In The Company Of Strangers Part 2

''Course she did. Not much got past Catherine.'

'But how how did she know?'

Paula shrugged, 'Someone always knows and someone always pa.s.ses it on. WA may be a huge state but it's a very small community. Catherine knew a lot of people. Shame you couldn't make it here when she needed you.' And she wheeled the trolley into the office, running over Declan's foot and twisting a knife into his already guilt-stricken gut. Paula, he thinks, is both blessing and nightmare. She knows the place well and does a terrific job, but she's too opinionated and nosy for his liking. He watches her now as she zips through the office dusting, wiping, whizzing around with the vacuum cleaner.

'Don't touch anything on the desk,' he calls. Not that it would make much difference, he hasn't a clue what's there or how to deal with it. She's an odd sort of mix, Paula, late thirties, possibly a bit more, very tight jeans and a pink t-s.h.i.+rt with a picture of Kylie Minogue on the front, usually plugged into her iPod, singing along quietly with Kylie while she works. But quite often, when she opens her mouth, she sounds like a 1950s charlady.

He shuffles a few papers on the desk now and, thankful that Paula has vacated the office, finds a pad and starts to draft an ad. It would help if he actually knew what sort of staff he needs but he hasn't been able to work that out yet. What he feels he needs is someone who will tell him what to do, how to make the place work. The figures for the summer tourist trade are down considerably on previous years and the whole place is looking seedy. A couple of seasonal garden staff have left, and everything looks sad and neglected. The shop obviously needs restocking, and although the young a.s.sistant is still there, Glenda, who had managed it for years, decided that Catherine's death was the signal for her own retirement.

The chef left a couple of months ago and Catherine had apparently run out of the energy required to interview anyone new, so she had closed the cafe. Declan has no idea what goes on with the lavender products except that for years Catherine made them all herself: the moisturisers and cleansers, the soaps and shampoos and conditioners, the ma.s.sage oils and refresher sprays and all the rest of it. But some years ago she'd started talking about finding someone to train, and that's when Fleur came along. Fleur, who in so many ways is larger than life confident, outspoken makes Declan feel like an awkward child. She's a big woman, younger than him, probably not yet forty, but tall and curvaceous, with lots of wild auburn hair, and big gestures. Something about her conveys the impression that she is the possessor of ancient wisdom and whenever she's around Declan fumbles for words and struggles to remember that he's the one who's supposed to be in charge. But it's easy for him to see why Catherine chose Fleur to be the one to whom she would pa.s.s the baton of the lavender products. She oozes competence, believes pa.s.sionately in the soothing and healing properties of the lavender, and her sense of humour is similar to Catherine's. Fleur plays with irony and takes no prisoners, and if something upsets her she doesn't mince her words. She seems to get on well with the rest of the staff but keeps her distance, spending most of her time in the workroom and production area and not using the staff room. But she's good at managing the volunteers who turn up to collect the dried lavender and bags of fabric to make soft toys and eye and neck pillows.

'Why don't we pay the volunteers?' Declan had asked Fleur as they walked around the gift shop a couple of days after he arrived.

'Because they're volunteers,' Fleur had said, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head to one side as though humouring him. 'All the profits from the cus.h.i.+ons and the toys go to charity,' she'd said, showing him the label around the neck of the nearest teddy bear. 'Benson's provides the dried lavender and some of the fabric. The rest of the materials come from local people and businesses who give us offcuts and remnants and also offcuts of the Dacron that goes in with the lavender to make up the filling. Catherine knew various people in Perth so every time she went there she'd come back with bags of leftover fabric and Dacron.'

'But where does the money actually go?' Declan had asked. 'What does it do?'

'The Birthing Kit Project,' Fleur had explained. 'They make up birthing kits for women in developing countries. They're very simple but hugely effective because they reduce the risk of death from infection and bleeding.'

Declan had blushed and swallowed hard; he was not good with discussions about bleeding, especially about women bleeding. 'Really?' he managed to say. 'That sounds . . . um . . . very . . .'

'I can show you a kit if you like,' Fleur had said. 'I've got one in the workroom.'

'No, no need for that,' Declan had said almost too quickly, visualising terrifying sets of forceps and hypodermic needles. 'I'm sure they're . . . they must be . . . um . . . important and obviously we should keep doing it.'

Fleur had eyed him off at the time, and he'd thought she might be having a silent laugh at his expense. Later she'd put some leaflets about the birthing kits on his desk, together with a small plastic package.

