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  And Lori was absolutely certain he would. “It’s all right. I’ll go on my own. There’ll be more space in the car.”

  “How much is there?”

  “I’ve no idea.” And where was she going to put it?

  The same question clearly occurred to Adam. “Maybe if we pull the settee forward we can stack stuff behind.”

  Which was another thing Nathan would mind. He and Lori had never warmed to each other. The antipathy might not plumb the depths reached by some of Adam’s previous boyfriends, but Nathan definitely had his place in the string of lovers who resented their friendship.

  She and Adam had met in the GLBT group at university during freshers’ week, and had hit it off. Over the years, they had nursed each other through a series of train-wreck relationships. Jokes about using each other as a vetting agency were old. It would put them both in line for long-term celibacy. Lori was yet to date a woman Adam liked.

  She shook her head. “No. I’ll take whatever Jess has found down to my parents’ house with the rest of my stuff. They’ve got plenty of space.”

  “Are they back?”

  “No. Still trekking down the Andes. But I’ve got a key. I can air the place out for them.”

  “Do you know how they’re doing?”

  “Mum’s talking about opening a sanctuary for retired llamas.”

  “Llamas retire?”

  “Presumably. I think they’re like donkeys.”

  A key sounded in the lock. “I’m home.”

  “We’re in the lounge,” Adam called back.

  Nathan appeared in the doorway. He smiled at Adam and gave a curt nod in Lori’s general direction. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

  “Spag bol. The sauce is done. I just need to cook the pasta.” Adam wrapped his boyfriend in a hug and planted a kiss on his lips before heading into the kitchen.

  Nathan dropped into the vacated spot on the settee. “How’s the job search going?”

  You want me gone. I get it. “I sent off another two applications this morning. But I’ve heard nothing back from the others.”

  “Games companies?” Nathan’s tone made it clear he did not think video games were a proper job for an adult. Lori’s parents would agree, although their opinion of a motorbike courier would not come much higher. Like all Adam’s boyfriends, Nathan was pretty, but unlikely to feature on anyone’s list of inspirational thinkers. However, she had to concede he looked good in motorcycle leathers.

  “No. One was telecoms and the other security systems.”

  “How do you rate your chances?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Do you think you’ll stay in London?”

  How far away would you like me to go? “In the long term, who can say? But I’ll be heading down to my parents’ place sometime next week.”

  “How long for?” Nathan made no effort to hide his eagerness.

  Lori slid down in the seat. Part of the reason she and Adam stayed such good friends was knowing when to back off. She did not want Adam and Nathan arguing over her, and anyone could see it looming on the horizon. “I’d been thinking just a few days. But once I’m there, I might as well stay awhile.”

  Adam stuck his head around the door. “Don’t you need to be in London for jobs? Not stuck in Devon. Have they got electricity down there?”

  “Dartmouth is hardly the back of beyond. It’ll be handy for Exeter and Bristol. If I get an interview in London I’ll come stay with you.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They won’t mind. And they’re not due home for a month. With luck, I’ll have found a job by then.”

  Nathan smiled. “Devon’s nice. You should treat yourself to a holiday.”

  Chapter Two

  Lori sat on her bed with the laptop balanced on her knees. There was nowhere else to work. Less than a quarter of the stuff stacked around the walls was hers. Adam and Nathan had been using the small bedroom for hoarding junk before she arrived. The only clear horizontal surface was the bed. Even the improvised side table was made from piles of books. Whatever Jess wanted her to take would have to stay in the car boot until she reached Devon. Fortunately, Mum and Dad believed in storing memories, not possessions, so there was no shortage of space in their house.

  They had built careers from travel writing and environmental activism. Hitchhiking the length of the Andes was their latest adventure. Even though they looked down on her career choice, Lori could not fault them on embracing new technology. Their podcasts got millions of hits. But after a childhood living out of a backpack, Lori needed to know where she was going to sleep that night. Grandma had been right, a tree without roots could not bear fruit.

  She ought to let Mum and Dad know she was moving in for a while. Not only was it polite, it was also possible they had installed new security systems. However, it meant telling them she had lost her job. Their response would be predictable. They would tell her to seize the chance, go wild and hit the road—live off grid for a while. They made no secret that her degree in computing and the resulting desk job left them bewildered. How had they produced such humdrum offspring? Video games were for people who did not lead interesting lives.

  Lori chewed her lip. She had to get a new job before they returned home, or run the risk of being kidnapped and dragged off to Kathmandu, or wherever they were headed next. Attached to their last email was a photo of Dad lying flat on his back on a pebble beach with two penguins standing on his chest. The signature line was definitely a dig at her. “Virtual reality is an oxymoron.”

  She typed:

  Hi Mum and Dad

  Hope you’re having a great time. Just to let you know, I’m planning on driving down to Dartmouth sometime next week. Is it OK if I stay for a while? Anything you’d like me to do while I’m there?

  Love Lori

  XXXXX

  She hit send before she had a chance to change her mind. She now had however long it took them to reply to work out how to field the inevitable questions.

