Chapter 3
I went outside to fetch the suitcases, the security lights automatically coming on.
It was close to zero out there, and the streak of blue I’d seen in the sky was long gone.
I checked the time. It had only just gone half three and it was almost dark already.
The days are short up there, Holly had told me when we’d been preparing for this trip. She hadn’t been lying about that.
I had already decided I was probably wrong about Holly disliking Morag.
We’d had a conversation in the first week of our relationship about the importance of honesty.
She had told me that her previous boyfriend, a musician whose name I recognized, had lied and cheated on her repeatedly, and also been secretly taking drugs, a particularly awful betrayal because of Holly’s own history with substances.
When I’d assured her I would never lie to her, I meant it.
I have always found it almost impossible to tell even the whitest lie.
It makes me go pink in the face and sweat.
Holly had promised to always be honest with me, too, and there was no need for her to lie about liking Morag.
She had probably been thinking about meeting Jasmine, a subject Morag had just broached.
It was a topic that filled her with dread – and I emphathized because, as I opened the boot, I was aware that the Grant family would start arriving soon.
I had, of course, met girlfriends’ parents and siblings before, and it had always been fine.
But this wasn’t like meeting a normal family.
Charles Grant was famous, as was his company, Gravitas, which was always mentioned alongside Dyson and Virgin whenever the media wanted examples of successful British firms with humble beginnings.
I had been on several dates with Holly before she told me who her dad was.
It was the first time she had asked me back to her flat, right when I began to wonder how someone who worked in a clothes shop could afford such a gorgeous apartment, with two bedrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows giving spectacular views of Brighton seafront.
‘It was a thirtieth-birthday present from my dad,’ she had told me. ‘His way of luring me back to the UK.’
We were in bed. We’d just had sex for the first time and I was slightly dazed, astonished by the chemistry between us, wondering if I was already falling in love with her.
I had been in lust before and it had been nothing like this.
My blood felt warmer, my stomach in knots whenever she looked at me a certain way, the thought of losing her already filling me with dread.
‘So your dad’s rich?’ I had asked.
‘Yeah. It’s kind of embarrassing. Have you heard of Charles Grant?’
‘The computer hardware guy?’
Of course I’d heard of him.
‘That’s him.’
‘Bloody hell. What’s he going to think about his daughter going out with a delivery driver?’
Gravitas. I had looked it up on Wikipedia the next day, refreshing my memory.
Charles founded it in the eighties, around the time of the first home computer boom.
The company focused on consumer products first, before shifting to more specialist medical and industrial hardware.
If you’ve ever been in hospital in Britain, chances are one of Gravitas’s machines helped diagnose, monitor or cure you.
Recently, a the business had also started manufacturing drones and other equipment used by the British military.
Remarkably, the company was still family owned, with Charles holding the majority share and his three children 10 per cent each.
This meant that, on paper, Holly was rich, too, although she had told me that selling her company shares would be more than her life was worth.
I was startled out of my reverie by a noise behind me, the scrape of a boot against gravel.
There was someone standing over by the cliff-edge: a teenage girl of about eighteen, with strawberry-blonde hair.
A cloud of vapour rose about her, giving the impression she had just appeared in a puff of smoke.
Noticing me notice her, she took another drag on her vape then stalked past me towards the house.
I followed her, carrying the cases, and found the teenage girl asking Morag when they were going to go home, calling her Mum. I was surprised. Morag must have had her very young.
‘We’re leaving in a minute, Avril,’ Morag said. ‘I have a couple of things to check. Be patient.’
Avril groaned.
Seeing me looking, Morag said, ‘This is my daughter, Avril. The bane of my existence and the apple of my eye.’
Avril did a classic teen eye-roll.
‘I’m just going to put all this stuff away.’ Morag picked up a bag of shopping that was just inside the front door. ‘You wait here. Be nice.’
Avril pulled her hood up over her head and I realized the hoodie bore the logo of one of my favourite bands. I forced myself not to say ‘Hey, I love The Cure, too,’ or anything that would provoke Gen Z disdain of my Millennial attempts to be hip.
‘Are you Holly’s new boyfriend?’ Avril asked, looking me up and down.
‘I am.’
‘Do you know when Lewis is getting here?’
‘Tonight, I think.’
