A Traitor to Memory

“Oh, you know you haven't got it wrong,” she laughed. And she touched him fondly, smoothing her fingers against his temple where his hair was grey. “And don't begin a lecture, if you're thinking of one, all right? I didn't go anywhere on my own to find it. The estate agent drove me up to Harrow.”


“Which is as it should be,” Richard said. His hand moved to her stomach, monstrously huge, the skin stretched taut like a kettle drum. “Are you awake, Cara Ann?” he enquired of their child.

Catherine Ann, Jill corrected him patiently. But she didn't make the correction aloud. He'd somewhat recovered from the distress in which he'd arrived in Shepherd's Bush earlier that day. There was no point to upsetting him all over again. While an argument concerning the name of their child was hardly going to cause an emotional upheaval, she did believe that what Richard had been through deserved her sympathy.

He didn't still love the woman, she assured herself. After all, they'd been divorced for years. It was merely the shock of everything that had made him so ill, having to gaze upon the bloodied corpse of someone who had once shared his life. That was something to make anyone ill, wasn't it? Asked to look upon the broken body of Jonathon Stewart, wouldn't she have reacted likewise?

With this in mind, she decided she could compromise on the house in Harrow. She was confident that her willingness to do so would prompt an important compromise on his part. She led into this compromise by saying, “All right, then. We won't go up to Harrow today. But the modern bit, Richard. Are you quite happy with that?”

“Decent plumbing and double glazing?” he asked. “Fitted carpet, dishwasher, and all the rest? I dare say I can live with it. As long as you're there. Both of you, that is.” He smiled at her, but still she sensed something deeper in his eyes, looking like regret for what might have been.

But he doesn't still love Eugenie, she thought insistently. He doesn't and he can't, because even if he does, she's dead. She's dead.

“Richard,” she said, “I've been thinking about the flats. Mine and yours. And which of them we should sell first, actually.”

He braked for a light near Notting Hill station, where an unappealing crowd dressed in London black were clogging the pavements and distributing into the street their share of London rubbish. “I thought we'd decided all that.”

“We had done, yes. But I've been thinking …”

“And?” He looked wary.

“Well, it seems to me that my flat would go faster, that's all. It's been done up. It's completely modernised. The building's smart. The neighbourhood's lovely. And it's freehold. I expect it would fetch quite enough for us to put money down on a house and not have to wait to sell both flats before we have a place for all of us.”

“But we've already made the decision,” Richard pointed out. “We've an estate agent coming—”

“We can put him off, surely. We can say we've changed our minds. Darling, let's face it. Your flat's hopelessly out of date. It's as ancient as Methuselah. And it's got less than fifty years left on the lease. It's in a good enough building—if the owners would ever get round to fixing it up—but it's going to be months before it sells. Whereas mine … You must see how different things could be.”

The light changed and they continued through the traffic. Richard didn't speak till he made the turn into the antiques shop heaven that was Kensington Church Street. He said, “Months. Yes. Right. It could take months to sell my flat. But is that really a problem? You can't want to move house for at least six months anyway.”

“But—”

“It would be impossible in your condition, Jill. Worse, it would be nothing short of torture, and it might be dangerous.” He swung them past the Carmelite Church and onwards down towards Palace Gate and South Kensington, weaving his way through buses and taxis. Another stretch of road, and he made the turn into Cornwall Gardens, going on to say, “Are you nervous, darling? You haven't said much about actually having the baby. And I've been preoccupied—first Gideon, now this … this other business—so I haven't done as right by you as I should have. Listen, I do know that.”

“Richard, I quite understand how concerned you've been with Gideon unwell. I don't mean you to think—”

“I think nothing but that I adore you, you're having our child, and we've a life to establish together. And if you'd like me to be in Shepherd's Bush with you more frequently now that you're nearly due, I'm happy to do that.”

“You're there every night already. I can hardly ask for more than that, can I?”