Believing the Lie il-17

by Elizabeth George

  “Well, it doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? Besides, I like to think I’m not that sort of woman. I don’t scheme. Well, not much at least.”

  “Are you scheming now?”

  “Only to have you and it can’t be a scheme if I’m admitting to it, can it?”

  He smiled at that. He felt a softening towards her and he recognised this as the desire he continued to feel for her, despite the fact that the timing of their relationship was wretched and they were ill matched anyway and always would be. He wanted her. Still.

  “It might be late when I arrive,” he said.

  “That hardly matters. Will you come to me, Tommy?”

  “I will,” he told her.

  CHELSEA

  LONDON

  He had arrangements to make first, however. While he could have made them over the phone, he decided that making them in person would allow him to gauge whether what he was asking was an inconvenience to the people he needed. For they would never tell him so.

  The fact that this was not to be a formal police investigation hobbled him considerably. It also called for a creative approach to appease the demands for secrecy. He could have insisted that Hillier allow him the services of another officer, but the only officers he cared to work with were unlikely candidates for a surreptitious crawl round Cumbria. At six feet four inches tall and with skin the colour of very strong tea, DS Winston Nkata would hardly fade into the autumn scenery of the Lake District. And as for DS Barbara Havers — who under other circumstances would have been Lynley’s first choice, despite her score of maddening personal habits — the idea of Barbara chain-smoking her belligerent way round Cumbria under the pretext that she was, perhaps, a walker out for a bracing week on the fells… It was too ludicrous to contemplate. She was a brilliant cop, but discretion was not her strong suit. Had Helen been alive, she would have been perfect for the job. She would have loved it, as well. Tommy darling, we’ll be incognito! Lord, how delicious. I’ve spent my life absolutely longing to do a Tuppence. But Helen was not alive, was not alive. The very thought of her sent him on his way as rapidly as he could manage.

  He drove to Chelsea, choosing the route that took him down the King’s Road. It was the most direct way to get to Cheyne Row but not the quickest as the narrow road led him through the area’s trendy shopping district with its fashion boutiques, shoe shops, antiques markets, pubs, and restaurants. There were crowds on the pavements as always, and seeing them — especially seeing their youth — made him melancholy and filled him with what felt like regret. He couldn’t have said what he regretted, though. He didn’t much want to try to find out.

  He parked in Lawrence Street, near Lordship Place. He walked back the way he’d come but rather than going on to Cheyne Row, he went in through the garden gate of the tall brick house that stood on the corner.

  The garden was showing its autumn colours and readying itself for the winter. The lawn was strewn with leaves needing gathering while the herbaceous borders offered plants whose flowers were long gone now and whose stalks leaned perilously, as if weighted towards the ground by an unseen hand. The wicker furniture wore canvas shrouds. Moss grew between the bricks. Lynley followed a path of these, which led to the house. There, steps descended to the basement kitchen. A light was on there against the coming evening. He could see a shape moving behind the window, itself steamed from the heat inside.

  He knocked sharply twice and when the usual barking of the dog commenced, he opened the door and said, “It’s me, Joseph. I’ve come in the back way.”

  “Tommy?” It was a woman’s voice, however, not the voice Lynley had been expecting but rather the man’s daughter. “Are you playing at Victorian tradesman?”

  She came round the corner from the kitchen in the wake of the dog, a long-haired dachshund with the unlikely name of Peach. Peach barked, jumped, and did her usual by way of greeting him. She was as undisciplined as always, living proof of what Deborah St. James often declared: that she required a dog she could pick up as she was utterly hopeless at training anything.

  “Hullo, you,” Deborah said to Lynley. “What a very nice surprise.” She scooted the dog to one side and hugged him. She brushed a kiss against his cheek. “You’re staying for dinner,” she announced. “For many reasons but most of all because I’m cooking it.”

  “Good Lord. Where’s your father?”

  “Southampton. Anniversary. He didn’t want me to go this year. I expect it’s because it’s the twentieth.”

