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There was a noise.
Cate tensed as she listened to Jack cross the landing at the end of the hallway.
He was looking for her.
Gathering the things together, she put them back in the box, hastily retying the lid with the ribbon.
It ought to go back where she found it. Or she should show it to Jack.
That was the right thing to do.
‘Cate? Cate?’ He was heading down the stairs. ‘Cate!’ Instead she tucked the box under her arm, racing soundlessly along the corridor, heart pounding, back to her room.
They began their work at the front of the house, with the entrance hall, working fastidiously at what seemed like a painfully slow speed. Little stickers went on each item with a number. Each number corresponded to a description dictated to Cate by Jack and then they took a photograph, sometimes several from different angles. Every figurine, every painting, every detail of the lives that were once lived here were recorded and priced for quick sale.
Each piece had an estimated value. Cate filled in the figures next to the descriptions in uncharacteristically careful, neat handwriting, the total mounting by the minute. It was mind-numbing. How sad that all these objects, acquired and beloved through generations, were to be reduced to nothing but a few lines in a catalogue. Endsleigh had been a home once – a refuge against life and the world. Some of these things had been favourites; treasured. Now she and Jack were the last people ever to stay there in its incarnation as a private home. A couple of strangers; strangers to the house and its history, strangers even to each other. Soon bulldozers would be knocking down Mrs Williams’s low-ceilinged cottage to make way for a luxury spa; the front hallway transformed into a reception area and bar. Already she could imagine the delight of tourists as they arrived for their country-house weekend.
Jack was good at his job, clever and concise, reeling off complicated accounts of styles and conditions of objects without pausing for breath. And Cate was grateful for the lack of demanding interaction between them. He dictated; she recorded. She was invisible and it soothed her to forget for a while who she was and how she’d ended up here. By the time they stopped at seven, her fingers ached from the effort of trying to write clearly and yet at speed.
‘Shall we leave it here for tonight?’ he suggested.
She nodded gratefully, filing away the forms in a folder.
‘I think I can smell something cooking,’ he added, yawning and stretching his arms above his head.
They wandered into the kitchen. Mrs Williams had been hard at work – the shepherd’s pie was browning nicely in the oven and two place settings were laid out on the long pine table along with a green salad, a bowl of fruit and some cheese.
‘Thank God for that!’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘I’m famished!’
‘And yet where is the invisible Mrs Williams?’ Cate wondered, leaning up against the worktop. ‘This is like something out of a fairy tale; Beauty and the Beast.’
‘Don’t we all wish we had staff like that?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Oh, and here’s just the thing!’ Jack picked up a bottle of red wine airing on the worktop next to two glasses. ‘Can I pour you one?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Then he remembered his conversation with Rachel, some mention of her father being an alcoholic. Of course, he wasn’t meant to know anything about her. He poured out a glass. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Why would I mind?’
He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘No reason.’
Feeling self-conscious, he smiled and sipped, as if to prove that he was completely ignorant of her family history.
Cate frowned, unable to disguise her irritation. Rachel had obviously been talking. ‘It’s so hot in here!’ She turned away, looking out of the window.
‘You’re right. Let’s eat outside instead.’
‘Fine.’
Once out in the garden, the tension relaxed. It was good to get away from the heat of the kitchen with its ancient Aga. They sat under the chestnut tree again at the same low table where they’d had their tea, carrying the food out on trays.
A cool breeze rustled through the foliage. And suddenly, after the pleasant anonymity of working together for hours, the strangeness of being alone was palpable again.
‘So,’ Cate pushed her food around on her plate, ‘have you always been a valuer?’
It sounded dry and stupid.
Jack looked across at her. ‘No. You’re an artist, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ She hadn’t expected him to bat the conversation back at her quite so quickly.
‘What kind of work do you do?’
‘I paint. Reproductions.’
Up shot an eyebrow. ‘Really? You mean Whistler’s Mother and that sort of thing?’
She tore at a piece of bread. ‘I specialise in French and Russian eighteenth-century Romantic painting.’
‘The Enlightenment?’
‘Yes.’
He chuckled.
‘What?’
‘Rachel didn’t tell me you were a faker.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘Ever try to pass anything off?’
‘It’s all real,’ she said, jabbing the bread into a pocket of gravy. ‘It’s just not original. And yes, pieces get “passed off” all the time. Most of the work I do is for insurance purposes. Very few people can afford to lose a masterpiece, even a minor one, to theft or fire.’
‘I’ve offended you. I’m sorry. My mother always told me I had the social skills of a cabbage.’
