That payment had shown itself in ways that had been extremely easy to ignore at first, to label as an allergic reaction to something or the initial harbinger of approaching old age. The tongue grows old so the food stops tasting right and the only way to give it flavour is to soak it in sauce or blizzard it with pepper. And what did it really mean when one failed to catch the subtle scent of night-blooming jasmine? Or the musty odour of a country church? Those little occasions of sensory deprivation were easy to overlook.
But then the more serious deprivations began, the sort that couldn't be ignored without risk to one's well being. And when the doctors and the specialists had run their tests, tried out their diagnoses, and finally shrugged their shoulders in a maddening combination of fascination, perplexity, and defeat, the psychiatric warriors had boarded the ship of Andy's condition, setting sail like Vikings towards the uncharted waters of her husband's psyche. There was never a name applied to what ailed him, just an explanation of the human condition as some people experienced it. So he fell apart by inches and degrees, with confession the only means by which he could put his life in order once again, reclaiming who he was through an act of purgation. But ultimately, all the diary writing, analysing, discussing, and confessing were not enough to make him completely well.
Unfortunately, considering the type of work he does, your husband simply can't live a dichotomous life, she was told after months and years of visiting doctors. Not, that is, if he wishes to be completely integrated as an individual.
She'd said, What? A dichotomous … what?
Andrew can't live a life of contradictions, Mrs. Maiden. He can't compartmentalise. He can't assume an identity at odds with his central persona. It's the adoption of a succession of identities that appears to be causing this failure of part of his nervous system. Another man might find that sort of life exciting—an actor, for example, or, at the other extreme, a sociopath or a manic-depressive—but your husband does not.
But isn't it just like playing dressing-up? she'd asked. When he's undercover, I mean.
With enormous attendant responsibility, she'd been told, and even more enormous stakes and costs.
She'd thought at first how lucky she was to be married to a man who could only be exactly what he was. And in all the years since he'd taken his retirement from New Scotland Yard, the future that they'd worked upon in Derbyshire had obliterated every one of the lies and the complicated subterfuges that Andy had been forced to make part of his life in the past.
Until now.
She should have realised when he hadn't noticed those burnt pine nuts in the kitchen, despite the way the smell had permeated the air of the Hall like overloud music played enthusiastically and in every wrong key. She should have realised then that something was wrong. But she hadn't noticed, because everything had been right for so many years.
“Can't say …” Andy murmured from the bed.
Nan leaned forward anxiously. She whispered, “What?”
He turned, burrowing his shoulder into the pillow. “No.” It was sleep talk. “No. No.”
Nan's vision blurred. She cast back through the last few months in a desperate attempt to find something that she might have done to alter this ending that they had reached. But she could come up only with having had the courage and the willingness to ask for honesty in the first place, which had not been a realistic option.
Andy turned again. He punched his pillow into shape and flopped from his side onto his back. His eyes were closed.
Nan left her chair and went to the bed, where she sat. She reached forward and brushed her fingertips across her husband's forehead, feeling his skin both clammy and hot. For thirty-seven years he'd been at the centre of her world, and she wasn't about to lose her world's centre at this autumnal date in her life.
But even as she made that determination, Nan knew that life as she currently experienced it was filled with uncertainties. And it was in her uncertainties that her nightmares lay, another reason for her refusal to sleep.
Lynley unlocked his front door just after one in the morning. He was exhausted and heavy of heart. It was difficult to believe that his day had begun in Derbyshire, and more difficult to believe that it had ended in the encounter he'd just experienced in Notting Hill.
Men and women possessed limitless potential to astonish him. He'd long ago accepted that fact, but he realised now that he was getting weary of the constant surprises they had to offer. After fifteen years in CID, he wanted to be able to say he'd seen it all. That he hadn't—that someone could still do something to amaze him—was a fact that weighed in his gut like a boulder. Not so much because he couldn't understand a person's actions but because he continually failed to anticipate them.