'It's very important, you need to read about it,' Paula had said fiercely when she spotted them the following day. 'Catherine thought it was important.'

So he had tucked them away in a drawer and turned his attention to other aspects of the business: the potted lavender plants in fancy gift containers, the berry products the jams, the sauces and vinegars made up by a couple of women in the town and delivered complete in octagonal gla.s.s jars and bottles topped with purple and white checked fabric and ribbon. Then there was the bulk picking (no more now until next summer, thank goodness) and the pick-your-own trade and, of course, the letting of the cottages. Catherine had kept everything in her head and so the history, the daily life and orderly running of the place had died with her. Declan knows he lacks the organisational skill and the sort of pa.s.sionate energy needed to pull it all together. Each day he comes in here and stares in dismay at the chaos which has not changed since the previous day except to become more overbearing. He is paralysed by anxiety, fearful of messing things up in ways that will destroy the place and with it the jobs of the remaining staff.

The telephone rings and Declan clears his throat and attempts to sound professional and confident as he answers. It's a booking. His first.

'A week certainly,' the woman says, 'but I may want to stay longer. I thought you might be fully booked.'

'Normally we would be,' Declan says in a tone he hopes is genial but businesslike, 'but we've had . . . a few administrative problems, things have slipped a little. We haven't been processing any bookings.'

'Well that's my good luck then,' the woman says. 'It's a lovely place so I'm happy you can take me. In fact, book me in for two weeks. I'll pay in advance.'

'I just need to tell you that we've had to close the cafe for a while,' Declan says. 'It used to cater for breakfast and lunch. But we can provide everything for a continental breakfast delivered to your cottage kitchen, so if you're happy with that . . .'

'That's not a problem . . . Mrs Benson, is she still there?'

Declan takes a deep breath. 'Sadly Mrs Benson died recently. I'm her nephew, Declan Benson.'

There is an awkward silence at the end of the line, then, 'Oh . . . oh my goodness, I'm so sorry, how very sad. Well I don't know what to say now. Your aunt, I only met her the one time we stayed there but she was lovely, so warm and friendly. It must be a great loss.'

The words slip like a dagger into Declan's heart, and for the first time he actually feels that loss. Stunned by the enormity of what he has to take on it is only now that he starts to feel exactly what it is that he has lost. A lump of something hard and painful seems to have gathered in his throat and he tries to swallow it and coughs in the process. 'It is indeed,' he says, thinking his voice sounds as though he's being strangled. 'But it was her wish that we should carry on with the business so-'

'Of course,' the woman cuts in, 'but it's difficult, I'm sure. Well, two weeks then, the name is Craddock, Lesley Craddock shall I give you my credit card details?'

Declan puts down the phone, enters the booking into the register and leans back in his chair thinking about Catherine, who she really was and what she meant to him. His parents are both long dead, the wider family scattered and unknown to him. His ex-wife despises him for his indecisiveness and his drinking, and hopes never to hear from him again. Years ago, in this situation, Declan would have reached for a drink. He would have opened a bottle of Scotch and poured a liberal amount down his throat, and then some more; or he might have drunk his way steadily through a few bottles of wine until panic and confusion were replaced by the comforting feeling that he was in total control and knew exactly what he was doing. Then he would have pa.s.sed out, woken up the next morning with a terrible headache and started all over again. There were times, too, when he would have shoved something up his nose or into his arm, but that was a long time ago. It's twelve years since he had a drink and much longer since he's taken anything stronger than a couple of Panadol. These days he attempts to deal with stress through meditation, but times like this are a painful reminder that he was much better at drinking than he seems to be at meditating. He wonders now if he might be better to shelve all this confusing paperwork and go outside and sort out the sprinkler system, or check the raspberry canes. But the raspberries are finished and, anyway, he's done that for the last four days and each time he comes back in here no office fairy has worked magic on any of the problems, a few more of which have landed on the desk.

Declan makes himself a cup of tea, sits down again and steels himself for the task ahead. He opens the diary in which Catherine had thoughtfully put some reminders for various days. On today's date the message in block capitals is sausage dogs followed by a phone number.

'Sausage dogs?' he exclaims in frustration, loud enough to make Paula, who is back now and is dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the office, jump almost out of her skin. 'What the d.i.c.kens are sausage dogs?'

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' Paula says, 'you frightened the life out of me.'

