The Night Book (23 page)

Meriel took her time in replying. She stood up and walked to the edge of the raised terrace, looking down on the neatly trimmed lawn beneath. Her eye was caught by a little black and white bird,
running up and down the grass. She knew it at once: a pied wagtail. It was searching for insects to feed on. As far as she knew, wagtails mated for life. And she wanted to spend the rest of hers
with the man behind her.

She turned to face him.

‘All of that does you great credit, but I want you to listen to me very carefully. What I have to say to you is extraordinarily simple.

‘First. When it comes to buying our next home, when it comes to buying or owning anything at all – what’s mine is yours. Cameron used to say that to me and at first I was
foolish enough to believe him. What he really meant was that he wanted to suck me so deep into his world that I’d never get out again.

‘But I mean it the way it ought to be meant, Seb. We should share everything we have,
everything –
just as we already share our love for and commitment to each other. No,
don’t speak, I haven’t finished, either.’

She spread both arms wide, as if embracing the house in front of her, and then she turned to do the same towards the garden.

‘
Second
. All this isn’t some sort of subsidy, Seb. None of it belongs to Cameron. Not any more. It belongs to
me
now. It’s my inheritance, and it’s
mine, mine to do with exactly as I choose. And I choose to share it with you. There’s no shame or burden in that, none at all. Come here.’

He went to her side. She took both his hands in her own.

‘You have nothing to feel even a particle of guilt over. Not now, not in the future, not ever. And neither do I – and believe me, Seb, I’ve thought about this. But I’m at
peace with it now – and so should you be.’

She kissed his forehead.

‘So, sit down and tell me about the papers. What are they saying?’

The Sundays, in fact, had barely touched the story of the inquest. One tabloid idly speculated when Meriel Kidd might return to her radio show. Another carried a photo-fashion
piece which was in excruciatingly poor taste, headlined:
MOURNING CHIC: HOW MINXY MERIEL WOWED THEM IN WIDOW’S WEEDS.

An upmarket broadsheet ran a feature on women who had been bereaved young, including an interview with a famous actress who had lost her own husband when she was the same age as Meriel. The
banner read:
MY MESSAGE TO MERIEL – YOU’LL FIND LOVE AGAIN.

And that was it, apart from a couple of stories in the business pages discussing the fate of Cameron Bruton’s various business enterprises. The consensus was that his widow would sell the
profitable ones and wind the rest up.

‘They’re right about that,’ Meriel told Seb. ‘I’m no entrepreneur. I have my own career. And, on that note . . .’

She stood up.

Seb stared at her. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The office. Lake District FM. It’s Sunday so there’ll be no one in. I want to have a look at my correspondence, see what needs dealing with right away and what can be put off.
Also, today’s papers have given me a couple of ideas for phone-ins. I want to flesh them out a bit.’

‘But I thought Peter told you to take as much time off as you wanted. I thought—’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘I know, and when he said it yesterday I still thought I needed it. But then I took myself up onto the mountain and gave myself a good talking to. And I
realised early this morning that it’ll do me no good at all mooching around here. I need to get back to work. It’s been weeks now since I made a programme.’

‘So . . . when do you plan to go back? On air, I mean.’

Meriel considered. ‘Well, let’s see. Glenda will have this week’s show all prepared, so I suppose it’ll be next week. I’ll leave notes for Peter and my producer
later today telling them, and I can call them tomorrow.’

She smiled at him. ‘Gosh, I feel better already.’

Seb returned her smile. ‘I must say, you look it. You have done since I got back from Keswick just now. Well . . . I suppose I won’t see you until much later tonight, then. I’m
rostered on the late production shift preparing tomorrow’s breakfast show. I’ll likely be heading in to the studios around the same time as you’re coming back.’

‘Probably. Anyway, I’ll have some supper ready for when you get home.’

‘And I’ll clear this lot away.’ He suddenly burst out laughing. ‘Christ, just look at the two of us, Meriel. We’ve turned into bloody Darby and Joan already,
haven’t we?’

She’d been gone for less than an hour when the lights fused. Seb had just finished uncertainly loading the dishwasher – it was the first dishwasher he’d ever
seen – but when he switched it on there was a bang and a blue flash from somewhere and the concealed lighting above the kitchen units simultaneously went out.

He jiggled a couple of wall switches. Nothing. It was the same out in the hall. Power to the entire house seemed to be out.

