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It wasn’t as though Joel had even noticed anything different about her, had even realised the significance of what she was wearing, where she was going.
She heard a car pulling up outside and knew instinctively that it was Daphne. The palms of her hands were damp and when she looked into the mirror her face looked far too pale and set and her eyes correspondingly huge and over-brilliant.
She looked like some of her patients after she had given them their drugs, she recognised, but the only drug in her system was too much adrenalin.
* * *
‘It’s such a shame that some parts of the city have been spoiled by new buildings,’ Daphne was commenting snobbishly as Clifford drove towards the university. ‘Kenneth is very wise to have moved out of the immediate environs of the university. The houses there must have been so gracious once, but most of them have been turned over to student flats now…’
Sally gritted her teeth. Her sister’s inane, self-satisfied chatter felt like a drill being applied to a raw nerve.
‘I’m glad to see you’ve taken a bit more trouble with your appearance today, Sally,’ Daphne approved, adding bossily, ‘Although you really ought to have your hair properly cut and styled. It’s far too long and untidy for a woman of your age… Kenneth could be very important to Clifford’s career. With his connections at the university…’
Kenneth doesn’t give a damn about Clifford or his career, Sally wanted to tell her, but somehow she managed to hold back the words.
Kenneth’s house was at the far end of a cul-de-sac of similar tall, narrow Edwardian houses. Its red-brick façade, rather than being warming, had a repressive starkness about it, Sally felt as she studied it through the car window. The bricks were red and shiny, cold and hard, the house free of the softening effects of the ivies and climbing roses which adorned the other houses. The front garden, like the exterior of the house, was starkly immaculate, and mentally she contrasted it with their own garden and the clutter of bikes which adorned their pathway.
Something about the house made her feel uncomfortable, but before she could question what it was Kenneth was opening the front door and waiting to greet them.
Sally stood back while her sister gushed effusively.
Kenneth might be pretending to listen to Daphne but he was looking at her, Sally recognised.
‘Please come in…’
Somehow or another Kenneth managed to manipulate things so that he could take her arm as they walked into the hallway. It was wider than her own, the stripped, matt floorboards so free of any marks or dust that Sally almost felt afraid to walk on them.
The hallway was painted white and so was the sitting-room Kenneth showed them into. There were no expensive fitted carpets here like the ones Daphne had, just those bare, immaculate floorboards covered with neutral-coloured rugs. There was no colour anywhere in the room; everything was pale and neutral, immaculate and stark; even Daphne seemed to have lost some of her normal self-confidence and arrogance as the room imposed its austerity on them. Sally could see her looking round uncertainly.
Kenneth was watching Daphne and there was a look on his face that Sally couldn’t quite define. It was almost as though he was somehow enjoying Daphne’s discomfort. Sally frowned. It was the lack of any personal belongings that made the room seem so austere, she decided; there were no things… no books, no magazines, no photographs.
Where were Kenneth’s photographs of his family, his sons? Perhaps he kept them upstairs in his bedroom, she decided, her skin flushing slightly at what she was thinking.
‘Let’s go out into the garden, shall we?’ Kenneth was saying. Once again he managed things so that he fell into step beside her.
‘You’re looking very pretty,’ he told her softly as he leaned towards her.
‘It’s a suit Daphne gave me,’ Sally confessed.
Kenneth’s, ‘Yes, I thought it might be,’ made her tense a little bit. There had been something in the tone of his voice that once again disturbed her without her being able to put her finger on why it should.
Once she was his, the first thing he intended to do was to buy her a new wardrobe, Kenneth decided. Subtle, elegant clothes in subdued neutral colours… natural fabrics, not that appalling man-made mixture she was wearing now. His colleagues would have a field day if they saw her dressed like that. The sister would have to be held at a distance as well—very much at a distance.
He shepherded them towards the French windows and the garden beyond it. Sally caught her breath as they stepped outside, and Kenneth, hearing the tiny betraying sound she made, turned to smile down at her.
‘Like it?’ he asked her, plainly pleased by her reaction.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Sally told him truthfully, and indeed it was; perfect green lawns gave way to deep borders filled with flowers and foliage in every possible shade of white and green, the colour scheme mirroring the neutrality of the room they had just left behind. A dark green yew hedge bisected the garden and as Kenneth guided them along the path that led to the opening in it Sally could hear Daphne enthusing in front of her, chagrin mingling in her voice with her praise.
Beyond the yew hedge lay a small formal garden, secret and shadowy with its green lawn and dark yew boundaries. Even the seats in it were painted dark green and set perfectly opposite one another.
There was no doubt that the garden was spectacular, Sally acknowledged, even her untrained eye could see that, but it was impossible to imagine Paul running around in it playing with his football; impossible to imagine any child at all, no matter how well-behaved, being allowed to play in such surroundings… or wanting to?
For once even Daphne was silent. Was she contrasting this silent green perfection with her own flamboyant, brilliantly hued flowerbeds? Sally wondered. To judge from the look on her sister’s face, Sally suspected that Clifford would soon be being bullied and chivvied into replacing them.
‘I like to walk here at night, just as it grows dusk,’ Kenneth murmured to her. ‘Sometimes it is almost possible to imagine oneself a true inhabitant of the Renaissance; to capture a small echo of its perfection.
‘I want to walk here with you, Sally. You don’t know how often I imagine that you are already here with me.’