'How am I supposed to know what this means?' Declan grumbles it is so much easier to turn the sadness and the guilt into anger. 'Sausage dogs!'

'They're the things you put along the bottom of the door to stop draughts,' Paula says. And she reaches down behind the open door and picks up a long sausage-shaped thing made of purple corduroy. 'Like this. They're very popular with the winter tourists. Catherine would have been thinking about ordering some into the shop for when the weather changes.'

Declan nods. 'Draught excluders,' he says quietly, 'well I'd better get on to Belinda, whoever she-' but he's interrupted by the phone and when he picks it up there is no one there because it's his mobile that's ringing and he slams down the receiver and shuffles more paper to find it buried under a gardening supplies catalogue.

'Declan? Declan, is that you?'

It's a woman's voice. The signal is weak and he gets up and goes outside onto the deck. 'h.e.l.lo, who's that? I can hardly hear you.' And the line drops out.

's.h.i.+t,' he murmurs, 'who was that? Oh my G.o.d it sounded like-' and it rings again.

'Popular, aren't you?' Paula says dryly, shaking her duster over the edge of the verandah.

'Declan, it's me, Alice.'

'Alice?' Declan is, quite suddenly, short of breath. 'Alice?'

'Yes.' Her voice sounds odd, shaky, or perhaps it's just the line. 'You said to call when . . . well, if . . .'

'Alice?' he says. 'Is it really you, are you getting out?' Goose b.u.mps p.r.i.c.kle his skin.

'I'm out,' she says. 'Last week, last Monday.'

'But that's wonderful . . .'

'No, no it's not, it's awful. I thought it would get better, but it's ten days now and it's worse every day. That's why I'm ringing. I'm sorry it's just . . . I don't have anyone else to talk to.'

Declan's spine tingles. Alice!

'Alice,' he says, and he can hear that she's really distressed. 'Alice, listen to me. Everything will be fine, trust me. Where are you now?'

She mumbles something about temporary accommodation, about trying to find a job.

'Listen, Alice,' he cuts in suddenly, uncharacteristically decisive. 'Listen to me. I'm in Margaret River now, my aunt's place, remember? Can you get yourself here? There's a bus you can get from Perth, it takes four or five hours. Do you have enough money for a ticket? Good. Get the first bus you can, it might not be till tomorrow, but ring and tell me what time it arrives. It stops right in the Margaret River High Street and I'll be there to meet you.'

'But I have to get a job, I won't have anywhere to-'

'You can stay here,' he says, 'I've got a job for you, you can have a nice little cottage all to yourself. Lovely place, lots of lavender . . .'

'But I-'

'Do it, Alice,' Declan says, and he hears the pleading in his own voice. 'Do it for you and for me. I need you here and you'll love it. Go and find out about that bus and ring me back. Trust me, Alice, please just trust me.'

uby gasps in shock as she steps outside the airport building and into the heat. She'd forgotten its intensity, the way it grabs you by the throat and leaches moisture from your skin in seconds. And she'd forgotten the sky too that endless dazzling blue beloved of tourists and cursed by locals in the final days of a painfully long, hot summer. She hesitates, takes a deep breath that seems to burn her nostrils, drags her suitcase towards the taxi rank and waits, sweat creeping down her back, for the next available cab.

It's weird being back here. Nearly forty years since she quit Australia and fifteen years since Cat turned up unexpectedly on her doorstep in Islington.

'Catherine?' Ruby had said, shock fixing her rigidly in the half-open doorway. 'You're here? You didn't . . .'

'No, I didn't,' Cat had said, bluntly. 'I didn't get in touch and I didn't say I was coming because you might have told me not to. But I needed to see you, Rube, needed to talk to you face to face. Are you going to stand there all afternoon or are you going to let me in?'

After shock Ruby's next sensation had been resentment that she had been ambushed. Catherine taking control again, she'd thought, getting what she wants irrespective of anyone else, presenting me with a fait accompli so I've no choice but to open the door and invite her in. 'Stay cool,' she'd told herself aloud while Catherine was in the bathroom and she was making tea in the kitchen. 'Don't blow this because of your pride. Years ago, for a very long time, she was your only friend in the world.'

'It's your turn next,' Catherine had said as they parted at Heathrow three weeks later. 'We've dealt with the past so now you can come to Perth.'

Ruby had hesitated, shaking her head. 'It's not only what happened between us,' she'd said, 'it's the rest of it being sent away from England, the convent, everything that happened there. I don't know if I can . . .'

