A Desirable Residence (8 page)

The thought of sitting in his dreary office, leafing through interminable bits of paper, filled him with a sudden horror. And then, of course, there was Miles to consider. Miles, who would quite possibly come into his office that afternoon and ask how the meeting had gone. The so-called meeting with the client. At this thought, Marcus felt a stab of something that was suspiciously like alarm and he irritably shook his head. It was pathetic. A sophisticated player like him shouldn’t worry about what his parochial cousin might think. He was above all of that, for Christ’s sake; he was into a new league. Big business; his own boss; unaccountable to anybody.

But on the other hand, it might be useful to have some sort of story ready. Just in case. Marcus indicated, and pulled onto the ring road, trying to recall the details of the client he’d given as an excuse. The rental woman. Perhaps he could go and have a look at the house now. It was something he needed to do, anyway, having promised to look after her case. He couldn’t remember her name, but he recalled perfectly the expression on her face when he’d volunteered to sort it out for her. She’d been so grateful, and he hadn’t actually done anything about it. An irrational wave of guilt went through him, and he tried to remember where it was. Somewhere in West Silchester . . . His mind went blank.

But it would be on the updated property list he’d slung into his briefcase the night before. Leaving one hand on the wheel, he groped with the other for his briefcase, twisting his wrist awkwardly to open the clasps. He scrabbled for the paper, and eventually wrenched it out, a little crumpled. Diverting his eyes from the road, he scanned the list. He would recognize it when he saw it, he thought, running his eyes down the page. He would recognize it when . . . Yes! Twelve Russell Street. That was it. And, fortuitously, the turning was just ahead.

As he parked the car outside number twelve, Marcus thought he saw a smallish figure disappearing down the side of the house, towards the garage. He got out of the car, took a few steps forward and squinted at the passageway. But whoever it was had gone. Probably someone local taking a short cut. Or his imagination. He turned to survey the house itself. A rather nice family semi-detached Victorian villa. Not huge, but big enough. Big enough for Ginny Prentice and her husband, he was sure. And she’d definitely said she was thinking of renting a place in Silchester. There seemed no reason why she shouldn’t take this house.

He pushed open the gate, and made his way cautiously up the garden path. He’d have to come back with the keys; have a proper look round. But at least now he could get an idea of the place. He walked slowly round, peering in through dusty sash windows. The predictable knocked-through double-purpose reception room, with two fireplaces, possibly period, possibly reproduction. Plain white walls; dark red carpet. Not bad. Round to the back, and a nice-sized kitchen. Harmless pine units; stripped wood floor extending out into the hall. No doubt there was a little study on the other side of the staircase. And upstairs there would be, what, two or three bedrooms. And a bathroom or two. In fact, probably only one bathroom, he decided. But that was OK.

He turned round and studied the garden. Grass and a few bushes. Nothing fancy. Still, that was ideal for renters. And a useful garage. He wandered over, and gave the door a hearty thump. The lock seemed to be broken, but the door still held surprisingly fast. The wood had probably got damp and stuck, he thought. They’d have to sort that out. And tidy the place up a bit. But from first impressions, the house seemed perfect. Perfect for Ginny and that actor husband anyway, he thought. He would phone her as soon as he got back to the office. It gave him something to take his mind off the other stuff, anyway.

Alice waited until she’d heard the car start up and drive away before she relaxed her position, braced against the garage door. She didn’t know who had been poking around their house. But the idea that whoever it was had got so close to her without even realizing she was there gave her a certain satisfaction. She looked at her watch. Only twenty past one. She had until twenty past three. And no one even knew where she was.

‘ “A desirable family residence, situated in a sought-after West Silchester street.” ’ Ginny Prentice looked up from the piece of paper she was holding, and giggled. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think West Silchester is remotely sought after.’

‘I bet it is,’ said Piers. ‘Among the lower echelons of society. You’ve spent too long talking to hacks at
Country Life
, that’s your problem.’ He leant luxuriously back on his chair, pulling the folds of his dressing gown around him, and took a sip of coffee from the hand-painted Italian mug in his hand. ‘Go on, what else does it say?’

