A week later, Greg and I went out to dinner with one of his colleagues and his wife. In the taxi back I burrowed against him for the warmth. Although the snow still hadn't arrived, the forecast said it was imminent: the temperature outside had dropped below freezing and the streets were almost deserted. The driver put the heater on and it blew hot air at our feet. I was mildly drunk and Greg laughed at me as he pulled me inside his coat and we kissed. He was leaving in the morning to spend the rest of the week working on site with a client, a light-engineering firm outside Birmingham. We hadn't spent a night apart since we moved into our flat and neither of us was looking forward to it, even though he would only be gone for three days. I wanted to wind myself around him like ivy now so that he couldn't go.
When we reached home, there was a figure standing on the pavement. I watched him as Greg paid the fare. The street was badly lit and I couldn't make out his face. He was wearing a heavy coat that hung from his shoulders as if from a wire hanger that couldn't cope with the weight of it. A knitted hat was pulled down close to his eyes. He was agitated, walking in small circles, shooting glances at our cab as if he were waiting for us.
The driver noticed him, too. 'That your house? Sure you want to get out?' he asked. 'I'll take you round the block, if you like, see if he disappears.'
'Thanks,' said Greg. 'I think we'll all right.' He hopped out of the cab and I got out behind him, a little afraid even though he was with me. As we got closer the figure stopped pacing and stood still. 'Hello, Lucas,' I heard Greg say.
Upstairs Lucas sat in the middle of our sofa. The coat was like a shell, such an integral part of him that neither of us tried to get him to take it off. He seemed so fragile I worried that without it he would disintegrate, just crumble into bits. He kept the hat on, too, and underneath it, his eyes were wide. I was reminded of his father on the night that he turned up at the house: he had that same febrile look. It was hard to calculate how much weight he had lost. He had been lighter than usual for the past year but now his body seemed to have changed completely. He was properly thin, the sort of thinness that comes only as a result of neglect. His skin had always been soft and smooth but now it looked papery and there were several nicks along his jaw, the result of the poor shave that he'd had about three days previously.
'Can I get you anything?' asked Greg.
'Could I have a cup of tea?'
I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. I was glad that I had told Greg the truth about Patrick's death. It was a secret that I hadn't been able to keep from him. He wouldn't let Lucas suspect that he knew. While the water boiled I stood at the window. It looked out on to the silent street and the tree whose bare branches reached back towards the house as if to touch it with entreating fingers. The street seemed to be waiting for something, perhaps the snow.
When I gave Lucas his tea, he slopped half of it on to the carpet. He seemed hardly to notice. There was a slight tremor in his lovely artistic hands as they cradled the mug and his nails were bitten down to their quicks. I felt a sudden urge to put my arms around him and tell him that everything was going to be all right.
He must have felt me looking at him because he glanced up and gave me an uneven smile. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'For turning up like this. I had to see you.'
'That's OK,' said Greg. 'It's no problem.'
'I needed to apologise.'
'For what?'
'Being such a nightmare. For all this shit about my family.'
'Lucas, it was beyond your control. It was between Patrick and your father. You're not to blame,' I said.
He let his gaze drift around the room, taking in the new rug that my parents had given us for Christmas and the lamp that had been by the bed in Greg's old flat, now promoted. Seeing the place through his eyes, I saw that it must look settled. We had an orchid on the mantelpiece - that had been Martha's housewarming present - and photographs on the side table, including one of Greg and me that my brother had taken at my parents' house. I had seen Lucas notice it earlier. I knew he would recognise the background.
He seemed to come out of his reverie and his eyes met mine again. 'I also wanted to tell you that things are going to change. I'm sorry for making things difficult between us. And I see what you mean now: I shouldn't live at Stoneborough all the time. You're right: I can't go on like this, cut off from real life. Can I smoke?'
I passed him an ashtray and he lit a cigarette and drew on it avidly. 'I don't want to be like my dad,' he said. 'I don't want to drink and drink until I lose everything that matters to me. I came very close to that.' He looked at me again and I had to look away.
'But that's not all. I see what you mean about Danny now. All this time you've been warning me about him and I wouldn't listen. You were right, Jo.'
It seemed too much to hope for that now, when I had almost despaired, Lucas should finally see. 'What changed?' I asked. I could feel my heart lifting in my chest.
'He has. I don't know why. You know he's split up with Elizabeth?'
I nodded, although I didn't tell him how. I didn't want to raise the subject of Diana now, when it seemed we were about to broach the topic that had been verboten for so long.
'He flies off the handle. This morning I refused to give him money and he went into a rage. I've never seen him like that. It was frightening. He's always been mercurial, I know. But I never thought it would be directed at me.'
'What did he do? Did he hurt you?'
