was very familiar to her. "Edmund, I have to tell you this, and this seemed to me the best way to do it." Marion felt a dizzying adrenaline rush. She took a mouthful of her Sauvignon and listened to

the rest of it.

Barry arrived a little early, admired her in the dress, and gave her one of his sloppy kisses. Marion thought he seemed taken aback by the modesty of the flat, but perhaps that was all to the good. He would be even more keen to rescue her from it. She had turned down her bed in an inviting way and sprayed the covers

and curtains with room fragrance, but it wasn't exactly an invitation. She knew by this time it was marriage or nothing.

The lamb vindaloo was a great success and Barry seemed to believe that the chutney was her own make and not Waitrose's. But Marion couldn't concentrate the way she usually did when she was with Barry. The tape got in the way. Phrases and expressions she had heard kept repeating themselves. This Guy character dying in the bath, Heather in a wet dress, water splashes on her shoes, the woman called Beatrix—their mother?—going off her rocker, the other girl, the sister, not wanting to leave Heather

alone in case she did it again. But who was the sister? Marion thought she'd listen to the tape again after Barry had gone and see if there was any clue on it as to where this sister lived and what her 259

name was. Maybe it was enough just to find out if Heather had a sister. But, yes, of course she did. Marion remembered now. It was all coming back to her. Heather had mentioned a sister. Irene had mentioned her at that dinner when Heather had had to ask for a glass of wine and again when she had said the sister was having a nervous breakdown.

"What's wrong, kitten?" said Barry. "You're very quiet. Come and give old Barry a cuddle."

So Marion sat on the sofa beside him, put her head on his shoulder, and curled up her legs so that he could rest a hand on her thigh. She had tried to lay her head in his lap but he reacted uneasily and she shifted to a more decorous position. After he had said he loved her and had never known anyone like her, she began to be confident that the proposal was imminent, but nothing

came and at eleven, rather the worse for drink, he used her phone to order a taxi to take him home.

"I may be retired," he said obscurely, "but still it wouldn't do for someone like me to be over the limit."

Marion managed quite a passionate good-night kiss and waved

as the taxi moved off. At least Fowler hadn't turned up. She began to wash the dishes. Marion would no more have gone to bed leaving

dirty crockery and cudery about than she would have let Barry

know details of Fowler's lifestyle. Washing up wasn't a particularly onerous task. It allowed her to dance about, picking up plates, balancing glasses and stacking cups and, later, stretching upward to put

things on high shelves. The by-now cold remains of the curry she put away into the fridge and saved the cold rice too. It would be tomorrow's dinner. Now Avice had given her the push and taken her out of her will, Marion was starting to feel the pinch. Another couple of weeks and she'd have to become a "job seeker," living on whatever the Department of Work and Pensions would allot her. 260

I wonder if I could sell the dress, she thought. She played the tape once more before going to bed.

Ismay got out of the tube at Clapham South and began the walk home. She thought about the women of her own age who lived in Hammersmith and Acton and Shepherd's Bush and who, since Preston's arrest, had felt safer now he was locked up. Even here was west enough to be risky. While he was free she had been conscious all the time of the need to be streetwise, to keep to well-lighted places, preferably frequented places, never to take short cuts along alleys or narrow dark lanes.

Their street was never thronged with people, only packed

with cars, cars lining pavement edges on both sides. Someone (a man) had once told Ismay that if what he called "one of those

lowlifes" approached her she should jump on the hood of a car and scream. She didn't think she could jump onto a car, and even if she tried such a safety measure she was sure her pursuer would be better at making the leap. But things really were safer now that Preston was under lock and key. She came to the house with the

pineapples on the gateposts and climbed the steps under the glass canopy to the front door.

As soon as she let herself in she smelled it, something she

hadn't smelled in there for months. Cigarette smoke. No one who smoked came here—except one person. Her heart seemed to swim up inside her rib cage and knock against the bones. Because her mouth had dried, the little cry she gave was halfway to a gasp. Her hand shook as she unlocked her own front door.

Andrew was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette and reading the Evening Standard.

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Chapter Twenty-three

"I would have come back before but it seemed—well—unfeeling, with Eva dead in that terrible way. I waited a decent interval." He held her in his arms. From the moment she came home and found him there he had held her. Eva was nothing, Eva was dead. "It was those two being here that made me leave in the first place," he said. "I couldn't stand sharing our home with them." That old excuse again, but all she heard was "our home." He thought of it as bis home as well as hers. "They're not likely to turn up, are they?" "No, Andrew," she said. "They won't turn up."

They won't turn up because they're upstairs. Don't think of

that. She wanted no alloy to her happiness that night. Don't think

of them, she told herself. Don't think how they offered to stay on, maybe for weeks. And I was grateful, I was pleased. He pulled her down on the sofa and began to kiss her with little soft kisses, whispering how much he loved her, how he had always loved her, and

she thought of nothing much anymore (except how happy she 262

was) until it was deep night, the mad after-midnight hours and he was fast asleep in her bed.

She got up and did something she couldn't remember ever

doing before in the nighttime. She made herself tea. Then, for the

first time, she saw and smelled the flowers he must have brought

with him. Without eyes or sense of smell for anything but him, she

had failed to see the chrysanthemums, big, luscious, expensive ones—like everything he indulged in—stuck in an inch of water in

the kitchen sink. She fetched a vase, put them into it because,

though she hated them and they reminded her at once of Guy,

Andrew had given them to her. Carrying the vase into the living

room, she sat down on the very spot where he had sat earlier that evening when she had found him there. I think too much, she whispered to herself. It would be better for me if I didn't think, if I could

just enjoy, live and be happy. But it's beyond my control. Never

mind Heather and Edmund upstairs. They're not in here. They're not living with me, it's not the same as it used to be. Andrew may never find out or by the time he does they'll be gone. Is he going to move in with me here? I don't know. I only know he said "our home." It's mad to worry about something when you don't really know what you're worrying about.

What I've got to worry about is something real, something that's happened. Andrew's come back to me because Eva's dead. Because someone—Preston, I thought—killed Eva. But Heather knew Eva, she'd talked to her on the phone and maybe met her too. Heather killed Guy to save me and now she's killed Eva to save me in another way. To bring Andrew back to me. Was it possible?

Of course it was. It was exactly what she had feared, only she had thought that when murder was committed again it would be to protect Edmund or even their children. She hadn't considered 263

herself once more as the beneficiary of an act of Heather's, but so it was. And it had worked. It had brought him back to her. Killing Guy had saved her from his attentions, and killing Eva had brought Andrew back and made her happy. She asked herself, what shall I do?

After a while, the smell of the chrysanthemums, bitter and medicinal, drove her back into the bedroom and there she gazed down on his sleeping face. It was dark still but enough light from street lamps came through the curtains for her to see him. She thought of a story she had once read of the girl called Psyche holding up a lamp to look down at her lover Eros while he slept. A drop of hot oil fell on him and he leapt up and ran away from her forever.

"I think I'll move in here," he said next morning. "Oh, Andrew, please do."

They were having breakfast. "I told Seb I very likely would in a week or two. Give him a chance to find someone else to share with him."

"Suppose I'd said no." She smiled to make it seem a joke. He took another piece of toast. "There wasn't much chance of that."

No, there had never been any chance of that. She felt cold, though it wasn't cold. Wasn't that what she wanted, that he should take her entirely for granted? That he should rely on her always being there, his lover, his home, the place he could always come back to? Why not? Why not? I said I'd wait forever, she thought, and now he's come back and the waiting's over. I should be as happy as the day is long. I am happy.

"Where are those two now? Still with his mother?" 264

If it had been anyone but Andrew she would have thought him obsessed with Heather and Edmund. "They've got a flat," she said. It was true in substance if not in intent. She changed the subject

swiftly. "Something I've just thought of. I had my handbag stolen but I'd kept my keys in my pocket. If they'd gone I'd have had to change the locks and then you wouldn't have been able to get in." "Are you glad the keys weren't in your bag, my darling?"

"You know I am, you know it."

Upstairs Edmund was giving Beatrix her capsule embedded in

a Black Magic strawberry cream chocolate, her favorite. When she had chewed it up and swallowed it he let her have a stick of chewing gum. She switched her radio on too low for anyone except herself to hear and squashed her right ear against it. Heather was at the front window, looking down on the steps, the bushy front garden, the pineapples on the gateposts, and the roadway.

"Andrew has just gone out of the gate and down the street," she said.

"What?"

"I told you he'd turn up."

"I didn't believe you. D'you think he's come back for good?" "Depends what you mean by 'for good.' Until another little blond fairy turns up."

"I hope we don't have to meet him," said Edmund. "What time are you on today?"

"Not till one. I'll stay here with Mum."

Ismay came upstairs after he had left. Heather put her arms around her and held her close. "I know," she said. "I've seen him." She couldn't stop herself. "Has he seen you?"

Heather released her. "Not so far as I know. I saw him from the front window about half an hour ago."

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Although Beatrix, as usual, had taken no notice of her arrival, Ismay went up to her and kissed her cheek. "I stood upon the sand of the sea," said Beatrix, "and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns and upon his horns ten crowns and upon his heads the name of blasphemy."

"I suppose he doesn't like it that we're up here," said Heather. In a low voice as if Andrew could hear Ismay said, "He doesn't know."

"Would you like some coffee?" "No, thanks."

"What did you mean by 'he doesn't know'?" "Just that."

"No, you didn't." Ismay couldn't recall her sister ever before speaking to her in that cold, resolute tone. "You meant you don't want him to know. You want us to hide ourselves, pretend we're not here and Mum's alone. Because if he thinks we're living here he won't want to come here. That's it, isn't it?"

"Please don't be cross, Het."

"I'm not cross, though I may be in a minute. Andrew will just

have to put up with us. We won't pretend. I know I can speak for Ed. We're not going or pretending we've gone. We're not sneaking in after dark. It's only for a fortnight anyway. You'll have to see him

at his place."

"He's coming to live with me." "When? Now?"

"In a couple of weeks. When Seb Miller's found someone to share the flat."

Heather lifted her shoulders in a little light shrug. Turning

her eyes away from her, Ismay thought, I must be mad, I'm feeling a bitch because I ought to be grateful to her. She's given Andrew 266

back to me and here I am asking her and her husband to disappear. "Forget what I said, Het."

"Of course." But Heather spoke in the same cold tone. "I'll

try. Ed says we ought to forgive, but forgetting takes longer, maybe a lifetime." She smiled but it was a rueful smile. "Changing the subject, do you know a woman called Marion Melville?"

"I don't think so."

"She's a friend of my mother-in-law. She phoned and said she wanted to get in touch with you. Ed took the call and gave her your address. Was that okay?"

"I suppose so."

"Do you know what she wants?"

"Does she work for a charity? Once I gave a donation to a children's charity and ever since all the other children's charities have been appealing to me."

"Then you're used to saying no," said Heather. "Where did you get it?"

"In a bin in Soho," said Fowler.

Marion wrinkled up her nose. "You are so disgusting."

For once she hadn't waited for him to turn up but had sought him

out, finally running him to earth in Conduit Street outside the

Kenzo shop. Now they were sitting on the bronze seat at the bottom of Bond Street, Fowler between the statues of Churchill and Roosevelt, and Marion on Churchill's knee, sharing a packet of salt and

vinegar crisps. Fowler had bought them with half his morning's takings.

"Has your old chap come up to scratch yet?" "Has what?"

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"It's what they used to say in olden times when a girl wanted to get a guy to propose. Has he?"

"It's not your business," said Marion. "I've lost my job, but I've got my eye on another one."

"You won't need another one if you marry the old boy. You'll have to seize time by the forelock. Did you come all the way down here just to find out where I found those Indian songs?"

"Don't flatter yourself. I'm on my way to Clapham. I've got friends there."

Marion trotted off without saying good-bye. The street

named by Edmund Litton was a turning off Clapham Common

Road and great walker though she was, she decided she couldn't get from Bond Street to Clapham on foot. It would have to be the Northern Line tube. On the way she would think the whole thing through and make up her mind what to say when she rang the doorbell and Heather's sister answered.

She had chosen a Saturday because the sister wouldn't be at

work. Edmund had told her that. He had also asked her in that abrupt, not to say rude, way of his what she wanted. Marion had answered, "Oh, this and that," in an airy tone. She walked

through St. James's Park to Westminster. By then her feet were hurting. The pointed shoes with kitten heels weren't ideal

footwear for a trek on hard pavements. She didn't want to arrive limping, but there was no help for it. She couldn't afford a taxithey were even more expensive on a Saturday—still less a pair of flat shoes, even supposing she could bear to put her dainty feet into such things. At last Embankment station was reached and she could sit down in the train to ease her feet. She got out at the wrong Clapham station and after another quarter of a mile she was in a discount store buying a pair of blue flip-flops. She could just about afford that and the relief was overwhelming.

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She saw the house and guessed it was the right one before she read the number. Edmund had mentioned the pineapples on the gateposts. Steps ran up to the porch and the front door under a funny glass arrangement, creeper climbed over the brickwork, and the bells told her there were two flats. Before passing between the gateposts, she studied the house, noting the stained glass in the heavy black-painted front door, the open window on the upper floor, the newspaper still trapped in the letter box, and the untended front garden. That newspaper was suddenly withdrawn;

the door opened and a tall, dark-haired young man came out, slamming the door behind him and running down the steps. Of Marion,

standing beside one of the gateposts, he took no notice. She stayed where she was until he was out of sight, climbed the steps, and rang the bell under the card which said "Ismay Sealand." The woman on the doorstep Ismay had never seen before.

