Night Music (44 page)

He hesitated a beat. ‘Because money talks. And if you sell to me, I will guarantee that financially you will be secure and also have the option to continue to live in this setting, if that’s what you wish.’

‘Mr Trent, you will understand that as a . . . single parent I have to do my best to provide for my children.’

‘Of course.’ He smiled.

‘So I was thinking a figure along these lines.’ Isabel scribbled on the pad, then sat back, as Mr Trent stared at it.

‘That . . . that’s quite a sum.’

‘That’s my asking price. As you say, Mr Trent, it’s a very special setting.’

He was taken aback, but she didn’t care.

Thierry appeared at her shoulder. ‘Mum?’

‘Just a minute, T.’

‘Can I set up a den in the house?’

She pulled him to her. Over the last few days he had tried to replicate Byron’s presence in the house. He had been ‘coppicing’, collecting bundles of twigs, had gathered food and firewood, and now, of course, the den. She understood. She felt Byron’s absence too. ‘You don’t want to swim with the others?’

‘I will afterwards.’

‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘But if you’re going to make one in the boiler room, don’t leave my good cups and plates in there, okay?’

As he ran off, she turned back to Mr Trent. ‘That’s it, Mr Trent. That’s what I need in order to leave. That’s the price of uprooting my children again.’

He began to bluster: ‘Mrs Delancey, you do realise this house will cost you a fortune to renovate?’

‘We’ve been living comfortably in chaos for several months. It no longer bothers us.’ She thought of the bath, which she had finished installing that morning. She had tightened the last nut, turned on the taps, then watched the initially brackish water clear and run gurgling down the plughole. It had given her as much satisfaction as the completion of a complicated symphony.

He stared at the paper. ‘That’s significantly higher than the market value.’

‘As I understand it, market value is simply what someone is prepared to pay.’

She could see he was wrongfooted. But he wanted the house. And she had done her sums. She had worked out the bare minimum she needed to buy a decent place, and to provide her family with a financial cushion.

And then she had added some.

‘That’s the figure. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to help with the party.’

It really was like Mr Cartwright all over again, she thought, except this time she had understood what was going on. Better than anyone could have imagined.

‘I’ll have one last look round, if that’s okay,’ Nicholas Trent said, blowing out his cheeks as he gathered up his papers. ‘Then I’ll come back and let you know.’

Kitty had barely believed it when Mum had told her what she’d done.

‘You did it yourself? And it really works?’

Isabel had held up her hands. ‘Plumber’s hands,’ she had said, then hugged her daughter, who, streaked with pondweed, was wrapped in an old towel. She didn’t tell her about the hours she had spent swearing at the incomprehensible diagrams, wrenching at too-tight nuts, the frequent sprays of escaping water that had drenched her. ‘Happy birthday, darling. I’ve bought you some nice bubble bath too.’

‘Oh, my God. A proper bath. Can I have one now? Have we got hot water and everything?’

‘Now?’ said Isabel. ‘But you’ve got a party going on.’

Shivering, Kitty jerked her head towards her friends, who were busy pushing each other out of dinghies. ‘They won’t care if I’m gone for half an hour. And I could wash off all this green gunk. Oh, my God, a bath! A proper bath!’ She jumped up and down with glee, her sixteen-year-old self unable to contain childish joy.

‘Go on, then,’ said Isabel. ‘I’ll set up lunch for you.’

Kitty tore into the house, taking the steps two at a time. She would have a quick bubble bath, wash her hair, then be scented and gorgeous at lunch when everyone climbed out of the water. She opened the bathroom door, and smiled when she saw what her mother had done. There were brand-new bottles of her favourite expensive shampoo and conditioner on the side of the bath. They had been using supermarket stuff for months. On the floor, wrapped in a red ribbon, was French moisturising bubble bath, and on the side a soft white towel. A bathmat lay neatly on the floor. Kitty picked up the bottle, removed the lid and breathed in, allowing the expensive perfume to fill her nostrils.

Then she put the shiny brass plug in its hole, and turned on the taps. The water came out, in a thunderous rush, prompting an immediate bloom of steam on the mirrored cabinet above it. Kitty bolted the bathroom door, then removed her swimming costume and draped herself in the towel she had brought with her from the garden. She didn’t want the new one covered with green slime. While she waited for the bath to fill, she padded to the window.