'You can, you will, I know you will,' Catherine had said. 'I just know it.' Once home again she had continued her urgings and Ruby had hesitated, prevaricated and now it was too late.

'Where to, love?' asks the taxi driver, heaving her suitcase into the boot.

He sounds, she thinks, like a Londoner, but she doesn't ask. The British are no novelty here. She and Catherine had been part of a ma.s.sive human cargo designed to boost the Australian population with good British stock but there were plenty who came of their own volition as ten-pound-poms, seeking the opportunities of a new life in the sun. People wait years now and have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get in. How times change, she thinks, and how relentlessly that early experience still defines her feelings about the place decades later.

'The Sheraton, please,' Ruby says, and settles back to fasten her seatbelt. Open mind, she tells herself, keep an open mind. Ignore the muddled surge of unsettling emotions that reared as the aircraft began its descent. She didn't have to do this, she could simply have found a local agent to act for her, provide a business a.s.sessment, and offer advice. Or she could have sent one of the staff. In fact, she acknowledges now, she could easily have sent Jess, who would probably have jumped at the chance.

They follow the other traffic out of the car park onto a wide and rather boring stretch of road lined with dusty native plants, long-term parking lots and the characteristically bland, crouching buildings that sprout up around airports. Ah well, she's here now and stuck with it. Stuck with Benson's Reach and her co-beneficiary, who, from the couple of telephone conversations she's had with him, seems to be struggling to get to grips with their shared legacy. He'd sounded pleasant, but nervous as though he knows as little about the place as she does. I'm too old for this, she thinks, it's time for a quieter life, not racing off to Australia to sort out a failing business.

Later, when the worst of the heat is gone, she opens the gla.s.s doors of her hotel room and sits on the balcony, watching the sun setting in a spectacular haze of crimson and coral, until her eyelids feel heavy. But the minute she slides between the immaculately laundered sheets she is awake again, her stomach writhing with anxiety, memories clamouring for attention.

'You can still turn around and go home,' she tells herself. 'Pick up the phone, call the airline, get the next possible flight back to London and despatch someone else to do the job.' But as she reaches for the phone a flicker of reluctance stops her and she pauses, equivocating. This is different. Benson's Reach no longer belongs to Catherine and along with some excruciatingly painful memories it also holds some happy ones which are entirely her own. The gut wrenching echoes of childhood in the convent, the cruelty and the shame well, she may never be able to lay those ghosts, never rid herself of that outrage, but Benson's Reach is different. She is here for Catherine and for herself, for their years of precious but severely disrupted friends.h.i.+p. 'Respect that,' she tells herself, 'make something good from it. Run away from this and you'll regret it later.' And punching her pillows into submission Ruby turns over, pulls the sheet up herself once again and closes her eyes and her mind in the pursuit of sleep.

From the kitchen window Alice can see up the slope to the balcony of the cottage where for the last two days she has sat watching the daily life of the place: Declan heading back and forth to the office, guests arriving and departing, a boy in a black baseball cap sweeping or pruning or riding off home on his bike, staff and tradespeople coming and going, and Paula, the only other person she's met so far, heading up the hill to clean the vacated cottages, or smoking surrept.i.tiously behind the old cow shed. Benson's Reach is supposedly smoke free and Alice wonders if Paula had risked smoking while Catherine was still around.

It's the first time she's been here in the main house, but from the vantage point of her balcony she has studied the outlines of this rambling, single-storey, stone building, with its wide verandahs, which has so suddenly become Declan's property and, for the time being at least, his home. She has imagined what it would be like inside, the arrangement of bedrooms, the place at which the office, added much later, is linked to it by a paved pathway. She has studied the other building too, a large, rammed-earth structure built in the eighties as a cafe and gift shop. The extent of the place has amazed her, not just the buildings but the sweeping, lavender clad slopes, the serried rows of raspberry canes, and the rest of the holiday cottages, similar in size and style to the one that Declan had taken her to when she arrived three days ago.

'It's lovely,' she'd said then. 'But I don't need a whole cottage to myself.' She was emotionally exhausted by almost two weeks of painful freedom followed by the long bus ride, and was still likely to burst into tears at any moment. Declan's kindness had seemed overwhelming.

'They're just holiday places, but you need some privacy,' Declan had said. 'And Ruby will need to stay in the house; it's partly hers, after all. We're low on holiday bookings now anyway, Catherine dropped the ball in the last few months. I should have been here to help her but . . .'