She was a little thin woman of forty-something with stick-like legs and bony feet thrust into blue flip-flops. The flip-flops, which would have been passable with a sundress, looked very strange with a check tweed skirt and a red sweater that matched her curly crimson hair. Ismay said, "Hello."

"Hello. I'm Marion."

"Oh, yes. My sister said you'd phoned." "Can I come in?"

It was said aggressively, rather as if people one didn't know

had a right to come into one's house anytime they liked. Ismay, who had been feeling the purest intense happiness, a happiness all the greater because Andrew had gone out, leaving her to savor her joy and bliss in his absence and in the knowledge he would return, thought, what would he do? He's much better at these things than

I am. She knew what he would say and she said it, but politely, "I'd like to know what this is about."

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"You are Ismay Sealand?"

"Yes, of course. Sorry. Didn't I say?" "No, you didn't. Can I come in, then?"

Ismay stepped back and closed the door after her. "Are you collecting for something?"

"You could put it like that." The tone wasn't aggressive this time but strangely menacing. "D'you live on your own?" Ismay knew she ought not to have answered that. She ought

to have asked the woman what she wanted, but she was so happy that Andrew was back and with her, that he would return soon and be with her all day and night and every day and night, she was so proud of him, that she said, "No, with my boyfriend. I expect you saw him go out just now."

"Maybe." Marion sat down. She had begun to feel aggrieved. There was something wrong with the way things were ordered that this girl had a man like the one she'd seen coming out of the gate and she was stuck with old Barry. Still, old Barry had the money and by the look of the place there wasn't much to spare around here. "I'll come to the point," she said. "Have you lost a handbag?" "I had a handbag stolen," said Ismay. "Why, have you found

it? Have you got it?" "I've got what was in it."

Just six words but as they were spoken, as Ismay realized what they implied, all her happiness vanished. It was as if the sun had been shining, warm and bright, but a cloud had come and covered it and the world was plunged in darkness. "I don't understand," she said, though she did.

She might have been less distraught if she had known how uneasy her visitor was feeling, how doubtful of how to proceed. There was something innocent and gende about Ismay, something sweet and trusting, which Marion had seldom encountered. She 270

was undeterred, but she was a little daunted. However, she went on, accompanying her words with a defiant stare, "You know what I've got so I don't need to spell it out. You never gave it to Edmund, did you? I wonder why not. I could play it to him. I could take it to the police. Or what about the boyfriend? What does he do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do for a living. Not a policeman, is he?" "He's a lawyer."

"I could play it to him. Ah, you don't like that, do you? I can see it in your face."

"What do you want?" Ismay's voice had grown higherpitched and more childlike.

"A hundred pounds now and a hundred next week and then

we'll see."

It didn't occur to Ismay not to meet this demand. Only the

victims of blackmailers who are strong-willed and experienced in dealing with those on the criminal fringe resist them and go straight to the police. With most people, going to the police comes later, as a last resort. The possibility of telling someone else and asking for advice did flash across her mind—flashed and vanished. Telling Andrew, to whom she should naturally go for support, was out of the question. You don't tell the object of the blackmailer's threat that you are being blackmailed. Edmund or Heather or

both of them would have to be told about the tape—unthinkable. Pamela? The only possibility—but Pamela was incapacitated and

far away....

Marion had understood her silence and waited with apparent patience. In fact, she felt more than usually jumpy, half expecting someone else to come into the room. Hadn't Irene said those sisters' mad mother lived here? What she most feared was that

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Edmund would arrive and be unpleasant, even throw her out. The boyfriend coming back would, on the other hand, have its advantages. She had sat down opposite this silent girl—how old was

she? She looked about sixteen—for much longer than she usually remained still. Unable to put up with it any longer, she jumped to her feet and began walking up and down. Upstairs someone was moving about. She could hear footfalls overhead.

Suddenly the silence was broken and Ismay said, "I haven't got a hundred pounds in the house."

It was victory. Marions troubles were over. "We'll go out and find a cash machine."

"All right."

She was afraid the boyfriend might come back. Marion could

tell that Ismay wanted to get out of here as fast as possible before he returned. He hasn't gone far then, Marion thought. Maybe to fetch a newspaper or milk or something. Now she too wanted to leave before he came back. It wasn't beyond possibility that if this silly girl's self-control snapped she might blurt everything out to him; then Marion's plan would come to nothing.

"Let's go, then."

Ismay's cotton trousers and T-shirt weren't warm enough for an autumn day, so she put a cardigan around her shoulders. As they went out into the street, Marion almost laughed out loud when she saw Ismay looking to the right and then to the left to make sure the boyfriend wasn't coming.

"What's his name?"

Ismay didn't have to ask who she meant. "Andrew CampbellSedge."

"Posh," said Marion.

The bank with a cash dispenser outside was about a hundred yards along the main road. Marion noticed that Ismay's hands 272

were shaking as she brought a credit card out of her wallet. She was so nervous that she took no precautions to hide the four digits she keyed in. Marion had excellent sight and a good memory for numbers, and repeated this one to herself over and over along with

what she had read on the card over Ismay's shoulder. Some idea that secrecy might be a good idea impelled her to lead Ismay into a phone box where she shut the door on the two of them and held out her hand. Ismay said nothing but counted out five twentypound notes and held them out to her.

"All I want now is your phone number." "What for?"

"Like I said, you haven't heard the last of me."

This number she also committed to memory, but as soon as

Ismay had gone she wrote it down along with the pin number and the card's start and expiry dates. Getting home took a long while, but once she was there she rooted through the stack of mail-order catalogs that had come through her letter box in the past week. Half an hour later she had spent two thousand pounds on a bathroom cabinet in a flatpack, a lifetime's supply of pastel-blue bed linen and towels, six cashmere sweaters, four pairs of trousers, two suede jackets, and, for Barry, a framed picture of a sultan in turban, surcoat, and scimitar, gazing into the eyes of a maiden in a sari. On second thought, she also ordered him a silk dressing gown printed with Indian dancers.

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Chapter Twenty-four

That pure perfect happiness was gone. It had lasted no more than a few hours. Trying to look at the situation dispassionately, Ismay knew this was Andrew's fault, not hers. Nor had it anything to do with Edmund and Heather. They had done nothing but selflessly stay in the upstairs flat to look after Beatrix when they would have greatly preferred to move into their own new home. Andrew had made her afraid of him. Without overtly threatening her, he had made it plain that Edmund and Heather were so obnoxious to

him that he wouldn't remain under the same roof with them.

While still believing they were living in Crouch End, a great distance from Clapham, he spoke of them often, referring to

Edmund as "that male nurse" and to Heather as "your little gorgon of a sister." Ismay protested but not very strongly.

Though he was there almost every night, he still hadn't

moved in, but she was afraid all the time that he would find out that Heather and Edmund were living upstairs. Having tried 274

unsuccessfully, she was now deeply ashamed of having made her sister think that she would like them to be gone. She remembered painfully Heather's hurt reaction, her suppressed indignation.

Never again would she hint at what she wished for, yet she increasingly wanted it so powerfully that she felt her desire must show

itself without words. She dreamed of Andrews finding out and created for herself fantasies of his anger and the accusations he would make of deceit, lying, and prevarication.

Then there was the Marion Melville threat. She had heard no more, but the first week wasn't yet over. Every time the phone rang she thought that was who it was. If Andrew found out the nature

of the threat, that a tape was in existence in which Ismay had spoken of her sister's causing the death of their stepfather, he might

not be surprised—he hated Heather enough to believe it without difficulty—but he would cut himself off from the Sealand family. He might not go to the police, though it was likely he would, but he would never see Ismay again. She knew that as forcefully as, more forcefully than, she knew of the rage he would feel and show if he discovered the presence in the house of Heather

and Edmund.

Yet he had been seductively sweet to her since he came back—not that she needed seducing. Every day red roses arrived,

one on the first day, two on the second and so on. The chrysanthemums had soon died. His lovemaking was better than it had ever

been, as if there had been no Eva, and he gave the impression of being, and always having been, entirely monogamous. He took her out to dinner to places she would have thought far beyond his means. He laughed at her protests.

"Nothing is too good for you, my darling," he said, and then, quoting something and in a mock dramatic tone, " All that I have is thine.'"

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When they were about to go out, while she waited for him,

she stationed herself in the hall, listening for movement from upstairs, hoping with all her strength that one of them wouldn't appear down the stairs or enter by the front door, but not knowing what she would do if they did. She pictured herself falling on her knees to Edmund, begging him to hide himself, and his acquiescent if contemptuous shrug. As for Marion—suppose he answered

the phone and she lightly hinted at her purpose in calling. A light hint which, to others might pass over their heads, would immediately be seized upon by Andrew, dissected, and give rise to

inquiries she felt it would kill her to answer.

Marion would phone. Somehow she knew it. Added to her

anxiety was the beginning of money worries. She didn't earn enough to stand that sort of strain on her resources. Yet the thought of saying no to Marion, of telling her, as the melodramatic phrase has it, to do her worst, was unthinkable. If I lose him again it will kill me. I shall die.

The next day, again a Saturday, when Andrew was back in Fulham, packing his things for the move, though she told herself she wouldn't seek Edmund out, she stayed where she could hear his tread on the stairs and when she did came out into the hall. "So you and Andrew are together again," he said but smiling, looking pleased for her.

"Yes." Impossible after that opening to say what she had

meant to. But she stumbled on awkwardly, "I've got a week's holiday owing to me. I could take it from Monday week if you like

and then you and Heather ..." "Heather told me how you felt," he said.

You tell each other everything, she thought. Without effort, without fear. How lucky you are. She said nothing but, turning away her eyes, feared she might start to cry.

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He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. "We're

going on Thursday. Heather's found a carer till Pam comes back." The doorbell rang. It was the delivery man bringing

Andrews eight red roses. She held them to her face, their velvety coldness, their scent as of fresh wet leaves. A thorn scratched her cheek. As she went back into the flat the phone was ringing. She knew it was Marion before she picked up the receiver.

"Is he there? I wouldn't want to be the cause of making you

any sort of..." This was one of those sentences Marion couldn't cope with and she began again. "I wouldn't want to embarrass you. I can call back."

"He isn't here," Ismay said.

"Right, then, there's another hundred owing." As if she were

a legitimate debt collector, Ismay thought. "I could come over or we could meet."

I don't want her in my home again. She contaminates it.

Anyway, Andrew may come. I don't know long he'll be fetching his stuff. Seb's got a car. Seb may drive him and it won't take long. A bold idea came to her. "Why don't I come to you?"

Of course she wouldn't want that. "I'll meet you in the middle of Hungerford Bridge at eleven."

Ismay had read enough thrillers and seen enough TV dramas

to know that, to safeguard themselves, blackmailers should take precautions against their victims bringing the police with them to venues. It would be wiser, for instance, for her and Marion never

to meet again, but for the money to be placed by her where

Marion could collect it. She should have been asked for the notes

to be in three (or even four) different denominations and taken

from separate cash dispensers. This carelessness or ignorance on Marion's part told her that her blackmailer was naive or inexperienced at this kind of work or both, but she had to face the fact that

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it made no difference. She would no more have brought the police into this than she would Andrew.

Luckily (and strangely, since he paid for all their entertainment and extravagances), while she and Andrew had been apart

she had spent less money than when he was with her. Perhaps it was because he wasn't there to admire her hair or any new clothes she might have bought. The result was that for a time she could

meet Marion's demands. But not for long, not for months....

She shuddered at the thought. Yet she must. Andrew must never in any circumstances hear that tape. Marion, she acknowledged, had picked her victim wisely, more astutely than she knew.

"I haven't got any money," said Marion. "It's no use asking me. There isn't any gin either. I'll be frank with you, Fowler. At present I've got a hundred pounds a week to live on and that's all. I've got the council tax to pay and the water charge, whatever they call it. You wouldn't know about these things."

"When we were little you gave me all your pocket money one week because I wanted a Bounty Bar. You lent me one pound sixty-five to buy Ma a birthday present."

"Yes, and I'm still waiting to have it back."

"Where's the hundred quid coming from? Your old chap?"

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," said Marion. "You can stay here tonight if you want, but there's no drink in the place and nothing to eat but baked beans."

On her way to Embankment tube station, she rather regretted

the impulse that had resulted in her offer. What if Barry brought her home? She would worry about that later. In the hall at the top of the escalator she watched her ticket vanish into the machine and wished it had been a return. Could she walk back? It was a very long way. 278

Lying in her path, ignored by everyone else, was the orangecolored plastic case of the Freedom Pass. Marion picked it up and

walked purposefully to the ticket window as if about to hand it in. This of course she had no intention of doing but, sure she was the cynosure of no eyes, veered around toward the exit. Inside the case was the pass, the "oyster" card itself, and the identity card, issued to those over sixty and ensuring them free travel on tube trains, buses, and suburban line trains in the capital.

Luckily for her, this one was for a woman, a dark-haired

woman looking years younger than her age. Must have been taken when she was about thirty, thought Marion. Loath as she was to add nearly twenty years to her age, she recognized that needs must when the devil drives. Besides, no one looked at your picture when you used the pass, she had noticed that, and noticed too that getting on buses, people didn't need to do more than wave it at

the driver.

