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Chapter Three
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008
    The morning after I’d tried to help the wailing girl at the garage, I dropped the twins at nursery and drove homewards through the green Cotswold lanes, fighting a sudden longing for a cigarette. Xavier was still waiting to hear from me; and Lord Higham’s face was staring at me impassively from the morning paper on the passenger seat. Images I’d blocked for years flickered remorselessly through my head until I had to pull onto a farm track. The rain had finally stopped during the night and the hedgerow sparkled with moisture, but I felt strangely bleak. I’d always known it was a risk coming here. It was too close for comfort; it always had been.
    But during my last pregnancy four years ago, James had been recovering from a serious bout of depression. His record label had narrowly missed a takeover bid, thanks to his business partner’s bad accounting, and the incident seemed to prompt the return of the nightmares from university days. He’d been haunted again, resulting in drugs and drink to counter endless sleepless nights. In the end he’d said the countryside was what he needed, he’d practically begged: and I’d craved peace myself, too exhausted to question his motives.
    I sat in the car for a long time, thinking.
    ‘Oxford 15 m, London 53m’ read the quaint white fingerpost. Wearily I rested my head on the steering wheel as Mick Jagger bemoaned ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’. I felt utterly confused and suddenly torn. London and Xavier lay in one direction; my family and my home were in the other. And somewhere suddenly in the middle were these memories, the cold clamp of the past pressing around me, the hideous misadventure James and I had fought to leave behind.
    I restarted the car, startling a lugubrious cow peering over the hedge, and I saw it was already time to collect the twins. They were so pleased to see me, running into my knees with euphoric cries of ‘Mummy!’ like I was the best thing since ice cream or Father Christmas, that the guilt I felt was savage. I shouldn’t write about anything other than giant marrows: that much I owed my children. But my soul was aching for the thrill of the hunt. I took them home and kissed and hugged them until they told me to go away, and eventually deposited them in the garden sandpit with sandwiches and juice whilst I sat on the stone bench and watched them.
    After a while I went inside and unearthed my notebook from the tidy pile, peeling an ancient half-eaten Twix from the front, and took it outside. Sitting on the bench in the spring sunshine, watching Effie’s sand-cakes grow ever wetter, and Fred sampling some tasty mud, I scribbled for a while. When I’d finished, I closed the book and fished my phone out.
    ‘So’, I said carefully when he answered, ‘if I do it, can I have carte blanche?’
    ‘Don’t be silly. You’re not Kate bloody Adie, darling.’
    ‘Not quite, no,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit Northern but not nearly as posh.’
    ‘And you’re prettier. Well, marginally.’
    ‘Yeah, OK, Xav. Don’t go overboard.’
    ‘Listen, something else has just come through on the wire from Qatar about Kattan. It might be nothing. But I wanna be first if it’s there. Specially after the fucking Telegraph stealing our ten-p tax thunder. I’ll send everything over.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘And, Rose, one thing. Be careful of interesting angles.’
    ‘Funny,’ I said shortly. I’d nearly been sued by the South African government the last time I’d written for Xav. Thankfully my instinct had been right, but it had been scary there for a while; the court costs mounting into six figures, me envisaging utter ruin.
    ‘You’ve got a week.’
    ‘OK.’ I hung up. Effie looked up at me and then carefully poured some sand into her red plastic cup.
    ‘Cup of tea, Mummy?’ she asked earnestly, holding it out to me.
    ‘Do you know what, my angel,’ I lowered myself into the sandpit between