Back in her flat she got undressed and put her pyjamas on.
When she was out shopping for her new wardrobe, Vicky had indicated with a raised eyebrow that the jeans she was already wearing were hopelessly uncool. She tried on the ones Vicky had selected and she had complained, “They’re so tight. It’s like wearing a corset.” “That’s kind of the idea,” Vicky had said. Now Katie peeled them off with a sigh of relief.
She uncorked the bottle of wine she had opened the night before and poured a glass. She made herself an omelet and had some cheese and fruit. If she had lunch in the canteen every day, she was going to be able to subsist for a while on what Justin and Siobhan had provided and needn’t go shopping on the mainland.
After supper she got out the iPad and sent an email to Lyle: “So far, so good. I’m going to give myself a couple of days to get my bearings, and then I’ll find an opportunity to photograph Claudia’s lab books.”
It was unfortunate that Claudia, too, lived on site. What had been the kitchens of the old house had been made into flats and she was in one of those. It was going to limit Katie’s opportunities for prowling around the lab without the risk of Claudia coming in and asking her what she was doing. It would have been better if she’d lived on the mainland. However, she had a boyfriend in London and was away at weekends a lot, so that would help.
She took her glass over to the window-seat. As she sat gazing out into the night, she took stock.
So, the first day was over and Maddie was her new best friend. She felt a twinge of conscience, but reminded herself that she wasn’t spying on Maddie. Her undercover work was solely concerned with Claudia and her research. Lyle had made it clear that he couldn’t care less about who was sleeping with whom or if someone was pinching Post-it notes from the office. She’d been instructed to ignore anything like that. So her friendship with Maddie couldn’t do Maddie any harm, and anyway she did genuinely like her.
But who was she fooling? Katie was sailing under false colours and lying by default. Maddie was bound to be upset when she found out. Though – did she have to find out? Suppose there was nothing wrong with the work that was being done here? If Katie could establish that, she could leave and be just one more person who hadn’t been able to hack it at Debussy Point.
Still, there was something corrupting in a subtle kind of way about Katie’s situation. Yes, she was genuinely interested in getting to know people, but at the same time, she was constantly assessing them in terms of how useful they were likely to be for her project.
She poured out another glass of wine and roamed around the flat. It was awfully hot. She turned the central heating down and opened the window a crack. She went into the bathroom and cleaned off her make-up. What a bore that was and she hadn’t anticipated how exhausting it would be – living a double life, having to think about every word that came out of her mouth. Even then she had nearly broken her cover by almost mentioning that she’d been in Antarctica. She was going to have to be so very careful.
It was a lonely business. Should she ring Justin for a chat, she wondered? She had both her phones – the Caitlin phone and the Katie phone – on the kitchen work surface. One of them buzzed. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw that it was the Katie phone and there was a text from Justin. “Let’s FaceTime. You can show me round your flat.”
“Hey, it’s really nice,” he said later, as she walked him round on a virtual tour.
“It is,” she agreed. She didn’t want to tell him that, though she was fine once she was in the apartment with the door locked, she didn’t like the walk through the shrubbery in the dark, and the stuffed birds in their cases on the landing gave her the creeps.
“I wish I was there with you,” he said. “It’d be a great place to do some star-gazing together. There won’t be much light pollution. Nothing like as good as the Antarctic, of course, but pretty clear all the same.”
Katie thought of the times they had gone out together, muffled up in layers and layers of clothes, to gaze at the night sky and to watch the rippling Southern lights.
She sighed. “I’d love to do that. I wish I could invite you. But it’s too risky. I’ve got to keep my life here and my real life separate.”
“I know. But I’ve been thinking. Surely there’s nothing to stop us meeting somewhere else; somewhere we’re not likely to run into anyone from Debussy Point. Bath, maybe, or Wells? We could book into a hotel.”
She was in the bedroom by now. She propped herself up on the pillows with the iPad resting against her knees.
“Well...” She was tempted, not so much by the thought of the city as by the thought of Justin and a night in a hotel. Surely celibacy wasn’t part of the deal? And there’d be the opportunity to talk things over, to relax and be herself. It was clearly going to be a strain, playing a part all the time.
On the other hand, she had a lot of work to do. It didn’t seem right to go off for the weekend so soon. But how she longed to see Justin – to feel his arms around her.
She said, “I ought to make the most of the labs being more or less empty on Saturday, but perhaps I could get away in the late afternoon and then stay over. I’d have to be back by Sunday evening.”
“Great! What do you say to Wells? It’s midway between us and it’s a nice little city – got a cathedral, good hotels, and places to eat out.”
“That’d be lovely.”
“I’ve got TripAdvisor up now,” Justin went on. “The White Hart sounds nice. View of the cathedral. Eggs Benedict for breakfast. What do you say, Katie?”
Five minutes later the room had been booked and they’d agreed to meet there for dinner at seven thirty. That would give Katie the day to work and she could leave Debussy Point around five for the two-hour drive. The thought of their meeting would be something to hug to herself for the rest of the week.
They said goodnight and hung up. She ought to go to bed, though it would probably take her ages to get to sleep. She had plenty of books on her Kindle, but it would be better not to be looking at a screen. There was a shelf with a few books that had been left by the previous occupant, including one about Debussy Point and the history of the house and garden. She took that to bed with her.
She learned that the banqueting hall in the old house was decorated with stained-glass panels designed by Morris and Company, telling the story of the Quest for the Holy Grail. She decided to have a look at them in the morning. There was a map of the garden, and apparently the statues in the garden were of Arthurian figures too: Merlin, Launcelot, Morgan le Fay and so on. Oh, and there was a maze! She hadn’t seen it this morning because it was on the other side of the house. That would be fun to explore.
Her eyes began to close, so she put the book to one side. She dropped off quickly, but had a restless night, never far from the surface. She’d never liked insects and there had been something disturbing about the visit to the insectary. Her jumbled, broken dreams featured swarms of mosquitoes. She woke with a start, certain that she’d heard a droning buzz close to her ear. She lay on her back, her heart thumping, listening intently. Of course there was nothing. The mosquitoes were safely shut away deep below the ground in the basement of the laboratories. It was only a dream.