Ismay was already waiting in the middle of the bridge. It was,

as usual, crowded with people. She didn't speak, so Marion didn't. She handed over an envelope. It might be a bit risky to count it with all these people about, but Marion just took a peep inside to check it was all there.

"It'll have to go up next time," she said. "I said we shall have to see and I've—well, I've seen. A hundred's not enough. I can't live on it."

"How much?" Ismay asked meekly. 'Til phone you when I've decided."

Ismay turned her back and walked across to the South Bank.

Feeling good, Marion contemplated the river in the morning sunshine,

the London Eye, the Palace of Westminster, and the Royal Festival Hall. It was a fine day, as days often are in the middle of October. If she had been acquainted with Wordsworth she might 279

have said that earth hath not anything to show more fair. The sentiment was there.

She had a free trip back to Finchley Road. All her mail-order goodies had arrived while she was out. Fowler had taken them in and left them stacked on the kitchen counter. For half an hour she amused herself putting away the linens, changing the sheets on her bed for new pale-blue ones, and trying on the cashmere sweaters. Finally she selected the lilac one to wear for her date with Barry that evening.

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Chapter Twenty-five

There was a chance Andrew would never discover the presence of Heather and Edmund upstairs. Not much of a chance, Ismay acknowledged, unless she could bring herself to persuade them to watch for his comings and goings and conceal themselves when he was likely to leave or arrive. Some vestige of pride or good sense still remaining with her, balked at this. She could—just—have tried it with Heather but not with Edmund. She was sure he would refuse her. Apart from that, she would have to face making the request and meeting his eyes. He was kind, he was one of the kindest people she knew, but she remembered the look he gave her

when the eight roses had come and she had received them so rapturously, not a contemptuous look but one full of pity and regret.

Four days to go before they left. Andrew was out of the flat all day, and when he came home in the evening neither Heather nor Edmund had yet come home. Andrew hadn't asked her who was looking after her mother. It never occurred to him to think about 281

things like that, caring for the sick, preparing meals, shopping and cleaning. They were done and someone must have done them,

but for him they always had been. They happened, just as water came out of taps when you turned them on and illumination from lightbulbs when you pressed a switch. She had told him where Pamela was, who this new man of hers was and when she would be returning, but he had shown minimal interest. He hadn't yet met her mother.

Her days with him had been a kind of honeymoon. Or,

rather, to create a honeymoon atmosphere was obviously his intention. She felt mean and base when she responded with less than her old delight—she feared she gave the impression of loving him less—because her worries oppressed her. She might be in his arms, she might be making love, when the thought would come to her in spite of herself that she was being blackmailed, followed closely by the everlasting anxiety of her doubts about Heather.

The substance of her stress she might hide from Andrew, but

she couldn't pretend the stress wasn't there, only tell herself that once Heather and Edmund were gone, things would be a little easier. Meanwhile she prepared herself for another phone call and for parting with twice what she had paid to Marion Melville last time.

Michael Fenster had been due to bring Pamela home on

Thursday lunchtime. Ismay and Andrew would both be at work. Because he worked shifts, Edmund would be at home to receive them. Things happened differently, though not at first disastrously. Michael arrived on Wednesday evening, letting himself

into the house with Pamela's key. It was just after seven and Ismay and Andrew were going out, first to dinner and then to a club where they were meeting Seb Miller and his girlfriend. For Ismay it wasn't a particularly happy arrangement. True, she would be 282

with Andrew, this new adoring devoted Andrew, but she couldn't forget how she had humiliated herself to Seb, phoning him and begging him to tell her where his flatmate could be found. Still, once she had faced him, things would be easier next time. Hearing someone come into the hall, she thought at first it

was Edmund, though she had believed him home already. She prepared herself to detain Andrew until he had gone upstairs, but

then she heard Pamelas voice and she went out to her. Andrew followed. Pamela looked pale and thin, but she could walk, though

with a slight limp.

"We're a day early, Issy. I should have let you know, but I couldn't wait to get home."

Ismay kissed her, introduced her and Michael Fenster to

Andrew. Smiling, looking a little shy, Michael shook hands and said, "Pleased to meet you." Ismay saw what no one but she would notice, the faint curl of Andrews upper lip, his invariable reaction to a solecism.

Then Pamela asked the question, the question Ismay hadn't allowed for in all her anxious predictions and fraught fantasies. "Are Edmund and Heather in, Issy?"

She felt a deep thick flush burn her face. Beside her, Andrew's intake of breath was almost silent. "I don't know," she said. "Well, you're obviously going out so we won't keep you," Michael said. "I'll fetch Pam's case in a tick," and, in a way which would once have won Ismay's admiration, he lifted Pamela in his arms and carried her up the flight of stairs. She heard Heather's voice as he reached the top.

Andrew opened the front door. Their taxi had drawn up outside behind Michael's car. Andrew went outside, told the driver he wouldn't be needed, came back, ushered Ismay into the flat, and shut the door behind them. She thought, I won't say I can explain. 283

I won't. I will not sink to that. He won't leave me for this. She

said nothing. "Sit down."

She thought he would ask her what she had to say for herself.

He didn't. "What is it with you, Ismay? Are you really so committed to those two, so in love with that pair, that you lie to me,

deceive me, go to all sorts of lengths to keep from me the truth that they have been living upstairs all the time I've been here? Why? What is it about this dull, plebeian, lower-middle-class couple, these chavs, that has so enslaved you?"

"I'm sorry," she said.

"You're sorry. Those words should carry with them an

implicit promise of amendment, but in your case they don't. You've done it before. No doubt you think you can do it again." "It will never happen again, Andrew. They're going tomorrow. They take over their new flat tomorrow."

The phone rang. The voice of Marion Melville said, "Hello?" This is the ultimate, my Apocalypse, my hell, thought Ismay. This is where I lie down and scream. Of course she didn't. "I can't talk now. Can you call back?" She put the phone down.

"Was that your sister?" "No."

"I find it hard to believe anything you say. Let me just say to you, I'm going out now. Alone. I don't know when I'll be back if ever. I can't live under the same roof with those people."

Last time he had gone she had cried. She had wept uncontrollably, sobbed through the night, lain on the floor crying bitterly.

For some reason it was different now. She said aloud to the empty room, I can't bear it, and then she began to bear it, dryeyed, still, staring at his roses, the fresh, the dead, and the dying,

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all in one vase, kept like that because she couldn't bring herself to throw away those that had faded.

For the first time for years, Beatrix showed a flicker of emotion when her sister came into the room. She held out her hand to Pamela, who, uncertain whether to take it in a handshake or clutch it, lifted it instead to her lips. Beatrix looked at her hand, frowning, and touched the spot where Pamela's lips had rested. Then she offered her a chocolate.

"Well, I've never known you do that before," Pamela said. Beatrix nodded to Michael in a moderately friendly fashion. "This must be your doing, Edmund," Pamela said. "I hope you're not thinking of going."

"Tomorrow," said Edmund. "We must. We've waited to get into our flat for nearly nine months."

Heather brought them a bottle of champagne and four

glasses. "To celebrate your homecoming." She glanced at Pamela in a meaningful way, said, "Perhaps something ... ?"

"Not exactly," Pamela said. "Michael has asked me to marry him. He says he'll live here with me and Beatrix or we can live in his house and bring Beatrix, but I won't do that."

"She says she won't put that burden on me. It wouldn't be a burden. I've always been fond of Bea."

"I hope he'll stay with me. I hope he'll be my—I won't say boyfriend—my lover. And forever or whatever we mean by that." Edmund raised his glass. "To you. I was going to recommend marriage. I like it. But I know when I'm beaten."

285

The mail-order dressing gown and the picture of the sultan with his bride were received by Barry with a gratitude that exceeded Marion's expectations. He insisted on putting on the dressing gown over his shirt and trousers and only removed it to change before they went out. Marion had a good look around the living room while he was upstairs. The books, which she had never examined before, were mostly histories of India and biographies of British and Indian luminaries. But there were also a number of

works on forensics, a couple of accounts of pathologists' investigations, and quite a lot of true crime, especially wife murder. Having

a suspicious mind and, in common with her brother Fowler, unsuppressed criminal tendencies, she wondered for the first time how Mrs. Fenix had met her death. It might be prudent to ask. Come to that, what had Barry done before he retired? She fancied Irene had told her he had been a civil servant.

Barry came out and drove her to St. John's Wood to the new Indian restaurant called Pushkar. He wore a white jacket over his pinstriped trousers and a white cap, which Marion could have accepted without embarrassment but for the presence of so many authentic Indian diners. It seemed to her that two or three of them exchanged amused smiles. He was rather taken aback when she asked him about his wife's death, said, "Heart," and reverted to the subject of the mail-order dressing gown. She thought he ought to take his hat off while they ate but relaxed a little when she saw that no one else had done so.

In spite of its auspicious beginning, it wasn't turning out one

of their more successful evenings. Barry had only once called her kitten, and he was strangely silent and seemed nervous. As they ate beef madras and sag gosht she racked her brains for something to say, asked him how he liked the lilac cashmere sweater, got a smile 286

and the response "Smashing," and once more had to cope with the unusual silence.

"There's something I want to ask you, Barry," she said. The look he gave her was preoccupied.

"It's—well, what sort of work did you used to do when

you ... " She had got muddled and tried again. "I mean, what was your... ?

Barry cut her short. "There's something I want to ask you," he said and his voice was low and serious.

He must have somehow found out about her demands for

money from Ismay Sealand or even her attempts with the morphine.

If he had it was all up with her. She said nothing. She just looked at him with the winsome timid eyes of the small animal with whom he identified her.

He swallowed and his face reddened. He picked up a fork from the table and set it down again. "Marion," he said and paused, looking away.

"Yes?" She knew what it meant to feel her heart was in her mouth.

It was coming now. She waited, breathless. "I love you," he said. "Will you marry me?"

She was forty-four and it was her first proposal. She had been working toward this end but had no idea what to do now she had got there. Her instinct was to scream with joy, but she managed to restrain herself. Slowly, trembling, she nodded her head. She nodded in a quite uncharacteristic way, almost shyly, as if she were awestruck. What might have happened next she later speculated, but before Barry could speak or act, an Indian man had come up

to their table and was addressing her. It was Mr. Hussein. "Good evening, Miss Melville."

287

Collecting herself, Marion was pretty sure he hadn't come up to them with simply greeting her in view. Until now he had generally been rude to her. He had been about to reprove Barry for some incorrectness of dress but seeing her there had deterred him.

"Won't you introduce me to your friend?"

"Not a friend, sir," said Barry. "No longer that. Her future husband. Miss Melville has just done me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage."

In the manner of his son, Mr. Hussein looked as if he was suppressing an almost uncontrollable mirth. Marion didn't know why. She thought Barry's little speech quite moving. He and Mr. Hussein chatted for a few moments about the name of the restaurant, which appeared to be a place in India. Barry had of course

never been to Pushkar but he knew quite a lot about it. "Beautiful lake," he said, "and the Snake Mountain."

Mr. Hussein's lips twitched. "Not forgetting the internationally renowned Camel Fair."

"Miss Melville and I may go there for our honeymoon." "Ideal," said Mr. Hussein with a broad smile. "Of course

you're aware that, as it is a holy place to the Hindus, alcohol, meat, and even eggs are banned there. Unlike," he added before strolling back to Mrs. Iqbal, "this restaurant."

Knowing it was an imprudent thing to do, a mad thing to do, Ismay had walked about on Clapham Common half the night. Nothing happened. The people she encountered took no notice of her. One of them was Fowler Melville, in unfamiliar waters, but he didn't know her and she didn't know him and they walked in

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opposite directions to each other like a white-sailed frigatoon and a dirty British coaster passing in the night.

She went to work in the morning, more dead than alive,

afraid to phone Andrew on his mobile, even more afraid to phone Seb Miller in Fulham and ask him yet again where Andrew was. When she got home a message awaited her. It must be from Andrew, it had to be—please, God. It was from Marion Melville, a jauntier than usual, confident voice.

"Okay, two hundred this week, please. I can't wait until Saturday, so let's meet tomorrow, same time, same place. Mind you

call me to confirm."

Suppose Andrew had been there and had taken the call or listened to the message. But even if he had been there and taken it,

that would be better than his not being there at all. Anything would be better than being without him. Late in the evening she remembered that this was the day Heather and Edmund were moving out. They would be in their own home now. With their two keys each, their new things, and their new phone. She had written down the number and she ought to phone them. For a long time she sat by the phone, doing nothing. Pam must be upstairs, but she didn't phone her either. At nine she walked down the road to take two hundred pounds out of the cash machine.

A foolish act after dark, but she no longer cared about things like that.

In bed but unlikely to sleep, she began wondering if he had

another girl somewhere, a girl kept in reserve for times like this. Someone he could phone, after weeks of absence, and say, "Hi, it's me. Can I come over?" Since he had come back things were different from what they had been before he went away. He had been

sweeter to her and yet more autocratic, while she had been less 289

able to stand up for herself. She was more in love with him than ever. She finally slept, only to dream he was back, that he had come into the room to tell her Heather was dead.

