The robot said, ‘Well, have a jolly good holiday.’

‘We deserve it. It’s twenty-two years since Fred or me set foot outside of Canada. Now, dear, tell me how’s your father?’

‘He’s fine. Fit as a fiddle. Still at the same old trade, you know.’

‘And you’re his right-hand man. I bet you’ve made yourself indispensable, eh?’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Stephen began to laugh. He couldn’t stop once he had begun and he rocked about on the sofa, sobbing with laughter, his chest aching with it, water running out of his eyes. He could see she was staring at him but he couldn’t stop. At last he got up and ran out of the room, colliding with auntie Midge and the Bracebridges coming in. Both his hands and his handkerchief were over his face and they thought he was crying.

‘Stephen was always very good to his nanna,’ said Mrs Bracebridge.

Afterwards they understood he was too upset to stay for the lunch. Stephen had meant to go to work in the afternoon, and when he left the crematorium he drove back by way of the market square, he even slowed briefly as he passed Whalbys’, but he didn’t stop. While his mother was in the town he didn’t want to face Dadda in case he too had heard of her arrival. Dadda’s reaction was beyond his imaginings, he didn’t want to try to think about it.

He changed his clothes and went out on to the moor, keeping as best he could to the shady places, the Vale of Allen and the eastern side of the hill. The air was heavy and humid, there had been no rain for twenty-four days, but although the sky was still a pale, dazzling blue, it was hung all round the horizon with white clouds mottled with indigo.

It was far too early for Rip to come. Surely he would never come in all this heat and light. Why had he called him that? It had been quite involuntary, calling the man, the girls’ killer, the denizen of the cavern, by the name of his imaginary friend. Yet it was a good name, it had the right daredevil, ruthless, fearsome sound. Rip. When he had killed Ann Morgan it had been broad daylight, though, but the moor no doubt as deserted as it now was.

Stephen took shelter from the sun inside the George Crane Coe and lay down on the dry brittle grass. The peaty soil had turned to dust and ran away through his fingers like salt. A throb of thunder made itself felt, vibrating through his body like a tiny earthquake tremor. He lay on the ground inside the broken tower, waiting for Rip to come.

Someone had bought the grey parrot and the rabbits. Apart from themselves, there was no living thing left in the shop but the snake. They were closed, the blind on the door was down. Nick sat on the edge of the counter, Lyn on the drum of corn. He was looking at her intently and she wondered if he could possibly guess or tell. But no, he was a vet, not a doctor, and she a woman, not a dog. The thought made her smile a little.

‘I love you, Lyn,’ he said. ‘I shall come back for you. I’ll come every weekend until I can make you say you’ll leave him and go with me.’

So he would, she thought, for a week or two or three. But two hundred miles away and with new things around him, he wouldn’t go on coming. He would forget.

‘I’m not leaving until Monday. When you change your mind I’ll be waiting by the phone.’

‘I shan’t change my mind,’ she said. ‘Shall we go out for a last walk or a drink or something?’

‘It won’t be a last walk, we’re not going to talk in terms of last things. Lyn, we’ve only just begun to know each other.’

She got up. Though she was as thin as ever, her body felt heavy with the child. They walked out of the shop into the sultry heat. As they passed the glass cases in the window an unpleasant thing happened. The snake, which scarcely ever moved, which had always when Lyn had seen it lain stretched out or coiled, suddenly reared up the forepart of its body, hissed and lashed its head at the glass. Its tongue flickered and Lyn drew back against Nick’s arm with a shudder.

12

The heavy atmosphere, charged with the threat of the coming storm, was inside the house as well as outside. Lyn felt it as soon as she woke up. She looked at the white sky of low cloud and felt the weight of the air and remembered that the evening before she had parted for the last time from Nick. Stephen was still asleep beside her. He looked very young as he slept and there was a droop to the corners of his mouth.

It was already very hot, though the sun was only a white puddle of light in a mass of cloud. She got up and had a bath, made tea and took a cup to Stephen. He sat up and took it from her with a hearty ‘Thanks awfully, darling,’ but he was absent and preoccupied. He seemed miles away from her on some distant thought plane. She longed to throw herself on someone’s compassion, tell them everything and ask for comfort. She had never been able to confide in her mother, Joanne was in hospital, only Stephen remained. Stephen was drinking his tea and looking out on to the moor, the scorched and shrivelled grass, the dull pale sky.

She left him and went downstairs. Peach came up to her and rubbed his head and soft golden shoulder against her leg. She picked him up and walked about with him in her arms. In six months she would have the baby, at least she would have that. Loneliness would pass when she had the baby. It was just that it was impossible to imagine the week ahead, all the weeks, without Nick. Peach purred in her arms. She set him down on the window sill, stared at the still, pale, brooding sky.

How many times, she wondered, had Stephen come to her for comfort? She thought of the last time, when his grandmother had died. Would he comfort her in the same way? Somehow she didn’t think so, she had never asked him or tried. The idea of the plan she had made came back to her, that she had been going to present to Stephen in cold practical terms. She was afraid she would cry as soon as she began to speak. Yet she had to tell him. Suddenly she realized she had no idea at all how he would take it.

She heard him get up and move about upstairs. She put the kettle on and set things on the table for breakfast. A small wave of nausea came gently up through her chest when she looked at the butter, the cream curds on the milk. These days she never ate breakfast. The nausea passed and when Stephen came in she was sitting at the table, drinking tea.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him then, but still she held back. She had realized something, that for weeks, months perhaps, Stephen hadn’t spoken to her at breakfast, hadn’t had a real conversation with her at any time. Unhappiness or anxiety was making her acutely sensitive. The voice in which he announced to her that he would go into his study now to write his piece for the Echo sounded to her like the noises made by a talking machine.

She washed the dishes. Sometimes she leant against the sink and closed her eyes. She dropped a cup and it broke into three pieces and the handle with a crash as loud to her as an explosion. If she went to the door she could just hear the irregular tapping of Stephen’s typewriter. She stood in the doorway listening to it, the few seconds of tapping, the pause, the tapping again. Rehearsing what she would say to him, she went upstairs and started to make the bed. The typewriter had been quiet for a long time but now it started again. She knew she would never say any of those cool decisive things. Her hands began to shake the way they did before she had known Nick.

All was silence from the study. She almost knocked on the door, but she told herself that was her husband in there, not to be a fool. He was sitting at the desk, looking at what he had just written, a handsome, dark, strongly built man. She thought she had never seen a better-looking man than Stephen. He turned on her those dark blue eyes that today had a curiously empty look.