‘ “A spacious Victorian semi-detached house, benefiting from a large reception room and many period features. The property has a good-sized kitchen-breakfast room, three bedrooms and an attractive Victorian-style bathroom.” Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.’

‘It sounds great,’ said Piers. ‘Let’s take it.’

‘ “To the rear is a lawned garden, with several mature shrubs, and to the side is a single brick garage.” ’

‘Great. Mature shrubs. Just the thing. Phone them up today and tell them we’ll have it.’

‘I’ll tell them we’ll
look
at it,’ said Ginny in mock reproval. ‘I’ve got to go down to Silchester on Tuesday for a meeting, anyway. You can come down too, and we can go round it.’

‘I don’t need to go round it,’ said Piers nonchalantly. ‘I know what it’s like. Three bedrooms and a Victorian bathroom. It’ll be one of those huge baths with claw feet and room for five people.’

‘No it won’t,’ said Ginny. ‘It’ll be tiny and cream coloured, with gold taps and wood panelling.’

‘Great,’ said Piers. ‘I love gold taps.’ He grinned annoyingly at Ginny.

But Ginny was not in the mood for feeling annoyed. It was a bright, crisp October day, and she was feeling slim and energetic. And it looked as though they really were going to move to Silchester. She beamed at Piers, who was sitting languidly in the bay window of their
bijou
London kitchen in a pose she recognized from a production of
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
two years ago, and poured herself some more coffee. She was dressed for the office, in smart shoes, and tights, and a new amber-coloured suit, which went rather well, she thought, with her wavy blond hair. Piers, meanwhile, was attired for loafing. He would, Ginny knew, dress at some point in the morning, and with some care. But with an entirely free day stretching ahead of him, it was hardly reasonable, she supposed, to expect him to compress the dressing process into a snatched five minutes.

Ginny, on the other hand, had a full day ahead, conducting a big press trip to a new property development some way out of London. She snapped open her briefcase to check everything was in order: the agenda for the day, the list of journalists who had promised they would attend, the shiny press packs. She checked the pile of photographs, fanning them out quickly to check that each attractive feature of the development was represented. The landscaped gardens. The picture windows. The built-in fireplace seats.

Clarissa, her business partner, had been particularly scathing about the fireplace seats. She never touched modern developments, and couldn’t understand how Ginny could bear to spend a day enthusing about them to the press.

‘Little boxes, for little executives,’ she’d mocked, in her tiny, clipped, baby voice. ‘Full of drip-dry suits.’ But Ginny had smiled, and looked at the pictures, and immediately conjured up an image of herself, the happy wife of just such an executive, keeping the carpet hoovered and making jam tarts and even wearing a flowered pinny. A nice, cosy, unexciting sort of life.

‘It’s not so bad,’ she’d said to Clarissa. ‘And they’re a very good client.’

‘Well, I don’t know how you can,’ said Clarissa.

‘Neither do I,’ said Ginny.

But Ginny did know. She knew that she had somehow a strange ability to find an attraction in almost any kind of residence, be it a tiny flat or a manor house. Confronted with the meanest little house, she was always able to construct in her own mind a charming hypothetical life there, imbuing on it a vicarious, often quite undeserved appeal. Scores of journalists would listen entranced as she stood at the gates of a dull rural development, painting a glowing picture of country family life, or in a hard hat on the site of a derelict city warehouse, enthusing about open-plan apartments and a London existence so fast-paced there was barely any need to build in a kitchen. It was really, she supposed, a gift, this ability of hers. And it made her ideally suited to a job in property PR.

The Mozart stopped, and the pips began. Ginny came to, with a little flurry.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m off.’

‘Have a good one,’ said Piers.

‘I’ll try,’ Ginny said brightly. She’d given up asking Piers what he thought he might do during the day. He’d begun to think she was getting at him; they’d actually had a row about it. She kissed him quickly, then stood up straight, brushed down her jacket and checked her tights for ladders.

