time, and he knew that if he didn’t do something to stop it, he would toss, turn, and fight with the pillow once he put out the light and attempted to sleep. He decided it probably wanted a washer, if bath taps had washers the way basin taps did. Ben Wragg could no doubt provide him with one. All he needed to do was pick up the phone and ask. What would it take to repair the thing, anyway? Five minutes? Four? And he could think while he did it, taking the time to engage his hands with an odd job so that his mind was free to make a decision regarding Helen. He couldn’t, after all, telephone her without knowing what his objective was in doing so. Five minutes would prevent him from rushing in thoughtlessly and just as thoughtlessly taking the risk of exposing him-self — not to mention Helen who was far more sensitive than he — to…He paused in the mental colloquy with himself. To what?
He laughed sourly at his own capacity for self-deception and reached for the telephone just as it rang.
“Denton told me where to find you,” was the first thing she said.
The first thing he said was, “Helen. Hullo, darling. I was just about to phone you,” realising that she probably wouldn’t believe him and that he couldn’t blame her if that was the case.
But she said, “I’m glad of it.”
And then they grappled with the silence. In it, he could imagine where she was — in her bedroom in the Onslow Square flat, on the bed, with her legs curled beneath her and the ivory-and-yellow counterpane acting as contrast to her hair and her eyes. He could see how she was holding the phone — two-handed and cradled as if she would protect it, herself, or the conversation she was having. He could guess at her jewellery — earrings that she’d already removed and placed on the walnut table by the bed, a thin gold bracelet still encircling her wrist, a matching chain round her neck that her fingers touched talisman-like when they moved the scant inches from the phone to her throat. And there at the hollow of her throat was the scent she wore, something between flowers and citrus.
They both spoke at once, saying,
“I shouldn’t have—”
“I’ve been feeling—”
— and then breaking off with the quick laughter of nerves that serves as the underpinning of a conversation between lovers who are both afraid of losing what they’ve so recently found. Which is why in an instant Lynley mentally abjured every plan he’d just been pondering before she had phoned.
He said, “I love you, darling. I’m sorry about all this.”
“Were you running away?”
“This time, I was. Yes. After a fashion.”
“I can’t be angry over that, can I? I’ve done it often enough myself.”
Another silence. She would be wearing a silk blouse, wool trousers, or a skirt. Her jacket would be lying where she’d laid it, at the foot of the bed. Her shoes would be sitting nearby on the floor. The light would be on, casting its inverted triangular glow against the blossoms and stripes of the wallpaper at the same time as it diffused through the lampshade to touch her skin.
“But you’ve never run away to hurt me,” he said.
“Is that why you’ve gone off? To hurt me?”
“Again, after a fashion. It’s nothing I’m proud of.” He reached for the cord of the telephone and twined it between his fingers, restless for something of substance to touch since he’d placed himself more than two hundred and fifty miles to the north, and he couldn’t touch her. He said, “Helen, about that blasted tie this morning…”
“That wasn’t the issue. You knew it at the time. I didn’t want to admit it. It was just an excuse.”
“For?”
“Fear.”
“Of what?”
“Moving forward, I suppose. Loving you more than I do at the moment. Making you too much of my life.”
“Helen—”
“I could easily lose myself in the love of you. The problem is I don’t know if I want to.”
“How can something like that be bad? How can it be wrong?”
“It’s neither. But grief comes with love, eventually. It has to. It’s only the timing that no one can be sure of. And that’s what I’ve been trying to come to terms with: whether I want the grief and in what proportion. Sometimes…” She hesitated. He could see her fingers move to rest on her collar bone — her gesture of protection — before she went on. “It’s closer to pain than anything I’ve ever experienced. Isn’t that mad? I’m afraid of that. I suppose I’m actually afraid of you.”
“You have to trust me, Helen, at some point in all this, if we’re ever to go on.”
“I know that.”
“I won’t cause you grief.”
“Not deliberately. You won’t. I know that as well.”
“Then?”
“If I lose you, Tommy.”
“You won’t. How could you? Why?”
“In a thousand different ways.”
“Because of my job.”
“Because of who you are.”
He felt the sensation of being swept away from everything, but most of all from her. “So it is the tie after all,” he said.
“Other women?” she said. “Yes. Marginally. But it’s more a worry over the day-to-day, the business of living, the way people grind at each other and wear the best parts down over time. I don’t want that. I don’t want to wake up some morning and discover I stopped loving you five years in the past. I don’t want to look up from dinner one night and fi nd you watching me and read on your face the very same thing.”
“That’s the risk, Helen. It all comes down to a leap of faith. Although God knows what’s in store for us if we can’t even manage to get to Corfu together for a week’s holiday.”
“I’m sorry about that. About me as well. I was feeling boxed in this morning.”
“Well, you’re free of that now.”
“And I don’t want to be. Free of that. Free of you. I don’t want that, Tommy.” She sighed. It caught on the edge of what he wanted to believe was a stifled sob. Except that Helen had only sobbed once in her life that he knew of — as a girl of twenty-one with her world smashed to bits by a car which he himself had driven — and he seriously doubted that she would begin sobbing again for his benefi t now. “I wish you were here.”
“My wish as well.”
“Will you come back? Tomorrow?”
“I can’t. Denton didn’t tell you? There’s a case, of sorts.”
“Then you won’t want me there to bother with, either.”
“You wouldn’t be a bother. But it wouldn’t work.”
“Will anything ever? Work, that is.”
That was the question. Indeed it was. He looked down at the floor, at the mud on his shoes, at the floral carpet, at the patterns it made. “I don’t know,” he said. “And that’s the full hell of it. I can ask you to risk it all with a jump into the void. I simply can’t guarantee
what you’ll fi nd there.”
“But then no one can.”
“No one who’s truthful. That’s the bottom line. We can’t predict the future. We can only use the present to guide us hopefully in its direction.”
“Do you believe that, Tommy?”
“With all my heart.”
“I love you.”
“I know. That’s why I believe.”
