As they walked through the lobby of the hotel, Archie excused himself to go to the lavatory. There was an English newspaper lying on the reception desk, and Laura saw Edward’s face in the photograph before she read the headline. What a dreadful picture they kept using: Alistair must have given it to the press. Over-exposed and taken from an unflattering angle, it made him look chinless and smug. But the story was worse. New allegations, new sources, new gossip: in this version, the British secret services had followed Nick and Edward from Patsfield on the momentous night, and then murdered them and dumped their bodies in the English Channel in order to keep them forever silent and minimise the international scandal that would ensue if the extent of their spying activities was revealed to the Americans.
Laura had Edward’s telegram that had been sent a week after he left, and had not lost faith that it was his voice in those misspelt words. But when Archie found her again, the newspaper abandoned on the floor, he could not help noticing that her expression was closed. ‘Don’t ask,’ Laura said, and she was glad when he didn’t.
In the taxi ride to the old town, she found herself trying to ignore all the questions in her mind. It had been nine months already: why no word, why had Stefan not made contact, why had no message been brought to her, not even a line about Rosa’s birth? This silence was corrosive, destructive, she thought, taking a cigarette from her bag. Archie lit it for her. The smoke filled her mouth with a moment of comfort.
‘All right now?’ he said, smiling, and Laura smiled back.
‘It gets to me sometimes,’ she said.
‘Things do,’ he responded, and again she was glad of his wry, accepting expression.
When they got to the restaurant, Peter was there but Winifred had been delayed, he said. Laura had not warmed to Peter. He worked for the British mission to the United Nations, and was one of those men who is always keen to show off his faultless French, his perfect German and his elegant Italian. He came from a diplomatic family himself, and seemed to revel in the rootlessness that a travelling childhood had given him, as though he was more at home in huge marble rooms and at impersonal ambassadorial functions than anywhere else. But in that moment, with the fear nagging away at her again, she was glad of the way that he and Archie could fall so easily into the patter of the group, talking about Archie’s travels, about whether he had visited Freya in Ventimiglia, Edith in Florence, Cecil in Alexandria.
Winifred finally joined them, obviously straight from work. She was working early and late hours that year, as a convention neared its final stages. At first she seemed irritable, clearly bringing with her a frustration from the meeting she had just left, but then she relaxed, telling Peter something Laura could not catch about how in the end the Australian ambassador would come round, it was only a matter of time.
Halfway through dinner, she turned and started speaking to Laura in an undertone. ‘Giles is coming to ski in March. None of my business, I know, but he is awfully hurt that you wouldn’t see him when Edward left. He said he rang and rang but you kept giving him the brush-off.’
‘I just couldn’t bear all the intrusion.’
‘He isn’t like Alistair, you know, he won’t blab all over the place. He’s been … rather changed by Edward’s disappearance. Also, I should warn you, Alistair’s turned those bloody articles into a book, to come out in a few months – the anniversary, you know.’
Laura did know. ‘What sort of book?’
‘I’ll get you an early copy, if you want.’’
‘It does sound a bit rich, him making a book out of it,’ Peter said, the sort of bland remark that was typical of him.
‘More than a bit rich – absolutely beyond the pale,’ said Winifred, ‘but it’s made him a star. He’s got a new novel coming out too, about espionage and sex. He sees himself as something of an expert.’
‘Aren’t we all experts now?’ Archie said, but his voice had a joking, rather brotherly tone that made it protective rather than needling, Laura thought. His relaxed presence took the edge off her anguish that evening, so it was a pity he was moving on the following week – to Italy, he explained, to the south, right down to Puglia.
A few weeks later Laura acquiesced to Winifred’s request, and brought the whole household – Mother and Aurore and Rosa – to St-Gervais for a couple of weeks, so that they could ski with Winifred and Peter and see Giles again. They stayed at the same hotel that they had gone to in the summer, one of those Alpine hotels with vast rooms and bad plumbing and postcard views at every window. Laura had a couple of skiing lessons and then gave up, finding the loss of control in that immensity of space too disorienting, but strangely her mother rather took to it, weaving her way slowly down the slopes with Winifred after a few lessons. One day, when Rosa was happy in the hotel crèche with Aurore, Laura agreed to go for a walk through the town with Giles. They were muffled up, and looked pale and tired and out of place, Laura thought, seeing themselves reflected in a bakery window, in this town where most people seemed to be rosy and laughing with the mountain air and exercise.