I didn’t see that much of Max for the next couple of days. I did, however, see quite a lot of Jenna, mostly armed with various copies of wedding magazines and accompanied by a cry of ‘what do you think about this one?’ until I had to hide behind the big leather armchair when I heard her coming. I didn’t mind talking weddings, but Max had me here to sort the Incredible Paper Mountain, and that was a lot harder to do when having fabric swatches thrust under your nose and being required to have an opinion about purple versus red.
The police removed the bones from beneath what was left of the Fortune House. They were going to perform some tests to see how old the skeleton was, how he or she had died and see if they could figure out why on earth someone would build a house over the top of them, but as there were no reports of anyone disappearing in the area going back as far as they could check, they weren’t rushing. ‘Probably some nineteenth-century lime kiln worker,’ said the Forensic Anthropologist cheerily, when I talked to him on the phone, as I’d apparently become the de facto coordinator of all things Hatherleigh Hall. Max was still clearing out the icehouse and Grant was – actually, I wasn’t entirely sure what Grant was doing, but since he wasn’t my problem, it didn’t matter.
So my days became all about sorting paper. Tiny slips, so old that the ink was invisible, big, official looking forms from the Ministry of Agriculture which had never been filled in, old newspapers, maps and cards all went into black plastic sacks for burning. The dust was a thing of wonder and I often had to break off to go and stand outside and cough. I had more showers per day than a professional sportsman but at least I wasn’t paying for the hot water, and I revelled in bathroom fittings that didn’t leak, drip or make peculiar groaning noises for half an hour after the taps were turned off.
I’d just got out of my latest shower and was trying to make my hair do something other than drip languidly, when Max came in and slumped into a chair, looking exhausted.
‘Jen’s not around, is she?’ he asked, making a half-hearted attempt to kick off his work boots but giving up when it involved bending down. ‘I’ve explained and explained why she can’t get married in the house, but she’s not getting it.’ He picked up the tiny pile of paper I’d put to one side as worth keeping, and shuffled through it.
‘She’s gone into town, but I’m not sure why.’ I glanced over at the torrent of paper still left to sort, and my skin itched reflexively.
‘Good.’
‘And why can’t she get married in the house? I would have thought it would be a nice earner, holding weddings here. You don’t even need to do anything more than provide the location and maybe some nice décor – the wedding planners do all the rest. I think,’ I added, because my wedding planning had consisted of making sure the shop had enough battered cod on the hot plate.
Max leaned back and stuck out his legs. The shorts were once more in evidence and he’d got socks that came halfway up his shins, giving him the look of a hiker who’s got lost on their way to a comedy convention. ‘Dad put something in the paperwork,’ he said tiredly. ‘When I inherited, the legal team found it in the small print. It was one of the first things I wanted to do, get the place licensed for weddings and civil partnerships and all that, but no. Dad’s terms mean it’s not allowed.’ A deep sigh. ‘He loved Mum a lot,’ he said quietly. ‘He was never the same after she died. I think the clause was his way of making sure that Hatherleigh was never instrumental in that kind of happiness.’
‘Well, that was a bit short-sighted,’ I said, without thinking. ‘Oh, sorry. Yes, it must have been hard for him.’
There was a long, slightly awkward, pause. The only sound was the hum of the computer fan and the soft chirruping of birds outside. At last, Max said, ‘It was hard for all of us, Alice.’
‘Yes, I didn’t mean—’
‘And he shot us all in the foot with it. You’re right, weddings are a great money spinner when you’ve got a place like this, and it would have helped with the finances a lot.’
‘Can it be overturned?’ I started to look at the overblown desk quite hard, so as not to have to see Max’s face, shadowed with loss. For all that he said it was a long time ago, there was still that awful memory, which as he’d explained was overlaid with the wondering whether his mother had returned to say goodbye to her daughter and not her son. I wished that ghosts were a real thing, so I could give them a piece of my mind.
‘Not without an awful lot of legal wrangling that we really don’t have the money for.’ Max stood up. ‘Come for a walk with me, Alice. Come and see the icehouse, now I’ve got it all cleared out.’
‘But—’ I stared now at the enormous pile of paper, still teetering at the edge of the room, half piled against the wall as though they were keeping one another up. ‘I’ve just washed my hair!’
‘You know that whole thing about catching a cold if you go out with wet hair is a myth, don’t you?’ he said, sounding slightly more cheerful. ‘Besides, it’s about thirty degrees out there, you’re more likely to die of heatstroke.’
