‘Where’s my laptop, Dad, what have you done with it?’ Ollie shouted at him. ‘Where is it?’
‘I’ve sent it away to have some adjustments made. The truth will set you free!’
Ollie woke with a start, drenched in perspiration. Then relief flooded through him as he began realizing it had just been a dream. He rolled over and looked at the clock.
8.11.
But his sense of relief was short-lived, turning rapidly into gloom as everything started to come back to him. He lay still, trying to think clearly. Remembering the conversation he’d had with the retired vicar on Thursday. Remembering his advice.
Slipping out of bed as quietly as he could, he walked across to the window, opened the curtains a chink and peered out, his eyes raw with tiredness. Tendrils of mist were rising from the lake, and several ducks were moving serenely across the surface, looking purposeful but unhurried. The grass had grown since last weekend and he would need to spend some of today on the ride-on mower, and with the strimmer. But before that, he had other tasks.
He went out and along the corridor to the airing cupboard, changed into his jogging kit, then went downstairs. As he entered the kitchen, he smelled curry. The remnants of last night’s meal lay on their unwashed plates, along with the takeaway cartons from the curry house on the draining board. Bombay and Sapphire were standing by their food bowls, meowing. He topped them up, changed their water, cleared away the dishes and cartons, then went through to the scullery, unlocked the back door and stepped out into the cool, fresh morning air. It was a fine, still morning, with an almost cloudless sky, full of the promise of those glorious late summer days that occurred so frequently during September.
He did a few half-hearted stretches then jogged down to the lake, stopping to watch the ducks for some moments. Then he ran round to the far side, through the gate into the paddock, and traversed it, making a trail through the tall, sopping grass. At the far end he let himself out of the gate, then tackled the hill.
He ran some way up it, through a large field, until he had to stop to get his breath back. He gulped down air and then, feeling too exhausted to go on for a moment, he sat down on the wet grass. A bunch of sheep stood some distance away, a few looking at him with mild curiosity, one of them bleating. Ridiculous, he thought. Normally he’d have run all the way up a hill like this with no problem. Maybe the move and all that had been going on in the house had sapped his energy.
He hauled himself to his feet, walked further up the hill and then tried to run, but only managed a few steps before he had to walk again, panting hard up the final steep hundred yards to the summit. The soft contours of the South Downs stretched out for miles on either side of him, to Winchester, eighty miles away to the west, and to Eastbourne, twenty miles to the east. He and Caro had been planning to hike the South Downs Way for years, a week-long trek, and now it was literally on their back doorstep, they had no excuse.
Still breathing hard, his heart racing, he turned and looked back down at the house, directly below him, and at Cold Hill village over to the left. He stared across the rooftops, the gardens, the church spire, the black ribbon of road. The cricket pitch. He saw a large Victorian-looking house, with a swimming pool and tennis court, some distance back from the village, with a long driveway. That must be the Old Rectory that Annie Porter had mentioned, where there were children around Jade’s age.
It was so beautiful. So peaceful. It could be paradise here.
If . . .
The morning was very quiet. He heard another bleat, the caw of a crow, the faint, distant drone of a microlight, as he gazed down at the lake, at the green rectangle of the empty swimming pool, the outbuildings, the red-brick walls of their house, the round tower.
Were Caro and Jade still asleep in there?
What the hell else was in there, too?
Thirty minutes later, standing in the shower, half-listening to his favourite radio show of the week, Saturday Live, he was feeling a lot better and much more positive. Bruce Kaplan was a smart guy. Energy. There was just a load of weird energy in this house, that’s all it was. All of it. Energy had to be harnessed, and Bob Manthorpe, on Thursday, had told him something. He hadn’t used the word energy, but that, Ollie was certain, was what he had meant. He was going to take the old man’s advice.
As he walked back out of the bathroom, with a towel round his waist, he saw Caro was awake, lying in bed, checking her messages on her phone.
‘Hi, darling,’ he said.
‘Did you get some sleep?’
‘A little, finally.’
‘I think we ate too late, I had indigestion,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ he lied, thinking it was better she put their lack of sleep down to something tangible, rather than anything else. He heard a rasping sound.
‘I think that’s your phone,’ she said. ‘It vibrated earlier while you were out and woke me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He went over to his bedside table and picked the phone up. He always left it on silent at night. Glancing at the display, he could see it was Cholmondley.
He frowned. This was early for his client to be calling – and at the weekend.
He answered, breezily. ‘Charles, good morning!’
There was a brief silence from the other end, followed, rapidly, by an explosion of anger.
‘Just what the hell do you think you are playing at, Mr Harcourt?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Ollie replied. ‘Playing at?’
‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyers first thing on Monday, if not sooner. How bloody dare you?’
His heart sinking, and completely confused, Ollie said, ‘I’m sorry, Charles – has something happened? I don’t understand?’
‘You don’t understand? Just what the hell do you mean by this – this – outrage? These slurs? Have you taken leave of your senses? What’s your game? What’s your bloody game?’
Ollie stood, stunned. The towel loosened and began to slip away, but he barely noticed. ‘I’m sorry, Charles, please – can you explain?’
He turned away from Caro’s curious gaze, and stepped out of the room, the towel falling away completely as he did so, closing the door behind him. ‘Explain?’ Cholmondley said. ‘I think you’re the one who’d better explain.’
‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘No? Is this your way of having a laugh? When you get drunk perhaps and start insulting your clients?’
‘I can assure you I’ve done nothing of the sort. Please tell me what you mean?’
‘And telling the whole world at the same time? Our arrangement is terminated. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers on Monday.’
‘Charles, please,’ Ollie said, desperately. ‘I’m really sorry – what’s happened? Please tell me, I’m totally in the dark.’
‘In which case you must be suffering short-term memory loss.’
‘Memory loss?’
‘You’re either mental or you have a very strange sense of humour, Mr Harcourt.’
Ollie heard the beeping of an incoming call. He ignored it. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I really don’t know what you are talking about, or why you are upset.’
‘No? Well try imagining how you might feel if I’d sent you an email like that – and copied it to all your rival companies. Eh?’
The phone went dead. As Ollie pressed the button to finish the call his end, utterly baffled and reeling, he heard another voice on the line that he recognized. The cultured Indian accent of Anup Bhattacharya.
‘Mr Harcourt?’
‘Anup, good morning!’ Ollie said, uneasily.
‘Just what exactly is the meaning of this?’
If Cholmondley had sounded incandescent, Bhattacharya’s tone, although reserved, contained even deeper anger.