Stuart looked thoughtful. Mark didn’t push him. Stuart finally said, “I s’pose I c’n tell you that.”
He brought from under the counter a volume that would have made Ebenezer Scrooge sigh in delight as he bent over it, scribbling figures by candlelight. Mark couldn’t believe Paulie wasn’t doing things digitally. Then again, an ancient ledger did have a certain cachet in a pawnshop.
Stuart flipped back two pages and ran his index finger down a column. Mark reckoned he was doing this for the drama of the moment. Stuart drew his eyebrows together and said slowly, “I see . . . How does one say . . . ? Well, I can tell you this at least: jewellery and silver.” He looked up at Mark. “I hope that’s helpful.”
As Pete had virtually no jewellery and as a couple they had absolutely no silver, Mark said, “That’s the lot, is it?”
“？’Fraid so. But Mark, c’n I say . . . ?” Stuart closed the book and returned it beneath the counter. “I mean, it’s none of my business but . . . Why don’t you ask her?”
Mark thought about how to reply. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s none of your business.”
He left the shop. Stuart was sputtering something behind him, which told Mark that his next action was going to be to ring Mark’s brother. That couldn’t be helped, and at this point Mark wondered what could be helped. He was no closer to knowing what Pietra had pawned than he’d been before. He was no closer to knowing why she wanted money. He was also no closer even to knowing whether she pawned something because she wanted or needed money, or whether she had another reason.
11 AUGUST
BELSIZE PARK
NORTH LONDON
He woke in the darkness from the kind of dream he’d had far too often in the first six months after Helen’s death. In this dream, he’d heard her clearly. She’d said, “Tommy, darling,” in that way she’d had of addressing him before she made a request to which she knew he wouldn’t want to acquiesce or a suggestion that she knew he would not want to take. There’d been any number of other ways she’d said those words Tommy darling in the years they’d been together—both before and during their marriage—and each of them had a separate meaning.
In his dream, he looked up upon hearing her, his heartbeat light and rapid. Her voice had been quite distinct, his name spoken as if she stood directly at his ear. But he couldn’t see her in the room, so he went in search of her, knowing that she was nearby, sure that she was in the house. This knowledge raised such a longing within him that he resolved not to stop looking till he found her. He went from room to room, and in doing this, he grew to believe that she was somewhere just beyond his reach, but she was there. There.
The rooms he passed through were not in London, though. Nor were they the rooms of his family’s home on the south-east coast of Cornwall. He didn’t recognise them, and this added to his desperation. He felt a hollow need open within him.
Waking, then, he recognised nothing at first. He saw only the shapes of things, the identity of which he waited to dawn upon him. As he waited, he heard it again, “Tommy?” and he turned his head towards the sound.
He saw that he was in bed with Daidre, but the anguished, hollow loss he’d been experiencing in his dream did not fade. He felt a sense of immense betrayal that told him how unfair he was being. But he could not have said where to apply the unfairness: to the memory of Helen or to the woman he was with, who was facing him, with one of her arms curled under her head and a lock of sandy hair falling across her cheek.
She murmured, “Are you quite all right, Tommy? What time is it? Are you leaving?”
He wanted to. He couldn’t imagine feeling any more wretched in his faithlessness. How could he possibly profess his love for this good woman? he asked himself. How could he make love to her and remain with her afterwards—for that was surely where they were, in her flat and not in his Belgravia house—when he felt a groundswell of purist agony upon the thought of Helen. And yet, Daidre was so much his comfort in moments like this. She was a place of resting that he sought out even when, he admitted to himself, he had so little to offer her in return.
He’d arrived in Belsize Park quite late. He hadn’t actually intended to come to Daidre at all. With his mind occupied with what they knew about Teo Bontempi, with what they were uncovering about her final weeks of life, and with what all of it might mean, he’d driven to Belsize Park as if on autopilot. Upon arriving, he’d looked round blankly, realised what he’d done, and also realised that he should turn round and head south towards his home. But he’d been incapable of doing that, especially when he saw the sitting-room lights shining from Daidre’s flat. He fixed his gaze on that sitting-room window, then, and waited for his mind to clear of all he’d gathered from Marjorie Lee.