Outside, her mother was putting plates on the trestle table, chatting to Asad, who was making a salad. Henry was sipping a glass of wine and shouting something to a group of girls in the water, which made them all laugh. He threw in a ball, then murmured something to her mother, who laughed too. A proper head-back laugh, the kind she used to do when Kitty’s father was alive.

Kitty felt the familiar prickle of tears and wiped them away. It would be okay. For the first time since her father had died, she sensed they would be okay. Mum took charge, these days, so Kitty could be sixteen. Just sixteen.

She saw Thierry sneaking a plate of food, then walking towards the boiler room and banged on the windowpane to attract his attention. She made a face to show him she knew what he was doing. He stuck out his tongue and she laughed, the sound just audible above the rush of water.

And then she leaped backwards as she heard a wrenching noise.

Kitty turned in time to see the white sheet behind the bath flutter as a crash sounded behind it. She yelped as Matt McCarthy appeared, pushing the sheet to one side.

‘What – what are you
doing
?’ she shrieked, pulling the towel tightly round her.

He stooped to clamber through the gap, and then, in the bathroom, rubbed a dusty hand over his head. ‘I’m going to fix this hole,’ he announced calmly. He was unshaven, his tool-belt skewed round his waist.

Kitty took an involuntary step backwards. ‘Matt, you can’t stay in here. I’m about to have a bath.’

‘I’ve got to put it right. That room was beautiful. It can’t stay like this.’

Her heart was thumping loudly enough to drown the sound of rushing water. She saw her swimming costume on the floor and wished she was wearing something under her towel.

‘Please go away, Matt.’

‘I won’t be long.’ He crouched, ran his fingers round the edge of the hole. ‘I just have to fill this in. I wouldn’t be much of a builder if I left a great hole here, would I?’

Kitty moved towards the door.

He stood up suddenly. ‘Don’t worry, Kitty. I won’t get in your way,’ he said. And smiled.

Kitty’s bottom lip was trembling. She willed her mother to come up, or Anthony – anyone. Someone must have seen him come in. The walls of the room seemed to close round her, the faint echo of the voices outside a million miles away.

‘Matt,’ she said quietly, trying to stop the quaver in her voice, ‘I’d really like you to go now.’

He seemed not to hear her.

‘Matt,’ she said again, ‘please go.’

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re so like your mother.’

It was as his hand stretched out to touch her face that Kitty bolted for the door. She pushed past him, wrestled with the lock, and then, with a muffled squeak, she was tumbling down the stairs to the hallway, not knowing if he was behind her. She fumbled with the front-door catch, and then she was outside, sprinting across the lawn, a sob still caught in her throat.

‘There’s no point asking me,’ Henry was saying. ‘I’m a musical Philistine. If it doesn’t have some tear-jerker as a finale, it’s lost on me.’

‘He is only the shortest genetic step from Judy Garland,’ said Asad, removing clingfilm from another bowl. Some of Kitty’s friends had got out of the water, and were towelling themselves dry or hovering hopefully by the food table.

‘I don’t think I know any Judy Garland songs,’ Isabel said. ‘There are more towels over there, if anyone needs them.’

‘Do you play only classical music?’ Asad arranged the serving spoons in the centre of the table, then popped an olive into his mouth.

‘Yes. But it doesn’t have to be gloomy.’

‘I don’t think classical music has quite the emotional drama you get with a show tune, though,’ Henry said. ‘I mean, I don’t think it would make me shed a tear.’

‘Emotional drama? Mr Ross, you have been ill-informed.’

‘What? You think you could make me cry? With your violin?’

Isabel laughed. ‘Harder men than you have been known to fall,’ she said.

‘Go on, then.’ Henry picked up a tea-towel. ‘I throw down my gauntlet. Do your finest, Mrs D. Wring me out.’

‘Oh, I’m out of practice. I haven’t played properly for months.’

‘We don’t care.’

‘But my violin’s in the kitchen.’

Henry bent down and pulled out the case from under the table.

‘Not any more.’

‘I get the feeling I’ve been played,’ she said.

The two men chuckled.

‘We had to ensure we got our own private performance,’ Henry said. ‘It’s not like you’ve been selling tickets or anything. Go on. A quick burst. Rude not to, given it’s your daughter’s birthday and all.’

