Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

The bone marrow tests had come back, Cyn had said. Neither she nor Gemma nor any of their children were a match. And their mum, Vi, had taken a turn for the worse.

Gemma stood in the hall, the silence of the house settling round her like an exhaled breath. She felt suddenly alien, an interloper in a life interrupted.

But having cleared the decks with Duncan and the boys, she meant to follow through on her promises to Tim and Alia, and she had better have a look round the house before she started making phone calls.

She touched the handlebar of the bike parked so neatly between the door and the stairs. A man’s racing bike, but not, to her relatively inexperienced eye, terribly new or terribly expensive. It, like the house, looked well used and well cared for. A flower decal was stuck on one side of the businesslike safety helmet. Charlotte’s handiwork, Gemma guessed, and thought it said something about Naz Malik that he had left it on. And if Naz rode the bike regularly, she wondered why he had not taken it that day.

Trailing her fingers across the newel post, she hesitated, then decided to start with the sitting room. She stepped through the doorway and stopped, taking in impressions. The wide-plank flooring continued from the hall. It looked as though it might be original to the house, as did the solid wooden shutters covering the lower half of the casements.

Paneling, shutters, fireplace surround, all simple, all in the same soft green. Sofa and squashy armchairs were slipcovered in a paler shade. A large petit point wool rug anchored the furniture, its colors so faded she could barely make out the floral design. But there the neutral palette ended.

Floral still lifes, many unframed, were propped on the chair rail around the circumference of the room. It was an odd but appealing effect, bringing the high-ceilinged proportions of the Georgian design down to a more human scale.

Large baskets scattered about the room corralled toys, but from one a tattered sock monkey seemed to have made a failed attempt at escape. One foot had caught on the basket’s edge, and he hung upside down, his stitched features frozen in a grimace of surprise.

The lamps and tables were simple, but a brass chandelier filled with candles hung from the ceiling, and several sconces mounted on the walls held candles as well.

At one end of the sofa, another basket held piles of newspapers beginning to yellow. Gemma touched a finger to the top sheet-it came away covered in dust. The banner identified the paper as the Guardian , dated mid-May.

On the other side of the fireplace a chaise and floor lamp formed a reading area. Both chaise and lampshade were covered in an unexpected patchwork of floral chintz, so whimsically bright it made Gemma smile. Books had been stacked on the floor beside the chaise in tottering piles. Gemma knelt beside them, reading titles. Some were coffee-table size-Georgian architecture and decoration, textile design, histories of painting and furniture. But there were also books on the East End, novels with page corners carelessly dog-eared, and children’s picture books, including many of Toby’s favorite Shirley Hugheses.

On top of the largest stack, which seemed to serve as an end table, sat a blue stoneware mug. It looked as if its owner had been interrupted in the midst of a cup of tea, but when Gemma examined the mug, she found it empty and spotless.

She stood again, catching her own reflection in a great, gilded mirror over the fireplace. She tucked a strand of her hair, now growing long again, behind her ear, and saw that she’d transferred the smear of dust from the newspapers to her nose. Lacking a tissue, she rubbed at the mark with the back of her hand while examining the display on the mantel. A cracked creamware jug. A child’s drawing of red stick figures under yellow clouds, framed. A porcelain border collie, its expression so lifelike she reached out to stroke it.

There were no photos.

The dining room displayed the same mixture of simplicity with a dash of eccentricity-the chairs round the imposing round dining table were mismatched, the seat cushions covered in different fabrics. Here the chair rail held yellowing oil portraits, both bewigged men and beribboned women with the effeminate, unisex faces Gemma associated with eighteenth-century portraiture. Again, both chandelier and sconces held candles. But the room looked little used, and Gemma could imagine the difficulty of bringing dishes up from the kitchen.

She took a breath. Upstairs, then. At the first landing, she looked out. Dusk was falling, and threads of neon from the curry palaces on Brick Lane had begun to dart like lances at the dark shadow of Christ Church. When Gemma reached the first floor, she fumbled until she found a light switch.

The master bedroom faced the street. It felt almost monastic-simple white linen roller shades on the windows, white quilt on the dark, carved bed. But again the chair rail held the eye; hooks held strings of necklaces and beads, tiny bud vases in jewel colors arranged above. There was a woman’s vanity, its old mirror fogged, its surface littered with antique perfume bottles, a jumble of dangly earrings, an ornate but tarnished silver-plate hand mirror, a lipstick. A sari-silk dressing gown tumbled across the dressing table chair.

The cupboards built into the end of the room, a modern addition, held men’s clothing on one side, mostly suits, with a few casual shirts and trousers.

Scent wafted out when she opened the other side, something spicy yet floral that Gemma didn’t quite recognize.

There were no business suits here. Dresses, blouses, skirts, many of which appeared to be vintage. A ruffled petticoat, canary yellow. Folded jumpers. T-shirts. Jeans. Boots and flip-flops, and a few pairs of very high heels.

The sense of presence was so strong that Gemma snapped the doors closed. She realized she’d been holding her breath.

Next, Charlotte’s room. A white, iron bedstead. A pony lamp. A pink, painted chest that Gemma suspected had been rapidly ransacked by Alia, as the contents of its open drawers cascaded out like the tiers in a fountain, bits of a little girl’s clothing flowing over the edges. And on the bedside table, a photo.

Sandra. Charlotte’s mum. The same corkscrew curls, but blond. An alert, intelligent face, pretty but not overly so. She looked directly into the camera, her lips curved in a slight smile. This, Gemma thought, was the face of a woman engaged with the world, not the face of a woman who had walked away from it.

Gemma went out, started up to the next level. Now the banister was plain, the steps narrower. She was moving into the old servants’ territory. This time she tried the back room first, a spare bedroom with a simple double bed.

The front room had been turned into a home office, immediately masculine, legal. A heavy desk. Glass-fronted bookcases with leather-bound volumes. A green-shaded desk lamp. Papers were scattered over the blotter, but a quick perusal revealed nothing but legal documents and what looked like case notes scribbled on a yellow pad. There was no Rolodex or diary. There was a laptop, but it was closed, and Gemma decided it was beyond her remit to open it.

She went back to the stairs and continued to climb. Enough light filtered up to the top of the stairs for her to see that she had entered a large space rather than a hall. She felt for a switch, found it. Light blossomed, and Gemma breathed an involuntary, “Oh.”

The top floor was a loft. The windows were uncurtained, the myriad panes bouncing color back into the room. And color there was, captured in the pools of warmth cast by the simple cone-shaped lights that hung from the ceiling.

It took a moment for Gemma to organize what she was seeing. A large worktable filled the room’s center. One side of the table held scraps of fabric, loose sheets of paper covered with pencil sketches. On the other, muslin had been stretched over a wood frame about four feet square. Parts of the muslin were covered with fabrics; others were bare or held only faint penciled lines.