He looked at me solemnly. 'No. Not this time. But he's asking for more and more money. I don't know what he's spending it on. It's not Elizabeth any more so what is it? Maybe it's drugs - maybe that's why he's so irrational. To be honest, I'm scared. I feel like I can't say no to him in case ...'
'In case what?'
He shook his head. 'I don't know. Maybe I'm overreacting. I just thought I should tell someone, that's all.' He stood up suddenly. 'I should go. It's time for me to stop keeping you up all night with my problems.' He grinned apologetically. 'It's late. Why don't you stay? Look, I'm working in Birmingham tomorrow. I'm aiming to be there by ten. I could take you back to Stoneborough first thing,' said Greg. Lucas looked at him, seeming to weigh it up in his mind. For a moment I thought he was going to agree.
'Go on,' I said. 'Stay. I'll bunk off work tomorrow and we can spend the day together. I'd like that.'
'No. I should go back tonight. And I've got the car here anyway.'
'Don't drive now,' I said. 'You look exhausted.'
'I'm fine. I haven't been drinking.'
He was at the door. 'I'll see myself out,' he said.
'Lucas ...'
'Yes?'
'Wait a minute. Come here.' I went towards him and put my arms round him. Despite his thinness, he pulled me against him with surprising strength. My nose was against the shoulder of his coat. He smelt clean, the smell of his soap powder as familiar to me as my own scent. I returned the pressure of the hug and found I didn't want to let him go. 'I'm so glad things are beginning to straighten themselves out,' I said. 'It's really good to see you a bit happier.'
'I am happier,' he said. 'And thank you.'
'There's nothing to thank me for.' I raised my face and looked at him. His large eyes were fixed on mine. 'You know that you mean the world to me.'
'I don't know what I'd do without you,' he said, smiling.
'Good to see you, Lucas, and look after yourself.' Greg shook his hand as we moved apart. 'We'll see you soon.'
Lucas turned to go and then paused to look back at us again. His face was like a pale moon across which a shadow was slowly moving. He nodded goodbye and then he was gone. I heard his footsteps drumming on the three flights of stairs down and then the slam of the front door, softened by distance. I pushed up the sash window and called goodbye to him again but I was too high and the breeze took my voice before it could reach him. He crossed the street to the Jaguar, which I hadn't seen earlier, got in and pulled away. I watched until his taillights disappeared around the corner.
Greg left at just after seven, before the sun had even begun to rise. I went down to the car to wave him off. Ice was shining along the street. No one had taken the spot that the Jaguar had occupied the previous evening, I saw: the marks of Lucas's tyres were still distinct.
'Get inside, Jo - you'll freeze,' Greg said, pulling me in for another kiss.
'I can't. I've got to make sure you're mine before you go. I can't have one of those Birmingham girls stealing you.'
He laughed and kissed me again. 'I think you're safe.'
He got into the car at last, promising to text to let me know he had arrived safely. I waved from the doorstep until he rounded the corner then ran back upstairs for a shower. My own schedule for the morning was busy. I had an interview to do with the headmistress of a large state senior school in Putney. It was also deadline day, which meant I would have to write up the piece in the space of two hours.
As I might have predicted, the interview overran. The headmistress hadn't been as stern as she'd sounded when I called; in fact, she'd been rather talkative and it was half-past twelve by the time I was able to make my way back to the office. The wind blowing down Putney High Street was excoriating and even without it, the air itself was so cold that I felt as though it were freezing my face on to my skull; my forehead and cheekbones began to ache. The sky was a mousy, insipid yellow and even as I walked, the first flakes of the long-promised snow began to sift down around me. With the wind, a heavy snowfall would cause drifts in the country, even if it didn't have the opportunity to settle in town. I hoped Greg had got to the Midlands before it started.
I'd had my phone off all morning and when I got to my desk I switched it on to see if he'd sent a text. There wasn't one but there were seven missed calls. They couldn't have been from the office: my arrival had been greeted with the usual indifference. Please God, I thought, let him not have had an accident. My heart in my mouth, I scrolled through the menu until it showed me the numbers. There was only one: Lucas's mobile.
I rang it and while I listened to the tone I thought how worried he had been about Danny. He didn't pick up and I was diverted to his answer service. I tried the landline instead but it rang for a long time before the automated voice told me that there was no one available to take my call. I rang the mobile again and this time left a message, asking him to get in touch as soon as he could. I began to dial Martha's number then remembered that she was away in Paris, a surprise that John had arranged.