She took the tube to Waterloo and walked on to Hungerford

Bridge from the South Bank. Marion also took the tube, but for

her it was a free ride as she used the Freedom Pass she had picked up at Embankment station. Having employed the "oyster" card to get through the barrier at Finchley Road, she began to worry once she was in the train that inspectors might get on. Then it would be all up with her, as she plainly wasn't Hilary Cutts, aged sixty-three. Of course, inspectors seldom did get on; she could remember it happening only once. What bothered her more than this precise anxiety was that she was worrying at all. She never worried. Perhaps it was because she had read in Fowler's Big Issue that all oyster card details were now kept in a database. Well, getting out at Baker Street where she had to change lines would be the solution. That

and not getting into the Bakerloo Line train.

It came in and she got into it. No inspectors did but she

jumped out at Charing Cross just the same to be on the safe side.

Remember the data base. She skipped along the Strand and dropped the Freedom Pass into a waste bin. A pity, but using it was too risky. What a funny thing it would be if Fowler found it. He'd be bound to bring it to her. He always did, like a cat bringing home a mouse to its owner. She was still laughing to herself when she met Ismay on the bridge.

The girl looked like a famine victim or a camp survivor, pale,

wan, her eyes dark-ringed. Marion said a sprightly "Good morning" and put out her hand for the money, her left hand so that

Ismay could see the ring on the third finger, a beautiful ruby ring 290

Barry said came from Delhi. An envelope was put into it in silence. "As you can see, I got engaged since I last saw you. I shall soon be Mrs. Barry Fenix. I'm telling you so as you know who it is when I'm giving you a ring."

Whatever reaction Marion hoped to provoke in her victim, it wasn't to make her break into a flood of tears and run away across the bridge. Marion shrugged, smiling, catching the eye of several passersby to show them how mature, sensible, and restrained

she was.

Ismay got a bus home. She had been back no more than ten

minutes when Andrew walked in. She gave a little involuntary cry. She allowed him to hold her in his arms and kiss her, but that was

all she did, resting her head limply against his shoulder, trembling from so many tears. When she finally lifted her head she made herself say, and the effort was enormous, "Andrew, we have to talk."

"Oh, darling," he said, "not that awful cliche, please. I can't bear it. Come on, do something about your poor face. I'm taking you out to lunch at the Fat Duck."

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Chapter Twenty-six

"We've had an invitation to Marion Melville's engagement party," Heather said to her husband. He was putting up bookshelves in their new living room. "The man she's marrying lives next door to your mother. Did you know about it?"

"I know my mother hoped he was marrying her." "You don't want to go, do you?"

"Wild horses might drag me. Especially if you were riding them. When I've finished here we've got to talk about our honeymoon."

He didn't finish there because a phone call from his mother, gasping that she was having a panic attack, fetched him to Chudleigh Hill, and in fact the shelves were destined never to be completed nor to contain a single book. Irene was lying on the floor with, beside her, the party invitation that had either fallen or been placed there. Edmund felt her pulse, listened to her heart, 292

and said there was nothing wrong with her. He helped her to her feet while she muttered to him that he wasn't a doctor.

"It's breach of promise," she said when she was seated in an armchair. "I shall definitely go. To this travesty of an engagement party, I mean. I shall tell everyone how he—well, he ... "

"Trifled with your affections," Edmund said. "No you won't. Because if you continue to make these threats I shall tell Barry he'd be wise to cancel the party or postpone it and not invite you next time. And I'll tell him why. Is that clear?"

She looked up at him, perplexed, and he knew that at last he

had won. He threw the invitation into the waste bin. "Heather and I," he said, "would like it very much if you'd come to tea tomorrow. I know you'll remember it's Heather's home and you're the guest. See you about four."

She said, "That will be nice, dear."

Leaving her, he thought a little kindness was called for before

they parted or perhaps he was simply reverting to his old cowardice. "It's a secret where we're going for our honeymoon, but I

can tell you. In the strictest confidence. No one else knows, least of all Heather."

It was pathetic, her very obvious joy. "I won't tell her."

"It's a place called Kanda. In Sumatra. Beaches and sunshine and beautiful green forest. Quite exotic for two people who have never been east of Greece."

The invitation to Mr. Hussein and Mrs. Iqbal was accepted, Mr. Hussein remarking to her that it would be "good for a laugh." His sons were not invited. Marion had admitted to Barry that she had a brother but said he was a recluse, almost a hermit. He wouldn't come if asked. She invited Avice Conroy, reasoning that there was 293

nothing damaging Avice could say about her except that she had invented a sick father and no one said that sort of thing at parties. Avice sent an abusive letter declining and telling Marion she had changed her will.

Marion made her by now regular phone call to Ismay. It was answered by a man she guessed to be the boyfriend she had seen on her visit to Clapham. She put the phone down without speaking and before trying again considered what the consequences

might be if the boyfriend, who sounded a masterful man, were to squeeze the truth out of Ismay and take steps. He might. He was a lawyer, she had said. And Ismay was a poor little thing with no spirit. Take no risks, Marion, but keep trying till you get her. She realized she was addressing herself by name the way Fowler had once told her was his habit. Her evening attempt was answered by Ismay and, mindful of the additional expenses she must incur as a bride, she again asked for two hundred pounds.

The "talk" with Andrew had never happened. Ismay thought of all the psychotherapists and counselors and agony aunts she had heard of who advised their clients to "talk it through," never apparently understanding that there are some people, many

people, who refuse to do this, who simply dismiss the suggestion with a "there's nothing to talk about" and clam up or walk away. Andrew was one of them. More than anything she would have

liked to sit down with him and tell him frankly how she felt, how terribly his departures made her suffer, and receive from him some explanation, some reason for his using her the way he did. I must

be a masochist, she thought, and knew he would tell her she was. Would he admit he could be sadistic? She should also, she confessed to herself, sit down with Heather and finally, after all these

294

years, get the truth from her about Guy's death. And Eva's death. This was beginning to seem more of a possibility than talking to Andrew.

If Marion Melville continued with her demands for money—and there seemed no reason why she shouldn't—the

time would come when she would have to talk to Heather. Somehow she knew her sister wouldn't lie to her. If she asked her

directly Heather would tell her the truth. And then what to do

with the truth when she had heard it? Go to the police? Her thoughts went back to those late summer days when Guy was newly dead and the police had questioned her mother, Heather, and herself. They had been gende with her and Heather, asking nothing about their relations with their stepfather but concentrating on their whereabouts that afternoon. Two police officers,

detective constables, and their superior had briefly appeared to speak to her mother. She couldn't remember their names except that the inspector's had been a bird's. Sparrow or Swift or Parrot. No, none of those. The policemen had believed them when they said they had all been out together, shopping for school uniforms. Beatrix, cleverly, had said Heather had been with them but hadn't actually gone into the shop but waited outside.

They would probably be retired by now, those policemen.

Why was she thinking of them now when she hadn't for years? Because, if the tape found its way into their hands, she would have to meet them again or their successors. It hardly bore thinking

of, yet it was almost preferable to the tape being handed to Andrew. When he had heard it he would leave and this time he wouldn't come back. But the police would come once he had spoken to them.

Her savings were almost used up. One more envelope containing two hundred pounds to Marion Melville and that 293

would be the end. The end of all our lives, mine and Heather's and Edmund's, her mother's and Pam's and maybe even Michael's. Not Andrew's, though. Andrew would leave and find himself a new little blonde. Achieving all this was in Marion's power. Nothing could stop her. Paying out thousands of pounds would keep her silent while it continued—but it couldn't continue. The money wasn't there.

"You don't want him to meet me, do you?" said Fowler. "It's not very kind, not when I've brought you a whole box of floppy discs." He had found them in a bin outside the Dorchester, rainbow-colored ones, apparently unused.

"They're no use to me," Marion said. "I haven't got a computer."

"If I can find one I'll give it to you for a wedding present." "No one throws away computers in waste bins. And, no, I

don't want him to meet you. I may be engaged but that's not marriage, is it? Engagements can be broken and you're enough to put

any man off."

Fowler helped himself to the last of the gin from Marion's

fridge and the last inch of tonic in the bottle. "Have you told him about me? Does he even know I exist?"

"If you must know, I've told him you're a recluse." "Chance'd be a fine thing," said Fowler, lighting a cigarette. "Do you know what a remittance man is?"

"No, I don't."

"It's someone like me. A wastrel, a ne'er-do-well, a loafer, a layabout, a freeloader, a black sheep, a sluggard, a hobo, a bum, a tramp, a—"

"Oh, give over, do." 296

"In a minute. A remittance man is all those. His relatives pay him to stay away. Right?"

"If you reckon on me paying you to stay away from Barry, you've got another think coming."

"I'm not asking for money," said Fowler. "Well, I am but no more than usual." Dirty, unkempt, and unshaven as he was, he looked at her with the limpid eyes of innocence. So had he eyed her when he was six years old and in pursuit of a tranche of her pocket money. "What I want is this flat."

Andrew had hired a car and they were going away to a country

house hotel for the weekend. From the brochure it looked a glamorous place, a converted stately home, once a refuge for Charles I,

later its owner host to George III. It was surrounded by twenty acres of parkland, it had a spa, a gym, and a pool. Before they could leave, Ismay had to pay her weekly hush money to Marion Melville. Two hundred pounds was almost all she had left in her account until her salary was paid into it in a week's time. Leaving Andrew in bed, she walked down to the cash dispenser, feeling that this was the last week of her life. Marion would ask for more next time and she couldn't pay it. Andrew would receive the tape in the post or, more likely, taking no risks, Marion would deliver it to him herself by hand. Ismay imagined the consequences. First of all there would be the kind of inquest he was so good at, the demoralizing kind he had instituted over her concealment of Edmund's and Heather's presence in the house, but far, far worse. She knew him so well. She envisaged his astonishment, half feigned, his lawyer-like interrogation of her, his threat that of

course she understood he couldn't "just let this go," then his slow considered decision to go to the police and finally his farewell. 297

Good-bye, this was the end, it couldn't be helped, but she must understand that in the circumstances, in his position, he could

hardly be associated with someone whose sister....

She had arranged with Marion for the meeting to take place earlier than usual. And at Clapham Common tube station, not Hungerford Bridge. She couldn't be away too long. Andrew would be suspicious as it was, wanting to know where she had been and what she had been doing. If she had been shopping, what on earth had she bought, knowing they'd be away for the weekend?

She withdrew the money. That made six hundred pounds

this woman had extracted from her. It was rare for her to go to Clapham Common station, Clapham South being much nearer

her own home, but she had lived here all her life so there was nothing to surprise her. Only perhaps something which had temporarily slipped from her memory. Phoenix Road. She passed the end of

it and the pub on the corner called the Phoenix, noted the name,

and wondered why it suddenly seemed to her so important, so relevant to her life as it now was, so vital. Something in the picture

on the pub sign? She didn't think so. It was just a bird looking rather like a pheasant rising out of a fire with red and yellow flames. Nothing there ...

Of course. It came to her suddenly. Phoenix was the name of

the detective inspector who had come to the house just once to talk to her and her mother and Heather. Not Parrot or Swift or Swan but Phoenix, the bird that is reborn from the flames that have incinerated it. Hope sprang, like the fiery bird, and made her breathless as if she had run instead of walked the distance. Marion was there before her, in ra-ra skirt, tight sweater, and kitten heels. She looked pleased with herself.

"How's Barry?" Ismay said.

"Goodness, what a memory you've got! He's fine, thanks." 298

"Here's the money." Ismay passed her the envelope. "So you'll be living next door to my sister's mother-in-law."

"It looks like it. I'll phone you about next week's installment." Marion went to get a train home. Watching her pass through

the barrier, Ismay marveled at herself. All this was very unlike her. This was the kind of thing people like Marion did, not people like her, but if she didn't go ahead with it she wouldn't enjoy her weekend. Even being alone with Andrew in that lovely place would

mean nothing if this wasn't resolved, or set up to be resolved. She took her mobile out of her bag and asked Directory Inquiries for the number of Phoenix, initial B, at 56 Chudleigh Hill, West Hampstead, NW6.

"How do you spell that?" "P-H-O-E-N-I-X."

"There's no one of that name."

She had never seen it written down. Perhaps there were other ways of spelling it. "Try beginning with an F. F, double E, N-I-X or maybe F-E-N-I-X."

One of those must have been right. The recorded voice came on. "The number requested is ... " and four digits followed the 7624 area code. Ismay dialed it.

A rather deep voice said, "Hello?"

"Is that Detective Inspector Barry Fenix?"

"It's ex—Detective Inspector now, my dear. What can I do for you?"

She cut the connection. 299

Chapter Twenty-seven

The remittance man was sitting on her doorstep when Marion reached home. She had not changed the locks again, so there was

no reason for him to be there except, as she put it to herself, out of malice. If he did it often enough the time would come when she

had Barry with her. Beautifully dressed Barry in his immaculate car, helping her out, escorting her to her door, to find this piece of human refuse littering the step. And Fowler was looking particularly awful, his face and hands black with dirt. It was months since

his hair had been cut and it hung in straggly rats' tails to his shoulders. Now the weather was growing cold, he had resurrected the

red wool scarf and wound it around his neck over the collar of a thickly grunge-encrusted black plastic jacket with a broken zip. He had surrounded his seat on the step with a detritus of food packaging, a plastic sandwich case, an empty quarter bottle of gin, several apple cores, and the remains of a meat pie on a polystyrene plate.

300

"I was just saying to myself," he said, "Fowler, I was saying, what's she up to, out all this time? Been to see lover-boy?" "No, I haven't, and it's no business of yours."

