In the kitchen, she navigated her way to the sofa by moonlight. She’d had to get up: she couldn’t take lying there any longer. Listening to his soft breathing, feeling his warmth radiating across the bed, her brain skipped from one anxiety to the next and all she’d been able to think about was losing him. How long would it take before she could fall asleep easily, secure in the knowledge that the morning wouldn’t see her life as she knew it torn out like a page from one of Marianne’s sketchbooks?
From over by the window came a sudden drilling sound. She jumped but then she saw a spot of greenish light on the work-surface near the back door. A phone, the vibration as a message arrived. But her own mobile was in her bag and Adam’s was upstairs; he’d brought a charger and plugged it in next to the bed.
By the time she reached it, the light had faded but when she pressed the button, the home-screen brightened again. The text was from a magazine she’d never heard of – the new issue was available to download – but the photograph behind it showed Bryony and the dark-haired girl who’d been with her that day at St Helena’s. Bryony’s phone – of course, Rowan remembered now: Adam had picked it up when she fell, put it on the work-surface here as they’d come into the kitchen.
Back on the sofa, she pulled Jacqueline’s old tartan blanket around her shoulders. When she’d realised it was Bryony outside, she hadn’t known whether to laugh with relief or be frightened. No armed attacker or housebreaker, then, just a teenage girl – but a teenage girl who’d been close to Marianne.
Could Bryony have been involved in her death? What if Adam was wrong and the Greenwoods had got wind of Marianne’s doubts about the relationship? Could Bryony have lured her to the roof, pushed her off? But no, of course not: Marianne had been alone, hers the sole set of footprints in the snow.
Thirty-three
Rowan heard the doorbell above the static fizz of water into the shower tray and tensed immediately. ‘I’ll get it,’ Adam called on the landing and his feet drummed down the stairs. She still had shampoo in her hair but she turned off the water and opened the cubicle door. Bryony, she hoped, come to collect her phone, but when she made out the burr of voices, it was deep. Male. Wrapping herself in a towel, she walked carefully across the room and turned the door handle, letting in a blast of cold air that made the hairs on her arms stand on end.
‘Would you mind if we came in?’
The voice reached up the stairs and Rowan closed her eyes. She knew it, that amiable middle-class tone with its hint of Ironbridge. Theo. A wave of pure panic washed over her, hot then cold, as a hand took hold of her heart and squeezed.
The door closed and the voices receded as Adam took Theo into the sitting room. Rowan’s heart was racing now, the beats falling over one another in their haste. She thought of her mother, the coronary she’d had at twenty-eight. Momentarily, she was paralysed by fear but then she stuffed the towel onto the rail and turned the water back on. She rinsed her hair roughly then, as quickly as she’d ever done it, she dried off and dressed.
At the top of the stairs she listened but coming from the sitting room now, the words were muffled beyond audibility. She went down slowly, heart still galloping. As if he’d been waiting for her, Adam called her almost at once and Rowan barely stopped herself giving a shriek of alarm.
Theo was in the same spot on the sofa that Jacqueline had had the day Seb died, and as she came into the room, Rowan saw the emotions play across his sunny expressive face like the shadow of clouds on a whitewashed wall: surprise, amusement, interest. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again.’
Next to him sat a skinny man still wearing a black outdoor jacket. He seemed younger than Theo, late twenties probably, but perhaps that was only the comparative smoothness of his skin, the lack of laughter lines around eyes that were looking at Rowan now as if they wanted to absorb every detail.
‘This is DS Grange,’ said Theo. ‘Rowan Winter.’
Adam looked between them. ‘You know each other?’
‘We were at college together,’ Rowan said.
‘Yes,’ said Theo, ‘we were,’ and, eyes sparkling with innuendo, he glanced at Adam in his crumpled T-shirt and then her wet hair. Oh, fuck off, she wanted to say, you’re the one who’s bloody married.
‘Ro, come and have a seat.’ Adam touched the cushion next to him and the gentleness of the gesture, the care it implied, was an arrow in her chest. ‘Chief Inspector . . .’
‘Please, call me Theo. Rowan and I are old friends.’
Adam gave a sort of half-nod, evidently uncertain. ‘There’s some bad news, Ro.’
‘A body was found earlier this morning, Rowan.’ Theo seemed to train his eyes directly on her face. ‘It hasn’t been confirmed yet – the formal identification is later today – but we’re confident it’s Michael Cory.’
Blood boomed in her ears. ‘Cory?’ she heard herself say. Was she imagining it, the focus with which both he and the other man were looking at her? Her face felt suddenly alien, as if it were beyond her control and might betray her at any moment.
‘It was a dog-walker who found him – isn’t it always? – up early along the river.’
‘Where?’