the balmy breeze that blew through the vehicle. It was like being on holiday. She hoped Jack didn’t spill chocolate milk on the backseat of Paul’s car. Sod it, it was inevitable. She started the engine and the radio came on. It was the traffic bulletin: the reporter was saying there’d been a pile-up on the M3 causing long delays for drivers heading to London from the west.
‘Oh great,’ Kate said. She paused, then added, thinking out loud. ‘Perhaps we should stay here tonight. The thought of getting stuck in that traffic in this heat is too awful to contemplate. We could find a hotel.’
Paul didn’t respond straight away and Kate hurriedly said, ‘God, I’m being so presumptuous, as if you’ve got nothing better to do. If you want to get back . . .’
‘I haven’t got anything better to do.’
‘Really?’
‘I’ve got my laptop and my phone, so if work needs me they can contact me. I’m owed a few days off anyway. I really need to find out what happened to Stephen, Kate.’
‘Okay.’
They headed up a big hill with a wonderful view of the Cathedral behind them, filling her rear-view mirror whenever she glanced in it. Before long, they turned the corner onto the road where the CRU stood.
But it was completely gone, replaced by a housing estate – new starter homes for couples and young families. Kate pulled up to the kerb and sat silently for a few minutes, staring at the freshly-trimmed lawns and gleaming garage doors. She got out of the car and stood in the road, turning slowly in a circle. Gone.
Why had she thought the buildings would still be here? How foolish. But surely it was reasonable to think there would still be a trace of those prefab huts, the wire fence that surrounded them, all the work and research that went on.
No, it had been erased. The people who lived in these houses – like that guy over there, watering his lawn; that woman sitting reading a fat paperback in her striped chair; those kids kicking a football around – all probably with no idea about what had once stood here.
She walked over to the wooden fence that marked the edge of the estate. Here was something that hadn’t changed: the verdant fields and crooked mud paths where she and the other volunteers had walked, allowed to wander as long as they didn’t come into contact with any outsiders. She closed her eyes, felt the sun on her face. In these fields, not so far away, she and Stephen had made love on a hot summer day like this one, beneath an oak tree, her long skirt pulled up, baked-dry grass prickling the flesh of her thighs. She had been so happy. The future was a golden place with Stephen in it.
She closed her eyes again and the images shifted.
The fire alarm screamed, smoke billowed through the corridors, Sarah held her up as they tried to find their way out of Hell . . .
She sensed Paul and Jack coming up behind her, their shoes scuffing the asphalt, and she wanted to turn to them. But she couldn’t open her eyes.
Outside now, running towards the building, the firefighters carrying someone out on a stretcher. Stephen. Oh god, no, Stephen. And the doctor coming up to her and everything fading.
‘Kate? Are you alright?’
The images shifted again – back to Sarah, pulling her out of bed. And further back – she and Sarah fighting. Fighting? What about?
Of course.
She opened her eyes and found Paul standing in front of her. For a moment, the walls of time flickered and Paul became Stephen: young, shy, flushed from their lovemaking. But then it was Paul again.
‘I’ve remembered what happened with Sarah,’ she said. ‘And I can remember her name too. Sarah Evergreen. The Green Eyed Monster.’
When they’d booked into this bland, boxy, whitewashed hotel on the outskirts of Salisbury (chosen more for its relative cheapness than for any expectation of luxury), Paul had firmly informed the receptionist that they required one twin room, and one single. He’d shown them into the twin room, and announced he’d see them later for dinner downstairs. Kate liked his calm decisiveness, so different from Vernon’s panicky bluster.
Later that night, Kate and Paul sat awkwardly on the edge of one of the twin beds in the bedroom. They were drinking red wine out of squat little water glasses from the en-suite bathroom, and talking softly to avoid waking Jack, who was comatose in one of the beds, snoring gently, his robot tucked under the sheet with him.
Kate had struggled with the decision to invite Paul into the room. They needed to talk, for sure, and there was no way she was going to leave Jack with another hotel babysitter – but it seemed a bit intimate, to be sitting here like this.
Still, she supposed, at least Paul hadn’t even suggested the three of them all share one room.
The room was pretty small, with no sofa or desk or anywhere else to sit; and not really even enough room for one of them to sit on the floor. Paul was wearing shorts, and she a short skirt, and the hairs from his leg were tickling her own bare thigh. She’d moved slightly further away, but before long, he was somehow in close proximity to her again. She couldn’t decide if he was as screamingly aware of it as she was, or even if he’d noticed at all. It was such a small thing, but one which was having the effect of making everything in her body tingle.
‘It’s been ages since I stayed in a room with twin beds in it,’ she said, gulping wine. ‘Not since the CRU, probably – although these beds are a lot bigger. I’d have got a double room for me and Jack, because he usually ends up climbing into bed with me – but he takes up all the room if it’s a single bed, so then I need another bed to swap over to. We spend all night switching from bed to bed, him chasing me. Easier just to be in a double.’
She blushed. Way too much talk about climbing into beds, and chasing – even though she was referring to a six year old boy.
‘Did everyone share a room at CRU? Did you share with Stephen?’
‘Everyone had to share, but they weren’t all twin rooms. There were some “flats”, as they were called: like self-contained apartments, with a sort of sitting room with a kitchenette, and two little bedrooms off it. More civilised, although the bathroom was out in the corridor. But I was in twin rooms both times I went – much bigger rooms, like bedsits. The beds were at opposite ends of the room, and the rooms had an en-suite bathroom. And no, I definitely wouldn’t have been allowed to share with Stephen, even if he hadn’t been staff ! Strictly single-sex. We were meant to be in isolation with our room-mate. Besides, nobody knew Stephen and I were a couple. He didn’t often stay on site anyway, he had a rented flat in Salisbury.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it was a bit dead up there. He did want some kind of life outside work, you know.’
‘No, I meant, why didn’t anybody know you were a couple?’
Jack snuffled and stirred in his sleep, reaching out a floppy arm to cuddle his unwieldy robot.
Kate waited until he was still again before continuing. ‘I’m not sure. Stephen made a big deal about it at the time, and I never really understood why. All he’d say was that it was best if no-one knew. That
