Page 95 of The New House

‘You can’t ask me that,’ I tell him.

Tom follows me into the bathroom and watches as I twist my heavy hair into its neat chignon and pin it in place. ‘What time will you be back?’

‘You know the rules, Tom,’ I say.

He trails me as I return to the bedroom and pull a pale cream tweed jacket from the wardrobe. ‘Youknow the rules,’ he says. ‘Back before nightfall.’

‘The children aren’t babies any more.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Why? Are you worried I’m setting Peter a bad example?’ I say, glancing in the wardrobe mirror and straightening my shirt collar so that my silk lapels are even. ‘I think that ship has sailed, Tom.’

He moves behind me, snaking his arms around my waist. I turn into him. When he kisses me, his mouth is hungry, urgent. His tongue forces its way between my lips, and I can feel his erection against my thigh.

This is how it is between us.

This is how it’s always been.

I saw his disappointment yesterday when I told him I wasn’t the one who killed Felix Porter. I am hisdance with the dark. He needs me to be who I am so that he can be who he is.

I know what he wants from me. Tom’s always been aroused by my shadowed side. It’s what kept him from Harper’s bed, what keeps him from the bed of any other woman but me. He tells me I’m a good person, but he doesn’t really believe it. It would break his heart to know the truth about me.

I killed my father, but I’m not the person Tom thinks I am. I break into homes, but instead of stealing, I leave flowers. I slice through flesh and dip my hands in blood, but I save lives: I don’t take them.

So this is my gift to him today: a consolation prize for the truth about Felix. He doesn’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing, but heimagines. His fantasies are what makes him hard. He thinks I don’t tell him because I’m afraid he would be shocked. And he would: but not the way he thinks.

Because I love him I’ve kept my secret for nearly twenty-five years: not for my sake, but forhis.

It’s Saturday: once I get out of Fulham, the traffic west to Abingdon is surprisingly light. It’s a journey I’ve made many times before; I know where the speed traps are, which traffic cameras work and which are dummies. I stop for petrol at the garage I always use, eschewing the bitter reheated coffee on offer when I go inside to pay, and instead crossing the forecourt to the greasy spoon on the corner of the block. The owner, Harry, greets me with a smile when I hand him my travel mug, and returns it filled with the best coffee I’ve had outside Brazil, along with a piece of homemade shortbread – still warm – on the house.

‘Haven’t seen you in a few weeks,’ he comments as I pay. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Fine, thanks, Harry. It’s just been a bit chaotic at home.’

‘Send your girl my love,’ Harry says, as he always does.

He proffers my change, andI wave it away, as I always do. ‘Thank you for the shortbread,’ I say, raising it in tribute.

Harry’s smile broadens. ‘Hope she enjoys it.’

I get back on the road, sipping my coffee as the grey built-up streets give way to country roads and vivid autumn foliage. Eventually I reach the outskirts of Abingdon, securing the lid of my travel mug just before the hump-backed bridge that would have spilled it. Shortly afterwards I turn right between a pair of stone pillars onto a long, sweeping gravel drive. It’s another half-mile before the warm yellow stone of Alexander Manor comes into view.

The receptionist is new to me. I hand her my ID, and she pecks away at her computer with neatly trimmed nails: all the better to show off the small princess-cut diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand.

‘Have you been here before?’ she asks, handing me a sticky ‘V’ label.

‘Yes. I know where I’m going,’ I say.

I ascend the broad curve of stairs to the second floor. Built in the eighteenth century, Alexander Manor was once the seat of an old Sussex family that endured for seven generations before being abruptly extinguished by the First World War. Requisitioned as a military hospital in 1916, it was finally returned to civilian use in the mid-Sixties and for the last four decades has been used as a private care home. Unlike most such institutions, it smells not of pee and bleach but beeswax and history.

Coloured motes of light from the stained-glass windows dance across the oak panelling, and long-dead ancestors look down sternly from the walls.

I head down the corridor to a bright, sunny room at the end. I imagine this was once the private sitting room of the mistress of the house: I can picture her gazing from the window down the graceful curve of her drive.

Watching a boy on a bicycle bringing her atelegram telling her the last of her four sons was dead.

‘Hello, my darling girl,’ I say, as I enter the room. I hold up the paper bag containing the shortbread. ‘Look what I’ve brought for you.’

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