“Let me do it, Pete.”
“Nonsense. You’ve always done more than your share. Hasn’t he, Lilybet? Hasn’t your daddy always done more than his share?”
Lilybet lolled in her wheelchair. She waved her hands.
“She’s clapping!” Pietra said. “She understands.”
“Pete, we need to talk,” Mark said.
“But look at her clapping! She’s clapping! She’s never done that.”
“Robertson?” Mark called. “Will you join us?” And when the man appeared in the kitchen doorway, laundry bundled against his stomach, “I must speak to Pete for a moment. Will you see to Lilybet?”
“？’Course,” Robertson said. “She c’n help me make scrambled eggs, can’t you, Lily?”
Lilybet waved her hands.
Mark took his wife’s arm and led her to their bedroom. He closed the door. He faced her.
“Can we talk about the pawnshop?” he asked.
She cocked her head. “What about the pawnshop? What pawnshop? One of your brother’s?”
“I expect it’s the one Stuart runs in The Narrow Way. You know him, Pete: Paulie’s brother-in-law. Paulie runs the shop at the bottom of the street; Stuart runs the shop at the top.” Mark was carrying the pawn ticket in his trouser pocket, and he brought it out, centred on his palm, and showed it to her. “I’ve been wondering what it is that you pawned. I’ve also been wondering why you pawned it.”
She stood quite still with her gaze on the pawn ticket. He waited. She said nothing at all.
“Pete?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know what that pawn ticket’s for or where it came from. I haven’t pawned anything. What on earth do I have to pawn?” She gestured round the room, by which he took it that she meant the entire flat. “Honestly, Mark. I mean it. What have I to pawn?”
“If you needed the money, why didn’t you come to me? I’ve never held back, have I? When you’ve needed something, when Lilybet’s needed something . . . Pete, d’you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s ‘going on,’？” she said, making inverted commas in the air as she used his own words. What could possibly be ‘going on’？” The air-sketched inverted commas again. “And when on earth would I have time to go to one of the pawnshops anyway?”
“This was in your purse,” he said.
“Are you actually going through—”
“I told you. I was pinching a couple of notes from your wallet. That’s where I found the ticket.”
“So why didn’t you ask me straightaway?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? And he knew the answer well enough: he hadn’t actually wanted to know. So why was that, Mark? he asked himself. Are you afraid of something, mate?
He said, “I didn’t think to. But now I’m asking.”
“You’re asking about nothing,” she replied. “I’m going back to the kitchen now, Mark. I’m needed to help with Lilybet’s breakfast.”
She turned to leave him then, with the pawn ticket feeling like something that was searing his palm. Before she was out of the room, however, he spoke.
“Your secret’s safe with Paulie,” he told her. “He wouldn’t tell me. Does he know why you’ve pawned something, then?”
She shook her head. “I’ve pawned nothing, Mark.”
She did leave at that point, but not before he asked himself why she hadn’t once looked at him directly after he’d produced the pawn ticket for her to see.
HACKNEY
NORTH-EAST LONDON
“I’ve told you everything, Sergeant. There’s nothing more that I can add.”
“Happens that’s probably not true. Can I come in?”
“Have you any idea what time it is?”
“Look. I’m as cheesed off about this as you are, Mr. Carver,” Barbara Havers replied. She looked over her shoulder. From the farmyard across the lane, a rooster was raising absolute bloody hell. She said, “You don’t actually sleep through that, do you?”
“Silicone earplugs. They were my first investment when I took the flat.”
“I hope your second was incense,” she said. “Now. Again. Can I come in? I expect you don’t want the neighbours to see me. They might get ideas and then—whoops—your reputation goes straight down the drain.”
So far, Barbara thought, the only good thing about her morning was that she’d actually been able to sink her gnashers into a Wildlicious Wild!Berry Pop-Tart. Well, two of them if she was being brutally honest about her caloric intake. She went for two in order to make up for time lost, and she served them to herself alongside a very powerful cup of PG Tips. She’d had to eat the Pop-Tarts on the way to Hackney, though, while most of her mug of tea got spilled onto the Mini’s floor. The fact that she hadn’t spilled tea on herself was mildly cheering, however.