The Lake of Darkness by Ruth Rendell Page A

turned to speak to her. She had been talking artlessly, charmingly, about transport difficulties between Highgate and Hampstead, how there ought to be a new tube line under the Heath, a station called the Vale of Health. He didn’t speak. He was suddenly conscious that she was not pretty but beautiful, perhaps the only truly beautiful person who had ever been in his car or sat beside him. Except, of course, for Tim Sage.
    She told him her name as they were driving along the Spaniard’s Road.
    “It’s Francesca,” she said, pronouncing it in the Italian way. “Francesca Brown.”
    It turned out that the friend, who had a flat in Frognal, wouldn’t yet be home from work. Martin suggested a drinkin the Hollybush. The rain was lashing against the windows of the car, but Martin had an umbrella on the back seat. He put up the umbrella and held it out over her but, to his surprise and slightly to his confusion, she put her arm through his and drew him towards her so that they were both protected from the rain. There weren’t yet many people in the bar. As he came back to her, carrying their drinks, he saw her big dark glowing eyes fixed on him and slowly she broke into a somehow joyful smile. His heart seemed to beat faster. It was eight before either of them realised how much time had passed and even then she lingered for another half-hour.
    “Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night, Francesca?”
    He had parked the car at the top of Frognal in front of the big houses in one of which Annabel had her flat. Francesca hesitated. The look she turned on him was intense, unsmiling, no longer joyful.
    “What’s the matter?” he said. “Is something wrong?”
    She said carefully, “No,” and then in a shy voice but as if she couldn’t hold the words back, “we must meet again, I know that.”
    “Then tomorrow?”
    Her answer was a vehement nod. She got out of the car. “Call for me at the shop.”
    The grey rain, blown by sharp gusts of wind, swallowed her up. It went on raining most of the night. On the radio at breakfast there was an announcement of a murder that had taken place in Hampstead the evening before. Martin shivered a little to think that while he had been sitting and talking with Francesca a woman had been murdered less than a mile away, her body left lying out in the teeming rain.
    He called for Francesca at the shop at a quarter to six. They had drinks at Jack Straw’s Castle and then dinner at the Villa Bianca. Francesca didn’t smoke or drink morethan a glass of wine, and for an aperitif she had orange juice. When the time came for her to go home she wouldn’t let him drive her. They were standing by his car, arguing about it, Martin insisting that he must drive her and she declaring in her earnest fashion that she wouldn’t dream of allowing it, when a taxi came along and she had hailed it before he could stop her. The taxi bore her away down Hampstead High Street and turned into Gayton Road which was what it would have done whether her home had been to the north of Hampstead or to the east or even possibly to the west. Tomorrow night, he thought, he would ask her point blank where she lived. Why hadn’t he done that already? He felt almost ashamed when he reflected that he had spent most of their time together talking about himself while she had listened with the attention of someone already committed to a passionate interest in the speaker. Of course, he wasn’t used to that kind of companionship. It was laughable to think of his parents or Gordon or Norman Tremlett hanging breathlessly on his words. But it hadn’t been laughable in Francesca. It had been enormously flattering and gratifying and sweet, and it had made him feel very protective towards her-and it had distracted him from asking her any questions about her own life. However, he would ask her tomorrow.
    Not the shop this time but the foyer of the Prince of Wales theatre. This was the way he had conducted his previous and rather