‘Ah, Katie!’ Andreas had always liked her when he had known her as a parent at the school. ‘How are the children, Jack and Daisy?’
‘They weren’t there. And they’re hardly children any more. Jack will be going to university next year …’
I told him about the letter and how I’d come to the conclusion that, perhaps, Alan hadn’t killed himself after all. He smiled. ‘That’s the trouble with you, Susan. You’re always looking for the story. You read between the lines. Nothing is ever straightforward.’
‘You think I’m wrong?’
He took my hand. ‘Now I’ve annoyed you. I don’t mean to. It’s one of the things I like about you. But don’t you think the police would have noticed if someone had pushed him off the tower? The killer must have broken into the house. There would have been a struggle. They’d have left fingerprints.’
‘I’m not sure they looked.’
‘They didn’t look because it’s actually pretty obvious. He was ill. He jumped.’
I wondered how he could be so sure. ‘You didn’t like Alan very much, did you,’ I said.
He thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t like him at all if you want the truth. He got in the way.’ I waited for him to explain what he meant but he shrugged it off. ‘He wasn’t someone it was easy to like.’
‘Why not?’
He laughed and went back to his food. ‘You complained about him often enough.’
‘I had to work with him.’
‘So did I. Come on, Susan, I don’t want to talk about him. It’ll only spoil the evening. I think you should be careful – that’s all.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s not your business. Maybe he committed suicide. Maybe someone killed him. Either way, it’s not something you should get involved with. I’m only thinking of you. It could be dangerous.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Why not? You should always think before you dig around in someone else’s life. Maybe I say that because I was brought up on an island, in a small community. We always believed in keeping things in the family. What difference does it make to you how Alan died? I’d stay away—’
‘I still have to find the missing chapters,’ I interrupted.
‘Maybe there are no missing chapters. Despite what you say, you can’t be sure he ever wrote them. They weren’t on his computer. They weren’t on his desk.’
I didn’t try to argue. I was a little disappointed that Andreas had shot down my theories so carelessly. It also seemed to me that there had been a slight awkwardness between us, a disconnection which had been there from the moment he had turned up at the flat. We’ve always been very companionable. We’re comfortable in each other’s silences. But that wasn’t true tonight. There was something he wasn’t telling me. I even wondered if he’d met somebody else.
And then, at the end of the meal, as we sipped the thick, sweet coffee that I knew never to refer to as Turkish, he suddenly said: ‘I’m thinking of leaving Westminster.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘At the end of term. I’m want to give up teaching.’
‘This is very sudden, Andreas. Why?’
He told me. A hotel had come up for sale on the edge of Agios Nikolaos; an intimate, family-run business with twelve rooms right next to the sea. The owners were in their sixties and their children had left the island. Like so many young Greeks, they were in London, but Andreas had a cousin who worked there and they looked on him almost as a son. They had offered him the opportunity to buy it and the cousin had come to him to see if he could help with the finance. Andreas was tired of teaching. Every time he went back to Crete, he felt more at home and he was beginning to ask himself why he had ever left. He was fifty years old. This was a chance to change his life.
‘But Andreas,’ I protested. ‘You don’t know anything about running a hotel.’
‘Yannis has experience and it’s small. How difficult can it be?’
‘But you said tourists weren’t going to Crete any more.’
‘That was this year. Next year will be better.’
‘But won’t you miss London …?’
All my sentences were beginning with ‘but’. Did I genuinely think it was a bad idea or was this the change that I had been fearing, the realisation that I was about to lose him? It was exactly what my sister had warned me about. I was going to end up on my own.
‘I hoped you’d be more excited,’ he said.
‘Why would I be excited?’ I asked, miserably.
‘Because I want you to come with me.’
‘Are you serious?’
He laughed a second time. ‘Of course! Why do you think I’m telling you all this?’ The waiter had brought raki and he poured two glasses, filling them to the brim. ‘You’ll love it, Susan, I promise you. Crete is a wonderful island and it’s about time you met my family and friends. They’re always asking about you.’
‘Are you asking me to marry you?’
He raised his glass, the mischief back in his eyes. ‘What would you say if I did?’
‘I probably wouldn’t say anything. I’d be too shocked.’ I didn’t mean to offend him, so I added: ‘I’d say I’d think about it.’
‘That’s all I’m asking you to do.’
‘I have a job, Andreas. I have a life.’
‘Crete is three and a half hours away. It’s not the other side of the world. And maybe, after everything you’ve told me, soon you won’t have a choice.’
That was certainly true. Without Magpie Murders, without Alan, who could say how long we could go on?
‘I don’t know. It’s a lovely idea. But you shouldn’t have sprung it on me so suddenly. You’re going to have to give me time to think.’
‘Of course.’
I picked up my raki and drank it in one gulp. I wanted to ask him what would happen if I decided to stay. Would that be it? Would he leave without me? It was too soon to have that conversation but the truth is that I thought it unlikely that I would swap my life – Cloverleaf, Crouch End – for Crete. I liked my job and I had my relationship with Charles to consider, particularly now when everything was so difficult. I couldn’t see myself as some twenty-first century Shirley Valentine, sitting on the rocks, a thousand miles from the nearest Waterstones.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘You might be right. By the end of the year I could be out of a job. I suppose I can always make the beds.’
Andreas stayed the night and it was good to have him back again. But as I lay there in the darkness, with his arms around me, there were a whole lot of thoughts racing through my mind, refusing to let me sleep. I saw myself getting out of the car at Abbey Grange with the tower looming over me, examining the tyre tracks, searching Alan’s office. Once again the photographs in Sajid Khan’s office seemed to slide in front of me but this time they showed Alan, Charles, James Taylor, Claire Jenkins and me. At the same time, I replayed snippets of conversation.
‘I was just worried you might get dizzy.’ James grabbing hold of me at the top of the tower.
‘I think someone killed him.’ Alan’s sister in Orford.