Page 8

7

Someone is coming. Someone new. They’re coming across the causeway, puttering along in a blue car. Grace can tell it’s a new person by the way they’re driving, slowly and tentatively. Taking their time.

She checks that the front door is locked before returning to her lookout spot at the large kitchen window. With the fraying sleeve of her cardigan she wipes condensation from the glass, but the car has disappeared; it will have reached the near side of the causeway, it will be idling at the bottom of the hill. Its driver will be looking at the chain slung across the track and at the ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ sign dangling from it.

Grace moves from the large window overlooking the sea to the smaller one on the north side of the house. From here, she can monitor the top of the steps leading up from the track to the front door. A minute or two passes. Just as she starts to imagine that the person must have turned back, a tall, thin man comes into view. He is pale, with hair the colour of damp straw, wearing a dark coat and thick-framed glasses. She starts – for a moment she thinks she recognizes him – but no. Just one of those faces. The man pauses at the top of the steps, catching his breath; he looks up at the house, rain falling on his face. She’s not sure, but she thinks she sees him smile.

He doesn’t look threatening, but Grace knows better than to imagine she can deduce the level of threat from a glance. You cannot infer a man’s propensity for violence from how he looks. She has set bones broken by soft hands, stitched cuts inflicted by men with easy smiles and white collars; she’s met brutes with angel faces.

She steps away from the window. From the rack on the wall in the living room she fetches the shotgun and carries it to the hall, propping it up against the bench – in full view of anyone standing on the doorstep. At the third or fourth knock, she opens the door.

‘Mrs Haswell?’ the man says, smiling nervously, holding out a damp hand.

Grace neither returns the smile nor takes his hand. ‘ Doctor Haswell,’ she corrects him.

‘Doctor Haswell, I’m sorry. Forgive me for turning up like this, I—’

‘What do you want?’

‘My name is Becker, James Becker, from the Fairburn Foundation? I’ve been trying to contact—’

At Fairburn , Grace starts to close the door. ‘I don’t have anything more for you,’ she says, mortified by the tears in her own voice. ‘You’ve already taken everything.’