The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill

Author:Susan Hill
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307369543
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2006-05-22T21:00:00+00:00

Thirty-one

At half past seven Lynsey Williams put her gear into the sports holdall, covered the salmon salad with cling film and wrote a note saying “Matt, food in fridge, xxxx” and went out. Matt was at the floodlit five-a-side courts with the boys he trained out of school hours.

She wondered, as she walked down St Luke’s Road, why some couples apparently found it so difficult to live together and be committed but also have individual lives. She and Matt hadn’t found it a problem. Whatever people said, school holidays were quite long and she worked her own time off around Matt’s, so they could go off together at least three times a year, skiing, diving, climbing, with one week doing nothing on a hot beach. In term, he was out from dawn till dusk teaching and then spent extra time coaching, travelling all over the place to matches, training. Lynsey crammed all her own work into Matt’s term time. She was lucky, she could. Five years ago, she had bought her first semi-derelict property and done it up with a bit of help on the heavy work from Matt and her brother. Now, she was on to her twelfth house, selling some on quickly, letting others. She had hit the right time, the market had boomed. She was doing well.

The only problem was whether or not to expand, take on staff and double her turnover. She had played about with the figures for months, but it was not the money that worried her so much as taking the giant step up from being small and single-handed. She liked to do most of the work and all of the decision-making herself. Expansion? What was she thinking? But she knew she would go on brooding about it as she ploughed up and down the sports centre pool, doing her forty lengths, and it was pointless talking to Matt. “Search me,” was his usual answer.

She turned the corner. Then, someone called her name. She looked round. The man was waving and calling again, running towards her up the road. Lynsey hesitated. She did not recognise him and he was still some way off but as she heard him shout her name urgently again, she waited. Perhaps he had looked round one of her houses, perhaps he was one of the tenants, though she did all the letting through an agency.

“Lynsey …” Was that what he said?

He was nearer now and the expression on his face was strange, as if he were astonished to see her and excited and somehow … the only word she could find was wild.

“Lizzie …”

He stopped dead, a yard or two from her.

“Hello?” Lynsey said. “Sorry, were you meaning me?”

He was staring at her, his face contorted into something like anger, something like bewilderment—again, she could not read it. But she was nervous now and as she spoke, began to turn and move away quickly, towards the main road, towards passing cars and open shops and other people.

“No … don’t go, don’t.

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