Not having really given it much thought, as his parents seemed to find bodies on a daily basis, Kit answered, “She said so, didn’t she?
So I suppose she did.” It didn’t seem the sort of thing one would make up.
“What do you think it was like?” Lally’s eyes sparkled.
Kit flashed on the one thing he couldn’t bear to think about, the
image as vivid as the day it had happened. He felt the nausea start, and the prickle of sweat on his forehead. Desperate to change the subject, he said, “Where’s your house, then?”
“Nantwich, near the square.” Lally appeared to notice his blank look. “You don’t know the town at all, do you? It’s dead boring. But you can find things to do. Once we get dinner over with tonight, we’ll go out. I’ll show you round a bit.”
The sitting-room door swung open with a bang, making Kit jump, and Sam looked in.
“Uncle Duncan just rang. We’re going to our house, all of us, in Granddad’s estate car. Nana says we have to leave the dogs.”
“My dad doesn’t like dogs in the house,” Lally explained, jumping up. “Let’s get our coats. If we hurry, we can get the best seats.”
And Kit, who never willingly left his little terrier, trailed after her without a word.
He discovered the pleasure of cruelty at eight. His mother had promised him a special treat, an afternoon on their own, the pictures, then an ice cream. But at the last minute a friend had rung and invited her out, and she had gone with nothing more than a murmured apology and a brush of her hand against his hair.
He’d felt ill with fury at first. He’d screamed and kicked at the wall in his room, but the pain quickly stopped him. It was not himself he wanted to hurt.
Nor was there anyone to hear him. His mother would have asked their neighbor Mrs. Buckham to look in on him and give him his tea, but for the moment he had the house to himself. He straightened up and wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.
Slowly, he made his way to his mother’s room. Her scent lingered, a combination of perfume and hair spray and something in-definably female. The casual clothes she’d donned for her afternoon with him lay tossed across the bed, discarded in favor of something
more elegant. Her face powder had spilled, and fanned across the glass of her vanity table like pale pink sand. He wrote “bitch” in the dust, then smeared the word away— even then, he had known that crudity brought less than satisfying results. And he had seen something else. Her pearl necklace, a favorite gift from his father, had slipped to the floor in a luminous tumble. He lifted it, running the smooth spheres through his fingers, then rubbing them against his cheek, feeling an unexpected and pleasurable physical stirring. With his pulse quickening, he glanced round the room. His gaze settled on just what he needed— the hammer left behind after his mother’s recent bout of tacking up pictures.
First he took the pearls in both hands and jerked. The string snapped with a satisfying pop that flung the beads to the carpet in a random cascade. Then he lifted the hammer and carefully, thoroughly, smashed every pearl into a splash of luminescent dust.
A gleam caught his eye— two had escaped and were nestled against the leg of the vanity, as if hiding. He raised the hammer, then stopped, struck by a sudden impulse, and scooped the pearls into his pocket. They felt cool and solid to his touch. He would keep them as souvenirs. Only later would he learn that such things were called mementos.
The satisfaction that coursed through him after his act of de-struction was unlike anything else he’d ever known, but that had been only the beginning. He awaited discovery, trembling with dread and excitement. His mother came home and went upstairs, but there had been no explosion of anger. Instead, she locked herself in her room, complaining of a headache. It wasn’t until the next morning, when he’d faced her across the breakfast table, that he’d seen the fear in her eyes.
Chapter Six
“I’m too big for riding in laps.” Toby squirmed half off Gemma’s knee, but she hooked her arm round his middle and pulled him firmly back.
“You’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t you?” she said, taking the opportunity to nuzzle his silky hair, something it seemed she seldom managed these days. “And what about my poor knee, having to put up with such a big boy on it? Do you hear it complaining?”
She bounced him and he giggled, relaxing against her.
“Knees don’t talk, Mummy,” Toby said with assurance.
“Mine do,” Rosemary chimed in from the front passenger seat.
“Especially when I’ve spent all day in the garden.”
Hugh Kincaid’s old Vauxhall estate car could theoretically have held seven comfortably, but the third seat had been filled with cartons of books. Hugh had managed to shift them so that Kit could squeeze in the back, leaving Sam, Lally, Toby, and Gemma to jam into the center seat as best they could.
It had begun to snow again, and the car was cold in spite of the number of bodies. “We’ll soon get the heater going,” Hugh said cheerfully as he turned up the blower. The blast of frigid air made
Gemma even colder and she hugged Toby to her until he wriggled like a hooked fi sh.
For Gemma, already disoriented by the unfamiliar terrain and her limited vision from the rear seat, the journey into town merged into a swarm of onrushing white flakes, punctuated by the yellow glare of the occasional sodium lamp and the wet gleam of black road. Ordinarily preferring to drive, she disliked the sensation of things being out of her control, and she felt a little queasy from the motion of the car.
Then, as they passed beneath a dark arch, Sam said, “Look. There’s the aqueduct. The canal goes over the road.”
“You mean the boats go overhead? ” asked Kit, sounding in-trigued.
“Can we see?” added Toby.
“Not tonight,” said Rosemary. “But maybe tomorrow, if the weather clears.”
There were houses now, crowding in on either side, and Sam continued his narration. “This is Welsh Row, where the Welsh would march in to kill the English. And not far from here were the brine works, where the Romans made salt. The ‘wich’ in Nantwich means salt, you know.”
“Who appointed you tour guide, Sam?” Lally said waspishly.
“I’m sure they’re perfectly happy not knowing.” Lally and Kit had been talking as they left the house, and Gemma wondered if Lally was cross over having had to sit beside her brother rather than her new friend. At any rate, Gemma was glad to see Kit overcoming his shyness with his cousins.
Toby tilted his head back until he could whisper in Gemma’s ear.
“Who are the Welsh, Mummy? Do they still kill the English?”
Gemma stifled a laugh. “The Welsh are perfectly nice people who live in Wales, lovey. And no, they don’t kill the English. You’re quite safe.” Wanting to encourage Sam, who had subsided into hurt silence, she peered out the window at the classical fronts of the buildings.
“From what Duncan’s said, I thought Nantwich was Tudor, but these buildings look Georgian.”