Elizabeth George: A Suitable Vengeance

She stepped on to the final landing and started when she saw him. 'Simon!'

Acceptance be damned. He held out a hand and she came into his arms. It was natural. She belonged there. Both of them knew it. Without another thought, St James bent his head, seeking her mouth but finding instead her mane of hair. The unmistakable smell of Lynley's cigarettes clung to it, a bitter reminder of who she had been and who she had become.

The odour brought him to his senses, and he released her. He saw that time and distance had caused him to magnify her beauty, attributing physical qualities to her that she didn't possess. He admitted to himself what he had always known. Deborah was not beautiful in any conventional way. She didn't have Helen's sleek, aristocratic lines. Nor had she Sidney's provocative features. Instead, she was a compilation of warmth and affection, perception and wit, qualities whose definition rose from her liveliness of expression, from the chaos of her coppery hair, from the freckles that dashed across the bridge of her nose.

But there were changes in her. She was too thin, and inexplicable illusory veins of regret seemed to lie just beneath the surface of her composure. Nonetheless, she spoke to him much as she always had done.

'Have you been working late? You've not waited up for me, have you?'

'It was the only way I could get your father to go to bed. He thought Tommy might spirit you away this very night.'

Deborah laughed. 'How like Dad. Did you think that as well?'

'Tommy was a fool not to.'

St James marvelled at the rank duplicity behind their words. With one quick embrace they had neatly sidestepped Deborah's reasons for having left England in the first place, as if they had agreed to play at their old relationship, one to which they could never return. For the moment, however, even spurious friendship was better than further disjunction. 'I have something for you.'

He led her through the laboratory and opened the door of her darkroom. Her hand went out for the light, and St James heard her gasp of surprise as she saw the new colour enlarger standing in place of her old black and white one.

'Simon!' She was biting the inside of her lip. 'This is… How very kind of you. Truly… it's not as if you had to… and you've even waited up for me.' Colour smudged across her face like unattractive thumbprints, a reminder that Deborah had never possessed any skills of artifice to fall back upon when she was distressed.

In his grasp, the doorknob felt inordinately cold. In spite of the past, St James had assumed she would be pleased by the gift. She was not. Somehow, his purchase of it represented the inadvertent crossing of an unspoken boundary between them.

'I wanted to welcome you home somehow,' he said. She didn't respond. 'We've missed you.'

Deborah ran her hand over the enlarger's surface. 'I had a showing of my work in Santa Barbara before I left. Did you know that? Did Tommy tell you about it? I phoned him because… well, it's the sort of thing that one dreams of happening, isn't it? People coming, liking what they see. Even buying… I was so excited. I'd used one of the enlargers at school to do all the prints and I remember wondering how I'd ever afford the new cameras I wanted as well as… And now you've done it for me.' She inspected the darkroom, the bottles of chemicals, the boxes of supplies, the new pans for the stop bath and the fixer. She raised her fingers to her lips. 'You've stocked it as well. Oh, Simon, this is more than… Really, I didn't expect this. Everything is… it's exactly what I need. Thank you. So much. I promise I'll come back every day to use it.'

'Come back?' Abruptly, St James stopped himself, realizing that he should have had the common sense to know what was coming when he saw them in the car together.

'Don't you know?' Deborah switched off the light and returned to the lab. 'I've a flat in Paddington. Tommy found it for me in April. He didn't tell you? Dad didn't? I'm moving there tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow? You mean already? Today?'

'I suppose I do mean today, don't I? And we'll be in poor shape, the both of us, if we don't get some sleep. So I'll say good night, then. And thank you, Simon. Thank you.' She briefly pressed her cheek to his, squeezed his hand, and left.

So that's that, St James thought, staring woodenly after her.

He headed for the stairs.

In her room, she heard him go. No more than two steps from the closed door, Deborah listened to his progress. It was a sound etched into her memory, one that would follow her right to her grave. The light drop of healthy leg, the heavy thump of dead one. The movement of his hand on the handrail, clenched into a tight, white grip. The catch of his breath as precarious balance was maintained. And all of it done with a face that betrayed nothing.

She waited until hearing his door close on the floor below before she moved away from her own and went -as she could not know he had done himself only minutes before – to the window.

Three years, she thought. How could he possibly be thinner, more gaunt and ill, an utterly unhandsome face of battling lines and angles on which was engraved a history of suffering. Hair always too long. She remembered its softness between her fingers. Haunted eyes that spoke to her even when he said nothing himself. Mouth that tenderly covered her own. Sensitive hands, artist's hands, that traced the line of her jaw, that drew her into his arms. 'No. No more.'

Deborah whispered the words calmly into the coming dawn. Turning from the window, she tugged the counterpane off the bed and, fully clothed, lay down.

Don't think of it, she told herself. Don't think of anything.

Always, it was the same miserable dream, a hike from Buckbarrow to Greendale Tarn in a rain so refreshing and pure it could only be phantasmagorical. Scaling outcroppings of rock, running effortlessly across the open moor, sliding helter-skelter down the fell to arrive, breathless and laughing, at the water below. The exhilaration of it all, the pounding of activity, the rush of blood through his limbs that he felt – he would swear it – even as he slept.

And then awakening, with a sickening jolt, to the nightmare. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, willing desolation to fade into disregard. But never quite able to disregard the pain.

The bedroom door opened, and Cotter entered, carrying a tray of morning tea. He placed this on the table next to the bed, eyeing St James guardedly before he went to open the curtains.

The morning light was like an electrical current jolting directly through his eyeballs to his brain. St James felt his body jerk.

'Let me get your medicine,' Cotter said. He paused by the bed long enough to pour St James a cup of tea before he disappeared into the adjoining bathroom.

Alone, St James dragged himself into a sitting position, wincing at the degree to which sounds were magnified by the pounding in his skull. The closing of the medicine-cabinet was a rifle shot, water running into the bath a locomotive roar. Cotter returned, bottle in hand.

'Two of these'll do it.' He administered the tablets and said nothing more until St James had swallowed them. Then casually he asked, 'See Deb last night?'

As if the answer didn't really matter to him, Cotter returned to the bathroom where, St James knew, he would test the heat of the water pouring into the tub. This was a completely unnecessary civility, an act giving credence to the manner in which Cotter had asked his question in the first place. He was playing the servant-and-master game, his words and actions implying a disinterest which he didn't feel.

St James sugared his tea heavily and swallowed several mouthfuls. He leaned back against the pillows, waiting for the medicine to take effect.