A Place of Hiding

“You can’t be leaving,” Deborah said incredulously. Cherokee whirled round. “Jeez. You scared the hell out of me. Where’d you come from like that?”


Deborah indicated the study door, where behind her the lamp shone on Simon’s desk and the gas fire dipped and bobbed a soft glow against the high ceiling. “I was up early. Sorting through some old pictures. But what are you doing? Where are you going?”

He shifted his weight, ran his hand through his hair in that characteristic gesture of his. He indicated the stairs and the floors above. “Couldn’t sleep. I swear I won’t be able to again—anywhere—till I get someone over to Guernsey. So I figured the embassy...”

“What time is it?” Deborah examined her wrist to discover she’d not put on her watch. She hadn’t glanced at the clock in the study, but from the gloom outside—even exacerbated by the insufferable rain—she knew it couldn’t be much later than six. “The embassy won’t be open for hours.”

“I figured there might be a line or something. I want to be first.”

“You still can be, even if you have a cup of tea. Or coffee if you like. And something to eat.”

“No. You’ve done enough already. Letting me stay here last night?

Inviting me to stay? The soup and the bath and everything? You bailed me out.”

“I’m glad of it. But I’m not going to hear of your going just now. There’s no point. I’ll drive you over there myself in plenty of time to be first in line if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want you to—”

“You don’t have to want me to anything,” Deborah said firmly. “I’m not offering. I’m insisting. So leave the jacket there and come with me.”

Cherokee appeared to think this over for a moment: He looked at the door where its three window panes allowed the light to come through. Both of them could hear the persistent rain, and as if to emphasise the unpleasantness he would face if he ventured out, a gust of wind shot like a prize fighter’s blow from the Thames and cracked loudly within the branches of the sycamore just along the street.

He said reluctantly, “All right. Thanks.”

Deborah led him downstairs to the kitchen. Peach looked up from her basket and growled. Alaska, who’d taken up his normal daytime position on the window sill, glanced over, blinked, and went back to his perusal of the patterns the rain was making on the panes.

Deborah said, “Mind your manners,” to the dog and established Cherokee at the table, where he studied the scars that knife marks had made upon the wood and the burnt rings left from the assault of too-hot pans upon it. Deborah once again set the electric kettle to work and took a teapot from the ancient dresser. She said, “I’m making you a meal as well. When did you last have a real meal?” She glanced over at him. “I expect not yesterday.”

“There was the soup.”

Deborah snorted her disapproval. “You can’t help China if you fall apart.” She went to the fridge for eggs and bacon; she took tomatoes from their basket near the sink and mushrooms from the dark corner near the outside door, where her father kept a large paper sack for them, hanging from a hook among the household’s macs.

Cherokee got up and walked over to the window above the sink, where he extended his hand to Alaska. The cat sniffed his fingers and, head lowered regally, allowed the man to scratch behind his ears. Deborah glanced over to see Cherokee gazing round the kitchen as if absorbing every one of its details. She followed his gaze to register what she took for granted: from the dried herbs that her father kept hanging in neatly arranged bunches to the copper-bottomed pots and pans that lined the wall within reach above the hob, from the old worn tiles on the floor to the dresser that held everything from serving platters to photographs of Simon’s nieces and nephews.

“This is a cool house, Debs,” Cherokee murmured.

To Deborah, it was just the house in which she’d lived from childhood, first as the motherless daughter of Simon’s indispensable right-hand man, then however briefly as Simon’s lover before becoming Simon’s wife. She knew its draughts, its plumbing problems, and its exasperating lack of electrical outlets. To her, it was simply home. She said, “It’s old and draughty and it’s mostly maddening.”

“Yeah? It looks like a mansion to me.”

“Does it?” She forked nine rashers of bacon into a pan and set them cooking beneath the grill. “It actually belongs to Simon’s whole family. It was quite a disaster when he took it over. Mice in the walls and foxes in the kitchen. He and Dad spent nearly two years making it livable. I suppose his brothers or his sister could move in with us now if they wanted to since it’s everyone’s house and not just ours. But they wouldn’t do that. They know he and Dad did all the work.”