At best, in the fields, the spring of the earth giving under my heels or sheltering in a slate-roofed hut among the nettles as the rain fell, I would fall into a sort of animal daze, and sometimes an animal pleasure, at the breeze rattling through the beeches, at the spreading lichen in mint and peach and mustard on a fallen oak, at the red-tailed kite sailing over a wood.

As children, Peter and I had often played detectives. We’d searched for clues—the red scrap of cotton caught on a fence, a single sheet of newspaper folded up and tucked away in the drawer of an old desk found decaying in the Savernake. Now I wondered if we’d not missed the point, missed the fact that the world itself was readable: the formations of the clouds, the tiny spray of punctures in the cross-section of a rotting trunk, rain spattering the surface of the river, the slender ribs slowly emerging through the fur of the corpse of a fox. Were these not also clues of some kind, a kind of message?

At work I did the books. I added the figures. But what I found on the walks was a realm where there were no sums, no ledger of accounts. Outside of the human world, there is no bankruptcy. In the heart of the Savernake, among the old trees, trees that were older than the oldest standing building I’d ever seen, older than Peter’s father’s church, I sat with my head in my hands and I did not want to go back. What would have happened next I’ll never know. If I would have found a way out by myself. If I would have survived the finding of it. If David had not come back. If we had not gone to the manor in the snow and played the game again.

CHAPTER 12

PRIVATE DETECTIVE

My private detective had offices near Finsbury Park. Over the years, I had had a personal trainer, a colorist, a nutritionist, even—for one whole hour—a therapist. Why not a private detective? As I took the tube up to my appointment with Mr. Hutchinson, whose listed services included video surveillance, vehicle tracking, and honey-trapping, the visit had a feeling of inevitability about it. Too much TV, I supposed, too many films. One day wouldn’t I also confront the serial killer in an abandoned building, defuse the bomb in the final seconds, untie the screaming girl from the railroad tracks? All still possible. But I would never see my mother again, not ever, not anywhere.