Fyfield Road was the last full street before the River Cherwell, and on a summer’s day, the view from this flat expanse at the rear of the house reached in a dazzle of blue and green across the grounds of Lady Margaret Hall and the playing fields of the Dragon School to the meadows on the other side of the river and all the way to Marston. Now, in the thickening twilight, Rowan could see the John Radcliffe Hospital glistening at the top of Headington Hill.
The band had been around a lot the summer they finished school. On the first day the temperature touched ninety, Turk had turned up at lunchtime with an inflatable paddling pool. They’d taken turns in it, cooling off, and then, when the sun left the garden, they’d come up to the roof. While the rest of them had stretched out on their blankets, Marianne had stayed on the low wall by the hatch, her back pressed hard against the chimneystack as she sketched a view of the rooftops.
‘Come on, Mazz,’ Turk had called, ‘don’t be antisocial.’ He’d rolled gingerly on to his side, keeping a careful eye on the opening of his boxer shorts. He’d had the brainwave about the pool on his way over and couldn’t be bothered going all the way home for his trunks. ‘There’s room on my blanket for you.’
‘And mine.’ The new guy gave her a twinkling smile. He’d been one of five potential bass guitarists who’d answered the band’s ad on Daily Information and, according to Josh, he’d been promising, which was why he was with them that afternoon. With his big brown eyes and blond hair, he was good-looking, though, and Rowan knew from the death-stare Turk gave him that he’d just signed his own marching orders.
‘I dare you, Marianne,’ Turk had said, less flippant. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of – we’re nowhere near the edge. Come on, what have you done with your balls?’
She’d carried on sketching without looking up. ‘I don’t need to air mine to the four winds for everyone to be sure I’ve got them.’
Rowan walked towards the back of the house now until she had a view of the patio. She was eighteen inches from the edge. Her eyes saw the muddy patch of lawn directly below and her heart started to pump faster. She was standing where Marianne must have gone off.
All of a sudden, the roof-edge came alive. Like the ruined grass, it seemed to develop a force field – it tugged at her, pulling her forward. The drop was dizzying, sickening, almost irresistible. No – no. With an effort of will, she took a heavy step back and then, as if someone had let go of her hands without warning, several stumbling short ones.
She walked quickly back towards the hatch, shaken. It would have been so easy – a second, not even that. A split second’s decision – Yes! – and it would all have been over. She’d never had a problem with heights; she’d never felt anything like that in her life. That – it was what Marianne had been talking about.
—
Rowan’s hands shook as she grappled with the corkscrew. The cooker said 5.47 but it felt like midnight, and the darker it got, the larger and stranger the house became. Walking downstairs, she’d thought about all the empty rooms behind the closed doors, all the places someone – a thief, an intruder – could hide. With the Dawsons away, the other side of the house was empty, too.
But if she was going to do this, she couldn’t cower in the kitchen. Filling a glass, she carried it back upstairs to the first-floor landing where she stopped outside one of the closed doors. She took a long swig, cranked the handle and went in.
When she turned on the light, she was startled. She’d guessed that Marianne would have kept it as it was, so little else having changed in the main part of the house, but this was something else. It was a tableau, like a room in one of those museums that preserved things as they’d been at a precise moment in time, Mary Celeste-style. Should Seb ever come back from the dead with work to do, his study was ready, the scorpion-esque ergonomic chair pulled up to the desk, his iMac G4 with its bubble base – cutting-edge then, geriatric now – still plugged in. To the right of the mouse pad, a week-to-view diary lay open, a pen laid ready across the pages. The gold letters in the top right-hand corner read 2004.
On the other wall, reaching from floor to ceiling, were the fitted shelves packed with The Lioness Who Loved the Silverback and its two sequels. Standing here, Seb had been photographed countless times for the newspapers and magazines, British and foreign, in which he’d expounded his theories of mate selection in the animal world and what humans might learn from it, more often than not, as Jacqueline pointed out, to good-looking female journalists.