  Next stop was a job website and the daily trawl for new vacancies, but summoning the enthusiasm was harder than normal. She stared again at Dad’s photo. Penguins—loud, smelly, chaotic, but also strangely endearing, as long as you were taller than them. She batted the memory away. There was no need to revisit the Antarctic as an adult. She was staying put.

  A roar came from the TV downstairs. Presumably someone had kicked a ball into a net. The choice of viewing was Nathan’s, and Adam was happy to go along with it—for now. Lori gave the relationship another six months at most, but there was no point saying anything to Adam.

  She could go downstairs and join them, but it would take more than a pert, leather-clad bottom to get her watching football. However, staying in the bedroom was not an attractive option either—eight o’clock was far too early for sleep. Lori rested back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Where did she go from here? How had her life gone tits up so quickly?

  She shut the laptop, and pulled out the magazine pages. Forget the brooding. At least the puzzles were fun. She was about to continue with the multiple-choice questions, but then decided to try the crossword instead. The format was slightly unusual, with answers to clues sometimes split between separate locations, as with the first clue:

  1 across & 29 down: Setting for a monochrome lament (7, 10)

  Lori tapped the pen against her knees. The trouble was, you had to get into the puzzle setter’s way of thinking, and people could be so perverse and hard to understand—even the ones you were not in a relationship with.

  Monochrome? Black and white? Or maybe grey? Or even Gray. Lori punched the air. Of course, that was it. The lament was an elegy, and the answer was obvious. Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” had been Grandma’s favourite poem. The crossword was not the classic cryptic sort—which was not a bad thing in her mind—but cryptic clues to general knowledge questions.

  The words COUNTRY and CHURCHYARD went into the empty spaces.
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  * * *

  Lori switched between puzzles until only one final crossword clue remained. After a sudden burst of inspiration, she filled in ATTILA THE HUN, and put her pen down. Everything was complete.

  A yawn surprised her, as did the silence. When had the drone of the TV stopped? Adam and Nathan must have gone to bed some time ago. She had not heard them climb the stairs, or anything else. The house could have been burgled and she would not have noticed.

  Too late now to shower; it would have to wait till morning. Lori stripped off her clothes and changed into pyjamas. The pages, including the sheets of substitute grids, lay across the bed. She considered them one last time. Maybe she should buy a book of puzzles. It would keep her occupied during the empty days.

  She was about to collect the papers, ready for the rubbish bin, but stopped. Something was niggling her. Something half noticed, but pushed to the back of her mind while pursuing other problems. She riffled through her memory, going from puzzle to puzzle. What had pinged her attention?

  There it was—number sequences that repeated across the different puzzles far more often than could be accounted for by coincidence. Lori flipped her notebook to a fresh page.

  2, 19, 1

  5, 12, 6

  7, 9, 14

  11, 4, 7

  No other sequences were repeated anywhere, yet each of these four lines appeared multiple times.

  Lori frowned at the numbers, searching for some logic or pattern, but came up with nothing. It had to be no more than an odd coincidence. But then, just as she was about to give up and go to sleep, another curiosity struck her. When she compared the second column to the answers in the multiple-choice section, the answer was always the “a” option, whereas the answers in the third column were always the “d.” Was it too big a leap to think of across and down?

  She picked up her pen again. The answer to multiple-choice question 19 was a-11, and question 1 was d-29. When applied to the crossword, 11 across was THE, and 29 down was CHURCHYARD. It was the work of seconds to produce:

  2: THE CHURCHYARD

  5: AT MIDDAY

  7: WALK THREE

  11: ENTER THE

  She stared at the lines. They looked like a partial set of instructions. Could it be mere chance? Was she reading too much into it? Everyone had heard the folklore about MI5 using the Times crossword to recruit spies during World War II, but even if the stories were true, they would not still be doing it. Nobody these days played games with national security. Yet, now that she thought about it, the pages from Zettabyte did not have a link to the solutions. Normally in magazines these were printed upside down on another page, but not here. The puzzles really were a test.

  Lori ran a hand through her hair. She did not want to be the next Jane Bond, but might an IT company have hit on an imaginative way to recruit software engineers? She could not help laughing at herself. Fat chance of that. About as likely as her fairy godmother appearing in a puff of glitter, ready to set her up with Princess Charming and a happy ever after, complete with talking mice.

  She slid the sheets between the pages of a book, turned out the light, and shuffled into bed.

  * * *

  The front of the building was the same as eleven days before, when it had still been her home and everything she wanted in life. An unremarkable, well-built house in a safe, respectable street. The biggest danger was becoming the subject of gossip. The curtains of Mrs. Jameson’s front room twitched even before the car had stopped.

  A cold, dull weight settled in the pit of Lori’s stomach. One difference stood out. Zoe’s motorbike was parked diagonally across the driveway, taking the space that had once been hers. Lori sidestepped around its front tyre to ring the doorbell, trying not to get dirt on her jeans.

  The lock taunted her. Eleven days ago, the key had been in her pocket. Eleven days ago, she had returned from the job centre and let herself in. Eleven days ago, she had found Jess and Zoe, sitting together at the kitchen table.