  “Ah.” He knew Deborah wouldn’t say more, not because it pained her to speak of her mother’s death, which, after all, had occurred when Deborah was seven years old, but because of him and the fact of what death might remind him of.

  “Anyway,” she said, “he’ll be back tomorrow. But meanwhile that leaves poor Simon in my culinary clutches. Are you wanting him, by the way? He’s only upstairs.”

  “I’m wanting you both. What’re you cooking, then?”

  “Shepherd’s pie. The mash is instant. More than that I wasn’t willing to attempt and besides, potatoes are potatoes, aren’t they? I’m doing broccoli for the veg, Mediterranean style. Swimming in olive oil and garlic. And a side salad as well, also swimming in olive oil and garlic. You’ll stay? You must. If it’s terrible, you can lie and tell me everything tastes like ambrosia. I’ll know you’re lying, of course. I always know when you lie, by the way. But it won’t matter because if you say everything’s wonderful, Simon’ll be forced to do likewise. Oh yes, and there’s pudding as well.”

  “That’ll be the deciding factor.”

  “Ah. You see? I know you’re lying, but I’ll play along. It’s actually a French tart.”

  “Leaping out of a cake or something?”

  She laughed. “Very amusing, Lord Asherton. Are you staying or not? It’s apple and pear, by the way.”

  “How can I refuse?” Lynley glanced towards the stairs that led up to the rest of the house. “Is he…?”

  “In the study. Go up. I’ll join you once I check to see how things look in the oven.”

  He left her. Upstairs, he walked down the corridor. He heard the sound of Simon St. James’s voice coming from his study at the front of the house. This took the place of a normal sitting room, and it was crammed floor to ceiling with books on three walls with a fourth dedicated to Deborah’s photographs. When Lynley entered the room, his friend was seated at his desk, and the fact that he was driving his hand into his hair with his head bent to the task as he spoke on the phone told Lynley that difficulty was afoot in the other man’s life.

  St. James was saying, “I thought so as well, David. I still think so. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the answer we’re looking for… Yes, yes. I completely understand… I’ll speak to her again… How much time exactly?… When would she want to see us?… Yes, I see.” He glanced up then, saw Lynley, and nodded a hello. He said, “All right, then. Best to Mother and your family,” before ringing off. His final remark told Lynley that he’d been speaking to his eldest brother, David.

  St. James rose awkwardly, shoving away from his desk to get purchase on its edge so that he could rise more easily, despite the disability of a leg that hadn’t functioned without a brace for years. He greeted Lynley and moved to the drinks trolley beneath the window. “Whisky’s the answer,” he said to Lynley. “Taller than usual and straight. What about you?”

  “Pour away,” Lynley said to him. “Trouble?”

  “My brother David’s come across a girl in Southampton who wants to put up her baby for adoption, a private arrangement made through a solicitor.”

  “That’s excellent news, Simon,” Lynley said. “You must be delighted after all this time.”

  “Under normal circumstances. It’s like a gift we weren’t expecting.” He uncapped a bottle of Lagavulin and poured a good three fingers for each of them. Lynley raised an eyebrow as St. James handed one over to him. “We deserve it,” St. James said. “At least I do, and I expect you do as well.” He
gestured towards the leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. They were worn and cracked, suitable for sinking into and getting properly sloshed.

  “What are the circumstances then?” Lynley asked.

  St. James glanced at the doorway, suggesting the conversation was meant to take place without Deborah’s knowledge. “The mother wants an open adoption. Not only herself involved in the baby’s life but the father as well. She’s sixteen. He’s fifteen.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “Deborah’s reaction was that she doesn’t want to share her child.”

  “Not entirely unreasonable, is it?”

  St. James continued. “And decidedly, she doesn’t want to share her child with two teenagers. She says it would be like adopting three children instead of one and besides that, there are both extended families to consider and how they’d fit in as well.” He took a gulp of the whiskey.

  “Actually,” Lynley said, “I rather see her point.”

