"IN A DARK WOOD" BY C. H. SISSON Now I am forty I must lick my bruises What has been suffered cannot be repaired I have chosen what whoever grows up chooses A sickening garbage that could not be shared.

My errors have been written on my senses The body is a record of the mind My touch is crusted with my past defences Because my wit was dull, my eye grows blind.

There is no credit in a long defection And defect and defection are the same I have no body fit for resurrection Destroy then rather my half-eaten frame But that you will not do, for that were pardon The bodies that you pardon, you replace And that you save for those whom you will harden To suffer in the hard rule of your Grace.

Christians on earth may have their bodies mended By premonition of a heavenly state But I, by grosser flesh from Grace defended Can never see, never communicate.

I have to go downstairs now for Christmas dinner, but I will be back later to read the poem to you again and tell you what I think it means. "The body is a record of the mind." Would you agree, Francine?

Kerry is calling me for dinner. Never fear-I shall be back.

Your husband, for worse and for worse, having given up all hope of better, Tim

9.

FRIDAY, 11 MARCH 2011.

I pull up on the gra.s.s verge where the narrow road comes to a stop. Tims house is hiding from me: the Dower House, in the grounds of Lower Heckencott Hall. I cant see it, but I know its behind these high wooden gates, thanks to a consensus of search results. The Hall is Grade I listed and featured on websites called things like Architectural Treasures of the Culver Valley and Britains Finest Historical Houses.

Tims home, I correct myself. Not his house. One of my searches yielded a PDF of plans for an extension drawn up by Roger Staples Design Studios for Daniel and Kerensa Jose. That makes sense; Dan and Kerry are the ones with the money. Thanks to www.nethouseprices.com, I know they paid 875,000 for the Dower House in February 2009.

Kerry never told me her name was short for Kerensa. Tim would have known. I hate myself for hoping that Francine didnt. It makes no difference to anything, but I prefer to think of her as ignorant, an outsider.

The conviction Kerry planted in my mind six years ago is still stubbornly, crazily there: Francine might have been married to Tim, but she didnt belong in his life. "Youre the fourth quarter of our quartet," Kerry told me once when Dan and Tim were late to meet us at Omars Kitchen. The idea took root, fast and firm. I believed her because I needed it to be true.

I still need it to have been true when she said it. If it was true once . . . It must have been true. Kerry told me about her dad-something she, Dan and Tim had agreed never to tell Francine.

Rain drums on the roof of my car like an angry reminder, chastising me for letting down my guard and admitting to weakness. It doesnt matter that no one heard me apart from me. Life punishes the needy; admit you cant live without something and its taken away.

I dont need Tim in the way that I used to. Ive proved I can live without him. I want to help him, thats all.

If my scientist colleagues could hear me trying to talk Fate round, theyd think twice about ever working with me again.

I understand that whatever this is, it is not Tim being returned to me. No one has invited me back into anything. Look at those closed gates.

When I knew Kerry and Dan, they had no gates to hide behind. They lived on Burtmayne Road in Spilling, in a two-bedroom gardenless terrace that was all front; from the street it fooled you into thinking it was s.p.a.cious, but it was only one room deep. Tim and Francine lived a two-minute walk away on Heron Close, in a three-bedroom detached new build with a garden so overlooked by other identical detached new builds that Tim referred to it as "the theater in the round," though never in Francines presence according to Kerry.

And now Tim lives here, with Kerry and Dan. And I live with Sean.

DC Gibbs asked for my address; it was one of his first questions, a formality. 47 Horse Fair Lane, Silsford, I recited. It sounded like an address and nothing more. When I left the police station, I headed straight for the Dower House, uninvited and probably unwelcome. Coming here felt as accidental and incongruous as going home would have. I knew I needed to sleep, but couldnt imagine doing it in my own bed. The idea that I have a bed, a home, a boyfriend, strikes me as something I might have wanted to believe even though its never been true: as if I found a collection of things all conveniently together in one place, pretended they were mine, and everyone else was too polite to object.

Stop driving yourself crazy. Do something useful.

I open the car door, close it again. The go-away gates are too off-putting. I tell myself that if Tim lives here then my feelings for him justify my being here. And theres no "if" about it: the news websites all agree that this was where Tim and Francine were living at the time of Francines death. Rent-free: thats the part I worked out on my own. Kerry and Dan would skip down the street naked before theyd charge Tim rent. He might have tried to insist on paying his way, but they wouldnt have let him.

The idea that I might see Kerry again-that she might be in her house now, behind these gates-makes my eyes water. I blink away the tears. I was so devastated when Tim walked out of my life, it was only months later that I was able to see past the loss of him to the smaller sadness of Kerry being gone too. I didnt know her for long, but I missed her more than Id expected to. Shed helped me in the most important way I have ever been helped: she explained Tim to me. Not completely-that would be impossible, given that Tim is Tim-but enough. Kerry made sense of my life for me when Id lost my grip.

