‘Of course. Would you like some food?’
‘Coffee would be nice.’
She was measuring coffee granules into mugs, her back turned to him at the kitchen table, when he gave way to an impulse he could simply resist no longer and moving towards her put his arms round her. She stopped what she was doing, stood stock-still for three loud heartbeats, then put the spoon down and turned round in his arms very slowly. Her eyes were shut. He kissed her cheek then moved his mouth towards hers but she lifted up a finger and put it on his lips.
‘Stop,’ she said.
He relaxed the pressure of his arms just slightly, but she made no move away.
‘All my strength has to come from me tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in the dock before. It’s… not like anything else. All I will have is myself.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Good. I’m glad, but it doesn’t change things. I have to know that they can’t touch me, that they can put me in prison for a year or for two years and that it doesn’t matter because I know I’m right. You see? No, you don’t see.’
‘I don’t want you to be in prison. Surely you know that by now? I want to be with you.’
‘Don’t tell me that,’ she said sharply, ‘I don’t want that in my mind tomorrow. That gives me something to lose. I don’t want them to see they can hurt me.’
He let his arms drop, kissed her once more, chastely on the forehead, nodded and became deliberately businesslike.
‘Right. I do see. OK, then. Tell your barrister that I’m prepared to testify. Do you want me to take you there?’
‘No… thank you. Margo’s going to take me. She’s been through it lots of times herself. She knows what it’s like.’
‘I’ll be there early in case the barrister wants to talk to me.’
‘You’d really go through with that?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘There’s no of course about it. Courts are horrible. They’d be sure to try to stop you giving evidence. It might get very nasty.’
‘I’ll do it.’
After that she had made the coffee, taken him into the back garden, sat next to him on a bench and explained her life to him, that whatever happened in court, this wasn’t going to be a final victory or a final defeat – that the Stray would still be there and she would still feel just as bound to go on showing that she objected. It would be hard, she explained, for anyone else to share that life with her unless they, at some deep level, felt the same. They couldn’t choose to share it just for the sake of her. That would only come between them. He listened mostly in silence, taking in what she said, determined all the more, by testifying, to put himself through some ordeal of purification for her.
Going in to his father’s house this time was so different. There was no temptation now to look in drawers however much he wanted eventually to know all there was to know of the missing years. Mrs Thompson had left cheese, eggs, milk and bacon in the kitchen for him with a note. She must have made a special trip to the shop after they phoned. He was touched and knew that it was a sign of her regard for Sir Michael.
He made an omelette and ate it outside on a stone-paved patio watching the last of the sun over the edge of the moor. He phoned his answering machine at the flat and used the tone codes to record a new message, giving Sir Michael’s number just in case, then he went into the study and sat down to get to know his father at second hand by dipping into his books. He was still there when midnight struck resonantly on the long-case clock and sleep called.
Mrs Thompson had prepared the same bed he’d used before. He threw the window open and leaned out, breathing in the scent of the high ground. The waning moon made the thinnest of crescents. The window looked down the long curving length of the drive and far away, through the trees at the end of it, he saw headlights.
They seemed to be stationary, right down there by the stone gateposts at the entrance from the road, a good half mile away. He watched them for a few seconds wondering idly what they could be doing, then stiffened as he saw the beams swing slightly, unmistakably, into the driveway. The next second, the lights blinked off leaving only spots of their after-image dancing, violet, in his eyes.
He leaned out, staring hard into the darkness, scanning his eyes from side to side to make the most of his night vision. Then he heard it on the very fringe of his ears’ range, but without any doubt – an engine, turning over slowly and the crunch of a wheel into a pothole. Whoever they were, they were coming up the drive with their lights off.
He went quickly downstairs and picked up the phone, unsure who to ring. The police? Heather at the Hall? It didn’t matter. As soon as he picked it up he could hear an engaged tone, even before he’d tried to dial. That meant they had to be professionals and they must surely mean him harm. He pulled on a jacket and took a torch then he went outside into the yard, looking for a place where he could see them but they couldn’t see him. He could hear engines clearly now and from where he was, unable to see the drive without risking silhouetting himself against the house in faint moonlight, he had no sense of how far off they were.
There were outbuildings across the yard. He opened a door, smelt cut wood and stumbled on the edge of the pile of split logs. Pulling the door almost closed behind him, he peered through the narrow gap.
A big vehicle, some kind of Japanese four-wheel-drive, crept quietly into the yard. The doors opened and men climbed out almost silently. Five of them. They split, fanning out around the house, and he shivered at the efficient look of it all. Two men stood by the door, waiting, giving time for the rest to get into position, then they opened it and one went inside.
He knew they would soon be back and would certainly check the sheds. He grabbed his chance while the man at the door was concentrating on what was going on inside the house. He pushed the door carefully open, trying to move it as slowly as he possibly could to keep the rusty hinges quiet. There was gravel outside. He moved sideways along the front wall of the shed, away from the house towards the bushes. His foot just tipped a larger stone – a tiny noise but it was enough. He saw the man at the door turn his head and abandoned caution, leaping forward to sprint across the lawn in front of him and hurdle the fence.
A voice behind him shouted, ‘Down here! He’s running for it!’ and the accent was unmistakably American.
Beyond the fence was a descending stretch of meadow, the long grass getting in his way, threatening to trip him as he leapt through it. He shot a hurried glance over his shoulder as he ran, saw figures come running back to the car, heard the engine start. He angled to the right, to get as far from the drive as possible, searching his memory for any record of gateways, any clue as to whether or where they could get in to the field. They were trying, using their headlights now. The vehicle tore down the drive, turned halfway, lurched down a slope a few hundred yards away and into a field but in the lights he could see it was a separate field with a long fence cutting them off.
He veered more to the right, running for all he was worth, the bruising on his face starting to pulse. A crash of splintering wood came from behind and he knew they must have driven straight through the fence. Something dark loomed up ahead and a branch whipped painfully across his cheek. He slowed to a walk, feeling more branches and knew he was in a copse of trees. A wooded slope fell away to the right and he followed it down, knowing it was taking him further and further out of their sight. At the bottom, he jumped a stream, ran into a stone wall in the darkness and hurdled it to find himself in a rough track.