Under the Harrow: A Novel by Berry Flynn

Author:Berry, Flynn [Berry, Flynn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

28

I FORCE MYSELF NOT to walk past Keith’s house. I already have twice today, before and after the aqueduct. His home isn’t what I expected. I thought he would live in a house like the one where we grew up, a little plaster box built after the war, but number eleven Bray Lane is wooden, with shingles. The shingles are shaped like scallops and painted pale green. It looks like a house you’d see in a port in Denmark or Sweden.

The difficult part is going slowly. If Keith ever accuses me of following him, I have to be sure it makes him seem like the crazy one, the fixated one. All of my movements must seem natural, as though only a guilty person would notice them.

I decide to go to the grocer’s in Marlow, where at least there is a chance of running into him. It’s also practical. I can’t afford restaurants or takeaways, and I assume I can talk the girl at the Hunters into letting me leave a few things in the restaurant fridge.

I haven’t done the shopping since it happened. I remember going to the Tesco in Kilburn a few weeks ago, with all the other people who had just come up from the tube, who were also hungry and had just finished work, also buying supplies for dinner and a reward for getting through the day.

A woman lays her hand on my arm. I look down from the boxes of pasta, which I was considering, wondering if the girl at the Hunters would also let me use their hob. The woman has long, smooth hair and wears a green hunting jacket. I recognize her from walks on the aqueduct. She has two massive Newfoundlands.

I try to remember her name. Something soft and rainy and Home Counties. Was it Tamsin? I asked Rachel about her. “She looks so fresh,” I said, “and outdoorsy.” Blooming was the word, which I didn’t intend to tell Rachel.

Rachel snorted. “Not outdoorsy,” she said, “rich.”

Rachel told me that she has three children and lives in the Georgian stone house that you can partly see from the aqueduct, behind a thick hedgerow.

She glances down at my basket, and I feel a stricture loosen, a sort of sigh. This is exactly what I need. She will invite me over for dinner. Maybe, eventually, she will suggest I stay with them instead of at the Hunters. I could make myself useful. Watch the children, walk the dogs. Take care of the garden, obviously. My worry over my credit debt will fade. I remember looking through the hedgerow toward her house a few weeks ago and seeing trees full of yellow apples.

“I hope they find him soon,” she says. “I’m sick of being scared at night in my own house. Do you think it’s someone from her Hull days?”

“Rachel never lived in Hull.”

She looks at me like I am lying. “Where was it again?”

I recognize her tone. It is the voice my clients in London use

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