I mustnt allow myself to hope that she can do it again.

The rain stops as suddenly as it started. I get out of the car, leaving my bag on the pa.s.senger seat but taking my switched-off phone with me. A compromise. If I suddenly decide Im ready to talk to Sean, I can switch it on and lose no more time. Though before ringing him Id probably want to listen to the eighteen angry messages hes left, to gauge his mood, and after listening to them, Id probably be even less keen to speak to him than I am now, so whats the point?

Which is also my gut reaction to the millionaires fortress in front of me: whats the point of trying to get in, when so much design effort has gone into keeping people out? The sign says "Lower Heckencott Hall," but it ought to say, "Abandon hope all ye who want to enter here," a subtle but crucial variation on the well-known phrase. I try not to feel intimidated by the carved stone gateposts, the intercom system with its two buzzers, the high stone perimeter wall with even higher hedges forming an extra layer of protection above it. Now that Im standing, I can see, in the distance, a repeating pattern of identical windows: the top two stories of a vast square building that must be the Hall. The long, straight driveway makes its presence felt while hiding out of sight-longer than a street with thirty families living on either side, judging by the position of the house in relation to the gates.

Despite its trappings of privacy, Lower Heckencott Hall looks public and practical, with its rigid corners and inflexible lines. I picture a large dusty meeting room within its walls, full of men shouting and waving leaflets in the air. One of my search results described it as "the grandest example of vernacular architecture in the south of England." Another called it a mansion, which strikes me as way off the mark; "mansion" implies a lavishness thats absent here. There are no flourishes, no softening details, no decorative touches, just a stone cube with nothing but windows to break up the monotony of the faade. Not even a sloped roof; the Hall is a flat-top.

The word jolts me back twelve years, to when I first met Sean in the gym at Waterfront Health Club. I dont want to think about him, but he keeps invading my mind. Is it a guilt reflex, because I know Im probably going to leave him?

Not probably. Definitely.

Probably.

When he asked me out, instead of saying yes or no, I told him I had a confession to make and blurted out that for months Id thought of him as s.e.xy Boiled Egg because his flat-top hairstyle created the illusion of someone having removed the dome of his skull. "Obviously thats partly complimentary and partly not, and you might not want to have dinner with me now you know," I said. Sean laughed politely. It was clear he found my admission neither funny nor charming nor offensive-merely an obstacle to him getting his question answered. When he saw that I was waiting for an answer too, he said, yes, he still wanted to take me out for dinner. He told me the venue, the date and the time as if it were a preexisting arrangement: The Slack Captain in Silsford, the following Sat.u.r.day; hed pick me up at seven-thirty.

He arrived with a brand-new crew cut, looking a little thuggish and four hundred times s.e.xier. I thanked him for coming to collect me and told him-in case it hadnt occurred to him, and for future reference-that we could have met at the restaurant. I didnt say that The Slack Captain wasnt my idea of a restaurant. "We could have met there," Sean agreed, "except that I invited you." I asked what that meant and he said, "It means dinners my treat and my responsibility. I pick you up, and I drive you home afterward." Still in the dark, I decided to drop it; his four-hundred-times-s.e.xier appearance made perfect sense even if his words didnt.

I shunted aside my unease about his having fixed all the details of our date before Id agreed to go out with him, decided his rapid hair response meant that he was flexible and open-minded, and told him so, making a joke about it being easy to keep an open mind if someones sliced off the top of your head. Sean gave me a flattening look and I stopped laughing.

He asked for the bill while chewing his last mouthful of steak. Id finished my main course a few minutes earlier, but I hadnt realized our dinner was over. It didnt occur to Sean that I might want pudding; he didnt, so why would I?

He doesnt want a career that involves getting stuck overnight in Dsseldorf; why do I?

I force the image of him out of my mind-horizontal on our sofa; gone-and am about to press the lower buzzer on the intercom, the one labeled "The Dower House," when the gates start to open with what looks like great reluctance. I hear a car engine and picture a silver Mercedes, a chauffeur in uniform. He might die before theres a gap wide enough to drive through.

I stand to one side as a grubby blue Volvo S60 emerges. It stops at the gateposts. The drivers tinted window slides open and I see a skinny man of about my age with a goatee beard and straggly shoulder-length brown hair with an indent, as if hes recently worn it in a ponytail. He stares at me. Theres a dead Christmas tree lying across the backseat of his car and, on top of it, a bulging green garden refuse sack.

I smile at him to thank him for opening the gates, and walk past the Volvo into the grounds of Lower Heckencott Hall. Heres the long, ruler-straight driveway, exactly as I pictured it.

