She watched Hanna straighten up, Linus’s suitcase in her hand, waiting patiently for him to reach them as though she was merely in line for a taxi.
‘Mrs Mogert?’ The man stopped in front of her. He appeared to be in his late thirties to mid-forties, and was wearing dark-green heavy-duty waterproof trousers and a matching polo shirt. He looked more like a gardener than a . . . whatever he was. Security guard? ‘Allow me to take that for you. Would you follow me, please?’
And with the suitcase in his hand, he headed back into the trees again, without even so much as a glance Linus’s way. Hanna stared at his retreating back with an expression Bell couldn’t explain, only feel, but after a moment’s hesitation, she took the girls’ hands and followed on the path too. Linus came after, walking with the stiffly swinging arms of a toy soldier, the resigned fate of the prisoner.
Bell reached for him as he passed and took his hand in hers. ‘Ready for an adventure?’ she winked, forcing a jollity she didn’t feel. For his sake, she had to somehow find some positives in this perverse situation.
He nodded uncertainly. ‘You won’t leave me here?’
‘Hope to die,’ she said, crossing her heart. ‘Now, look out for the rottweilers, okay?’
He looked surprised, then managed a small smile. ‘If you keep a lookout for the sniper rifles and camouflaged man-traps.’
‘Deal,’ she said with a sharp nod, beginning to walk.
They strode through the woodland, moving through deep shade into sudden puddles of sunlight, the sun flashing over their faces like a playful sprite as they wove between the trees. Ahead, the twins were chattering like busy birds, stopping every few metres to admire a flower or pick up a particularly straight stick that might pass for a fairy wand. Hanna walked in silence behind them, oblivious to their games, her pale legs scissoring over the stones, slender as the birches, until after a few minutes, she stepped out of the wood and stood with the girls, bathed in a fierce light. Bell and Linus caught up with them a moment later, all of them taking in the view.
It was sensational, but not at all what she had expected of 007. It wasn’t a show space – all clipped box and clever topiary – but rather an old-fashioned garden, the sort that seemed to have fallen out of style. A real-life chintz, somewhat scruffy and overblown, it was as unlikely a thing to find in this landscape as a giraffe on an iceberg. Clover and daisies and buttercups speckled the grass, a few mature specimen trees dotted around, old flowerbeds a riotous jumble of colour with butterflies flocking to agapanthus and buddleia stems, towers of frothy pale blue delphiniums nodding in the breeze, pink and yellow roses rambling wildly up arched trellises, an old oak swing dangling from a four-metre length of thick nautical hemp rope.
The long, gently sloping lawn was fringed by the dense wood, hiding this garden and home from the curious gazes on passing boats. The house itself matched the garden, like a glove to a coat – wide and two storeys high, with a columned portico in the centre and a mansard roof, a row of seven large rectangular windows winking back at them. It was grand, but nonetheless stamped as an island house by the vertically grooved wooden walls that were the vernacular of properties in the archipelago. Those were usually a brownish-red (and significantly smaller) but this was a bold, juicy tangerine. A Bond villain’s lair it was not. Dr No wouldn’t have been seen dead in an orange house. It was far too . . . cheery.
Bell wished she didn’t like it. She wished she hated all of it – the gracious, somewhat tired-looking house, the enchanting, overgrown, blowsy gardens. ‘It’s going to be a nightmare playing football on that lawn,’ she muttered to Linus.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he breathed back.
‘Dibs I get to play downhill.’
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Yes it is. I’m way older than you. You’ve got youth on your side.’
He looked at her through narrowed eyes, wanting to lose himself in their game, but she could see the glint of fear in them and knew he was faking it as much as her.
Hanna looked across at them both, seeming baffled by their role-play as a tiny frown puckered her brow. She turned to Linus and crouched down so that her knees dipped into the cool grass. ‘Do you see how lovely