I was actually worried about the heat and humidity making my hair frizz, but I reasoned that Max didn’t seem to worry too much about my physical appearance, and gave in.
We went out through the side door, along the grassy terrace, which was baking brown in the heat. The ground thudded hollowly under our feet, and the edges of the grasses were sharp with dryness, so it was almost a relief to arrive at the dank shadowy dampness of the icehouse.
Rubble bags full of weeds, wilting in the sunlight, rocks, rubbish and bits of old furniture were lined up outside the gate, like servants in a Disney film, waiting to be animated by music. The stones which formed the entrance were cracked, interspersed with ferns and mosses growing at improbable angles, forming little cushions and beckoning fingers.
‘It’s empty now.’ Max ushered me through the gate, which whined plangently as it swung. ‘Took me ages, but I’ve got muscles now that I never had before, lugging that lot up the ladder.’
Once through the gate, we were in a little lobby which led to the steep sided twenty-foot drop to the curved base of the icehouse. Above our heads, the roof arched elegantly away into the side of the hill and the arms of the ladder jutted from the drop, like a person letting go.
‘Wow.’ I looked down into the shadowy depths. ‘You’ve worked really hard. It looks…’ I trailed off. I had been about to say that it looked great, but it looked, mainly, like a brick-lined bucket.
‘It looks sinister,’ Max finished for me, the sibilants sliding away to echo around our heads. ‘But it’s done now, and it was quite nice being in here. Jenna couldn’t get to me, anyway. Even she’s not desperate enough to come shinning down a ladder to talk wedding plans.’
I looked again down into the terracotta darkness. Tiny shafts of sunlight, filtered through the wrought iron of the gate, got about a third of the way down and highlighted the depths. The base of the icehouse was a kind of cone shape, I half expected to see a gigantic plughole in the middle, but there was nothing except a muddy circle. It was cool, smelled of damp basements and the acoustics were horrifying, but…
‘Could you hold weddings in here?’ I turned around, back to the drop, to see Max staring up at the roof. ‘You’d need a proper staircase down, some atmospheric lighting, and maybe a proper floor down there, of course. But it’s wacky enough that people might like it.’
Max’s stare came down to me. He looked as though he was doing very difficult calculations in his head. ‘Would it be possible?’
‘I’m pretty sure you could get this place licensed. It’s an indoor space, after all. I’m presuming your dad’s terms don’t extend out here?’
Max still looked a bit stunned. ‘I’d have to check, but I wouldn’t have thought so. The icehouse has been disused for about fifty years, I doubt he would have even thought of it.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Alice, you are more than a genius, you are quite probably my saviour.’
I gave a half-laugh. ‘It’s just logic, that’s all.’
‘No. If it were logic, I would have seen it. You…’ he stopped talking and raked both hands through his hair. ‘You are bloody amazing.’
The entryway was narrow, a carved stone and brick cavern, so we were standing very close together, I suddenly realised. ‘I’m really not,’ I said, feeling the pink heat clambering its way up my body.
‘I think we’ve had this discussion.’ Max moved to face me. ‘I know my own mind, Alice.’
And then he leaned in and kissed me.
Everything in me knew I should protest, but hot damn he was gorgeous, he was here, he seemed to want me, and I was sick of sorting papers. I abandoned the coy attitude which I’d held to me like a security blanket and moved closer to him. He shuffled the pair of us back, so that I was pressed against the rough stone wall, the cool sponginess of mossy pillows squeezing water into my shirt and tickling the back of my neck. Suddenly I couldn’t smell wet rock and decaying vegetation any more, my head was full of the smell of Max; orange and dust and hot skin and a tiny hint of turpentine. His mouth was on mine, pulling forth all kinds of dreams, and his fingers were holding my chin, curved around my jawline as though the extra inches of flesh were precious and worth touching. I felt worth touching.
‘Max! Alice! Are you out here?’
Grant’s voice was drifting over the lawns, coming closer. Max and I moved apart, straightening clothing and taking deep breaths.
‘Max! The forensics people are on the phone, they want a word with you!’
We could hear Grant’s footsteps now, clonking over the ground hollow with the lack of rain towards us. I wanted to giggle, but didn’t. Max raised his eyebrows at me.
‘Are we fit to be seen, do you think?’
I looked him up and down. ‘I am. Your shorts aren’t leaving much to the imagination.’
‘Maybe Grant will just think I get really turned on by caves.’
I gave him a stern look. ‘If there’s a double entendre in that, please do not explain it to me.’ Then I moved out, swinging the gate open and meeting Grant under the sun-laden bushes beyond.