‘Ginny,’ Piers said suddenly, catching her offguard. He had an extraordinarily deep, resonant voice, which he used to great effect in shops and in restaurants, causing old ladies to back away nervously and waitresses to blush, and scribble more quickly.

‘Yes?’ she faltered. His voice still, ridiculously, could make her feel quite lightheaded, even after four years of marriage.

‘Tell them we’ll both be down to look at the house in Silchester.’ He grinned at her, and pushed his dark, springy hair back off his forehead. ‘I’d love to see it.’

‘Oh, brilliant.’ Ginny’s natural enthusiasm bubbled over. ‘It’ll be a day out. We’ll go and have lunch somewhere nice, shall we? I’ll have to go into Witherstone’s for my meeting, of course, but you’ll be able to find something to do in Silchester, won’t you?’

‘I bloody hope so,’ said Piers. ‘If we’re going to live there.’

Prentice Fox Public Relations was based in a tiny office in Chelsea, just about walking distance from the flat which Ginny and Piers were currently renting. As Ginny picked her way through the sodden autumn leaves on the pavement she wondered how to break the news to Clarissa that she was looking at a house in Silchester on Tuesday. She had already warned Clarissa that she was thinking of moving out of London; that she’d had enough of the city; that she’d fallen in love with Silchester . . . but Clarissa had scoffed at her.

‘You’ll never move,’ she’d asserted. ‘You’d miss London too much.’

‘But I spend half my time out of London anyway,’ Ginny had pointed out. ‘Nearly all the clients I look after seem to be in Silchester. Witherstone’s is a really big account now, and there are those two property relocation companies near by.’

‘What about Brinkburn’s? They’re in London. And what about all the journalists? They’re all in London.’

‘I know,’ said Ginny. ‘But I can always come up a couple of times a week. People commute from Silchester, you know. And, I mean, I could do all this equally well from home, couldn’t I?’ She gestured around the little office at the computer terminals, the filing cabinets, the piles of property details and press releases waiting to be sent out.

‘But you can’t just leave me!’ wailed Clarissa. ‘We’re a team!’

‘I know,’ said Ginny, soothingly. ‘And we still would be a team. I just wouldn’t be here all the time. But anyway, don’t worry about it. We probably won’t go.’

Now she tried to prepare tactful phrases in her mind. There was no point trying to conceal from Clarissa the fact that they were going to see a house. Even if Witherstone’s hadn’t been a client of theirs, Clarissa would have picked it up in no time. Not for nothing was she one of London’s foremost property PR consultants. She had generations of family connections with one of the country’s biggest estate agents, an engaging manner and an ability to wheedle gossip out of people who barely realized they had anything interesting to relate. She was also one of Ginny’s best friends and it would, Ginny realized, be a real wrench to leave their cosy office companionship and giggles.

But she couldn’t spend the rest of her life giggling in an office. It was all right for Clarissa—she had a rich, cosseting father and a rich, cosseting husband, and a secure future mapped out. According to her, this included a baby at age thirty-two and another at thirty-four and an extra-marital fling at age thirty-six. ‘To prove to myself I haven’t lost it,’ she’d explained to Ginny in her tiny, brittle voice. ‘And to keep myself in shape.’

They’d shared a thirtieth birthday party the year before, at which Clarissa had confided to Ginny that she was seriously thinking of postponing the first baby until age thirty-three. Or even thirty-four. ‘Then I’ll have to have the fling at thirty-eight,’ she’d said, swaying drunkenly on Ginny’s shoulder. ‘But that would be OK, wouldn’t it?’

For Ginny, the future was certain only insofar as it existed within the four walls of her career. Several years of marriage to an actor had taught her that a steady job was not, after all, simply an interminable sentence of boredom; an endless dragging millstone to which all the tedious little people of the world chose to manacle themselves. It was a future; an income; in fact, it was a release.