She shook her head with irritation at her own timidity. Where was all the courage that had filled her heart and mind when she had sung those words a mere half-hour ago? She took a deep breath, lifted her chin and lengthened her stride. Eleven, twelve, thirteen - nearly halfway there.
He must have been wearing soft shoes, or no shoes. She didn’t hear a thing but glimpsed a sudden great pouncing out of the corner of her eye. Then he was on her. She felt the weight of him, the grunting curse of his breath. His arm was clamped so fiercely round her throat that, even in her terror, she could not cry out.
She was dragged over to the nearest car. Then, before she understood what was happening, he seized her hair, gathering it tightly in his fist, and yanked her head right back then swung it forward with tremendous force hard down against the edge of the bonnet.
Valentine Fainlight was working. That is, he was going through the motions. The proofs for Barley Roscoe and the Hopscotch Kid had finally arrived and Val was vaguely turning over the pages, thinking they looked all right to him. Once upon a time, in another life it sometimes seemed, he would have noticed that the margins on more than one page were not quite even and that Barley’s magic cap was too dark a shade in the scene where he transformed hopscotch squares into blocks of honey fudge. (The cap, a pale, delicate blue when Barley was simply going about his day-to-day affairs, deepened according to the degree of catastrophe his transformations wrought.)
Valentine saw none of these things. He saw only Jax’s face: cruel, beautiful, enigmatic. He had found himself wondering briefly yesterday evening how a person not all that intelligent could actually manage to look enigmatic then felt ashamed. Val had had thoughts like this once before and had immediately berated himself for being snobbish and unfair. And in any case, they were irrelevant. For who was ever cured of a fever by dispassionate analysis?
He felt bad about Louise. He loved his sister and knew that his apparent rejection was hurting her. The only thing to be said in his defence was that if she continued to live with him, she would be hurt much, much more.
Sometimes, at moments like this when Val acknowledged that the word relationship was meaningless and what he had really been infected by was a fatal disease, he remembered Bruno. Val had had the good fortune to live for seven years with a complex, gifted, difficult, funny, kind and completely loyal man. The sex had been great, the fights never vicious. When Bruno died, Valentine felt he had fallen into a bottomless chasm of despair.
His partner’s parents, one or two very close friends, his work but, most of all, Louise had pulled him back to life. Now, when she was struggling to recover from her own smash-up, he was turning her out. A month ago he would not have thought himself capable. This morning, when she had cried in the kitchen, he felt so terrible he almost changed his mind. But then a wonderful idea occurred to him. A week ago, when Louise had gone to London for the day, he had asked Jax over to see the house. It had been warm and they had had wine and sandwiches in the garden. Jax had loved Fainlights and could hardly tear himself away. With Louise gone, Jax could not just visit, he could actually come and stay.
The telephone rang. Val snatched it up and cried, ‘Yes, yes?’
‘Hello, Val.’
‘Jax! What do you—’ He stopped, gulped in some air. ‘I mean, how are things? How are you?’
‘I’m just going to have a shower, actually.’
Oh God, if this is a tease I’ll go over there and kill him.
‘You one of them green people?’
‘What?’
‘You know, save water, shower with a friend.’
‘Do you mean you’d like . . .’
‘Only if you want.’
Louise saw him go. She had heard the phone ring, once. Now she watched her brother, her lovable, intelligent brother, capering in his excitement, fumbling with the front gates and racing into the road. Dancing at the end of this odious man’s leash like some sad performing bear.
As Valentine hurried through the blue door and up the stairs, he realised he had not brought any money. But he could put that right. He could explain.
The door of the flat was slightly open. He could hear the shower running. Was Jax already in there? Or maybe he was moving silently behind him on the cream carpet, creeping up to jump. To grab Val hard round the throat as he had once before. Already excited, Val deliberately didn’t turn his head.
But then Jax walked out of his bedroom wearing a loosely tied towelling robe. Came straight up to Val and put the end of the belt in his hand. Then, using both his own hands, ripped open Val’s shirt, sending the buttons flying.
Hetty Leathers, having now confirmed the time and date of her husband’s funeral, invited Evadne both to the church and afterwards for a light lunch at the bungalow.