Deloitte,’ said Kit. He smiled. ‘I told you: I’ve been thinking, readjusting. We both need to get out of a rut – we need something to get excited about, even if that thing’s not Cambridge. So we’re going to set up our own business. You can still work part-time for your parents if you want, but mainly you’ll be working with me. You need more independence from your family – being there eight hours a day five days a week is too much. Your mum and dad need to see that you’re capable of doing something that wasn’t originally their idea, or your dad’s dad’s dad’s idea. That’ll help them to see you for what you are: a bright, capable, independent woman.’
I opened my mouth to tell him he couldn’t decide all this without consulting me, but he was too quick, and was already describing the next strand of his plan. ‘We’ll find a house we love – really love, even more than 17 Pardoner Lane. That won’t be hard. That’s one thing places like Spilling and Silsford have got over Cambridge – more unusual houses, more variety. In Cambridge almost everything’s a brick-built terrace.’
‘I love 17 Pardoner Lane,’ I said pointlessly. Now, for the first time and with startling clarity, it hit me that it was the perfect house, the only house I wanted, now that I was being told I couldn’t have it.
‘You’ll love the house we buy in the Culver Valley, I promise you,’ said Kit. ‘If you don’t, we won’t buy it. But you will. And then, once our business is a runaway success, and we’ve got pots of money, and you’ve shown your parents that you can manage on your own, without the almost non-existent salary they pay you . . .’
‘I thought I’d still be working for them part-time,’ I said. My leaving Monk & Sons altogether would bother Mum as much as the move to Cambridge would have.
‘At first, if you want to.’ Kit nodded. ‘But once our business really takes off, once we’re clearing so much from it that, really, it’d be ridiculous for you to still be earning seven hundred quid a month or whatever it’d be as Monk & Sons’ part-time book-keeper, then you’ll just have to tell your parents you’ve got better things to do – say, “I’m sorry, Dad, but if I wanted to do voluntary work, I’d sign up with the Red Cross.” ’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘So what’s this hugely profitable business of ours going to be?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t a clue,’ Kit said cheerfully, relieved that I was looking and sounding happier. ‘I’ll think of something, though, and it’ll be good, whatever it is. And, in five years’ time, we can talk about moving to Cambridge again, maybe, or somewhere else – London, Oxford, Brighton – and you’ll find you won’t be half as scared then as you are now, because you’ll already be well on the way to’ – he mimed peeling something away from something else – ‘extricating yourself.’
‘That’s why Melrose Cottage is so beautiful,’ I tell Sam Kombothekra, whose eyes look glassy from listening to me for so long. He’s probably drawing the conclusion round about now that no sane person would make such a melodrama of a simple plan to relocate to another part of the country. Therefore I must be insane, and likely to hallucinate dead women in pools of blood on my computer screen. ‘Melrose Cottage is the name of our house in Little Holling,’ I add, in case he didn’t notice the sign on the door.
‘It’s certainly chocolate-box perfect,’ he agrees.
‘It had to be. To make up for . . . everything.’ It’s seven years since Kit and I had that conversation in the office at Monk & Sons. He hasn’t mentioned the possibility of moving to Cambridge or London or Brighton again, not even once. London would certainly be out of the running; now that he works there several days a week, he’s started to bring home stories of how hellish it is: litter-strewn, noisy, grey. It’s the sort of thing my mum, who has never been to London, says, but it depresses me more when it comes from Kit, who’s supposed to be my ally in the struggle for freedom.
The Christmas after we moved into Melrose Cottage, Kit bought me the ‘4/100’ King’s College Chapel print. ‘I thought we should have a picture to remind us of Cambridge, since we’re not going to be living there,’ he