"I've always understood that one's family was one's business,

even in these degenerative days. If I clear up this mess, will you cut my hair?"

She was looking for ways to get out of the trap he was setting

for her. If she were to clean him up and somehow keep him clean, maybe pay him a little, would he withdraw his threat? Once she was married to Barry it wouldn't much matter what Fowler did. Of course, marriage wasn't what it had been in their parents' day, the permanency, the tie that binds, but it still carried a fair amount

of security.... She sent Fowler off to shower and wash his hair. A

man wouldn't leave his wife because she turned out to have a brother who was a dosser, but a fiance might leave his fiancee. Fowler really wasn't bad-looking when he was cleaned up. If his hair was no longer golden and curly it was quite a pleasant straw color. She sat him down in a chair, spread towels on the floor, and

began cutting.

"Are you going out with him this evening?" "What's that to you?"

"You know what, Marion. I won't be here, anyway. I've got an engagement with a skip in Highbury, but I could come back on, say, Wednesday."

Filthy again by then, she thought. "I could give you a bit," she said. "I mean, say, twenty pounds a week."

"I remember," said Fowler, reminiscing, "our dad telling me

that when he was young twenty quid a week was a fortune. The height of a girl's ambition was a handsome husband and a thousand a year. Can't imagine, can you? It's nothing now, couple of

drinks and a packet of cigarettes." 301

"I'd throw in a new pair ofjeans and one of those army greatcoats."

"I don't want a greatcoat," said Fowler. "I want this flat."

"I expect you'd like a big white wedding," said Barry. "No reason why not. I can afford it."

"No, darling, I don't think so. It'd take so long to organize. Actually, I just want to be your wife as soon as possible."

"Do you, kitten? Camden Register Office, then, and we'll be off to India. How about three weeks' time? I reckon it has to be three weeks."

He returned to his perusal of The World Scanner's Guide to the Asian Subcontinent.

"Will you fix up the wedding, then?"

"Of course I will, kitten. I'll pop over there this afternoon." "And it'll be just us?"

"We'll have to have witnesses. How about that brother of yours? And maybe an old colleague of mine."

"From the Civil Service?"

"That's right," said Barry, his mouth twitching rather in the manner of Mr. Hussein and his sons. What was so funny about the things she said she couldn't imagine.

Mr. Hussein came to the engagement party and brought

one of his sons with him, Khwaja, the tallest and best-looking

one, accompanied by a glamorous wife in gold lame shalwarkameez. Marion, in her Indian gown, felt quite equal to her. She

had hoped for the chance to crow over Irene Litton, but Irene stayed away, though Edmund and Heather were there. Barry appeared to have no relatives or none whom he wanted to invite, but by far the majority of guests were former colleagues of his in 302

the Civil Service, all now retired. Marion thought them the dullest bunch of men she had ever come across. She smiled and simpered when Barry introduced her as his "lovely bride-to-be" but soon skipped away with the excuse that she had to "see to the refreshments." These were in the hands of caterers, all Pakistanis, and the

food was splendid Mogul delicacies, Barry's favorite, covering two long buffet tables. She picked up a plate of samosas and handed them to Heather and Edmund.

"When's the wedding, Marion?" said Edmund.

"In two weeks' time. We're going to India on our honeymoon the next day. That's the best part of a wedding, don't you think? You didn't have a honeymoon, did you?"

"We're starting ours a month after you," said Heather. "Are you going abroad?"

"I don't know. Ed is planning a secret destination."

Marion smiled tightly. If everyone was going to look at her

like that, with suppressed amusement, she'd be seriously angry. And this woman had no business to look at anyone like anything, not after what she'd done. Drowned someone! Well, Edmund would know, the whole world would know, once that sister-in-law of his had run out of cash. Marion trotted off to greet Joyce and Duncan Crosbie. Every time the doorbell rang she feared it might

be Fowler. She hadn't invited him, of course she hadn't, but somehow he had found out about the party and though he said he had a

date with a couple of men he called job seekers in a pub in Harlesden, she couldn't rely on his not turning up here. Maybe she'd take

some of this food home for him. There was so much of it, leftovers were bound to be abundant. A bottle of wine too wouldn't be missed. She realized, uneasily, what lengths she was going to to keep him sweet.

303

Another glance in Heather Litton's direction reminded her of

the tape. Since she began her extortionate demands she had carried it with her everywhere she went. It wasn't safe to leave it in the

flat with Fowler about. It was in the pretty little jeweled handbag that was yet another gift of Barry's and she had left it lying on a chair, on an arm of which one of the dull colleagues was sitting. With a sweet smile, Marion retrieved the bag and, imagining her feelings if someone had robbed her of the tape, quickly checked.

No one had. She hooked the bag strap over her shoulder to be on the safe side and advanced in a hostessy way on Edmund and Heather once more. They were talking to Joyce and Duncan Crosbie. Marion took Edmund's arm and smiled up into his face.

"You and I were very close once, weren't we, Edmund? You used to walk me home from your mothers. She—and not only she—had high hopes we might have a future together. But it was not to be and here we are with completely different people. No doubt it's all for the best."

Joyce flicked her eyes up and down Marion's Indian dress. "How's your father these days, Marion?"

Marion made her escape with the excuse that guests' glasses needed refilling.

Heather and Edmund left the party early to call next door on his mother. Irene was entirely dressed in black, hung with handmade strings ofjet and onyx.

"The noise from next door has been fearful. I had always supposed that if one's house was detached, one could hear nothing from

the next house, but I find I was mistaken. Surely it isn't necessary to have the windows open at the end of October. Was she there?"

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"If you mean Marion, Mother, since it was her engagement party, inevitably she was."

"You know, I consider your going to it, not to mention my own sister and her husband, a betrayal of me personally." "That's a pity," said Edmund, "but nothing can be done about it now."

Heather had said nothing, believing that any comments on

the party and the party guests would be unwelcome. At last she asked Irene how she was and felt the choice of inquiry had been tactful as her mother-in-law launched into a litany of ailments: backache, exhaustion, pins and needles in the legs, numbness on waking (if indeed she had slept), persistent cough, and general malaise.

"I find it much easier to be tough with her now." Edmund

put his arm around Heather as they walked down the street. "And the result is I feel guilty. I'm so sorry for her, but I daren't show it. She spends hours at that window, watching the comings and goings next door and fermenting hatreds. If Barry Fenix had to get married, why couldn't he marry her instead of Marion? They're both obnoxious, but my ma is marginally less awful."

"I don't understand why anyone marries anyone except you," said Heather. "You weren't really close to her, were you?" "What do you think?"

"Ed, what are we going to do about Issy? She's never been over

to see us in our flat. We haven't been asked to Clapham. I've phoned her, but she's only once phoned me and that was from work." "Andrew," said Edmund as they went into the station at

Finchley Road and Frognal.

"Yes, of course Andrew. She doesn't say, but I know that's why. He'll divide me from her. That's what he wants."

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"Is it making you unhappy?"

"Well, put it like this. You make me so happy, much happier

than I've ever been in all my life. So that's all right. This thing with Issy, that's a kind of secondary unhappiness. It's always there and I'd like it to stop, but I reason that although she's crazy about him now, she'll have to get over it. He can't last. He's so awful and she's bound to see that sooner or later. One day she'll sort of—I

don't k n o w ..."

"The scales will fall from her eyes, as your mum might say." "That's right. And she'll give him the boot and we'll be like we were before."

"Darling, I hope I'm not unreasonable but I can't say I find your aunt's boyfriend entirely congenial. At least he's not living upstairs,

though I suppose that will be the next step."

"I don't think so." Ismay wanted to sound warm and accommodating, but she found it impossible. Her voice was low and

despondent. "Pamela lives with my mother and she doesn't like the idea of anyone else being there." She made a renewed effort to be strong. "You haven't met my mother yet."

"No, I haven't, have I?" Andrew lit a cigarette. The smoke

caught at Ismay's throat, but she knew that if she allowed herself to cough he would accuse her of putting it on. "Do I have to?" He said it in the tone of a man willing to do anything to please, but she knew what the result would be if she said, "Yes, you do."

Things would be said that were so hurtful that she couldn't contemplate them at this stage of her life, this crux.

Marion Melville had phoned ten minutes before he came in

and asked for four hundred pounds. "Only two more weeks," she had said brightly, "and then you can have a break. I'll be away 306

on my honeymoon. Clapham Common station on Saturday morning?"

"No, I don't think so," Ismay said. "I'll come up to you this time. There's a cafe in West End Lane called Ayesha's. Do you know it?"

"It's at the bottom of Barry's street," said Marion. "Possibly. I'll see you there at eleven."

How it could it be, she thought as she put the phone down,

that she could be so positive, so strong and in control, with other people, yet so feeble with Andrew? She was like two different people, two souls in one body. He would take her away from Pamela now as he had separated her from Heather. The time would come, and it wasn't far off, when he would ask her not to go upstairs and see her mother. And she would comply. Because she couldn't lose him.

The four hundred pounds would be for Marion's wedding dress. Barry had offered to pay, but her pride wouldn't allow that. He'd be paying for everything after they were married, she told him. Something dignified, she had in mind, but suited to her type. Not white but possibly pale pink, one of those ankle-length skirts that were all over frills and lace and bows. When Barry drove her home after the party, Fowler was nowhere to be seen, but on the kitchen counter she found a note with "I want the flat" on it in large print. She tore it up and went to bed.

She and Barry were spending most of every day together now.

He wanted it and not letting him out of her sight except at night made her feel safer, for as the wedding approached she found herself acutely aware of how unlikely it was that someone like her

should marry someone like Barry. Barry who was rich and had a 307

house as big as Mrs. Pringle's and a Mercedes-Benz, and she who lived by her wits. It wasn't like Marion to be nervous and even less

like her to be afflicted with low self-esteem, but on the previous evening he had told her his wife (to herself Marion referred to her as his first wife) had had a lot of family money, all of which she had left to him. And this man was marrying her. Nothing could go wrong now, could it?

Fowler professed to be hurt that she hadn't asked him to the party and now didn't want him at her wedding. "You've got to admit I clean up all right," he said, though he was dirty again by this time and had put gel he had found in a bin on his nice clean hair. "When we were little you promised we'd live together when we were grown up. That was when you had that Wendy house in the garden and you used to ask me to tea. Well, Penguin bars and Lemsip. I sometimes think it was drinking all that Lemsip that started me on those substances."

"I haven't got a Wendy house now." "No, you've got a flat," said Fowler.

She had to make an excuse to Barry for not coming around to

his place on Saturday till midday. She told him she had a fitting for her wedding dress. Men didn't know about these things. He wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a skirt from Dorothy Perkins and one from Chloe. Still, it might even be

Chloe when she'd got that four hundred pounds.

Extremely devious herself, she wondered what was prompting Ismay to come all the way up here for their meeting. Clapham

was about as far again in the opposite direction from central London as West End Lane. Could it be a trap? But of what sort? It was possible—remotely possible—that Ismay could have told the

police and one of them would be with her, in plain clothes of course, sitting at a nearby table. But if she had done that she 308

would have to be prepared for certain dire consequences. If they failed for some reason to listen to the tape, no one could prevent

her coming out with what was on it. And she would, right there in public in Ayesha's. Even then nothing could be done to her. She'd take the greatest care to check the place over before she entered

into any transaction. In fact, this time she might suggest she and Ismay take a walk to some open space, even Hampstead Heath, before the money was handed over. If only all this weren't happening

quite so near to Barry's house....

While to walk through the streets between the Finchley Road

and West End Green and then take Chudleigh Hill was by far the quickest way to get there, Marion dared not pass number fifty-six. If Barry saw her he would want to come with her. Instead, she

took Acol Road and ran up West End Lane. She was early. Ayesha's was a very small cafe with bead curtains over the doorways and statuettes of many-armed goddesses on the counter, run by a very large and handsome Indian woman in a mauve sari. Not one of

the four tables was taken. Marion sat at the one nearest the window where she could keep an eye on the street. Though it was possible Ismay might have taken a bus, the tube was more likely and

she would be expected to appear from the direction of West Hampstead station. Within two minutes she did.

Her appearance was less haggard and strained than on previous occasions. Resigned herself to fate, Marion thought rather dramatically. For the first time at any of their encounters she greeted Marion with a "hi." Both of them had realized that they could hardly meet in a cafe without buying at least a cup of coffee. "What would you like?" Ismay asked.

"Me? Oh, nothing. You have something."

Ismay came to join her at the table, carrying a cappuccino. She sat down, said, "Once, quite a long time ago, I met your 309

future husband. That was when he was Detective Inspector Fenix. You didn't tell me he'd been a policeman."

Marion stared. She said nothing. Ismay took a sip of her coffee. "You didn't know, did you? No, I thought not. All right. I

don't like doing this. It's blackmail and I think it comes more naturally to you than to me. It disgusts me, frankly, but I must do it.

I'm not giving you any more money and if you say to me that you'll carry out your threat, I shall tell Mr. Fenix what you've been doing. He might think a bit differently about you then, don't you think?"

"You can't do that," said Marion.

"Well, I can and I will if I have to. We could go around there now if you like. Number fifty-six Chudleigh Hill, isn't it? He's an honorable man and I don't think he'd listen to the tape, but he wouldn't marry you either. By the way, can I have the tape, please?"

