‘Anyone there?’
Horace lumbered up from under his chair to greet the newcomer. An elderly woman in a clear plastic rain hood picked her way through the piles of books, nosing the air like a woodland creature.
‘There you are!’ Her watery eyes alighted on Zoe. ‘Oh, but I don’t want to trouble you if you’re busy, Professor.’
‘No trouble at all, Betsy. It’s always a pleasure to see you.’ He pushed his chair back, turning to wink at Zoe over the woman’s head. ‘Do help yourself to more coffee, Ms Adams, and a book, if you like.’
But Zoe sensed the earlier intimacy had been broken; Mick’s appearance had cast a shadow of guilt over their conversation. She picked up her jacket and tucked The Myths That Make Us inside it.
‘Thank you – I should get on with my shopping. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’
‘Not at all.’ He waved a hand. ‘I’ve left you on a cliffhanger so you’ll have to come back and see us.’
The old dog followed her to the door, sniffing at her legs. She scratched his head between his ears on her way out and he made a low, throat-clearing noise of appreciation, sitting down solidly in the doorway. Zoe turned to see the elderly woman watching her through the glass as she walked away.
She spotted the young teacher as he jogged across the empty playground, clutching the hood of a waterproof hiking jacket around his face against the downpour, while she cowered under the brick archway of the bike shop yard, peering out at the sky, bewildered by its sudden betrayal. She took a bold step forward into his line of sight, one hand protectively clamping the saddle of her new bicycle, pretending she hadn’t noticed him. The plastic carrier bag from the supermarket knocked against her leg as it swung from the handlebars.
‘Oh. Hello again.’ Edward’s face lit up as he approached; rain had spattered his glasses and he had to take them off and wipe them with a tissue. ‘You picked the wrong day for a bike ride.’
‘I know, right?’ Zoe pushed a wet strand of hair out of her face and grinned. ‘What’s going on? It was fine when I came out.’ She patted the bike. ‘And I just paid the guy to take this for a month. He didn’t tell me it was monsoon season. Reckon I could get a refund?’
‘If he gave money back for every day it rained here he’d have gone bust long ago.’ Edward smiled. He seemed nervous. ‘Seriously, though. You can’t ride all the way back in this. You should wait it out – the weather changes from one hour to the next.’
‘I see that.’ She pulled her scarf tighter. ‘I was going to take my groceries home. You guys are not big on cabs around here, I understand.’
He laughed. ‘Uh, no.’
‘I guess it’s back to the bookshop till this clears up.’ She glanced along the street. ‘Your Professor will think I’m hitting on him. Though I’m not sure I can afford to pay my way in buns.’
‘You can wait at mine if you like.’ The way he said it; too quickly, trying to make it sound casual. ‘I’m across the green there, in the School House.’ He indicated through the billowing curtains of rain.
She frowned. ‘But you were on your way somewhere.’
‘Nothing urgent. I’ve got biscuits, and coffee,’ he added, as if to persuade her. Zoe wondered if he had seen her from the window; if he had come out specifically to bump into her. The possibility fired a small, bright buzz in her chest.
‘Well – that’s really kind. If you’re sure I won’t be in the way?’
‘Of course not. Charles will be closing up soon anyway, you might as well. Here, let me take that.’ He reached out for the bike; she unhooked the bag and let him steer. Together they scurried across the green, heads down into the rain as it drove harder all around them, bouncing up from the road and sluicing along the gutters in a brown stream.
She stole a glance at his profile as he fumbled to unlock the gate at the side of the School House, the bike balanced against his hip. Neat, regular features, glazed with the uncomplicated smoothness of youth, save for that fine crease between his brows that hinted at deep preoccupations, a serious involvement with the world. A brief shiver of unease rippled through her; an absurd sense that she should not step across the threshold into his life, that to do so would be to invite a curse, as in a fairy tale. She shook the rain from her hair briskly and smiled as he held the front door open.
The School House was built in the nineteenth century from the same hard grey stone as the school it served. Inside it had been furnished sparely, the floral curtains and plain upholstery faded, the carpet’s pattern worn indistinct by the feet of previous tenants. Edward had imposed little of himself on his home, Zoe thought, as he showed her into the cramped living room. A curved silver wireless speaker on the walnut dresser; a black-and-white photograph of dreaming spires in dawn mist; a music stand under one narrow window, his violin case leaning beside it. Scanning the room, she had the impression that he had barely unpacked, and did not intend to stay long. Only the bookshelves offered any glimpse of him. They had been carefully arranged, poetry and classics together, literary novels and the kind of non-fiction she saw extracted in the New Yorker and always intended to read one day. Browsing the spines, she began to feel intimidated by him: his obvious intelligence, his earnest intensity.
‘Tea? Coffee?’ He took off his glasses and wiped them on the tail of his shirt. That English diffidence as he looked at her from under his fringe, fearful of being refused. Funny to think she and her friends would have looked straight past a boy like this in college. Now she was the one who feared being invisible.
‘Tea, thanks. If I have any more coffee I’ll shoot through the ceiling. No milk.’
‘So you’ve been to see Charles already?’ he called through the open door of the kitchen, over the sound of running water. ‘Has he been filling your head with lurid legends?’
‘I wanted him to tell me about the house.’ A wooden staircase led up from the main room, almost opposite the door. Zoe wandered over to the shelves beneath it and began lifting paperbacks from a stack.
‘In defiance of Mick’s Official Secrets Act?’
‘Yeah – what’s with that?’ She picked up a hardback volume of Rilke in a plastic dust-jacket and flicked through the pages. Some had been folded down at the corners and here and there she glimpsed pencil notes in the margin. One of his college books, she guessed, and felt an odd pang of tenderness, to think of him so newly out in the world. ‘Did Mick give everyone orders not to tell me?’
‘More or less.’ Edward came to stand in the doorway, a kettle in his hand. ‘He was afraid it would scare you off. He doesn’t like anyone talking about his family history at the best of times, but especially not in front of paying customers.’
‘It’s a little paranoid. Every old place has its stories. I wouldn’t have chosen to live in a house like that if I was easily spooked.’
‘Even so,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he was struggling to be fair, ‘it would be a big deal for some people, to find out you’re living in a house where a woman killed her child. And then after what happened last year – I can see his point.’
Zoe snapped her head up from the book to stare at him. ‘She killed her child? What did happen last year?’
He froze, guilt slinking over his face. ‘Shit. I thought Charles had told you?’
‘He didn’t get to that part. Oh, come on,’ she said, when it appeared he was turning away, ‘you can’t throw that out and not explain it. Who killed her child – Ailsa McBride?’
Edward sighed, flicking at the kettle lid with his fingernail.