She sent Adam a text to warn him but at half-past nine there’d been no response. Her anxiety rose another notch. It was one thing not to be in touch to see how things were, but not to reply to a text giving him information – that information – was out of character. She went so far as to check that the message had been delivered then told herself he couldn’t text, he was driving. But she’d sent the message just after seven and the journey shouldn’t take two and a half hours. It was Sunday night, too: most of the traffic would be heading into London, not out.
There’d been a disaster, an accident. He’d been driving under-slept and overwrought, his reactions were dulled . . . Or – the idea came accompanied by a wash of nausea – what if Theo had called him? What if the police had discovered something new about Cory, managed to link her to him that afternoon? She’d been sure no one had seen them but if she was wrong . . . At ten, she called Adam but the phone rang out and went to voicemail, and the same thing happened again twenty minutes later. Nerves frayed, she paced the house, incapable of sitting still for longer than a minute. Should she ring Jacqueline? Could she, even? If something had happened to her son now, too . . . Stop it, Rowan.
It was almost quarter-past eleven when she heard a key in the door. Seeing Adam, she nearly ran into his arms with relief. She went to kiss him but he pressed his cheek sideways against hers then, a second later, moved away.
‘I was worried,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be earlier – I . . .’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Was it a bad drive?’
‘Not great. I’m going to have a glass of wine. Do you want one?’
‘I’ll get it,’ she told him in the kitchen, ‘you sit.’
‘I’ve been sitting for the past hour and a half,’ he said, brusque.
‘Is she still outside – the journalist? Did you get my message? I texted you.’
‘Yes, I saw it.’
Did he think he’d replied? Did the message get lost? Confused, Rowan turned to the worktop to open the wine, glad of the excuse to hide her face for a moment. She poured two glasses then carried them to the table. As she handed him one, he met her eyes properly for the first time and, with a jolt of trepidation, she saw something new in his, more than just emotional and physical exhaustion. After hours of waiting, imagining catastrophe, she couldn’t take any more. ‘Is something wrong, Adam?’
He took a sip of wine, seeming to consider. ‘I went to see Peter this evening.’
‘Peter Turk?’ she said, too quickly. Then, trying to compensate, ‘Why? Did you want to tell him in person, too? The news, I mean.’
‘That was part of it.’
The knot of tension in her stomach pulled tighter.
‘Why did you go and see him, Rowan? The week after the funeral. Was it really just to try and build bridges?’
‘I don’t understand.’ She frowned, trying to mask her alarm.
‘Pete told me you wanted to talk about Marianne. He said you didn’t believe she slipped.’
‘You know I didn’t.’
‘You hadn’t spoken to either of them for ten years and yet you made a special trip to London to talk to him. He reminded me, by the way, that you vanished just when Dad died, when Mazz really could have done with having you round.’
Rowan looked straight at him. It was a gamble but she had to do it: she couldn’t let him pursue this line of thought any further. ‘Did Pete tell you I’m a gold-digger, too?’ she asked, heart thumping. ‘A leech – that was his word. Did he ask if I’d got my claws into you?’
As she’d hoped, Adam was wrong-footed. ‘What?’
‘That’s what he said to me the last time I saw him – which, by the way, was the day he came here, to the house, the morning you saw him, too. He made up a story about having lent Mazz a pair of cufflinks for a party, but it turned out he’d come to steal instead.’
‘Steal? What are you talking about?’
‘He’s furious with me because I caught him stealing her sketches. Lots – ten or fifteen of them. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment idea, either: he came prepared. He had a sort of press in his rucksack to carry them.’
Adam was looking at her as if she’d started speaking in tongues. ‘Pete was stealing sketches from Marianne?’
‘Yes. To sell. He’s broke.’
‘No.’ Adam shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense. The royalties from the record . . .’
‘One record, split between four, years ago? What’s he done since? Some radio jingles last year?’ She stopped: being a bitch wouldn’t cover her in glory. ‘Did you meet his lodger?’ she asked. ‘The friend of a friend, staying for a few days?’
A look of dawning realisation told her he had. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Because I felt bad for him. And he said that Mazz used to give sketches to her friends and that was true, too.’ She thought rapidly, made another decision. ‘Also, I didn’t want to leave.’
Adam looked up.