Rachel, not having expected the quotation, took a moment to recognize it. ‘Oh yeah — “Harrowdown Hill”,’ she said. ‘My own little obsession.’
‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘we’re all prey to those, now and again.’ She smiled an unreadable smile. ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘No. It’s not far from Oxford, is it?’
‘Not at all. And it’s even closer to where I live. I bought a house very near there, with my husband, a few years before he died. We both liked the idea of living in a village, in the country. Thought it would be good for our son while he was still little.’
‘I didn’t know your husband had …’
‘Last year.’
‘I’m so sorry. Was it …?’
‘Cancer? A heart attack? No. It was an accident. A stupid accident. Or at least …’ She tailed off. ‘Well, there’s always more than one way of looking at things, isn’t there?’
In the silence that followed, Laura made a quick, impulsive decision; and before she’d had time to think whether it was a good one or not, she heard herself putting it into words. Why didn’t Rachel, if she had nothing much else to do this weekend, come and visit her tomorrow, at her house in the village? She could take the train out to Didcot and Keisha could pick her up from the station. And then, in the afternoon, they could drive out together to Harrowdown Hill itself.
Rachel seemed doubtful at first, and Laura wondered whether the suggestion sounded too morbid. ‘It’s a really nice spot,’ she insisted; and then added, even more recklessly: ‘You could even stay the night if you wanted. There’s a nice spare bedroom which hasn’t been used for months.’
Later that night, thinking about it soberly, Rachel knew that she had accepted the invitation more out of politeness than anything else.
*
The village of Little Calverton lies a few miles east of Didcot. The name itself is mysterious, since there is no Large, Big or even Great Calverton, nor is there any record of there ever having been one. It is a classically beautiful Cotswold village, where property prices are (relatively speaking) still on the low side, thanks to the proximity of Didcot power station, the massive chimneys of which rise up less than five miles away. If you can reconcile yourself to this, there are bargains to be had in Little Calverton, and houses there rarely stay on the market for more than a week or two.
‘Nice country,’ Keisha said to Rachel, as they drove along a single-track lane between high hedgerows. Rachel did not answer, but nodded cheerfully: she was not sure, in fact, whether Keisha was referring to the surrounding countryside or to England as a whole, and did not want to appear insensitive by misinterpreting her.
‘Very different to Malaysia, I expect,’ she said, in a non-commital way.
‘Very different. But I like it. I prefer all this. I’m very happy here. Very happy in the UK. Very happy to work for Laura. She’s a nice lady. She teaches you, yes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘For a long time?’
‘Just a few months so far. But she’s great. It’s been great.’
‘Very nice person. Kind, generous. But sad, you know?’
‘Because of her husband?’
‘Because of Roger, yes.’
‘You knew him?’
‘No. I never knew him. I came after he died.’
Briefly, just as they entered the village, a few glimmers of February sunlight broke through the clouds. On their left, the hedgerow tapered away. A triangle of lawn came into view, at its apex a war memorial flanked by two tubs of early primroses. The road curved around it, and after another fifty yards or so Keisha swung the car sharply right, into a short, loosely gravelled driveway that ended at the front door of a picture-perfect thatched cottage, its buttery-yellow, Cotswold-stone walls draped in curtains of wisteria. As soon as the car engine was turned off, the silence seemed chilling, absolute.
‘So, here we are. You all right with your bag?’
It seemed a silly question: Rachel’s tiny holdall was three-quarters empty. She followed Keisha to the front door which, before they had even had time to touch the handle, was thrown open from inside. There, standing in the darkened, flagstoned hallway, was a brown-haired boy of about five or six, who hurled himself at the nanny and crushed her in his arms without saying a word.
‘Hello, beautiful,’ Keisha said. ‘Did you miss me?’
‘You must be Harry,’ said Rachel, reaching out to shake his hand with mock-ceremony, but he ignored her and turned back towards the kitchen, pulling Keisha after him as forcefully as he could.
Rachel was left alone in the hallway. There was a steep, uncarpeted wooden staircase to her left, and three doors at the far end of the hallway, one leading straight ahead into the kitchen, the other two closed. For a moment, the sight of these three doors gave her a flickering sense of déjà vu, but it passed before she could decide whether it arose from a real or a phantom memory. What should she do? It would feel wrong to start calling out Laura’s name. She had been expecting Keisha to announce her arrival, but instead, she could see through the kitchen window that the nanny had already been dragged out into the garden by Harry, and he was trying to involve her in some sort of ball game.
Tentatively, still carrying her holdall, she crossed the flagstones in the direction of the kitchen. Pausing outside the two closed doors, she thought she could hear, from behind one of them, the muffled clicking of keys being tapped on a computer keyboard. She pushed the door open and found herself looking into Laura’s study. Laura herself had her back to the door. She was working at a desk placed in front of a large leaded window, and she was wearing headphones as she worked. She seemed unaware of Rachel’s presence. Through the window Rachel could see a further view of the garden — a sparse expanse of lawn rolling down towards a scruffy border which hinted at a stream beyond — making her suspect for the first time that the house and its grounds might be larger than she had thought. The sun was again doing its best to break through the clouds, throwing occasional patches of light on to the grass.
Rachel was still wondering what to do next when Laura, sensing her presence at last, swivelled round in her chair, took off the headphones and rose to her feet in greeting.
‘Hello, I didn’t hear you come in. Did you have a good journey? Did Keisha look after you? Where’s she got to?’
‘Outside with Harry.’
‘Come on, I’ll get you some coffee.’
In the kitchen, decanting coffee from a frothing, bubbling, gleaming chrome-plated machine, Laura said again: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t hear you. I meant to have hit my word target hours ago but the dreaded emails intervened as usual. They never stop — not even on a Saturday. So I’m afraid I’ve still got a bit to do.’
‘It’s nice to know lecturers have to set themselves word targets as well,’ said Rachel. ‘I thought that was just lazy students.’
‘Hardly,’ said Laura. ‘I promised myself five hundred words today. But I’ll do nowhere near that, of course.’
‘What are you writing about?’
‘Well … I don’t really know. And therein lies the problem, of course. I’m trying to carry on with a project my husband began. I suppose you’d say it was about paranoid fiction. With particular reference to recent British sci fi. And even more particular reference to …’ (she looked embarrassed) ‘… the Loch Ness Monster.’
Rachel was surprised. ‘Sounds fun,’ she said. ‘But quite a long way from Milton.’
‘Yes, well, the faculty isn’t too wild about it,’ said Laura, passing her a mug of treacly black coffee. ‘I’m sure they’d rather I just wrote the fifteen thousandth article on Lycidas — but … well, you have to go wherever your interests take you, don’t you?’