A Place of Hiding

“Just the way it seemed.”


“They’ll search here if they’ve searched there.” He gazed towards the window as if he could see the manor house from the kitchen, which he could not. “I wonder what they’re looking for.”

“I don’t know,” she told him again, but her throat felt tight. From the front of the cottage, a dog began to bark. The barking changed to yelping. Someone shouted. Valerie and her husband went to the sitting room, where the windows looked out onto a lawn and beyond it the drive, at the point where it circled round the bronze sculpture of the swimmers and the dolphins. There, they saw, Paul Fielder and Taboo were having a run-in with the local police in the person of a single constable, backed against a tree as the dog snapped at his trousers. Paul dropped his bicycle and began to pull the dog away. The constable advanced, red of face and loud of voice.

“I’d better see to that,” Valerie said. “I don’t want our Paul ending up in trouble.”

She grabbed her coat, which she’d left on the back of an armchair when she’d come into the cottage. She headed for the door. Kevin said nothing till her hand was on the knob, at which point he merely spoke her name.

She looked back at him: the rugged face, the work-hardened hands, the unreadable eyes. When he next spoke, she heard his question but could not bring herself to reply:

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” he asked her. She smiled at him brightly and shook her head.

Deborah sat beneath the silver sky not far from the looming statue of Victor Hugo, whose granite cloak and granite scarf billowed back forever in the wind that blew from his native France. She was alone on the gentle slope of Candie Gardens, having walked up the hill from Ann’s Place directly after leaving the hotel. She’d slept badly, far too aware of the proximity of her husband’s body, and determined not to roll next to him unconsciously during the night. This frame of mind didn’t welcome Morpheus: She rose before dawn and went out for a walk. After her angry encounter with Simon on the previous evening, she’d returned to the hotel. But there she felt like a guilt-stricken child. Furious at herself for welcoming the smallest sense of remorse into her consciousness when she knew she had done nothing wrong, she soon left again and she didn’t return till after midnight, when she could be reasonably assured that Simon would be asleep.

She’d gone to China. “Simon,” she told her, “is being completely impossible.”

“Ain’t that the definition of m-a-n.” China drew Deborah inside and they made pasta together, with China at the cooker and Deborah leaning against the sink. “Tell all,” China said affably. “Auntie is here to apply the Band-Aids.”

“That stupid ring,” Deborah said. “He’s worked himself into a state about it.” She explained the entire story as China poured a jar of tomato sauce into a pan and commenced stirring. “You’d think I’d committed a crime,” she concluded.

“It was stupid anyway,” China said when Deborah was finished. “I mean even buying it in the first place. It was an impulse thing.” She cocked her head in Deborah’s direction. “Just the kind of thing you’d never do.”

“Simon seems to feel that bringing the ring round here was impulsive enough.”

“He does?” China stared at the cooking pasta for a moment before replying matter-of-factly. “Well. I c’n see why he hasn’t been exactly desperate to meet me, then.”

“That isn’t it,” Deborah protested quickly. “You mustn’t...You’ll meet him. He’s eager to...He’s heard so much about you over the years.”

“Yeah?” China looked up from the sauce to regard her evenly. Deborah felt herself growing sticky under her gaze. China said, “It’s okay. You were going on with your life. There’s nothing wrong with that. California wasn’t your best three years. I can see why you wouldn’t want to remember if you could help it. And keeping in touch...It would have been a form of remembering, huh? Anyway, sometimes that happens with friendships. People are close for a while and then they’re not. Things change. Needs change. People move on. That’s just how it is. I’ve missed you, though.”

“We should have stayed close,” Deborah said.

“Tough to manage when someone doesn’t write. Or call. Or anything.” China shot her a smile. It was sad, though, and Deborah could feel it.

“I’m sorry, China. I don’t know why I didn’t write. I meant to, but time starting passing and then...I should have written. E-mailed. Phoned.”

“Beat a tom-tom.”

“Anything. You must have felt...I don’t know...You probably thought I forgot you. But I didn’t. How could I? After everything?”