Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [65]
There was no reason their concerns should not be soothed, for she did love her husband. She was devoted to him. God in heaven, she was hardly the first woman on earth who had fallen in love with a man less attractive than herself. It happened all the time. So for every person to gaze upon her so speculatively… This had to stop, but she wasn’t sure how to halt it.
Alatea knew that she had to resolve her anxieties about this and other matters in some way. She had to stop starting at shadows. It was not a sin to enjoy the life she had. She hadn’t sought it. It had come to her. That had to mean it was the path that she was intended to follow.
Still, there was the magazine mixed among the others on the table and now on the top of them. Still, there was the way the woman from London had looked at her. How did they really know who this woman was, why she was here, and what she intended? They didn’t. They had to wait to find out. Or so it seemed.
Alatea picked up the coffee service on its tray. She carried it into the kitchen. She saw next to the telephone the scrap of paper upon which she’d first written the message from Deborah St. James. She hadn’t taken note of the name of the company Deborah St. James represented when she’d taken the message, but the woman herself had mentioned it, thank God, so Alatea had a place to start.
She went to the second floor of the house. Along a corridor where servants once had slept, she had designated a tiny bedroom as their design centre while she and Nicholas worked upon the house. But she also used the room as her lair and it was here that she kept her laptop.
It took forever to access the Internet from this location, but she managed to do so. She stared at the screen for a moment before she began to type.
BRYANBARROW
CUMBRIA
It had been easy to bunk off school. Since no one with any brains would actually want to cart him all the way to Ulverston and beyond and since Kaveh did have brains, it had been a simple matter. Lie in bed, clutch the stomach, say Cousin Manette had served him something that must have been bad on the previous evening, claim he had already been sick twice during the night, and act appreciative when Gracie reacted as he’d known she’d react. She’d flown to Kaveh’s bedroom and he’d heard her crying out, “Timmy’s been sick! Timmy’s not well!” and he did feel a very small twinge of guilt because he knew from Gracie’s voice that she was afraid. Poor dumb kid. It didn’t take a genius to know she was worried that someone else from her family might suddenly kick the bucket.
She needed to get a grip, did Gracie. People died all the time. One couldn’t prevent that by hovering round them and doing their breathing, eating, sleeping, and shitting for them. Besides, as far as Tim was concerned, Gracie had bigger worries now than the potential death of someone else in her life. She had the worry of what the hell was going to become of her now their dad was dead and their mother wasn’t making the slightest move to claim them.
Well, at least they weren’t the only ones with that worry, he thought. For it was only a matter of time before Kaveh got both the word and the boot, and then it would be out on the street for him. Find a new place to live and a new dick to fuck you. Go back to whatever hole you’d been living in when Dad first found you, Kaveh my man.
Tim could hardly wait for that moment. And he wasn’t the only one, as things turned out.
That morning old George Cowley had waylaid Kaveh on his way to the car with Gracie in tow. Cowley looked like shit from what Tim could see from his bedroom window, but Cowley always looked like shit so it didn’t mean much to see him with his braces forgotten and his fly so undone that part of his shirt was hanging out of it like a tattersall flag. He must’ve seen Kaveh and Gracie from the window of his hovel and come running to have it out with the bloke.
Tim couldn’t hear what they were saying but he reckoned he knew the topic well enough. For Cowley hitched up his sagging trousers and adopted