A Foreign Country

59

Barbara was correct.

Pausing in front of the first stile in the meadow, about four hundred metres from the Shand house, CUCKOO reached into his trouser pocket and powered up his mobile phone.

‘I’m afraid you’re unlikely to get a signal,’ Amelia told him, asking for his hand so that he could steady her as she crossed over the stile. ‘I normally have to drive across to Fovant if I want to check my messages. Occasionally one can get a feeble signal on the hill.’

She pointed ahead of her, in the direction of Ebbesbourne St John.

‘Why don’t you have a booster fitted to your house?’ CUCKOO asked, an edge of surprise in his voice. ‘Don’t MI6 like to be in touch with you?’

‘That’s the whole point of this place.’ Amelia watched as CUCKOO swung a leg over the stile, following her. ‘Isolation. Retreat. I like to be somewhere that nobody can find me. My privacy is very important to me. You know what it’s like to be at the mercy of text messages, constant calls on one’s BlackBerry, endless emails from colleagues. My weekends are sacred. When I take over next month, they’ll be posting security guards in the lane, wiring the house for CCTV. These are the last moments of solitude you and I will know for years.’

It was a deft coda, planting CUCKOO with the idea that Amelia envisaged their relationship stretching far into the future. She found it curious to reflect on how much she was enjoying turning the tables; she had expected to feel physically ill in his presence, but after only a few minutes in the house, CUCKOO had become little more than a cipher to her. Those aspects of his character that she had once found endearing — his sensitivity, his shyness, his careful and enquiring intellect — she now viewed as faults, weaknesses. She considered most of his conversation to be repetitive and lacking in insight; anecdotes and jokes were already beginning to be repeated. His physical attractiveness, which she had once, embarrassingly, prided herself on, was now evidence only of an extreme vanity, bordering on narcissism. The process by which Amelia had come to loathe CUCKOO was not all that different, she reflected, to the process by which she came to resent her former lovers. Those things she had most adored about him were now those things that she abhorred. She felt only an unequivocal determination to destroy him, borne of shame and the desperate desire to find François.

‘Merde,’ said CUCKOO.

He was patting his trousers, front and back, searching the inside pockets of his Barbour.

‘What is it?’

‘I forgot my cigarettes.’

Amelia felt an itch of alarm.

‘Does it matter? I hate it when you smoke.’

He looked at her as though she had betrayed him, a sudden sullen expression of his contempt.

‘What? Even outside, in the open air?’ It was the first time that he had raised his voice against her. Why the shift in his mood? Did he suspect that something was going on at the house, the forgotten cigarettes a ruse to go back? But then CUCKOO seemed to remember the need for tact and good manners and his characteristic charm returned. ‘I just like to smoke as I walk. It helps me to think, to relax.’

‘Of course,’ Amelia said. ‘But we’ll be home fairly soon.’ She gestured ahead at a wooded glade about a quarter of a mile to the west. ‘We can turn around at the end.’

CUCKOO was shifting from foot to foot. ‘No, I’ll run back,’ he said, and before Amelia could stop him, he had vaulted over the stile and started jogging towards the house. At that speed he would be there in less than a minute. She looked back along the valley for a sign of Kevin Vigors. He was nowhere to be seen.

‘François!’

CUCKOO stopped and turned around, frowning.

‘What?’

Slowly, Amelia took herself back over the stile and walked towards him, buying time with every step. When she was a few metres away, she reached into her coat pocket and took out her keys.

‘You’ll need these.’

‘Barbara can let me in,’ he replied, turning and starting to jog. He called back: ‘I’ll only be five minutes.’

And all Amelia could do was watch and wait.