Marion took it out of her handbag and handed it over. The

shock of what Ismay had said, the revelation about Barry and then the threat, had been so great that she doubted if she could stand up. She felt as she imagined a very old woman who has had some sort of seizure must feel, broken, weak, dazed, and disorientated. Ismay put the tape into the bag she still carried on her shoulder and drained her coffee.

"I'm sorry I can't save that poor man from marrying you," she said as she left. "He's a good chap and he deserves better."

It was a full ten minutes before Marion felt able to get up.

She might not have done so even then if four people hadn't come into Ayesha's and Ayesha herself begun hovering. Once out in the street, away from the joss stick scents of patchouli and cardamom, strength began to return. She hadn't got her four hundred pounds, but that was not the worst of it. She was the blackmailer

310

blackmailed and it wasn't over yet, what with her other blackmailer set on getting her flat. But she was still engaged to Barry,

she was still getting married on Thursday week.

He was delighted to see her half an hour earlier than the promised time. "I thought we might try Afghan today for our

lunch. And then I'll drive us to Hampton Court." "Lovely, darling," said Marion. "Why didn't you tell me you'd been a policeman?"

He laughed. "How did you know?"

"A little bird told me. Why didn't you say?"

"I did try, kitten. I kept dropping hints. I was going to tell you

that time we met Tariq and then at the party I did say I wanted you to meet Superintendent Bailey and ex—Chief Inspector Ambury only, honestly, sweetheart, you didn't seem interested."

Ismay had been brave and strong. She had stood up to Marion Melville and said things and made threats of which she would hardly have believed herself capable. Now reaction had set in and careless what any passerby thought of her, she sat down on a wall and began to cry.

A very pretty young woman crying in the street soon attracts attention, mostly from hopeful men. Two of them asked her what was wrong and one offered to buy her a drink. Realizing that she must pull herself together, she got up, rubbed at her eyes with the one tissue she had, and began thinking what excuse to make to Andrew for her absence. One great worry at least was over. She had no doubt Marion had passed out of her life forever. She had handled that. Could she handle those two other great quandaries? One of them she could and must. The time had come to confront Heather and, after thirteen years, ask her for the truth. That which 311

had for so long seemed impossible, insurmountable, she began to

see as necessary and essential. Now there was no possibility of anyone else asking her, she must do it.

As for Andrew, if she wasn't to be ruined and ultimately destroyed, she must refuse to let him divide her from Heather and Pamela, whatever the cost might be. She was in the tube by this time. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes when she thought of what that cost was.

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Chapter Twenty-eight

The fact that Marion had found out for herself what his occupation had been convinced Barry she was fascinated by his reminiscences, and reminisce he did. India might be his first love, but he

ate in Indian restaurants every day, dressed up in Indian clothes whenever he felt like it, and was going to India in a week's time. Ever since his wife's death there had been no one to talk to about the old days in the Force unless a former colleague came around for a drink, but now there was Marion, avid and all ears to hear about his cases, his adventures, and his triumphs.

She understood this and though she was bored stiff, saw it as a good thing in these last crucial days before she became

Mrs. Fenix, and it was, so to speak, too late to do anything about it. She listened, smiling and admiring, to the case of the Wandsworth Widow, who had done away with three husbands

and would have seen off a fourth but for Barrry's intervention, and the mystery (until Barry solved it) of Bernard the Balham Burglar, 313

who broke into flats and cut off locks of hair from the heads of sleeping women. Daily she expected to hear of the Clapham man found drowned in the bath, but he never spoke of that.

Her own past history troubled her sometimes. What would

Barry say if he knew of the frozen grouse and partridges, the pots of caviar, and the Stilton cheese she had appropriated from

Mrs. Pringle? Or the silver, glass, and jewelry brought home from Avice Conroy's? Then there was the morphine. Avice hadn't died—Marion would have worried less about the ornaments if she had—but she had intended her death and that was attempted murder. Not to be forgotten, though she tried, were all those

things that were not against the law but of which she knew Barry would deeply disapprove: the lies about her father, her efforts to fix Avice's will, her keeping the morphine instead of handing it in.

For a whole week she had kept and used on trains and buses someone else's Freedom Pass. It wasn't that her conscience bothered her,

she had once told Fowler that she didn't know what he meant by the term, but rather that if Barry found out about even one of those things the wedding would be off.

Marion had much the same attitude to her coming nuptials

as upper-class Victorian brides-to-be had to theirs. Or so authors tell us. Only let her once be married and then all those offenses against the law and morality might come out. In the case of the Victorians, it was usually debts to be settled because once married, the husband would be liable for his wife's, but there was little else he could do short of leaving her. Barry could leave her of course, Marion thought, but she'd still get half the value of his house and no doubt maintenance. Only let her be married.

During these last days she barely had enough to live on. That four hundred pounds would have made all the difference. It was hardly a question any longer of buying a wedding dress. She 314

scarcely had enough to eat. She told herself she'd starve to death but for dinner out somewhere with Barry most evenings. When they got to whichever Asian restaurant he had picked this time, she had to restrain herself from falling on the food and stuffing it into her mouth with her fingers. The debts for Barry to settle in the sweet by-and-by would be her council tax and the electricity, gas, and water bills, none of which she had paid and which were perilously overdue.

The rich never think of these things. It seemed not to occur

to Barry that when she lost her job she would also lose her income. He never asked, he never mentioned the subject. Perhaps he thought she had savings or had gone on the benefit and she rather wished she had. It was too late for that now. Of course, she had thought herself assured of an income from Ismay. One evening

when she was at 56 Chudleigh Hill and Barry was cooking dinner for her—the scent of meat and spices coming from the kitchen made her feel faint with hunger—he asked her what she was going to do about her flat.

"It won't be any use to you, kitten, after Thursday. You could

let it. You'd better allow me have a look at the tenancy agreement if you do. Or sell, of course."

"I don't know, darling. I'm not very good at business matters. You can be sure I'll consult you before I do anything." "That's my kitten."

After they had eaten dhansaak, dahin, rice, and poppadoms (Barry critically, Marion voraciously), they spent the rest of the evening perusing the travel agent's brochures on Kerala. Pushkar

had been given up on grounds of its vegetarianism and a preponderance of camels.

"The Land of Green Magic," said Barry. "I can't tell you how I'm looking forward to showing you India, kitten."

315

She knew better than to point out that he could hardly do so

since this would be his first visit. Just before ten he said he would drive her home. Although she liked the lift, her terror of finding Fowler on the doorstep outweighed the pleasure. As always lately, she said she could walk or take the tube, and as always, he said he wouldn't dream of it.

"You never know what scum is hanging about out there after dark," said Barry, the ex-policeman.

It was true. She didn't. As they went out to get into the car and Barry was saying that Wednesday was the last time they would have to do this, a man of indeterminate age and appalling filth, unshaven, with straggly hair and a grunge-encrusted plastic jacket over ragged jeans, a dirty red scarf wound around his neck, emerged out of the dark between the street lamps. It was Fowler. Marion clutched Barry by the arm, afraid that this time she might really faint.

Fowler looked her in the eye. He held out his hand and addressed Barry. "Got the change for a cup of tea, guv?"

She knew then. This was a threat, not the end of the world, not

the collapse of her hopes. Her brother was better at blackmail than she was. But she was just as good an actor. She had her bag open. "Oh, the poor man," she said to Barry. "I must give him something." "I wouldn't," said Barry.

She had little enough. She handed him one of her three last pound coins.

"Thank you, madam," said Fowler. "You're a lady." And, giving Barry a nasty look over his shoulder, he went on his way up the hill to West End Green.

"I hope I'm not unreasonable, darling. Of course I'm not trying to stop you seeing your sister. She is your sister, though I'm naive 316

enough to marvel at the disparate types found in one family. I simply

don't want to have to go near her or that closet queer she married. If they come here, perhaps you'll let me know in advance so

that I can make sure I'm out."

Ismay lifted her eyes to meet his. "Does the same go for Pam and Michael?"

"Come on, Issy. You know I'm not unreasonable. I don't care

for him. I'm not mad about her, come to that. But of course I wouldn't dream of stopping you going up there to see your mother. You must know family is highly important to me. And you can have them all down here if you like." He smiled at her, took her hand. "Once a year," he said. "Anyway, we're not going to live here forever, are we? What do you think of the idea of moving out and buying a flat? This place isn't ideal and it's a long way out."

She had lived here all her life, but she would move if he

wanted to. "If it's what you want. It would be a big step for me." "Mary Queen of Scots is supposed to have said to Bothwell

that she'd follow him to the ends of the earth in her shift. I'm only asking you to go to Chelsea."

He had booked them into a suite at the Savoy for Tuesday

night. It was her birthday, which was perhaps a good enough reason, though he had never done anything like that before. Dress

up, he had said. It's important. That day, first thing in the morning and before he was up, she took the tape out of the bag she had been carrying it in ever since Saturday and tugged it out of the spool inside the cassette. It was very cold outside. She put on her winter coat, took one of the ashtrays he used and a box of matches, and went out into the back garden, down to the end, and there under the trees she put the shiny brown length of tape onto the ashtray and set light to it. This was the only way she could think of 317

which would utterly destroy it. The tape smoldered, then flamed, half-melted, and turned black. She dropped the remains into the dustbin by the back door and went into the house.

At six that evening she got out of the tube at Charing Cross

and bought an evening paper. Immediately she wished she had

stuck to that old rule she had made never to look at newspapers. That had been after that photograph of Andrew with Eva was in

the Evening Standard. Eva was in this one too, a big picture on the front page, and the headline beside it was MAN IN COURT ON EVA DEATH CHARGE. Ismay stood still up against a shop window, reading the story under it. Not Kevin Preston, not the West End Werewolf, but a completely different man, someone called Kieron

Thorpe, aged nineteen, from Harrow. She thought, Heather killed Eva. It's Heather who should have been in that court, not this nineteen-year-old, this boy. She would have to do something now. She couldn't let Kieron Thorpe go to prison for fifteen years when he'd done nothing.

But she put the paper into a waste bin. Andrew mustn't see that face, Eva's face, on this special day. If only she could push

away the story and the name as easily from her mind. She walked along the Strand to the Savoy, thinking about it, trying not to but still thinking about it. About a boy of nineteen going to prison for something he didn't do. What must Heather feel? What must Heather ever feel? She found she didn't know. She hadn't the faintest idea of what her sister's thoughts might be. Except on one subject. She knew Heather loved Edmund, but it seemed to Ismay that she knew nothing else about her.

She was shown up to the suite. Andrew was already there and

the room was full of red roses. He put his arms around her and kissed her as if he had fallen in love with her anew, or as if it were three years earlier, when they had first met.

318

"Would you like to go down for dinner or have it up here?" "What would you like?"

"No. This is your evening and your night. You say."

She would have liked to dress up and go down for the sake of showing Andrew off as hers, but she sensed he would prefer being up here, so she said, "Here. This room is so lovely. And the view." "Good. I'm glad. There's something I want to say to you and

I'd rather we were alone to say it."

A hint of alarm, like a cool breath on her skin, touched her. Something about the photograph in the paper? Something worse? When Fowler turned up, letting himself in with his key, not even bothering to ring the bell, Marion was delving through her wardrobe for what to wear the day after next. It was no longer even a question of a visit to Dorothy Perkins, not even an excursion to Asda. She was too skint for either and it had to be something she already possessed but preferably an outfit Barry hadn't

seen before.

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue," said Fowler, plucking a battered artificial rose from the pile on the floor.

"There's no problem finding something old," said Marion tardy.

"I've brought you something new. At any rate, it was new

when they threw it away. It came out of a bin in Conduit Street and that's a classy area." He pulled out of his backpack a flounced pink skirt with frilly hem which he had wrapped up in the Evening Standard. "Look, it's still got the price tag on it. Folks are amazing what they throw away. You even get a free paper with it. You can read all about the Kensington Gardens murder."

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"I'm getting married the day after tomorrow, remember," said Marion. "I'm too busy for reading." She held up the skirt against herself. "Actually, it's just what I had in mind."

"Can you spare the change for a cup of tea, guv?" "Oh, shut up. I'll never forgive you for that."

She found something blue, a length of ribbon. Maybe she

could tie it around her leg like a garter. What could she borrow? "Shall I come along and give you away?" asked Fowler.

"You don't need anyone to give you away in a civil ceremony." "I'll be a witness then."

"We've got our witnesses."

"I'll be there. You can count on me. Waiting on the steps to throw confetti."

"You can have the bloody flat," Marion screamed.

She had a bath and put on a diaphanous white slip of a dress. He liked her best in black or white. What was he going to say to her? The idea came into her head that it was something about Eva. That he was still mourning Eva, she had been so sweet and good—something like that. But he had never yet shown signs of mourning her. It could be something different. He had said it was her special day. She did her face, combed her newly washed hair, and went back into the bedroom.

"You are so beautiful," Andrew said. "Who would look at another woman if you were there?"

You did, she thought, but she didn't say it. Not on this special day. It was seven and their dinner was due in half an hour. While Andrew opened the champagne she thought about Eva and the boy they were saying had probably killed her—a paranoid 320

schizophrenic, a madman, a poor deluded creature?—and then she thought how Pam had once said you could never trust a man who opened champagne without spilling a drop. Andrew withdrew the cork with practiced dexterity, a foamless maneuver. But

she already knew she couldn't trust him, didn't she? He handed her one of the tall flutes.

