Into the Woods by David Mark

Author:David Mark [Mark, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800244016
Publisher: Head of Zeus

21

Rowan feels a little like a giant bumblebee. He’s wearing dark jogging pants along with an Australia rugby jersey, and is reclining in one of the brown wing-back chairs that fan out around a circular, bright yellow table. He doesn’t know if Serendipity planned it this way when she pulled the first two items of clothing she could find out of the laundry pile and insisted he sit in front of the Aga in the kitchen and warm himself up.

He raises his glass, toasting his sister. Saint Serendipity – always willing to blow-dry a drowned rat.

Serendipity has looked after him like she always has, fussing and clucking and doing everything but press her lips to his sore hands and kiss them better. He’s been fed – an acceptable vegetarian lasagne with some ghastly avocado and pumpkin-seed flapjack for afters. Had his glass refilled enough times to make the world a softer, gentler place. His hands have been re-wrapped; the wounds healing well; his hands and fingers more able to move under the new wrappings. Now the drowned sailor who stood on her doorstep two hours ago has been replaced with a slightly healthier version of her younger brother. She keeps smiling at him, looking like she wants to pat his head.

It’s nice here, in Serendipity’s madly patterned kitchen, at the heart of the large stone farmhouse that Jo has spent a very keenly worked out budget on transforming into a home of distinction. Warm, with the Aga belting out heat. The walls are a mixture of burgundy and teal and the low roof and dark wood beams make him feel as though he’s sitting in some marvellous Victorian tavern, tankard in hand and pipe cupped in a grimy palm. He’s having to squint a little to keep up the charade. Jo is seated at the other end of the kitchen table, a hunched praying mantis.

It doesn’t take long to spoil it for himself. Slowly, inexorably, the doubts wash in. The questions about what is real and what is projection. Does he really believe something has happened to Violet or is he just pretending to so he has something to tell his editor and agent? He’s worked this way before – starting with a headline and trying to make the story fit the mould.

‘Were you sleeping?’ asks Snowdrop, appearing in the doorway. She’s in huge pyjamas and slippers made to look like half-peeled bananas. She looks recently scrubbed, her hair dried and brushed so that it gleams like wet coal.

‘Not at all,’ says Rowan, shifting position and smiling. ‘How are you doing, Scoop?’

‘Scoop?’ asks Snowdrop, muttering a “hello, Jo” to the silent, spindly figure who taps away at a typewriter and puts circles around an expenses sheet at the far end of the table.

‘Somebody claim an extra mile on the round trip to Kent, did they?’ asks Rowan, raising his voice and winking at Snowdrop.

Jo, a sleeping lioness, does not look up from her calculations. ‘We have those odometers fitted for a reason, Rowan.

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