Free Body Politic by J.M. Gregson

much at any time, and never alone. But she had never had to plan anything like this before.
    *
    In the damp darkness beside Raymond Keane’s empty cottage, Joe Walsh decided that the owner was not coming tonight, and stole softly away. It did not really matter; he had only come out here on the off chance. And the man would be down here for Christmas, whatever happened: he was sure of that. There was no need to hurry.

     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    The weather was turning cold at last. It had been unseasonably mild for several days, but now the wind was from the east, light but chilling: straight from Siberia, the weathermen said. Children waiting impatiently for Christmas were put into scarves and balaclavas; the bookies had shortened their odds against snow on the twenty-fifth.
    On Christmas Eve, Raymond Keane drove the forty miles from his mother’s large house to his isolated cottage. It was a dry cold: there was no danger of ice on the roads yet. But he drove slowly, enjoying the freedom of having no formal schedule. For a man used to the straitjacket of a strict timetable, it was a holiday in itself to be able to leave when he fancied and arrive at whatever time was congenial. He was almost glad now that he had not arranged any definite time to meet Zoe at the cottage, though her failure to respond to his calls still puzzled him.
    The last leaves had fallen from the forest trees as he drove through the southern Cotswolds. The green of the fields was a muted, winter green; tomorrow they would be white. Although the occasional beech hedge still lined the lanes with russet, the colour in this December landscape was mostly that introduced by man, and confined to the gardens around the villages.
    The pyracanthas and cotoneasters were still well berried against the mellow buff stone of the older houses. But the brightest berries of all were on the holly; he had never seen such an abundant crop, reminding him of the festival at hand. A quiet Christmas in a Cotswold cottage: it was almost an English cliché, as one of his colleagues from an urban northern constituency had reminded him when he mentioned his plans for the recess.
    He realized as he skirted Gloucester that his chosen route would take him past the end of the road where Moira Yates lived with her watchful brother. Almost before he knew he had done it, he took the alternative road, a slightly longer route which avoided the outlying suburb where Yates lived. He had concluded that particular chapter in his life: there was no way he was going to risk opening its pages again.
    Keane smiled a little at his own superstition in avoiding the area. But there was a logic to it, after all. There was no chance that a woman with agoraphobia would be abroad, but it was just feasible that he might have seen that protective brother, or that faithful spaniel of a lover who sat so abjectly at Moira’s feet. There was no sense in inviting the possibility of such embarrassment. That Sunday-afternoon visit to the house had been quite enough mortification for him.
    The wind had dropped when he got out of the warm car beside the cottage. The long, low bulk of the thatched building loomed above him, a darker shape against the blue-black of the sky behind it. No light within it; Zoe was not here yet, then. He paused for a moment before he went inside, savouring the absolute silence of the country night after the incessant hum of life in London. The stars he could see above the treeline were brilliant as new-cut diamonds against the heavens; there was no moon as yet. It was already freezing; there would be ice on the puddles before the night was out.
    He switched on the lights in the lounge and the kitchen, turned on the water at the stopcock under the sink, set the boiler throbbing, listened for a moment to the pump forcing the water round the radiators. The sounds of the house coming alive were curiously comforting to him. It would be warm by the time Zoe arrived. For a moment he indulged