‘Why did you come here?’ she asked him, fighting to keep her voice level. She pressed one hand to her cheek and felt it blazing.
He rocked back on his heels and turned to look at her, a box of matches poised in his hand, his face frank and open and impossibly young. ‘I broke up with someone. I was planning to stay in Oxford for another couple of years while she finished her PhD, but … well. She met someone else. That’s what happened.’ He dropped his gaze to the matchbox, turning it between his fingers. ‘So I wanted to get as far away as I could. I saw this job advertised. I didn’t think they’d take me – I’d only just graduated. But it was halfway through the year and I guess they weren’t overwhelmed with applicants. A place like this isn’t for everyone, I suppose.’
‘Is it for you?’
He paused.
‘It’ll do, for now. I wouldn’t want to settle.’ He stared into the fireplace, letting out a long sigh and covering it with the hiss and flare of a match sparking. The room fell silent; only the crack and spit of the fire as he coaxed it to life. A dark scent of woodsmoke drifted up from the hearth. When he was satisfied, he sat back, cross-legged, and turned his gaze on her. ‘How about you?’
‘What about me?’ It came out sharp-edged; she had not meant to sound so defensive. He blinked, his expression mild behind his glasses.
‘Why did you come here?’
She hesitated, watching him. How much should she say? Could she tell him everything that had happened with Dan this past year; could she unspool the brittle thread of events that had led her to this place? How much of that could he hope to understand, this dark-eyed, earnest boy, whose first serious break-up had sent him fleeing to the other end of the country? The urge to unburden herself rose up through her, fierce and strong; she caught her breath and pulled back from the edge in time.
‘I wanted some quiet.’ She ran a finger around the rim of her mug. ‘A place to paint.’
‘Long way to come for it.’ Edward hugged his knees. His tone offered no judgement, though it was half a question. Zoe made a small movement with her shoulders to acknowledge the truth of this. ‘So, do you have a partner?’ he asked, in the same light tone, when it became clear that she was giving nothing without a prompt.
Firelight sparked in bright reflections from his glasses; behind them, she could not see his eyes clearly. She left a long pause, not because she wanted to guard her privacy, but because she was no longer even sure of the answer herself.
‘I did,’ she murmured, after a while. Her eyes flicked away to the lurching shadows thrown by the flames. Edward nodded, as if he understood. When he didn’t say any more, she let her shoulders unclench and thanked him silently for having the grace not to force it.
‘The Professor was right, then,’ he said, as he levered himself to his feet and brushed down his trousers. ‘We are all running away.’
Zoe looked up at him briefly with a closed little smile. She wrapped her arms around her chest and drew her knees up, turning back to the fire. Edward bent to pick up her mug.
‘Do you want more tea? Or …’ His eyes darted away from hers and he dipped his chin. ‘I have a bottle of wine somewhere, if you’d rather?’
He was looking at her from under his lashes, shoulders hunched, his torso twisting with awkwardness. Zoe shifted, wincing as the sofa’s defeated springs dug into her leg. Again she felt wrong-footed by the difficulty of recognising his motives. If a man her age had offered the same, she might have presumed he was making a move, but she had no way of knowing how Edward regarded her. Perhaps he was being friendly to a stranger because he had been raised well; perhaps he simply wanted someone to talk to, and would be appalled to think she might have taken it any other way – a woman nearer his mother’s age than his. She glanced away to the window; the sky had turned the colour of wet slate and rain drove at the panes with determination. There was no way she could ride the bike back now, whether she had a drink or not. Part of her wanted nothing more than to stay, to feel that first thick heat of the alcohol sliding through her, gently teasing out the snarls and tangles of her mind; to sit here and listen to this beautiful boy, so pristine in all the blithe self-assurance and anxious uncertainty of youth. She would have liked to pretend, for one night, that she was his age again; to drink wine, play music, sit on the floor into the small hours until he suggested that she stay over. Just for the company, the warmth of another body, the knowledge that she was still desirable. She closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb. This was exactly the kind of situation she had resolved to avoid. If she relaxed now, she would find herself talking. It would all come out: everything she had worked so hard to tamp down, out of sight. A patient listener would undo her. And she could tell he would listen well; there was a stillness about him, an attentiveness to others rare in a boy his age. The children must adore him, she thought. Caleb would. She swiped that thought away before it could settle. Besides, she had begun to feel a strange compulsion to return to the house, a chafe of anxiety behind her sternum, as if it were calling her back.
‘You won’t be cycling out there now, in any case,’ he said, nodding to the window as if he had heard her thoughts. ‘I can drop you home later if you like, though you’d have to leave the bike here. If I only have one glass.’
‘No!’ The word cracked out of her, hard and fast as a shot, ricocheting off the walls. Edward stared at her, alarmed. She breathed in and out, tightened her hand around the arm of the sofa. She was shocked at herself; she had not meant to sound so fierce.
‘I meant – you shouldn’t drink at all, if you’re going to drive,’ she said, not looking at him, shaping each word clearly and precisely so as to keep her voice steady, though she could feel the colour rising up her neck. ‘You never know—’ She broke off, aware that she sounded like a parent. Well, let him think that.
Edward shuffled, chastened.
‘No, you’re right. I wouldn’t usually, but you don’t get pulled over here. More tea, then?’ When she hesitated, he said, as bait, ‘I haven’t told you yet what happened last year.’
Her scalp tightened. She was no longer sure she wanted to hear any more of these stories. Charles was right; they would take on a different shape once she was back in the house, alone, with the darkness pressing in. Whatever Edward was about to tell her, she could not unknow. But she merely nodded, watching him as he padded softly in his socks back to the kitchen to fill the kettle.
‘A child disappeared at the McBride house,’ he announced when he returned, holding out her mug. He settled himself on the floor near the fire with his back against the sofa. His head was close enough to her knees for Zoe to reach out and stroke his hair. She wondered briefly how he would react if she did, and clamped her free hand firmly under her thigh, because she did not entirely trust herself.
‘Disappeared?’ Her voice sounded high and strange. ‘How?’
‘They don’t really know.’ He stretched his legs out and crossed his feet at the ankles. ‘It was last August, just over a year ago. Mick was a few months into the work and the place was a building