Chapter 29
Honey Stone
ALISTAIR
Ascot Grange comes up through the trees the way it always does, the honey stone, the slate, the curve of the gravel.
Then we round the second bend and the eastern wing comes into view, and it doesn’t look like itself at all. Scaffolding. White plastic sheeting taped over the gap where the nursery wall used to be. A skip in the drive with a broken sash window protruding from it.
The crew has been stood down for the day. Mick is at the gate, waiting beside his vehicle, and he raises a hand as Henderson pulls up.
“Mr Ravenscroft.”
“Mick. Thank you for clearing the site at short notice.”
“Of course.”
“How is the build?”
“On schedule for three weeks. Could be sooner if you want it sooner.”
“How much sooner?”
“A week, if the team go round the clock and you pay them double.”
“Pay them double.”
“Yes, sir.”
Henderson drives us up to the door.
The hall smells of fresh plaster and sawdust and, faintly, of the lemon polish Brumilde has used on the floors for thirty years. Whatever has happened, the floors have remembered themselves.
The ordnance lead is at the foot of the stairs. Tall, fifties, grey at the temples.
“Mr Ravenscroft.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly. I appreciate it.”
“Of course, sir. Ground floor is clear. Cellar clear. Boot room and kitchen wing clear. We have just started on the first floor and we'll be in the east wing within the hour. Sir, with respect, I'd rather you waited at the gate until we have signed off.”
“I understand. I'd like to come up anyway.”
“It is not best practice.”
“I know. I'd be grateful for the company on the way through.”
He does not give me a longer argument than that, because he is a professional and he has read the file and he knows what is in the room I am asking him to take me to.
“This way, Mr Ravenscroft.”
The blast pattern is visible in the wall halfway up the staircase, a faint grey shadow under the new paint, where the plaster is settling at a different rate to the older work. By next week it will be invisible. Today I can see it.
I run my hand along the banister. The wood is the same wood. I pull my hand away.
We turn onto the landing. Our bedroom door is the second on the left, closed, the corner of the four-poster visible under a dust sheet through the crack.
I stop at the nursery doorway. The ordnance lead stops a pace behind me.
“In your own time, sir.”
The wall is patched. That is the first thing, patched and primed and waiting for paint, the size of a small car, smooth grey plaster sitting in the room like a held breath.
The carpet has been replaced where the blood was.
The cot is gone. The mobile, the rocking chair Ivy used to feed him in, the wicker basket of his soft animals, the little lamp Brumilde turned on at dusk, all of it gone. Destroyed. The blast took everything that was in the room.
I stand in the doorway and I let it sit on me.
I let myself see Brumilde the way she was when they pulled her out, the dust in her hair, the wrong angle of her arm, her hand still open.
I let myself see Alex's small face, the cut, the surprise of him crying because he was alive and angry.
I let myself see Ivy on the floor of the corridor with her own blood in her eye and her arms reaching for her son.
“Behind the wall?”
“Done. Twice.”
“Floorboards.”
“Lifted and replaced. There was nothing under them.”
“Skirting.”
“Scoped. Clean.”
“Window frame.”
“Clean.”
“Light fitting.”
“Clean.”
“Anything fixed to the structure that we did not have eyes on a week ago.”
“Three things, sir. New radiator, new pelmet rail, replacement skirting on the east side. All installed by Mick's crew, all checked by us, all clean.”
I nod.
“Vehicles next.”
“After the house. Then outbuildings. Then anything else that touches your movement.”
“Thank you. I'm grateful.”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods once and steps back into the hall, leaving me in the room.
I stand a moment longer. I put my hand flat against the patched wall. The plaster is cold.
We go through the rest of the house. Our bedroom—clean.
The dressing rooms. The bathrooms. The corridor cupboards.
Down the back stairs. The kitchen, the pantry, the boot room, the cellar.
The garages, all four cars. The stables, the loose boxes empty because the horses are at the home farm. The office wing.
Two and a half hours.
The ordnance lead finds me in the kitchen looking out at the lawn. “Mr Ravenscroft. The structure is clean. Vehicles clean. Outbuildings clean. We will return tomorrow for a final pass and the equipment scan, but I do not expect to find anything.”
Henderson comes through from the kitchen with two glasses of water, hands one to me, and leans against the door frame in the way he does when he is giving me room without leaving.
The water is cold from the tap and the tap water at Ascot has always been good.
I drink half of it without registering the taste.
“It’s a good house,” he says, after a while.
“It is.”
“Soon it’ll be a home again.”
My phone buzzes.
I think Brodie. Or Pryce, who is with Ivy. I take the phone out of my pocket without looking up.
The name on the screen is Sarah.
I look at it for a beat. Sarah and Matt, from the resort. The threesome. The week before everything went sideways. I had not expected to hear from her.
I open the message.
SARAH
Hi gorgeous. Matt and I are in London. Last-minute trip! We're hosting tonight at the Orchid House, eight til whenever. Small group, very curated, the kind of evening you and Ivy would enjoy. Champagne, music, toys, like-minded company. xS
A photograph attached. Sarah and Matt on a balcony somewhere, golden light, his arm around her waist. Both of them smiling at whoever took the picture.
I read the message twice.
The wording is careful in the way these invitations always are. Curated. Like-minded company. The Orchid House is one of three or four places in London that hosts this kind of evening. She is asking if we want to spend the night the way we spent that afternoon at the resort.
I am not in the mood for it. The morning has taken too much.
I put the phone back in my pocket without replying. I turn back to the window and the lawn and the cold glass in my hand.