She nodded.
‘That wouldn’t be so bad,’ he went on, ‘if it was just like a suit of armour that you could step out of at the end of the day, and be yourself again. But it isn’t like that, is it? It’s become part of you, this other character, you’ve changed to make room for it… Sorry, I’m going on a bit.’
‘No, it’s true, what you say. I’m just the same. Right now my boss is telling me to forget about Marion Summers. He thinks I’m getting too involved. I tell myself that he’s wrong, but here I am, sitting in my flat trying to get inside her head. What kind of life is that?’
‘Exactly. I think what I’m trying to say is that I sometimes wish I could just have my old self back, because then it would be easier to tell you how good it feels, just sitting here, talking to you.’
She reached out her hand to his, then leaned forward and kissed him gently on the mouth. Later she led him into her bedroom. The sheets and pillows had been replaced, but she still had a mental image of the cat’s head. She needed him to wipe it away. eighteen
T hat same evening, Suzanne returned to the bookshop in Notting Hill. She almost hadn’t come-there weren’t convenient trains and the thought of driving up to London for a brief and probably unrewarding talk was unwelcome. But she was intrigued by the thought of seeing Dougie’s wife in the flesh, and in the end she had decided to make the trip. She felt slightly guilty about being in town without telling David, but he might have wanted to come too, and she’d felt obscurely embarrassed by the idea. This was part of her sentimental journey down memory lane, she told herself, probably the end of it, and she avoided asking herself if she hoped Dougie might be there, though surely there was little chance of that.
But he was there, she saw, as soon as she opened the door and stepped inside. At first she was slightly dazzled by the light, then there he was, standing in a group beside a pyramid of his wife’s books, glass of wine in hand. She recognised him instantly, although when she came to register the details-thinning dark hair slicked back, fleshy jowls, pouchy eyes, heavy build-they were nothing like the teenage Dougie of memory. But those middle- aged features couldn’t hide the dark magnetic eyes, the curling smile of the lips, the interrogating tilt of the head she remembered so vividly. The impact was so immediate and so breathtaking that she actually had to turn away and lean against the end of a bookcase until she had calmed down a little. She didn’t approach him, but handed over her ticket and took a glass of wine, then concentrated on examining the bookshelves furthest from the group until the bookshop manager called for people to take their seats. She sat near the back at the end of an empty row, and focused on a novel she’d picked out, and so didn’t recognise the elderly lady with a stick who came in late, helped by a younger woman. Suzanne looked up and gave an automatic smile which faltered when she saw that it was Joan Warrender, Dougie’s mother, taking the place beside her. LadyWarrender smiled back, then gave a little frown, as if trying to remember why the face was familiar. Then her eyes became sharp. ‘Why, hello again.’
‘Hello Lady Warrender,’ Suzanne murmured, feeling her face colouring, as if she’d been caught stealing apples from the old lady’s tree, or something equally absurd.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, readers, lovers of fine books…’ The woman by the pyramid of biographies called for their attention and began a glowing introduction to the author. Dougie had sat down somewhere at the front, and Suzanne couldn’t see him. There was applause, then Sophie Warrender got to her feet.
‘How pleasant to know Mr Lear,’ she began.
‘He reads, but he does not speak, Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr Lear!’
Sophie smiled at the gathering. ‘Edward Lear’s autobiographical poem said it all for me. Getting to know him through researching and writing his life was indeed a very pleasant experience.’
The talk was followed by questions. How did she pick her subjects? How long did it take her to do the research? Who were her own favourite authors? Then it was announced that she would sign copies of her books, and the audience began to get to their feet.
‘You must come and meet Dougie,’ Joan Warrender said, with a glint of what might have been mischief in her eye.
‘Oh no, I don’t want to intrude.’
‘Nonsense. Of course you must, after all these years.’ Joan Warrender turned to the young woman at her side. ‘This is my granddaughter Emily. Emily, meet an old friend of your father’s, um. ..’
‘Suzanne Chambers. How do you do, Emily.’ They shook hands, and Suzanne reluctantly followed them as they slowly made their way through the throng to the front of the room.
Douglas Warrender was standing near the table at which his wife was seated, signing her books. He was talking to the bookshop manager who, Suzanne suspected from her animated gestures and smiles, rather fancied him. She wasn’t really surprised, for despite the years he still had the powerful physical presence she had found so overwhelming that summer long ago. Her heart beat a little faster as she allowed herself to be led forward.
‘Dougie!’ Joan interrupted peremptorily. ‘I’ve got someone you must meet. A childhood sweetheart.’
‘What?’ He turned to look at them with an amused expression on his face, and then his eyes snagged on Suzanne’s and they gazed at each other. ‘Good Lord,’ he said softly. ‘Is it…?’
‘Suzanne,’ she said brightly, a little too loudly, before he could make a mistake. ‘Suzanne Chambers. I was Angela Crick’s friend.’
He stared at her for a moment, then said, ‘I want to hold your hand.’ They all stared at him in astonishment. Suzanne, startled, was dimly aware of his wife pausing in her signing and looking up at them.
‘Remember?’ he said.
Then she gave a laugh, remembering vividly, and said, ‘Anyone who had a heart.’
‘Can’t buy me love,’ he replied, with a big, wicked smile.
‘Don’t throw your love away. Oh, Dougie. I do remember.’
The others still weren’t sure, too young, or in Joan’s case too old, to remember the hits of 1964.
‘So how do you know my father?’ Emily broke in.
‘I stayed in the house next door to yours for a couple of months, with a school friend who lived there.’
‘But there was something else, wasn’t there?’ Joan said, again with that edge in her voice. ‘Oh, that’s right, you’re the wife of the detective who called about Marion. Do you remember, Dougie, last Saturday, that man?’
The smile on Dougie’s face froze.
‘We’re friends,’ Suzanne said quickly. ‘Not married.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ Joan went on relentlessly. ‘But that was how you came to call at the house on Monday, wasn’t it?’
‘Monday?’ Douglas said. Sophie’s pen had stopped, suspended over a book, while she listened.
‘I was in Notting Hill, and after hearing my friend mention that he’d met your wife, whose work I admire so much, and realising it was the same house I used to know, I couldn’t resist seeing it again. Lady Warrender was in the garden, and very kindly invited me in.’
‘I see,’ Douglas said carefully. ‘And now you’re here.’
‘Yes. As I said, I’m a great fan of Sophie’s books.’ She glanced at Sophie, who was now distracted by an enthusiastic reader haranguing her about a very interesting great-grandfather, ripe for biography.
‘Well, you must meet her.’ Douglas’s poise had returned. ‘Have a glass of wine with us while she finishes off that queue. So what are you up to these days?’
Emily was whispering in her grandmother’s ear and pointing to the gardening section, and the two of them moved away, leaving Suzanne alone with Douglas. She accepted the glass he offered and told him a little about her shop in Battle, and he seemed genuinely interested.
‘So how come you know this copper?’
‘Oh, I’ve known David for ages.’
‘Just good friends, eh?’
‘Yes.’ She gave a casual laugh, and silently asked Brock to forgive her.
‘What was the girl next door called again?’
‘Angela Crick.’
‘I can’t picture her.’
‘Long straight blonde hair, quite pretty. Your cousin Jack was madly in love with her, do you remember?’ She didn’t add that she had also been madly in love that summer. She wondered how much he did remember.
