trimmed down to the height of the new trellis. The olive stood erect in a pale terracotta urn on the new limestone terrace, and several new shrubs had been planted, as well as lots of squat dobs of green. The back was still lit by the low sun; despite the towering wall of my trees, and next to the trampoline, someone had created a bed out of railway sleepers. Her wildflower meadow? Still empty, it was bathed in a shaft of golden evening light; I could see insects whirling.
I chanced the boiling-water tap for another cup of tea and then, clasping it in my hands more as a prop than refreshment, stared about me. On the counter, next to the stove, was a small lasagne covered in clingfilm. The week before it had been a chicken pie. Before that, a stir-fry, the vegetables neatly chopped in preparation. Was that odd, or normal, to be so methodical? I worked with a woman at the library who had OCD and she told me that, after cleaning her teeth in the morning, she would prepare her toothbrush for the evening – even in the knowledge it would dry out. I asked if she thought that otherwise she would forget? She said it wasn’t about that, it was about fear and control.
The fridge was half empty: not much more than milk, orange juice, a bottle of wine, a pack of butter. No mint sauce or chutneys past their sell-by dates, no piece of old cheese disintegrating into clingfilm. I am not the best judge of these things but the pull-out cupboard that housed the PG Tips also seemed unnaturally neat, the boxes of tea lined up in height order. The other cupboards were the same: cereal packets, and jams perfectly displayed, plates stacked. Even the cutlery drawer was clinically tidy, none of the elastic bands and glue sticks, and muddle of tape measure and takeaway chopsticks that you find in most cutlery drawers. It’s a long time since you’ve been able to open mine. The effect was disconcerting. I thought of that film Sleeping with the Enemy, when Julia Roberts knows her ex-husband has been in the house because all the labels on her tin cans have been turned to face the same way. Not that order necessarily indicated the presence of a psychopath.
I’d been down into the basement where Max had now escaped to, the week before. I knew it had an enormous screen on one wall and a large, pale-grey linen, L-shaped sofa; not much else. The double sitting room, where Bea was ensconced in front of the TV, was equally minimalist; white shutters, a light-blue velvet sofa, some sheepskin rugs, that dangly swan-feather chandelier. The back half of the room, which I could see up some steps from where I was sitting, contained a black upright Yamaha piano, nothing else. There were no pictures. It was only the downstairs loo that was decorated, exclusively with things from Tom’s past; group photographs of his school rugby team and Cambridge college year, and a framed New Yorker cartoon of two cats waiting outside a mouse hole. Caption: ‘If we were lawyers this would be billable time.’
Upstairs was uncharted territory; even the builders hadn’t let me up there. My mind turned to it. I was about to say I didn’t mean to snoop, but I might as well be truthful: I did.
On the half-landing were two doors; the first opened onto a bedroom, a mirror image of Faith’s, but this one was square and bland and neutral. Next to this was a small bathroom decorated in shades of green and white; an unused cake of soap sat in a porcelain dish, both the dish and the soap shaped like shells. Half a flight up, the space had been reconfigured. The loft conversion had shrunk the landing, and whereas we had three doors, here were only two. The first opened onto the equivalent of my bedroom: a study containing a desk, computer, shelves of files, and neatly stacked piles of paper. The other door was closed. I hesitated for a moment before pushing it open.
It was a beautiful room – the same shape and size as my mother’s – with three large sash windows (invisibly double-glazed, I knew from talking to the builders). A door led to an en-suite bathroom. Fitted cupboards ran along one wall, and to the right, facing me, was a light oak four-poster bed; one of those modern ones with posts