Chapters (23)
Simon Barton had not come home all night. He had phoned Joanna at eleven to say that a meeting in Carlisle had taken longer than he had expected and he would stay on at the hotel where it had been held. Joanna accepted his explanation without question and asked no awkward questions about the meeting.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow night,’ Simon said cheerfully. ‘At about eight.’
In the morning Joanna woke unusually early and decided she would go to see Alex at Monk’s Wood. Alex wouldn’t mind, she thought, despite the previous day’s phone call. They were supposed to be friends, weren’t they? And if she was still in bed when Joanna arrived it would serve her right for being so bloody unfriendly the day before. She deserved to be woken up. Joanna needed to talk to her about Cassie. She needed reassurance that her bloody parents were right and the private school in Dorset was the best place for the girl.
All the same, when she got to Monk’s Wood it was still very early so she decided to park by the pub and walk down the lane to the house. It would give Alex an extra quarter of an hour in bed. The day was still and cloudy, very mild. There were already midges under the trees so she could imagine that it was summer, like the time she had first walked with Simon on the hills.
She saw his car parked outside the house. Before she had time to consider the implication of it, the front door opened and he came out, dressed in a suit all ready for work, his hair still wet from the shower. He carried a briefcase. Alex was behind him. Joanna saw that she was taller than him. She wore a silk dressing gown with an extravagant oriental design embroidered on the back. Her hair was loose, longer than Joanna could ever remember having seen it. Simon put down the briefcase and kissed her. He pushed his hands underneath the dressing gown so it swung open and Joanna could see the long freckled legs and the greying pubic hair. They turned and she saw his hands moving beneath the silk so the pattern seemed to come to life. They broke apart. Alex was laughing. Simon picked up his briefcase and drove away, without seeing Joanna watching him from the trees.
Alex stood by the door to wave him off. As she turned to go back into the house she thought she glimpsed something moving across the grass between the trees, but when she looked again she decided she had imagined it. Upstairs the baby began to cry.