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“Is it? No wonder I’m hungry. I’d better go and shower.”
“No rush. Laure and I are going for a quick run. She’s made dinner, it will be ready at eight.”
Gabriel laughed. “She made dinner? Wow, that’s a first.” He peeled off his gloves. “Where are you going for your run?”
“Over the fields, I think.” She paused. “Laure asked to go to the quarry.”
Gabriel frowned. “Why? It’s out of bounds.”
“I know. I think she’s just curious.”
“Well, she can be curious about something else.”
Iris’s heart sank. “Have you heard from Pierre?” she asked, in an attempt to change the subject.
“No. There’s been nothing since I spoke to him last week. Do you think I should have gone to see him, even though he told me not to?”
Her heart ached for him, for the guilt he was feeling. If Charlie hadn’t been constantly on his mind, Gabriel would have been over to Paris the moment Pierre refused to return his calls.
“No, I don’t think so.” She laid a calming hand on his arm. “Let’s wait and see what happens when Laure is back in Paris. If it doesn’t work out, that’s when Pierre will really need you.”
14
“I feel mean,” Iris said, climbing into bed beside Gabriel.
He put down his book and slipped off his black-framed reading glasses.
“Why?”
“Because I’m relieved that Laure is going back to Paris this weekend.”
“It’s normal. She’s been your constant companion with a one-track conversation for nearly three weeks now. It would try the patience of a saint.”
“It’s just that she seems to have no boundaries, something I never noticed before.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned toward him, propping herself on an elbow so that she could see his face. “You know we went for a run earlier? Well, when we came back, we went to have our showers and as I was going downstairs, Laure called to me from her room. So I went in and she was standing there with a towel around her. And then she just dropped it and walked around naked while she spoke to me about Pierre.”
Gabriel hid a smile. Iris was quite prudish when it came to nakedness, even with him. It had always amused him that she slept in pajamas. She said it came from being sent to a convent school, and being brought up by elderly parents.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“There was nothing I could do so I just averted my eyes until she was fully dressed.” She flopped onto her back. “Do you want to carry on reading or shall we turn out the light?”
“I’d like to carry on reading. But I can go downstairs if you want to sleep.”
“No, it’s fine, you can read here.” The disappointment shadowing her face made Gabriel hate himself for rejecting her again. But it was stronger than him, probably because he’d never lied to her before and subconsciously no longer felt worthy of her. He needed to get over it before he hurt her even more.
Iris settled herself into her sleeping position and he retrieved his book. But instead of reading, his thoughts turned to Maggie Ingram, Charlie’s mum, and the letter he’d received. He had worried about Maggie after Charlie’s death. Her husband was in the army, on a tour of duty somewhere overseas. According to an article in the newspaper, he’d left soon after Charlie’s funeral.
People had asked why Charlie had chosen to cycle all the way to the quarry in the late evening, as it would have taken him almost an hour to get there from his school in Winchester. But it seemed that he used to cycle there with his father whenever he was home on leave, so the general feeling was that he’d been missing his dad and had gone to the quarry to feel close to him.
Gabriel hadn’t gone to the funeral. Iris had had a hard time accepting his decision to stay away, given that he’d known Charlie, and that he’d been there when he died. He’d told her he wouldn’t be able to face reliving Charlie’s final moments. The truth was, it was Maggie he wouldn’t have been able to face. At the time of Charlie’s death, she’d been head of pastoral care at the public school where he’d been a daypupil, and Gabriel could understand that it must have sometimes been hard for Charlie to have his mum around. But something really bad must have happened between them for Charlie to use his dying breath to give her such a damning message. Because what Charlie had actually said wasn’tTell Mum I love herbutTell Mum I’ll never forgive her.
15
Iris paused at the gate to catch her breath and stretch her calf muscles. For the first time, Laure hadn’t wanted to go with her on her run and it was amazing how free she’d felt as she’d run through the dappled shade of the woods.
