Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [283]
Ian’s trousers were large on Tim, but a belt did the trick and in another year they would probably fit him anyway. He sifted through the rest of the clothing: more trousers and shirts, ties and waistcoats, tee-shirts and sweaters, and he thought of how well his dad had dressed and of what this meant about who his dad had been. Just a bloke, Tim thought, just an ordinary bloke …
Hurriedly, he grabbed up a shirt, a tie, and a jacket. He went back to the others, who were waiting for him in the old kitchen of the manor house, where Gracie was taping a note to Kaveh onto the cupboard in which he kept his tea. Gracie and Timmy have gone to a wedding! was written on the note. What fun!
After this, the lot of them set off to Windermere. On the way out to the car, though, they saw George Cowley removing the last of his belongings from the tenant’s cottage. Daniel was there, hanging back a bit, and Tim wondered that Dan wasn’t in school. Their eyes met, then slid away from each other. Gracie called out, “Bye, Dan. Bye, Dan. We’re off to a wedding and we don’t know if we’ll ever be back!”
It wasn’t until they’d wended their way from Bryanbarrow village to the main road through the Lyth Valley that Manette turned in her seat and spoke to them. She said, “What if you never came back at all, Gracie? What if you and Tim came to Great Urswick and lived with Freddie and me?”
Gracie looked at Tim. She looked back at Manette. Her eyes were round with expectation, but she turned her gaze to the window and the passing scenery it offered her. She said, “Could I bring my trampoline?”
Manette said, “Oh, I think we have room for that.”
Gracie sighed. She moved on the seat to be closer to Tim. She rested her cheek on his arm. “Lovely,” she said.
So the drive to Windermere was spent in a tangle of plans being laid. Tim closed his eyes and let the sounds of their conversation wash round him. Freddie slowed the car as they came to the town and Manette said something about the register office, which was when Tim opened his eyes again.
He said, “C’n I do something first? I mean, before the wedding?”
Manette turned to him and said of course he could, so he directed Freddie to the appliance repair shop where he’d left Bella. The doll had been seen to. Her arms and legs were reconnected. She’d been cleaned up. She wasn’t what she’d been before Tim had pounced upon her, but she was still unmistakably Bella.
“Thought you wanted it posted,” the woman behind the counter said to him.
“Things changed,” Tim said as he accepted the doll.
“Don’t they always,” the woman said.
In the car, he handed Bella to his sister. She clutched the doll to her budding little bosom and said, “You mended her, you mended her,” and cooed to the thing as if it were a live baby and not a realistic depiction of one.
He said, “I’m sorry. She’s not as good as new.”
“Ah,” Freddie said as he moved the car away from the kerb, “but which one of us is?”
12 NOVEMBER
CHELSEA
LONDON
When Lynley and Deborah arrived back in London, it was after midnight. They’d made the drive mostly in silence although Lynley had asked her if she wanted to talk. She knew he understood that she was carrying the heavier of both of their burdens because of her part in Alatea’s flight and her death, and he wanted to relieve her of at least part of the weight. But she couldn’t allow it. “May we just be quiet with each other?” she’d asked him. And so they had been, although from time to time he’d reached over and covered her hand with his own.
They hit traffic near the junction for Liverpool and Manchester. They came upon road works near Birmingham and a tailback from an accident at the junction for the A45 to Northampton. At this last, they got off the motorway