'I thought we could go for a drink first.'
'It's your dollar, babe. You spend it how you want.'
'That's what I want.'
'Where?'
'Camden?'
'Sure. Tell me when and where.' She listened then hung up the phone and looked at her picture on her laptop again. Only the hair colour was wrong. Her midnight cowboy liked brunettes. She picked a wig off a stand and slipped it over her head. She stood up and picked up the long riding crop from one of her bedside cabinets and gave it a swishing flex in the air. She slammed the crop down hard on the bed with a satisfying thud and smiled. Christmas was coming early to Camden.
Hampstead was huddled against the weather. The scudding clouds had taken on weight and mass now, and although the wind still blew at a constant rate the swollen sky above was black and unbroken. The air was cold and threaded with moisture. Delaney looked up at the night sky, the moon now hidden behind the low wall of cloud that hung over the spread city like a biblical judgement. It shouldn't be so dark this early at this time of year, he thought as he looked at the entrance to the pub, deliberated for a second or two and then tapped a cigarette from a crumpled packet into his hand and searched through his pockets for his matches. The scent of the perfume Opium suddenly filled his nostrils and he realised a woman had come up to stand beside him. She was in her late twenties in a fake-fur coat and was holding a lighter out to him. Delaney was taken aback for a moment then leaned forward so she could light his cigarette.
'Thanks.'
'Not a problem.'
Her voice had the lyrical smoothness of the confident rich, one whose education had eschewed affectation.
Just like Kate's.
The woman closed her lighter and Delaney wondered why someone such as her would approach him, but then realised as the woman walked away and joined her friends that the gesture was just one of solidarity, of friendship. The fraternity of smokers in exile, gathered in groups outside every pub and bar throughout the country, united by the stigma of nicotine.
The woman's friends laughed a little and whispered something to her. She turned to look back at him curiously and Delaney realised he had been staring. He looked away and sipped some smoke from his cigarette into his mouth, then drew it deep so that it burned his lungs. Delaney was sure he saw something akin to pity in the young woman's eyes and the thought of it stung more than the hot smoke. What the hell was he thinking of, buying a house in an area like this? He looked at the window of the pub behind him, bright with colour and noise, he looked through it at the shining faces with smiles full of porcelain, and voices ringing with the confidence of a golden future. He looked at the fashionable ties and slicked-back hair, at the Barbour jackets and coloured, corduroy trousers, and he thought of the dark-haired woman who waited for him at the bar and who fitted in among that crowd like a Hunter Wellington at the Chelsea Flower Show. He told himself he hadn't moved to be near her. It was to be near his daughter and his sister-in-law and her family. But as he ground out his cigarette on the cold slate beneath his feet, he realised the biggest sin was lying to yourself. The trouble was that, contrary to received opinion, the truth did not set you free. Sometimes the truth was an iron cage of your own fashioning.
He walked through the door, the sounds and chatter around him muted somehow, the light a softness like warmth as he threaded through the crowd and saw her waiting for him at the bar.
'Hello, Jack.'
He could see in her eyes that the drink she held in her hand was not her first. But her gaze was steady and the warmth of her breath was sweet. Her lips had
