Free The Memory of Trees by F. G. Cottam

mean, I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement.’
    She nodded, smiled slightly and looked at her perfectly shaped fingernails, which were lacquered a deep shade of red. ‘It involves trees. If twenty grand is walking around money for his pet planter, it must involve some really esoteric and valuable trees, species that have to be stolen and smuggled. Or it involves a huge number of trees, planted on a vast scale somewhere. That second option would be my guess. This is Saul Abercrombie you’re working for. He’s spent his entire adult life empire building.’
    From his position by the window, Tom Curtis looked back towards the woman with whom he used to share his life and tried to view her objectively. She was blonde and slender and, even though she was seated, the length of her legs suggested she was quite tall. She was dressed in engineer boots, Earl jeans and a white fitted shirt, and had a high-boned hauteur which the cool appraisal of her green eyes emphasized.
    He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t see Sarah objectively at all. He could acknowledge that she was physically attractive and knew that she was successful at what she did. But she had the power to break his heart and she had used it in a way he thought both calculated and cruel, and in doing so had harmed their daughter. Charlotte was the most precious person to him in the world.
    ‘What about my proposal?’ he said again.
    She smiled. Her smile was complex, not good-humoured or accommodating, but a cold warning of what was to come. ‘You can’t buy access to your daughter.’
    ‘I’ll spend every penny he pays me on legal fees if I need to. Don’t make me take that route, Sarah. It’s so wasteful.’
    ‘I won’t be bribed, Tom.’
    ‘This way we both benefit.’
    ‘I won’t be bought.’
    He nodded. He would have to pass Charlotte’s things on the coat rack at the foot of the stairs on the way out. Her school coat and her satchel hung there on a peg. He would inhale for a breath the sweet aroma of his daughter’s hair and skin and, this close, not seeing her would be unbearable.
    Sarah stood. She spread the fingers of her elegant hands to dust imaginary debris from where it might have gathered in her lap had they eaten anything. They hadn’t. He was the debris. She was brushing him away. It had become a gesture she performed now every time they were obliged to meet. He thought that she was completely unaware of it.
    ‘Charlie has written you a letter.’
    He hated their daughter’s name abbreviated. ‘When did she do that?’
    ‘She’s been working on it for a week. She finished it yesterday. She’s been quite stressed about it, actually.’
    ‘Then let me see her. I’ll put her mind at rest.’
    ‘It’s addressed and stamped in the envelope. You might as well take it, since you won’t be in Lambeth to get it through the post.’
    Outside, he walked through the rain for a while. He couldn’t bring himself to read Charlotte’s letter just yet. He needed to recover from his encounter with Sarah. He walked along the chestnut-lined path at the rear of the development that led to the river. Over to the right, through the dripping tree trunks, was the park in which he had played with his daughter on the infant rides in the years before she was old enough for school. He could see their shapes in bright pastels through the prevailing gloom.
    He reached the river. The surface was stippled in places with the current and dimpled everywhere with rain. It was still quite early in the morning and the boat houses opposite were brick follies in lingering mist where the far bank reached down through grand sweeps of garden from great detached houses no more in this light than ghostly suggestions of stone. At the water’s edge, willows bowed and wept. Kingston was a lovely place in which to live. The richer you were, the lovelier it became for you.
    He would go back to his flat and pack what was necessary for a prolonged stay in Wales. He wouldn’t