Trespass by Rose Tremain

could read his extravagant thoughts and already had some strategy to crush them. He sat back in his chair and said: ‘What d’you think, Kitty?’
    She looked away from him, looked far away at the high tops of the hills. She had a snub nose that had probably once been called cute, but which now gave her face the squashed look of a Pekinese.
    ‘Why don’t you rent for a while?’ she said. ‘See if you get used to being this far away from everything.’
    Rent? What kind of a wasteful, unambitious idea was that? And what was this ‘everything’ she was talking about? Kitty Meadows hadn’t the remotest idea what was – or had been – important to Anthony Verey, wouldn’t even come close to imagining it. And he certainly wasn’t going to reveal to her the truth about his ‘everything’: that it had been straying, apparently irretrievably, along the pathway towards ‘nothing’. Because anyway, he was going to grab it back now, he was going to get it all back, and he wouldn’t let anybody stand in his way, certainly not Kitty Meadows . . .
    ‘I don’t want to rent,’ he said. ‘I want to find something and commit to it. I want to do it before it’s too late.’
    ‘Too late?’ said Kitty. ‘What d’you mean?’
    ‘V knows what I mean,’ he said, ‘don’t you, darling?’
    He was talking about time, as Kitty knew perfectly well. He wanted to make some grand new statement about his life before the years ate any more of him away, before he had to lay vanity aside. And this was going to be it, apparently: some expensively restored, immaculately furnished house in the Cévennes. Famous friends would be invited down to worship. He’d spend his days getting everything just so and then showing it off. He’d speak bad French in a loud voice. In the neighbourhood, he’d be disliked by everyone, but never ever be aware of it.
    Kitty was already so weary of Anthony’s company that she had begun to experience it as a deep unhappiness. He’d been with them at Les Glaniques for ten days, disturbing the rhythm of their life, making work impossible for her, and now he was going to start his house-hunt and this could go on and on for weeks or months to come. It was intolerable.
    Intolerable.
    As Veronica ordered crème caramels and coffees, Kitty thought how she’d like to march Anthony Verey down to the bridge below them and shackle his feet to stones and tip him into the raging water. He was the last of the Verey men, with all their old snobberies and unjustified feelings of entitlement. It would surely be better – for her, for Veronica, for the world – if he was simply disposed of, if that life he appeared to regard as so precious was brought to an abrupt end.
    ‘What are you thinking, Kitty?’ asked Veronica suddenly.
    Kitty felt startled, fidgety as a bird. She laid down her napkin, said she’d changed her mind about the crème caramel; she wanted to go for a walk along the river.
    ‘Oh don’t,’ said Veronica. ‘Wait till we’ve finished lunch and we’ll all go.’
    But Kitty got up. As she shook her head, she remembered, with some pain, the thing Veronica had said about her hair being ‘difficult to stroke’.
    She walked away from the table towards the steps that led down to the road. As she went, she heard Anthony say in a loud voice: ‘Oh God, did I say something terrible? Am I a monster?’
    Kitty kept on, without looking back. She thought: Every step I take away from him is a consolation. But the fact that she was walking away from Veronica as well put a little twist of agony into her heart. The last time the two of them had been here at Les Méjanels, at the end of the previous summer, they’d wandered down to the Gardon after lunch and sat in the hot sun, playing noughts-and-crosses in the sand, and Veronica had said: ‘I’ll do the crosses. There you are. That’s the first kiss for you.’
    As Kitty walked towards the water, she wondered: Doesn’t every love need to create for