Barbara shook her head with a chuckle. It was odd, she thought, how one could look at this particular form of human contact: an intrusion or an introduction. It was up to her to decide what to call it.
She was about to launch herself onto the daybed to pick up where she’d recently left off in her latest romance novel when she caught sight of the carrier bag that she’d unceremoniously stuffed beneath it upon the conclusion of her sojourn into Middlesex Street with Dorothea. It seemed ages ago, and she’d nearly—but not quite—forgotten the experience. What she had forgotten was what Dorothea had purchased for her: those trousers, their accompanying jacket, that shirt.
She reached for the bag and dumped its contents onto the daybed. She had to admit that none of it was half bad. Not what she’d have chosen for herself, but perhaps that had been the point. And it wouldn’t hurt to try everything on. She didn’t have to wear it in public.
All pieces fit, she discovered once she’d shed her old clothes and shimmied into the new ones. Odd, that, as she hadn’t told Dorothea her sizes. But the departmental secretary apparently had an unerring eye when it came to clothing.
She had to stand on the seat of the loo to see herself completely, and when she did this, Barbara found that the colour of the trousers and the jacket was right. So was the cut. It was rather amazing.
She could, she reckoned, wear this sort of clobber to work. Of course, a few of her colleagues would take the mickey, but that was only to be expected. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world to amuse one’s fellows in the workplace. It also wasn’t the worst thing in the world to cooperate with her superiors when it came to her manner of dress. She would have vastly preferred to go her own way in this, but she could chalk it up to a new experience, as Dorothea would have put it. There was the autobiography to consider, after all.
BELSIZE PARK
LONDON
Aside from speaking to her on the phone once, Lynley hadn’t had contact with Daidre in four days. Even then, their contact had been simple. Had he mentioned that Daidre now lived quite near his colleague Barbara Havers? had been the excuse he’d used for ringing her, and the subsequent conversation they’d had after that introductory remark had kept them safely away from any issue more personal than the pressures each of them faced at work: Daidre was ethically opposed to breeding programmes whose intentions were to produce more animals for captivity, and this was putting her into conflict with several powerful members of the zoo’s board of directors. For his part, Lynley reported on the successful conclusion of the case in Dorset. Admittedly, he was still walking carefully round Superintendent Ardery after using the Cambridge police to orchestrate Barbara’s involvement in the investigation. But at least Havers and Nkata had produced a result on the final day they’d been given to produce one prior to being recalled to town. Et cetera, et cetera went the conversation. Lynley knew they were skirting round what needed to be said. He reckoned Daidre knew it as well.
I’m in love with you hung between them.
He’d had dinner at home in Belgravia on this evening, but he found that there was no pleasure in solitude at the end of the day. He had the morning’s newspapers to finish reading, the day’s post to go through, a phone call from his sister to return, and an invitation to dinner with Simon and Deborah St. James—“I swear I won’t do the cooking, Tommy, and we do long to meet Daidre, you know,” Deborah had said—to consider. All of these activities could have occupied him once he’d eaten his meal. Still, the only activity he wished to pursue was seeing Daidre.
He rang her. He made no excuse. He didn’t lie. “I think we’ve gone off course,” he said. “May I come to see you?”
It was late for a call upon anyone, but Daidre said that she would welcome a visit. “I’ve been missing you,” she added. “Work’s been deadly—when isn’t it, actually?—and you could be the antidote for my anxiety about having taken on this bloody job in the first place.”
“Politics at the zoo?” he said.
“Politics at the zoo. Anyway, do come. Are you nearby?”
“Belgravia, I’m afraid.”
“Well, that can’t be helped, can it? If you don’t mind the trek, I’d love to see you.”
And so he went. He’d had four days to think things over: what he’d meant about being in love with her and how being in love with her—or with anyone—led to having expectations that, frankly, he’d preferred to ignore. Supreme among those expectations were those that had their roots in Daidre’s background and in what she’d tried time and again to communicate to him about that background and its effect on who she was and who she was likely to remain.
When he rang the bell, her voice said, “Shall I assume it’s you?”