'But you'll get more bookings,' Alice had said. 'You'll stay here, won't you? Get it going again?'

'It really depends on Ruby,' he'd said, and he'd explained then about the will, about his aunt and Benson's Reach, and the prospect of her old friend's imminent arrival. 'Right now I don't really know what I want from it all. But whatever we decide we'll need to get things back on track first. Anyway, you need some time to sort yourself out, get over the trials of freedom.'

The interior of the house is bigger, lighter and more airy than Alice expected. The rooms all open off a wide central pa.s.sage, and at the heart of it is this kitchen with its quarry tiled floor, the huge old range, a long line of windows and a scrubbed pine table loaded with unfinished paperwork, old newspapers, a bowl of fruit, a jug of dried flowers, and various items of crockery. Alice finishes rinsing the cups she and Declan have used for their coffee and dries her hands on a tea towel that looks as though it needs a good wash.

'I need to know what my job is,' she'd told him earlier this morning. 'I can't sit around in the cottage contemplating my navel; it's no good for me. So tell me what you want me to do. You must have had a role in mind for me when you invited me here.' But as they talked it soon became clear that Declan's invitation had encompa.s.sed everything in general and nothing specific.

'I'm a lousy organiser, I needed help,' he said sheepishly, 'someone to talk to and to . . . share the load, I suppose. Maybe we could talk about it now?'

It reminded her how diffident he could be, how indecisive.

'All my motivation and decision making abilities disappeared years ago,' he'd told her once. 'It floated off in a cloud of all that dope I smoked in my youth.'

'Then let's make a list of things that absolutely have to be done and done soon,' Alice had said this morning, and they had soon filled a page of Declan's notebook. They were both floundering, she thought, but hopefully they would be able to keep each other afloat. Now, a couple of hours later, Declan has driven off to an appointment at the local council.

'Have a good look around the house, the office, everywhere, while I'm gone,' he'd said. 'Here are the keys for the cafe and shop. We can talk again when I get back, and if you could make up a room for Ruby that would be good.' He'd handed her another key hanging from a string of small purple beads. 'This is the key to Catherine's room. Apparently she made them lock it when they took her to hospital.' He glanced away, obviously embarra.s.sed. 'I haven't been able to bring myself to go in there yet. And I certainly didn't want Paula nosing around in there. Have a look, would you, see what you think?'

Alice turns the string of beads in her hand and then hangs it back around her neck. She is both curious and cautious and the caution dictates that the impersonal s.p.a.ce of the office is the best place to start. Stepping out of the back door she pauses, inhaling the scent of the lavender that lines the path. Closing her eyes she senses, fleetingly, something that has evaded her for so long. Is it calm, perhaps, or hope? Yes, hope. She is free, and despite the awfulness of those first ten days back in the world, she is now somewhere safe and friendly, somewhere with possibilities. She has some control over her future now, but it's still going to be a struggle. A woman only a couple of years off sixty with no one left of her own, no home, no possessions, an ex-con with a terrible scar across her past constantly threatening to overwhelm her does she actually have a future?

When Declan had met her at the bus stop in Margaret River she had been a mess. The freedom she had craved so long hadn't been anything like she'd imagined and as each day pa.s.sed she had sunk further into despair at her inability to cope without the boundaries to which she'd become accustomed. Stick it out for at least a week, she told herself several times a day. She didn't want to think about what she would do if things didn't improve in that time. And when the week was up the outlook was grim. She'd applied for jobs, turned up for interviews and was knocked back from all of them. They were jobs that she could have got standing on her head back before all this happened.

'When you call for the interview, don't tell them where you've been for the last few years,' the counsellor had told her. 'You don't have to lie, just don't say anything about it. If you get an interview you'll make a really good impression, and that's when you put your cards on the table.'

But Alice, uncomfortable with what seemed like deception, had disclosed the information on the telephone and those first conversations had promptly been terminated. Finally she tried it the other way and landed four interviews in four days. They were jobs in cafes and restaurants that she thought she should easily be able to get. She wasn't aiming high, just hoping for something she knew she could do and that would get her back in the workforce again. One was in a sandwich bar, another waitressing in a city cafe. The third was on the checkout in a large supermarket. Alice agonised for hours over what to wear not that she had much to choose from what to say, and how to appear confident. And then she struggled with the shame that paralysed her when she disclosed where she had spent the last five years. The first three employers cooled immediately at this point. The final interview was for a short order cook in a hotel near the airport. It was a perfect location, walking distance from the place she was staying. The interview went well, and when she told the manager that she had just been released from jail he was warmly supportive. For a moment she thought she'd got the job, but then he shook his head and said he was sorry, he had no problem with her record but he'd tried in the past to employ post-release applicants and the general manager wouldn't agree.

