“Walk?”
“You know”—he mimed walking with his fingers on the tabletop—“locomotion with two legs. I think we have time before the light goes. We could climb Leith Hill. It’s the highest point in southern England.”
“I don’t have any boots,” she protested. “And I’m not dressed for—”
“Live dangerously. I’ll bet you’ve got trainers in your overnight bag in the boot, and I’ll loan you my anorak. It’s warm enough—I don’t need it. What have you got to lose?”
And so Gemma found herself striding along the road beside him, the nylon of his anorak swishing as she swung her arms. They left the road just past a tidy place called Bulmer Farm, and shortly they were climbing on the signposted path. At first, the land fell away on their right, the slope carpeted with russet leaves and punctuated by the skeletal trunks of pale-barked trees. Soon, however, the banks began to rise steeply on either side, and the path became a muddy rut.
Gemma hopped from dry spot to dry spot, rabbitlike, grabbing vegetation to steady herself and cursing Kincaid for his longer legs. “This is your idea of fun?” she panted, but before he could answer they heard a humming noise behind them. It was a mountain biker, kitted out in helmet and goggles, barreling full tilt along the path towards them. Gemma sprang to one side and scrambled up the bank, clutching a tree root as the biker whizzed by, splattering them with mud.
“Bloody bastard,” she seethed. “We ought to report him.”
“To whom?” asked Kincaid, eyeing the mud on his trousers. “The traffic police?”
“He’d no right—” Gemma said as she let go of the tree root and began a gingerly descent towards level ground. Then her feet shot out from under her. She twisted violently in midair and landed hard on one hip and one palm. Her hand stung like fire, and she snatched it up, swearing viciously.
Kincaid came and knelt beside her. “Are you all right?” The expression on his face told her he was biting back laughter, and that made her more furious.
“Don’t you know better than to touch a nettle?” he asked, taking her hand and examining her palm. He rubbed a smear of mud from her finger with his thumb, and his touch made her skin burn almost as fiercely as the nettle.
She withdrew her hand and pulled herself up, balancing carefully, then stepped for the next spot of dry ground.
“Look for a dock leaf,” Kincaid said from behind her, amusement still coloring his voice.
“Whatever for?” Gemma asked crossly.
“To stop the stinging, of course. Didn’t you ever have holidays in the country as a child?”
“My mum and dad worked seven-day weeks,” she said, standing on her injured dignity. Then after a moment she relented. “Sometimes we went to the seaside.”
It came back to her with the smell of salt air and candy floss—the bite of the water, always too cold for anyone sensible to bathe in, the feel of wet bathing dress and sand against her skin, the squabbling with her sister on the train home. But afterwards had come hot baths and soup and drowsing before the fire, and for a moment she felt a stab of longing for the unquestioned simplicity of it all.
When they reached the summit a half hour later, she sat gratefully on a bench at the base of the brick observation tower and let Kincaid fetch tea from the refreshment kiosk. Her thighs ached from the climb and her hip from her fall, but as she looked out across the hills she felt exhilarated, as if she’d reached the top of the world. By the time he returned with steaming polystyrene cups, she’d caught her breath and she looked up at him and smiled. “I’m glad I came now. Thanks.”
He sat on the bench beside her and handed her a cup. “They say that on a clear day you can see Holland from the top of the tower. Are you game?”
She shook her head. “I’m not very good with heights. This will do well enough.”
They sat for a while in silence, sipping the steaming tea and looking at the hazy smudge of London sprawling across the plain to the north. Then Gemma brought her knees up and swiveled around on the bench, tilting her face up to the sun.
Kincaid followed suit, shading his eyes with his hand. “Do you suppose that’s the Channel, just on the horizon?” he asked.
Gemma felt the tears smart behind her lids and leak from the corners of her eyes. She found she couldn’t speak.
Looking at her, Kincaid said anxiously, “Gemma, what is it? I didn’t mean—”
“Jackie …” she managed, then gulped and tried again. “I’ve just remembered. Jackie told me she meant to go there her next holiday. She’d always wanted to see Paris. She and Susan were going to the Chunnel train across to France. If I hadn’t—”
Kincaid took the cup from her shaking hands and set it on the bench. He put the flat of his hand against her back and began to rub in slow circles. “Gemma, it’s right to grieve, but you can’t go on blaming yourself for Jackie’s death. In the first place, we’re still not positive there’s a connection. And even if there is, Jackie was an adult and responsible for her own decisions. She helped you because she wanted to, not because you made her, and she went further than you’d asked because she was curious. Don’t you see?”
She shook her head mutely, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, but after a few minutes she relaxed against his hand and the tightness in her chest began to subside. Opening her eyes, she glanced at his face. His concern for her was evident in the crease between his brows, and it seemed to her that he’d acquired new lines around his eyes. She thought of him driving up from Surrey so that she wouldn’t receive the news of
Jackie’s death from an impersonal phone call. Such consideration deserved better treatment than she’d given him lately.
“The sun’s starting to sink,” he said. “Dusk will come on fast. We’d better start down while we can see where we’re going.”
They managed the last few hundred yards of the trail in gathering gloom, and by the time they reached the village, lights had begun to glow in a few of the houses.
Kincaid looked at Gemma hugging his anorak tighter around her as they faced into the wind. She hadn’t spoken on the way back from the tower, but he sensed no hostility towards him in her silence, only a withdrawing into herself. She had smiled at him and taken his hand willingly in the rough spots.
“Claire should be well back by now,” he said. “Let’s try the house first.”
“Like this?” Gemma gestured at her mud-spattered trousers and shoes.
“Why not? It will give us an air of country authenticity.”
The gate creaked as they let themselves into the Gilberts’ garden, and the shrubbery assumed shapes of unexpected menace in the dim light. Kincaid stopped when they rounded the corner into the back garden, not sure at first what felt odd. He held up a hand to halt Gemma and peered towards the dog’s run. Was that a shadow or a still, dark shape?
“Lewis?” he said softly, but the shape didn’t stir. Kincaid’s heart lurched in his chest. “Stay here,” he hissed at Gemma, but he felt her at his heels as he sprinted across towards the enclosure.
The dark shadow coalesced as he drew closer, became a sleek, black dog splayed on its side. Kneeling, Kincaid thrust a hand through the octagonal space in the wire, scraping the skin from his knuckles. His straining fingers touched the dog. The coat felt warm, and under his hand the flank rose gently.
“Is he …” Gemma didn’t finish her sentence.
“He’s breathing.” He saw a smudge on the concrete near the dog’s head. Kincaid looked up at the dark windows of the house. “Something’s wrong, Gemma. You stay—”