two milky coffees with grated chocolate on top, in cups that Queenie had brought with her, and a Danish pastry each, they sat by the open French windows in the drawing room, holding a council as to what should be done about Gwendolen. Opening thosewindows had not been easy. The bolts were stuck until Olive oiled them. Finally she managed to wrench the two glass doors apart. About fifty dead spiders and their accumulated webs of aquarter of a century fell down onto the floor and somethingthat looked like a very old and long-deserted swallow's nestcollapsed on the steps, scattering mud and sticks and shatteredeggshells everywhere.
'How anyone can live like this!' exclaimed Olive, not forthe first time.
Queenie gave an exaggerated shudder. 'It's quite awful. But you know, dear, we have to think what we're going to do about Gwen. If that man is to be believed she went to catch a train forCambridge on Monday morning, two days ago. Suppose he made Cambridge and the train up? Suppose she was just going for a little walk and while she was out she collapsed and nows he's in hospital somewhere? Who would know? Who would they tell?'
'Yes,but why would he?'
'Who knows what goes on in the mind of a man like that? He might be planning to get her out of this house so he can take it over. I've heard of unscrupulous tenants doing that to old people who are their landlords and he's exactly the type.'
The more practical Olive said they could try phoning hospitals.
'Yes,dear, but which hospitals? There must be hundreds inLondon. Well, dozens. Where do we start?'
'Around here. If she went for a little walk, like you saidt hough it seems very unlike Gwen to me-she wouldn't have got far before she collapsed. So it's going to be St. Charles around the corner here or St. Mary's Paddington, isn't it? I'll phone St. Charles the minute I've finished my coffee. Oh,Queenie, look what I've found down the side of this chair! It's that thong thing poor Gwen went on and on about.'
'How very peculiar. I'm going to shut those doors, dear, or more flies will come in.'
Before leaving home, he had fortified himself with two strongv odkas. No tonic, just a couple of ice cubes. Not Dutch but Russian courage. He set off to walk along Oxford Gardens toward Ladbroke Grove. His backache had gone but for the occasional faint twinge to remind of what had been, and he feltc harged with confidence. Passing the house where Danila had lived, he told himself how silly he'd been to worry about her.Nothing had come of it. Most of the things you have worried about have never happened. He had read that somewhere andi t was true.
Above his head, Kayleigh was at one of the windows of the first-floor flat she now shared with Abbas Reza, looking down into the street. Trees, still in full leaf, grew on both sides alongit, but outside this house one had been cut down and removedso it was possible to get a clear view. They were going out for lunch, which they planned to have in a pub on the river. Kayleigh wasn't due for work at the spa before four, and she wass tudying the pavements for evidence of raindrops. She neverbothered with macs or umbrellas herself but Abbas, being older, took a serious view of these things.
She called to him, 'I don't know what those splashes on the window was, Abby, but it wasn't rain. Come and see.'
Abbas came over, put his arm around her waist, and lookeddown. A man in the kind of clothes called 'smart casual' waswalking past in the direction of Ladbroke Grove.
'It is he!'
Any student of such matters would have known Abbas was an incomer to the United Kingdom by the grammatical correctnessof his English. Kayleigh set him right.
'What's him, Abby?'
'The person who has just passed by, it is he I passed on the stairs when he has been visiting Miss Kovic.'
'You're kidding.'
'Oh, no, I kid you not, Kayleigh. He is the boyfriend all search for.'
'Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? 'Cos if you are, you'll have to tell the police. So are you positive?'
Now you put it like this, no, I am not sure that I could swear in a court, this is he. I must think. If only it is possible for me to see him close. If I go after him, if I go now… '
'No, you don't, Abby. We're going out-remember? And if you get up close and personal it'll be you they're arresting, not him.'
No bus came so Mix walked all the way down Ladbroke Grove and crossed Holland Park Avenue to make his way up to Nerissa's house. Her car wasn't on the forecourt. Did that mean she had put it away in the garage or could she be out? Please don't let her be out, he prayed to a deity whom he didn't believe in and who he dimly knew wouldn't support him in escapingretribution but just might help him to become Nerissa'slover. The deity, or guardian angel, did. As he was walking upthe path of a house next door but two, rather ostentatiouslybrandishing the orange folder, the Jaguar swept up the hill andswung into her driveway. She couldn't have seen him, he wasconcealed from view by a large bush coveered in red berries. Mix rang the bell and when it was answered by a woman in large black-rimmed glasses and a pin-striped suit began earnestly outlining to her his own assessment of the virtues of Proportional Representation.
As always, Nerissa had scanned the street as she drove up itfor the blue Honda. Once more it wasn't there. It hadn't beenthere for-well, it must be two weeks by now. He's given up,she thought, and this, though what she longed for, would leaveher with no excuse for phoning Darel Jones.
Even though she had had a shower before she went out, she always felt soiled after she had been in Madam Shoshana's well,'den' was the word she always used for it. Anyway, she was going out to lunch with the Vogue woman and she might aswell get ready now. So when Mix rang her doorbell half anhour later, she was dressed in a pale yellow suit, her hair up ina chignon, and her legs encased in primrose yellow suede boots.
The woman in the severe suit and the glasses had given Mix a hard time. She told him she was a Member of Parliament, until recently a lecturer at the London School of Economics. What she didn't know about Proportional Representation, and indeed all psephological systems, plainly wasn't worth knowing, while he knew nothing but what he had read in a tabloidnewspaper. He left, feeling unfairly punished for simply trying to find out if people really like voting for an individual insteadof a political party. The man who answered the door at the nexthouse wasn't interested and became plainly exasperated when Mix, in rather a muddled way, tried passing on to him some of the explanations put forward by the MP. No one was at home next door to Nerissa. He drew a deep breath, told himself not to be shy, she was just a woman like any other, and went to the door.
She was aghast to see him but where another woman in herposition might have slammed the door in his face without waitingto hear what he had to say, she stood, holding it open. She had been brought up to be well- mannered.
Mix had rehearsed what he would say. 'Well, good morning,Miss Nash. We're not exactly strangers to each other, arewe? If I remember rightly, the first time was at my friend Colette'shome.'
'We've met before, yes,' she said.
She looked so beautiful he could hardly keep the yearning out of his eyes or the hope from his expression. Like a yellowrose, he thought, unaccustomed to lyrical comparison, like anAfrican queen. 'I don't expect you knew,' he said, using the rehearsed words, 'that I do market research in my leisure time.'
'No,' she said. 'No, I didn't.'
'I'd like to talk to you today about elections. I expect you know what Proportional Representation is, don't you?'
She said nothing, her face puzzled and, in some way he recognized but couldn't have explained, helpless.
'May I come in?'
It was the last thing she wanted. If he had been a total stranger she would have been able to refuse him but they had spoken before, three times before. 'I'm going out.' She wasn't for an hour. 'Just for a minute, then.'
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew she shouldn't have uttered them. She should have been firm, strong, said what she'd have said and often had, to Jehovah's Witnesses and kitchen equipment salesmen, thank you very much but she just wasn't interested. Before she had thought this he was in the house, walking slowly through the hallway looking admiringly from side to side, nodding and smiling in aI way that plainly indicated admiration of everything.
She would have kept him in the hall and as near to the frontdoor as possible but he didn't give her the chance. He was in the living room before she could attempt to stop him. Today was the day the flowers came. Lynette had taken them in whileshe was at Madam Shoshana's and arranged them in the bigcream pottery and etched glass
