Pete looked so confused by this that he knew his mother had not phoned her in advance to give her time to cook up a story. “Sorry?” she said.
“The Art Deco jewellery Mum gave to you. You know my dad gave it her over the years, only when he could afford to set a piece aside instead of putting it on display when its time ran out. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t ask your mum for it, Mark. She wanted me to take it.”
“But she didn’t need the money it would bring. You did.”
She faced him squarely but didn’t look at him directly. She spoke to whatever she could see beyond his shoulder: most probably the curtains. “I wasn’t going to use it. But your mum said I must. She said if nothing else I must at least try. She said it wasn’t fair as things were, not to Lilybet, not to me, but most of all not to you. She asked me how long I expected our lives to go along the way they were going along. She said everything’s a matter of time, even this. Especially this.”
Mark could see how miserable this little speech made her. But he couldn’t tell if the misery rose from guilt or simply from being caught out. He said to her, “I’m in the dark, Pete. I’d rather not be. When I found the claim ticket in your bag, I didn’t know what to think. But I did know we own nothing worth pawning. If I hadn’t seen the one piece of jewellery in the shop window, I still wouldn’t know what was going on. And as it is, I know half only. Or perhaps two thirds. Mum gave you the jewellery and that silver calling card tray in order to pawn them. You pawned them, but the money wasn’t for her.”
She rubbed her hands down the front of her jeans. She pushed her dark hair away from her face and behind her ears. She finally said, “It’s therapy.”
“Therapy?” In the way of a mind hopping quickly from one idea to another, he went first to physical therapy and he thought she intended it for Lilybet, save for the fact that when Pete was gone from home, Lilybet wasn’t. Then it was physical therapy for herself because she wouldn’t want him to know if she’d hurt herself lifting their daughter’s dead weight. And that certainly made sense since Pete was forever lifting Lilybet instead of waiting for him or Robertson to help her.
“Yes,” she said. “I would have tried for a meeting during the day, but she had none. She had only the evening, so that’s what I took and that’s where I’ve been when I said I was with Greer. I made the appointment at the same time and on the same day as I’d meet with Greer. I told her—Greer—that I couldn’t manage meeting her for a while, at least not in the evening and not while you were so busy. She doesn’t know where I’ve been, though. You mustn’t think she ever did.”
This wasn’t getting them closer to the truth, though. He pressed her with, “The police know you’ve been to Streatham. You’re on CCTV where Teo lived. She came to the door to speak with you. At some point you’re going to have to tell the truth. I’d be that grateful, Pete, if you’d start with me.”
She was silent. She lowered her head and seemed to be studying the tops of her white trainers. Finally, she said, “I know I told you that I wouldn’t be bothered by it, by what you did because of how I am. But I found that wasn’t the truth.”
“You must mean with my finding someone for sex, that you wouldn’t be bothered by that.”
She nodded. Still she didn’t look at him. She said, “At first I wasn’t. How could I be? That wouldn’t have been either right or fair. And how could I be angry and how could I blame you when I’d told you to take care of yourself. I just didn’t think, ever, that . . . Then there she was and I knew everything was different and it would stay different unless I did something.”
“About Teo?” His throat was tight. It was difficult for him to manage the words. The music resumed in the sitting room. The audiobook, it seemed, had very brief chapters. He was suddenly afraid that she might walk out, leaving him once again in the dark so that she could see to Lilybet, but she didn’t move.
Instead she said, “About me, not Teo. This therapist, Mark. It’s . . . She’s the kind of therapist who takes people with problems . . . with issues. Like mine. Your mum found her.”
“My mum?”
“She knew. She knows. You must have said something at some point and I don’t blame you for that. Because that’s what sent your mum on a”—she looked up and gave a small, sad smile—“a mission, I think. She gave me the name and the number and she said not to worry because she would pay and if I could ever return the money, that was fine, and if I could never return the money, that was also fine. So I rang for an appointment but she—the therapist?—only sees people whose problem isn’t physical. I mean, it doesn’t have a physical cause. If there’s a physical cause, she won’t take the patient. So one sees a GP first and if there’s nothing physically wrong, one is referred. It’s not on NHS, though. Your mum knew that. Well, it wouldn’t be, would it.”