  In itself, this was no great surprise. Jess had been working from home more frequently, and Zoe was a regular visitor. Her bike was often parked on the road when Lori got home from work. Why had she not been more suspicious? With hindsight, the signs were clear enough. The story that Zoe had called in for a coffee on her way to DJ at the local gay bar was ludicrously weak. The disco did not start until nine o’clock.

  Eleven days ago, the charade was over.

  Even before a word was said, Lori had known what was coming. Zoe’s posture wavered between cautious and combative. Jess’s lips were squeezed in the familiar pout at the beginning of a passive-aggressive sulk. Normally, what followed was several hours of sniping, trying to make Lori agree she was being either unreasonable or a bully, and possibly both.

  That day, it was all over much quicker. Just long enough for Jess to explain how, once again, it was all Lori’s fault. If she had not lost her job, then she would not have been hanging around the house all day, so Jess and Zoe could have carried on their affair without upsetting her. But now that everything was out in the open, Lori would be able to move on—as a euphemism for move out—and take her life in new directions. In fact, Lori would be quite childish to see it as anything other than Jess giving her a range of exciting possibilities to explore.

  The lump in Lori’s stomach started to crawl up her throat. She clenched her teeth, determined to get through this meeting without another scene. Nice, slow breaths. Rerunning the conversation through her head was unhelpful.

  The door opened, and for the briefest moment she thought Zoe was standing there. Jess was wearing an unironed, shapeless T-shirt proclaiming, “I’ve got zero fucks left to give.” Her jeans were ripped at the knees. Her hair was pink and shaved on both sides. Was this the result of that morning’s hairdresser appointment? It might not be a full Mohican, but how would it go down at corporate meetings on Monday? What had happened to the sober, senior finance executive? But if Jess was suffering from some sort of midlife crisis, it was no longer Lori’s concern.

  “Hi.” Jess’s face was fixed in a false smile.

  “Hi.”

  “You made it all right.”

  As if there was a risk she might have already forgotten the way. Lori did not even bother nodding in reply.

  After a moment of indecision, Jess stepped back, inviting her in. “I’ll get your things. They’re upstairs.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jess’s fashion sense was not the only change. Mismatched shoes were scattered along the hallway. A discarded coat lay on the stairs, turning it into an obstacle course. Opened junk mail was piled on the hall table, needlessly delaying its date with the rubbish bin. It was doubtful if the vacuum cleaner had been out of the cupboard since she left. Clearly, Zoe was making her mark in all sorts of ways.

  Through the open door to the lounge, the lower half of Zoe’s legs were visible, stretched towards the TV, an open beer can by her feet. A soap opera was playing—one that involved people shouting at each other while wearing hospital scrubs. Zoe made no attempt to acknowledge Lori’s arrival, which was just fine.

  “Do you want help carrying the stuff down?” Lori offered.

  “No. It’s all right. Stay here.” Jess raised her voice. “Zoe. Lori’s here for her things.”

  Zoe grunted in reply.

  “There’s quite a few boxes.”

  This time Zoe did not even grunt. Clearly, she did not respond to hints.

  “A hand with them would be nice.”

  “In a minute.”

  Jess’s tight smile grew tighter. She looked as if she was thinking about saying more, but then scuttled up the stairs, avoiding the coat. After a minute of thumping about, she reappeared, peering around the stack of four printer paper boxes. She edged her way down, feeling with her feet. “It’s okay. I’m fine. It’s…yes. Okay. Nearly there.”

  The implied criticism finally provoked a response from Zoe—she turned up the volume on the TV. Was the honeymoon over so soon?
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br />   Jess glared into the lounge as she handed over the boxes. “Here you go. I’ll get the rest of your stuff.”

  “Right.”

  Lori carried the boxes to her car, and arranged them in the boot. By the time she returned, Jess was on the doorstep, her arms stretched around three bulging rubbish sacks. A four-foot-high yucca stood on the ground. Where had the plant come from? Jess obviously considered it hers.

  She eased two bags from Jess’s grip. Judging by the feel and weight, they contained her winter coat and warm sweaters, which would not be required for months. Did Jess really need to clear everything out so urgently?

  “I’ll take these, if you can bring the other one,” Lori said

  “What about the yucca?”

  “Keep it, or throw it out.” Adam’s spare room did not have space and the plant would not survive a week in the car.

  Lori dumped the two sacks in the boot and waited for Jess. “That’s it?”

  “Yes. That’s everything. Um…I don’t know if…” From the way Jess stood, blocking the path, she did not want Lori back in the house, but neither was she ready for her to go.

  “If what?”

  “You’re doing okay.” Jess’s tone made it more a hopeful statement than a question.

  Lori shrugged in reply.

  “Still at Adam’s?”

  “For a few more days. I’m going down to Dartmouth next week.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. Say hi to your parents from me.”

  “Will do.” Mum and Dad had met Jess twice, and had not been impressed on either occasion.

  “You ought to join them, next time they travel. See more of the world.”

  Thanks for the advice.

  “Anyway, I’m pleased you and Adam are getting a chance to catch up.”

  Was Jess angling for gratitude at helping to cement their friendship?