Dario, Mick and I ransacked the fridge for bits to eat. Pippa arrived with a tall man in a dark suit and a slim black briefcase, and sent him to buy more food from the corner shop. Then, as we were leaving, Davy turned up with a lovely young woman in tow. She had shoulder-length brown hair, and large brown eyes, fair skin and pink cheeks; he introduced her as Mel and she blushed, smiled and shook our hands in turn.
‘Come for a picnic,’ I said.
‘We were going out to eat,’ began Mel, hesitantly.
‘Great idea,’ said Davy. He grinned at Mel. ‘It’s an initiation rite, but I’ll protect you. Let me have a shower first.’
After the world’s shortest shower, Davy collected his frisbee and Dario took a large rug from Miles’s room. I put plastic cups into a bag with Leah’s wine. The park was just a few minutes’ walk from the house, less if you climbed over the fence. It was not a very beautiful park – no ponds and walkways and landscaped views of London, no deer grazing inside well-tended enclosures – but it was beautiful this evening, green and tranquil in the dusk. There was no wind, and everything was very still, as if waiting. We made our way across the grass, strewn with plastic bags, cigarette ends, crumpled cans, to the chestnut tree, where we spread the rug and laid out our random assortment of food. As I was pouring wine into the plastic beakers I saw Owen walking towards us and raised a cup to him. He had his camera with him, and he stopped a few feet away from us and started taking photos.
‘How do we look?’ I called.
He lowered the camera. ‘How should I know? I’m interested in that tree and its shadow.’
‘Flattering,’ I said.
He frowned at me, not smiling, then put away his camera, sat on the grass and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Pippa’s friend, whose name I never found out, used his briefcase as a small table on which to assemble messy sandwiches. We threw the frisbee to each other until the light became too murky to continue. Then we lounged on the grass and talked and didn’t talk. Pippa and her latest sat with their legs tangled: I saw Davy and Mel shyly holding hands when they thought no one was looking. Dario lay flat on his back with a joint clamped between his lips, snorting smoke through his nostrils. He was giving a garbled account of my meeting with DI Mitchell to Mick and anyone else who would listen. Mick wasn’t paying much attention but he seemed more at ease than usual. He was wearing a black singlet and I noticed for the first time that he had a tattoo on his shoulder: two intersecting spirals that moved and expanded when he flexed his muscles.
I slid over the grass towards Davy, and he and Mel moved apart.
‘Sorry to butt in,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to ask you something. You know the police hauled me in again?’
‘I heard,’ said Davy. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I think they’re desperate,’ I said. ‘You know when you’ve lost something and you start looking in the places you’ve already looked? I think that’s what they’re doing. I just wanted to ask you something that’s been getting on my nerves. You know when you and Dario ran out to help me in the street?’
Davy grinned. ‘I’m not likely to forget it, am I?’
‘I know I asked you before, but I still have this nagging impression that there was someone with you. Someone who said goodbye to Dario, or Dario said goodbye to him. Or her. Dario said there wasn’t and I don’t mean to doubt his word, but this is a murder we’re talking about and if there’s anything we can do to help…’
‘Of course,’ said Davy. I thought he looked slightly uncomfortable, but perhaps I was imagining things. ‘Maybe there was someone – but if there was, Dario’s the one you should ask.’
‘I have asked him. You’re telling me there was, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not telling you anything. It was sunny. I was tired. I was sitting on the steps, with my eyes closed, probably, letting everything drift over me, you know how it is.’
‘Your eyes were closed?’
‘I dunno. Maybe, is all I’m saying. They were open for your accident, though. It makes you realize how unreliable memory is, doesn’t it? If you ask someone in advance to remember everything that happens, that’s what they do. But if you ask them afterwards – well, ninety per cent has gone over their head. My head, I mean.’
‘OK,’ I said, not satisfied.
‘What are you two conspiring about?’ said Pippa. ‘Are you planning to tell Miles we’re sitting tenants and we’re never leaving?’
‘The police hauled Astrid in,’ said Davy. ‘Gave her the third degree yet again.’
‘I should call you in as my lawyer,’ I said.
‘Any time, darling,’ she said.
‘Charge my client,’ I said. ‘Or let her walk.’ Then a thought occurred to me. I looked round. Her partner of the evening was far enough away, pouring himself another glass of wine. I spoke to her in a quieter voice: ‘Pippa, do you remember that guy who stayed over the night I had my accident?’
‘Just about.’ She gave a coy giggle, which irritated me.
‘You might want to mention him to the police. They really want to talk to anyone who was in the area. He may have seen something when he arrived.’
Pippa’s expression turned frosty. ‘We didn’t see anything.’
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘It might be worth mentioning.’
‘It’s not really a good idea,’ she said.
‘Married, by any chance?’ said Davy.
Pippa shot him a fierce glance. ‘It would be awkward,’ she said.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you didn’t see anything.’
‘Exactly.’
I sighed. I’d done my duty as a responsible citizen, and I didn’t want to think about Peggy any more, not this evening, anyway. I went back to where I’d been sitting and lowered myself on to the grass. I lay on my back next to Owen and gazed dreamily up into the sky, which was fading from turquoise to silver grey. The trees’ branches were massed darkly above me, and through them I could make out the faint outline of the half-moon. I closed my eyes.
Then Dario lobbed the frisbee towards me, spilling my wine, and the spell was broken. I sat up, cursed Dario and poured myself some more. In the thick evening light, I looked across the park. From where we were, I could see the roof of our house. Leah and Miles were there, planning how it would look once we were out of the way. They’d change bedrooms into studies and extra bathrooms, knock down walls, throw old beds and sagging sofas into a skip, paint over all the marks and stains that had accumulated through the years, until nothing would be left to show that we had lived there. Time to move on, I thought, but I’d never felt less like moving on than that evening in the park.
As the air cooled and the day faded, we saw another figure walking towards us. It was Miles. He didn’t say anything, just sat down beside me, so close that our hips touched and I could feel his warmth through the material of my jeans. I poured out the dregs of the wine for him, smiling at him to make peace. He put his hand over mine and I let him, just this once.
‘It’s fine,’ I told him. ‘Like you said, we couldn’t stay there for ever.’
‘She’s measuring windows now,’ he said gloomily. ‘You don’t think she could by any chance be pregnant, do you?’
I didn’t want the day to end. After everyone had wandered off to their own rooms, I went out into the garden. The last warmth of the day had gone and it was clear and cool. I sat on Dario’s creaky little bench for a while and looked at the house: the lights in the rooms went off one by one. Only the kitchen glowed. Then I stood up and walked to the end of the garden, where I stared out over the other houses stretching in either direction, with their fences and their long gardens, and beyond them the tall, patchily illuminated tower blocks. So many people all around me; so many strangers up close. In the distance, I could hear music, the bass note jumping. Then, abruptly, it stopped and there was a sudden, unnerving silence.