And quiet.
She was in some kind of hallway or corridor. Terracotta floor tiles. Low wood panelling and, above, wallpaper full of illustrations of sycamore leaves.
She walked down the little corridor and into the main pub area which she had peeked at through the window. She jumped as a cat appeared out of nowhere.
An elegant, angular chocolate Burmese purring away. She bent down and stroked it and looked at the engraved name on the disc attached to the collar.Voltaire.
A different cat, with the same name. Unlike her dear beloved ginger tabby, she doubted this Voltaire was a rescue. The cat began to purr. ‘Hello, Volts Number Two. You seem happy here. Are we all as happy as you?’
The cat purred a possible affirmation and rubbed his head against Nora’s leg. She picked him up and went over to the bar. There was a row of craft beers on the pumps, stouts and ciders and pale ales and IPAs.Vicar’s Favourite.Lost and Found.Miss Marple.Sleeping Lemons.Broken Dream.
There was a charity tin on the bar for Butterfly Conservation.
She heard the sound of clinking glass. As if a dishwasher was being filled. Nora felt anxiety constrict her chest. A familiar sensation. Then a spindly twenty-something man in a baggy rugby top popped up from behind the bar, hardly giving any attention to Nora as he gathered the last remaining used glasses and put them in the dishwasher. He switched it on then pulled down his coat from a hook, put it on and took out some car keys.
‘Bye, Nora. I’ve done the chairs and wiped all the tables. Dishwasher’s on.’
‘Ah, thanks.’
‘Till Thursday.’
‘Yes,’ Nora said, feeling like a spy about to have her cover blown. ‘See you.’
A moment after the man left, she heard footsteps rising up from somewhere below, heading across the tiles she had just walked down, coming from the back of the pub. And then he was there.
He looked different.
The beard had gone, and there were more wrinkles around his eyes, dark circles. He had a nearly finished pint of dark beer in his hand. He still looked a bit like a TV vet, just a few more series down the line.
‘Dan,’ she said, as if he was something that needed identifying. Like a rabbit by the road. ‘I just want to say I am so proud of you. So proud of us.’
He looked at her, blankly. ‘Was just turning the chiller units off. Got to clean the lines tomorrow. We’ve left it a fortnight.’
Nora had no idea what he was talking about. She stroked the cat. ‘Right. Yes. Of course. The lines.’
Her husband – for in this life, that was who he was – looked around at all the tables and upside-down chairs. He was wearing a fadedJawsT-shirt. ‘Have Blake and Sophie gone home?’
Nora hesitated. She sensed he was talking about people who worked for them. The young man in the baggy rugby top was presumably Blake. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.
‘Yes,’ she said, trying to sound natural despite the fundamental bizarreness of the circumstances. ‘I think they have. They were pretty on top of things.’
‘Cool.’
She remembered buying him theJawsT-shirt on his twenty-sixth birthday. Ten years previously.
‘The answers tonight were something else. One of the teams – the one Pete and Jolie were on – thought Maradona painted the Sistine ceiling.’
Nora nodded and stroked Volts Number Two. As if she had any idea who on earth Pete and Jolie were.
‘To be fair, it was a tricky one tonight. Might take them from another website next time. I mean, who actually knows the name of the highest mountain in the Kara-whatsit range?’
‘Karakoram?’ Nora asked. ‘That would be K2.’
‘Well, obviously you know,’ he said, a little too abruptly. A little too tipsily. ‘It’s the kind of thing you would know. Because while most people were into rock music you were intoactual rocksand stuff.’
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I was literally in a band.’
A band, she remembered then, that Dan had hated her being in.
