He booted up his computer, listening to its mysterious internal ticks and whirrs, then entered his password.
There was a rap at the door. It was Angela, the departmental administrator.
She said, 'You all right?'
'Yeah. Y'know.'
Apparently she did. She pressed a palm to her vertically extended fingertips.
'Tea?'
He smiled back, for her implicit English assurance that there was no problem in the world that a cup of tea could not, somehow, make better.
'Please,' he said.
Ten minutes later she brought it to him. She'd prepared it just as he liked it: strong white, one sugar. Alongside it on his desk she placed four jammy dodgers, Nathan's favourite biscuit. While the kettle was boiling, she'd nipped to the local shops to buy them for him.
was
Looking at the biscuits, a symbol of something lost, Nathan overcome with the urge to weep.
erAnd
Angela stood there, nodding slightly, exactly as if she und stood.
18
On Friday Nathan ordered flowers. He gave the florist his credit card details and told them price was not a problem -- he wanted the flowers to be beautiful but not ostentatious. They must look, he said, exactly as if he'd spent a great deal of time discussing them with a florist. He picked them up on Saturday morning.
The shop was weirdly humid. The pale sunlight filtered through a glass ceiling and deep green foliage. The flagstones were damp beneath his feet.
The florists were a rotund Japanese woman and a lithe Scot with a coppery crewcut. They were excited to greet him and (having discussed him over coffee that morning -- their best customer of the week) fussed around him like manservants. They told him what each of the flowers were, their significance, and why they had been chosen.
They wrapped the bouquet in cellophane and brown paper and ribbon and handed it to him with no small degree of ceremony.
He left the shop carrying the flowers like a vast offering. He was aware of people looking at him, bundled up in a long coat, carrying such a big bunch of flowers. He knew what they were thinking and enjoyed the fact they were right. Eventually, he found the courage to return some of the glances, smiling complicity with a couple of pensioners in powder-blue macs and sensible shoes.
He lay the bouquet on the back seat of his car, which still smelled faintly chemical from the valeting. He turned on the radio and spread a map book on his lap. Gradually, the car filled with the thick scent of flowers.
He was distracted as he drove out of town.
Eventually, something caught his attention. He looked up to see he was driving past a field of forlorn cattle. He saw the name of the town, Sutton Down, written on a road sign.
He took a road through the forest where Elise Fox lay face down.
He looked for the entrance to the dark unnamed lane, but didn't see it.
After passing the forest, he pulled over to the grassy side of the road until his heart had slowed. He wanted a drink and he wanted a cigarette. But he also wanted to smell clean. He wanted to look like he had stepped out of the shower, bright and handsome and confident.
He
didn't recognize Sutton Down. The night he'd passed through, it had been indistinct shapes in the night. Now he saw that it centred on a long, oval village green. There was an ancient, low-ceilinged pub with a pagan sign.
He identified the correct house on the third circuit of the village green: it was three or four hundred years old, set back behind some twisted apple trees preparing to blossom. He parked the car by the grassy verge. He pulled his coat from the back seat, and put it on. It was speckled with dark spots where moisture had dripped from the bouquet he'd rested on it. There was a golden smear of pollen across the chest.
He hoiked the flowers gently under his arm and remote-locked the car with a wrist-flicking flourish, an over- compensation in case an onlooker should perceive his nervousness.
On the drive, an old, racing green MG was parked alongside a white Peugeot 205 gone rusty round the wheel rims. The door to the house was framed with ivy. Nathan stood on the stone doorstep. He was almost giggling with anxiety.
He rang the doorbell.
After a long minute, he heard some obscure shuffling in the hallway.
Panic rose in him and he considered squatting down behind the Peugeot, to hide. But he couldn't imagine how he might explain himself, should he be seen. So he stayed where he was.
It wasn't Holly who answered the door; it was her father, a neat, narrow-shouldered man who wore pressed indigo jeans and a pastel shirt.
He said, 'Yes?'
'Mr Fox?'
'Yes?'
'I'm Nathan. A friend of Holly's.'
Holly's father eyed the flowers. Nathan almost presented them to him.
'I'm afraid Holly's not home.'
He had a clipped, old-fashioned diction that made Nathan think of war films, but it was not unkind.
I see.
'Have you come a long way?'
'Not far. Only from town.'
'Well, listen. She shouldn't be gone too long, she's just running an errand for her mother. Why don't you come in and wait?'
'I don't want to be any trouble.'
'No trouble at all. Glad of the company. There's scones if you like them.'
'That would be lovely,' said Nathan, who did not like scones.
'Come in, then.' Holly's father stepped aside and Nathan stepped over the threshold.
'I'm Graham. Holly's dad.'
Nathan shook his hand. It was slim and dry and strong.
'Nathan,' said Nathan.
'We thought you might be the press, you see. They still turn up on the doorstep every now and again.'
The house smelled of potpourri and old leather and perhaps the tinge of old cigars. Nathan followed Graham into the kitchen. A long, bright room, it dog-legged into a glass conservatory that overlooked the garden and a small orchard. All of it was wet and brown and black, the colours of English spring. Apparently dead, but waiting to grow.
There was a woman in the kitchen. She was a bit younger than Graham: dark hair, sensibly cut. Slacks and court shoes. Widening through the hips. She was doing something to a flower beneath the running tap water. At Nathan's entrance, she turned off the tap and dried her hands on a York Minster tea cloth.
'June, darling,' said Graham. 'This is Nathan.'
She set down the tea cloth and looked at the flowers. She said, 'Aren't those just lovely? Shall I put them in water?'
Nathan was relieved to be unburdened of them.
June smiled. It was surprising and strangely moving.
'Just until Holly gets back,' she said, and practically winked.
In a series of dazzlingly quick and efficient movements, she'd opened the top drawer, removed a pair of secateurs, and begun to snip at the wet, green stems.
