Borrowed Time by Robert Goddard Page B

in his appointment as British Ambassador to several former French African colonies just after their independence in the late fifties and early sixties. He and his Basque wife spent their retirement in Biarritz, close to
Grandmère
’s numerous relatives. Their villa, L’Hivernance, inherited by Sarah’s father, was the scene of many of her happiest childhood memories. She and Rowena would spend days on end playing in the garden or building sandcastles on the world-famous beach, only a pebble’s throw away, during long sun-drenched summers.
    Sir Keith, meanwhile, was making a name for himself in the medical world. With royal patients and a knighthood came a lucrative private practice, a large town house in Holland Park, a homely weekend retreat in the Cotswolds and the best of everything for his wife and children. He was a doting and generous father, buying both daughters an expensive education, a succession of well-bred ponies, a skiing holiday every winter and a car for their eighteenth birthdays. As for Louise, who was fifteen years younger than him and looked more beautiful at forty than she had at thirty, there was nothing Sir Keith wasn’t prepared to do. A dress allowance she couldn’t spend. A luxury car she didn’t want. And a gilded cage—I couldn’t help suspecting—she wasn’t prepared to remain in for ever.
    Sir Keith didn’t share Louise’s interest in Expressionist art and, for all his lavishness in other directions, seemed to begrudge the money she spent on it. She and a school-friend, Sophie Marsden, began dabbling as collectors to see if they could make more than their husbands earned from sound and sober investments. They didn’t, of course, but they enjoyed becoming expert amateurs and started trying to spot unrecognized talent before it acquired the price-tag to match. Oscar Bantock was more of a has-been than a might-be, but Louise did her best to make something of him, arranging exhibitions at small but select galleries where the right sort of people might realize what they were missing.
    One such exhibition was held in Cambridge during Sarah’s last year at King’s College. Her presence at the private view was virtually mandatory and it was there she met Bantock for the first and last time. “A short and stocky man with white hair and a bushy beard. A bit cantankerous, of course. A bit ‘Why am I dressed up like a dog’s dinner sipping warm white wine with this rabble of Philistines?’ But you could see he was trying to behave well for Mummy’s sake. Which was ironic, since the event was supposed to be for
his
benefit, not hers. He was nice to me, probably for the same reason. Even to the man I’d brought with me, who made some pretty cringe-inducing remarks I remember. But old Oscar just grinned and twinkled his eyes at me. They were a quite startling blue. Pale yet bright at the same time. And he had this low rumbling
suppressed
voice. Like some operatic baritone singing a lullaby. You know? Power on a short leash. Energy waiting to be released. I can see him now so clearly. It’s no more than five months ago. But in other ways it seems like five years.”
    There it was. The same dead end we couldn’t avoid coming back to. Take any path you liked through the maze. Admire any vista you pleased over the hedge en route. It was still waiting. If not round the next corner, then round the one after that.
    “Why did he do it?” she asked later. “I mean, if he was just a burglar, as they seem to think. Why murder? Why rape?”
    “One thing leads to another, I suppose. Probably high as a kite on drugs. And your mother . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “Was a very beautiful woman.”
    “You make that sound almost like an excuse.”
    “It’s not meant to be. Just an explanation. His type see something lovely and precious and want to destroy it. Looking—even touching—isn’t good enough for them. What they can’t have they smash.”
    “Yes.” She nodded. “And the rest of us are left