Alys, Always Read Online Free Page B

out of reach of the winter sun on the rare occasions when it might appear; otherwise there is little sign of it left in the front garden and the wide front steps have been scraped clear of ice. Apart from the glow of the stained-glass fanlight – smoky purple grapes spilling forth from a golden horn – the house itself is in darkness. It’s five o’clock, teatime, but could just as well be midnight.
    A security light clicks on as I walk up the steps and press the bell but I hear nothing: no chime, no footfall. I was nervous enough about this meeting to start with and now, before I’ve even gone inside, I’m feeling caught out, on the hop.
    Perhaps I didn’t press the bell hard enough? Perhaps it’s broken?
    I wait another few seconds, just to see whether anyone’s coming, and then press it again, firmly this time, though with a similar result. A moment passes, and then I hear the soundof light footsteps, followed by the snap of the lock. A trim-looking young woman in a zippered fleece and knee-length corduroy skirt opens the door.
    ‘Frances,’ she says, clasping my hand and looking me squarely in the face, an onslaught of sincerity. ‘I’m Kate Wiggins. The family’s downstairs.’
    In the hall, I take off my scarf and jacket. There’s a worn scarlet rug underfoot, Turkish, by the look of it. A tall pot of umbrellas and cricket bats. A rack of wellingtons and shoes and hiking boots. A wall of coats, slumped there like so many turned backs.
    The air is full of scent: flowers, the creamy sweetness of their fragrance. There’s a bowl of hyacinths on the hall table, next to the spill of unopened post, and as we walk down the corridor I look off into the shadowy reception rooms on either side and see containers filled with roses, lilies, irises, freesias, mostly white and still bound in luxurious cellophane ruffs and curls of ribbon.
    The staircase at the end of the hall curves down into the open-plan kitchen: a judicious combination of heritage (flagstones, butler’s sink, Aga, a dresser stacked with Cornish-ware) and contemporary (forensic lighting, a stainless steel fridge the size of a Victorian wardrobe). More flowers are crammed into jars and jugs along the bookshelves and the windowsills and the oak refectory table, around which three people are sitting. A fourth figure, a girl, stands at the French windows, a cat angling around her ankles. As I descend, the girl glances away from the back garden, the golden rectangles of light falling on the preserved fragments of snow, and fastens her pale eyes on me. It’s a very desperate sort of scrutiny. It makes me feel even more self-conscious. Carefully, I look down and watch my feet moving over the last few stairs.
    ‘Laurence Kyte,’ he says, rising from the table and comingtowards me. ‘Thanks for agreeing to see us. Can I call you Frances?’
    I take his hand. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ I say.
    He swallows. The cheap remark is fresh, still a shock, for him. Seeing his vulnerability I feel a strange tremor of excitement. This man I know from the half-page reviews and the diary pages and the guest slots on
Newsnight
, with his authority and remorseless judgements, standing here before me, shouldering his grief, bowed down by it.
I have something he wants
, I think, with a prickle of possibility.
I wonder if I can give it to him
. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘These are my children, Edward and Polly.’
    Edward is mid-twenties, tall, fair, slight-looking, and his greeting is non-committal, courteous but impersonal. Polly, a few years younger, comes away from the French windows towards me and as we shake hands she twists her mouth to stop herself from crying. Her narrow white face is blotchy with old tears.
She looks like a little mouse
, I think. I squeeze her hand. ‘I’m Frances,’ I say.
    ‘And this is Charlotte Black,’ Laurence Kyte says, indicating the third person at the table, a woman in her fifties. Plain dark clothes, the sort that cost