‘What are you doing in there?’ he asked, as though I’d just stepped out of a fairy knoll.
‘Looking at the icehouse,’ I said briskly. ‘Max is in there, tidying up. But I wouldn’t go in, if I were you,’ I added as he stepped forward. ‘There’s quite a drop and it’s dangerous and slippery.’ I almost added, ‘a perfect place to fake your own death again, should you need to,’ but I bit my tongue because I really had to stop remembering that.
‘Oh, okay. I just said that I’d let him know the police had rung. About the skeleton up on the moors,’ he added, as though there might have been any number of reasons for the police to want to be in touch with Max.
‘That’s fine.’ I started to walk back towards the house. Grant came with me. He’d kept the sharp sideburns and the slightly thinner face, and it was a good look on him. ‘Are you really going to marry Jenna?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ Grant stopped walking. ‘It’s all right. I really have learned my lesson, Al. She’s the woman for me, and I’m not going to tell her about the whole “amnesia” thing. If I do, in the future, don’t worry, I’ll tell her that it was my idea. I don’t want her to think badly of you and Max.’
I stared at him. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this might be the case, but, of course, if Jenna ever found out that the memory-loss plot had been mine, well… ‘Thank you,’ I said humbly.
‘I’ve grown up a bit, Al. Since I blew myself up, I’ve become a new man, I think.’ Grant disproved this by lifting his shirt to scratch at his navel thoughtfully. ‘I want to make a go of it with Jen.’
I remembered the hug. The silent tears. ‘You’re good together,’ I said, trying to inject as much honesty into my voice as I could. ‘You can do it, Grant.’
‘Thank you.’ He sounded as though he meant the gratitude. And he was right, he was different with Jenna. More lively, more tactile – there wasn’t a great increase in his intellect, of course, but she didn’t seem to mind that. Added to which he’d already got back many of his IT clients, so he was earning again, too.
We reached the side door and went in. I went back up to the flat to carry on rooting through sheaves of paper, after all, that’s what I was here for, and I only had a couple more days… The thought hit me hard. This week spent at Hatherleigh Hall had taken on a kind of charmed feel. I’d got a lovely bedroom, en suite bathroom, a fridge full of food, even if I still didn’t know what to do with samphire, and a view that stretched over yellowing fields and trees whose leaves were becoming dusty with incipient autumn. In the evenings, I’d gone through wedding pages with Jenna or played rowdy board games with Max. It had been a long, long way from the little terrace in Pickering.
The thoughts alarmed me. I couldn’t get used to this lifestyle. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t me. I was destined to spend the whole of next week trying to find all the files that Malcolm had ‘helped’ me with by putting away somewhere utterly logical to him and nobody else. Listening to the low-level grousing and sniping that being crammed together in a hot office always leads to. Running out of milk and having to charge across to the Co-op, where I would inevitably end up buying twenty pounds’ worth of shopping I didn’t really need. While Sheila over-tactfully tried to ascertain whether or not my periods were still regular.
I looked up at the ceiling mouldings, the carved cornices and the full-height windows. Even in here, where the furniture was so masculine I was slightly surprised that it didn’t hump my leg whenever I came in, there was an airy, Country House vibe. My house didn’t have a vibe, apart from when big lorries went past on the main road. But, I assured myself, shuffling through papers, it was my house. It had been Mum and Dad’s when they’d married, and they’d bought it outright with part of their insurance payout. It had been the only home I’d ever known. The tiny, cramped rooms, the peculiarities with running water and the ever-present dust were all mine. Hatherleigh Hall was big and part of it was sixteenth century but it took a team of people to keep it clean and Max running about with a screwdriver and paintbrush to keep it maintained.
But you could help him, whispered a tiny voice in the back of my head. Go on, admit it. You’re itching to sort this place out and make it earn its keep. Weddings in the icehouse and receptions in a marquee on the lawn. Attractions to bring in the tourists – jousting knights at the front and a cookery school in that huge kitchen… I dropped the pile of papers I had been working my way through and stood, as alarmed as if it had been a ghost muttering all that into my ear. Was that how I was thinking? Really? Making plans for the house that only seconds ago I had been assuring myself wasn’t as good as the two-up two-down in a tiny market town?
And then there was Max. Gorgeous, sexy Max. Who genuinely seemed to want me, if that kiss had been anything to go by, and who, if Grant hadn’t charged in, might well have had me. I remembered my reaction; the feel of him when I’d run my hands up inside his shirt, the way his fingers had lightly brushed my neck…
‘They’ve got a forensic result.’ Max appeared in the doorway. ‘You’re pink. Did you catch the sun earlier?’
