head slowly towards him and kissing her eyelids, first one, then the other. In the harsh light reflected from the gleaming walls he could see the countless tiny grains of her skin and the faint down on her upper lip.
She turned off the gas and fetched two cups from a cupboard above the stove and set them on the countertop and poured the coffee. 'I shouldn't have telephoned her, I suppose,' she said. 'She was nothing, just another poor bitch on the make, absolutely common, dragged up from the slums.' She lifted the cup to her lips and narrowed her eyes against the coffee's heat. 'That's another thing they don't tell you, how the other woman-the other woman!-even when you know her, becomes a sort of evil, scheming, irresistible serpent coiled around your life, putting its slime on everything, squeezing the goodness out of everything. In your heart you know she's just a person like any other-like yourself, even-maybe a bit more selfish than most, a bit more ruthless, wanting to have her way, wanting the man she's put her eye on even though he's someone else's husband, but still, just a human being. But you can't allow yourself to admit that. Not if you're to preserve any shred of self-respect.' She drank the coffee, sip by sip, grimacing at the scalding heat of it, punishing herself. Quirke watched her. 'No,' she said, 'she has to be a-what do you call it?-a gorgon, something not human, more than human. A devil.'
She carried her cup to the plastic-topped table in the middle of the floor and sat down. Quirke looked about. Everything was too clean; the shining cleanliness of these surfaces made something in him cringe. Even the air, the very light in the room, seemed drained of all impurities. Kate saw him looking and read his mind. 'Yes, I do a lot of cleaning,' she said. 'It seems to help.'
He went and sat opposite her at the table.
'I'm sorry,' he said, not knowing what exactly he was apologizing for.
'I'm too old for this kind of thing, really, I am,' she said. She leaned forward, hunching over the coffee cup as if she were suddenly cold. 'In two years' time I'll be forty. What man will look at me after that?' She gave a low, mock-mournful laugh, and then, surfacing to another level of sobriety, focused on him suddenly. 'Why are you involved in this,' she asked, 'this grimy little suburban melodrama?'
He lifted one shoulder. 'I suffer from an incurable curiosity.'
She nodded, as if she considered this a sufficient answer. Another thought struck her. 'Are you married?'
'I was. A long time ago. She died.'
'Sorry.' She did not look it; she looked, with that tightened mouth and narrowed eyes, as if she envied him, having a spouse who was dead. 'What happened to her?'
'Childbirth. A fluke, one in ten thousand.'
'And the child?'
'She survived.'
'A daughter.'
'She's twenty-two now. Twenty-three.'
'Does she live with you?'
'No.'
'Well, at least she doesn't remember. Losing her mother, I mean.' Idly she dabbled a fingertip in the ash from his cigarette in the ashtray between them on the table. 'I have no child,' she said. 'Leslie couldn't have any. That was fine by him. He was pleased as Punch when he found out. Handy, I suppose, for'-she made a crooked mouth-' 'getting round the girls,' as he would put it, I've no doubt.' She was silent again, but after a moment stirred herself. 'What can I tell you, Mr. Quirke? I've no idea what you want to know. And nor have you, so you say. Is there something suspicious about Deirdre Hunt's death? Do you think she was pushed? I'd have done it myself, if…' She stopped, and sat back hard on her chair, making the legs squeal on the tiles. 'You don't think Leslie-you don't think Leslie was somehow involved, do you? I mean, you don't think he-?' She laughed. 'Believe me, Leslie wouldn't hurt a fly-he'd be afraid it would bite him. Oh, he could be dangerous, if cornered, I know that. But I can't see him pushing a woman into the sea. Leslie, Mr. Quirke'-she reached out and seemed about to touch his hand but then withdrew her fingers-'my poor Leslie has about as much backbone as a sea slug. Sorry-I love him dearly, or used to, God help us, but it's the truth.'
HE STAYED ANOTHER HOUR. SHE PREPARED PLATES OF SMOKED SALMON and salad and they ate without speaking, facing each other across the table in the gleaming light and silence of the unreal room. The refrigerator jolted into life and hummed away grumpily under its breath for a while, then abruptly switched itself off again with another, seemingly rancorous, jolt. A bubble of trapped air in a water pipe somewhere made a pinging sound. Their knives and forks rang sharply against their plates, their water glasses made joggling noises when they set them down on the Formica tabletop.
'I'm sorry,' Kate White said, 'about earlier.'
'Earlier?'
'You know what I mean. Guzzling wine and throwing myself about. That's not me, really, or at least I hope it's not. I've been struck a blow and I don't know how to deal with it. I keep trying out other personalities, to see if I can find one that will work better, be more plausible, more persuasive than the one I'm stuck with.' She smiled, her somehow bruised-looking, beautiful black eyes glistening in that teary way they did. 'No luck, so far.'
She rose and collected their plates and cutlery and carried them to the sink.
'Don't imagine,' she said, 'that I've forgotten the fact that I have no idea who you are or why you're here. I'm not in the habit of letting strange men into the house and treating them to smoked salmon and intimate revelations.'
He put down his napkin. 'I should be on my way.'
'Oh, I didn't mean that, necessarily. I've quite enjoyed having you here. Not much company about, these days. Leslie and I never went in for friends and all that.' She smiled again. 'He's English. So am I. Did you know?'
'Yes. Your accent…'
'I thought I'd lost it. It's reassuring that I haven't. I wonder why? I mean, why reassuring.' She ran the tap and stood pensive, waiting for the water to turn hot. Above the sink a square window gave onto a side garden with stands of African grass. The day was failing, growing shadowed. 'Maybe I should go back,' Kate said. 'My mother had Irish blood, but I think I'm a London girl at heart. Bow Bells and all that. Winkles, skittles, the Pearly King and Queen.' She gave a brittle little laugh. She began to wash the dishes, rinsing and stacking them on a plastic rack. He stood up and went to her side. 'Is there a tea towel?'
'Oh, let them drain,' she said. A pale, greenish radiance from the window touched her face. 'Just stand about and look handsome, that will do.'
He lit a cigarette. 'You have a workshop, have you?' he said. 'A design workshop?'
'Yes. I call it a factory-may as well be honest. We cut for the top designers. Irish girls make wonderful seamstresses. It's the training they get from the nuns.' She smiled, not looking at him. 'And yes, if you're wondering: I'm the breadwinner in the family, or was, when there was still a family. Leslie used to run a hairdressing business, until he ran it into the ground. That's why he went in with little Miss Swansdown. He thought he was her Svengali, but I bet she was the one doing the hypnotizing.' She stopped and raised her face to the window again. 'I wonder what he'll do now, old Leslie. Too late for him to become a gigolo. He used to be quite decorative, too-different type from you, of course, but dishy all the same, in his languid way. Lately the rot has set in. I suppose that's the main reason he took up with that poor little tart: she was young enough for him to feel flattered.'
She went off to the den and came back after a moment with her wine glass and the remains of the wine from earlier. She put the almost empty bottle into the fridge and plunged the glass into the dishwater in the sink and shook it vigorously in the suds.
'We were quite well off, in London,' she said. 'My father made a lot of money out of the war-' She glanced at him sidelong. 'Are you shocked? I think you should be. He was a bit of a crook, more than a bit, in fact-the black market, you know. So naturally he got on with Leslie. Then Leslie and I decided to come over here, much against Father's wishes-he wasn't very hot on the Irish, I'm afraid, despite Mother's Tipperary roots-and after that the Daddy Warbucks fund dried up. Leslie was terribly disappointed and
