Elizabeth George - Believing the Lie

After their time at the Old Bailey that day, they’d parted: Lynley heading back to the Yard and Barbara heading to the dentist. They’d not seen each other again until the end of the day when they met in the ascending lift. Barbara was taking it from the underground car park and when it stopped at the lobby, Lynley got on. She could see that he was preoccupied. He’d been preoccupied outside Courtoom Number One earlier in the day, but she’d reckoned that had to do with having to testify to his near encounter with the Grim Reaper in the back of a Ford Transit kitted out as a mobile murder scene some months earlier. This preoccupation seemed different, though, and when he vanished into Superintendent Ardery’s office after the lift doors opened, Barbara reckoned she knew the reason why.

Lynley thought she didn’t know what was going on between Ardery and him. Barbara could understand the reason for this conclusion. No one else at the Met had a clue that he and the superintendent were dancing inside each other’s knickers two or sometimes three nights a week, but no one else at the Met knew Lynley as well as Barbara did. And while she couldn’t imagine anyone actually wanting to shag the superintendent — bloody hell, it had to be like going to bed with a cobra — she’d spent the last three months of their affair telling herself that, if nothing else, Lynley deserved it. He’d lost his wife to a street murder at the hands of a twelve-year-old, he’d spent five months afterwards wandering the coast of Cornwall in a sodding daze, he’d returned to London barely functioning … If he wanted the questionable diversion of plugging Isabelle Ardery’s drainpipes for a time, so be it. They could both be in big trouble if anyone found out about it, but no one was going to find out about it because they were discreet and Barbara wasn’t going to say a word. Besides, Lynley wasn’t going to hook himself up permanently to someone like Isabelle Ardery. The man had something like three hundred years of family history to contend with, and if nothing else, he knew his duty and it had very little to do with an interlude in which he bonked a woman on whom the title Countess of Asherton would hang like a hundredweight. His type was meant to reproduce obligingly and send the family name hurtling into the future. He knew this and he’d act accordingly.

Still, it did not sit easily with Barbara that Lynley and the superintendent were lovers. That relationship comprised the malodorous elephant present in every encounter Barbara had with him. She hated this. Not him, not the affair itself, but the fact that he wouldn’t talk to her about it. Not that she expected him to. Not that she really wanted him to. Not that she would actually be able to think of something reasonable to say should he turn to her and make a comment alluding to it. But they were partners — she and Lynley — or at least they had been and partners were meant to… What ? she asked herself. But that was a question she preferred not to answer.

She shoved open her car door. The rain wasn’t bad enough to use a brollie, so she pulled up her jacket’s collar, grabbed the bag that held her new purchases, and hurried towards home.

As was her habit, she glanced at the basement flat of the Edwardian house behind which her tiny bungalow sat. The day was falling towards dusk, and lights were on. She saw her neighbour move past the French windows.

All right, she thought, she was ready to admit it. The truth was, she needed someone to notice. She’d endured hours in the dentist’s chair and her reward had been Isabelle Ardery’s nod and her words, “See to the hair next, Sergeant,” and that had been it. So instead of heading down the side of the house to the back garden where her bungalow sat beneath a towering false acacia, Barbara headed over to the flagstones that marked the outside area of the basement flat, and there she knocked on the door. The notice of a nine-year-old was better than nothing, she decided.

Hadiyyah answered, although Barbara heard the girl’s mother say, “Darling, I do wish you wouldn’t do that. It could be anyone.”

“Just me,” Barbara called out.

“Barbara, Barbara!” Hadiyyah cried. “Mummy, it’s Barbara! Shall we show her what we’ve done?”

“Of course, silly girl. Do ask her to come in.”

Barbara stepped inside to the scent of fresh paint, and it took less than a moment to see what mother and daughter had accomplished. The lounge of the flat had been repainted. Angelina Upman was putting her mark upon it. She’d arranged decorative cushions on the sofa as well, and there were fresh flowers in two different vases: one low artistic arrangement on the coffee table, another on the mantel above the electric fire.

“Isn’t it lovely?” Hadiyyah gazed up at her mother with such adoration that Barbara felt her throat close. “Mummy knows how to make things special and it’s simple, really. Isn’t it, Mummy?”

Angelina bent and kissed the top of her daughter’s head. She lifted the little girl’s chin and said to her, “You, my darling, are my biggest admirer, for which I thank you. But a more disinterested eye is required.” She shot a smile at Barbara. “What do you think, Barbara? Have Hadiyyah and I made a success of our redecorating?”

“It’s meant to be a surprise,” Hadiyyah added. “Barbara, think of it. Dad doesn’t even know .”

They’d chosen to cover the heretofore dingy cream walls with the pale green of early spring. It was a colour well suited to Angelina, and she had to have known that. Sensible decision, Barbara thought. Against it, she looked even more attractive than she already was: light haired, blue eyed, delicate, a sprite.

“I like it,” she said to Hadiyyah. “Did you help pick out the colour?”

“Well …” Hadiyyah shifted on her feet. She was standing next to her mother and she looked up at Angelina and sucked a tiny part of her upper lip.

“She did,” Angelina lied blithely. “She had the final say. Her future in interior design is laid out in front of her, I daresay, although it’s not likely her father will agree. It’ll be science for you, Hadiyyah pet.”

“Pooh,” Hadiyyah said. “ I want to be” — with a glance at her mother — “a jazz dancer, that’s what.”

This was news to Barbara, but not surprising. She’d learned that life as a professional dancer had been what Angelina had ostensibly been attempting for the fourteen months during which she’d disappeared from her daughter’s life. That she hadn’t disappeared alone was something Hadiyyah had not been told.

Angelina laughed. “A jazz dancer, is it? We’ll keep that a secret, you and I.” And to Barbara, “Will you have a cup of tea with us, Barbara? Hadiyyah, put the kettle on. We need to put our feet up after our day’s labours.”

“No, no, can’t stay,” Barbara said. “Just stopped by to…”

Barbara realised that they hadn’t noticed either. Hours upon hours in the blasted dental chair and no one… and that meant… She pulled herself together. God, what was wrong with her? she wondered.

She remembered the bag in her hand, the scarf and blouse within it. “Bought something in the high street. I reckoned Hadiyyah’s approval is all I need to wear it tomorrow.”

“Yes, yes!” Hadiyyah cried. “Let’s see, Barbara. Mummy, Barbara has been making herself over. She’s been buying new clothes and everything. She wanted to go to Marks and Spencer at first, but I wouldn’t let her. Well, we bought a skirt there, didn’t we, Barbara, but that was all because I told her only grannies ever go to Marks and Spencer — ”

“Not exactly true, darling,” Angelina said.