Outside the snow was beginning to fall with intent. The flakes were larger and moved past the window with a hypnotic regularity. I thought about Greg again. Usually I tried not to call him at work but I was sure that no one would mind him being interrupted briefly today, given the weather. I called his mobile and was surprised when it rang but he didn't answer. Normally if he was in a meeting and couldn't be disturbed he switched his phone off. If it was on, he almost invariably answered. I left him a message asking him just to let me know that he was OK and then tried Lucas again. Nothing. My unease ratcheted up another level. I went outside for a cigarette while I thought about what to do. I had to smoke quickly: my hands were red with cold after a minute. In my pocket my mobile vibrated as a message arrived. It was from Lucas. Two words: 'I'm sorry.'
My heart started to hammer. What did he mean? I wanted to talk to Greg. I tried his mobile fruitlessly one more time and then made a decision.
Back at my computer I brought up Google and typed in the name of the company in Birmingham. It was a family firm, I knew, dynamic but still small. They would know where he was on the premises and put me through to him. I would apologise later for interrupting if it turned out to be nothing.
The receptionist's voice had the musical cadence of the Black Country. Embarrassed at sounding like the over worried girlfriend that I was, I explained that I was trying to get hold of him. 'Greg Sorrell?' she said. 'Will you hold on a minute, please?' I heard her put the receiver on her desk and get up. Somewhere in the background her voice mingled with a deeper male one in low conversation.
'Hello?' she said, picking back up again. 'I've just asked our MD, who he was supposed to be meeting today. I'm afraid he hasn't arrived.'
I told Stephen I wasn't feeling well and left the office as quickly as possible, not even bothering to turn off my computer. I couldn't have cared less about the deadline. He could sack me if he wanted to. My heart was pounding as I ran to the tube and it didn't slow down in the three-quarters of an hour it took me to get back to Kilburn. The trains were running even more haphazardly than usual, the snow affecting the track where it lay overground at the ends of the lines. I stood the whole way, as if somehow that might make the journey quicker.
The car was parked ten minutes' walk away from the station and I was still wearing the heels that I'd put on for the meeting. Although the snow wasn't yet thick on the ground, enough had fallen to cover the pavement and, where other feet had pressed it down, it was slippery as soap. Several times I felt myself about to fall and readjusted only at the last minute. When I finally reached the car, I found there wasn't enough petrol in it to get me all the way to the house. I would have to stop at a garage. And I still hadn't heard from Greg. My mind was presenting me with images of his car upturned on an icy carriageway or tangled beyond recognition in a terrible wreck. They made me sick to my stomach.
Though it was still only mid-afternoon, the traffic wasn't light and it took twenty minutes just to get on to the North Circular. The snow was falling fast and the wipers kept up a steady beat as they cleared the windscreen again and again. To anyone else on the road, my driving must have looked dangerously erratic. I was accelerating too quickly, then having to stop sharp almost at once to avoid hitting the car in front. I would have given anything then to have been able to teleport myself to the house or even to have had an easier journey out of town. It wasn't until I reached the M40 that there was any clear road ahead of me at all. I put my foot to the floor and pushed the poor car as hard as I could. I didn't doubt that something had happened at Stoneborough, but what? Had Lucas finally made a stand against Danny? Had Danny retaliated? I knew that, if he had, he would have had no qualms about applying pressure exactly where it would hurt Lucas most. If Danny had threatened to leave, I feared Lucas would have broken down; he wasn't mentally strong enough any more. I felt my pulse accelerate.
As the snow brought the night in early and the light began to fade, the temperature dropped further still. I took my hands off the wheel for a second or two to rub them together, hoping to get the blood flowing into my fingertips again. Out towards High Wycombe, where the land fell away from the road into fields and smallholdings, everything was the same white. Under any other circumstances I would have thought it beautiful. There were gritters out but, while I was grateful for the parts of the carriageway that they had already done, they were like pack animals, slow-moving and happily oblivious to my desperate need to get through the bottlenecks of traffic they caused, especially where the road narrowed to two lanes.
As soon as I left the motorway after the cut through the Chilterns, the roads grew more hazardous still. No gritters had been through the web of lanes that led to the house. The car slid often but I couldn't make myself slow down any more. When I reached Stoneborough village, it was like a fantasy of English winter. The thatched cottages were covered with a layer of snow that looked like icing on gingerbread. On the ground it had hardly been disturbed at all. Mine was perhaps the third car that had been through since it started. The pond was iced over and the reeds around it offered a stiff resistance to the wind.
There were no lights on at the cottage that I now knew to be Elizabeth's; it looked closed up, as if she had gone away. I drove on, and after a few minutes I reached the bottom of the track up to the house. The wood on my left was already a mass of impenetrable darkness and the drive itself was visible only as far as the arc of my headlights. I had the feeling that I was not at the start of a road but on the edge of a hole that, if I chose to venture further, would take me deep underground. Shaking my shoulders to rid myself of the feeling, I turned the car slowly, feeling the wheels slide sideways. The snow in front of me, although not so deep as where the ground was unsheltered, was crisp and virgin. The pounding in my ears started immediately, quickly falling into a rhythm with the beat of the wipers. I realised that the night of the party had enabled it to widen its reach beyond the house permanently. Above me the trees were bare of leaves just like the first time we'd come here, when I'd thought of an enchanted wood that would ensnare all who ventured in.
