A Suitable Vengeance

or four digestive biscuits while Deborah and Lynley made polite conversation with him, all the time wishing he would be on his way. 'It's really not right.'

Deborah paused at the kitchen cupboard, a cup and saucer in her hand. 'Not right? What d'you mean? It'll just be-'

'Listen, little bird.' He wanted only to get everything said, do his miserable duty, keep his promise to her father, and be gone. 'Your father's worried about you.'

With studied precision, Deborah put down the saucer, and then, even more carefully, the cup on top of it. She lined them up with the edge of the worktop. 'I see. You're here as his emissary, aren't you? It's hardly the role I'd expect you to play.'

'I told him I'd speak to you, Deborah.'

At that – perhaps it was the change in his tone – he saw the spots of colour deepen on her cheeks. Her lips pressed together. She walked to the daybed, sat down, and folded her hands.

'All right. Go ahead.'

St James saw the unmistakable flicker of passion cross her face. He heard the first stirring of temper in her voice. But he chose to ignore both, deciding to go on with what he had come to say. He assured himself that his motivation was his promise to Cotter. His given word meant commitment, and he could not leave without making certain Cotter's concerns were explained to his daughter in the most explicit terms.

'Your father's worried about you and Tommy,' he began, in what he deemed a reasonable manner.

'And what about you? Are you worried as well?'

'It has nothing to do with me.'

'Ah. I should have known. Well, now that you've seen me – and the flat as well – are you going to report back and justify Dad's worries? Or do I need to do something to pass your inspection?'

'You've misunderstood.'

'You've come snooping around to check up on my behaviour. What is it exactly I've misunderstood?'

'It isn't a question of your behaviour, Deborah.' He was feeling defensive, decidedly uncomfortable. Their interview wasn't supposed to take this course. 'It's only that your relationship with Tommy-'

She pushed herself to her feet. 'I'm afraid that's none of your business, Simon. My father may be little more than a servant in your life, but I'm not. I never was. Where did you get the idea you could come round here and pry into my life? Who do you think you are?'

'Someone who cares about you. You know that very well.'

'Someone who…' Deborah faltered. Her hands clenched in front of her as if she wished to stop herself from saying more. The effort failed. 'Someone who cares? You call yourself someone who cares about me? You, who never bothered to write so much as a single letter all the years I was gone. I was seventeen years old. Do you know what that was like? Have you any idea since you care so much?' She walked unevenly to the other side of the room and swung to face him again. 'Every day for months on end, there I was, waiting like an idiot – a stupid little fool – hoping for word from you. An answer to my letters. Anything! A note. A card. A message sent through my father. It didn't matter what as long as it was from you. But nothing came. I didn't know why. I couldn't understand. And in the end, when I could face it, I just waited for the news that you'd finally married Helen.'

'Married Helen?' St James demanded incredulously. He didn't stop to consider how or why their conversation was escalating so rapidly into an argument. 'How in God's name could you even think that?'

'What else was I to think?'

'You might have had the sense to start out with what existed between the two of us before you left England.'

Tears sprang into her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously. 'Oh, I thought of that all right. Every night, every morning, I thought of that, Simon. Lying in my bed, trying to come up with a single good reason to get on in my life. Living in a void. Living in hell. Are you pleased to know it? Are you satisfied now? Missing you. Wanting you. It was torture. A disease.'

'With Tommy the cure.'

'Absolutely. Thank God. With Tommy the cure. So get out of here. Now. Leave me alone.'

'I'll leave all right. It would hardly do to have me here in the love-nest when Tommy arrives to claim what he's paid for.' He pointed crudely at each object as he spoke. 'Tea laid out nicely. Soft music playing. And the lady herself, ready and waiting. I can see I'd get just a bit in the way. Especially if he's in a rush.'

Deborah backed away from him. 'What he's paid for? Is that why you're here? Is that what you think? That I'm too worthless and stupid to support myself? That this is Tommy's flat? Who am I, then, Simon? Who bloody well am I? His bauble? Some scrubber? His tart?' She didn't wait for the answer. 'Get out of my flat.'

Not yet, he decided. By God, not yet. 'You talk a pretty piece about torture, don't you? So what the hell do you think these three years have been like for me? And how do you imagine I felt waiting to see you last night, hour after hour – after three goddamn years – and knowing now you were here all that time with him?'

'I don't care how you felt! Whatever it was, it couldn't come close to the misery you foisted on me.'

'What a compliment to your lover! Are you sure misery is the word you want to use?'

'It comes back to that, doesn't it? Sex is the issue. Who's screwing Deb. Well, here's your chance, Simon. Go ahead. Have me. Make up for lost time. There's the bed. Go on.' He didn't reply. 'Come on. Screw me. Have me for a quickie. That's what you want, isn't it? Damn you, isn't it?'

When still he was silent, she reached in a fury for the first available object that came into her hand. She threw it at him with all her strength, and it crashed and splintered against the wall near his head. They both saw too late that in her rage she had destroyed his gift to a long-ago childhood birthday, a porcelain swan.

The act ended anger.

Deborah started to speak, a fist at her lips, as if she were seeking the first horrified words of apology. But St James felt beyond hearing another word. He looked down at the broken fragments on the floor and crushed them into powder beneath his foot, a single sharp movement with which he demonstrated that love, like clay, can be pitiably friable.

With a cry, Deborah rushed across the room to where a few pieces lay beyond his reach. She picked them up.

'I hate you!' Tears finally coursed down her cheeks. 'I hate you! This is just the sort of thing I'd expect you to do. And why not when everything about you is crippled? You think it's just your stupid leg, don't you, but you're crippled inside, and by God, that's worse.'

Her words knifed the air, every nightmare come to life. St James flinched from their strength and moved towards the door. He felt numb, weak, and primarily conscious of the terrible awkwardness of his gait, as if it were magnified a thousand times for her to see.

'Simon! No! I'm sorry!'

She was reaching towards him, and he noted with interest that she'd cut herself on the edge of one of the pieces of porcelain. A hairline of blood ran from palm to wrist.

'I didn't mean it. Simon, you know I didn't mean it.' He marvelled at the fact that all previous passion was quite dead in him. Nothing mattered at all, save the need to escape.

'I know that, Deborah.'

He opened the door. It was a mercy to be gone.

The blood felt like rising floodwaters within his skull, the usual precursor of intolerable pain. Sitting in his old MG outside the Shrewsbury Court Apartments, St James fought it, knowing that if he gave it even a moment's sway the agony would be so excruciating that finding his way back to Chelsea without assistance would be impossible.

The situation was ludicrous. Would he actually have to telephone Cotter for assistance? And from what? From a fifteen-minute conversation with a girl just twenty-one years old? Surely he, eleven years her senior with a world of experience behind him, ought to have emerged the victor from their encounter rather than what he was at the moment – shattered, weak-kneed and ill. How rich.

He closed his eyes against the sunlight, an incandescence that seared his nerves, one that he knew did not