Five Ways In: Horror Stories

Joanna had brought a book she meant to finish. She put it on the kitchen table, where Simon had already spread his drawings, and moved his tobacco tin off the cover.

“That one's mine,” she said.

He looked up from the window catch. “I thought you'd finished it.”

“So did I. I've been carrying it about for six months.”

He cleared a place for it beside his pages. She had wanted him to clear the table, but he looked so pleased to have her there that she took off her coat instead of explaining. Through the window she could see both cars. Leaving them side by side was an extravagance she hadn't expected to enjoy.

Louise Baird had offered four weeks in the empty house in return for the repairs. Simon could do them in the evenings, and Joanna could come when the children were with Grant. The previous Friday they had spent most of an hour deciding which evenings those were. At the end she had mistaken the time and had to leave before the food came. Simon had eaten her supper as well as his own and telephoned to report that she had chosen badly.

Today she had permission for a long lunch. She'd brought bread, cheese and two apples, although she knew there was something ridiculous about carrying provisions for an hour in a house with a kitchen. Simon had found plates. One had a chip, which he put towards himself when she sat down.

“You don't have to do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

She turned the plate round. He turned it back and handed her the better knife. She could have argued until their lunch was cold, except that nothing on it needed heating. She cut the bread.

He asked about Owen's fishing trip. It had produced a fish too small to keep and a quarrel about who was supposed to bring the sandwiches. Joanna found herself describing the fish with her hands. Simon asked whether it had been growing since Sunday. She said he could enquire of Owen himself, then looked down at the knife. She hadn't yet invited him to do that.

“I'd like to,” he said.

She put another slice on his plate. They ate for a while with the window open. A lorry laboured up the road and she waited for it to pass before asking whether he was going to work all the time they were here.

“Not all of it.”

“Only I can sit and read at home.”

He began stacking the pages. “These aren't the house. It's the course I told you about. I thought you might look at it.”

“I will. I don't want an examination over lunch.”

“Neither do I. I'd fail.”

She laughed, and he left the pile where she could reach it. She moved her book to the windowsill before he could suppose it had been put away. There was a chair there with a cushion flattened at one end. If they spent a whole evening here she would try it. For now she wanted him to finish eating and come out with her while she fetched the milk.

He had one last little job by the back door. Louise had listed the loose brass cover among the repairs. He joined the narrow copper strip beneath it and refastened the cover while Joanna wrapped the cheese. Upstairs he found a tall clock on the landing, its face without a maker's name. The pendulum moved freely, so he wound it. She heard him coming down and told him he was no longer allowed to discover things until after lunch.

He rested his chin on her shoulder and reached around her for the bread knife. She gave him an elbow because he made the job awkward, and because she liked him close enough to interfere with it. He kissed the place below her ear. She kept the knife still until he moved.