Michael had spoken honestly when he told Edmund Fane he was used to far worse sleeping quarters than Deborah Fane’s empty house; his work had frequently taken him into the squats and the hostels of London’s East End, and from there into deeper, sadder worlds where people lived in shop doorways and tube stations.
But after Fane left, Michael felt vaguely uneasy. There was no logic to this feeling: he had been in this house several times already – once after Deborah Fane’s funeral, and two or three times after that, stage-managing the various surveys and reports that had to be prepared for CHARTH. It had in fact been at this house that he had met Francesca. Francesca. Even with his hand a grinding mass of agony Michael felt a smile curve his lips at the thought of Francesca. In a moment he would phone her; he was furious and disappointed at not being able to get back to London tonight for their dinner, but hopefully they could meet tomorrow evening. It would be good to hear her voice – thank goodness for mobile phones.
He switched on the rather old-fashioned electric fire in the small room overlooking the lane and closed the curtains. He liked this room; it had a friendly atmosphere, and it looked as if it had been used as a study; there were bookshelves and a little writing desk and a rather weatherbeaten sofa near the window. Had Lucy and Edmund done their homework in here during school holidays? It was still odd to think that Lucy was his cousin – that Alraune had been half-brother to Lucy’s mother. Michael wondered how Lucy got on with that dry stick, Edmund Fane. Had they had a teenage romance, as distant cousins sometimes did? Had people in the family speculated about whether they might one day marry?
Michael’s own childhood, once he had left Pedlar’s Yard and once he had found Alice, had been extremely happy. He had loved living in the old stone house set amidst the ancient fenlands, and it was a measure of Alice’s own charm and energy that there had never been any boredom. But he thought he would have liked to have Lucy as a small cousin, part of his growing-up years. And Edmund, said his mind wryly. Don’t forget that Edmund would have been a cousin as well. Oh yes, so he would. Only a distant one, though.
He might as well spend the night in the friendly little study rather than go foraging around for sheets and pillows. The sofa was wide and deep, and there would probably be a travelling rug or an eiderdown somewhere upstairs.
To counteract the rather brooding silence he switched on the radio, tuning it to Classic FM. A request programme was on and the ordinary announcements for music and the breaks for advertisements and news went some way towards dispelling the unsettling atmosphere.
He went along the hall to the back of the house. The kitchen had been more or less completely cleared, but a kettle stood on the top of the cooker. Filling it was awkward – Michael had to disentangle his hand from the sling to do so, and he acknowledged with annoyance that the doctor had been right about not driving. But he managed to make a cup of instant coffee which he drank gratefully, swallowing one of the painkillers with it. The label recommended two every six hours, but Michael loathed the vague muzziness that even an aspirin caused. He would take one pill now, and if necessary he would take the second one later.
Now for the call to Francesca. He smiled again, thinking he would say that if she was free tomorrow evening they would still go to the Italian place, because he could spoon up pasta with one hand. It was good to imagine the two of them in the restaurant, Francesca seated opposite to him, her eyes wary and defiant most of the time, and then suddenly and disarmingly intimate when she smiled.
His jacket was in the hall, flung over the stair rail, and he felt in the pocket for his mobile phone. It was at this point that he remembered Edmund Fane using the phone to call the local pub to book a room for the night. Fane had had to get out of the car to make the call because the signal was weak, but it had only taken a few minutes, and then he had got back in.
But what had happened to the phone?