"To you," he said. "To us." And then, taking her left hand, "Will you marry me, Ismay? Will you be my wife?"

"Do you remember," Heather said, "the day we were married, I

said something to you about Tess of the d'Urbervilles and her marrying a man called Angel and them confessing to each other? And

you said no one does that anymore. You meant about sexual things. Maybe they don't, but I didn't mean that. I meant something else, but I couldn't tell you. I lost my nerve."

Edmund said, "There's no need to tell me anything." "There is. I'm going to tell you now. I must."

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Chapter Twenty-nine

It should have driven everything else out of her mind and for a while it did. Her ring was so beautiful, the solitaire diamond so big that for a moment or two she doubted if it could be real.

"Of course it's real," he said, laughing. As if any serious person, anyone who was anyone, would give a girl anything but the most precious of stones!

She was dizzy with happiness, thoughts of Eva gone, the nineteen-year-old Kieron Thorpe gone, or apparently gone. Even

then, though, she knew they hovered under the threshold of her conscious mind. Did there always have to be a worm in the bud? Andrew put the announcement of their engagement in the

Daily Telegraph. She read it over and over, it was so wonderful to see their names coupled together: Andrew Jefferson, son of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell-Sedge, and Ismay Lydia, elder daughter of Mrs. and the late Mr. James Sealand. But in opening the newspaper to find the engagements page, she saw another photograph

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of Eva beside the proceedings in the magistrates' court where Kieron Thorpe had been committed for trial.

A feeling came to her that this exciting time, this glorious

time of being congratulated and feted and loved, must be limited, would fade soon and gradually depart. And then she must

confront Heather. At last, after all this time, she must know and act. Would that be the end of her engagement, the end of everything joyous and good and life-enhancing?

Something blue was her shoes, something old the skirt, and something new the tights she bought in Church Street market for fifty

pence. A string of pearls she had pinched from Avice she told herself she intended to give back so that it would do for something borrowed. Brides should turn up a little late for their weddings so

as to seem shyly reluctant, but Marion's nerves saw to it that she was on time, even a little early. Barry's sister and the policeman called Ambury were the witnesses. The wedding passed uneventfully. Her sensations were those not uncommon to brides who are desperate to be married—that is to have the ceremony performed and the union made legal—more than to be loved and desired, a feeling of unreality, of a dream too good to be true, of faintness. Coming down the steps from the registrar's office she had to cling

to Barry's arm and even so almost tripped on the hem of the frilly pink skirt. She saw the world, streets, buildings, people, faces, a dog, trees, cars, and buses through a pale golden haze, not entirely the consequence of the sun shining through November mist. She had done it. She had married this wealthy man with his Mercedes and his two-million-pound house, and she would never again be in want. Cheating and petty thievery could be put behind her. Lying and prevarication too. The time had come when she could 323

afford to be good and she would be, a shining example of goodness, especially to people like Irene Litton and that sister of hers.

They would admire her. She would be called a lovely woman. That Mrs. Fenix, she's a lovely woman.

In the taxi she snuggled up to Barry and said, "Can I tell you something, darling?"

"What's this then, a confession?"

God knew what he thought was coming. "I don't know what you'll think," she said, prolonging his suspense.

"You'd better try me, kitten." He sounded quite anxious.

Maybe he thought she was a bigamist or having a lesbian affair. "Well, sweetness, I've given the flat to my brother Fowler.

He's got nowhere and nothing and you and I—well, we've got so much."

His arm already around her waist, Barry gave it a squeeze, the fact that she had promised to consult him forgotten. "You're an angel, do you know that? The most generous woman I know."

He and she and Alan Ambury and Barry's sister Noreen had "tiffin" at a Sri Lankan restaurant with a wedding cake and flowers everywhere. Having done the gracious hostess bit for ten minutes, Marion escaped to the ladies'. Fowler had moved into the flat the moment she left it. She phoned him on her mobile.

"I've done it. I'm Mrs. Fenix," she said.

"Congratulations. I never thought you would. Not when it came to the crunch."

"Nor did I," said Marion.

Admiring Ismay's ring, Heather said she was happy for her. She knew how much she loved Andrew. They had been together for a long time and must know each other really well. Ismay noticed 324

that "for her" and that her sister failed to say that Andrew was nice or someone she'd like for a brother-in-law, and she didn't blame her for that. Heather never lied. Or, rather, Heather had never lied since she went along with their mother's lying and said a downright no to Detective Inspector Fenix's question as to whether

she'd been at home that afternoon. Since then she had always told the truth—so she would tell it now.

"I saw the announcement in the paper. Marilyn at work

showed it to me. She said you must be very grand and I said, no, you weren't but Andrew was."

"Quite right."

Ismay was suddenly overwhelmed with love for her sister.

What did it matter what she had done thirteen years earlier? She had been a child, hardly into her teens. No, it didn't matter much, but it mattered what she had done last summer. What she did for me, she thought, for me. And it worked, what she did. It brought Andrew back and now I'm engaged to him and I'll be his wife, and when we've been married for half a century I'll look back and remember my sister gave me this. No, I won't. I'll remember Kieron Thorpe who served fifteen years in prison for what she did for me.

"I brought a bottle of wine. Shall we have some?"

As Ismay opened it and filled two glasses she thought how

much she needed it to help her through what she was about to do. For now she knew she must do it and today, tonight, before Heather and Edmund went away.

"Does Andrew know you've come here?"

"Of course he does, Heather. He's not set against you like that. He'll come around." To her truthful sister she had told a lie and another to Andrew. He didn't know where she was. He thought she

was at a friend's office-leaving party. I need this wine. I shouldn't 325

live like this, but I do and when I'm married to Andrew I always shall. To brace myself for the lies I shall have to tell him. To fortify myself against the lies he will tell me. For his infidelities and for my daily stress. It's that or Saint-John's-wort or Prozac—or worse. "Heather," she said, "can we talk? I have to ask you something." "All right. What is it? If it's about Andrew, yes, I'll come to

your wedding. I'll even be a bridesmaid—a matron-of-honor, they call them when the bridesmaid's married—and I'll be as nice as I can to Andrew, but, you know, Issy, I can't answer for Ed."

"It's not about Andrew. It's about Eva Simber."

Heather raised her clear and calm blue eyes to Ismay's, innocent, childlike eyes. "Oh, yes, poor Eva. I see they've got someone

for killing her. He's only nineteen." She paused, then said, "I met her, you know."

"You asked her to give Andrew up."

Heather looked surprised that she knew. "Yes, I did. That was

the point of talking to her. She wasn't my sort of person and I certainly wasn't hers."

Ismay was breathless now. Hyperventilating was what they

called it and now she knew what it meant. It affected her voice, which came out at the first attempt in a whisper. She tried again. She was staring at Heather and she took a deep breath, unclenched her hands, and spread them flat on her knees. She tried to speak evenly. The words she used, just the words themselves, shocked her. "Did you kill her, Heather? Did you?"

In Heather's incredulous stare she had her answer, but she persisted. "Did you?"

"Did I kill Eva?" Heather spoke roughly. "Are you mad?" "Don't be angry."

"Of course I'm angry when you ask me something like that. What sort of a question is that? Of course I didn't kill her," 326

Heather said. She seldom got cross, but when she did Ismay was afraid of her anger. "Why do you ask a thing like that? I can't believe it. You think I'd go into a park and strangle someone? You think I'd plan something like that? Do something like that? I wouldn't be surprised if Mum had asked me that but not you." Ismay said in a small, almost humble, voice, "You never tell

lies, do you?"

"I suppose I do sometimes, little ones, like saying I can't go

out somewhere when I can, that sort of thing, but no, I try not to." "You know why I thought you'd killed Eva?"

"For the reason I'd talked to her, I suppose. To make her give Andrew up."

"That, yes. I thought you'd killed her for me."

"Well, thank you very much. I'm not a psychopath. Just for

your information, Issy, I think she was on the point of giving him

up the last time I talked to her. Next time she'd have agreed, I'm pretty sure she would have, only there wasn't a next time because Kieron Thorpe killed her."

"I'm sorry," said Ismay.

"You didn't suspect any of your friends of killing her, did

you? You didn't think Pam might have. You suspected me. You thought it was me because of Guy."

It was what she had waited for these past thirteen years. The

truth would come now, she knew it. It should be happening at

home in the house Andrew was going to take her away from, not here in this new, pretty, newly furnished flat. Truth can be told everywhere, she said to herself, it has no home, and she wondered if she had made that up or was quoting from something she had read. "You did kill Guy, didn't you? You did drown him? I haven't

been wrong all these years? It wasn't Michael, was it? Michael wasn't in the house that afternoon?"

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Heather looked steadily at her. Her face was no longer indignant

or incredulous but sad, as if she had carried a great sorrow for years and perhaps she had. "No, you haven't been wrong," she

said. "Michael—God, no." A silence fell. They sat there like two people who have just met and can't speak the other's language. Then Heather said, "I think you've just been wrong about why." "You did it for me. Because you thought I needed protecting

from Guy. You thought I didn't like the way he came on to me.

But I did. I encouraged him. I was fifteen—what did I know?

Then he got ill. He was very ill, you know, he had a terribly high fever. Mum thought he was going to die. I must have been very selfish. I just saw it as keeping him from me. I used to hope he'd come to my room at night and get into bed with me and his illnesswell, it postponed that. You haven't got much patience

when you're a teenager."

"I know that," said Heather. "I mean I know all that, what you're saying."

She had gone very white. Heather was normally very healthylooking with tanned skin and pink cheeks, but now all that color

seemed to have drained away. Lines appeared between her eyebrows and above her cheekbones. She aged ten years. Ismay

watched her hands curl into fists and clench hard. "I know how you felt about Guy," she said, "and how he felt about you." "You can't have. You were thirteen."

"I know because he told me. I don't know how to put this,

Issy, but he wasn't—well, a good person. People used to say someone like him was wicked, but wicked' means something else now.

It means nice or extraordinary. Guy wasn't either of those things. He was a pedophile."

Ismay didn't know why she was appointing herself his

defender. She felt Heather was being unjust. "You can't call a man 328

a pedophile because he fancies a fifteen-year-old who sets out to attract him. I really did do that. I sort of lay in wait for him. If he came on to me, I came on to him."

She hesitated, realizing suddenly that she was doing it,

she was talking about it to Heather. The impossible was happening, the something she had known she would never do. Here she

was, doing that impossible and Heather was answering, whitefaced, stricken Heather with her clenched hands and eyes that

stared. "I suppose I was in love with him," she said. "He was a sort of forerunner of Andrew. Andrew looks a bit like him, don't

you think?"

"More than a bit," said Heather. She let herself slump forward, dropping her shoulders in a conscious effort to relax. Her

voice was steadier. "That was why I found it so hard to talk much to him. I found it hard to be ordinarily nice to him and of course he noticed. But sometimes I'd find him sitting in the flat and I'd fancy for a moment it was Guy sitting there." She looked suddenly cold but didn't quite shiver. "I really hated Guy," she said. "Would you tell me what happened that day?"

"The day I drowned him?" It was horrible to hear her say it so openly in that stark, cold voice. "Can I have some more wine, please? I said that to my mother-in-law once and she said she'd never known a guest in her house ask for anything before. Sorry, I'm stalling."

"But you did drown him?"

"Oh, yes. Of course I did. I'll tell you. I'll tell you now and I

won't put it off any longer." Heather took a long, slow draft of her wine and shivered a little. Then she began. "You remember I was going to go out that afternoon. I was going to play table tennis at my friend Greta's. Guy was in bed. I suppose he was asleep. I don't know. I never went into that room when he was in it. Greta

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phoned and said not to come because she had to go with her

mother to see her gran in hospital. I went out into the garden. Do you remember that swing seat we had? I sat on that with a book I was reading. It was less of the d'Urbervilles and I thought it was the most boring book I'd ever read. But I did finish it—oh, yes, I finished it. Somehow I can't leave a book I've started unfinished.

"The French windows to the balcony were open and just

before four I saw Guy come out onto the balcony in his dressing gown. He saw me and he called out, 'Hi, Heather. Lovely day, isn't it?' It was, but I didn't answer. I didn't look up. A bit after that I heard the water running. I'll always hear that sound, Issy, the running of water, the flowing of water. It's not that I don't like water,

the sea, swimming and all that, but it seems to have an importance in my life sort of out of proportion. Anyway, I sat there, trying to read that sad, miserable book, and soon I heard the running water stop and I knew Guy must be in the bath.

"The day before when Guy was downstairs I'd been in their

room to borrow a comb because I couldn't find mine. While I was

there I must have taken my cardigan off and left it on a chair. It

was a warm day but starting to cool down and I needed my cardigan. Nothing would have made me go into that room when I

knew Guy was there, but he wasn't. He was in the bath.

"I went upstairs and into their bedroom. I couldn't see my cardigan. Mum had put it in my bedroom, but I didn't know that then. The door to the bathroom was wide open. He must have heard me, though I was careful not to make a noise. He called out, 'Heather, would you bring the shampoo in here, please?' I didn't want to. I didn't believe he'd wash his hair in the bath. But I did take it in. I don't know why."

"He was in the bath and he called you in? A girl of thirteen? Heather, is that true?"

