There were some papers on the desk, held down by a biro, and she looked at them. 'Were Goneril and Regan evil? Or just practical businesswomen? Was Shakespeare trying to tell us all something, centuries before his time? Had the Business Woman of the Year Award existed in Elizabethan times, could they have won it?' Alex smiled. She remembered Fabian discussing this with her only a few weeks ago; she could picture him clearly, walking around the kitchen, hand in his jeans pocket, firing questions at her.

  She looked around; it seemed almost as if he had just popped out for a few minutes. She pulled up a chair, stood on it, and lifted his trunk from the top of the wardrobe. The clips opened with dull metallic thuds and she raised the lid, staring at the torn yellowing lining inside, at the broken plastic coat hanger and the single black sock that lay in there, and remembered the first day she had ever packed this, fourteen years before. She could see the clothes lying neatly pressed and folded, the regulation string vests and Airtex shirts and the grey prep-school pullovers with the name tags neatly stitched in, and she felt herself crying and did not want to cry in case Otto came in and saw her.

  She opened the top drawer in his desk and saw his diary. She flipped through a couple of pages from March, but could see nothing of interest: dates and times of lectures; the start of the holiday marked with a thick line and the word SKIING written after. She turned back a few pages, to January 15th. '8pm. Dinner. Carrie.' The previous day read: '7.30. Cinema. Carrie.' There were no more entries mentioning Carrie after the fifteenth. A couple of days were blank, but with large asterisks marked on them. She turned forward to April 7th and smiled through her wet eyes at the black circle around the date, neat handwriting underneath. 'MOTHER'S B'DAY.'

  She turned the pages forward and noticed a few other asterisks; they seemed to be about two weeks apart. She noticed an asterisk against May 4th and the date rang a bell. She felt suddenly as if an unseen hand had picked her up and dunked her in cold water; she felt the cold seep through her, as if she were litmus paper. May 4th; that was the date her watch had shown in the middle of her lunch with Philip Main.

  'How are you getting on?'

  She turned around. Otto was standing in the doorway, smiling that hideous knowing smile, the grotesque slashed and bruised mask that contained, she knew, so many secrets about her son. 'O.K.,' she said. 'Fine. There's some port in that decanter � you may as well have it.'

  'Port doesn't last,' said Otto, disdainfully. 'That won't be any good now.'

  'Oh,' she said flatly. 'There's quite a lot of wine � you're welcome to that.' She wanted Otto to take something, desperately wanted him to take something, but she did not fully understand why, whether it was to have him in her debt, or simply to atone.

  He nodded uninterestedly. 'I don't think Fabian had that good taste in wine.'

  'His father was -' she began, indignantly, then stopped, realizing she was rising to the bait. 'What did you mean just now, Otto, that Fabian was always having problems with girls?'

  Otto walked over to the bookshelves and plucked a book out; he flipped through the pages. 'I don't think you knew very much about your son, Mrs Hightower,' he said, absently.

  'Do your parents know much about you, Otto?'

  'My mother has been in a home since I was four. My father -' he shrugged '- yes, I see him often.'

  'What sort of home?'

  'A home.'

  'A mental home?' she said, gently.

  He looked away from her. 'What are you going to do with everything?'

  'I don't know. Take it back and �' She realized she did not know. She closed the diary and looked at the rest of the papers. Puzzled, she noticed a wodge of postcards and a letter addressed to Fabian at Cambridge in a girl's handwriting, all held together by a rubber band. She pushed them into the diary and put it into the bottom of the trunk. She could sense Otto watching her, but each time she turned around he was still leafing backwards and forwards through the pages. She folded a pair of trousers and laid them in the trunk, feeling embarrassed, as if she was looting.

  'I'll take this book, if I may.'

  'Of course. Take anything you want � it's no use � I mean � I'm just going to give this all away, so take anything.'

  Otto shrugged. 'Just this.'

  'What is it?'

  He held up the cover. It was a slim paperback, F. R. Leavis on T. S. Eliot.

  She smiled. 'I thought you were studying chemistry?'

