'Nothing.'
'I know you too well.'
She sat at the other end of the sofa, beyond my feet.
'What are you doing here?'
'Waiting for your father.'
She looked at me moodily. 'I'm going to sell that flat in Oxford,' she said.
'Are you?'
'I don't like it any more. Louise Mclnnes has left, and it reminds me too much of Nicky…'
After a pause I said, 'Do I remind you of Nicky?' With a flash of surprise she said, 'Of course not.' And then, more slowly, 'But he…' she stopped. 'I saw him,' I said. 'Three days ago, in Bristol. And he looks like me, a bit.'
She was stunned, and speechless.
'Didn't you realise?' I said.
She shook her head.
'You were trying to go back,' I said.
'To what we had, at the beginning.'
'It's not true.'
But her voice said that she saw it was. She had even told me so, more or less, the evening I'd come to Aynsford to start finding Ashe.
'Where will you live?' I said.
'What do you care?'
I supposed I would always care, to some extent, which was my problem, not hers.
'How did you find him?' she said.
'He's a fool.'
She didn't like that. The look of enmity showed where her instinctive preference still lay.
'He's living with another girl,' I said.
She stood up furiously, and I remembered a bit late that I really didn't want her to touch me.
'Are you telling me that to be beastly?' she demanded.
'I'm telling you so you'll get him out of your system before he goes on trial and to jail. You're going to be damned unhappy if you don't.'
'I hate you,' she said.
'That's not hate, that's injured pride.'
'How dare you!'
'Jenny,' I said. 'I'll tell you plainly, I'd do a lot for you. I've loved you a long time, and I do care what happens to you. It's no good finding Ashe and getting him convicted of fraud instead of you, if you don't wake up and see him for what he is. I want to make you angry with him. For your own sake.'
'You won't manage it,' she said fiercely.
'Go away,' I said.
'What?'
'Go away. I'm tired.'
She stood there looking as much bewildered as annoyed, and at that moment Charles came back.
'Hallo,' he said, taking a disapproving look at the general atmosphere. 'Hallo, Jenny.' She went over and kissed his cheek, from long habit. 'Has Sid told you he's found your friend Ashe?' he said.
'He couldn't wait.'
Charles was carrying a large brown envelope. He opened it, pulled out the contents, and handed them to me: the three photographs of Ashe, which had come out well, and the new begging letter.
Jenny took two jerky strides and looked down at the uppermost photograph. 'Her name is Elizabeth More,' I said slowly.
'His real name is Norris Abbott. She calls him Ned.'
The picture, the third one I'd taken, showed them laughing and entwined, looking into each other's eyes, the happiness in their faces sharply in focus. Silently, I gave Jenny the letter. She opened it and looked at the signature at the bottom, and went very pale. I felt sorry for her, but she wouldn't have wanted me to say so.
She swallowed, and handed the letter to her father.
'All right,' she said after a pause. 'All right. Give it to the police.'
She sat down again on the sofa with a sort of emotional exhaustion slackening her limbs and curving her spine. Her eyes turned my way.
'Do you want me to thank you?' she said.
I shook my head.
'I suppose one day I will.'
'There's no need.'
With a flash of anger she said,
'You're doing it again.'
'Doing what?'
'Making me feel guilty. I know I'm pretty beastly to you sometimes. Because you make me feel guilty, and I want to get back at you for that.'
'Guilty for what?' I said.
'For leaving you. For our marriage going wrong.'
'But it wasn't your fault,' I protested.
'No, it was yours. Your selfishness, your pigheadedness. Your bloody determination to win. You'll do anything to win. You always have to win. You're so hard. Hard on yourself. Ruthless to yourself. I couldn't live with it. No one could live with it. Girls want men who'll come to them for comfort. Who say, I need you, help me, comfort me, kiss away my troubles. But you… you can't do that. You always build a wall and deal with your own troubles in silence, like you're doing now. And don't tell me you aren't hurt because I've seen it in you too often, and you can't disguise the way you hold your head, and this time it's very bad, I can see it. But you'd never say, would you, Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry?'
She stopped, and in the following silence made a sad little gesture with her hand.
'You see?' she said. 'You can't say it, can you?'
After another long pause I said, 'No.'
'Well,' she said, 'I need a husband who's not so rigidly in control of himself. I want someone who's not afraid of emotion, someone uninhibited, someone weaker. I can't live in the sort of purgatory you make of life for yourself. I want someone who can break down. I want… an ordinary man.'
She got up from the sofa and bent over and kissed my forehead.
'It's taken me a long time to see all that,' she said. 'And to say it. But I'm glad I have.' She turned to her father. 'Tell Mr Quayle I'm cured of Nicky, and I won't be obstructive from now on. I think I'll go back to the flat now. I feel a lot better.'
She went with Charles towards the door, and then paused and looked back, and said, 'Goodbye, Sid.' 'Goodbye,' I said: and I wanted to say Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry: but I couldn't.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Charles drove himself and me to London the following day in the Rolls with me still in a fairly droopy state and Charles saying we should put it off until Monday.
'No,' I said. 'But even for you this is daunting… and you're dreading it.'
Dread, I thought, was something I felt for Trevor Deansgate, who wasn't going to hold off just because I had other troubles. Dread was too strong a word for the purpose of the present journey; and reluctance too weak. Aversion, perhaps.
'It's better done today,' I said.
