She tore herself from him and for a moment he thought she meant to dash from the room and scrabble in the mud below them in order to rescue her fast-dissolving pills. But instead she went to the cupboard, where she began yanking clothing from within. It was red upon red, crimson, magenta, and every point in between, and all of it she threw in a heap on the floor. She was looking for the one that said the most, he thought, like the crimson sundress on that long-ago evening.
He said, “Tell me what happened. I was with Parsons’s sister. I was doing what I could do to her, what she’d let me get away with, and that was a lot. He found us together and he threw me out. Not because he cared that his sister was about to get stuffed in the corridor of her parents’ house in the midst of a party but because he liked feeling superior to everyone, and this was another way to do it. It wasn’t a class thing. Or even a money thing. It was a Jamie thing. Tell me what happened between you once I left.”
She continued throwing her clothes on the floor. When she’d finished with the cupboard, she went to the chest. Here she did the same. Knickers and bras, petticoats, jerseys, scarves. Just the red of it all until the clothing was pooled round her feet like the pulp of fruit.
“Did you fuck him, Dellen? I’ve never asked about any of them specifically, but this is the one I want to know. Did you say to him, ‘There’s a sea cave on the beach where Ben and I go for sex and I’ll meet you there.’ And he wouldn’t have known we were finished, you and I. He would have thought it a good way to sort me. So he’d meet you there and?”
“No!”
“?he’d fuck you like you wanted. But he’d taken some of the drugs on offer?weed, coke, whatever else was there…LSD…Ecstasy?and he’d mixed them with whatever he was drinking and once he’d done what you wanted him to do, you just left him, passed out cold, and deep in the cave, and when the tide came in the way it always comes in?”
“No!”
“?you were long gone. You’d got what you wanted, and what you wanted had nothing to do with getting stuffed and everything to do with getting revenge. And what you reckoned was that?Jamie being Jamie?he’d be the one to make certain I knew he’d had you the very next time he saw me. But what you hadn’t reckoned was the tide would get the better of your plan and?”
“I told!” she screamed. She had nothing more belonging to her to throw onto the floor, so she reached for the bedside table’s lamp and she brandished it. “I talked and I told everything I knew. Are you happy now? Is that what you’ve wanted to hear from me?”
Ben was rendered speechless. He wouldn’t have thought anything could have robbed him of words at this point, but he had none. He wouldn’t have thought there were any surprises left from his past, but that was clearly not going to be the case.
BEA AND DS HAVERS walked from Blue Star Grocery to Casvelyn of Cornwall. The bakery was in full production, preparing for the delivery of goods to the area’s pubs, hotels, cafés, and restaurants. Hence, the heady fragrance of flaky, succulent pastry formed a hypnotic miasma in the air. It became more powerful as they drew closer to the shop, and Bea heard Barbara Havers murmur fervently, “Bloody blooming hell.”
Bea glanced at her. The sergeant was gazing longingly in the direction of Casvelyn of Cornwall’s front window, where the trays of newly baked pasties lay in seductive, eye-popping, and utterly diet-busting ranks of cholesterol, carbohydrates, and calories. “Pleasant, isn’t it?” Bea said to the sergeant.
“It’s got Pop-Tarts beat. I’ll give you that.”
“You must have a pasty while you’re in Cornwall. And if you’re going to do so, these are the best.”
“I’ll make a note of it.” Havers gave a lingering look to them as she followed Bea into the shop.