  'I study lots of things.'

  He walked out of the room without saying anything further.

  As she drove back towards London, with the trunk wedged in the passenger seat, the drizzle turned to pelting rain. She watched the wipers clouting away the water, like angry hands, she thought.

  The rain turned to hail; the stones rattled on the car's bodywork, drumming on the soft hood above her, and then turned back to rain again. She thought about Otto's strange behaviour. He had always struck her as being weird, now he was even more so; anything was understandable, she supposed, after what he had been through; but there was a malevolence about him which seemed to have intensified, as if it was a joke that he had survived, some sort of bizarre personal joke. And his strange comments about Fabian; maybe it was true, maybe Carrie had ditched him, but his remark about Fabian always having problems with girls mystified her; what had he meant? Was he gay? Had he and Otto been lovers? She thought about Carrie again. A pretty little thing, with her spiky punk blonde hair and her chirpy South London accent and the awe in which she had walked round the house. 'Like bloomin' Bucknam Palace,' she had said. Alex smiled. Hardly.

  'Actually, I like scrubbers, Mother,' Fabian had said. God, he could be a ghastly snob at times, and then do something totally out of character, like bringing this girl home for Christmas and fawning all over her, as if it were a game. Carrie had been no fool, that was for sure. She tried to remember what she had been doing at Cambridge; reporting for some strange left wing magazine, something to do with ecology. She remembered driving down through Streatham with Fabian and his pointing out a dismal council high-rise complex, telling her proudly that was where Carrie's mother lived.

  Suddenly there was a sharp scratching noise on the windscreen in front of her and she flinched; a car passed her in the fast lane, chucking up a heavy spray which blinded her for a moment; there was another sharp crunch and then another.

  Then the spray cleared, and she stared, transfixed with horror, at the single red rose entangled in the wiper arm, sweeping backwards and forwards across the windscreen.

  CHAPTER NINE

  She stopped on the hard shoulder, got out of the car and stood in the lashing wind and driving rain. A lorry thundered past, inches from her, the blast of its slipstream catching her, throwing her against the side of the Mercedes. She walked forward, put her hand out, and the wipers swept again, the rose scratching, shrieking against the howl of the wind and the whine of the traffic. She grabbed the wiper arm and lifted out the rose. It pricked her finger badly, and she swore; she released the arm and the wipers swept again, angrily. Another lorry passed, close, sucking her in its slipstream, then throwing spray like a breaking wave over her. She jumped back into the car, slammed the door against the elements, and switched on the interior light.

  The rose was red, blood red, like the stain trickling down from her finger which she put to her mouth and sucked. She stared out through her window at the rain, at the demoniac lights which hurtled past, at the roars and whines which faded away into the black.

  Then she looked down at the rose. Who had flung it from their car, or left it loose on the back of a lorry, or . . .? But no, that was impossible, a coincidence, that was all, she told herself half-heartedly. She sat, shaking, wanting to throw it back out there where it had come from, but she could not, instead she laid it down in front of the gear stick and drove off slowly, frightened.

  She carried the rose into the house and stood in the gloomy hallway, leaving the front door open behind her, not wanting to close it yet. She did not know why, but she did not want to cut off contact with the outside world.

  She sucked her finger again, which was still painful, and felt the wet damp stem; some of the petals had fallen off. She went through into the drawing room and placed it in the bowl among the roses Fabian had given her for her birthday. It stood out, fresh and vibrant among the others which had now wilted and were dying or dead; but she couldn't throw them out, not yet.

  There was a loud bang as the wind blew the front door against the wall; there was another bang and then it slammed shut, as if an unseen hand had hurled it in a rage.

  The trunk would have to stay in the car until Monday when she could get Mimsa to help her lift it out, she thought, walking through into the kitchen to turn the heating on, and was surprised to see that it was on, had been on all day, according to the time switch. She suddenly noticed that she could see the vapour of her breath and breathed out again, puzzled, then rubbed her hands together against the cold.