Seb chewed his bottom lip. God knows where the fuse box was. He’d have to find it and change whichever fuse had shorted before Meriel got back. He couldn’t leave her to sit all alone
in the dark. Of course it was possible that she knew how to fix it but he couldn’t count on that.

Fifteen minutes later he was no closer to finding the box. He’d looked in all the likely places on the ground floor – kitchen, cloakroom, downstairs toilet, utility room. That meant
the damn thing had to be in the cellar, and that meant finding a torch.

Eventually he discovered one under Meriel’s side of the bed and made his way back downstairs to a latched door set at a right-angle to the back kitchen door. He suspected it would open
onto the cellar steps.

He pushed the door back on its hinges and peered in. Yup; it was the cellar, all right. Things looked in pretty good order, though; the wooden stairs were free of dust and the stairwell itself
had been neatly whitewashed.

Seb kept a firm grip on the narrow handrail as he went carefully down the steps, holding the torch out in front of him. When he got to the bottom he swept the arc of light slowly from left to
right. He could see cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other, a couple of old bicycles with completely flat tyres and, incongruously, what looked like most of a car’s engine, mounted on
thick wooden blocks.

It took him a minute or two to find the fuse box but yes, there it was, a big square wooden cupboard bolted to the back wall of the cellar. He could see thick electrical cables running down into
it from the ceiling above.

A shorter man would have needed a stepladder to comfortably open the box but Seb was easily tall enough to do it. Once he’d pulled the little hinged door open he reached inside and began
patiently removing the old-fashioned Bakelite fuses one by one from their slots, carefully examining the exposed wire on their undersides.

At the fifth attempt he found the culprit; the little strand of metal inside had completely melted away.

Assorted flat cardboard packets of fuse wire were stacked on a wide shelf above the box, along with pliers and a screwdriver. There was even a little torch, which worked. All very organised.

He found the correct gauge and quickly replaced the fuse, sliding it back into its holder when he’d finished. Immediately, electric light filtered down from the utility room above and he
heard the faint noise of the fridge suddenly start to hum. Good.

It was as he was returning the tools and packets of wire to their shelf that he felt it. Something right at the back, pushed hard up against the wall. His fingers explored for a moment, and then
he firmly gripped whatever it was and pulled it out.

A thin cardboard tube, like the ones left behind when rolls of kitchen paper had been used up. Except this one felt oddly heavy.

There must be something inside.

Seb turned the tube around so one open end was pointing towards him, and shone his torch directly into it.

It was full of paper. Tightly furled sheets of paper.

He grunted. Probably a wiring diagram of the house – that would certainly fit with everything else he’d found down here in this boy scout cellar: be prepared, and all that. He might
as well take a look to familiarise himself in case the electrics blew again.

He stuck his middle finger inside the tube and worked it back and forth until the roll of papers gradually began to emerge. He pinched its leading edge between forefinger and thumb and carefully
drew the whole thing out.

It wasn’t an electrical circuit plan; he could see that straight away. The outside page seemed to be covered in lines of handwriting, as were presumably all the sheets furled inside it.
Was it a letter? Some sort of essay? Whatever it was, what was it doing hidden down here in the dark?

With growing curiosity, Seb decided to take the documents upstairs where he could examine them in daylight. Who knew; maybe he’d stumbled across some kind of story.

He snapped the fuse box closed, and turned back towards the cellar stairs.

The Night Book.

It was definitely her handwriting, there on the first page. Meriel wrote in what used to be known as copperplate, a style based on elegant engravings. She always used a fountain pen when she
made her diary entries and the overall effect was old-fashioned and formal.

Seb had unrolled the papers and placed four heavy mugs on each corner to stop them curling back in on themselves. He was intrigued. It looked to him as if Meriel had been secretly writing a
novel, and had made photocopies for security. But why hide them away down in the cellar? A bit extreme, wasn’t it?

He felt slightly guilty that he was about to read what she’d written. She obviously didn’t want anyone else to see these pages. But he was deeply curious.
The Night Book.
What could it be about?

He carefully removed the first few folios from the pile and took them into the garden where Meriel and he had breakfasted together. He sat down in one of the wicker chairs and began to read. Seb
noticed at once that although the pages were undated, they seemed to be copies of some sort of diary.

Three minutes later he placed the sheets of paper very gently on the table in front of him and stared, unseeing, across the shining lake.

His voice, when it eventually came, was fluted and strange.

‘
Sweet Jesus.
’

And then . . .

‘
Oh, holy fuck.
’