Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [285]
“How do I manage that?”
“Through resignation.”
“But that means I’ve given up, that we’ve given up. So where does that leave me?”
“Wandering,” he said.
“Hungry,” she said. “That’s what it’s like. Inside of me, always. This… this hunger that nothing is able to assuage. It’s horrible. It’s why I always feel… well, empty. I know I can’t keep living this way, but I don’t know how to make the hunger stop.”
“Perhaps you’re not meant to,” he said. “Perhaps you’re meant to cope with it. Either that or to come to realise that the hunger and the appeasement of the hunger are two entirely different things. They’re unrelated. One will never quell the other.”
Deborah thought about this. She considered how much of herself— and the way in which she’d lived so long— had been tied up with a single unfulfilled desire. She finally said, “This is not who I want to be, my love.”
“Then be someone else.”
“Where on earth do I begin with that project?”
He touched her hair. “With a good night’s sleep,” he said.
WANDSWORTH
LONDON
Lynley had thought about going directly home from Chelsea. His town house in Belgravia was less than five minutes by car from the St. Jameses’ home. But as if of its own volition, the Healey Elliott had taken him to Isabelle’s, and he was putting his key in the lock and letting himself inside before he truly thought about why he was doing so.
The flat was dark, as it would be at this time of night. He went to the kitchen and turned on the dim light above the sink. He examined the contents of the fridge and after this, hating himself for doing so but doing it anyway, he looked through the rubbish in its bin, opened and closed the cupboards quietly, and glanced into the oven to make sure it was empty.
He was doing this last when Isabelle came into the room. He didn’t hear her. She’d flipped on the overhead lights before he was aware of her presence, so he had no idea how long she’d watched him prowling through her kitchen on his search.
She said nothing. Nor did he. She merely looked from him to the open oven door before she turned and went back to her bedroom.
He followed her, but in the bedroom it was more of the same and he couldn’t help himself. His glance went to the bedside table, to the floor next to the bed, to the top of the chest of drawers. It was as if an illness had come over him.
She watched him. That he’d awakened her from sleep was obvious. But what sort of sleep, how it had been induced, if it had been induced… These were suddenly troubling matters that he had to sort out. Or so he’d thought until he saw her expression: Acceptance, along with its clansman resignation, was in her eyes.
He said, “In a thousand different ways, I’m sorry.”
“As am I,” she replied.
He went to her. She wore only a thin nightgown and this she lifted over her head. He put his hand on the back of her neck— warm with sleep, it was— and he kissed her. She tasted of sleep interrupted and of nothing else. He broke from her, looked at her, then kissed her again. She began to undress him and he joined her in the bed, pulling the covers away, off, to the floor, so that nothing could come between them.
But it was there nonetheless. Even as their bodies joined, even as she rose above him and his hands sketched curves from her breasts, to her waist, to her hips, even as they moved together, even as he kissed her. It was all still there. No avoiding, he thought, no running, no escape. The pleasure of their connection was a celebration. It was also, however, a pyre that bore the touch of a torch and then did what pyres always do.
Afterwards, their bodies slick and satisfied, he said, “That was the last time, wasn’t it?”
She said, “Yes. But we both knew that.” And after a moment, “It couldn’t have worked, Tommy. But I have to say how I wanted it to.”
He sought her hand, which lay palm-down on the mattress. He covered it, and her fingers spread. His curved into hers. “This isn’t about Helen,” he told her. “You must know that.”
“I do.” She turned her head and her hair fell against her cheek for a moment. It had