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Back The Sandpit Save as PDF
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Also by Nicholas Shakespeare
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. PART ONE
  8. Chapter One
  9. Chapter Two
  10. Chapter Three
  11. Chapter Four
  12. Chapter Five
  13. Chapter Six
  14. Chapter Seven
  15. Chapter Eight
  16. Chapter Nine
  17. Chapter Ten
  18. Chapter Eleven
  19. Chapter Twelve
  20. Chapter Thirteen
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. PART TWO
  29. Chapter Twenty-one
  30. Chapter Twenty-two
  31. Chapter Twenty-three
  32. Chapter Twenty-four
  33. Chapter Twenty-five
  34. Chapter Twenty-six
  35. Chapter Twenty-seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. PART THREE
  40. Chapter Thirty-one
  41. Chapter Thirty-two
  42. Chapter Thirty-three
  43. Chapter Thirty-four
  44. Chapter Thirty-five
  45. Chapter Thirty-six
  46. PART FOUR
  47. Chapter Thirty-seven
  48. Chapter Thirty-eight
  49. Chapter Thirty-nine
  50. Chapter Forty
  51. Chapter Forty-one
  52. Chapter Forty-two
  53. Chapter Forty-three
  54. Chapter Forty-four
  55. Acknowledgements

Even so, Katya had exerted a sort of hold on Dyer. When he saw her next day, he didn’t have much time to go through complicated contortions to avoid her. She was shepherding Vasily from the playground. He looked at her in her lavender cashmere (did she wear any other kind of jersey?) and recalled with a shudder how she had potentially tried to poison him. She showed no curiosity on recognising Dyer. She gave him a quenched look, then opened wide her large grey eyes at Mr Tanner, ostensibly fascinated by his plans for the upcoming long weekend.

PART THREE

Chapter Thirty-one

A SPRAWLING COUNTRY HOUSE IN Lancashire outside the village of Browsholme. Posters of the Great Northern Railway on striped wallpaper. Logs burning inside a marble fireplace, and the River Hodder murmuring over stones in the darkness below.

Tonight’s dinner is smoked trout, lamb and Argentine merlot, and a lemonade for Leandro.

A cancellation has brought them to this warm dining room. Dyer had borrowed Paula’s mobile to make the booking. To begin with, he was told that the hotel was full for a wedding party. Then, on Thursday afternoon, Paula rang his doorbell. ‘They’ve called back.’ A room had come free. Plus she had four Amazon packages for him.

He was careful not to inform anyone. Updark had never said to him that he couldn’t leave Oxford. Dyer had trusted Paula alone with the secret of where he was taking Leandro in fulfilment of a long-standing promise made on a yellow sandy beach nearly six thousand miles way.

They departed on Friday afternoon, four hours up the M6 and over the fells through the Trough of Bowland, between unfenced green hillsides and sheep grazing beside a stream. Dyer worried that the Beetle might not complete the journey after an orange light beneath the mileometer started flashing. Leandro leafed in vain through the manual, but the light went off after Dunsop Bridge, and shortly before eight they arrived at the Inn at Browsholme.

He had to be patient, and the fishing would be good for that. The Hodder was one of the rivers on which Dyer had learned to cast a fly – when two years older than Leandro. As well, he was familiar with the inn.

Dyer’s surge of relief mingled with nostalgia lasts through the meal. Gold flames dance in the grate as though the fire has never gone out.