Until It's Over by Nicci French Page B

leaned towards me. ‘I was the one who called this meeting. I thought it would be a good idea to discuss the terms of our eviction.’
    ‘I’m not evicting you,’ said Miles. I could tell from the way he said it that he had said this many times already.
    ‘We have rights,’ said Dario. ‘Don’t we, Pip?’
    ‘Miles has already been generous,’ said Leah.
    ‘Generous how?’ asked Owen. ‘Generous in telling us to go? Generous in giving us a paltry few weeks to find somewhere else to live?’
    ‘I’m a sitting tenant,’ said Dario. ‘Correct, Pip?’
    ‘Well…’ began Pippa.
    ‘Can I say something?’ Miles interjected.
    I almost felt sorry for him.
    ‘Not if you’re going to give way even more,’ said Leah. ‘This has gone far enough.’
    Davy got up from his chair and came and squatted down at my feet. ‘Are you all right, Astrid?’ he mumbled. ‘You seem a bit out of it.’
    I smiled gratefully at him and opened my mouth to speak, but closed it again. I couldn’t bear to talk about it. Not yet. I didn’t want this rabble turning their attention on me and showering me with their questions.
    ‘… in the light of rising house prices and tenants’ rights…’
    ‘I’ll tell you later,’ I mouthed.
    ‘… we need to reach an agreement on how much money is fair and reasonable,’ Pippa was saying. She sounded suddenly like a different person. Someone bureaucratic and pedantic.
    ‘You want him to pay you off,’ said Leah. ‘I might have known it would come down to money in the end.’
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Pippa. ‘How vulgar to mention it.’
    ‘I want to be fair,’ said Miles. He half turned and flung me a look of such desperate appeal that on another day I might have come to his rescue. Instead, I sat limply in the armchair and thought of Ingrid de Soto’s mutilated face and felt nausea rise in me.
    ‘We have to work out a ratio,’ said Pippa, ‘depending on how long we’ve each been here.’
    ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ said Leah. ‘You’ve been here the longest.’
    ‘What about all the work I’ve done on the house?’ put in Dario.
    Beside me, Davy made a huffing sound and said something about damp courses.
    ‘What about the fact that you’ve paid no rent since you moved in?’ snapped Leah. ‘And it all needs redoing anyway.’
    ‘Are you sure you want to be alone with this lady, Miles?’ asked Dario.
    ‘I’ve not been here very long,’ said Davy.
    ‘You and me both, mate,’ said Owen.
    ‘No one’s going to lose out,’ said Miles. ‘How about fifteen thousand?’
    ‘Are you mad?’ exclaimed Leah. ‘Listen, Miles, you don’t have to give them anything at all. They haven’t got a leg to stand on and they know it. Don’t be intimidated.’
    ‘They’re my friends,’ said Miles. ‘Don’t interfere. Or don’t you want me to have friends? Is that it?’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
    ‘Fifteen thousand each?’ said Pippa.
    ‘Pippa, you know I can’t afford anything like –’
    ‘Because a fifteen-thousand-pound lump sum, to be shared out between us, is insulting. We’ve lived here for years. We’ve helped you pay your mortgage. Now we have to find somewhere else to live. We have to put down deposits and buy furniture and begin again. Meanwhile, the value of your house has gone up tenfold.’
    ‘Twenty, then. In instalments.’
    ‘We all chipped in for the boiler,’ said Dario. ‘That cost loads.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Pippa. ‘Even though some of us, not to mention names, Mick and Dario, get more benefit from it than others.’
    ‘If you don’t like my painting,’ said Dario, sulkily, ‘what about Astrid’s garden? She’s spent days, weeks, on that.’
    ‘Nobody asked her to do it,’ said Leah. ‘We’re having it dug up.’
    At last I spoke. ‘What a cunt you are,’ I said.
    Leah turned and stared at me. Her beautiful eyes were hard. ‘The cunt who got your man, though.’
    ‘Whoa,’ said Davy. He looked