They all shook their heads. "He's a type you notice," said Zadie, "but the first time we saw him was Barton Edge. So where was he before… and where's he been holed up the last few months?"
Bella stirred. "He had Wolfie's mother and brother with him then, but there's no sign of them now. Does anyone know what happened to them? The poor little kid's frantic… says they left weeks ago."
The question was greeted with silence.
"It makes you wonder, doesn't it?" said Zadie.
Ivo took an abrupt decision. "Okay, let's shift back to the buses. There's no way I'm breaking my balls on this crap till I get some answers. If he thinks-" He broke off to look at Bella as she put a warning hand on his arm.
A twig snapped.
"Thinks what?" asked Fox, sliding out from behind a tree. "That you'll follow orders?" He smiled unpleasantly. "Sure, you will. You don't have the guts to take me on, Ivo." He threw a scathing glance around the group. "None of you does."
Ivo lowered his head like a bull preparing to charge. "Try me, you fucker!"
Bella saw the glint of a steel blade in Fox's right hand. Ah. Jesus! "Let's eat before someone does something stupid," she said, grabbing Ivo's arm and turning him toward the campsite. "I signed on for my kids' future… not to watch a couple of Neanderthals drag their knuckles along the ground."
15
They ate lunch in the kitchen with James presiding at the head of the table. The two men prepared the food-the elegant fare that Mark had brought from London-and Nancy was put in charge of finding plates. For some reason, James insisted on using the "good" ones, and she was sent to the dining room to find them. She guessed it was an excuse to give the men a chance to talk, or a subtle way to introduce her to photographs of Ailsa, Elizabeth, and Leo. Perhaps both.
From the way the dining room had been turned into a junk room for unwanted chairs and chests of drawers, it was apparent that it was a long time since it had been used. It was cold, and dust lay everywhere. There was the smell of the decay that Mark had mentioned earlier, although Nancy thought it was disuse and damp rather than rot. There were blisters in the paintwork above the skirting boards, and the plaster underneath was soft to the touch. It had obviously been Ailsa's domain, she thought, and she wondered if James avoided it as he avoided her garden.
A dark mahogany table stretched the length of one wall, covered in papers and with piles of cardboard boxes stacked at one end. Some of the boxes had "RSPCA" inscribed in large letters across their fronts, others "Barnado's" or "Child Soc." The writing was strong and black, and Nancy guessed that this was Ailsa's filing system for her charities. Patches of mildew on the boxes suggested Ailsa's interests had died with her. A few were unmarked, and these lay on their side, with files spilling out across the table. Household bills. Garden receipts. Car insurance. Bank statements. Savings accounts. The stuff of everyday life.
There were no paintings, only photographs, although pale rectangular patches on the walls suggested paintings had hung there at one time. The photographs were everywhere. On the walls, on every available surface, in a stack of albums on the sideboard that held the dinner plates. Even if she'd wanted to, Nancy couldn't have ignored them. They were largely historical. A pictorial record of past generations, of Shenstead's lobster enterprise, landscapes of the Manor and the valley, shots of horses and dogs. A studio portrait of James's mother hung over the mantelpiece, and in the alcove to the right was a wedding photograph of a younger, unmistakable James and his bride.
Nancy felt like an eavesdropper, in search of secrets, as she stared at Ailsa. It was a pretty face, full of character, as different from James's square-jawed, black-haired mother as the north pole is from the south. Blond and delicate, with bright blue, impish eyes like a knowing Siamese cat's. Nancy was astonished. She hadn't imagined Ailsa like this at all. In her mind, she had transposed her late adoptive grandmother-a tough, wrinkled farmer's wife with gnarled hands and spiky personality-onto her natural grandmother, turning her into a daunting woman with a quick tongue and little patience.
Her eyes were drawn to two more photographs that stood in a leather double-hander on the bureau beneath the wedding picture. In the left frame: James and Ailsa with a couple of toddlers; in the right: a studio portrait of a girl and a boy in their teens. They were dressed in white against a black background, a studied pose of profiled bodies, the boy behind the girl, his hand on her shoulder, their faces turned to the camera. "Trust me," Mark had said, "in a million years no one would mistake you for Elizabeth." He was right. There was nothing in Nancy that recognized this made-up Barbie doll with petulant mouth and bored eyes. She was a clone of her mother, but with none of Ailsa's sparkle.
Nancy told herself it wasn't fair to judge a person by a photograph-particularly one that was so fake-except that Leo wore the same bored expression as his sister. She had to assume the whole setup was their choice, for why would James and Ailsa want such a bizarre record of their children? Leo interested her. From her perspective of twenty-eight years his attempts to look sultry were amusing, but she was honest enough to admit that at fifteen she would probably have found him attractive. He had his grandmother's dark hair and a paler version of his mother's blue eyes. It made for an interesting combination, although it disturbed Nancy that she saw more of herself in him than she did in his sister.
She took against both of them, though she couldn't say whether her dislike was instinctive or a result of what Mark had told her. If they reminded her of anything-possibly because of the white clothes and Elizabeth's false eyelashes-it was Malcolm McDowell's deceptively innocent face in A Clockwork Orange, as he slashed and cut his victims in an orgy of violent self-expression. Was that their intention, she wondered? Was it a coded image of amorality that would amuse their friends and pass their parents by?
The dinner service stood on the sideboard, covered in dust, and she lifted the stack of plates to the table to retrieve clean ones from the bottom. You could read too much into a picture, she told herself, recalling the unsophisticated snapshots of herself, mostly taken by her father, that littered the farmhouse. What did such unimaginative portrayals say about her? That Nancy Smith was a genuine person who concealed nothing? If so, it wouldn't be true.
As she returned the plates to the sideboard, she noticed a small heart-shaped mark in the dust where they'd been standing. She wondered who or what had made it. It seemed a poignant symbol of love in that cold, dead room, and she gave a superstitious shiver. You could read too much into anything, she thought, as she took a last look at her grandparents' smiling faces on their wedding day.
Fox ordered Wolfie back to the bus, but Bella intervened. "Let him stay," she said, pulling the child into her side. "The kid's worried about his mum and brother. He wants to know where they are, and I said I'd ask you."
Wolfie's alarm was palpable. Bella could feel the tremors through her coat. He shook his head anxiously. "It's o-k-kay," he stuttered. "F-fox can tell me later."
Fox's pale eyes stared at his son. "Do as I tell you," he said coldly, jerking his head toward the bus. "Wait for me there."
Ivo put out a hand to stop the child moving. "No. We've all got an interest in this. You chose families for this project, Fox… let's build a community, you said… so where's yours? You had a lady and another kid at Barton Edge. What happened to them?"
Fox's gaze traveled around the group. He must have seen something in their collective expressions that persuaded him to answer, because he gave an abrupt shrug. "She took off five weeks ago. I haven't seen her since. Satisfied?"
No one said anything.