In the stables it’s cooler. I have pretended for a long time that I am not frightened of anything, that there is nothing left that can frighten me. I have removed myself to a safe place, so it is so. My self comes back to my body, unsteady, circling. David shivers and I shiver.

I put out my hand and put it over his heart. After a moment, he does the same. The pads of his fingers pressing gently against my chest through the cotton of my shirt.

This is the other game, and I do not know how to separate them.

CHAPTER 9

ENCHANTED PALACE I

Fridays and Saturdays, I worked for Darren in the office, matching purchase orders with invoices and delivery notes, then stapling them together. I slid the drawers out of the big metal filing cabinets and rifled through pink carbon copies for serial numbers matching the ones on a list Jules had given me. When that was done, I fired up the computer and played about with the payroll program with the manual open on my lap until Marcus came to pick me up.

Em finished at the tearooms at three. She came out in her black and whites with the little cap still on and got changed in the back of the van as we took the road out to the manor.

“Tips any good?”

“Busload of Americans!” She was unpinning her cap, her hair—mouse brown and poker straight—falling over her face.

“Did you get us anything?”

“Might have a few scones about my person, my love.” She smoothed down her hair and began unbuttoning the white frilly blouse they made her wear. Marcus kept his eyes glued to the road. In stillness, she could sometimes take on the look of a lady from an old painting, keen-eyed and white-throated, with a smile that guarded secrets. But Em was not often still, and when she spoke it was broad Wiltshire. The tights and skirt came off. The maid disappeared. She had on a cream satin padded bra we’d nicked from Dorothy Perkins and a pair of yellow Snoopy underpants, then a T-shirt and shorts.

“Where’s Peter?”

“At a wedding I’m guessing.” Peter picked up tidy sums playing the “Wedding March” and “Jerusalem” for couples getting hitched. “Least no one was answering when I called.”

But I was wrong, because when we got to the manor, Peter was already there, quite at home, sitting on a blanket I recognized from the vicarage conservatory, David beside him in the sunshine.

He told the others what he had told me. The school trip to Italy at Easter, the theft of the coat and cards. Same details, same confidential tone. I tried to look like it was news.

“How did you get back into England?” Em asked. “Didn’t they have your name on a list at the airports?”