‘I’m sure she was just being kind.’
He laughed. ‘Mothers are bound to be indulgent. So,’ he tried again, ‘why that period?’
‘I sort of fell into it.’
‘Into the Age of Reason?’
‘Someone asked me to do some work for them. A trompe l’oeil in a quite amazing flat overlooking the park. I found I had a certain aptitude for it. Also, there’s considerably more scope for economic success. After all,’ she took a bite, ‘if you hang a copy of Sunflowers on your wall, everyone knows you’ve got a fake. But if you choose something more elusive, unknown…’
‘Very clever. Was that Constantine’s idea?’
His astuteness caught her off guard. She shifted. ‘Well, the commission did come through a client of his.’
‘He’s always been, shall we say…enterprising.’ He took another sip. ‘And what about your own work?’
‘This is my work.’
‘Of course. I just meant your own subject matter.’
Again, she felt wrong-footed. ‘I get paid very well. And there’s nothing particularly worthy about starving to death in a garret.’
He said nothing. But his expression was amused.
‘This is more sustainable.’
‘Well, yes. We must do what’s sustainable.’
‘Have you always been a valuer?’ she asked again, crisply.
He looked up, grinning. ‘No. My father had an antiques business in Islington. I trained as an auctioneer at Sotheby’s one wayward year after university before I came up with the brilliant idea of becoming an architect. Then, unfortunately, my father became ill. Parkinson’s. And I took over the business.’ He paused. ‘I should’ve sold it and moved on; just been brutal and done it that same year. Instead, I got stuck.’
‘In what way?’
‘Pretending to be my dad, I suppose.’
‘You don’t like it?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A job’s a job, right? And –’ he flashed her a smile – ‘at least it was sustainable. For a while, anyway. I was forced to sell a couple of years later.’
‘How is your father now?’
‘The truth is, it’s hard to tell. One day he’s quite bad and the next he seems like his old self. My mother is thinking of moving him to a nursing home. They live in Leicestershire now and I don’t see them as often as I’d like.’
‘And you never finished your training?’
He stabbed at a bit of salad. ‘I was married by then. To a girl who came into the shop to buy a mirror.’
‘I see. Did you sell her one?’
‘No, she couldn’t afford any. But I made her cups of tea and she used to stop in quite often on the pretext of finding one. In the end I gave her a really quite beautiful Edwardian overmantel.’ He smiled to himself, remembering. ‘I searched high and low for something decent I could afford to part with. I tried to act like I was going to give it away anyway. I don’t think she was fooled.’
‘But she married you. So it worked.’
‘Yes, it worked. I got the girl.’
‘But you sold the shop anyway.’
‘Turns out you need quite a lot of ambition to run your own business. After my wife’s death, I let it go.’ His eyes met hers. ‘She was killed in a car accident, two years ago.’
He said it simply; quickly. She wondered if he’d practised how to get it over with the least amount of emotion possible.
‘I’m so sorry.’
Cool air rushed around them.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
They ate in silence.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ Jack put his fork down. ‘That’s what everyone says – “I’m so sorry.” And I say “Thank you”, like I was buying a pint of milk in a shop. It’s somehow…wrong, inadequate, that it should be reduced to that. And in the end, the whole thing gets reduced down to a single sentence. “That was the year my wife died.”’
She nodded. ‘The whole thing’s an absolute cunt.’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Yes, well…that’s one way of putting it.’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘It makes a change from people apologising.’
‘When my father died, I dreaded speaking to anyone I hadn’t seen in a while; going through the whole dance of clichés. It made me angry. At them, which of course was stupid.’
‘Were you close?’
‘He wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. But I don’t think it makes a difference. Mostly what I missed was the idea that one day it might be different. When he died the relationship became written in stone. It was too late to change it, even if I wanted to. Or could. And I was left, wandering around saying “Thank you” to a bunch of people who didn’t really want to talk about it and had no idea of what to say anyway.’
‘Yes,’ Jack conceded, taking another drink of wine, ‘it is a cunt.’
They watched a flock of house martins swoop in and out of the high hedges on the south side of the garden.
‘And what about you?’ He leaned back. ‘Married? Divorced? Widowed?’
She looked up sharply.
‘Or shall we leave all that?’
She stared at him a long time. ‘I’m…I was involved with someone.’
‘You have a boyfriend?’
‘It wasn’t quite so clearly defined.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You seem a little vague, Miss Albion.’
‘That’s my intention, Mr Coates.’
‘Do you instinctively balk at being defined, or simply in matters of the heart?’
