Page 48

I HEAR THE DOOR TO the apartment close. Open my eyes, check the alarm clock for the time. Just after midnight.

I reach for my phone and open the tracking app. Francesca is still on the premises, not yet in the woods. In fact, she appears to be heading to one of the cabins—Woodland Hutch 11. What is she doing in a guest’s room at this hour of night? We don’t have a single empty room this weekend. Is she meeting someone there? I really don’t like this.

I dress, then head down through the courtyard into the public part of the building. Stride up to the girl on reception: unlike many country hotels there’s someone there twenty-four hours, ready to attend to the guests’ night-time whims. “Where’s Michelle?” I ask. “Is she still about?”

The girl takes a step back and I wonder what she sees in my face. “I think she’s in the store?”

A few minutes later I push open the door to the wine store. The bar of light from the corridor illuminates a figure crouched on the floor, catches on the bent blonde head.

“I need to talk to you,” I say.

“Oh!” Michelle startles at the sound of my voice. Stands and turns, smoothing dust off her skirt. It feels satisfying to be the one catching her unawares, for a change.

I close the door behind me. Her eyes go to the catch as it clicks into place.

“I was checking the supplies for tomorrow’s celebration,” she says, unnecessarily, gesturing to the crates of booze on the floor beside her. “What are you doing here?”

As though I have no right to be here. As though I have no authority over her. I hate that she knows who I really am. I hate that she looks at me and sees that grubby, lonely, unloved kid from the past. But for the time being I’m going to swallow my pride.

“What did you mean,” I say, “earlier? When you said she’s not a good person?”

“Oh,” she says. She looks uneasy. “I—I just didn’t like seeing you ashamed of where you come from. I don’t want you to put her on too much of a pedestal.”

There’s something shifty about her body language, about the way her gaze slides away from mine. She looks guilty. I think of the way she leapt up when I entered.

“What were you doing just now, when I came in?”

“Nothing,” she says, far too quickly. “Just checking the supplies like I said...”

“I don’t believe you,” I say. “Tell me now, or... or I’ll go straight to Francesca.” I take a step toward her.

She narrows her eyes, juts her chin a little. “No, you won’t. I think you’ve put a lot of effort into becoming Owen Dacre. I doubt you want me to reveal you’re really a fisherman’s son who grew up too poor to live in a real house. Not just a local, but the family even the locals looked down on.”

I feel like she’s just punched me: the long-ingrained shame of it. But I try to bluff my way out. “Yeah,” I say, “well maybe I don’t care. It’s hardly a crime, growing up poor.”

“No. That isn’t a crime, anyway.” A flash of that steel I saw in her earlier. She gestures at me, at my clothes.

I feel a sudden apprehension. “What do you mean—”

She sighs. “The chippy was right next to The Crow’s Nest, if you recall. We stayed open late, to mop up the drinkers after last orders. So I was often there in the small hours, long after everyone else had gone home, cleaning it all down, taking out the rubbish, locking up. I saw you. You... and that box of matches. And what was it? A can of fuel from your dad’s boat?”

Oh no.“Shut up.” I just want to make her stop talking.

“Look,” she says, in a reasonable tone. “I get it. I do. People were awful to you and it must have felt good to get even.” And then she says, almost apologetically, “And if you try to get me fired from this job, I’ll tell everybody what I saw, the night before you and your dad left Tome. I don’t think it would look all that great for your profile, do you? Famed architect revealed as childhood arsonist. I don’t think Francesca would like that sort of thing at all. To her, image is everythi—”

The last word ends in a gasp, because my hands are around her throat. I feel the temptation to squeeze, to stem the awful flood of words, to wipe the look of scorn and pity from her face.

No one else has recognized me... the buck would stop with her—

And then I come to my senses. I drop my hands. What just happened to me?

“Oh my God,” I say, and something like a sob escapes me. “Oh fuck, I’m sorry. I don’t know what...”

“It’s OK,” she says, in a whisper. “It’s OK.”

I stare at her. She looks back steadily.

And then something totally insane happens. I kiss her. Or she kisses me. There’s a moment when we break off, maybe each as shocked as the other.

And then we’re kissing again, and she’s making a deep, almost animal sound at the back of her throat, and this is wrong on so many different levels. And yet at the same time there is something intoxicating about being known and wanted for who I am. Here is someone who knows me as the boy who grew up in a caravan, who smelt of fish, fag smoke, and disappointment. And who still wants me, in spite of all that. Who knows and accepts maybe the worst thing about me.

I’m fumbling the top buttons of her shirt open when I see the small inked mark just above her left breast.

“What is that?” I ask.

“Oh.” She smiles. “Just a youthful mistake.” Silences me with another kiss.

And it is good. It is really, really good.