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  Just after nine, just as she had given up on the couple, the doorbell rang. “At last,” she muttered, and walked through to the hallway, stopping to check her reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall next to the hat stand. Her makeup was subtle—just a hint of eyeliner and some blusher—and she’d tied her long chestnut hair into a ponytail and secured it with a white ribbon. It made her look almost virginal. She smiled at herself, satisfied that the buyer’s first impression of her at least would be a good one.

  She opened the front door and the smile dropped from her face.

  “Is this your idea of a joke?” Brian Tanner stood in the doorway, dwarfing the space. He thrust the solicitor’s letter at her and pushed past into the hallway. She could smell whiskey fumes on his breath and the whites of his eyes were threaded with red.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she said calmly. “Why don’t you come back in the morning when you’re sober and we can talk about this reasonably?”

  He lashed out with his foot, kicking the door shut behind him. “Fuck that,” he said viciously. “We’ll talk about it now.” He grabbed her arm and hauled her through to the lounge.

  “Brian, you’re hurting me,” she said, trying to keep her feet as he dragged her.

  “Not half as much as you’ve hurt me,” he said, threw her down onto the couch, and stood over her. “Right. Explain.” He was breathing hard, sucking air in through his mouth and expelling it through his nose.

  Like a rampant bull, she thought. She’d experienced Brian’s explosive temper in the past. She still carried the bruises to prove it. “I told you last week it was over, Brian,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. Don’t let him see you’re afraid. “This . . .” She glanced down at the letter clutched in her hand. “. . . This makes it legal. I’m dissolving the partnership.”

  “You can’t,” he said petulantly. “I won’t let you.” He paced across the lounge to the cupboard where she kept her bottles of drink and poured himself a glass of Teachers, taking a mouthful, shuddering slightly as the neat liquor burned down his throat.

  She stood up and dropped the letter down onto the table. “You can see from this that I can,” she said, feeling less vulnerable standing. “It’s over, Brian. Accept it.”

  He downed the rest of the whiskey and hurled the glass into the fireplace, where it smashed on the marble hearth, sending shards of glass flying across the sheepskin rug.

  “I think you’d better go,” she said.

  “Like hell,” he said, advancing on her again.

  She backed away—the two of them moving in a bizarre minuet danced in the cramped confines of the room. Let the couple turn up now, Laura thought, then, no, don’t let them see the cottage like this, full of anger and regret.

  Brian stopped, his shoulders sagging, the “little boy lost” look she’d once found so appealing creeping back into his eyes. “What about us?”

  “There is no us, Brian. There never was. It was only ever you and what you wanted. I, like a fool, fell for it.”

  “It wasn’t like that. You wanted it too.” He had begun the pleading stage of his strategy sooner than she thought he would, but once she had learned to see through his ploys none of his charm worked on her.

  “At first, yes, I did. Until I learned what you were really like.” She found she didn’t have to work as hard on being tough, as she once might have done.

  “You make me sound like some kind of monster.” The face of a reasonable man.

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, Brian, but I’ve made my decision. The partnership is over. Our relationship is over. You’d better go.”

  He lowered his head, tears in his eyes. Laura relaxed and took a step toward the door. Before she could take another he lunged at her, grabbing her by the hair, his fingers closing around her thick ponytail. “You’re not going to do this to me,” he hissed in her ear and pulled her backward through to the kitchen and forced her head down onto the work top. With his free hand he grabbed a carving knife from the wooden block on the side.

  She saw the blade glinting in the sharp light of the overhead halogen spots and gasped. “Brian, no!”

  The rage was back in his eyes and he stroked her cheek with the knife. “I could kill you,” he said. “Easy. I could cut you so badly . . . You bitch! You’re not going to dump me. Who the hell do you think you are? Without me you’d still be selling space on the local rag. I made this company. I made you.”

  Laura said nothing, her head still pinned to the work top by his grip on her hair.

  “I’ll show you,” he said and moved the knife away from her face and began sawing at the thick rope of her ponytail. The razor-sharp carving knife cut through it in seconds. She felt the pressure ease as the hair came away. When the ponytail was all but severed she jerked upright, reached out, and grabbed a Pyrex measuring jug from the draining board, spinning round and catching him a glancing blow on the side of the head.

  He staggered backward, dropping the knife. She scooped it up, holding it out in front of her. “Get out!” she said. “Get out now!”

  The fire in his eyes dimmed and he looked down at the hank of hair still grasped in his fist. He frowned in confusion, as if wondering how it got there.

  “Laura, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice soft, contrite. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Go!” She screamed the word, jabbing the knife at him.

  He shrugged and walked through to the hall, still staring at the trophy in his hand. “I always loved your hair,” he said, dropping the severed ponytail onto the couch, where it lay like a dead animal. He opened the front door. “It didn’t have to be like this,” he said, looking back at her.

  Laura still held the knife out in front of her, but her hand, her whole body, was starting to shake.

  “Good-bye, Brian,” she said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

  His mood switched again and he smiled at her. “I’m going to destroy you, Laura,” he said. “I’m going to take away everything you’ve ever cherished.” He took one step out through the door and she dropped the knife, ran forward, and slammed the door shut.