“You shall,” he replied and when she admitted him, he pushed open the building’s door to find her waiting in a shaft of light from her sitting room. She was, he saw, attired for bed and it came to him that, exhausted from her day of zoological politicking as she probably was, she might vastly prefer simply to sleep. He said to her, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. Did I awaken you with the call?”
“You did. But you take priority over sleep.”
She closed the door and shot the bolt home. She’d opened a bottle of wine, he saw. Along with two glasses and a plate of grapes, it was on the old window-cum-table that they’d been using for ages. She’d not got beyond painting the walls of the sitting room. This dispirited him for all it implied. Lack of progress on the place suggested that she was calling a halt—or at least a hiatus—to them as well. He couldn’t actually blame her, he decided. He’d been pushing her, and she wasn’t the sort of woman who was going to like that.
She poured them each a glass of the wine. It was very good. When he told her this, she said with a smile, “I’ve found that buying wine based strictly on the appearance of the label leads to all sorts of completely delicious surprises.”
“I’ll adopt the practice tomorrow,” he promised.
“Of course, I choose only Italian wines, so there is that,” she admitted. She lifted her glass to him and said, “Congratulations on a case concluded and at least part of your reputation redeemed. Was Superintendent Ardery pleased?”
“She’d have vastly preferred we all go down with the ship.”
“She hasn’t forgiven you yet?”
“She’s a woman who knows how to hold a grudge.”
“Ah.” She reached for some grapes. She said, “Well. Hello, Tommy. Do sit. You have an expression that suggests you’ve something to say.”
He sat. They were thus opposite each other with the old window between them, much as they’d been when consuming the endless pizzas that had been their meals over the past few months. He’d have preferred to be closer to her—all the better to touch her hand as he spoke—but his preferences were what had brought them to this pass, and he was finally able to recognise that.
He said, “I’ve put us in a difficult place. I’d like to alter that, if you’ll allow it.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’ll explain if you’ll listen.”
“Of course I’ll listen.”
“I’ve had to think it through, what it means that you’re so fiercely independent, what it means that you’re—truly, Daidre—the most self-reliant woman I’ve ever met.”
“I did try to tell you that, Tommy. From the very first or at least from the moment I considered coming to London.”
“You did. But, of course, ego told me that was all mere talk. I’m attracted to her, I want what I want, she’ll fall into line eventually.”
She nodded and looked regretful, hearing this. “I never do, you know. It is my curse. I’m fairly certain I told you that as well. There’s a point beyond which I simply don’t go or can’t be known or . . . call it what you will. It’s been the death of every relationship I’ve had.”
“I r
emember. You told me. Either that or something very like. But what I want to say to you is that I believe I understand what’s behind it and you and everything. I’ve been expecting you to put aside your past when your past is what created you in the first place. It seems obvious, of course.”
“It is an anchor, though. Or perhaps better said, a ball and chain. You do see that, don’t you?”
“I do. But more important is that I expected you somehow just to shed it. But how does one ever put aside one’s past? I’ve never been able to put mine aside, and yet I’d persuaded myself to believe you could manage to put aside yours and not allow it to affect how you might come to feel about me.”
“It does stand between us. It always will, you know.”
“I do. Now. I do know that.”
“And?” she said. “Or is it but?”
He took a sip of wine. He gave a tired chuckle. “I’m not sure. I know that I want you in my life, Daidre. And I want to say that you are free to define us—whatever we’re to be to each other—as you will. You can define us in any way that works for you or gives you comfort or allows you the space or freedom or whatever it is that you need.”
She considered this, her gaze on her wine which was ruby in colour, deeply so, reflective of the Tuscan vineyards where its grapes had grown. “Want,” she said.
“Hmmm?”
“You said you want to say all that. But something stops you.”
“Of course. I’m a man who likes his hatches battened, and being with you requires leaving them . . . well, unbattened. God knows for how long, but possibly forever. That, my darling, is not going to be easy for me.”
“You seem to be saying you’re willing to try.”
“I seem to be saying I’m determined to try. I can’t promise you I’ll be successful. But I can promise you my very best effort.”
He saw her swallow. She looked away from him although there was nothing to see through the bay window since the shrubbery there was so overgrown that it acted virtually as a wall. She wasn’t at all a woman who cried, but he fancied he saw the glitter of tears in her hazel eyes.
