“Did she give you the impression that someone was with her in the flat, someone she didn’t want you to see?”
“Someone might have been with her. I didn’t think that, though.”
“What did you think?”
“That she didn’t want the wife of her lover to cause trouble that the neighbours might overhear. Or she worried that, once I got inside, she wouldn’t be able to get me out again. Or perhaps she thought I intended her harm.”
“Someone did.”
“I wasn’t that someone.”
“Tell me, then.”
“I waited for her to come down. I thought she might not as it was five or ten minutes before she finally did. We spoke just outside the building, near the buzzers for the flats. She told me she wasn’t going to take Mark from me. No intention of doing that, was what she said. And he has no intention of leaving you, was what she added. She pointed out that she was still married, and she didn’t have plans to divorce her husband. Not that marriage and divorce matter much in the world any longer, but she obviously had to say something to reassure me. And that’s what she chose.”
“After that, though, you sent her texts using your husband’s phone.”
“She’d told me she wasn’t seeing Mark any longer. She said she wasn’t going to resume seeing him. But saying and doing are two different things, Inspector. Most people can do one but not the other.”
“So after you spoke with her, you wanted to check.”
“I had to know. I couldn’t rest easy. He was in love with her, and he’d never before been in love with any . . .” She moved restlessly, reaching once again to adjust the shawl round her daughter’s legs before she went on. “Before Teo, there were women, but Mark had never been in love with any of them. They were just . . . just women to him. She was different. She was a real partner. I didn’t believe either one of them could give up the other just by saying they’d do so. How could they? Really. How could anyone do that when there’s a tie between them? I mean, there’s a tie between Mark and me as well. But the tie is . . .” She glanced at her daughter. “Lilybet’s the tie, and that’s entirely different from Mark’s tie to Teo. So once I’d spoken to her, I waited a day or so and I texted with his phone to see how she would reply.”
“But she didn’t reply.”
“Which told me she’d been sincere.”
“And Mark?”
“What about him?”
“How did he take the ending of his relationship with Teo?”
“I didn’t want to know. Or see. Whatever he was feeling, I couldn’t let it get close to me. I just . . . I couldn’t. I suppose we started wearing masks with each other. What else, actually, could we do? I had hopes he would get over her and we could go back to how we were before.”
“Which was?”
“I expect he’s told you. We share only a flat and the care of Lilybet.” She swallowed, and Lynley noted how tightly her hands were clasped. “Things like this,” she went on, “they don’t just begin one day, Inspector Lynley. They develop over time. They’re the result of . . . So many things combine to make us who we are and who we become. You understand that, I hope.”
Lynley nodded. “I do.”
“When Lilybet was born . . . She had to be taken, you see, five months along. It was pre-eclampsia, and things should have worked out well and they could have worked out well eventually, I suppose, but they didn’t. She . . . there were so many things wrong, so many issues. Her heart, her lungs, one of her kidneys. It was like . . . bits and pieces of her never developed the way they should have done. Every day brought more bad news until there was no news left. Or at least no possibility of good news.” She crumpled into a ball the tissue she was holding. She began to pick at it restlessly. “I couldn’t go through it again. I couldn’t face it, take the chance, all of it. I just couldn’t do it. And then, after a bit, I . . . I couldn’t at all.” Her eyes filled. She sought another tissue. “I never would blame Mark if he left. He should leave. No one should expect any man . . . What I thought was if I encouraged him to . . . to find someone who understood or not even understood but was at least willing . . . Surely there are women who wouldn’t want more than what he had to give.”
“You wanted him to find a sexual partner? Is that what you mean? Someone he would hire, perhaps? Someone he would see occasionally and pay?”