  Something moved upstairs, a creak of a spring or a floorboard. She stood and listened. The cold permeated through her, made her tingle; she curled her toes, silently, listening. There was another clunk, and then the sound of water in pipes; the boiler made two loud clanks and switched itself off. She breathed out; stupid, she knew, the house always made strange noises when the heating was on.

  She filled the kettle, then walked into the drawing room, glanced nervously at the rose again and switched on the television. There was a roar of applause from a studio audience and the camera panned along a row of beaming antiseptic faces: second division showbiz celebrities playing a panel game, trying a little too hard to be jolly; there was a cut to a slick quiz-master holding his microphone up close to a brunette who rolled her tongue round the inside of her mouth. Alex continued to watch for a few moments, cringing. The series had been devised by one of her clients; the critics had called it tasteless, banal and degrading, and they were right. But it had paid the rent for the past four years.

  It was too cold to relax. She jumped to her feet, walked across to the roses, sniffed the new one and gave it a light caress with her finger.

  She thought of Fabian's trunk lying out there on the front seat of the Mercedes, wondering why she had bothered to bring the clothes back and worried for a moment that someone might steal it. Then she shrugged; perhaps that would be the best thing.

  If David had been around, he could have got the trunk; she wished she had been able to swallow her pride and ask him to. She rubbed her hands together again and shivered and felt sad, wanted to be with Fabian, wanted to hold him, hug him, wanted him to walk in the door and unpack the trunk himself.

  She went up to his bedroom; the temperature seemed even lower in here; had Mimsa turned off the radiator? She put her hand on it, then lifted it away smartly, feeling the heat burning her skin. She looked at the brass telescope, the posters on the wall, and then up at the painting, almost expecting a reaction, a slight movement, but there was nothing, just the cold arrogant stare. She knelt down under it and buried her head in her hands. 'I love you, darling; I hope you're all right wherever you are; I hope you're happy; happier than you were here. I miss you; I wonder if you miss me; take care, darling, wherever you are. Please God, take care of Fabian.' She stayed kneeling, then slowly rose to her feet, and felt more peaceful.

  She slipped out, gently shutting the door behind her, stood in the corridor and closed her eyes tightly. 'Goodnight, darling,' she said, and opened her eyes again; they were brimming with tears. She stopped at the top of the stairs, sat down and sobbed.

  She thought of Otto's lacerated face; thought of him being catapulted from the car; what had happened, she wondered, at that moment of impact? How had Fabian reacted? What had he thought? Who was the driver of the other car? How could he have done this? The questions seemed to appear in her mind in bright green letters printed on a black void. How did Otto feel about surviving? Why was he so damned weird? He'd given her the creeps; what did he know? Some secret about Fabian? Was the whole thing a hoax, some sick joke; were he and Fabian about to come waltzing in through the door, laughing, brushing past her and going straight to his room and locking the door, and do what? Watch the stars? Make love?

  She heard a roar of laughter from downstairs, and then applause and a voice saying something she could not make out; she felt peaceful, sad and a sudden overwhelming desire to be kind. She thought of David alone in the farmhouse with the dog and the sheep, tired, lonely, baffled and she went into her bedroom and dialled his number.

  'David?' she said, when he answered.

  'How are you?' He sounded pleased; she knew, sadly, that he always sounded pleased when she rang, and she wished sometimes that he would sound angry, or disturbed from something, or distracted, anything to stop her feeling guilty about what she had done to him.

  'I just thought I'd say hi.'

  'What have you been up to?'

  'I went to Cambridge today - to clear out Fabian's room.'

  'Thanks for doing that; must have been a bit of an ordeal.'

  'It was O.K.; except I have a bit of a problem.'

  'What's that?'

  'I can't get his trunk out of my car.'

  She heard him laugh.

  �Want me to come up and help you?'

  'Don't be silly.'

  'I don't mind - I'll come now - or -' his voice became quieter, testing. 'Do you have a date?'

  'No, I haven't got a date.'

  'Well I'll come now; take you to dinner.'

  'I don't want to drag you all the way up.'

  'I'll be there in an hour � hour and a half. Better than talking to the sheep.'