My chest eased with relief as I turned on to the gravel and saw Greg's car. I said a silent prayer of thanks. He'd been able to get here quicker than me, of course. And he would be there to help me with whatever waited inside.
The front door was wide open.
There were no lights on. The house stared blindly into the dying afternoon. I got out of the car and felt my feet sink into the snow. I stumbled up the path, slipping in my heels. Fear made me hesitate a second on the doorstep but I went in, feeling the tempo of the beat in my ears accelerate again. I flung open the drawing-room door, hoping that I would find them around the fire, not having noticed that the light had gone, but there was no one there. The room looked like a squat. There were glasses and bottles everywhere, and plates bearing the remnants of meals long ago digested. The ashtrays were full to overflowing. Newspapers and food wrappers littered the carpet. I went over to the fireplace. It was cold.
The light had gone almost completely in the hall and, as I crossed it, something crunched under my feet. I stopped still at once. The floor was covered with a rough powder, like coarse sand. There were also large chunks of whatever it was, lumps and uneven cubes of the stuff. Turning on the lamp, I saw traces of colour amongst it, rich reds and pomegranate pink and gold and a Mediterranean sky-blue. It was plaster and I knew where it came from.
The painting - that magnificent, horrible work of art - was ruined. There were craters in it, huge areas gone, like a patch of no man's land above my head. It had been shot at, it must have been. It was too high to get at any other way, impossible to throw paint over or spray from a can. The faces of both Patrick and Justin had been obliterated, blown away. I stepped out from under it, as if away from the scene of a crime.
In the kitchen every surface was covered with unwashed pans and crockery and empty bottles. The kettle was cold when I pressed my fingers against it. A thin film of dust had settled over everything and there was a rich stink of rotting food. The cleaner couldn't have been for weeks. I ran back down the passage into the hall. 'Lucas!' I screamed through the heart of the house. 'Greg!' The beating in my ears intensified and I made myself look up again. Even now, damaged as his physical presence was, I could still feel his power. Patrick. The place was tense with excitement, as if he couldn't wait for me to discover the latest move in his game. 'What have you done?' I asked him out loud. 'What have you done?'
I searched each room in turn, running from one to the next, throwing doors open, leaving the lights on behind me, partly in haste, partly for comfort and their protection against the shadows. All the bedrooms were empty.
I hesitated again before going up the second flight of stairs to the gallery landing. There was my first bedroom at the house, Lucas's room, the studio.
There was nothing in mine. The sheets on the bed were pulled as tight as ever, not a wrinkle on them. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door to Lucas's room. The air smelt stale. Again there were dirty plates and two whisky bottles by the bed, empty. On the bedside table, the glass broken, was the photo of us all that Greg and I had given him on the night of the party. The duvet had slipped on to the floor. My heart was pounding so hard now that the blood was booming in my ears.
The door of the study was closed. It was the last room. If they weren't in the house, where would they be? It was too cold to be outside. Had something happened that meant they had had to leave? But Greg's car was still on the drive.
I opened the door.
They weren't there. A glance in the half-light showed the chairs, the roll-top desk but no Lucas, no Greg, no Danny. And then I saw it, at first just a shape on the carpet, a formless mass in the gloom. In a horrible dawning, I realised it was a body, a man's body in a heavy outdoor coat.
I crossed the room and sank to my knees beside him. I put my hand on his face and tried to turn it up towards me. It was Greg.
I must have given a small cry because he made a low sound in his throat. 'Jo,' he said and I wanted to weep with gratitude.
'What's happened? What's happened to you?'
He attempted to move his body towards me but couldn't. He took a sharp in-breath and even in the near-darkness I saw the bolt of pain that went across his face.
'What happened?'
'I've been shot. I can't move.'
'Shot?'
'My hip. I don't know, I can't tell. It's broken, shattered. Jo, I think I've lost a lot of blood.'
It was then I realised that my knees were wet. I put my hands down on the carpet next to me and it was sodden, the pile of it spongy and cold. I gave another cry but this time not from shock but fear. I moved my hand down to where his coat layover his thigh and very gently lifted it. The material was soaked.
He swallowed and I saw that he was trying not to show me how much pain he was in, not to frighten me. 'Call an ambulance,' he said. 'Call an ambulance and then go and find Lucas.'
'I can't. I can't leave you.'
'Call an ambulance and find Lucas. Please, Jo.' He tried to move and caused himself another spasm of pain. 'Please. He's a danger to himself.'