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He looks into her eyes. They’re so still. He can never see past the surface of them. Sasha is unreadable. Sphinx-like. It draws people to her. It drew him. ‘Why aren’t you feeling it?’ he asks. She was right beside him last night, digging, filling IKEA bags with remains.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. She puts her hands on his shoulders and digs in deep. It’s painful, but he leans into it.
‘You’re tight,’ she says. Olly’s body aches everywhere. It’s been a while since he did manual labour and he’s seizing up. The digging put blisters on his hands, as well as dirt. He looks at them, sees sore patches but clean, wet palms and fingers. The backs of his hands are the same. At least the basin is clean. Sasha must have done it. When he walked away from it last night, rivulets of filthy water stained the sides of the basin and bits of earth and grit and God knows what else collected in the plughole. An involuntary sob escapes him. Even if they look it, his hands still don’t feel clean.
Sasha stops kneading his shoulders. She moves to stand between him and the basin and cups his cheek with her palm. ‘Shhh,’ she says. ‘You’re okay. Why don’t you go out this morning? Get away. I’ll handle everything here.’
‘This is Anna’s fault,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘After everything we’ve done for her.’
‘I know,’ she repeats.
He follows her downstairs, watches as she makes breakfast for them both. He’s glad Anna isn’t here this morning. It would be hard to stop his anger with her from showing.
‘How can you be so calm?’ he asks.
‘We have no choice,’ Sasha says. ‘We have to be strong.’ She hands him a bowl of porridge.
‘Are you teaching this morning?’
She nods.
‘I’ll eat in my study,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to see Anna.’
‘That’s probably for the best. Stay out of her way until you’ve calmed down. Don’t let this spiral. Remember the endgame.’
He settles into his study. Sasha is a better partner than he could ever have dreamed of. She knows how to keep him steady. He takes a seat on the sofa facing the orchard. The porridge makes him feel a bit more human. The coffee, too. He consumes both greedily. Last night was horrific, he tells himself, but death is a part of life, and as a novelist, he should treat it with curiosity and not let it overwhelm him. If Sasha can keep her cool, he can, too.
Once he’s finished his food and drink, he sits for a while, looking out. The orchard is densely planted and, if you ignorethe fallen and rotten fruit, it’s beautiful. Moving Kitty’s body was essential to protect their lives at the Manor and their plans for the future, he thinks. If you’re not willing to take extreme action when it’s needed, you will always be a slave to other people. He believes deeply in this.
He thinks how a life of crime is not so different from the creative life. You take risks in both, you gamble. You’re not subject to the normal rules. Sasha was right to warn him to keep his head. Just like his novel, this game has been carefully planned and, so far, almost perfectly executed. It’s nearly over and they should be prepared to do whatever it takes to reach the end.
At first, he thinks what he sees is just a shadow at the edge of the woodland. But it’s not. He watches as a man emerges from the treeline and stands facing Olly directly. He can’t see me, Olly thinks, not from there. The windows are old, and leaded. But he feels uncomfortable in the man’s gaze.
He stands, thinking to open the window and call out, to let this person know that they are trespassing. It occurs to him that this could be the person Nicole Booth saw wandering around, the one she told the police about. If he’s not a camper perhaps he’s a vagrant. They discover them in the woodland here occasionally. He’s certainly got a nerve, approaching the Manor like this.
Olly stands and opens the window. He leans out. ‘Hey! You! You’re on private property! You shouldn’t be here!’
The man sees him. He glances left and right and walks towards Olly, weaving between the trees, sometimes in view, sometimes disappearing momentarily.
‘Hey!’ Olly shouts again. ‘Did you hear me? Get lost!’
The man emerges and Olly is shocked to find that he recognises him.
‘Patrick?’ he says.
It looks like Nicole’s friend, so far as he can remember his face.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Patrick says.
‘Why are you sneaking up on the house?’
‘Come outside.’
Olly balks. He knows that Patrick is capable of violence. But he’s also curious.
