A Traitor to Memory

LIBBY NEALE TOOK the corner into Chalcot Square so sharply that she had to put out a foot to prevent the Suzuki from going into a skid. She'd decided to take a break from her delivery route by scoring an English version of a BLT at a Pret à Manger on Victoria Street, and while she'd been munching at one of the stand-up counters, she'd spied a tabloid that a previous customer had left lying by an empty Evian bottle. She'd flipped it over to see that it was the Sun, the paper she loathed most due to the taunting presence of the Page Three Girl, who served as a daily reminder to Libby Neale of all she was not. She was about to shove it to one side, when the headline grabbed her attention. Virtuoso's Mother Murdered took up about four inches of space. Beneath it was a grainy picture that was dated by the hairstyle and the clothing of the woman in it: Gideon's mother.

Libby snatched up the paper and read it as she ate. She made the jump to page four, where the story continued, and what she saw on that page made her mouthful of sandwich begin to taste like wood shavings. The entire spread covered not the death of Gideon's mother—about which only a limited amount of information was currently available—but another death entirely.

Shit, Libby thought. The Fleet Street dickheads were digging everything up all over again. And tabloids being what they were, it was only a matter of time before they started hounding Gideon himself. In fact, they probably were already hounding him. A sidebar about Gideon blowing his concert at Wigmore Hall was a feature just begging for further exploration. And as if the poor dude didn't have enough messing up his mind, the paper looked like it was trying to make some sort of connection between Gideon's tough time at that concert and the hit-and-run in West Hampstead!

As if, Libby thought contemptuously. Like Gideon would even recognise his mother if he'd seen her on the street or something!

Uncharacteristically, she'd thrown half her sandwich away and stuffed the tabloid down the front of her leathers. She had another two deliveries to make, but to hell with that noise. She needed to see Gideon.

In Chalcot Square, she roared counterclockwise around the street and skidded to a stop right in front of the house. She pulled the motorcycle onto the sidewalk without bothering to chain it to the railing. Up the front steps in three strides, she banged on the door, then followed that with a long ring on the bell. He didn't answer, so she looked around the square to see if she could spy his Mitsubishi. She picked it out in front of a yellow house a few doors down on the right. He was at home. So come on, she thought, answer the door.

Within the house, she heard his telephone begin ringing. Four rings and it was abruptly cut off, which made her think he was at home and just not answering the door, but then a distant disembodied voice that she couldn't recognise told her that Gideon's answer machine was taking a message.

“Damn,” she muttered. He must have gone off somewhere. He must have learned that the papers were digging up everything about his sister's death and decided to split for a while. She couldn't blame him. Most people had to live through shit only once. But it looked like he was going to have to live through everything connected with her murder a second time.

She went down to her flat. The day's mail lay on the mat, and she picked this up, unlocked her door, and looked through the letters as she stepped inside. Among the BT bill, a bank statement showing that her account was in dire need of an emergency transfusion, and a circular for a home alarm system, there was also a legal-sized envelope from her mother, which Libby dreaded opening because of the possibility of being confronted with yet another of her sister's success stories. But she tore the end off it anyway, and as she removed her helmet with one hand, with the other she shook out the single sheet of purple paper that her mother had sent.

Have What You Want … Be Everything You Dream ran in heavy black script across the page. It seemed that Equality Neale—CEO of Neale Publicity and recently a Money magazine cover girl—was giving a seminar in Boston on the topic of Self-Assertion and Achievement in Business, which she would follow with another appearance in Amsterdam. Mrs. Neale had written in the precise hand that would have done proud the nuns who'd taught her, Wouldn't it be nice if the two of you could get together? Ali could arrange for a stopover on her way back. How far is Amsterdam from London?

Not far enough, Libby thought, and balled up the announcement. Still, the very idea of Ali and everything so righteously irritating about her that made her Ali caused Libby to bypass the refrigerator, where she'd normally have headed after being thwarted in her intentions to see Gideon. Instead, she poured herself a virtuous glass of Highland water in lieu of the six cheddar quesadillas she was feeling like scarfing down. As she drank it, she looked out the window. Against the wall that marked the side boundary of Gideon's backyard stood his kite-making shed, and its door was ajar, a light within throwing a wedge of illumination onto the ground in front of it.