And so she began again, with similar results, until she had hit rock bottom and was drained of energy and unable to muster the confidence to carry on. It was then, desperate for the sound of a familiar and friendly voice, that she had called Declan and the next day she was on the bus to Margaret River. They didn't even know each other very well at least, not in the way you'd normally know an old friend. They'd met at a particularly difficult time in his life and she'd been able to support him through that. Then, when Alice was the one in trouble he'd been there for her. The first time he had come to see her in prison had been her first connection with her pre-prison life.

'It's a two-way thing,' he'd said, flus.h.i.+ng when she told him what it meant to her that he'd visited. 'You were an absolute rock for me when I needed it, so if there's anything I can do now, you only have to say. I'll come again in a few weeks' time.' And he had. In fact he'd come every six weeks or so, until he took a job in Albany, five hours' drive away, so the visits stopped, but he wrote from time to time. They were strange, sometimes melancholy, sometimes light-hearted letters in which he told her more about himself and what he was doing, but spoke mainly of his observations on what was happening in the world. From climate change to celebrity excess, from social networking to the treatment of asylum seekers, Declan had a view thoughtful, considered and always concisely expressed, and usually remarkably similar to her own. His despatches on the state of the world had grown increasingly important to Alice; they were her only personal contact with life outside the prison and she treasured them. But Declan is still something of a mystery to her as, she supposes, she is to him. What she's sure of is that she trusts him; he has learned from his mistakes, and can acknowledge his weaknesses even if he is slow to acknowledge that he has any strengths.

Alice slips the key into the lock and lets herself into the office. It is a nightmare: the desk buried under a chaotic pile of papers, catalogues and files so large and so messy that they almost seem to have their own monstrous energy. There are days weeks of work needed in here but surely that is for Declan and his new partner when she arrives. She skirts the desk, glances through the reservations book and the details of the staff, and retrieves a file that she has knocked from its place on the windowsill. Briefly she pauses to study it, closes it and as she puts it on the desk in a prominent position there's a tap on the office door and a boy, the boy in the baseball cap that she's spotted a few times, pops his head in.

'Sorry, I was looking for Mr Benson,' he says, obviously surprised to see her, s.h.i.+fting his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other.

'He's out, I'm afraid,' Alice says. 'He said he'd be back about lunchtime. Can I help? I'm Alice, by the way, I'm staying here to help out. You work here, don't you?'

'Sort of,' he says. 'Do a few jobs for Cath . . . um . . . Mrs Benson. I was wondering about my pay.'

'Oh dear. You will need to talk to Declan about that. Could you come back later, after lunch? I'm sure he'll sort it out for you then.'

He nods. 'Okay,' he says awkwardly, 'I'll get on with something else.'

'I'll tell him, shall I?' Alice says. 'Tell him you were looking for him and that you'll be back?'

'Okay, thanks.' He turns away from the door.

'Who shall I say . . . ?'

'Sorry?'

'Your name? So I can tell him.'

'Todd,' he says, 'thanks, yeah thanks, see ya.'

Alice closes the office door and goes out back along the path to the house thinking that he seems awfully young, and wondering why Declan hadn't mentioned him when he'd told her about the other people who worked here.

There are four bedrooms off the pa.s.sage and apart from the one Declan has obviously chosen for himself it's clear that the others haven't been used for some time. In the grey and white tiled bathroom the only signs of recent activity are Declan's: his toothbrush and toothpaste in a gla.s.s, towels thrown carelessly over the rail and a couple of t-s.h.i.+rts and underpants dropped on the floor.

The dining room has the deserted air of a long-gone dead life that belongs, perhaps, to a time when Catherine and her husband, Declan's Uncle Harry, entertained here. The jarrah table is waxed to a high sheen and not a speck of dust mars the bottles and crystal gla.s.ses on the shelves of the c.o.c.ktail bar. Alice suspects that Paula, with her vacuum cleaner, feather duster and the lavender polish that scents the air, is probably the only life form that this room has seen in a very long time.