There was a pub near the church where they’d filmed Shakespeare in Love, and Louisa bagged a table under a diamond-patterned window while River fetched drinks. It still seemed odd, this—even a casual drink after work felt like two-timing Min’s memory. But nothing stayed still. It was like moving from one room to another: you’d been there, and now you were here. Sooner or later, you closed the door between.
Three months back, Louisa had shifted the fridge in her studio flat and chiselled a lump of plaster from the wall. Nestled there was the uncut diamond, a fingernail-sized chunk of light, she’d acquired when the heist at the Needle came unstuck, shortly after Min’s death. In a pub near Hatton Garden, she approached a man she’d been staking out for weeks: an appraiser at one of the smaller local jewellers, someone she knew would pay cash for an unprovenanced stone; not a fortune—daylight robbery, even—but that was an irony she could appreciate, and he could presumably guess at. Lumped together with her scraps of savings, it was enough for a deposit on an apartment some way out of town. “Apartment” was an estate agent’s word, making the property sound bigger than it was, but she was no longer sleeping in her kitchen, and her living-room window had a view of a park, and she was paying a mortgage, not rent. Sometimes at night she’d sit with the curtains open, a glass of wine in her hand, looking down on trees waving in the wind; not thinking about Min exactly, or about anything much, but being glad she was there and no longer in her poky studio with its constant cooking odours, and heavy bass noises thrumming from passing cars. Glad, too, she was no longer on bar stools every other evening, hooking up with strangers. She wasn’t drinking so much, and was sleeping better. She woke early, but was mostly untroubled by dreams.
And this, having a drink with River, this was okay too. When you’d been through a war together—even a small one—it lent you a connection you weren’t going to find in a hook-up. They’d both shot people. This didn’t get aired much, but it was always there on the table.
He returned with the drinks: a vodka-lime for her for old times’ sake, and a pint of bitter for him for £4.80. Prices in London were getting out of hand.
Because she wasn’t yet ready for conversation, she hit the burning question of the day before he was seated:
“Why’d you think Lamb’s invited the Moira to lunch?”
“The Moira” was what they’d taken to calling her; one of those unplanned habits that foster relationships.
River said, “He might have been pulling her leg.”
“Cruel, even for Lamb.”
“I dunno. Actually taking her to lunch would be crueller. Besides, taking her—paying for it? How likely is that?”
Lamb had a distinctly droit de seigneur approach to mealtimes.
Louisa sipped her vodka and felt it hit the right buttons: suddenly the bar’s edges were less harsh, and the noise from the other patrons subsided to a background murmur, waves collapsing on a beach. River looked better in this light too: the light of the evening’s first drink. He was fair-haired, pale skinned, grey eyed, and while these things were always true, they were usually run-of-the-mill details, swamped by the particularities of the moment: that he looked knackered, hungover, or pissed off, all of which were routine for a slow horse. His nose was a little sharp, true, and the mole on his upper lip grew larger when you noticed it, but basically he was fit enough, which was a good reason to go slow on the vodka-limes. Been there, done that. Her next phase of life involved domestic tranquillity, and avoiding unwise shagging choices.
So: conversation.
“Moira, anyway,” she said. “That’s an oldies’ name. Your aunt’s called Moira.”
“I don’t have any aunts.”
“You know what I mean, though.”
“Unless I do,” River continued. “I might have, come to think of it.”
“Yeah, ’cause who’s got time to go around remembering whether they’ve got aunts?”
He said, “Well, I never knew my father.”
“Oh.”
“Or if he had sisters. Or what they were called.”
“Oh, right, yeah, did I know that? I think I knew that. Sorry.”
“It’s what happened,” said River. “That’s all.”
“Your mother never told you who he was? No hints, no clues?”
“She’s a stubborn woman, my mother. She decided before I was born that he wasn’t part of her life any more. And that’s one path she’s never deviated from.”
This being an unusual circumstance, Louisa surmised.
Sundry details of their lives had been exchanged, but had frequently fallen into that abyss where facts of no relevance or interest were stored. This was because for most of that time, they’d been locked in separate miseries, exile to Slough House being a shared condition only in the way that long-term imprisonment was—you might knock about together in the yard, but when the cell doors slammed shut, you were alone. Sharing had been killing time, that was all. Later, with Min, her interest in other people had been dimmed for the inverse reason: the natural selfishness happiness carries with it. So Louisa might have absorbed any amount of information about River’s life, but basically, what she knew about him was he’d stood next to her once while bullets flew. She supposed most office relationships progressed along similar lines. Well, except for the bit about bullets.
So it was with the sense that she was covering territory she might have been expected to be familiar with that she said, “She’s not a big part of your life, then.”
“Not a big presence, anyway. My grandparents brought me up.”
“David Cartwright.”
“The one and only. Rose, my nan—she died a while ago.”
“And now you’re worried about him.”
“Yes,” River said. “I’m worried about him.”
“Getting forgetful?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that so bad? I mean, yeah, okay, it’s bad, but . . . How old is he, anyway?”
“Eighties,” River said, “Eighty . . . four? Yeah, four.”
Louisa said, “Not so very old. Not these days.”
“Kind of is, though,” River said.
She didn’t reply, because he was right. Eighty-four kind of was old.
Her glass was nearly empty, but because River was still working on his pint she didn’t make a move towards a fresh round. Besides, it wasn’t the moment to break off talking. River had the absorbed air of one getting something off his chest, but with a way to go before he’d mined down to the real stuff.
She said, “How forgetful are we talking? Days of the week or his own name?”
“Somewhere in between, I guess.”
“Is he on meds?”
“Statins. Nothing else I know of. And I would, because . . . ”
“Because you’ve been through his bathroom cabinet. Have you talked to him about it?”
He gave her a look.
“Okay, not easy. But is there anyone you can talk to? Neighbours, anyone?”
“His neighbours think he’s a retired civil servant.”
“Well, he sort of is.”
“But not the kind they think. And the last thing I want is to discover he’s been sharing his life’s story with the postman.”
“Is that likely?”
“I don’t know, Louisa. Every time I see him, a bit more of him has slipped away. It’s like the light gets dimmer. He’s always been the anchor in my life. Now, I sometimes catch a look in his eye like he doesn’t know where he is, and it frightens me. I don’t know what to do about it.”
She let her hand lie on his for a moment. He nodded at the contact, then broke it to pick up his beer glass, which he drained. Then he said, “Fancy another?”