Elena went upstairs before Miles could stop her.
The stair rose from the hall between the kitchen and sitting room, twelve steps to a narrow landing. The small guest room was on the left. The larger bedroom faced the lake at the end. The bathroom stood between them, with a little round window that had always made Daniel say he was shaving in a boat.
Everything smelled of the lemon cleaner the rental company used. A pale runner covered the boards. Elena followed it into the large bedroom and looked behind the door, then beneath the bed. She felt foolish crouching there with her coat still on. Foolishness did not make her stop.
The cupboard stood closed.
She lifted the handle. It caught in the usual way, and when she let go the door drifted open an inch. Inside were two empty hangers and a spare duvet in a plastic bag. There was no one on the balcony, no place behind the curtains for an adult to stand.
Miles waited on the landing. He had turned off the stove. The spoon was gone, and he kept his hands where she could see them.
“You can look in the other room,” he said.
“How generous.”
“It isn't—” He stopped. “All right.”
She did look. His bag lay open on the guest bed. A shirt, a toothbrush, a packet of antacids. A novel with a receipt as its bookmark. No recording equipment, no photographs of her, no obvious machinery for making dead husbands close cupboards. On the windowsill stood a mug with a skin of tea over its surface.
“How long have you been here?”
“Three days.”
“This is rented to me.”
“I had a key.”
“From whom?”
He gave her a look that said she knew the answer. Before returning downstairs, Elena stepped into the bathroom. No one was there, and the floor was dry. She went down and called the rental office.
Jo answered with a mouthful of something and apologized. Yes, Elena had the house. No, there was no other booking. Could it be the man who checked the water supply? Elena said it could not, and Jo's tone sharpened at once.
“Come away from him. Go back to your car. I'll ring the caretaker.”
Elena stood in the kitchen doorway. Miles had opened the pan again and was scraping something from the bottom, his jaw set. He was making an effort not to listen, an effort so visible that she could almost hear it.
“I don't think he means to hurt me,” she said, surprised to find she had said it.
“Elena, you don't have to decide that. Go out.”
“I'll ring you back.”
She ended the call and saw the screen fill immediately with Jo's return call. She silenced it. Miles looked at the phone and then at her.
“That's the first sensible person you've spoken to today,” he said.
“Including you?”
“Especially me.”
She set the phone on the counter and went out through the kitchen's lake door. Five wooden steps led down to a path, then another twenty yards to the dock. The hired rowboat rocked gently alongside it. Its oars lay beneath the seats. Beyond the house's small bay the water broadened toward a village hidden by the southern headland. She had walked there along the shore before, with Daniel, and later by herself. An afternoon walk, not a wilderness.
She could leave. The car was ten steps past the porch. She could get a room in the village, ring the police, let someone else deal with this man and his wet socks.
On the dock lay a towel. It was clean except for one muddy footmark. Miles had been down here recently. She turned and found him at the top of the kitchen steps, holding a dishcloth.
“Did you swim?” she asked.
“No.”
“Your socks are wet.”
“The bathroom leaked.”
She had just stood on a dry bathroom floor. He looked away before she could say so.
“Show me what Daniel gave you.”
Miles went to his bag, and she waited in the hall where she could see the porch door. He returned with a thin envelope. Its flap was torn and repaired with clear tape. Her name was not on it. Across the front Daniel had written For Miles, in the impatient handwriting she used to decipher on shopping lists.
He let her hold it. The paper smelled faintly of coffee. Inside was a folded sheet, a photograph and a small brass key. The photograph showed Elena at thirty-five, laughing beside the lake with her hand over her face. Daniel had taken it eleven years ago, on a day of vicious wind. Her skirt had blown up and she had blamed him for looking delighted. She had never seen the print.
“That's his,” she said, touching the key. It was the house's old key, before the rental company fitted the combination box. “They made us pay for losing it.”
“He gave it to me.”
She unfolded the sheet. Daniel's first line was: If I don't tell her myself, start with the lake. Don't start with what she owes.
Miles reached for the paper. Elena pulled it away.
“No.”
He let his hand fall. “There are things in there I don't understand. I need you to hear them with me here.”
“You've had eleven years.”
“Yes.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I've had eleven years.”
It sounded less like an answer than something he had woken to this morning and could no longer bear. Elena read the next sentence, but it referred to a return, and a term, and she could not make the words join. She folded the sheet along its worn crease.
Her phone rang again. This time it was Bea. Elena stepped onto the porch to answer.
“Are you there?” Bea asked. “Jo rang me. What's happened?”
Elena looked through the screen at Miles. He had taken the pan off the heat and was tasting what was in it. He shut his eyes in disappointment, added salt, then tasted again.
“There's someone Daniel knew,” she said. “I'm talking to him.”
“Is he supposed to be there?”
“No.”
“Then leave, El.”
“I can. I'm not locked in.” She tried to say something reassuring and heard herself become stubborn instead. “He's got a letter from Daniel. There are things I need to ask.”
Bea stayed quiet long enough for Elena to feel how this sounded. “Send me his name. And ring me in an hour. If you don't, I will be a nuisance. A serious nuisance.”
Elena promised, texted Miles's name and put the phone down. At home she had left a laundry basket half full and a pupil's lost hair ribbon hanging from her kitchen handle. She thought of those things with unexpected affection.
Miles stood just inside the door. “I can eat something else. The food isn't an obligation.”
“What is it?”
“Fish. Beans. A sauce that had an optimistic start.”
Daniel had loved fish with butter and lemon. He had made it for her on their honeymoon, taking over after the breakfast disaster. Miles had made it now, on a day Daniel arranged eleven years before. She should have hated the neatness of that. She did hate it. She was also hungry, and the photograph was still in her hand.
“I'm having half a glass of wine,” she said. “You can have water.”
“Fair.”
She went in and shut the screen behind her. She left the solid door open.