black-and-white tiled hall with slate-blue walls. The house smells of wood smoke and the outdoors – an oxygenated, muddy smell that is not quite damp. An umbrella stand is filled with brollies and walking sticks, and to their left – Manon peers around the door, painted mustard yellow – is a boot room, wallpapered with Victorian images of birds as if in a shooting lodge. She squats next to a line of wellingtons – one black pair and three green – and touches the mud that cakes them.
‘Davy?’ she calls, and he appears by her side. ‘Does this look fresh to you?’
She swaps places with him and follows the hallway out to a baronial-scale lounge. The ceiling is double height, the walls blotchy with blood-red lime wash. There is a grand open fireplace with white stone surround – the sort you could rest an elbow on when you came in from fishing in the Fenland rivers. A charred black scar runs up the back of the brickwork in the hearth. Manon squats beside the grate but it contains only the cold, crocodile husks of burnt-through logs.
The fire is surrounded on three sides by red sofas patterned with fleur-de-lys and collapsing with age and gentility. She can imagine the Hinds reading their Dickens hardbacks or their subscriptions to the
New York Review of Books
, fire roaring and some string music playing in the background.
From the lounge is a staircase leading up to a minstrels’ gallery and off it, the bedrooms. Manon is feeling her way, the house cast in painterly shadows. Swathes of muddy colours curling up the staircase or viewed through an open bedroom door: mustard, rose, slate blues and grey, one leading on to the next. She pushes open a door to a vast bedroom – Ian and Miriam’s, she assumes, because it is furnished with a grand French bed, its headboard framed in ornate gold and upholstered with grey linen. There is an imposingly dark French armoire, too, its bottom drawer slightly open. Manon walks to the window – a long cushion in the same grey linen has created a window seat with two Liberty-print pink blossom pillows at either end. From here she can see the front drive and their car, and she has an urge to go towards it, to drive away.
She jumps at the sound of a door slamming and her heart thuds in the shadows of the mansard window.
‘Boss?’ calls Davy, entering the room.
‘Have you checked all the downstairs rooms?’
‘I have.’
‘Right, well, let’s check the rest of the rooms up here and the outbuildings. Then Polsa can take it from there.’
‘Not a bad little bolt-hole,’ says Davy.
Manon shivers. ‘Gives me the creeps.’
Helena
They’ve left her waiting in interview room two and in the waiting, she can’t help but rehearse what she’ll say, though she fears the rehearsal will make her appear guilty, like trying to make your face seem natural when going through passport control in Moscow or Tehran – the more you think about it, the more rictus your expression becomes. Not that she’s ever been to those places, but even in the queue at Brittany Ferries she has made a point of catching the immigration officer’s eye and smiling, so as to say, ‘You won’t find any contraband in
my
backpack.’
The strip light above Helena’s head fizzes then plinks, as if there’s an insect dying inside it. She’s always rehearsing, having imaginary conversations in her head which pre-empt real encounters – like she’s rehearsed her return to Dr Young’s couch after the Christmas break and how she’ll tell him all that has happened with Edith. She used to rehearse her sessions so much that when she first started with Dr Young, it had taken quite a long time to get her to diverge from the script and ‘allow things to emerge’, as he put it.
Helena hears a door slam somewhere in the corridor, brisk footsteps, and her heart quickens at the prospect of someone coming in. She sits upright, brushes at her skirt, but the footsteps clack past the door and drift away.
‘Davy?’ she calls, and he appears by her side. ‘Does this look fresh to you?’
She swaps places with him and follows the hallway out to a baronial-scale lounge. The ceiling is double height, the walls blotchy with blood-red lime wash. There is a grand open fireplace with white stone surround – the sort you could rest an elbow on when you came in from fishing in the Fenland rivers. A charred black scar runs up the back of the brickwork in the hearth. Manon squats beside the grate but it contains only the cold, crocodile husks of burnt-through logs.
The fire is surrounded on three sides by red sofas patterned with fleur-de-lys and collapsing with age and gentility. She can imagine the Hinds reading their Dickens hardbacks or their subscriptions to the
New York Review of Books
, fire roaring and some string music playing in the background.
From the lounge is a staircase leading up to a minstrels’ gallery and off it, the bedrooms. Manon is feeling her way, the house cast in painterly shadows. Swathes of muddy colours curling up the staircase or viewed through an open bedroom door: mustard, rose, slate blues and grey, one leading on to the next. She pushes open a door to a vast bedroom – Ian and Miriam’s, she assumes, because it is furnished with a grand French bed, its headboard framed in ornate gold and upholstered with grey linen. There is an imposingly dark French armoire, too, its bottom drawer slightly open. Manon walks to the window – a long cushion in the same grey linen has created a window seat with two Liberty-print pink blossom pillows at either end. From here she can see the front drive and their car, and she has an urge to go towards it, to drive away.
She jumps at the sound of a door slamming and her heart thuds in the shadows of the mansard window.
‘Boss?’ calls Davy, entering the room.
‘Have you checked all the downstairs rooms?’
‘I have.’
‘Right, well, let’s check the rest of the rooms up here and the outbuildings. Then Polsa can take it from there.’
‘Not a bad little bolt-hole,’ says Davy.
Manon shivers. ‘Gives me the creeps.’
Helena
They’ve left her waiting in interview room two and in the waiting, she can’t help but rehearse what she’ll say, though she fears the rehearsal will make her appear guilty, like trying to make your face seem natural when going through passport control in Moscow or Tehran – the more you think about it, the more rictus your expression becomes. Not that she’s ever been to those places, but even in the queue at Brittany Ferries she has made a point of catching the immigration officer’s eye and smiling, so as to say, ‘You won’t find any contraband in
my
backpack.’
The strip light above Helena’s head fizzes then plinks, as if there’s an insect dying inside it. She’s always rehearsing, having imaginary conversations in her head which pre-empt real encounters – like she’s rehearsed her return to Dr Young’s couch after the Christmas break and how she’ll tell him all that has happened with Edith. She used to rehearse her sessions so much that when she first started with Dr Young, it had taken quite a long time to get her to diverge from the script and ‘allow things to emerge’, as he put it.
Helena hears a door slam somewhere in the corridor, brisk footsteps, and her heart quickens at the prospect of someone coming in. She sits upright, brushes at her skirt, but the footsteps clack past the door and drift away.
Similar Books
