‘Oh, look, don’t bother. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’
‘Nonsense. I wasn’t in the mood for work anyway. That’s why I was down here.’ He stood and added, ‘I’ll be back in one minute.’
He went upstairs and picked up his coat, leaving his bag and books in the booth, convinced that if he had to go back for them he might do some work. As he headed back down the stairs he got the feeling she wouldn’t be there, that she’d have changed her mind and left.
She was still sitting in the same place though and smiled as she saw him. She was really attractive, not just in the way she looked but her whole manner, and he was caught up in the anticipation of getting to know her, even while in the background he could hear a discordant note sounding.
He liked her but no good could come of this. If he got to know her it would be a friendship or relationship based on dishonesty and that lie would always be at the centre of things, a shadow. And the more the relationship came to mean, the more he’d be terrified of Will or one of the others getting careless.
He couldn’t afford to confuse things like that. He’d go for a walk with her and that would have to be it. If she showed an interest in getting to know him better he’d have to play busy, the build-up to finals and all that. For once he’d found a reason to talk to a girl he liked but he couldn’t afford to forget what that reason was, that she was sad because he’d killed her friend.
They walked out across the square, past the chaplaincy centre and onto the paths that led down across the landscaped campus to the lake. It was cold but until he saw the green sweep of the campus frosted white he hadn’t realized how cold. It was an amazing day, the first time in nearly three years that he’d seen the place looking like a true winter landscape.
‘I love weather like this,’ Susie said. ‘It makes me think of Bruegel.’ She looked at him apologetically and said, ‘That wasn’t meant to sound pretentious; it’s just that I’m studying History of Art.’
‘No, it makes me think of Bruegel too. Or Hendrick Avercamp.’ He laughed and said, ‘What a great name! Hendrick Avercamp.’
She looked at him and said, ‘You know a lot about art?’
He shook his head, saying, ‘A great-aunt of mine owned a picture by Hendrick Avercamp, a winter landscape kind of like this. I used to stare at it for hours when I was a kid. I loved it.’
She looked entranced.
‘You’re serious? Your aunt owned an Avercamp?’
‘Great-aunt,’ he said.
‘Was she rich?’
‘Not at all.’ He laughed at the thought. ‘She married a really rich guy. They never had kids and then they divorced when she was like, forty-five or something. She said all she wanted was the house and the Avercamp. So he gave her those two things. She could have gotten a lot more but she didn’t want anything. My grandfather had to make her an allowance because she had no money. When he died, my dad gave her an allowance. She was a great old girl but completely unworldly.’
‘How wonderful.’ She left a suitable pause and added, ‘What happened to the painting?’
‘She left it to a museum.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, exactly. I dropped enough hints, but hey, she had this whole different drummer thing going. I’m happy anyway. It’s sad to lock a great painting up in a private house.’
Susie looked up at him and smiled, saying, ‘It’s really weird but I already feel like I’ve known you for a long time.’ He smiled too, feeling uncomfortable again though, because she was warming to him. He couldn’t believe his bad timing. She seemed to realize then how much she was craning her neck and said, ‘God, you’re really tall.’
‘You noticed?’
She laughed and said, ‘Sorry, you must hear that all the time.’ She pointed off the path to a clump of trees, delicate and bare, drawn lightly in ink against the hazy white of the landscape.
They set off towards them, the grass crunching under their feet.
‘This is a great spot. We had a picnic here last summer.’
‘You and Emily?’
‘And others. There were about six of us. It was such a lovely day.’
‘Yeah, there have been one or two like that while I’ve been here.’
They stopped directly in front of the trees. Matt looked back at their two sets of footprints, dark dotted lines like animal trails. Susie swept the horizon with her hand and said, ‘See what a great spot it is. The sea over there, the lake and the woods, the hills on the other side of the bay.’