But after a time my revulsion gave way to a furtive curiosity, and the house attracted me despite myself. I would leave the tube a stop early and scurry across the Heath just to peer into its lighted windows. How do they live? What do they talk about, apart from me? Who was I when I lived there? That Diana had left the Office I knew only too well, for she had written Merriman one of her letters.
"Your darling ex has decided we're the Gestapo," he announces, seething with outrage. "And she's been bloody rude with it. Unconstitutional, incompetent, and unaccountable, that's us. Did you know you were nursing a viper to your breast?"
"That's just Diana. She lets fly."
"Well, what's she going to do about it? Wash her conscience in public, I suppose. Splash us all over the Guardian. Do you have any influence over her?"
"Do you?"
She's studying to become a psychotherapist, I hear on the grapevine. She's a marriage counsellor. She's lost weight. She attends yoga classes in Kentish Town. Edgar's an academic publisher.
I rang the bell. She opened the door at once.
"I thought you were Sebastian," she said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to apologise for being the wrong person.
* * *
We perched in the drawing room. I had forgotten how low the ceilings were. Perhaps Honeybrook had spoiled me. She was wearing jeans and a Cornish fisherman's top from our holidays at Padstow. It was faded blue and suited her. Her face was lighter than I remembered it and wider. Her complexion creamier. Her eyes less shaded. Edgar's books went from floor to ceiling. Most were on subjects I'd never heard of.
"He's on a seminar in Ravenna," she said.
"Oh, right. Great. Jolly nice." I had no natural voice in which to speak to her. No ease. I never had. "Ravenna," I repeated.
"I've got a patient coming in about half a minute, and I don't keep patients waiting," she said. "What do you want?”
“Larry's disappeared. They're looking for him."
"Who is?"
"Everyone. The Office, the police. Separately. The police can't be told of the Office connection."
Her face hardened, and I feared she was about to give me one of her diatribes on the need for us all to tell each other everything straight out, and how secrecy was not a symptom but a disease.
"Why?" she said.
"You mean why can't they be told or why's he disappeared?"
"Both."
Where did she get this power over me? Why do I stammer and placate her? Because she knows me too well—or never knew me at all?
"He's supposed to have stolen money," I said. "Scads of it. The police suspect me of being his accomplice. So does the Office."
"But you're not."
"Of course I'm not."
"So why've you come to me?"
She was sitting on the arm of a chair, back straight, hands folded on her lap. She had the professional listener's mirthless smile. There was drink on the sideboard, but she didn't offer me any.
"Because he's fond of you. You're one of the few women he admires and hasn't been to bed with."
"You know that, do you?"
"No. I assume it. It also happens to be the way he describes you."
She gave a superior smile. "Does it really? And you're prepared to take his word for it, are you? You're very trusting, Tim. Don't say you're getting soft in your old age."
I nearly flew at her. I was proposing to tell her I had always been soft, and she was the only one who hadn't noticed it; and I'd half a mind to add that I didn't give a brass farthing whether she slept with Larry or a two-toed sloth; and that the only reason Larry had taken the remotest interest in her was in order to get at me. Fortunately she came in ahead of me with another barb of her own:
"Who sent you, Tim?"
"No one. I'm flying solo."
"How did you come here?"
"Walked. Alone."
"I just have this picture of Jake Merriman waiting for you in a car down the road, you see."
"He isn't. If he knew I was here, he'd set the dogs on me. I'm practically on the run myself." The doorbell was ringing. "Diana. If you know anything about him—if he's been in touch—phoned, written, dropped by—if you know how to get hold of him—please tell me. I'm desperate."
"It's Sebastian," she said, and went to the hall.
I heard voices, and the sound of young feet going down the basement stairs. I realised in a fit of anachronistic indignation that she must have commandeered my old study and put her consulting room in it. She returned to her chair and sat on the arm exactly as before. I thought she was going to tell me to leave, for her face was firmly set. Then I realised she had reached one of her decisions and was about to communicate it.
"He's found what he was looking for. That's all I know.”
“So what's he looking for?"
"He didn't say. And if he had said, I probably wouldn't tell you. Don't interrogate me, Tim; I won't have it. You dragged me into the Office for seven years, and that was bad enough. I don't subscribe to the ethic, and I don't accept the imperatives."
"I'm not interrogating you, Diana. I am asking you a question: What is he looking for?"
"His perfect note. That was his dream always, he said. To play one perfect note. He was always graphic; that's his nature. He telephoned. He'd found it. The note."
"When?"
"A month ago. I had the impression he was leaving for somewhere and saying his goodbyes."
"Did he say where?"
"No."
"Did he suggest where?"
"No."
"Was it abroad? Was it Russia? Was it somewhere exciting? New?"
"He gave absolutely no clue. He was emotional.”
“You mean drunk?"
"I mean emotional, Tim. Just because you brought out the worst in Larry doesn't mean you have rights of ownership to him. He was emotional, it was late at night, and Edgar was here. 'Diana, I love you, I've found it. I've found the perfect note.' Everything was in place for him. He was together. He wished me to know that. I congratulated him."
"Did he tell you her name?"
"No, Tim, he wasn't talking about a woman. Larry's too mature to suppose we're the answer to everything. He was talking about self-discovery and being who he is. It's time you learned to live without him."
I had not expected to shout at her, and I had gone to some lengths till now to avoid doing so. But since she had appointed herself the high priestess of self-expression, there seemed no reason to restrain myself. "I'd adore to live without him, Diana! I'd give my entire bloody fortune to be rid of Larry and his works for the rest of my natural life. Unfortunately, we are inextricably involved with each other, and I have to find him for my own salvation and probably for his."
She had turned her smile to the floor, which I suspected was what she did when patients ranted at her. Her voice took on an extra sweetness.
"And how's Emma?" she enquired. "As young and beautiful as ever?"
"Thank you, she is well. Why do you ask? Did he talk about her too?"
"No. But you didn't either. I wondered why not."
* * *
I was climbing. In Hampstead if you are climbing you are exploring, and if you are descending you are going back to hell. Thinner air, thicker fog, pieces of brick mansion and Georgian façade. I entered a pub and drank a large Scotch and then another, then several more, remembering the night I returned to Honeybrook with the black light glowing in my head. If there were people in the pub I didn't see them. I walked again, feeling no different.
I entered an alley. To one side, a high brick wall. To the other, iron railings like spears. And at the further end a white wood church, its spire severed at the neck by fog.