‘Which is why I’m writing to her now. I want to do things better.’ He gave her a tragic look. ‘It’s about Timmy, you see. I woke up this morning and it hit me. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll end up doing to him what my father did to me.’
She kissed the top of his head. ‘Timmy’s going to be fine,’ she assured him. ‘From here on, we’re going to make darn sure he is.’
He grabbed her tightly and squeezed. ‘I love you, Thea Slocombe,’ he said. ‘And I absolutely don’t deserve you.’
‘That could go two ways,’ she laughed. ‘Some people might wonder what you did to deserve such a terrible wife.’
‘Some people don’t know what they’re talking about,’ said Drew.
Over lunch, Jessica talked about Finch Graham. ‘He was telling me a bit more about the metal detecting. It’s been a hobby of his for years, and he’s got really good at spotting likely places where stuff might be hidden. He liked to think he’d find stolen goods out in that field, but really he’d heard a whisper that there might be some Roman hoards still to discover. There must be quite a few villas that haven’t been unearthed yet, even round here.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Thea. ‘The whole area’s been gone over minutely in the last century or so. More than anywhere else in Britain, probably.’
‘Even so, it would be easy to miss a small one. And even easier to miss a stash of buried coins or jewellery. Think about it – in the first place, the person hiding them would use a secret place, not close to a road or buildings. Maybe near a big tree, so he could find it again. Then the tree blows down, and brambles and nettles grow all over it, and new baby trees spring up and eventually it’s a real little wood, and nobody thinks of it as having been open ground at one time. All this rewilding that’s going on shows how quickly a patch of land can change. It’s all very exciting,’ she finished with a sigh.
Stephanie and Timmy were both following this with wide-open eyes. ‘I want a metal detector,’ said Timmy. ‘I’m going to find some treasure with it.’
Jessica beamed at him. ‘So am I,’ she said.
Drew was inattentive, eating quickly. ‘Dad?’ Timmy said. ‘Can I have a metal detector for my birthday?’
Drew looked up in confusion. ‘Birthday? That’s not till September. You’ve only just had Christmas. And I’m not sure they’re suitable for children, are they?’ He looked at Thea and Jessica for enlightenment.
‘Finch might let you go with him sometime, when he’s using his,’ Jessica told Tim.
Stephanie had been watching Drew and Thea since before lunch. Something nice had happened; they were being all lovey-dovey, like they’d been a year ago, before Thea started getting bored. It was probably just Christmas, she concluded. The presents and the food and the candles had all conspired to make everybody happy, after all. And now it was almost over, the cold meat and stodgy rewarmed pudding’s faint echoes of the wonderful Christmas lunch – but the niceness of it, not just the meal but the whole day − were lingering on. She tried to think of a better word – ‘warm’, perhaps. ‘Loving’ seemed a bit strong, but ‘affectionate’ wasn’t strong enough. Dad was distracted, but not in a worried way. He was looking at Timmy as if he was really glad to have him. And Jessica was being mushy about the Finch person.
Only Thea was making her uneasy. Even now, when she was smiling at Dad, and putting her hand on his shoulder when she went to get something from the fridge, there was something unreliable about her. She never let you forget that there was a world just outside their front door where strange and scary things were happening. There was always a mystery of some sort, always a reason to go out and involve herself in other’s people’s trouble. Stephanie herself was torn between that unsettling lure of the outside and the comfort and contentment of a person’s own home. Timmy, she suspected, was essentially a stay-at-home sort of person, like Dad.
Her thoughts rambled along these lines while the meal came to an end and Drew hurried back to his office. She began to sort everybody she knew into one category or the other, until at some point she drew the surprising analogy between burial and cremation. Her father was a burial person – wanting to stay snug and secure in the same grave for ever. Thea, on the other hand, would want her ashes scattered to the four winds, free to float away in all directions. Not surprising, then, that Dad had become an undertaker specialising in burials. He probably had the site for his own grave already secretly decided. But Stephanie, once she gave it some serious thought, rather imagined she might prefer the other option.
‘I suppose I’d better think about what we’re going to feed Damien,’ said Thea. ‘They’ll be here tomorrow. We’ll have to put the cot up, and tidy away anything that Kim might break or hurt herself with.’
‘What time are they due?’ asked Jessica. ‘I could stay and see them if it’s not too late.’
‘Mid-afternoon. You won’t get home till after dark if you do that.’
‘So? I’m not scared of the dark. It’s motorway practically the whole way back. I’ve never even seen Kim. She’s my cousin – she should know who I am.’
The prospect of suddenly exchanging Jessica for a new set of step-relatives gave Stephanie pause. The house would become full and noisy, and she would have to spend two more nights sharing her room with Timmy. She wondered how her father was feeling about it. He had never met these people, either. It seemed a rather rude intrusion to turn up right after Christmas and expect food and hospitality. From things Thea had said, she wasn’t even sure that Damien was very nice.
‘Please
