I had been waiting twenty minutes. I was restless. I kept thinking of Elaine’s face. Something was knocking around in the back of my mind, and I was trying to ignore it. Some unease. Of course, it would take twenty minutes to get anywhere in this house, I thought.
Surely Mrs Woods had better things to do than personally fetch Max? How would she know where she was, anyway?
I got up and went back into the kitchen. The woman at the pot sink was gone. Elaine looked up from the worktable. She was pale, and she had the expression of a person watching the movements of a wild animal – attentive, focused, but unsocial, not acknowledging any returning gaze. I paused. I pressed the moment.
‘Elaine, where’s Max?’ I said.
She should have said she didn’t know and that I should wait for Mrs Woods. In
