“Yes,” Pascal answered firmly. “I remember I took one on Friday, after Donald had taken me fishing on the Thursday.”
“Do you know how many tablets were in this bottle?”
“The prescription is for thirty—there were perhaps fifteen remaining. I cannot be exactly certain, you understand.”
Ross looked round the room. “Weel, this puts a slightly different complexion on things. Anyone in this house could have put those tablets in Callum MacGillivray’s whisky, but”—his gaze swung back to John—“it was you and young Martin here who were seen entering Mr.
MacGillivray’s cottage.”
“I just wanted Martin to see the place.” John sounded desperate to convince him. “I knew Callum wouldn’t mind.”
“Chief Inspector, you still haven’t told us anything about Callum,” said Louise, her face set with determination. She seemed to have decided to ignore Martin for the time being. “I don’t know if you mean to be deliberately cruel, but Callum is our friend as well as our neighbor.”
“I apologize, Mrs. Innes.” Ross gave her his most gracious smile. “I didna mean to keep you in suspense. The doctors seem to think Mr. MacGillivray is out of the woods, but it will be a few hours before they’ll let us question him.”
Gemma was relieved but not surprised, as she’d suspected that if Callum had died Ross would have told them straightaway. She also felt sure Ross had neglected to mention that he would have a guard posted outside Callum’s room, just in case someone decided to finish what they had started before Callum could talk.
“Thank God,” breathed Louise, and Gemma saw John give her an odd look. Did John not think his wife should show such concern over their neighbor? Was there something going on here that she had completely missed?
Just as she was wondering if she and Kincaid could talk Ross into letting them see Callum, or if she could get Louise alone again, her phone vibrated. Excusing herself, she turned away and looked at the caller ID. To her surprise, it was a local number. She slipped from the room and answered the call.
“Gemma? It’s Heather Urquhart here. Is Hazel with you? I’ve come across something I think she should see.”
Heather sounded hesitant and puzzled, quite unlike her usual confident self. “In fact, I’d like you both to come over straightaway, if you could manage it.”
Kit had run away once before, from his grandparents’ house, just after his mother had died. He’d come back to Grantchester then, too, searching for something that had eluded him. Why had he thought this time would be any different?
His mum was dead, his house belonged to someone else, and now Ian was gone, too. There was nothing left for him here.
He sat on the ground, inside the yew arbor that ran like a tunnel along one side of Nathan’s cottage. A gate at either end gave the space an enclosed, cavelike feel, and Kit had often come here to think after he and Nathan had become friends.
That morning he’d awakened early, aware of the strange bed, the unfamiliar creakings of the house as it settled around him. A fierce wave of homesickness had gripped him—he’d had no idea how accustomed he’d become to the house in Notting Hill, to the sound of Duncan singing hopelessly outdated tunes in his morning shower, to Gemma murmuring to the animals as she moved about the kitchen, to Toby’s little feet thumping up and down the stairs. Automatically, he reached for Tess, and patted an empty space on the coverlet.
How could he have left Tess behind? It was the first time he’d been separated from the little dog since he’d found her, and he felt as if he’d lost a limb.
Knowing he couldn’t sleep any longer, he’d dressed and slipped out of the house, trying not to wake Nathan.
He took the path that led from the bottom of Nathan’s garden down to the Cam. From the morning mist that lay in the dips and hollows along the river, tendrils floated out like ghostly fingers. Reflections of the old trees swam insubstantially in the still surface of the water, and the air smelled of damp earth, and faintly of decay.
Kit walked along the river path until he could see into the back garden of his old house. The cottage’s Suffolk-pink plaster glowed rosily in the morning light, but the grass in the garden was uncut, the patio empty. Perhaps the new family had not yet moved in, he thought, but then he’d heard a door slam, and seen a flash of movement at the uncurtained kitchen window.
For an instant, behind the streaky glass, he thought he
saw his mum’s profile and the swing of her pale hair.
Then he had turned and run, blindly, back to Nathan’s, hiding himself away beneath the yews, trying to get the surge of his emotions under control.
The gate creaked, and Nathan’s stocky silhouette filled the arbor’s entrance.
“I thought I might find you here,” Nathan said, coming to sit down beside him. That was one of the things Kit liked about Nathan; he never minded getting dirty. “Duncan rang a few minutes ago. He said he let your school know you’d be absent for a couple of days.” Nathan rubbed a yew needle between his fingers, then added,
“He also told me about Ian.”
They sat in silence for a bit. That was another thing Kit liked about Nathan; he could sit with you in silence, without telling you what you should think about something.
“I’d been saving all term for that trip to Toronto,” Kit said, when he thought he could trust his voice.
“Rotten luck. Or maybe I should say rotten timing, as far as Ian’s concerned.” Nathan smiled. “You know, Kit, just because people are grown up doesn’t mean they always think through the consequences of things. I’m sure he didn’t realize how much you were counting on that visit.”
“He wants rid of me,” Kit said thickly. “He said he was starting over, with a new life, a new family. I’m sure that’s why he wanted me to have the DNA test.”
Nathan thought about this for a moment. “And you don’t want to have the test, right?”
“Right.”
“But even if what you said about Ian were true—and I don’t think it is, mind you—your life is with Duncan and Gemma now. Are you not happy there?”
“No, it’s not that—well, school’s not all that brilliant, really, but it’s not that, either. It’s just—” Kit rested his chin on his knees, struggling to put something he could barely get his mind round into words.
“Are you afraid the test won’t prove Duncan’s your father? Or that it will?” Nathan added softly, as if he’d suddenly understood something.
A spark of sunlight stole through the yew branches, illuminating the lace on Kit’s shoe with a microscopic clar-ity. “Yes,” Kit said. “Both. If Duncan’s not really my dad, then I’d have to go away, and I don’t—” He swallowed.
“We’re like family, you know. But if it proves that Ian was never my dad, then it means that everything that went before was a lie. Mum, and Ian, and me. This.” His nod took in the cottage down the road, the village, everything that had been his reality for twelve years. “And that makes me . . . not who I thought I was.”
Slowly, Nathan said, “Kit, no test, no configuration of molecules, can take your past away from you. That experience will always be a part of you, no matter what happens in the future, no matter where you live, or how many times Ian gets married. Those layers of living build up like a pearl in an oyster—you can’t just slice them away . . . although sometimes it might be easier for people if they could.”
“But what if— If I wasn’t— What if Duncan didn’t want me anymore?” There, he had said it. He felt suddenly lighter.
“Kit, I think Duncan wants to prove you’re his son because he loves you and is proud of you, not the other way round. Does that make sense? But no one can make you have this test. You have to do what you think is right for you.”