‘Must have done.’ I carefully, very carefully, sat on the edge of the desk with a meaningless pile of paper in my hand and pretended to be scrutinising it. ‘So, what did they tell you?’
He bounced into the room and prised off the work boots. ‘Well, obviously they couldn’t tell me too much, in case I am a murderer who disposed of a corpse under the ruins of the house I’m writing about.’
‘Did you?’ I put the papers down.
‘Of course not. Besides which, they reckon the body had been there for between sixty and eighty years. Give or take a decade.’ He peeled off the dreadful half-length socks and balled them up.
‘If you’re going to do a striptease, I suggest a touch more gyration.’ I didn’t know why I said it. I was interested in what the forensic examination had shown, but I knew he was taking off dirty footwear before he trampled all over the Exhibition Carpet. They were just the words that sprang into my mouth without my brain’s involvement.
Max looked at the wadded socks in his hand. ‘Nope. That’s your lot.’ He placed them on the back of the burnished muscleman of a chair, where they instantly rolled off. ‘For now.’
In silence, we both regarded the sock ball as it trickled its way along the floorboards and bumped to a gentle stop against the leg of the desk.
I cleared my throat to let my mouth know I wouldn’t be standing for any more of its random pronouncements. ‘So, the body’s been down there a while?’ My voice was slightly high-pitched and I coughed again.
‘Yep. It’s male, they couldn’t see any obvious cause of death but they’re going to do more tests.’
‘But nobody reported anyone missing, no accidents, nothing, in that time?’ I glanced over towards Max’s notes on the house. It was quite a thick file. ‘What about Alethia’s brother? That’s about the right time frame, isn’t it?’
Max shook his head. ‘He went to London. Alethia said that her mother told her he used to write to her occasionally, and I can’t see both parents keeping quiet if anything had happened to him in the house, can you? Why would they?’
‘Maybe his dad murdered him and threatened his mum to keep quiet?’ I wasn’t really a detective novel person, but this definitely had overtones of those afternoon programmes that Mum had loved having on. She’d usually fallen asleep halfway through and been baffled by the conclusion, but that, apparently, hadn’t really been the point.
‘Mr Fortune died before his wife, though. She’d have said something then, wouldn’t she? Or told Alethia, at least?’ Max pushed his hands through his hair, curling his bare feet into the thick pile of the rug. ‘According to Alethia, when we used to chat, her mum was quite a force to be reckoned with. They couldn’t tell how old the man was when he died, either. His teeth were good, so dental records are no help, he was well nourished, and an adult under forty. Could be anyone. Oh, but they matched the tooth that they found after the explosion to the body.’
‘I’d been wondering about that. I hadn’t noticed Grant minus a molar.’ I began sheafing the papers back together again. Another pile for the bin bag, which gaped at me from the floor, its shiny blackness already half-filled with random scraps and notes.
‘But it’s not outside the realms of possibility that the body was already there when the house went up,’ Max went on. ‘Allowing for a margin of error. Anyway.’ He straightened up, dropped his hands. ‘I’m off to look into getting the icehouse approved for weddings, thanks to you.’
At the mention of the words ‘icehouse’ my body had a Pavlovian response and I nearly dropped the papers all over the floor. ‘Oh. Yes, that’s good.’
He didn’t go. I wished he would, because I wanted to wash my face in cold water and possibly change out of these jeans, which felt suddenly very uncomfortable. ‘Alice,’ he said, after a moment, ‘are you all right that we… that I kissed you earlier?’
‘Um,’ I said. For one definition of ‘all right’, I was most definitely ‘all right’. For another, I really, really wasn’t.
‘You seemed to be into it, but I don’t want to cross any boundaries that you may have.’
‘I don’t have any boundaries,’ I said, and then realised how that sounded and sweaty heat shot up my neck again. ‘I mean, I do, obviously. Have some, I mean. Just not, well. No.’
He flashed me a look. There it was again, dark and heavy with promise but containing a light of mischief. ‘Well, good. I think. Only I’d like to do it again sometime and I don’t want to run the risk of you beating me to death with the Elizabethan bed post.’
He didn’t give me chance to answer this time, just scuffed his way out of the study and I heard his bare feet padding away down the corridor towards the kitchen. When the kitchen door closed, I let my lungs have a bit more freedom and blew downward to try to cool my chest.