"Oy!" the man calls out.

Is he talking to me? I retrace my steps. He looks angry. "Who said you could go in there?" His accent is roughest Culver Valley.

"I pressed the buzzer for the Dower House and they buzzed me in," I lie.

"No, they didnt. I opened the gate. No one buzzed you in. Theyre busy at the Dower House. They dont want to be disturbed."

Busy? Not with stuff and things, by any chance? He must be so proud of his detailed, imaginative excuse. "Kerry buzzed me in," I lie, determined to stand my ground. "She spoke to me through the intercom. Im an old friend. My names-"

"Gaby Struthers." He says it as if hes found me out, even though I was about to tell him.

"How did you know?"

"So its Kerry youve come to see, is it? Not Lauren?"

"Lauren? Cookson?" Were never going to get anywhere if we keep answering questions with questions. "Why would I come here to see Lauren? I know she used to work here, but . . ." I cant bring myself to say, But Francine Brearys dead, and dead people dont need care a.s.sistants.

He makes a noise thats halfway between a laugh and a jeer, and leans his arm out of the car window. The movement pushes up his shirtsleeve to reveal a tattoo that would have made me think of Lauren if we hadnt already been talking about her. Hardly anybody I know has a tattoo. Does she know anyone who isnt covered in them?

"Dont pretend you dont know Lauren lives here," the man snaps, but Im not listening. I stare at the blue words on his skinny arm: "IRONMAN."

Jason Cookson. Laurens husband, three-time survivor of the Ironman challenge. Gardener-c.u.m-handyman-c.u.m-remover-of-dead-Christmas-trees.

Murderer of Francine Breary? Maybe.

"Is Lauren back yet?" I ask. "Id like to see her too, if shes-"

"Shes not."

"How did you know who I was?"

"Lauren said youd come looking for her." He stares at the road ahead. The message is clear: he might have to speak to me, but he doesnt have to look at me. "She doesnt want you meddling in her life, so youre wasting your time."

"Im here to see Kerry. I had no idea Lauren lived here until you told me."

"Youre bulls.h.i.tting," Jason says to his steering wheel. "Word of advice: never bulls.h.i.t a bulls.h.i.tter. If I were you, Id turn round and walk away."

So hes a bulls.h.i.tter, by his own admission. Interesting. "Youre not me," I say.

"If you dont walk away, thats your lookout. I dont give a monkeys what happens to you, but youd better not still be here when Lauren gets back."

"Off to pick her up at the airport, are you?"

"If she comes home and finds you here, sh.e.l.l get herself in a right state. Stay away from her. She wants nothing to do with you. Shes scared s.h.i.tless of you."

"Whatever shes said-"

"Forget what Lauren said, and listen to what Im saying: get lost. No one wants you here."

"Forget everything Lauren said?" I ask. "Or just the part about Tim Breary being innocent of murder?"

"c.o.c.ky b.i.t.c.h!" He jabs the air with an angry finger. I preferred it when he wasnt looking at me. "Why dont you f.u.c.k off back to your snooty yuppie house on Sn.o.b Street?"

He drives away before I can call him a hypocrite. Though its likely to be stupidity rather than a double standard; to apply two different sets of rules to two similar situations would be beyond Jason Cooksons intellectual capabilities. He must have forgotten that he lives in the grounds of a stately home.

The gates have started to close. I sprint inside, then feel embarra.s.sed, even though no ones watching me, because there was no need to run. To my left, a path wide enough for a car to drive down follows the line of the wall around the farthest edge of the garden and disappears behind the Hall. I take the most direct route instead: the gra.s.s. Because it was gra.s.sy and wanted wear . . .

One of Tims favorite poems: Robert Frosts "The Road Not Taken." "Its incredible how little people understand when the words and syntax couldnt be simpler," he ranted during one of our lunches at the Proscenium. I loved Tims insightful soft-spoken rants. "Everyone thinks the poems a celebration of non-conformity, but its nothing of the sort. The writers tearing the narrator to shreds for his pompous self-deception, for being too vain to face the truth." I asked what the truth was. "That all our choices are insignificant," Tim said, grinning.

Three-quarters of the way across a lawn thats bigger than most crop-growing fields, I see a two-story brick-and-stone building ahead and to the left. The Dower House; it has to be. Its easily large enough to accommodate twelve people, with a clock tower protruding from the middle of its sloping roof, square stone bay windows and a wisteria that must look beautiful in bloom covering most of its faade.

I can see why Dan and Kerry bought it. Its softer and more attractive than the Hall, and makes me think of a vicarage from a nineteenth-century novel. I bet Kerry fell in love with it before shed crossed the threshold, when she first stood where Im standing now. Theres a generous graveled parking area outside with three cars parked on it. Does that mean Kerry and Dan have a visitor? Was Jason telling the truth when he said they were busy and wouldnt want to be disturbed?