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"Oh, yes, it's true. This is all true. You know I won't lie. I

went in and he was in the bath and the bath was full of foam. You know how it is with a foam bath. You can't see the person's body. I remember I was thankful for that. You could later—when the foam went. I put the shampoo on the shelf thing by the taps, not looking at him, and then he said something to me. Something awful or I thought it was at the time. It was when you think how old I was. I mean, how young. I thought, I'll stop this now, now before it's too late, and I picked up his feet and lifted them up high and his head went under—and you know the rest."

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Chapter Thirty

It was very silent in there, high up above London. From the window in daylight you could see tall landmarks, the dome of Saint Paul's, the Post Office Tower, and in the distance on a fine clear day the silver-gray shine of the river with an unidentifiable bridge over it. Tonight, in the winter dark, it was just a spread of lights, some still, some winking in varied colors, one which flashed brightly every few seconds. Ismay walked away from the window and sat down again. Heather said, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. You said I know the rest. I don't really. What did you think you were going to do?"

"After I'd drowned him? He fought and struggled but he was weak, Issy. Under the water he was so white, sort of parchment color. I could see him very clearly because all the foam had gone. Funny thing, wasn't it? All the foam had gone. My dress was wet and my legs were wet. I dried them on a towel but not my shoes. I didn't think of my shoes. You asked me what I thought I was going 332

to do. I thought I'd run away. It was the only thing I could do, though I didn't know where I'd go or anything.

"That's why I came downstairs. I hadn't heard you and Mum come in. I hadn't any money or any clothes with me, but I came down because I thought I'd go out of the front door and run away.

You were there, looking up at me, and I couldn't speak. Mum spoke to me. She said, 'Why are you so wet, Heather? Where have you been?' and then I spoke. I said, 'In the bathroom. You'd better come.

"And we did and found Guy drowned. Someone must have phoned the police, but I don't remember who. Not me."

"It was Pam. Mum phoned Pam. She came straight over. The police came later. And a doctor, though anyone could have seen he was dead. All the time I was thinking I couldn't run away now. We didn't talk to each other at all, you and I and Mum. Mum wasn't in the sort of state I'd have expected. She was calm. I was terribly frightened, Issy. When the police came, the inspector and the other one, I thought they'd take me away, and then Mum told them we'd all been out together, buying school uniform, but I hadn't gone into the shop, I'd waited outside. I suppose even then

I knew she'd said that so that if they questioned the shop man he'd say I didn't try on any clothes. And I said that was right. And you said the same." She paused. "You say I don't tell lies—well, I did then, about as big a lie as anyone could."

"The inspector is the man Marion Melville married."

"Really? I suppose we lived in his jurisdiction or whatever

you call it. I wonder if he remembers. After he'd gone and the other one had, I expected you and Mum to ask me what really happened and I couldn't understand why you didn't. I thought Pam might, but she had other things on her mind. That was when Michael left her. Why didn't you ask?"

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"I don't know. I suppose if we didn't ask we could go on accepting Guy had done it himself. That it was an accident, I mean. One thing we did do. We tried it out to see if you could have done it. Mum got into the bath and I lifted her feet up and her head went under and she couldn't have pulled herself up till I let go. So we knew you could have done it."

"If it wasn't all so ghastly," said Heather, "I could laugh. At

the idea of you and Mum doing that, you know. Was it knowing all that which drove Mum crazy?"

"I don't know. No one knows. It was easier for me. After all, presumably she'd loved Guy. She had that loss to bear. And she couldn't have known why you'd done it. I did."

Heather looked at her curiously. "Why did I do it, Issy?"

"For me," Ismay said. "To save me from Guy. Even if I didn't want to be saved, you thought I ought to be, didn't you? Nothing had happened, though I'd wished it would. I knew you'd done it for me and I think that's the reason I never told anyone."

"I didn't do it for you, Issy. I did it for me."

It was as if she were trying to speak a language in which she'd only had a few lessons, a strange tongue whose grammar she hadn't even begun to master. "What do you mean? I don't understand what you mean."

Heather nodded. "That night we stayed at Pam's—do you

remember that?—and we both came downstairs because there was a wasp in our room. Do you remember?"

"Of course I do. That was when Guy first saw me."

"He saw two girls, Issy, not one. He saw me as well. I think

we both attracted him, but you—you have to forgive me for this—showed pretty plainly what you felt. And you were older. That was part of the trouble. Did you never wonder why you got 334

all that kissing and fondling but nothing more? Why he never did what you wanted and came to your bedroom?"

"I suppose I thought there wasn't the opportunity. Or maybe he was scared of going that far."

"He wasn't scared," Heather said. "He came to mine."

This time Ismay was silent, looking down at the empty wineglass in her hands, not daring to meet her sister's eyes. Outside, halfway up in the sky, that single light flashed on and off, on and off. She was as Heather had been when she had come down those stairs, speechless.

Heather went on, "I don't want to hurt you, but since I'm

telling you all of it, I have to tell you this. Guy wanted you at first, but he stopped wanting you because you so plainly wanted him. Does that make sense? I said he was a pedophile. He kissed you and had you sitting on his knee to distract attention from me. But I was the one he wanted because I didn't want him. That's the kind of man he was. He told me so. He said, I need a girl who looks like a woman but who's innocent like you are. You don't want it now, he said, but I'll make you like it. You'll see. That was when he came to my room and—well, did it to me. There was only the once. He got ill after that. What could I do? I couldn't tell Mum. It's the old story. That's how men like Guy operate. She won't tell and if she does they won't believe her."

It was surely the longest speech Heather had ever made. "He actually had sex with you? He raped you?"

"Yes, you could call it that. I didn't struggle, though. I was afraid he'd hurt me. Well, hurt me more."

Ismay put her head in her hands. Just for a moment. "What

did he say to you when he was in the bath and you went into the bathroom?" she asked. "You said he said something awful to you." 335

"Yes. Maybe if he hadn't said it I'd never have drowned him.

He said, 'How about coming into the bath with me, Heather? .' "

"Oh, God, Het. He deserved what he got."

"I don't know how many times I've heard those words. 'The

water's lovely.' Every time I've been to the seaside. It always makes me wince."

"Let's finish the wine. Do you know, I can tell you now, I was

so worried about it all when you met Ed that I thought I'd have to tell him, sort of not let him marry you without knowing this thing

about you." She poured the last of the wine into their glasses. "I never did tell him, of course."

"Oh, Ed knows," said Heather. "I told him." "You told him?"

"I had to. A few days ago, actually. I told him everything." "What did he say?"

"He said he loved me and we'd never talk about it again. He

didn't exactly say I was justified, but that's what he meant. And we have talked about it again. He does love me and things are just the same—I think—but s t i l l ... he never used to be sad, Issy, but he's sad now."

Was Heather justified? Ismay didn't know. If she had fought

off his advances and killed him in self-defense, well, yes. But in cold blood? A calculated move because he had disgusted her? "Do you think you were justified?"

"No," said Heather. "Not really. Do you?"

"I can't say. I don't seem to know anything anymore." "What are you going to do? If you're going to do anything, would you let us have our honeymoon first? For Ed's sake?" They heard his key in the lock. He came in, kissed Heather, kissed Ismay, and began talking about his mother. Ismay 336

thought his eyes were unhappy, in a steady, accepting, resigned sort of way.

In the days that followed, Ismay spent as much time as she could with Heather, not as difficult as it might have been, for Andrew was occupied in house-hunting. And it was "house," not "flat." His father had promised him the deposit on a mortgage if he would consent to buy a mews house. Douglas Campbell-Sedge was prejudiced against flats. His children lived in stylish houses in fashionable places. Ismay went with Heather to buy clothes to wear in a hot sunny climate at Christmastime, sundresses and swimming costumes. She told Andrew she had been looking at furniture and carpets for the new house.

Edmund and Heather left for their honeymoon in the

middle of December. On the same day Andrew took Ismay to look at a little house he had found in a pretty mews in Chelsea, cobbled and with antique lampposts and troughs for flowers, looking, he said, as mewses should. She liked it, he told the estate agent they would have it, and that evening he got in touch with his solicitor. Ismay didn't know he had a solicitor, but, on reflection, she saw that of course he would have one, inevitably.

Marion and Barry came back from India. He had been disappointed in the subcontinent. There was a great deal more dirt than

he had expected, and the widespread poverty got him down. There were too many people about who reminded him of that poor wretch who had asked for change outside his house the evening before they were married. The food, too, failed to come up to expectations, the meat and fish being tasteless and tough compared with what he got at the Maharanee and the Pushkar. He

wasn't, however, disappointed in his wife, who was sweetness itself, 337

something which went a long way to consoling him for the gas, electricity, and water bills that Fowler had forwarded and were waiting for him on his return. Although they were careful not to drink the water, they both came back with what Barry called "tummy bugs."

Christmas chez Litton was a livelier affair than it had been the year before. Joyce and Duncan Crosbie came, and brought

Avice Conroy with them. Her new Croatian au pair was rabbitminding. The unexpected guests were Marion and Barry Fenix

and their friend ex-Superintendent Alan Ambury, who had promised to come in "just for drinks" the day before. Marion had made

her peace with Irene, humbling herself and apologizing profuselyshe had done much the same with Avice—for, as she put

it, she could afford to do so now. Much to her relief, Barry's impressions of the subcontinent had put him off Indian dress and

he came in a new charcoal worsted suit. Marion was in Alexander McQueen with Prada shoes. There was a lot of kissing and expressions of regret that Edmund and Heather weren't there.

"They've gone to a place called Kanda in Sumatra," Irene

told everyone. "No one else knows, but Edmund naturally confided in me."

Barry and his wife went home for Christmas dinner—curried turkey, for Barry's disappointment in India didn't extend to

his own cooking—and they took ex-Superintendent Ambury with them, but not before he had asked for Irene's phone number and given her his.

Andrew met Ismay's mother at last. He seemed embarrassed

by the experience, a condition Ismay had never seen him suffering before. He managed to be polite to Pamela and Michael but was visibly relieved to make his escape and take Ismay out to lunch at San Lorenzo. She thought about Heather and Heather's confes338

sion more than she liked. Every day she thought about it and about Edmund knowing and what she should do. If anything. Kieron Thorpe had been committed for trial to a higher court. Andrew said it would be months, maybe even a year, before the trial took place. At least Heather had had nothing to do with that. She faced Andrew across the table and ate the delicious food

and drank champagne. He had given her a gold bracelet for Christmas. She was wearing it. She thought, I must decide about Heather. Perhaps I have decided—to do nothing. In a minute Andrew would wonder why she was so quiet, he would ask her why. She looked up and saw that he had turned his head. His eyes

were fixed on a girl who sat waiting, alone, at a table nearby, a fairhaired, pretty, waif-like girl in a translucent white dress. It's nothing,

she said to herself, it means nothing. He turned back to her and smiled.

The earthquake and hurricane and floods in Indonesia and

Sri Lanka dominated news broadcasts from the day after Boxing Day onward. "Tsunami" was a new word to most viewers, but it was soon on everyone's lips. Southern India, the Thai coastline, the islands that Irene still called the East Indies, though she wasn't quite sure what the term comprised. She talked about it on the phone with her new friend Alan Ambury.

"Sumatra," he said. "The Nicobar Islands, the Andamans." "Sumatra?"

"Places one has never heard of, like Banda Aceh." "My son is in Sumatra."

"It's a vast area, Irene. I shouldn't worry."

"You don't want to worry about that," Andrew said to Ismay, signing the contract for the purchase of their house in Chelsea. "I remember when some mate of my mama's was in a hurricane in Guatemala or she thought she was. Of course I got on to my pal in 339

the Foreign Office, but it was all a storm in a teacup if you'll forgive the pun."

Ismay said, "But the worst-hit place is Kanda in Aceh, and Ed's mother called to tell me that that's where they went." Andrew's casting up of eyes showed plainly what he thought of any family connections of Edmund Litton's.

She watched television, one news after another. The water wasn't lovely. One huge wave and then another and another, the engulfing of land, the destruction and sweeping away of fragile structures. Four British citizens staying in a beach hotel in Kanda ...

"Their names cannot be released until next-of-kin have been informed."

Next-of-kin would be Heather's mother and Edmund's

mother. Ismay lived, moved, wandered in a daze. She was afraid to show much to Andrew, but at last she couldn't help herself and she threw herself into his arms, begging him to find out, to tell her the worst, anything to end this. He didn't fail her.

"You're wonderful," she said. "What would I do without you?

"You don't have to do without me," he said.

He gave her a drink and went into the bedroom to phone the

pal in the Foreign Office in private. When he came back, after a long time, enmity forgotten, quarrels past, his face told her. He held her close, telling her she had no need of anyone else. Hadn't he said he would love her forever?

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About the Author

Since her first novel, From Doon with Death, published in 1964, has won many awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for 1976's best crime novel forv4 Demon

in My View, and the Arts Council National Book Award, genre fiction, for The Lake of Darkness in 1980.

In 1985, received the Silver Dagger for The Tree

of Hands, and in 1987, writing as Barbara Vine, won her third Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America (oiA Dark-Adapted Eye.

She won the Gold Dagger for Live Flesh in 1986 and, as Barbara Vine, for A Fatal Inversion in 1987 and for King Solomons Carpetin 1991.

won the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990,

and in 1991 she was awarded the Crime Writers' Assocation Carrier Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre. In

1996 she was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 was made a Life Peer. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages.

has a son and two grandsons, and lives in London.