“Jemima’s the reason-”

“Jemima,” he said evenly, “has easily found someone else by now. You know that as well as I do. And I expect it drives you mad.”

GORDON JOSSIE’S PICKUP wasn’t visible when Robbie Hastings pulled beyond the tall hedges and onto the driveway of the man’s holding. But that didn’t deter him. If Gordon wasn’t there, there was still a chance that his new woman might be, and Robbie wanted to see her as much as he wanted to have a conversation with Gordon. He also wanted to have a look round. And he wanted to see Jemima’s car with his own eyes although Meredith could not have mistaken it for someone else’s. It was a Figaro, and one didn’t see a vehicle like that on the road every day.

He had no idea what all of this would or would not prove. But two more phone calls to Jemima’s mobile had produced no response and he was beginning to panic. Jemima was flighty, but she wasn’t one to ignore her own brother.

Robbie walked over to the paddock where he saw that two ponies were grazing. It was an odd time of year for the animals to be brought in off the forest, and he wondered what was wrong with them. They appeared perfectly fit.

He looked over his shoulder at the cottage. All of its windows were open, as if in hope of a breeze, but there seemed to be no one about. This was all to the good. Meredith had said that Jemima’s car was in the barn, so he made for this. He’d got the door wide open when he heard a woman’s pleasant voice call out, “Hullo there. C’n I help you with something?”

The voice came from a second paddock, this one on the barn’s east side, across a narrow, rutted farm lane that led off towards the heath. Robbie saw a young woman brushing fragments of weeds from the knees of her blue jeans. She looked like a designer from one of those telly programmes had dressed her: white shirt starched and with the collar turned up, cowboy neckerchief bibbing against her throat, straw hat shading her face from the sun. She wore dark glasses, but he could tell she was pretty. Prettier than Jemima by several yards, tall and possessing curves in places other girls her age usually didn’t want to have them. She said, “Are you looking for someone?”

“My sister,” he said.

She said, “Oh.” No surprise, he thought. Well, she wouldn’t be surprised at this point, would she? Meredith had been there ahead of him and what woman wouldn’t ask questions of her man if another woman’s name came up unexpectedly, as Jemima’s name no doubt had done?

He said, “I’ve been told her motor’s in the barn.”

“Evidently,” she said. “So is mine. Hang on.”

She ducked through the wire fencing. It was barbed, but she was wearing gloves to hold the barbs away. She was also carrying a map of some sort, ordnance survey by the look of it. “I’m finished here anyway,” she told him. “The car’s just inside.”

So it was. Not covered by a tarpaulin as it had been before, according to Meredith, but standing there big as life: battleship grey with a cream coloured roof. It was an ancient thing, and it was pulled far into the barn. Another car sat behind it, a late-model Mini Cooper, apparently the other woman’s.

She introduced herself although he knew she’d be Gina Dickens, Jemima’s replacement. She said frankly that she’d been rather put out, learning that the car wasn’t Gordon’s but his former partner’s. She’d had a few words with him about it, she said. About Jemima’s clothing boxed up in the attic as well.

She said, “He told me she’s been gone for months, that he’s not heard a single word from her in all that time, that she likely isn’t coming back again, that they’d…well, he didn’t say they’d had a row, just that they’d parted. He said it was something coming on for ages and it had been her idea, and as he was hoping to move on with his life, he’d boxed up everything, but not thrown it away. He reckons she’ll want her things eventually and ask to have them sent when she gets…settled, I suppose.” She removed her sunglasses and looked at him frankly. “I’m babbling,” she said. “Sorry. I’m nervous about all this. I mean about how it looks and everything. Her car here, her things boxed up.”

“You believed Gordon?” Robbie ran his hand along Jemima’s car. It was dust free and it shone with a glossy patina. She’d always taken good care of it. So Meredith was right in this: Why’d she not taken it with her? True, it would be difficult to have a car in London. But Jemima wouldn’t have considered that. When an impulse came upon her, she’d never stopped to consider a thing.

Gina said in a somewhat altered voice, “Well, I actually had no reason not to, Mr. Hastings. To believe him, that is. Do you think otherwise?”

“Robbie,” he said. “Name’s Robbie. You can call me that.”

“I’m Gina.”

“Yes. I know.” He looked at her. “Where’s Gordon, then?”

“Working near Fritham.” She rubbed her arms as if a chill had come over her. She said, “Would you like to come inside? The house, I mean.”

He didn’t particularly want to, but he followed her, hoping he might learn something that could settle his concern. They went in through the laundry area and from there to the kitchen. She set her map on the table and he saw that it was indeed an ordnance survey map, as he’d thought. She’d marked the property on it, and she’d attached to it a second sheet of paper with a penciled drawing. This, too, was of the property, but enlarged. Gina apparently saw him looking it over because she said, “We’re…,” and she sounded hesitant, as if leery of parting with the information. “Well, we’re thinking of making some changes round here.”

That certainly said a great deal about Jemima’s absence from the scene. Robbie looked at Gina Dickens. She’d removed her hat. Her hair was pure gold. It was shaped to her head like a close-fitting cap, in a style that brought to mind the Roaring Twenties. She removed her gloves and tossed them on the table. “Amazing weather,” she said. “Would you like water? Cider? A Coke?” And when he shook his head, she came to the table to stand beside him. She cleared her throat. He could tell she felt uncomfortable. Here she was with the brother of her lover’s former lover. It was bloody awkward. He felt it as well. She said, “I was thinking how lovely it would be to have a proper garden, but I wasn’t quite sure where. I was trying to determine where the property actually ends, and I thought the survey map would help, but it doesn’t, actually. So I’d decided that perhaps in the second paddock…as we’re not…as he’s not using it. I thought it would make a lovely garden, a place where I could bring my girls.”

“You’ve children?”

“Oh no. I work with adolescent girls. The sort who might get themselves into trouble if they don’t have someone to take an interest. Girls at risk? I hoped to have a place besides an office somewhere…” Her voice drifted. She used her teeth to pull on the inside of her lip.

He wanted to dislike her, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t her fault Gordon Jossie had chosen to move on once Jemima had left him. If indeed that was what had happened. Robbie looked at the map and then at Gina’s drawing. She’d created a grid from the paddock, he saw, and she’d numbered the squares within it. She said as if in explanation, “I was trying to get an idea of the exact size. So I’d know what we…what I was working with. I’m not sure the paddock itself will do for what I have in mind, so if it doesn’t, then perhaps part of the heath…? That’s why I’m trying to sort out where the property ends, in case I have to have the garden…we have to have the garden somewhere else.”

“You do,” Robbie said.

“What?”

“You can’t have it in the paddock.”

She seemed surprised. “Whyever not?”

“Gordon and Jemima”-Robbie wouldn’t allow his sister not to be part of the conversation-“have common rights here, and the paddocks are meant for the ponies, if they’re out of condition.”