A Traitor to Memory

“Now, perhaps not. But then I did.”


“No. And it wouldn't have mattered, anyway. You could have spoken about it, yes. You could have phoned. You could have returned on the very next plane, and confronted me with what you believed was going on. But nothing would have changed with all that. Oh, we might have married in a rush or something. You might even have stayed with me in Santa Barbara so that I could finish at the institute. But at the end of it all, there still wouldn't have been a baby. Not mine and yours. Not mine and Simon's. Not mine and anyone's as it turns out.”

“What do you mean?”

She leaned back on her heels, setting the scissors and the tape to one side. She said, “Just what I say. There wouldn't have been a baby no matter what I did. I just didn't wait long enough to find that out.” She blinked rapidly and turned her head to look hard at the bookshelves. After a moment, she returned her gaze to him. “I would have lost our baby as well, Tommy. It's something called balanced translocation.”

“What is?”

“My … what do I call it? My problem? Condition? Situation?” She offered him a shaky smile.

“Deborah, what are you telling me?”

“That I can't have a baby. I'll never be able to have one. It's incredible to think that a single chromosome could hold such power, but there you have it.” She pressed her fingers to her chest, saying, “Phenotype: normal in every way. Genotype … Well, when one has ‘excessive foetal wastage’—that's what they call it … all the miscarriages … isn't that obscene?—there's got to be a medical reason. In my case, it's genetics: One arm of the twenty-first chromosome is upside down.”

“My God,” he said. “Deb, I'm—”

“Simon doesn't know yet,” she said quickly, as if to stop him from going on. “And I'd rather he not just now. I did promise him that I'd let a full year go by before having any more tests and I'd like him to think I've kept that promise. I intended to. But last June … that case you were working on when the little girl died …? I just had to know after that, Tommy. I don't know why except that I was … well, I was so struck by her death. Its uselessness. The terrible shame and waste of it, this sweet little life gone … So I went back to the doctor then. But Simon doesn't know.”

“Deborah.” Lynley said her name quietly. “I am so terribly sorry.”

Her eyes filled at that. She blinked the tears back furiously, then shook her head just as furiously when he reached out to her. “No. It's fine. I'm fine. I mean, I'm all right. Most of the time I don't think about it. And we're going through the process of adoption. We've filled out so many applications … all this paperwork … that we're bound to … at some time. And we're trying in other countries as well. I just wish it could be different for Simon's sake. It's selfish and I know it, it's all sorts of ego, but I wanted us to create a child together. I think he wanted … would have liked that as well, but he's too good to say so directly.” And then she smiled despite one large tear that she couldn't contain. “You're not to think I'm not all right, Tommy. I am. I've learned that things work out the way they're meant to work out no matter what we want, so it's best to keep our wants to a minimum and to thank our stars, our luck, or our gods that we've been given as much as we have.”

“But this doesn't absolve me from my part in what happened,” he told her. “Back then. In Santa Barbara. My going off and never saying a word. This doesn't absolve me of that, Deb.”

“No, this doesn't,” she agreed. “It doesn't at all. But, Tommy, you must believe me. I do.”



Helen was waiting for him when he got home. She was already in bed with a book lying open in her lap. But she'd dozed off while she was reading, and her head rested back against the pillows she'd piled behind her, her hair a dark blur against white cotton.

Quietly, Lynley crossed to his wife and stood gazing down at her. She was light and shadow, perfectly omnipotent and achingly vulnerable. He sat on the edge of the bed.

She didn't start as some might have done, roused suddenly from sleep by someone's presence. Instead, her eyes opened and were immediately focused on him with preternatural comprehension. “Frances finally went to him,” she said as if they'd been talking all along. “Laura Hillier phoned with the news.”

“I'm glad,” he said. “It's what she needed to do. How is he?”

“There's no change. But he's holding on.”

Lynley sighed and nodded. “Anyway, it's over. We've made an arrest.”

“I know. Barbara phoned me as well. She said I should tell you all's right with the world at her end of things. She would have rung you on the mobile, but she wanted to check in with me.”

“That was good of her.”

“She's a very good person. She says Hillier's planning to give Winston a promotion, by the way. Did you know that, Tommy?”