  Alex hung up feeling angry with herself, angry at her weakness; giving David hope, allowing the wound to continue festering. She was startled by the vapour of her breath, and stared at it, thinking for a moment it must be cigarette smoke that she had exhaled. But she wasn't smoking. She watched the cloud, thick and heavy, so heavy she could almost see ice crystals form as it drifted up in front of her; she was cold again, suddenly, almost unbearably cold. She felt as if something had come into the room, something unpleasant, malevolent; something very angry.

  She got up, went out into the corridor and into the kitchen, but it stayed with her. Her hands were shaking with the cold, shaking so hard she dropped the tea bag on the floor; she heard the clunk upstairs again, a different clunk this time, not like the boiler. She walked out of the kitchen in long positive strides, down the corridor and out of the front door, into the orange glow of the street lighting.

  The rain had stopped and the wind was still strong, but felt warm and enveloped her like an eiderdown. She walked down the street, slowly, hugging it around her shoulders.

  She heard the toot of a horn and the rattle of an engine and was engulfed by the stench of pigs, a strange, unfamiliar smell in the middle of Chelsea. She looked around and saw David's mud-caked Land Rover. He was leaning over, sliding open the window. 'Alex!'

  She waved, surprised. 'You were quick! I didn't think you'd be here till well after eight.'

  'It's half past eight.'

  'Half past eight?' She frowned, and looked at her watch. No, it wasn't possible. Surely it had only been a few minutes? She shivered. What was happening?

  'What are you doing out without a coat?'

  'Just came out to get some air.'

  'Jump in.'

  There's a space just there � you'd better take it, you won't get any closer.'

  He nodded. 'Saturday night, I was forgetting.�

  She watched him reverse into the space, then jump out. 'Aren't you going to lock it?'

  'I'm out of the habit of locking cars.' He gave her a kiss, and they walked down the road to the house.

  How long had she spent walking around outside? An hour and a half could not have gone by. Surely not?

  'You look frozen,' he said.

  'I � er � was a bit hot in the house � had the heating up too much. Let's get the trunk � I'm parked just there.'

  She staggered backwards into the house, sagging under the weight, and heard a crunch as the trunk swung into the wall. 'Careful,' she said, testily.

  'Sorry.'

  They laid the trunk down and David closed the front door; she saw a flat piece of dried mud on the carpet. 'For Chrissake, David, you're bringing bloody mud in!' she shouted, livid suddenly.

  He blushed apologetically, as if in the house of a complete stranger, bent down and untied his brogues. 'Sorry,' he muttered, sheepishly. 'Bit muddy down there at the moment.'

  She instantly regretted her outburst, and guiltily watched him stooping over, removing his shoes. She stared at his faded roll-neck sweater, battered tweed jacket with its haphazard patches and his shapeless brown corduroy trousers. His beard was tinged with white strands and his face had a ruddy weather-beaten complexion. It was hard to imagine, she thought, watching him standing there in his grey woollen socks, with his big toes poking through, that he had once been so fastidious about his appearance; that he had once worn nothing but sharp designer suits, silk shirts, Gucci loafers; that he used to gad about in a Ferrari, that he had loved to strut into Tramp in the early hours of the morning, greeting Johnny Gold and every waiter by name.

  'You're right,' he said, 'it is hot in here. Incredibly hot. How are you?' He leaned forward to kiss her, staggered and nearly fell. 'Ooops.'

  She felt the bristles of his moustache, smelled the alcohol, felt his tongue poke through and push in between her lips. She recoiled. 'David,' she said, reproachfully.

  'Just giving my wife a kiss.'

  'Do you have to get drunk before you can come and see me?'

  He shifted his weight, uncomfortably.

  'If you got breathalysed, you'd be really stuck. Want some coffee?'

  'I'd prefer some whisky.'

  'I think you've had enough.'

  God, why had she asked him up, she thought, riddled with guilt; she just wanted him to go away; she did not need him, did not need anyone. It had all been a mistake, tricks of her imagination; or was it? Somehow, she had to be sure. At least it was comforting, having another human here; at least she felt safe.