I dont care. I need to know why Tims lying about killing Francine. Kerry will be able to tell me more than anyone else can.

The presence of so many cars on a weekday suggests that in their new life, Dan and Kerry dont have Monday-to-Friday nine-to-five jobs. Dan was an accountant when I knew him before. He worked with Tim at Dignam Peac.o.c.k. Kerry was a care a.s.sistant, like Lauren. Perhaps they also met through work. And then one day Kerry said she was leaving. She wouldnt have said why, wouldnt have mentioned the money. How surprised must Lauren have been, however many months later, to be offered a job by her former colleague, better paid than any shed had before and with accommodation in the grounds of Lower Heckencott Hall as a perk?

What will happen to Lauren now that Francines dead? Will Kerry find other work at the Dower House for her to do? I shiver as I picture a gray-skinned faceless woman, a stroke victim like Francine, being wheeled in on a trolley as a subst.i.tute. To give Lauren someone new to look after.

Why Lauren, Kerry? Tim? Why choose thick, sweary Lauren?

Maybe Jason came first; Dan and Kerry hired him, then found out his wife was a care a.s.sistant . . .

Or . . .

I shake my head to banish the idea. And again. No luck. Its determined to stick around until I acknowledge its presence, which I dont want to do because it frightens me.

What if Tim, or Kerry, wanted Francines carer to be as stupid and vacant as possible? So that she wouldnt notice . . . what?

This is useless. I could speculate all day and I still wouldnt have a coherent theory at the end of it. I take a deep breath, march toward the Dower Houses front door like someone who knows what shes doing, and ring the bell, hoping it will silence the voice in my head thats still murmuring all the worst possibilities.

What if Tim and Lauren were . . . ? No. No way.

But what if?

Hes one of the few people who doesnt think hes better than her, she said. She sounded fond of him. What if she knows Tims innocent not because she knows Jasons guilty but because she was with Tim in a hotel room nowhere near the Dower House when Francine was murdered? What if shes his alibi, and they cant tell the police because theyre scared of what Jason would do if he found out?

Id rather Tim were a murderer than sleeping with Lauren. It makes me feel sick to know this about myself.

Theres a date carved into the Dower Houses stone door-head: 1906. The tails of the 9 and the 6 are threaded through the 0. It makes me think of Laurens "Jason" tattoo: red hearts on green stalks wound around the vowels. Did he come up with the design? Did he put on a soppy face or a threatening one as he demanded hearts on stalks? What about her dad, when he asked for the "FATHER" tattoo on Laurens arm as his birthday present?

I ring the bell again, more insistently this time. Ive been alone with my thoughts for too long; Im starting to feel unreal.

Dan Jose opens the door. His fine, fair hair is longer and more disheveled than it used to be when he worked at Dignam Peac.o.c.k. Hes got new gla.s.ses: square black frames instead of his old silver wire ones. "Gaby," he announces, as if I might not know who I am.

"Is Tim sleeping with Lauren Cookson?" I ask him.

He leaves it a few seconds. Then says, "Of course not. Theres been n.o.body."

This is more information than I hoped for. Even more surprisingly, its good news. I start to cry. Dan steps forward, pulls me into a hug. "Its good to see you, Gaby. Even . . . like this."

I believe him; of course I believe him. All the same, I cant get the other, untrue story out of my head: that Tim is involved with Lauren, or was before he had himself sent to prison. Of all the women hes ever met, he wants her least, respects her least: thats why he chose her; shes what he thinks he deserves. Hed have been able to read her his favorite poems and smile to himself when she asked him to stop spouting a load of boring old s.h.i.te. If he really wanted to prove that the choices we make couldnt matter less, Lauren would have been his perfect fling.

"Tim didnt notice Lauren at all," Dan says. "It was embarra.s.sing. Kerry tried to have a word with him about it but it had no effect. He didnt see her in rooms, didnt say h.e.l.lo to her when he pa.s.sed her in the hall. I thought it was a sn.o.bbery thing, but it wasnt."

"Then what was it?" I ask. Years since weve met, and not even two minutes of small talk. Good. It would be unbearable to have to go through the whole pointless "So, what have you been up to?" charade.

"Kerry could tell you better than me," Dan says. "She reckons that after . . . well, after everything that happened, Tim deliberately shrunk his world, so that there was no one in it but him, me and Kerry. And Francine, obviously, after she had her stroke."

"After?" What a strange thing to say. "And before, presumably?"

Dan looks over his shoulder, into the house. I cant see much, only a mirror above a dark wood cabinet with drawers and legs. There are no lights on in the hall. Despite the rea.s.suring hug, Dan hasnt invited me in.