Catch Me When I Fall by Nicci French Page B

everybody's nose was deep into them and it looked like a toddler's birthday party.
    Forty-five minutes later, Meg and I were driving out of London. Meg was reading the map with great precision and I was driving too quickly. We were on our way to inspect the venue for the weekend event. 'Venue" makes it sound formal and bland, like a modern hotel with identical bedrooms, well-stocked and overpriced mini-bars, a dinky gym where businessmen sit on rowing machines for fifteen minutes before their nine o'clock meeting, and conference facilities. It wasn't. It was a semi-converted watermill in Oxfordshire, covered with Virginia creeper. As well as the stream running through it, there was a small duckweedy
    lake at the end of the tangled stretch of land, a dozen or so higgledy-piggledy bedrooms with the suspicion of damp under the wallpaper. It was perfect: trees for adults to climb; water for them to fall into; a long, shuttered dining room where they'd have to sit round a single table together in the evenings, no other building for miles and miles. It had been bought recently by friends of friends of Meg, who wanted to get away from their stressed life in London and were now discovering what real stress was, among the cowpats, under the dripping trees.
     "This feels good,' I said. "It reminds me of when it was just you and me.'
"Yes," said Meg, with a hollow laugh. 'Those were the days.' There was a pause. I thought she was looking at the map. 'I suppose it's all right. About Deborah. I mean, I hope she won't sue us.'
"I hope she will,' I said. "We'll show her.'
Meg just coughed.
     London feels like a different city according to which way you leave it. When you head towards Oxford, it seems to dribble on and on and then you blink and everything's green. Water sprayed up from the wheels of cars as the rain, which had been threatening all morning, started to fall at last. I turned on the windscreen wipers and, through the arcs swept clear with each stroke, saw a grey, sodden, empty landscape. I turned on the radio, jabbed at buttons, jumping between stations, then gave up and turned it off again.
    Corinne and Richard were waiting. They'd lit a fire in the large sitting room, and made a pot of coffee. Corinne handed round a plate of little sponge cakes with raspberries on top and I devoured two, one after the other, my cheeks bulging like a hamster's. I stretched out my legs to feel the warmth of the flames and sighed. The stream gushed and burbled outside, and when the
    sun came out from the heavy clouds it threw weak beams of light over the wooden floor.
'Maybe I should do it,' I said.
'Do what?'
"Run away from London.'
'I wouldn't call this running away, exactly' 'Escape,' I said dreamily. 'Begin afflict.' 'What? Afflict?"
     'Begin afresh,' I corrected myself. My eyelids were dragging down, so I snapped them open, sat up straighter, gulped my good, strong coffee, listened to the rain on the windowpanes. The garden outside was damp green; on Saturday, seven men and five women would be playing games out there.
     'Right,' I said, reaching for the last cake. 'To work."
    We went to the bedrooms first: fine, except that a fire blanket and mini-extinguisher were needed on the top landing. Then we visited the kitchen, which had a blissful half-sized door that opened on to the gushing stream.
'Is this safe?' asked Meg, always the practical one.
'We're not opening a cre here,' I said.
'We keep it locked,' said Richard. 'It's an architectural feature.' With some difficulty, I drew back the heavy set of bolts, pushed open the little hatch, and pushed my head out. Flicks of water stung my cheek and the wind whipped my hair across my
face. I sighed and closed my eyes.
'Holly?'
'Mmmm. Coming.'
I pulled my head in, shut the door.
'Do you want to discuss the food for Saturday evening?' "I'm sure it's fine.'
     "I've done a menu for lunch, and breakfast on Sunday and made a list of ingredients that are available for them