A Suitable Vengeance

first not understanding, even believing something had happened to the post. Phoning you after two months and hearing how distant you were. Your career was making such demands on you, you said. Responsibilities were piling up. Conferences and seminars and papers to write. You'd answer my letters when you could. And how is school, Deborah? Are you getting on? Are you making friends? I'm sure you'll do well. You've the talent. You've the gift. You've nothing but a brilliant future ahead of you.'

He said the only thing he could manage. 'I remember.'

'I judged myself’ Her fleeting smile was a fragile thing. 'Not pretty enough for you, not clever enough, not amusing, not compassionate, not loving, not desirable… not enough.'

'That wasn't the truth. That isn't the truth.'

'Most mornings I woke and despaired of the fact that I was still alive. And that became part of my loathing as well. I wasn't even enough of a person to take my own life. Worthless, I thought. Totally without value. Stupid and ugly and utterly useless.'

Each word was more difficult to bear than the last.

'I wanted to die. I prayed to die. But I didn't. I just went on. Which is what most people do.'

'They do go on. They heal. They forget. I understand.' He hoped those four statements would be enough to stop her. But he saw that she was determined to carry their conversation through to an end of her own devising.

'Tommy was my forgetting at first. When he came to visit, we laughed. We talked. The first time he made an excuse why he'd come. But not after that. And he never pushed me, Simon. He never once made demands. I didn't talk about you, but I think somehow he knew and was determined to wait until I was ready to open my heart to him. So he wrote, he phoned, he laid a real foundation. And when he took me to bed, I wanted to be there. I'd finally let you go.'

'Deborah, please. It's all right. I understand.' He stopped looking at her. Turning his head was the only movement he seemed capable of making. He stared at the items he'd placed on the bed.

'You'd rejected me. I was angry. I was hurt. I got over you in the end, but for some reason I believed that I had to show you how things were now. I had to make you see that, if you didn't want me, someone else did. So I put that photograph on the wall in my flat. Tommy didn't want me to. He asked me not to. But I pointed out the composition, the colour, the texture of the curtains and the blankets, the shapes of clouds in the sky. 'It's just a photograph,' I said. 'Are you embarrassed about what it implies about us?''

For a moment, she said nothing more. St James thought she was finished, and he looked up to see that her hand was at her throat, her fingers pressing along her collarbone. 'What a terrible lie to tell Tommy. I just wanted to hurt you. As deeply as I could.'

'God knows I deserved it. I hurt you as well.'

'No. There's no excusing a need for retaliation like that. It's adolescent. Disgusting. It says things about me that make me ill. I'm so sorry. Truly.'

It's nothing. Really. Do forget it, little bird. He couldn't bring himself to say it. He couldn't say anything. He couldn't bear the thought that, through his own cowardice, he had driven her to Lynley. It was more than he could suffer. He despised himself. As he watched, seeking words that he didn't know, feeling wrenched by emotions he couldn't bear to possess, she placed the photographs on the edge of the bed, pressing their corners down to keep them from curling.

'Do you love him?'

She had gone to the door, but she turned to answer. 'He's everything to me,' she said. 'Loyalty, devotion, affection, warmth. He's given me things-'

'Do you love him?' The question was shaken this time. 'At least can you say that you love him, Deborah?'

For a moment he thought she might leave without answering. But he saw Lynley's power sweep right through her body. Her chin raised, her shoulders straightened, her eyes shone with tears. He heard the answer before she gave it. 'I love him. Yes. I love him. I do.' And then she was gone.

He lay in bed and stared at the shifting patterns of black shadow and dim light on the ceiling. The night was warm, so his bedroom window was open, the curtains were undrawn, and he could hear, occasionally, cars rumbling along Cheyne Walk just a block away, the noise of their engines amplified by the open expanse of the river. His body should have been tired – demanding sleep – but instead it ached, muscles excruciatingly tense in his neck and shoulders, hands and arms feeling strung with external nerves, chest sore and constricted as if pressed by a weight. His mind was a maelstrom in which were swirling fragments of former conversations, half-formed hazy fantasies, things needing to be said.

He tried to think of anything other than Deborah. A fibre analysis he needed to complete, a deposition he was due to give in two weeks, a conference at which he was to present a paper, a seminar in Glasgow he had been asked to teach. He tried to be what he had been during her absence, the cool scientist meeting commitments and facing responsibilities, but instead he saw the man he really was, the coward who filled his life with denial and distraction to avoid running the risk of vulnerability.

His entire life was a lie, founded on noble aphorisms in which he knew he did not believe. Let her go. Let her find her own way. Let her have a world of expanding horizons filled with people who could give her riches far beyond the paucity of what he had to offer. Let her find a kindred soul with whom she could share herself, one unburdened by the weaknesses that plagued his own life. But even this listing of the specious regulations that had governed his behaviour still left him safe from having to confront the final truth.

Fear dominated him. It left him useless. Any action he chose could be the source of rejection. So he chose by not choosing, by letting time pass, by believing that conflicts, difficulties and turmoil would sort themselves out on their own in the long run. And indeed they had done so. Loss was the result.

Too late he saw what he should have seen all along: that his life with Deborah had been a long-forming tapestry in which she had held the thread, had created the design, and had ultimately become the fabric itself. That she should leave him now was a form of dying, leaving him not death's peace of the void but an infinite hellfire of recrimination, all of it the product of his contemptible fear. That the years had passed and he had not told her how he loved her. His heart soared in her presence, but he would not say the words. Now he could only thank God that she and Lynley planned to take up a new life in Cornwall after their marriage. If she was gone from his presence, what remained of life here would at least be bearable.

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at the glowing red numbers of the digital clock. It was ten past three. The effort to sleep was useless. He could at least admit that. He switched on the light.

The stack of photographs still lay on the table next to the bed where he had placed them over two hours ago. In what he knew quite well was an act of deliberate avoidance – more cowardice for which he would despise himself with the dawn – he picked them up. As if this action could eradicate Deborah's words, as if the knowledge of how she had once wanted him were not tearing at his soul, he began to examine them, a study in detachment with his world in ruins.

Without emotion, he looked at the corpse, its mutilation, its position near the sofa. He observed the debris that lay in the room: the letters and envelopes; the pens and pencils; the notebooks and folders; the scraps of paper covered with writing; the poker and fire irons tumbled to the floor; the computer – switched on – with black floppy disks spread out on the desk. And then closer to the corpse, the glint of silver – perhaps a coin – half-hidden under his thigh; the five-pound note, a small wedge torn from it, lying disregarded near his hand on the floor; above him the mantel on which he had struck his head; to the right the hearth to which he had fallen. St James flipped through the photographs again and again, looking for something he could not have identified even if he saw it. The computer, the disks, the folders, the notebooks, the money, the mantel. He thought only of Deborah.

Giving up the game, he admitted that there would be neither sleep, nor peace, nor even the possibility of a moment's distraction. He could only make the hours till dawn slightly more livable. He reached for his crutches and swung out of bed. Throwing on his dressing gown, belting it clumsily, he headed for the door. There was brandy in the study. It would not be the first time he had sought its oblivion. He made his way down the stairs.

The study door was partially closed, and it swung inwards noiselessly upon his touch. A soft glow – dancing between gold and dusky rose – came from two candles that should have stood on the overmantel but had been placed side by side and lit upon the hearth. Hands clasped round her knees, Deborah sat on the ottoman and watched the candles' flames. Seeing her, St James wanted to retreat. He thought about doing so. He didn't move.

She looked towards the door, looked away again quickly when she saw it was he. 'Couldn't sleep,' she said