Dark Room

Meg's throat for years, and he's blaming her for her frigidity.' He sighed. 'He's more upset than Mum is but I think that's because he's always been so fond of you. He can't understand why Meg would want to hurt you. I can't either for that matter.'

'I'm sorry,' she said inadequately, 'but I don't expect she meant to hurt anybody. You know Meg. Carpe diem and leave tomorrow to look after itself. She's always been the same.' She rubbed the side of her head where it was hurting. Why did memories of Russell keep flooding her mind? 'Your father must be very angry if he's saying things like that to your mother.' Russell and Meg ... Meg and Leo...

'They're just words,' he said. 'He doesn't mean anything by them, any more than poor old Mum means anything by striking out at religion.'

'But in a way, they're both right, you know.' She felt very tired suddenly. 'Meg's never been comfortable in the role of vicar's daughter, and she's far too raunchy for your mother.' Her eyelid drooped in exhaustion as memories whirled effortlessly across her mind. 'It's your fault as much as anyone's.'

Russell dying ... She had an affair with Russell, too, you know ... You got drunk and tried to kill yourself ...

His voice came across vast stretches of space. 'Why?'

'She couldn't compete with a saint, Simon, so she became a sinner...'

She lurched out of sleep with a sickening jolt and opened her eyes on Alan Protheroe. He was bending over her, and Jinx's immediate thought was that he must be Simon, until relieved recognition told her it wasn't. She looked around rather vaguely. 'I was smoking a cigarette.'

He pointed to the butt in the ashtray. 'I put it out.'

'I had a visitor.'

'I know. Father Simon Harris. I gave him his marching orders. I was afraid he'd upset you.'

'He wouldn't dare,' she said with a twisted smile. 'He's an Anglo-Catholic priest.'

'And Meg's brother,' he said, taking the other chair. 'Do you like him, Jinx?'

She could feel the inevitable sweat drenching her back again. 'He's a sanctimonious prig like his father and mother, and he made his sister into a whore.' Her face turned towards this huge, amiable man who was doing his best to care for her, and she felt an incredible urge to reach out and touch him. She wanted to curl up in his lap, feel his arms about her, shelter childlike inside the protection of his strong embrace. Instead, she withdrew to the other corner of her chair and wrapped her thin arms about her chest. 'I'm not sure why I said that.'

'Because you're angrier with her than you think you are.'

'Simon came to apologize.'

'For his sister's behavior?'

'I suppose so.' She fell silent.

'Is he older or younger than she is?'

'He's a year younger.'

'Does Meg look like him?'

'Not really. She's very beautiful.'

'Do you like her, Jinx?'

'Yes.'

He nodded. 'You were dreaming just now, and they didn't look like very happy dreams. Do you want to tell me about them?'

She didn't-couldn't?-answer. Even after ten years, the wound was still raw and she shrank instinctively from anything that might reopen it. Yet there was an extraordinary need within her to convince someone-anyone-of how little Leo had really mattered to her. Do you like her? Yes. Yes. YES. But why did it hurt so much to say it?

'I was dreaming about a man I knew,' she said abruptly. 'He was beaten to death ten years ago, and I was the one who found him. He had an art gallery in Chelsea. The police think he disturbed some burglars, because the place had been ransacked and several of the paintings stolen. We were supposed to be having dinner but he never turned up, so I went to the gallery to find him. There was blood everywhere. I found him in the storeroom at the back, but I didn't recognize him...' Her voice faltered and she held her fingers to her lips. 'He was still alive, but he couldn't say anything because his jaw had been smashed. So he tried to use his eyes to talk to me, but ... I ... couldn't understand what he wanted.' She lived the terrible scene again in her mind, her shock, her revulsion, her inadequacy in the face of the bludgeoned bleeding mask that had once been Russell. 'And there was nothing I could do except call an ambulance, and watch him die ... I watched him die.' She fell silent. Had Russell been in a trap, too?

Protheroe didn't press her to go on. He was content to let her tell the story at her own speed, realizing perhaps that because it was so rarely told it was bound to lack fluency.

'I had nightmares about it for ages, so Adam packed me off to a hypnotherapist. But that just made everything worse. The man was a quack. He encouraged me to confront what disturbed me most about the incident and then put it into perspective, but all he actually succeeded in doing was exacerbating every feeling of guilt I had.' She fell silent again, and this time her face took on an introspective look, as if she were revisiting rooms long closed.

Protheroe was more interested in what she hadn't said than what she had. He knew the details of the story already, both from what her father had told him over the phone and from reading the notes made by her psychiatrist. Why hadn't she mentioned, for example, that she and Russell Landy had been married? Or that the murder of her husband had caused her to miscarry at thirteen weeks? Why did she talk about being referred to a hypnotherapist when she had, in fact, been admitted to hospital in a state of near starvation, weighing under six stone, and with very severe depression? He ran his thumb down his jawline and pondered this last thought. She had referred to the therapist as 'he,' yet the notes he had in his office were written by a woman.

He waited for another minute or two, then prompted her gently when it became clear she was lost in self-