Free (1992) Prophecy by Peter James

them back in the vase and in the morning they were still there, and she had begun to wonder seriouslywhether it had simply been a dream. Or just a household accident to which she’d overreacted.
    She asked Oliver more about his farm, trying to build up a picture of it. He told her his manager and younger brother, Charles, was a very committed Green, and the farm was now almost completely organic. They were building up large herds of organically reared cattle and sheep, although both were fraught with problems, and he explained some of them. She learned also that Charles was divorced and had custody at the weekends of his son, Tristram, who was the same age as Edward.
    Oliver was not a driver she would have liked to have been following, she thought. He drove well if a bit fast most of the time, but occasionally, when he talked about something that particularly excited him, he would go for several miles oblivious of an indicator he’d left flashing, or forgetting to change up into top gear so that the engine raced, maddeningly. Several times she had been quite convinced he was not going to stop for a red light, and had found herself jabbing her foot down.
    Now, cruising on the motorway, everything had settled down. The windows were open and air billowed through the car, batting strands of Frannie’s hair across her face, and she lounged back in her seat, beginning to relax, surveying the scenery through her sunglasses.
    As London receded, the disconcerting memory of her sleepless night receded with it. The weekend ahead was full of promise and she was determined to enjoy herself. Her return journey seemed a hundred years away, and she wondered whether she and Oliver would have become lovers by then.
    The friends with whom Edward had been staying in France were catching a ferry to Dover this morningand would be dropping him home around midday. The accident on the powerboat had clearly distressed Oliver; he had not talked about the boy very much, yet she had the feeling that Edward had a strong influence on him. She realized how very little she really knew about Oliver. Their conversations had all been about their subjects, their views on life, and they had talked only very sketchily about their families. She had not been able to draw him back on to the topic of his wife’s death and she was curious to know both how she had died, and what the coincidences were that had distressed him so much. But she did not want to be morbid.
    The silhouette of the South Downs, like a huge barrier wedged across the horizon, drew closer, and a few miles on they turned eastwards off the motorway, on to a busy country road. They drove into a heavy stench of manure, but even that she found refreshing after the cloying, greasy air of London.
    ‘Where does Edward go to school?’ she asked.
    ‘A place called Stowell Park. A prep school about ten miles away. It’s easy for picking him up at weekends.’
    ‘Does he board?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘He doesn’t mind?’
    ‘No. That’s what he wants to do.’
    Through an opening in a hedgerow she glimpsed a flurry of activity at a car-boot sale. ‘Did you board?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes, from the time I was seven.’
    ‘How did you find it?’
    ‘I hated it. I loathed school altogether.’
    ‘Why?’
    He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t do what I wanted, Isuppose. And I didn’t care about team games.’ He smiled and scratched his ear. ‘I was only interested in mathematics and aeroplanes as a child. We could only do one afternoon a week of gliding, and that was in summer, and I used to think the maths teachers were a load of bozos.’ He smiled again. ‘I don’t think I was very well adjusted to school. Did you like it?’
    ‘Yes, most of the time, I loved it. Particularly history, and the classics. I used to long in the holidays for term to start. People probably thought I was an awful swot.’
    ‘And they all thought I was a lazy bugger who didn’t like being prodded. They were probably