‘Do you think they’ll find her?’ Kate asked.
‘Isabel?’
‘Yes.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I do. I have to believe that they will.’
‘She seemed very nice.’
‘She is.’
‘But I hate women with figures like that. They look good in anything.’
I smiled. I remembered how she looked, how she felt, her scent, her voice. She had to be alive. She just had to be.
Kate reached across and squeezed my hand.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said. ‘It’s just that Jamie drives me mad. His life seems to have been taken over by Dekker. I sometimes feel like he’s sold his soul to Ricardo.’
‘I know what you mean. Ricardo likes to control the people who work for him. He lets them go about things their own way, but he makes sure their interests are tied up completely with his. But I can understand Jamie’s point of view. He needs to pay for all this.’
‘No, he doesn’t!’ said Kate with surprising forcefulness. ‘We don’t actually need all this. Of course it’s very nice, but we could quite happily live in a small flat in Chiswick. And that stuff about providing for me is crap, too. I had a perfectly good job in a City law firm. I could earn a decent salary again. Of course I want to spend the time with Oliver while he’s young, but I don’t have to.’
I was quiet. I didn’t want to get involved in an argument between Kate and Jamie. Especially when I thought one of them was right and the other wrong.
‘Do you know, he was angry with me for letting you stay here?’ she said.
I shook my head.
‘He said it would look bad at the office. I told him not to be so absurd.’
‘I don’t want to stay if—’
‘You stay,’ said Kate firmly, her eyes blazing. I was surprised. Kate was normally calm, unflappable. I had never seen her so worked up as in the last twelve hours.
The shock must have shown in my face. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, with a slight smile. ‘Jamie wants you here too. I think he realized he was being stupid.’
She took a sip of her coffee, and stared out towards the hill behind the garden. ‘He’s changing, you know.’
I didn’t answer at first. I didn’t want to talk too deeply about Jamie with Kate. But, then, she clearly needed to talk to someone about him. So I stepped delicately into the minefield.
‘Is he?’
Kate shot me a glance. She sensed my reluctance to talk, but went on regardless. ‘You remember him at university. He never took anything too seriously. He was always fun, he was always kind, he was always, well, affectionate. And afterwards, too. He was great when my father died.’
I remembered when Kate’s father had been killed in a car crash. She had been devastated. Jamie had done all that could be expected of a husband, and done it very well. He seemed to know exactly when to cheer her up, and when to let her be alone.
‘He’s always been a good friend to me,’ I said. ‘He got me the job at Dekker, didn’t he? I know that didn’t work out too well, but he stuck his neck out for me.’
‘Yes, he did.’ Kate smiled briefly, but she still wore a frown. ‘But what about Oliver? When he was born, Jamie was wonderful. And now he hardly ever sees him.’
‘He doesn’t have any choice, Kate. I’ve been inside Dekker. You have to work hard, ridiculously hard. Jamie spends no more time there than anyone else. In fact he probably spends less.’
‘But why does he have to work there in the first place? After all it’s done to you. After all it’s doing to him.’
There was a note of anguish in Kate’s voice. I knew the answer. I had played rugby with Jamie. He was one of the most competitive people I had ever come across. And he never gave up. If he had decided to make his fortune at Dekker, there was nothing that Kate or I could do to change his mind.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really admire what you did.’
‘What? You mean resigning?’
She nodded, looking straight ahead, her coffee mug half an inch from her lips.
‘I had to. I didn’t have any choice.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
She turned to me and smiled her warm friendly smile. The sun shone off her short brown hair. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a long cotton skirt, light summer clothes that gently rested on the soft roundness of her body.
Jamie didn’t deserve her.
So I stayed with Kate and Jamie. I spent a couple of days sorting out my flat. This involved talking to letting agents, getting a plumber in to fix the boiler, tidying up, packing, and hiring a van for a morning to move my stuff, eighty per cent of which was books. The agents were optimistic that they would find a tenant at a rent that would almost cover the mortgage.
I began work again on my thesis. I had thought that resurrecting the missing chapters would be desperately tedious, but actually it wasn’t. I could remember quite well what I had written, and although I needed to dig around in my notes a lot, even that I enjoyed. And the thesis was taking better shape second time round. But I hadn’t made adequate notes of all the references I needed. For these I would have to spend a couple of days at the School of Russian Studies’ library in London. Most of the rest I could do from Dockenbush Farm.
It was a very pleasant place to work, especially in May. There was a guest room at the top of the house. I fixed up a table and chair in front of the window, which supported the brand new Apple Mac I had bought in anticipation of insurance money. The view was over the top of the apple trees to a couple of fields of young barley and a low wooded hill beyond. It was idyllic. I worked a full day, eight till eight, with an hour off for lunch with Kate and Oliver. I was able to throw myself into Pushkin’s world and forget my own. Ricardo, Eduardo and Dekker were still there, but they seemed a long way away.
The only reminder was Jamie, who brought with him the smell of Dekker as he returned each evening. It soon wore off: he didn’t want to talk about it; neither did Kate nor I. The atmosphere in the house had improved since their argument on my arrival. We had fun in the evenings: we stayed up late drinking and talking. It felt almost like a holiday.
I phoned the police station in Kentish Town to see how they were getting on in solving Crime Number 1521634/E. I wasn’t surprised to hear that they had got nowhere. None of the stolen goods had turned up. They had interviewed Eduardo, who had denied all knowledge of the burglary, and they had been unable to find any connection between him and it, apart from my suspicions.
I thought intermittently about Isabel, rather than constantly. I felt guilty about this, although I realized it was probably a good thing. Because when I did think of her, I felt anxious, guilty, worried, uncertain, angry. We had spent so few days truly together, and it had been so far away. I kept on asking myself whether the relationship would have worked, and I kept on telling myself it would. Very well. And then I got angry that I’d been prevented from finding out.
I phoned Luís to see if there was any news. He was pleased to hear from me. He said he had introduced KBN, a large Dutch bank with good Brazilian connections, to Humberto Alves, and suggested they talk about favela financing. It would take a couple of months to resurrect the deal, but Humberto was confident something would come out of it. I was glad Ricardo hadn’t been enraged for nothing.
‘No news of Isabel?’ I asked.
There was a heavy silence. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’
‘Have the police found anything yet?’
‘No.’ He paused. I let the silence hang there. ‘She’s still alive, you know. They haven’t found a body yet. If she was dead, they would have found her. I know she’s alive. I can feel it.’