He pulled up in front of his sister’s farmhouse. Cat was not yet working full-time and he had hoped to see her, maybe take her out for a pub lunch. But there were no cars in the drive, the windows were shut, doors locked. He wandered across to lean on the paddock fence. The grey pony looked up from grazing for a moment but did not make a move to come nearer. Chickens pecked about in the grass at its feet. It was very quiet. A bleak, depressed mood threatened him, like a cloud hovering at the edge of the bright sky. He was on leave. The station was buzzing along cheerfully without him. So was his family. He had behaved stupidly with Diana. The prospect of seeing her again at the private view was troubling.

Simon understood what made people disappear, take off for an airport or a ferry and simply go, wherever, leaving no trace. He could do it now. Africa. He had always wanted to go to Africa.

He shook his head to clear the thoughts. Such responsibilities as he did have were perfectly real and his conscience was better developed than his sister would believe.

He left the pony and the red-brown, pecking hens, and took the road that led to Hallam House and his parents. If anybody would welcome a good pub lunch and his company, it might be his mother.

Half an hour later, he was on the motorway back to London. There had been no one in at Hallam House either. Simon scanned through the radio stations in search of music, or comedy, or at least some good news.

Thirty-one

At half past seven Lynsey Williams put her gear into the sports holdall, covered the salmon salad with cling film and wrote a note saying “Matt, food in fridge, xxxx”and went out. Matt was at the floodlit five-a-side courts with the boys he trained out of school hours.

She wondered, as she walked down St Luke’s Road, why some couples apparently found it so difficult to live together and be committed but also have individual lives. She and Matt hadn’t found it a problem. Whatever people said, school holidays were quite long and she worked her own time off around Matt’s, so they could go off together at least three times a year, skiing, diving, climbing, with one week doing nothing on a hot beach. In term, he was out from dawn till dusk teaching and then spent extra time coaching, travelling all over the place to matches, training. Lynsey crammed all her own work into Matt’s term time. She was lucky, she could. Five years ago, she had bought her first semi-derelict property and done it up with a bit of help on the heavy work from Matt and her brother. Now, she was on to her twelfth house, selling some on quickly, letting others. She had hit the right time, the market had boomed. She was doing well.

The only problem was whether or not to expand, take on staff and double her turnover. She had played about with the figures for months, but it was not the money that worried her so much as taking the giant step up from being small and single-handed. She liked to do most of the work and all of the decision-making herself. Expansion? What was she thinking? But she knew she would go on brooding about it as she ploughed up and down the sports centre pool, doing her forty lengths, and it was pointless talking to Matt. “Search me,” was his usual answer.

She turned the corner. Then, someone called her name. She looked round. The man was waving and calling again, running towards her up the road. Lynsey hesitated. She did not recognise him and he was still some way off but as she heard him shout her name urgently again, she waited. Perhaps he had looked round one of her houses, perhaps he was one of the tenants, though she did all the letting through an agency.

“Lynsey c” Was that what he said?

He was nearer now and the expression on his face was strange, as if he were astonished to see her and excited and somehow c the only word she could find was wild.

“Lizzie c”

He stopped dead, a yard or two from her.

“Hello?” Lynsey said. “Sorry, were you meaning me?”

He was staring at her, his face contorted into something like anger, something like bewilderment—again, she could not read it. But she was nervous now and as she spoke, began to turn and move away quickly, towards the main road, towards passing cars and open shops and other people.

“No c don’t go, don’t. Stop. Please. Stand still. Stand STILL.”

She stood still. He came slowly nearer to her.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Lynsey c” she managed.

“No. No, you’re Lizzie. Turn round. Let me look at your hair.”

She froze.

“You’re Lizzie. You have to be.”

“I’m Lynsey. I’m sorry, I have to go, someone c someone’s waiting for me over there.”

He stood, staring, his eyes scanning her face desperately. “Turn round.” Her hair was long, pulled into a cotton scrunchy “Please loosen your hair c I want to see your hair. I must, please c”

He did not come nearer but his voice was urgent, and his expression still so strange that she put down her sports bag, and obeyed, pulling the band off and shaking her head until her hair fell loose.

“Lizzie?”

“No. I said. I’m Lynsey c Lynsey Williams. Look, you’ve just mistaken me for someone else c please let me go, I’m late, I have to meet someone, I said.”

“Your hair’s the wrong colour. It isn’t Lizzie’s hair.”

“No,” Lynsey said. “Sorry. No.”

There was a low wall in front of the house beside them and the man suddenly reached out for it, as if he felt faint, then sat heavily down. Lynsey stood, watching, wanting his signal so that she could go, run, fast round the corner and out of his sight.

Then she saw that he was weeping, openly, silently, putting the back of his hand up to his face to wipe his eyes, which then filled and overflowed again. She felt embarrassed and awkward, unsure what to say, desperate to go. And in the end, because he took no more notice of her but sat on, wrapped in himself and his own distress, she simply did so, turning and walking away, slowly though. As she reached the corner, she looked back, upset at what she saw, wishing she knew how to help him—except that she did not know what had happened or what he needed or why.

It was not until she had swum a dozen slow lengths of the pool that she felt calmer, but for the rest of the evening, she had the image of the man in her head and could not wipe it away.

She took a different, longer route home and walked quickly, looking behind her time and again, listening in case she heard someone calling her name again.

No one did.

*

Matt was in the kitchen, the salmon salad eaten and the plates and cutlery washed and put away. Matt was a dream to live with, neat and tidy about everything, clean, organised, punctual. He was sitting at the kitchen table trying to finish the cryptic crossword.

“Hi, babe. Good swim?”

Lynsey dropped her bag.

“Lyns?”

“Something weird happened.”

He looked round. “What? Are you OK?”

“I think so. Yes. Yes, I am. Only it was c a bit weird, that’s all.”

She got a bottle of water from the fridge and wandered to the table, to the sink, back to the fridge. The man was still in her head, sitting on the wall in the street, crying.

Matt listened carefully. “And he didn’t do anything, didn’t touch you?”

“No. I think c when I wasn’t whoever he thought—this Lizzie, not Lynsey—he just crumpled up, you know? He didn’t, sort of, notice me again.”

“Right, well, people do make mistakes, you see someone’s back view, they turn round, it isn’t whoever at all c but you don’t ask them to take the band out of their hair. That’s weird. That’s what I don’t like.”

“No.”

“What do you want to do?”

“How do you mean?”

“Go to the police? Now? Tomorrow?”

“What would I go to the police for? Don’t be daft.”