  “As do I. The situation’s far from ideal. On the other hand, it seems… Well, she’s had the rest of the tests, Tommy. It’s definite. It’s highly unlikely she’d ever be able to carry a child to term.”

  Lynley knew this. He’d known for over a year, and it seemed that Deborah had finally told her husband the truth she’d carried alone — aside from his own knowledge of it — for the past twelve months.

  Lynley said nothing. Both of them meditated on their glasses of Lagavulin. From the corridor, the clicking of dog nails against wood indicated that Peach was coming to them and if Peach was coming, she was no doubt accompanied by her mistress. Lynley said quietly, “Deborah’s asked me to stay to dinner, but I can make an excuse if it’s awkward for you tonight.”

  St. James replied with, “God no. I’d prefer it. You know me. Anything to avoid a difficult conversation with the woman I love.”

  “I’ve brought us some pre-dinner goodies,” Deborah said as she entered the room. “Cheese straws. Peach has already had one, so I can tell you they’re delicious, at least to a dog. Don’t get up, Simon. I’ll fetch my own sherry.” She put a plate of the cheese straws on an ottoman between the two chairs, shooed the dachshund away from them, and went to the drinks trolley. She said to her husband, “Tommy’s told me he wants to see both of us. I reckon it’s either business or an announcement or both and if it has to do with the Healey Elliott, I vote that we buy it off him straightaway, Simon.”

  “Clear your mind of that proposition,” Lynley said. “I’ll be buried in that car.”

  “Damn.” St. James smiled.

  “I did try,” his wife told him. She came to perch on the arm of his chair and said to Lynley, “What, then, Tommy?”

  He thought about how to approach the matter. He settled on saying, “I’m wondering how you two might feel about an autumn’s jaunt up to the Lakes.”

  CHELSEA

  LONDON

  She always brushed the day’s tangles out of her hair before she came to bed. Sometimes he did it for her, and sometimes he watched. Her hair was long and thick and curly and red, ungovernable at most times, which was why he loved it. Tonight he watched from the bed, where he rested against the pillows. She stood across from him at the chest of drawers. There was a mirror above this and she could see him watching her in its reflection.

  “Are you sure you can take the time away from work, Simon?”

  “It’s only a few days. Question is, can you and how do you feel about doing it?”

  “Dissembling not being my stock in trade, you mean?” She put down her brush and crossed to the bed. She wore a thin cotton nightgown, but she shed this, as usual, before joining him. He liked that she preferred to sleep naked. He liked turning to find her, warm and soft, while he was dreaming. “It’s the sort of thing Helen would have loved,” she noted. “I wonder Tommy’s not thought of that.”

  “Perhaps he has.”

  “Hmm. Yes. Well, I’m ready to help him, for whatever good I can do. I’ll want to track down that sidebar about Nicholas Fairclough that Tommy mentioned. I c’n use that as my jumping-off point, I daresay. ‘Having read about you and your project in that magazine article on your parents’ topiary garden…’ Et cetera, et cetera. And at least there’s a reason that already exists for someone to want a documentary film made. If there weren’t, I’d be completely out of my depth. What about you?”

  “The inquest material won’t present a problem. Nor will the forensic data. As to the rest, I’m not sure. It’s an odd situation any way you look at it.” And speaking of odd situations, he thought, there was another that remained to be dealt with. He said, “David phoned. I was talking to him when Tommy arrived.”

  He could actually feel the change in her. Her breathing altered, one slow intake followed by one very long pause. He said, “The girl would like to meet us, Deborah. Her parents and the boy would be there as well. She prefers it that way, and the solicitor indicated — ”

  “I can’t,” Deborah said. “I’ve thought about it, Simon. I’ve looked at it every possible way. Truly, I have. You must believe me. But no matter how I try to twist it, I do think that the bad outweighs the good.”

  “It’s irregular, but other people manage it.”

  “They may do, but I’m not other people. We’d be asked to share a baby with its birth mother, its birth father, its natural grandparents, and God knows who else, and I know this is trendy and modern, but I don’t want it. I can’t make myself want it.”