‘Do you know what time?’ Her Scottish accent was thicker than her mum’s and I had to concentrate to understand her.
‘Sorry, I’m not sure.’
I had clearly disappointed her. She turned away and thumbed her phone until Morag reappeared.
Before she went, Morag turned and said, almost whispering, ‘If you need anything, let me know. You can usually find me at the pub.’ She paused.
‘You might need a break at some point over the next few days.’
‘Thank you. That’s kind.’
‘Good luck,’ she said, then followed her daughter out through the front door.
I carried the cases upstairs and found Holly in our room, sitting on the bed, wrapped in a grey wool blanket, illuminated by a thin shaft of fading light.
She pushed her hair out of her eyes and, for the thousandth time, I marvelled at the cupid’s bow curve of her lips, the flutter of her lashes as she blinked up at me.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ she asked with a smile.
‘I can’t help it. Hold on. Let me take your picture.’
She protested, but I already had my phone out. ‘Please.’
She consented, and I captured her, a final gasp of sunlight kissing the lens, washing her out so she looked like an apparition, made of light instead of flesh. I wasn’t sure about it – I liked her in high definition – but she scooted over to take a look.
‘I like it. Filtered by nature. You can’t see the bags under my eyes. Send it to me. Also, you can stop staring at me now.’
‘I can’t help it.’
I kicked the door closed behind me and dropped the cases, then lay down on my back, head on the pillow. Holly crawled up the bed and lay beside me.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m cold. I always forget how freezing this place is. It gets into your bones.’
‘Missing your underfloor heating?’
Back home, she usually walked around barefoot; her flat was always warm, even when it was pissing down outside. Now, I noticed, as her feet poked out from beneath the blanket, she had slipped on a pair of thick woollen socks.
She saw me looking. ‘Sexy, huh?’
‘Cute, I’d say.’
‘Urgh. Just don’t tell Miranda I raided her sock drawer.
I borrowed a couple of her jumpers, too.
’ She nodded at a pair of garments that she’d chucked over the back of a chair.
They looked like something a country lady would wear, not Holly’s usual style, which she described as ‘aspirational streetwear’, the kind of stuff they sold at her shop.
She rolled on to her back beside me and I craned my neck to take in the rest of the room.
A wardrobe, a couple of paintings of Scottish scenery on the walls.
Nothing personal. ‘It never stops being weird, coming here. You know, my mum died in the bedroom just along the hall. They came back here when she knew she didn’t have long left.
A private nurse with a bag full of morphine. ’
I sat up. ‘She died in your dad’s room? The master bedroom?’
‘Yeah. The same room he’s going to share with Jasmine. I wonder if he’s told her that.’ She stretched out the edge of the blanket so it covered me, too, and pulled me towards her. ‘Come here. I need you to warm me up.’
She kissed me, and I kissed her back, moving closer, hearing her breath catch, instantly aroused – but then a noise came from outside. A car engine, wheels on gravel.
Holly threw aside the blanket and went over to the window.
‘Miranda and Zack are here.’
She headed straight for the door, pausing and smiling back at me. ‘I love you,’ she said.
I grinned, even though her sister’s arrival had made me feel a little ill, and delivered the line she expected: ‘I know.’
As Holly left the room, I waited a moment then went to the window. It was too dark outside now to see very much except the shape of their car, a Land Rover, and two silhouettes heading towards the house, the crunch of footsteps.
I heard Holly say, ‘Hey, sis,’ and then the sound of barking and a man’s voice, a Brummie accent, going, ‘Watson, be quiet.’ That would be Zack. He sounded like he’d stepped off the set of Peaky Blinders.
I went along the landing and paused outside the master bedroom. How would it feel to know you were staying in a room in which your partner’s wife had died?
I stood at the top of the stairs and took a deep breath.
This was a big moment. Be natural, I told myself.
Don’t try too hard. I went down the stairs – and a black Labrador immediately came bounding towards to me.
Before I’d reached the bottom, he jumped, like a dolphin leaping to catch a fish, and knocked me backwards. I landed on my bum on the second step.
‘Watson, get here!’
Zack was a big guy with a shaved head and a neat beard, a shirt stretched tight across his muscular frame. He came striding over, grabbing the dog by his collar and hauling him off.