I haven’t actually said it. I only asked ‘What if?’
We get out of the car. It’s strange to think I’m standing in the exact spot where the three of them stood on Saturday morning: Flora, Thomas and Emily.
Dom presses the doorbell. A few seconds later it opens and a man appears. He’s wearing a blue-and-grey-checked shirt tucked into jeans, and white socks, no shoes. He looks at Dominic and me as if we’re a delivery that someone has left on his doorstep, which he now has to decide what to do with. He has a square face and mid-brown hair in a short, serious-businessman style.
‘Dominic and Beth Leeson?’ he says, unsmiling.
‘Yes. Thanks so much for agreeing to see us at such short notice,’ says Dom.
‘I agreed for Jeanette’s sake. She was disturbed by what happened in the car park yesterday.’ He looks pointedly at me. ‘So … I’m hoping we can resolve the matter swiftly and avoid any further … incidents.’
‘That’s exactly what we want too,’ Dom assures him. ‘The last thing Beth wants to do is upset your wife, Mr Cater. If we can—’
‘I think you’d better call me Kevin. And let’s not have this conversation on the doorstep.’
‘Of course not.’
‘What time is it?’ Cater consults a watch that looks expensive. ‘Yes, it’s noon. All right, follow me. Close the door after you.’
He takes us through a spotlit lobby that’s too sleek and professional-looking to be called an entrance hall. There’s nothing homely about it. It’s entirely white – like a non-slippery ice rink – and dotted with square pillars. We pass the entrance to an enormous kitchen with a concertina-style door that’s standing open. It’s made of padded white felt, with rows of silver studs marking out the lines along which it folds. I think it’s supposed to look stylish.
There’s a hefty white rectangle of kitchen island with a ring of silver pans hanging from the ceiling above it, three beige sofas at the far end of the room, and a wooden table with at least twelve chairs around it, though it’s hard to be precise after a quick glance while walking past.
Dom looks back, glares at me and beckons me to hurry up. He thinks I’m snooping and he doesn’t want our host to catch me in the act. I wonder if he’s noticed: every single thing I’ve seen so far inside this house could have been chosen by Lewis Braid. Or by the kind of interior designer he’d hire.
Kevin Cater shows us into a large, rectangular sitting room with unusually high caramel-coloured skirting boards, ornate bronze radiators, a herringbone-patterned dark-wood floor, gold floor-length curtains and striped wallpaper: mustard alternating with fawn. Around the room, in a strictly rectangular arrangement, are sofas and chairs, all white, cream or gold, with wooden occasional tables dotted between them here and there.
When I see the framed photographs on the walls, my breath catches in my throat. There are eight in total, and every single one is of a murmuration of many hundreds of birds against a sky. Sunset, broad daylight … the skies are all different, as is the shape made by the birds in each picture, but the theme is very much the same.
When I knew him, Lewis Braid used to go wild with glee if he saw a murmuration. I didn’t know it was called that until he told me. He would stare and stare, and sometimes chase the birds, and swear loudly, more often than not, when they finally flew out of sight. ‘Isn’t that the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen?’ he’d demand. Once he snapped at Flora for not bringing a camera to a picnic, as if she could have known that there would be a murmuration of starlings above our heads that day. Another time he leaped up and started flapping his arms like an idiot, yelling, ‘Why can’t I be a bird, flying in a beautiful, perfect flock in the moonlight?’
Lewis Braid arranged for these photographs to be framed and hung on the walls of this room. How could it have been anyone else? Does anybody care as much as Lewis does about birds flying in large groups? I’ve never met anyone else who’s even mentioned a murmuration, let alone made a fuss about one.
‘Did you do up this room?’ I ask Kevin Cater. It comes out harsher than I intended it to.
‘Beth …’ Dom warns.
‘It’s all right,’ says Cater. ‘Actually, we didn’t. We inherited it from the previous owners. Everything had been done so beautifully, with no expense spared. Jeanette and I hardly changed anything.’
No. Lewis wouldn’t leave his murmuration pictures here for another family. He’d take them to Florida. He’d take them with him wherever he went.
Kevin Cater’s eyes rest on me a little too long. A smile plays around his lips. It’s not a friendly one.
‘Take a seat,’ he says. ‘I’ll go and track down Jeanette. In a house this size, it’s easier said than done.’
Once he’s gone, I walk over to the door and close it.
‘Did you see the look he gave me before he left the room?’ I ask Dom. ‘He was taunting me.’
‘What?’
‘He wanted me to get the message: “If I tell you I haven’t changed anything about this house, then you won’t be able to prove that the reason it still looks like Lewis Braid’s house is because it still is Lewis Braid’s house. He’s not a good guy, Dom. I don’t trust him.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Beth.’
‘And I don’t like him. Did you hear how he said, “Let’s not discuss this on the doorstep”, when he was the one who started doing that, not us? And what about “What time is it? Ah, yes, it’s noon, so you can come in” – he virtually accused us of arriving rudely early, when it was easily five past twelve by the time we rang the bell. And he must have known that. If we’d been two minutes early, would he have made us wait outside? That was how it sounded.’
‘Beth, shut up. I mean it. He’s going to walk back in any second now.’
‘So? I’m not scared of him. Or fooled by him. Everything he’s said and done so far is an attempt to manipulate us and make us feel small.’
‘Shh. Keep your voice down.’
‘Why? Remember how huge his house is, like he just told us? He’s probably in another wing, miles away, and wouldn’t hear me if I screamed the place down.’
Dom’s face is flushed. ‘I can’t be bothered to think of a way to put this tactfully, so I’m just going to say it. You’re sounding madder by the minute. Manipulate us? Come on! The guy’s understandably pissed off because he’s having to waste his day proving to you that his wife is in fact his wife and not a woman who used to live here and who’s currently in Florida. If he’s falling a bit short of warm and friendly, that’s why.’
‘Really? If you think that, then you can’t possibly understand …’
‘What?’ Dom asks in a whisper. ‘What don’t I understand?’
‘You keep saying you agree that everything that’s happened is bizarre, but if you really thought that, you’d know that Kevin and Jeanette Cater have to be involved in it, whatever it is. She was wearing the same clothes.’
The door opens. Kevin Cater walks in, followed by the woman I first met yesterday in the car park in Huntingdon. She’s wearing a knee-length black pleated skirt with a red and black leopard-print top and black slip-on pumps.