Opening extract
Claire had put a saucepan under the drawing-room ceiling. A drop fell into it as Mara came through the door, loud enough to make them both look up.
“That isn't him,” Claire said. “I know how it looks.”
She was standing on the third step of a little ladder, holding a towel against the damp patch. Her hair had come loose on one side. She had the telephone tucked into the neck of her cardigan, with a voice still coming out of it.
“You need a bucket,” Mara said.
“I need a different house. Can you tell this man we're not a hotel?”
Mara set her overnight bag down. She had driven nearly an hour from the housing office, all the way thinking of what she would say about Owen, and now she was being given a telephone.
“We don't have a maintenance department,” she told the man.
“I was explaining to your colleague—”
“She's the owner. There's water coming through a ceiling. Can you get someone here today?”
He could get someone there between four and six. Mara gave the phone back and steadied the ladder while Claire came down. She had expected tears, perhaps the little shaking breath Claire had taken before saying on the telephone that Owen had gone. Instead they stood together looking at a saucepan.
“I thought you could have room three,” Claire said. “You may have to wear a hat.”
Mara laughed. It came out too loudly in the empty room.
The Salt House was a narrow guesthouse on the uphill edge of Merecombe, where the shops stopped and the ordinary terraces began. From the front step there was a view between two buildings to a strip of grey sea. Claire and Owen had lived and worked here for eight years. Mara had stayed often during the first few. Later she had come for lunch with Claire when Owen was out, and lately she had mostly met Claire elsewhere. She knew which stair creaked and which drawing-room chair would tip forward if you sat on its edge. It was an uncomfortable amount to know about a house in which she no longer felt able to ask for her brother.
Claire took her into the kitchen. A tray of cups stood ready by the kettle. There were six rooms upstairs, four of them occupied, and a couple due from Leicester who had rung twice to discuss parking.
“Is he answering you?” Claire asked.
“I haven't tried yet.”
“I thought you might have, on the way.”
“You said he'd left his phone.”
“He has.” Claire opened the shallow drawer beneath the breadboard. Owen's phone lay beside a charging lead and a packet of matches. “I thought he might have emailed you. Something.”
Mara shook her head. Claire pushed the drawer shut.
“Tell me what happened this morning.”
“I was doing breakfast. He went out while I was in here. I thought he'd gone for milk. There's a note on the table.”
It was a sheet from the pad they used for shopping lists. Claire brought it from beside the toaster and laid it in front of Mara.
I'm safe. I need some space. I'm not coming back tonight. I'll get in touch about the house and the work. Please don't try to find me.
Owen had put his name beneath it, as if there might be doubt.
Mara read it twice. She had last seen him at Christmas, across a restaurant table, where he had asked about her journey and then found reasons to speak to the waiter. Before that there had been the message in the spring. She had not thought of their silence as an estrangement until Claire used the word on the phone today. It had seemed a succession of things neither of them had done.
“Have you heard anything since?”
“The police rang just after twelve. They'd spoken to him. He's all right.”
“They actually spoke to him?”
“Yes. He contacted them himself, apparently. They were very kind. They just couldn't tell me where he was.” Claire folded the paper along its existing crease. “I understand that. He's a grown man. They can't make him come home.”
Mara took her coat off. The kitchen was warm and she had been keeping it on as though she might leave again. “Then I'm not sure what I can do.”
“Get him to talk to me.”
End of extract
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