the second he met her, moving to Cambridge without her would have felt like a terrible failure.’
‘You’re saying he fell in love with her?’ Charlie enjoyed trying to make Simon say the word ‘love’.
He neatly avoided it. ‘I doubt he’s capable of normal emotions,’ he said. ‘Everything he feels is couched in terms of a want. He’ll have decided he wanted Connie as much as he wanted Cambridge, but she had strong roots in Silsford – she was a Monk before she married Bowskill, as in Monk & Sons. Her family’s lived in Little Holling for generations. It won’t have taken Bowskill long to realise that prising Connie out of the Culver Valley was going to be hard. Connie told me herself: the whole ethos of no one ever leaving is woven into the fabric of her family. There was a glimmer of hope for Bowskill, though – he quickly saw that Connie’s parents drove her insane. She was desperate to get away from them. Cleverly, he didn’t put any pressure on her or try to persuade her. He encouraged her to spend time with her parents, telling her what a great thing a close family was – he said that all the time, Connie told me. He was relying on her getting so sick of the Monks that she’d suggest moving away. He probably had to wait longer than he’d initially hoped, but it happened eventually – one night they went out for dinner and Connie told him how bored of the Culver Valley she was. Bowskill wasted no time in telling her he’d been offered a job by Deloitte Cambridge, a promotion—’
‘Too much of a coincidence,’ Charlie cut in.
‘Not a coincidence – a lie,’ said Simon. ‘If I ring Deloitte Cambridge on Monday and ask, I know what they’ll tell me: they didn’t offer Bowskill anything. He went to them, soon as he could after finding out Connie wanted to move, and told them they had to let him transfer. Not a promotion, necessarily – any job, though I suppose it could have been a promotion. I’m sure Bowskill had spent years, by then, making sure he impressed all the relevant people. Deloitte must have agreed to the move, because Bowskill and Connie started looking at houses in Cambridge. They found the perfect house.’
‘18 Pardoner Lane,’ said Sam.
‘All the “perfects” seemed to be lining up,’ Simon went on. ‘Perfect city, perfect woman, perfect house, perfect job. Someone like Bowskill’s happiest when he’s tantalisingly close to realising his dream – before it comes true, and he wakes up the next day to find that he’s still the same sad fuck he was before. Fuck, is this traffic ever going to move?’ Simon banged the window angrily with his fist. ‘I can’t even take the pavement route, not without killing fifty tourists. You know Cambridge better than I do, Char – shall we get out and run? How far are we from Bentley Grove, on foot?’
‘This is the worst bit,’ Charlie told him. ‘Let’s sit it out. Once we get to that roundabout ahead, we’ll be okay.’
‘It must have been a big blow, when he didn’t get 18 Pardoner Lane,’ said Sam.
‘He could have got it, if he’d been less arrogant,’ Simon told him. ‘There was someone else interested, but when Hugh Jepps broke the news to Bowskill, Bowskill accused him of lying, said he didn’t believe this other buyer existed, that it was a ruse to bump up the price. He walked away – told Jepps to get back to him once the other bloke had lost interest. You can see where the idea for his and Jackie’s fake bidding-war scam came from.’ The car swerved sharply to the left; the wheel scraped the kerb.
‘Simon, don’t,’ Charlie groaned. ‘The pavement’s not an option – let it go.’
‘By the time Bowskill worked out that the other buyer story was true, a deal had been done,’ Simon said. ‘The Beth Dutton people were selling to the Gilpatricks. Bowskill would have had a hard time accepting that. That’s where Jackie Napier came in. Hugh Jepps had told Bowskill the house was sold, there was nothing that could be done, but Bowskill sensed that Jackie was more sympathetic to his cause.’
‘Which, if she wanted to shag him senseless, she would have been,’ Charlie chipped in cheerfully.
‘She was.’ Simon’s solemn tone cut through her frivolity. ‘She rang the vendors and asked them to reconsider – probably told them how keen Bowskill was, that he’d