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times table was in league with the fractions, and how the multiplication hid inside the square roots, waiting to pounce.’ He laid his hand over his son’s in a brief gesture of affection or sympathy, Matthew was not sure which. ‘Boring arithmetic,’ he said.
    ‘Flummery and moonshine?’ suggested Matthew hopefully, because this was one of his father’s expressions, and he liked saying it.
    His father’s smile broadened, but he said, ‘Well, not exactly that, because you need to know about some of it. But there are other things in life as well as maths. Just do the best you can and I’ll help you with your homework. Remember, figures aren’t everyone’s strength and you’ve got a lot of other strengths.’ He withdrew his hand, as if embarrassed by his own display of emotion. ‘Let’s have some lunch,’ he said. ‘I see they’ve got chocolate pudding today.’
    Matthew did not write stories about arithmetic like his father had done, but he drew pictures of all the figures laying plots, giving them secret faces and swirly cloaks like villains in stories, making them seem to be dodging in and out of the columns. He showed them to his father who laughed and said Matthew was a genius, and how about them trying to write a comic-cartoon strip together – like you saw in newspapers? He would write the stories and Matthew could illustrate them. They might try to sell the whole thing to a newspaper or a children’s comic. This was a wonderful plan and what was even better was that his father thought Matthew’s sketches were good enough.
    ‘It will probably help the arithmetic as well,’ said his father, smiling.
    It helped with arithmetic, but it did not help with the cold-eyed men when they came to the house. Each evening, as Matthew drew his pictures or did homework or read a book, he waited for the house to plunge into its frozen state of fear that meant the bulbous-eyed car had driven up the lane. He listened almost all the time for the sounds of their footsteps outside the house.

CHAPTER THREE

    Each evening, as night fell, Theo found himself listening for the sounds of footsteps outside Fenn House.
    He did not immediately realize he was doing this. When he did he was annoyed because he was used to living on his own and, although he had his fair share of writer’s imagination, it did not normally prompt him to listen uneasily for prowlers the minute darkness descended. But then he had never stayed in Fenn House on his own and he had certainly never been at Melbray during a bleak Norfolk winter. And he had never, he thought uneasily, experienced anything quite like that insistent image that had scalded his mind when he arrived – the image of the boy frightened to enter the dark house.
    He had been at Fenn for four days and had quelled some of the dusty dereliction, swiping at cobwebs and trundling the vacuum cleaner over a few of the rooms. Charmery would have laughed; she would have said, ‘Theo, darling, how can you be bothered – why don’t you just hire a cleaner?’ But Theo did not have Charmery’s careless attitude to money, and he did not want anyone disturbing his work. He had still not been down to the boat-house, though. He thought it was because he did not want to see it with the remnants of the police investigation strewn around; he wanted it to stay in his mind exactly as it had been all those years ago.
    He had worked almost non-stop since he arrived. Once or twice he wondered vaguely what his agent and editor would say when they found out he was writing a totally different book to the one outlined in his current contract, and that it was a book so different from anything else he had written, it might not even be recognizable as a Theo Kendal novel. Still, providing he added a few scenes of classy bonking and injected a touch of humour here and there, his agent would be appeased even if his editor tore her hair in exasperation.
    At intervals he went rather absently into the kitchen to