'No,' I agreed, 'but she never asked anything so direct. She was far more subtle'-I smiled-'and
'That's illegal.'
'Undoubtedly.'
'You're lying,' he said with more certainty than his expression suggested he felt. 'Why would she keep on with something like that? It doesn't make sense.'
I smiled ruefully as if I agreed with him.
'What answers did she get?'
'That your mortgage went from L20,000 to L500,000 in fifteen years, and you worked your way through seven girlfriends in the process. Two of your start-up businesses failed and the half million you made on the one you sold last year went straight into staving off bankruptcy. The only reason you're still here'-I nodded toward his front door-'is because the capital value of the house exceeds the loan and the bank's allowing you to make interest-only repayments while you look for a job with a six-figure salary. You're not having much success because you're almost fifty and your track record is far from impressive. You're fighting the bank's pressure to sell the house because you're afraid you'll only walk away with L200,000 once the bills have been paid, and that's barely enough to buy back your old place in Graham Road.'
He looked devastated, as if I'd just torn his life apart and tossed the pieces to the winds. I felt no remorse. In a small way he was beginning to understand what he had once done to me.
'If it's any consolation,' I went on amiably, 'Sam's been just as economical with the truth. We didn't make a killing in Hong Kong, there's no eight-bedroom mansion on the horizon, and the farmhouse we're renting is falling down. In fact we're not much better off than you are, so it seems rather pointless to spend the next half-hour trying to impress each other with our nonexistent fortunes.'
He sighed-more in resignation than anger, I thought-and gestured toward the door. 'You'd better come in, though I warn you I'm pretty much confined to my study these days. The rest of the house is let out to foreign students as the only way to cover the bills. Matter of fact, I was planning to take you to the pub so you wouldn't find out, but it's a hell of a sight easier this way.' He led me across the hall toward a room at the back. 'Have you told Sam any of this?' he asked, opening the door and ushering me in.
'No. He still believes everything you tell him.' I took stock of the room, which had barely enough space to maneuver. It was packed to the scuppers with sealed boxes, piles of books and pictures hung in tiers on every wall, and if anything of Annie's was in here, it was stubbornly invisible. 'My God!' I said, unbuckling my rucksack and dropping it to the floor. 'Where the hell did all this come from? You haven't taken to burglary, have you?'
'Don't be an idiot,' he said tetchily. 'It's the stuff I'm keeping from the lodgers. If they don't steal it they'll break it. You know what they're like.'
'No,' I assured him. 'I haven't met them.'
'I meant foreigners in general.'
'Ah!' I gave a snort of laughter, enjoying the irony of Jock sharing his house with strangers. 'Are we talking
'Arabs,' he said crossly. 'They're the only ones with any money these days.'
'Is that why you're sleeping in here?' I asked, looking at the bed in the corner. 'To guard your possessions from dusky predators?'
'Ha-bloody-ha!' He took the swivel seat in front of his desk, leaving the armchair for me. 'Only when the other rooms are full. It's a bit hand-to-mouth but it's tiding me over.'
He had grown a beard since the last time I saw him and his dark hair was going gray, but it suited him and I decided he must thrive on adversity because he had none of the worry lines that characterized Sam's face. 'You look good,' I said, settling myself in the chair. 'Sam's lost most of his hair and is very sensitive about it. He'll be upset to hear you've kept all yours.'
'Poor bugger,' he said with surprising sympathy. 'He was always paranoid about going bald ... used to count the hairs in his comb every day.'
'He still does.' I transferred my attention to a tortoiseshell cat that was curled up on a padded footstool in the corner of the room. 'I didn't know you liked cats.'
He followed my gaze. 'This fellow's grown on me. One of the exes stormed out when I refused to pay her credit-card bill and poor old Boozey got abandoned in the rush ... Either that, or he went to ground the minute the estrogen started to fly. He's more interested in me than my wallet so we rub along pretty well together.'
'Do you have a girlfriend now?'
'You mean Libby hasn't told you?' he asked sarcastically. 'I thought she knew everything.'
'She gave up calling when foreigners started answering the phone.'
'Why wasn't she worried about me picking it up?'
'You did,' I told him, 'several times. She always pretended to be an old lady phoning the doctor's surgery. You were very patient with her. Kept telling her to correct the number in her book so she wouldn't get it wrong again.'
'Godammit! Was that Libby? It didn't sound like her.' He looked impressed, as if I'd just said something laudable about a nonexistent daughter instead of the wife who'd cast him aside nearly a quarter of a century before.
'She's good at putting a tremble in her voice.' I paused. 'Do you miss her?'
