'I'm a working mother.'
'And I go to an office, too . . . I'm not the same, am I?'
'The same what?'
'The fantasy. The guy with no chains.'
Wounded, Jenny said, 'I think you're confusing me with your ex-girlfriend. If you remember, I encouraged you to go back and qualify.'
'I really didn't want to argue, Jenny.' His head sank towards his knees. 'I just want to know what's going on with us, what you're expecting.'
She drew hard on her cigarette until the hot smoke scorched her mouth. 'I'm sorry if I seem that way. It's probably the pills my shrink put me on. I'll be off them soon.'
'Didn't I used to make you happy?'
She felt her legs twitching nervously. A shiver passed through her, physical sensations taking the place of thoughts. 'You know what I am, Steve. I try to keep the parts of me I'm trying to deal with separate, but sometimes they escape from the box.'
'You know you can talk to me all you like. I wish you would.'
'It doesn't work like that. That's not what I need from you.'
'Can you tell me what you do need?'
To touch me, hold me, reassure me, give me a place to hide . . . The words tripped out of her mind but stumbled and fell somewhere short of her mouth. All she could manage was to shake her head.
Steve said, 'Do you love me? Or just the idea of me.'
'You're not leaving?'
'I need to know what the future is, I need to know how you feel. A girl at work asked me if I was with anyone the other day. For a moment I didn't know what to say.'
'Was she pretty?'
'For God's sake, Jenny.' For once he was closer to tears than she was. 'You've got to stop being afraid. Letting yourself feel loved is a gamble, don't I know it, but you won't even try.'
'I ... I do ... I try all time.' The words sounded empty even to her.
Steve said, 'I've been thinking more about your dream - the part of you that died. Why would you have it again now? When we got together I watched you come alive. You smiled and laughed and lost yourself. And then it was as if you felt too guilty to let yourself be free again.' He tossed his cigarette end onto the fire and drew his palms back across his face. 'What I'm trying to say is, sometimes being faced with a choice is the best way to get bounced out of a rut.'
He stood then leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'Think about it. Give me a call.'
He disappeared down the steps and into the night.
Chapter 18
Jenny had suffered many insults from many men over the years, but no one had accused her of being lifeless in bed. True, she'd allowed herself to think about someone else during sex, but she'd done that many times with her ex-husband and even in the midst of their acrimonious split David had had the good grace to say that he had few complaints about the physical side of their marriage.
Studying her face in the mirror she did detect a certain absence, a dullness in her eyes, a lack of vitality in her features. She felt sure these changes had occurred since she had been on her latest regime of medication. Yes, the malaise Steve had detected was partly existential, but she could see in her own reflection that it was partly physical too. The pills had been a useful support at her low points, they'd staved off the melancholy and anxiety which forced their way in when her mind wasn't absorbed with work, but they'd blunted her edge, diluted her passion.
Steve was right: part of her had died, the part that wasn't afraid to feel the rush of life.
It was time for a new strategy; to cut loose. The deadening drugs must go. Across the wet grass and into the dark stream with Dr Allen's poisons. She'd rather live raw and true, be like McAvoy - a force of nature, a raging gale or a barely moving breeze depending on how the spirit moved her.
And if she faltered, a glass of something nice or a tranquillizer or two couldn't do any harm.
She checked in the bottom drawer of the oak chest where she kept her special things - silk underwear, white cotton gloves with delicate pearl buttons, a pair of stockings she had worn only once - and dug down to the bubble-wrapped package she'd stashed there months before, when she'd vowed that the single container was for life-saving purposes only. She slit the sticky tape with nail scissors and released the small brown bottle. Xanax 2mg. Contents 60. A reassuring rattle. She unscrewed the lid and pulled out the plug of cotton wool just to make sure.
She had her parachute. Now she could jump.
The phone woke her shortly before seven a.m. on Sunday morning. Jenny went downstairs, turned the ringer to mute and had breakfast in peace. She had no intention of answering any calls today. She had nothing to say to anyone until she had some more answers. Two cups of strong coffee took away her sluggishness. She felt more exposed without Dr Allen's pills; a small hard kernel of fear sat stubbornly between her throat and diaphragm, but there was also an energy she wasn't accustomed to. A sense of excitement, of unleashed emotion. The day felt fresh and full of possibility.
She arrived outside the Crosbys' home in Cheltenham shortly after nine. It stood in a terrace of identical regency townhouses, distinguished from one another only by the varying designs of their intricate wrought-iron porches and balconies. Built with the first flush of serious colonial money to reach the hands of the merchant classes, these stuccoed streets in the heart of the town were an idealized vision of what it was to be English and civilized. Even on a dull February morning the buildings seemed to shine.
It was Mrs Crosby who answered the door, her hair still slightly rumpled, though she'd had time since Jenny's call half an hour before to dress and, judging from the smell, burn some toast. She took her through to an elegant, unfussy drawing room that matched tasteful contemporary sofas with an antique chandelier. The paintings were modern abstract, the huge decorative mirror above the white marble fireplace was tarnished with age. Eight-feet-high windows looked out over a mini Italianate garden.
Jenny said, 'It's lovely. So light.'
Mrs Crosby offered a sad smile and glanced up at the door as her husband entered, hair still wet from the shower, his irritation at being stirred so early on a Sunday morning written across his unsmiling face.
'Found a body, have you?' he said, taking a seat next to his wife.
'No. There's no body, nothing to suggest she's dead.'
Husband and wife exchanged a look of relief tinged with a sense of anti-climax.
'This may sound odd,' Jenny said, 'but the reason I need to speak to you is that a small trace of radioactive material was found on the body of woman connected to another case I'm investigating. You might have read about it - Nazim Jamal.'
Mrs Crosby looked puzzled.
'I've read reports,' her husband said, abruptly. 'What's this got to do with Anna Rose?'
'Maybe nothing. I don't know. Let me explain.' She gave them the bare bones: a brief history of Nazim and Rafi's disappearance, Mrs Jamal's campaign, her bizarre death and the traces of caesium 137 that could only have originated in a nuclear power plant. She told them that, from what she'd managed to find on the internet, the main source of black market radioactive material was the former Eastern bloc, but Anna Rose's job at Maybury presented her with a coincidence that needed at least to be discounted.
Mr and Mrs Crosby listened in silence, exchanging the occasional fretful glance. Jenny sensed she had touched on something, but finished her exposition before asking if it brought anything to mind.
There was a pregnant pause. Mrs Crosby spoke first. 'You didn't know that Anna Rose studied physics at Bristol?'
'No—'
'She graduated last summer,' Mr Crosby said.
'I see . . .'
The three of them sat in silence for a long moment.