Isabel adjusted the violin under her chin. Then she drew her bow across the strings, and let the first bars of Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B Minor sing out in the midday sunshine.

She glimpsed Asad and Henry’s rapt expressions, and then she closed her eyes, trying to concentrate, to remember the music. She played, and suddenly her violin didn’t seem so inferior. It sang of her sadness to be leaving the house, of the absence of her husband, the man she had thought he was. It sang of the pain of missing someone you hadn’t known you might miss.

She opened her eyes, and found that Kitty’s guests had begun to climb out of the water and sit on the grass. They were quiet, listening, apparently mesmerised. She shifted position, and as she ended the first movement she saw him among the trees and wondered if she had imagined it. He lifted a hand, and she was smiling, a huge, unguarded beam.

Henry and Asad turned to see what she was smiling at and nudged each other surreptitiously.

He smiled back at her. He wasn’t her husband, but that was okay.

‘You came,’ she said, lowering the violin. He looked tired, she thought, but at peace. His job had restored something to him.

‘Brought Kitty a present,’ he said. ‘My sister chose it. I can’t say I know much about what girls like.’

‘She’ll love it,’ said Isabel. She couldn’t stop staring at him. ‘I’m so glad you made it. Really.’

All the old awkwardness had disappeared. He stood tall again. ‘So am I,’ he said. Out of Matt’s shadow, he had become, she realised, imposing.

They stood there, facing each other, oblivious to curious glances.

‘All right, all right,’ said Henry, flapping a hand at Isabel. ‘Sit down, Byron. You don’t have to make her stop. I was feeling enjoyably mournful.’

Byron grinned. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Where’s Thierry?’ His eyes had not left Isabel’s, and she realised she had flushed.

She lifted her violin to her shoulder. ‘The kitchen or the boiler room or somewhere. He’s been setting up a . . . den.’ He raised an eyebrow. It was a shared joke now, she thought. Not a source of tension.

He lowered himself on to the grass, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and she fixed her eyes on the Cousins and resumed playing, trying to focus on the music, trying not to think about what his return might mean. I don’t care who he is, what he did when he was someone else, she thought. I’m just glad he’s here. She closed her eyes, immersing herself, afraid that without the notes to hide behind what she felt would be nakedly apparent, all too visible to her audience.

She loved the second movement, its rich ebb and flow, its reflective, songful tone, but it was now, sliding down the heart-wrenching notes of the descent, that she grasped why she had unconsciously picked this piece. That phrase, the impassioned bittersweet notes before the end of the movement, suggested new knowledge, that there was no returning to the past. Elgar himself had said it was ‘too emotional’, but also that he loved it.

She opened her eyes. And there was Asad, his head tipped back in contemplation, and Henry, beside him, wiping his eyes surreptitiously. She let the last notes linger, wanting to milk the moment.

‘There,’ she said, as she let her violin fall to her side. ‘I told you I—’

She was almost winded by her daughter hurling herself at her, one hand pulling Isabel towards her, the other clutching her towel. She was sobbing so hard she could hardly speak.

‘Kitty!’ Isabel backed away a little and peered into her face. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s him.’ Kitty struggled to speak through her sobs. ‘It’s Matt McCarthy. He’s in the house.’

‘What?’ Byron was on his feet.

Isabel looked at the house. Then, realising her daughter was naked under the towel: ‘Did he touch you?’

‘No . . .’ said Kitty. ‘He just . . . He was in the master bedroom . . . He came through that hole . . . He frightened me.’

Isabel’s mind raced. Her eyes met Byron’s.

‘He was acting really weird. I couldn’t get him to go . . .’ Kitty was still hanging on to her.

‘What shall we do?’ Asad had stepped up beside her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘What’s he playing at?’ Something had hardened in Byron’s face and his body tensed. Suddenly Isabel was filled with fear, not of his history but of what he might do in her name.

‘He said he wanted to fix the house,’ said Kitty. ‘The hole. But he wasn’t normal, Mum. He was—’

‘Thierry,’ said Byron, and was sprinting across the grass towards the house.

Upstairs in the bathroom, Matt wiped the glass with a finger and peered down at the gathering below. He saw Isabel look up and, for a moment, could have sworn she had caught his eye. Now she would come.