Maggie glances down and sees handwriting that she recognizes. Suddenly, the heaviness inside her seems more manageable. Her heart, that has been fighting to keep beating, picks up its pace.
‘Come in,’ she says, stepping back from the doorway. In the kitchen she will have room to move. In the kitchen there will be enough light. She will be able to see what’s coming.
‘There isn’t time. He’s on his way. You need to read it now.’ Agitated though she may be, Sirocco seems strangely reluctant to come any closer to Maggie. This time, it seems to be she who is afraid.
He’s on his way. Maggie can hear a drumming in her ears as she backs into the kitchen. ‘Why should I be able to understand it?’ she asks. ‘If you can’t, what makes you think I can?’
Sirocco approaches cautiously. The letter – Hamish’s last love letter? – dangles in the air between them. Then it is in Maggie’s hand. It is damp. Maggie glances down, then back up again.
‘I can’t I’m afraid. I need my reading glasses.’
‘I’ll read it to you. Give it back.’
Still holding the letter, Maggie walks past her, out of the room, heading once again for the basement. ‘I left them downstairs just now. I won’t be a second.’
‘Get back here.’
The stairs are seconds away and Sirocco is following her. ‘Where are you going?’ Her voice has risen, become shrill. ‘Is that the cellar? Are you going in there?’
‘You can wait up here,’ Maggie reaches the cellar door and pulls it open. ‘What did you mean when you said, “He’s on his way”? Why on earth would Hamish come here? This is the first place the police will look.’
She looks back when she is halfway down the steps. Sirocco is hovering, uncertain, at the top.
‘He’s coming for me,’ Sirocco says. ‘He’s been planning it for ages. I’ve been helping. He wrote to me, telling me where to meet him.’ She points to the letter in Maggie’s hand.
‘So why am I involved?’ asks Maggie.
‘He said to ask you. He said he had to write in code, so the prison staff wouldn’t know what he was telling me. If there was anything I didn’t understand, I had to ask you. Let me just read it to you, please. We don’t need to go downstairs. I have to meet him now.’
Maggie’s heart, which has been accelerating for some time now, is starting to beat painfully. She climbs back up four steps. ‘I may still need to read it for myself,’ she says. ‘But OK.’
Sirocco pulls the letter open and leans back, to catch the overhead light.
Sirocco begins, and then looks up, almost triumphantly at Maggie. Maggie nods at her to go on.
Sirocco stumbles a little over the names, as though they are unfamiliar to her. Maggie wants to tell her to get on with it.
There is a tiny, annoying smile on her face now.
Sirocco’s voice has fallen lower. Maggie takes a step up, so as not to miss a word.
Sirocco’s eyes lift and meet Maggie’s again. ‘What does he mean?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know where to find him. He’s never called me Guinevere before.’
The world can transform in a matter of seconds, Maggie discovers. It just has. She turns away, so that Sirocco will not see her smiling, will not guess that her heart is racing, her head singing.
‘What?’ Sirocco says, suddenly confused. ‘What is it? Do you understand it? Where are you going? Come back up.’
‘Of course I understand it,’ Maggie takes the last step down. She turns the corner, but hears with satisfaction the sound of the other woman’s footsteps.
‘You know what he means?’ Sirocco is calling out as she follows. ‘You know where he’ll be?’
‘Oh yes.’
Maggie hears the softer footstep that tells her Sirocco has reached the stone floor at the bottom of the steps.
One of the most surprising aspects of this whole business, Maggie thinks, as she takes up position in the centre of the room, is how easy it can be to persuade women to do the dumbest things. Like stepping down into the basement of someone they do not know.
With Jessie, she’d faked an injury. Jessie had been the most challenging, in fairness, because Jessie had stepped out that bright Saturday believing she was to meet a handsome doctor. She’d almost refused to go with the smartly dressed young woman who’d claimed she was Harry’s PA, and that he’d been unavoidably delayed in theatre, but would meet her later at his house.