“Was that her name? Like Hammond’s Teas?”
“Exactly. It’s her family’s business, and she was in charge of it. Where did you see them?”
George pleated the tea towel. “Once coming out of the Indian restaurant just down the road. He was holding her arm, friendly-like, and she was laughing. You couldn’t help but notice her. Once in the Waterman’s Arms. And another time, in his Mercedes. The windows were tinted but you could still tell it was her.”
“Recently?” asked Janice.
“In the pub, a month or so ago. That time outside the restaurant, I’m not certain, except that it was nippy that day. In the autumn, maybe.”
“And the time in the car?”
“It was just a glimpse, one day when I was taking Sheba for her run. It doesn’t mean anything, that he knew her.”
“No. But we’ll have to have a word with him, just the same,” said Janice, and George thought she didn’t sound any happier at the prospect than he’d felt in telling her what he’d seen.
She finished her tea and stood up. “Thanks, George. I’d better let you tend to your supper.”
With a regretful thought for his potatoes—likely cooked to a crisp—and cold chops, George saw her to the door.
From the walk she turned back and gave him a cheeky grin. “By the way, George—I’m sorry about the Settlement Dance. Tell your Georgie that for me one of these days, would you?”
GORDON FINCH STOOD AT THE WINDOW of his first-floor flat, looking out across East Ferry Road. A breath of cool air stirred the lace curtains. The street lamps had come on, and across the road in Millwall Park the bowlers had given up their game and retired to the pub.
All so normal, all so ordinary. For a moment he held on to the thought that he would turn and life would go on uninterrupted. Annabelle would be standing naked at his kitchen sink, brushing her teeth, holding the mass of her hair back with the other hand to keep it dry. She would lean forward, the angle of the light creating a hollow in the small of her back, highlighting the curve of her hip, then as she straightened the shadows would shift, playing over her skin like a lover’s hands.
From the beginning she’d shed her clothes whenever she walked into his flat, throwing her expensive suits casually over a chair. Sometimes on colder days she slipped on a silk kimono he’d found at a street market. Captivated by the rich colors of the old silk, he’d bought it on impulse. It was the only gift he had given her, hanging ready from a peg on the back of the bathroom door.
He saw the gold and russet folds of the robe fall open, revealing a slice of creamy skin as Annabelle sat at his small table, eating Indian take-away with a plastic fork. The candles he’d stuck in saucers guttered and smoked between them. Laughing, she’d called him a barbarian, but when he challenged her to invite him to her flat for a proper dinner, she refused.
She’d come to him for months before he learned her name, and even then she’d never talked about herself in the ordinary sense. It was only by chance that he’d seen her come out of the Ferry Street flat one day and learned that she lived just down the road—a few blocks and another world away.
Not that he’d needed confirmation that Annabelle Hammond was everything he despised, one of the privileged who take without considering those they trample in the process. Why had he thought he might be the undamaged exception?
Once, straddling him on his narrow bed, she’d held his clarinet between her breasts and asked him if he’d give it up for her. “Don’t be daft,” he’d said, but for a moment the abyss of obsession had opened before him. What might he have done for her, he wondered now, if he hadn’t discovered her betrayal?
CHAPTER 8
Memories of Childhood
on the Isle of Dogs, 1870–1970
In the mid-eighties, Lewis Finch had chosen to live with a view of Millwall Dock rather than a view of the river; in fact, his housing estate had been one of the pioneering Docklands developments, low-rise and less than exorbitantly expensive. Although he’d had many opportunities since to sell at a profit and move into one of his own newer, more glamourous riverside developments, he liked the small scale of the place, liked knowing his neighbors, and he’d found himself loath to make a change.
Nor did he care much for travel, and having arrived home from a weekend conference late the previous evening, he’d begun his Monday morning routine with a particular sense of relief.
Shower, shave, dress, then repair with a pot of coffee, a rack of toast, and a stack of newspapers to his tiny dockside balcony.
As he buttered his toast, he gazed out at the sun-pearled, early morning mist on the water. To the north, across the Outer Dock, he could see Glengall Bridge; to the northwest, the towers of Canary Wharf rose in the distance, barely visible in the haze; to the east were the DLR and the high ground of the Mudchute.
It was his small kingdom—the Island—and if he hadn’t quite managed to re-create the past, at least he’d come to terms with his failures over the years, and with himself.
Or so he’d thought, until Friday night.
The things that had happened with Annabelle had exposed long-buried wounds, and his reaction had shocked him so deeply that he’d spent the weekend trying to regain his balance.
Today, he’d attempt to repair the damage, or at least control it. But it was too early yet to ring Annabelle at the office, so he would read the papers and drink his coffee, and try not to consider the prospect of his life without Annabelle in it.
He began with the