  It was then the tears came. She leaned her back against the door, her fingers touching the jagged ends of her hair, and she began to cry, sliding slowly down to the floor, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them.

  She sat like that long into the night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A late spring afternoon and the café was packed to capacity, customers spilling out onto the handful of tables and chairs clustered on the pavement, where they sipped at their lattes and put the world to rights. Laura pushed her way inside and looked around. She spotted Maggie almost immediately, sitting at a table in the far corner, her fiery confusion of copper curls haloed in a wreath of cigarette smoke. She weaved her way through, pulled up a chair, and sat down. Maggie looked up from the paperback book she was immersed in. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Nice crop,” she said. “New image, eh?”

  Laura ran her hand self-consciously through her freshly cut hair. It had taken the hairdresser less than an hour to repair the damage from last night. “Time for a change,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Maggie the real reason, just as she couldn’t involve the police, even though common sense told her it was the right thing to do. For some reason she felt ashamed. As if in some way Brian’s attack on her was her fault.

  “So how did it go last night? What did they think of the place?”

  “They didn’t show.”

  “You’re kidding. Fuck them! I wondered why they hadn’t got back in touch with me. I’ll call them. Have a go.”

  Laura shook her head and took a mouthful of the coffee Maggie had thoughtfully ordered for her. “Don’t bother. I’m sure there’ll be others.”

  “Of course,” Maggie said. “It’s just that they sounded so keen.”

  “So, what have you got for me?”

  Maggie dragged her voluminous bag from the floor and set it on t
he table in front of her. She dropped the paperback inside and rummaged through the contents, bringing out three sheets of A4 paper, and spread them on the table. “Three to choose from, all within your price range, all with vacant possession; those two there”—she indicated two of the sheets with a finely manicured but nicotine-stained finger—“those two are so new the advert only just went into the newspaper. So you’ve got a couple of days’ grace before it hits the streets.”

  Maggie had been running her own estate agency for five years, and in that time Laura had bought several properties with her friend’s help. It was an aspect of the friendship that suited them both perfectly.

  Laura studied the details for each of the houses in turn. “This one looks interesting. Four bedrooms, two receptions, kitchen . . . what about the outhouses? It says three. Is that right?”

  “Agent-speak; so don’t get your hopes up. From what I remember they’re three brick-built sheds, ramshackle and dilapidated. Oh, and that one hasn’t got a bathroom. The toilet is in one of the sheds. The old boy that lived there couldn’t be doing with modern conveniences. There’s a tin bath hanging on the back of the door, and the kitchen has an old-fashioned copper for boiling the water. You have to see it to believe it.”

  “You’ll be telling me next there’s no mains electricity.”

  “The place has its own generator in—”

  “One of the outhouses?”

  Maggie made a gun with her extended index finger and mimed pulling the trigger. “Bull’s-eye! Interested?”

  “At that price? No way. Now if they were to drop by several thousand I could be. The location seems right, lashings of land and the house gives me plenty of scope for renovation.”

  “I could have a word. It’s some distant relative of the old boy who’s selling the place. She wants to hold out for the full asking price, but her husband’s more pragmatic. I think he just wants rid of it. What about the others?”

  Laura shook her head. “No, I think this could be the one. I’ve got a gut feeling about it, and you know I always trust my instincts. Shall we go and have a look?”

  “Shortly,” Maggie said. She gathered up the papers and slipped them into her bag, dropping it back down to the floor. Then she leaned forward conspiratorially. “But first things first. Tell me, have you heard from Brian?”

  Laura avoided her friend’s eyes. “My solicitor has written to him. I think it’s best not to have any direct contact. It only ends in recrimination and grief. His I don’t care about, but I’m developing a well-overdue sense of self-preservation.” Her fingers went to the nape of her neck. She imagined she could still feel the blade of the carving knife pressed against her skin. She shuddered involuntarily. It was only hair, she thought. It would grow back. It could have been so much worse.

  “Could have been worse,” her friend said, unknowingly echoing her thoughts but in a completely different context. “You could have married him. It’s not as if he didn’t ask you enough times.”

  “When the relationship was strictly business it worked fine,” Laura said. “But once it became personal, once sex reared its ugly head, the whole relationship was on the slippery slip. I knew the first time we slept together I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, but by then it was too late to slam on the brakes. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. As for marriage . . .”

  “I tried to warn you,” Maggie said.

  “I should have listened.”

  “Just think of it as a lucky escape.”

  “I haven’t escaped yet. Once the solicitors dissolve the partnership I’ll sleep easier.”

  They talked in a similar vein for the next half hour, Laura catching up with Maggie’s news—new boyfriend, excitement—ditching new boyfriend, depression. The usual news, the usual Maggie.

  “One day you’ll meet the right one, get married, and have hundreds of kids,” Laura said.

  “Yeah, right, when hell freezes over. I think I’m destined to remain spinster of this particular parish.” She laughed bitterly. “Come on then. Drink up. I’ll take you over and show you the house.”

  Maggie’s car, as usual, was filled with cigarette smoke. Laura wound the window down, letting the slipstream fan her face. There was always a sense of completeness when she was with Maggie. She could relax in a natural way that she never could with other people. It was the nearest she felt to being on her own, but more secure.

