She had driven this lane before. She must have. There in front of her was the farmhouse that Rob and Sally were having renovated. The same farmhouse that Rob had promised her when she was seventeen. Sally had taken her round the empty shell at a celebration barbecue following the successful purchase, pleading with Rob to replace an oak on the front lawn with a circular drive and a fountain, and expounding on the dilemma of deciding between a swimming-pool or a tennis court or both, but then having a limited garden space. Emma had been inclined to make sure she was not around for the work’s completion.
Builders were plodding around the house now: it was coming together. Emma leant her head against the car window, crushed by the epiphany that it wasn’t just the ghosts of the past that she had to wrestle and evade but the ghosts of the future. She could fool herself no longer. She had to leave, this time for good.
As she trudged up the stairs to the flat, with nothing to look forward to except sitting in the tainted glare of framed wedding photos, wondering if she’d ever smile like that again, Mrs Le Boutillier’s door opened. Emma’s mood deflated further.
‘Hello, Mrs Bygate, not at work today?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got that bug that’s going round?’
‘I think I probably have, so best keep back. I don’t want to give it to you.’
‘Very thoughtful of you – got to be careful at my age.’
Emma turned to put her key in the lock.
‘Oh, silly me, I’ve got this for you – you must have just missed him,’ Mrs Le Boutillier went on.
‘Colin?’ replied Emma, confused.
‘No, the boy. He had a letter for your husband. I said I’d make sure he got it. Things get awfully messed up in the pigeon-holes. Not everyone in this block takes as much care as I do, making sure the right letters go in the right places.’ She held up an envelope with ‘Mr Bygate’ handwritten in the centre.
‘Right, thanks.’ Emma tried not to sigh, but was weighed down by yet further proof that any interaction with her neighbour took at least five times longer than she might have predicted.
‘He was ever so helpful. I’d just got back from the market and he helped me in with my trolley. I offered him a cup of tea to say thank you but he said he was in a rush. Maybe I put him off, talking too much. That’s the thing when you live alone. If you get the chance to talk you probably do it too much …’
‘Right. I’ll make sure Colin gets it. Did he say who he was?’
‘He said he was a pupil.’
‘He should be at school then.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I get so confused by what holidays they have, these days. Not like in my day …’
‘Wonder how he knew our address.’
‘Well, it’s an odd name. Only one in the phone book.’
‘I suppose. Thanks again.’
‘Let me know if you’re feeling up to a cup of tea later. I bought some currant buns at the market that need eating up …’
Emma had shut the door.
Saturday, 10 October 1987
The first coffee had pierced the fug of her hangover. The second had helped her assemble the jumbled pieces of the previous night. The third unbuttoned the Scouse lip that Louise O’Rourke had used sparingly since she’d come to the Island.
She had held back yesterday morning when she’d been fired from the Bretagne halfway through her first day. Initially this was because she was reeling from the shock. She had just about got used to the fact of having landed a job at one of the Island’s top hotels, the first rung on a ladder that would take her to higher levels previously denied. For a moment she had thought she was about to cause a monumental scene, but as she processed what was happening she decided on a cannier move.
Though she knew him by name and reputation, she had not met Rob de la Haye before she started working on the front desk of his hotel. She’d caught his eye as he walked up the main staircase that Friday morning, but she had recognised him as Doug, the yacht salesman, ‘in the Island for one night only’, who had bedded her at the end of a day’s carousing at the Bouley Bay Hill Climb in July, an annual event in which bikes and cars took turns to roar up the tree-fringed bends from the harbour to the top of the bluffs.
She hadn’t been sure it was the same man so once she’d finished dealing with a guest she had checked the register for anyone staying named Doug or Douglas. There was none. Later that morning the inscrutable Christophe had taken her into his manager’s office and told her that, due to circumstances beyond his control, he would have to ask her to leave. He offered her three months’ wages, a glowing reference and a hint to refrain from pursuing the matter, which she declined to take.
‘Shame. I never even got to meet Mr de la Haye. Or his wife.’ She still wasn’t sure whether Rob was the man she had slept with.
‘I could make it six months’ wages, if your need to meet Mr de la Haye or his wife were to disperse.’ That was all the confirmation she needed.
She’d taken the money, met some friends at lunchtime, told them she’d jacked in her job after a modest win on the local lottery that would see her right for a while, and drunk the day away. Her friend Danny had joined her for last orders once he’d finished his kitchen shift and they’d sat on the walkway that led out to the Victorian tidal bathing pool at Havre des Pas. It was opposite the café outside which she now sat, insulated from the fresh October air by her body-warmer, and a stagger away from the bedsit where she’d been woken by sunlight streaming through the dip in the sheet that hung as a makeshift curtain. It hadn’t helped her mood to find Danny on the floor; that meant they’d started off sharing the bed platonically, then he’d either mentioned the L-word or had started grinding against her with an erection while they were spooning. Either way, she’d literally kicked him out of bed. He had a characteristic that marked him out from other men she had known, which drew her to him as a friend but repelled her as a lover: dependability. She’d enjoyed sleeping with him initially, but she was not conditioned to be attracted to men who posed no challenge, so had made it clear some months ago that they were to proceed as friends. He’d protested but they had stuck to it without any tension, except on those odd occasions when Louise had been drunk on the wrong side of the Island at midnight without a taxi fare and they’d ended up sharing a bed. Her girlfriends had taken to referring to him as ‘Danny Doormat’, which she resented. If he chose to put her on a pedestal and make an unasked-for pledge of romantic servitude, that was his look-out. She’d made clear to him where they stood.
The café was starting to fill for lunch. A family of four stood on the pavement, the parents eyeing the menu with distaste.
‘It’s a rip-off place for visitors. I mean, look at the people,’ muttered the father, in peach-coloured linen trousers and boat shoes. Louise looked around at the out-of-season tourists. They were her kind of people: Mancs, Scousers, Scots, working-class families in search of a bit of sun in a place where you could order a decent cup of tea in your own language.
‘Oh, please, I’m starving,’