Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [277]
“And that’s all you have to offer me? After nearly forty-three years?”
“That’s all I have to offer,” he said.
“Why on earth would I accept that? You as my husband with no promise of anything else, such as fidelity, such as honesty, such as…” She shrugged. “I don’t even know any longer, Bernard.”
“What?”
“What I want from you. I no longer know.” She poured herself a cup of tea. He’d brought lemon and sugar, no milk, which was how she’d always taken it. He’d brought toast without butter, which was how she’d always eaten it. He’d brought pepper but no salt, which was how she’d always seasoned her boiled egg.
He said, “Valerie, we have history together. I’ve done you— and our children— a terrible wrong and I know why I’ve done it and so do you. Because I’m Bernie Dexter from Blake Street and that’s all I’ve had to offer you from the first.”
“The things I’ve done for you,” she said quietly. “To you, for you. In order to please you… to satisfy you.”
“And you have,” he said.
“What it took from me… You can’t know that, Bernard. You’ll never know that. There’s an accounting that needs to be made. Do you understand that? Can you understand that?”
“I do,” he said. “Valerie, I can.”
She was holding her cup of tea to her lips, but he took the cup from her. He placed it carefully back onto its saucer.
“Please let me begin to make it,” he said.
GREAT URSWICK
CUMBRIA
The police had taken Tim directly to hospital in Keswick. Indeed, they’d radioed for an ambulance to do so. Manette had insisted that she ride inside the vehicle with the boy because if she knew nothing else about Tim’s condition and the prospects for his healing, she knew that he needed to be close to what was standing in place of his immediate birth family from this time forward. That was Manette.
The alarm had still been howling like a warning of the apocalypse’s imminent arrival when the police burst onto the scene. Manette had been sitting on the makeshift bed with Tim’s head in her lap and his body shrouded by the nightshirt, and Freddie had been crashing about looking for the guilty parties— long since flown— as well as for evidence of what had been going on in this place. The camera was gone, as was any sign of a computer, but in their haste the other members of the cast and crew of the spectacle being filmed had overlooked such items as a jacket containing a man’s wallet and credit cards, a woman’s bag containing a passport, and a rather heavy safe. Who knew what would be inside? Manette thought. The police would find out soon enough.
Tim had said nothing other than two numbly spoken sentences. The first was “He promised” and the second “Please don’t tell.” He wouldn’t clarify who promised what to whom. As to what he meant with “Please don’t tell,” that was fairly clear. Manette rested her hand on his head— his hair too long, too greasy, too unnoticed by anyone for far too long— and she repeated, “No worries, Tim. No worries.”
The police had comprised uniformed constables on the beat, but when they saw what they had walked into, they’d used their shoulder radios and made a request for detectives and officers from Vice. Thus Manette and Freddie had found themselves face-to-face with Superintendent Connie Calva once again. When she stepped into the room and swept her gaze over the Victorian bedroom, the open window, Big Ben in the distance, the dog at the foot of the bed, the discarded costumes, and Tim lying with his head in Manette’s lap, she had said, “Did you ring for an ambulance?” to the constables, who nodded. Then to Manette, she said, “I’m sorry. My hands were tied. It’s the law,” and Manette had turned away. Freddie had said, “Don’t tell us about the goddamn law,” and he’d spoken so fiercely that Manette felt such a wave of tenderness sweep over her that she wanted to weep for how stupid she’d been not to see Freddie McGhie clearly before this moment.
Superintendent Calva took no offence. She