“But Colton . . . ? Doesn’t he represent when some other woman was just fine for you?”
“Colton was the result of turning competitive ballroom dancing into this-is-meant-to-be. I was eighteen, so was my partner, and we took doing the salsa to a higher level. Latin dancing tends to mess with the mind. At least, it messed with mine. She came up pregnant. She reckoned we would marry. I reckoned different.”
“Did Teo know about Colton?”
“He’s been part of my life since he was born. I rejected his mum—I’m not proud of that, by the way—but never him. Teo knew all that.”
“Where’s his mum now?”
“Hammersmith. Married, two other children, and perfectly happy with her life.” He tipped his bottle and took several more gulps of beer. “I’m just guessing that last part,” he admitted. “But I can’t see why she wouldn’t be happy. Colton never reports otherwise, and he and Kieran—that’s the stepdad—get on well. He’s quite a decent bloke is Kieran.”
“Did Teo never feel betrayed?” It all seemed so adult to Barbara, so au courant, if that was the term, although it could well have been a la mode, she reckoned.
“Because of Telyn’s pregnancy? She wouldn’t have done. She’s three years younger, Teo is. She was only fifteen when all this happened—when Telyn and me happened—and we’d not yet ever been a couple, me and Teo. Then once we were, I never looked at another woman. I never wanted to.”
“If that’s the case—you never doing the dirty outside your marriage—how were you the one to throw a spanner?”
“I loved her too much.”
“Too much?”
“One can do that, you know.” He looked towards the doors onto his balcony as if what he wanted to say resided outside. He settled on, “It’s like overwatering a plant. One means well, but the plant can’t cope and it dies.”
That, Barbara thought, was a strange analogy since Teo Bontempi—Teo Carver who had been—was at the present moment awaiting burial. She said, “When did you last see her?”
“It would have been two nights before she went into hospital.”
“Where?”
“In Streatham. At the flat.”
“Your idea or at her invitation?”
“Her invitation. She said she needed to speak with me.”
“Needed?”
“Needed. Wanted. I suppose both add up to the same thing: conversation. She asked me to come over for a word. So that’s what I did.” He paused, drawing his dark eyebrows together as if trying to recall his wife’s exact words. “She wanted to . . . ‘go over a few things’ was how she put it. She asked if I would come to Streatham. I had nothing on, so that was fine with me. When I arrived, though, she didn’t bell me into the building.”
“So you left?”
“I had a key so—”
“Had she given you a key?”
“I’d never given up the one I had. When we split up, I made four trips? Five? To fetch my clobber. She never asked me for the key because she wouldn’t always be home when I needed to stop at the flat.”
“You never handed it over once the move out was finished?”
“Didn’t. So that night I let myself into the building. I reckoned she’d only stepped out, gone to the shops or something. She knew I was on my way, so I decided I’d wait as I never knew when I’d have another chance.”
“For what?”
“To see her.” He drained the bottle of beer. He said, “I’m having another. You don’t want one?”
Barbara demurred. When he returned, however, he brought two bottles. He set one in front of her, already opened, “Just in case,” he explained. He sat. He was silent. Barbara reckoned that fetching the beer had been intended to buy him time.
She said, “Have you any clue what she wanted to talk to you about?”
Before he could answer, his mobile rang. He dug it out of the back pocket of his jeans and looked at the screen. He said to Barbara, “Sorry. I’m meant to take this.”
She nodded with a gesture towards the mobile. He said into it, “Yeah?” and mostly what he did after that was listen. He rose, mobile pressed to his ear, and went to the balcony’s door, which he opened. He stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and continued listening. Barbara saw his expression change. He looked at her, saw her looking at him, turned, and, head lowered, seemed to speak. It wasn’t a long call, less than two minutes. When he came back into the flat, his expression was grim.