“You’re a very good person,” she said quietly. “That’s always made everything difficult, Tommy.”
“Difficult but not impossible?” he said.
“That’s something I simply don’t know.”
He was silent. There was, he reckoned, nothing else to be said. He’d done his best to explain himself to her and to make some sort of declaration that might soothe her. The rest was completely up to her. He felt a heavy thudding in his chest. It was wretched, he realised, to allow the future to be defined in any way by someone else. He saw that as well and at last, he realised. He wanted to tell her, but he suspected he’d said enough.
She stood at last. She placed her glass on their makeshift table. She said to him, “I’ve something to show you,” and she extended her hand.
He allowed himself to be drawn to his feet, setting his own glass down and feeling her fingers twine with his. She led him from the sitting room, past her finished bathroom, and into the bedroom. The walls were still not painted, he saw, the floor was still not refinished or sanded, and the window had yet to be replaced. But where the camp bed had sufficed for her to sleep inside her sleeping bag, a real and blessedly normal bed stood. A floor lamp stood next to it, and a box served as a temporary bedside table with a clock and a glass of water upon it. But the only point was the bed itself, and it was large, not king-sized but more than enough for two people to sleep quite comfortably in it. Together.
She said, “I’ll have to work round it when I finally get to this part of the flat, but it did seem to me that it was time. It’s not a perfect situation, of course. But really, when you think about it, what actually is?”
“Very little, I find,” he admitted.
“So will it do for now, Tommy?”
“Daidre . . .” He took a steadying breath. “Yes. It certainly will.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great many thanks to Dr. Doug Lyle, who first suggested sodium azide to me as an efficient poison and who also revealed to me how astoundingly easy it is to purchase. He fielded questions once I had dispatched my victim, and he was infinitely patient about providing me with all sorts of information. My fellow writer Patricia Smiley put me on to Doug, and I thank her for this, as I thank my fellow writers Nancy Horan, Jane Hamilton, Gail Tsukiyama, and Karen Joy Fowler for moral support when I needed it. My additional gratitude goes to Dr. Gayl Hartell, who provided much insight into aberrant personality types.
My cheerful assistant Charlene Coe did research for me, never inquiring why she was delving into everything from the various uses of baking powder to the dates of the Industrial Revolution. During the time of my creation of this novel, she also did laundry, shopped for groceries, fetched the mail, walked the dog, taught the cat to walk on a leash, acted as sous chef, watered plants, arranged flowers, saw to the upkeep of my car, and helped run the Elizabeth George Foundation.
My husband Tom McCabe graciously accepted my trips to England as well as the lengthy disappearances into my office required to bring this novel to life. He also heroically managed to rid our property of marauding deer, giving me one less thing to worry about.
My longtime cold reader, Susan Berner, asked merciless questions and made merciless comments on the draft of the manuscript, and these were indisputably helpful in my wrestling a complicated story to the mat.
My editor in the US, Brian Tart, was wonderful, generous, and completely supportive about my getting the manuscript in to him “when it’s completed” and not necessarily when the deadline called for it to be completed. His editorial comments—along with those of my UK editor Nick Sayers—proved critical to the completion of the story.
And as always, I must thank my literary agent, Robert Gottlieb, for his endless endeavors on my behalf.
In the UK, I turned often to the indefatigable and always resourceful Swati Gamble, of Hodder & Stoughton, who has for so long graciously tracked down individuals whom I need to interview or facts that I need to check.
My UK publicist Karen Geary suggested both Spitalfields and Camberwell to me as potential London locations, and she was spot-on with what they had to provide me in the way of settings. She also kept me amused during the time of this writing by making sure I had the latest thrilling details on Prince George and his parents.
Oxfords Bakery in Dorset became a central location for the novel, and its owner was good to show me around, to allow me to take photographs of odd objects, and to answer my questions.
The topographical gumshoeing I did in London and in Dorset provided me with all the locations for this book, and while I have attempted to be accurate in all things, the acute reader will occasionally notice that something may have been moved slightly to accommodate the needs of the story. But most things are as I saw them during the time of my research, including the amazing find of the Wren Clinic, where India Elliott plies her trade as an acupuncturist.
Mistakes herein are mine alone.
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