Familiar Rooms in Darkness by Caro Fraser Page A

idly.
    â€˜When is that again?’
    â€˜In two weeks – July the first.’
    â€˜I may be in France that weekend.’
    â€˜Oh, Adam! You’ve known about it for ages. I’ve accepted for both of us.’
    â€˜Sorry about that. But she’s your friend.’
    Megan said nothing for a moment. She had wanted very much to attend this wedding with Adam. At an old schoolfriend’s wedding, being part of a couple had a special importance. It was all very well being a single thirtysomething on the London scene, but when the chips were down, in the old church setting and at the reception afterwards, she’d look very much like remaindered goods if she had to show up on her own.
    â€˜Why might you be in France?’
    â€˜I pitched this idea to the commissioning editor on one of the Sundays – about farmers who’ve abandoned this country to go and farm in France. I suggested it months ago, and he’s only just come round to the idea. So I may be away for a week or so.’
    â€˜Can’t you go later? I could take a couple of weeks off, come with you. It would be more like a holiday.’
    Adam considered this. ‘I could, I suppose. There’s no particular hurry. I’ll think about it.’
    â€˜Anyway, I thought you were meant to be getting on with this biography thing?’
    Adam sighed. ‘I know. I really should. Actually, Bella Day rang today and left her mother’s number. You know, Cecile Patterson, Harry Day’s first wife.’
    â€˜Oh, right.’ Megan had lost interest, and was watching the television.
    Adam wondered why he didn’t ring her now. He’d been hanging back on this book, hadn’t got in touch with any of the people whose phone numbers he’d taken down at Gandercleugh. His diffidence had something to do with that business with Bella. Well, he’d sorted that out in his mind, so he might as well get on with it.
    He got up and went into his room, picked up the piece of paper on which he’d written the number, and rang it.
    The voice which answered was light yet husky, very precise. ‘Cecile Patterson.’
    Adam introduced himself, and mentioned Bella.
    Cecile was warm and expansive. She said she would be delighted to assist Adam, and that he was most welcome to visit any time next week. She began to talk about Harry, unbidden, and went on for a good ten minutes. Adam started to jot down notes, but stopped. He could get it all again when he went to see her. He suspected she was somewhat lonely. She talked in the eager way that lonely people did.
    He arranged to visit her at her home in Dulwich the following Wednesday, at two in the afternoon. As he went back through to Megan, Adam wondered whether he would glean from Cecile anything more than the superficial facts of this period of Harry’s life. She sounded too civilized, too much at ease with the past, to bring out any hard and bitter truths.
    He sat down next to Megan. She half-turned, nestled against him and kissed him, unbuttoning the top of his shirt. ‘Do you want to go to bed?’
    â€˜Let’s do it here.’
    â€˜On the sofa? Bed’s comfier.’
    â€˜Comfy,’ replied Adam, ‘is not what I want.’
    â€˜Cosier.’ She slipped her hand beneath the waistband of his trousers.
    â€˜Nor is cosy.’
    Undefined thoughts, vaguely connected with Megan’s friend’s wedding, drifted through Megan’s mind as Adamundressed her. They were to do with the pleasures of being part of a couple, and of patterns taking the shape of stability. Adam’s own thoughts dwelt on the sensual pleasure of sexual familiarity, quite different from the erotic charge of first encounters, and tailed off, when his mind became incapable of coherent thought, into the question of how long it took for familiarity to lose its delight and become merely boring.
    Cecile lived in a semi-detached house in Dulwich, in a street which