  Maggie stubbed a cigarette out in the ashtray.

  “Much farther?” Laura asked.

  Maggie indicated and turned off the main road onto a narrow winding lane. “Almost there,” she said, then reached for her cigarettes on the dashboard and lit another.

  The car shuddered and jolted over the potholes in the macadam. Laura braced herself. “I thought you said access wasn’t a problem.”

  “It’s a road, isn’t it?”

  “Only just,” Laura said. Through a gap in the trees she could see a house in the distance. Redbrick, slate roof. “Is that it?”

  Maggie nodded, sending a column of ash tumbling down the front of her shirt. “Impressive, huh?”

  “It’s big but I’ll need a closer look.”

  “God, you’re such a pessimist these days.” Maggie indicated again and pulled off the lane. There was a break in the hedgerow and what remained of a five-bar gate hung limply askew from a rotting post. There was a long winding drive leading up to the house, little more than a mud-track, though the mud was baked to hard rough ridges by the summer sun. Now in full view Laura could see how badly the place was in need of restoration. There were slates missing from the roof, paint had peeled from the window frames, revealing the timber beneath, and the bottom six inches of the front door had simply crumbled away.

  Maggie parked and climbed from the car, grabbing her clipboard from the backseat and a bunch of keys from the glove compartment. Laura followed, her eyes drinking in every detail, a curious thrill of excitement running the length of her spine. Despite Maggie’s assertion, she wasn’t a pessimist, not a fully paid-up member yet anyway. You couldn’t enter into a career like this without a boundless sense of optimism. To most people this house would be a complete disaster, but she was already formulating plans. New windows, a new roof, and certainly a new front door. She could see it in her mind’s eye clearly. It needed work—a lot of work—but the house had an undeniable charm. And she hadn’t even looked inside yet. Renovated to holiday accommodation, the sale or rental potential was limitless.

  As if reading her thoughts Maggie said, “We’ll do out here first, and then I’ll reveal the delights within.”

  They circled the house, Laura noting that all the guttering and downpipes needed replacing. They came across one of the outbuildings almost immediately. “This is where the generator lives,” Maggie said, and pulled open the door, brushing away thick cobwebs with her hand, ignoring the spiders that darted for cover in the shadows.

  “Does it work?” Laura said, eyeing the antediluvian contraption skeptically.

  Maggie shrugged. “Doubt it. But who knows?”

  Laura closed the door and followed her friend around to the back of the house.

  There were two more brick-built sheds, one a lot smaller than the other. “The small one’s the loo,” Maggie said. “We’ll give that one a miss. Too easy to conjure images of the old boy sitting there straining for my liking.”

  “Maggie, that’s disgusting.” But Laura was only half listening. Her attention was captured by the garden. It was a riot of color. Lupins and delphiniums jostling for space with huge rosebushes and great clumps of spirea and hydrangea. Beyond the formal beds was a row of fruit trees—apple, pear, plum, and greengage—and beyond them a meadow area. Gravel paths led through the profusion of plants, badly overgrown and weed-strewn.

  “Well, he was a keen gardener if nothing else,” Laura said, then opened the door of the larger of the sheds and stepped inside. As if to confirm her observation the shed was crowded with gardening implements. Spade
s, forks, hoes, and rakes, three large sieves, and an antique lawn mower with rusting blades and a broken handle. There were shelves along each side of the shed, crowded with terra-cotta pots of every imaginable size, and a pair of leather gardening gloves tossed casually beside them, as if the owner had just popped into the house for a cup of tea and left them there. Laura felt a sudden and almost overwhelming sense of sadness. She was surprised to find tears misting her eyes.

  There was something unimaginably sad about the place, a deep melancholy that stirred emotions in her she thought were long buried. She remembered her grandfather, pottering in the garden at home. A man so vital and full of life that even now she found it hard to think that he’d lost his long and desperate battle with cancer. She rubbed away the tears pricking at her eyes.

  “God, what is wrong with me?” she said under her breath, and stepped back out into the sun, closing the door behind her, but not before a soft, whispering sound came from inside the shed. It sounded like the wind blowing through long, dry grass. She opened the door wide and looked in, but nothing was stirring. Laura shook herself and closed the door. Get a grip! she thought. Then to Maggie she called, “Come on, let’s go inside.”

  Maggie was yards away walking through the flower beds, bending to sniff a rose, brushing her hand lightly over the thick lavender bushes. Even from where she stood Laura could see the beds were fast running to weed. Thistle, nettles, and dock were squeezing their way into the gaps left by the flowers. Bindweed was spiraling up the stems of the taller plants while couch grass was starting to choke out the smaller perennials. Maggie looked around at her friend, shielding her eyes from the sun, which hung low in the western sky.

  For an instant there seemed to be someone beside Maggie. It could have been only the play of shadow from the position of the sun, but to Laura it seemed as if there was a figure next to Maggie, arms raised ready to drape them over her. She nearly shouted out to her friend, but then a cloud passed in front of the sun and Maggie was walking toward her, fumbling in that bottomless bag of hers.