Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [85]
“Not for me going at it directly. You’re right about that,” Lynley said. “But there’s someone else who can do it.”
LAKE WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
By the time they’d concluded their meeting, it was too late for Lynley to place the call he needed to make. So instead he phoned Isabelle. Truth was, he was missing her. Truth was, he was also glad to be away from her. This wasn’t due to any disinclination on his part for her company. This was, instead, due to his need to know how he felt about her when they were apart. Seeing her every day at work, seeing her several nights each week, made it nearly impossible for him to sort through his feelings for the woman aside from those that were clearly sexual. At least now he had a feeling to name: longing. Thus he knew he missed her body. What remained to be seen was whether he missed the rest of the package comprising Isabelle Ardery.
He waited till he’d got back to Ireleth Hall to place the call from his mobile. He stood just to the side of the Healey Elliott, and he punched in the number and waited for it to go through. He thought about how he was all at once wishing that she were with him. There had been something in the easy conversation between himself and his friends and something more in the way Simon and Deborah communicated with each other that made him want that for himself once again: that familiarity and assurance. He understood that, more specifically, what he really wanted was a return to the way he and his wife had talked to each other in the morning, over dinner at night, in bed together, even as one or the other of them bathed. For the first time as well, however, he realised that Helen herself didn’t need to be that woman but that someone else— somewhere else— could. This felt, in part, like a betrayal of a most beloved wife, cut down through no fault of her own by a senseless act of violence. Yet he also understood that this feeling was part of getting on with life, and he knew Helen would have wanted that for him as much as she’d wanted their life together.
The ringing stopped on the other end, in London. He heard, “Damn,” faintly, then the sound of Isabelle’s mobile hitting something, and then there was nothing at all.
He said, “Isabelle? Are you there?” and he waited. Nothing. Again he said her name. When there was no response, he ended the call, the connection apparently gone.
He punched in her number again. The ringing began. It continued. Perhaps she was in the car, he thought, unavailable. Or in the shower. Or engaged in something that made it impossible—
“’Lo? Tommy? Joo jus’ call?” And then a sound he didn’t want to hear: something knocking against the side of her mobile, a glass, a bottle, what did it matter. “I’s thinking of you an’ here you are. How’s tha’ for mental tepe… tele … telepathy?”
“Isabelle…” Lynley found he couldn’t say more. He ended the call, put the mobile in his pocket, and returned to his room in Ireleth Hall.
5 NOVEMBER
CHALK FARM
LONDON
Barbara Havers had spent the first part of her day off visiting her mother in the private care home where she was domiciled in Greenford. The call was long overdue. She hadn’t been there in seven weeks, and she’d been feeling the weight of guilt grow heavier with every day once she’d reached the three-week point. She’d admitted the worst to herself: that she welcomed having work piled upon her so she wouldn’t have to go and witness the further disintegration of her mother’s mind. But there had come a point when continuing to live with herself meant she had to make the journey to that pebbledash house with its neat front garden and spotless curtains hanging behind windows that fairly gleamed in sun or rain, so she took the Central Line from Tottenham Court Road, not because it was faster but because it wasn’t.
She wasn’t liar enough to tell herself she was travelling in this manner to give herself time to think. The last thing she really wanted to do was to think about anything, and her mother was only one of the subjects she didn’t want pressing in on her mind.