The Search Read Free Page A

back?’
    ‘I think you’re not being quite honest again, Mr Walker.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I think you do watch films. Old ones. And no, all I want are the documents.’
    ‘Did he have affairs?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You mean if he did you don’t know?’
    ‘I don’t see the distinction.’
    ‘What about you?’
    ‘What about me?’
    ‘Did you? Have affairs?’
    ‘No.’ Then, business-like again, she said, ‘Shall I go on?’ Walker crossed his legs, preparing to resume his note-taking.
    That evening he cooked dinner for them both. They ate outside, drank wine. He lent Rachel a sweater, which she draped around her shoulders. Earlier in the day he had seen her
handwriting for the first time. Now, for the first time, he was watching her eat. Seeing things for the first time. Relationships last for as long as there are still things to see for the first
time. Walker thought of the future when they would look back to the moment they first saw each other. She was eating lettuce with her fingers. A drop of dressing glistened on her lips. She dabbed
her mouth with a napkin, blue. Her mouth.
    They took the plates inside. Walker made coffee. Rachel had her back against the wall. She had discarded his sweater. He moved over to her, leant one hand against the wall, level with her
shoulder. She took a dark gulp of wine, aware of his arm like the low branch of a tree she would have to duck under. Sleeves rolled above his elbows, veins in his forearm.
    ‘That’s a lovely dress,’ he said.
    ‘You like it?’
    ‘Yes.’ He moved his other arm so that it too was pressed against the wall on the other side of her shoulders and she was enclosed by the cage of his body, the hoop of his arms. The
movement brought his face lower, a few inches closer to hers. Their lips were almost touching.
    ‘You know what kind of dress that is?’
    ‘The kind you can buy anywhere.’
    ‘It’s the kind of dress I want to put my hand up.’
    She pressed back against the wall. Their hearts were beating faster.
    ‘You know what kind of line that is?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I think you do.’
    ‘And that’s not all,’ said Walker. ‘There’s something else.’
    ‘What?’ The air felt heavy around them.
    ‘It’s the kind of dress . . .’ Walker said, freeing the words from the coarseness in his throat, ‘the kind of dress I want to pull up over your hips. the kind of dress
where you raise your arms and I pull it over your head.’
    ‘To do that the zip would have to be undone.’ Walker moved one hand from the wall to her legs, below the hem of her dress.
    ‘After the zip was undone, then I would pull it over your head. Then –’
    ‘And then I would undo the buttons of your shirt, your belt.’
    Walker moved his hand up between her thighs, feeling her skin become softer and softer until it attained that softness that can never be remembered because it is impossible to imagine anything
so soft, because there is nothing to compare it with, to store it alongside. Their lips touched for a moment. Then Walker felt her hand on his wrist, pushing it away from between her legs.
    ‘No,’ she said, ducking beneath his other arm, smoothing down her dress. In prison he had heard stories like this many times, stories that ended in rape and hate. Walker took up the
position Rachel had occupied, leaning back against the wall, his hands hanging by his side. She came towards him, kissed him on the lips.
    ‘You understand?’ she said.
    ‘No, yes. No.’
    ‘But you understand?’
    ‘No,’ he said.
    Malory lived – ‘as far as he lives anywhere’ – in a beach house a couple of hundred miles up the coast. Rachel gave Walker a set of keys and he drove
there the next day. A storm was building, the sun flinching in and out of clouds. The house was sparse and expensive, built mainly out of windows. Rugs on wood floors, white walls.
    Despite everything Rachel had told him it was difficult to form an impression of Malory from