  “They might well lose interest in the child,” St. James pointed out. “They’re very young.”

  Deborah looked at him. She’d been sitting up in bed — not at rest against the pillow — and she swung round and said incredulously, “Lose interest? This is a child, not a puppy. They’re not going to lose interest. Would you?”

  “No, but I’m not a fifteen-year-old boy. And anyway, there would be arrangements. They’d be drawn up by the solicitor.”

  “No,” she said. “Please don’t ask me again. I just can’t.”

  He let a moment pass. She’d turned away. Her hair tumbled down her back nearly to her waist, and he touched a lock of it, saw how it curled naturally round his fingers. He said, “Will you just think about it a bit longer before you decide? As I said, she’d like to meet us. We could do that much if nothing else. You might well like her, her family, the boy. You know, the fact that she wants to keep contact with the child… That’s not a bad thing, Deborah.”

  “How is it good?” she asked, still turned from him.

  “It indicates a sense of responsibility. She doesn’t just want to walk away and get on with her life as if nothing ever happened to change it. In a way she wants to provide for the child, be there to answer questions should questions come up.”

  “We could answer questions. You know that very well. And why on earth — if she wants to be involved in the child’s life — would she choose a couple from London to be the parents anyway, instead of a couple from Southampton? That doesn’t make sense. She’s from Southampton, isn’t she?”

  “She is.”

  “So you see…”

  He reckoned she couldn’t bear another disappointment and he didn’t blame her. But if they didn’t continue to push forward, if they didn’t follow whatever avenue opened up before them, an opportunity could easily be missed and if they wanted a child, if they truly wanted a child …

  That was, of course, the real question. Asking it, however, constituted a mine field, and he’d been married to Deborah long enough to know that some fields were too dangerous to venture into. Still, he said, “Have you another solution, then? Another possibility?”

  She didn’t reply at once. He had the sense, though, that she did have something else in mind, something she was reluctant to mention. He repeated the question. She quickly responded with, “Surrogacy.”

  He said, “Good God, Deborah, that route’s fraught with — ”

  “Not a donor mother, Simon, but a host mother. Our embryo, our baby, and someone willin
g to carry it. It wouldn’t be hers. She’d have no attachment. Or at least she’d have no right to an attachment.”

  His spirits plummeted. He wondered how something that for other people was so damnably natural could have, for them, turned into such a mire of appointments, doctors, specialists, procedures, solicitors, questions, answers, and more questions. And this, now? Months and months would pass while a surrogate was sought and interviewed and checked out in every possible way while Deborah took drugs that would do God only knew what to her system in order to harvest (God, what a word) eggs while he disappeared into a lavatory stall with container in hand to make the required, passionless, and loveless deposit and all of this to result — perhaps, if they were lucky, if nothing went wrong — in a child that was biologically their own. It seemed wildly complicated, inhumanly mechanised, and only partially guaranteed of success.

  He blew out a breath. He said, “Deborah,” and he knew that she recognised in his tone a form of hesitation that she would not want to hear. That it had to do with his desire to protect her would not occur to Deborah. And that was just as well, he thought. For she hated him to protect her from life, even as she felt life’s blows more than he thought either necessary or good.

  She said in a low voice, “I know what you’re thinking. And this puts us at an impasse, doesn’t it?”

  “We just see things differently. We’re coming at it from different directions. One of us sees an opportunity where the other sees an insurmountable difficulty.”

  She thought about this. She said slowly, “How odd. It seems there’s nothing to be done, then.”

  She lay next to him, then, but her back was to him. He switched out the light and put his hand on her hip. She didn’t respond.

  WANDSWORTH

  LONDON

  It was nearly midnight when Lynley arrived. Regardless of his promise to her, he knew he should have gone home instead and slept however he was meant to sleep on this particular night, which would be fitfully, no doubt. But instead he made his way to Isabelle’s, and he let himself in with his key.