The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [93]
‘Sam, it’s the middle of the fucking night. You’ve had this stuff for weeks.’
‘Not this.’ He tapped the letter with the print of his index finger. ‘This came today.’
‘Come back to bed,’ she said. ‘Bob was just in love with Mum. Obsessed by her. I’ll tell you about him in the morning.’
‘What do you mean, “obsessed”?’
She walked forward and grabbed his arm. ‘In the morning.’
‘No. Please.’ He had one hand on her waist, holding her. He caught the sudden sharp smell of her sex and thought of Tanya’s betrayal. ‘I need to know. You have to tell me. You have to wake up. Can I make you some tea? Some coffee?’
‘This is ridiculous.’ She allowed him to pull her into a chair. ‘If I tell you, will you promise to let me sleep?’
‘I promise to let you sleep.’
‘Fine.’ She leaned her elbows on the kitchen table, eyes closed, head bowed, as if in the early stages of prayer. ‘Bob Wilkinson,’ she muttered to herself. She was plainly having difficulty remembering the details. ‘Mum’s last boyfriend before Dad. Possibly first love. Can’t remember.’
‘And you’ve met him?’
‘Sure.’
‘What’s he like?’
She looked up and stared at Gaddis in irritation, as if a character sketch was far beyond her remit at half-past four in the morning.
He backed off. ‘OK, fine. Then tell me when they were involved.’
He had stood up as he asked the question and switched on a small digital radio in the corner of the kitchen. He didn’t want the conversation to be overheard. Classical music began to pour into the room. Holly frowned, but she was too tired to question his bizarre behaviour. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Sam. Early seventies, probably.’ She curled a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Mum would have been about my age. They almost got engaged but Bob was sent abroad by the Foreign Office or something and they had to break up.’
Gaddis didn’t like that. ‘Foreign Office or something.’ It sounded as though she was overcompensating for a lie.
‘He chose his career over your mother?’
‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it.’ She laughed. ‘Mum was actually relieved. She’d met my father, they got married soon after, they had me. And we all lived happily ever after.’ She began to play with the lid on one of the shoeboxes. ‘Only Bob never forgot about her. Got married, got divorced, always stayed in touch with Mum, then helped her a lot with her career after Dad died.’
Gaddis saw that she was frowning.
‘Why are you looking like that?’
Holly shook her head. ‘I think they may have had an affair, a rekindled thing, about ten years ago.’ She turned towards the radio. ‘Why the fuck have you turned on Classic FM?’
‘Give me some credit. It’s Radio 3.’
Holly stood up. She poured herself a glass of water from a bottle in the fridge then turned down the volume on the radio. Gaddis wanted to object but understood the absurdity of his behaviour; he could not afford to alienate her with a paranoid rant about audio surveillance. Instead, he watched as she drank the water – the entire glass, like a cure for a hangover – before returning to her chair.
‘Mum wrote about political issues, geo-politics, espionage.’ Holly dropped into a stage whisper, putting a finger to her lips. She was beginning to enjoy herself. ‘Bob was a huge spy. Iron Curtain. Cold War. Is that why you’re worried about being bugged?’ She looked as though she was about to burst out laughing. ‘Are you using Mum’s stuff to write a book about MI6?’
He gestured at her to keep talking.
‘Far as I know, Bob would feed Mum titbits of information all the time. Spy gossip, rumours from Washington and Westminster.’ She tapped the table with her knuckles. ‘He probably gave her fifty per cent of this stuff. It was his way of expressing his affection. Either that, or a way of assuaging his guilt for running off to Moscow. He said he wanted her