“Hard to get into trouble in those days,” George agreed with a smile. “Someone would rat on you for certain. We played in the street on fine days, hoops and marbles, not like the things kids do today.”
Closing his eyes, he could see it all as clearly as if it were yesterday. “The girls had tops with colored paper stuck on them and they looked so lovely when they spun.… And we all played cricket together, girls and boys, while the grown-ups stood round chatting.…” He opened his eyes and found Janice watching him intently. “I knew him then. Just a little lad, and I was already in my teens. Who’d have thought things would turn out the way they did?”
“What things?”
“The war, his family …” George sighed and shook his head. “But he came back, and I’ve always admired him for that. He never forgot where he came from or what he owed. And he always had a kind word for me and a pint at the pub.”
Janice held her teacup motionless, balanced in both hands. “Who, George?”
“Lewis Finch,” he admitted reluctantly.
“You saw Annabelle Hammond with Lewis Finch?”
“Was that her name? Like Hammond’s Teas?”
“Exactly. It’s her family’s business, and she was in charge of it. Where did you see them?”
George pleated the tea towel. “Once coming out of the Indian restaurant just down the road. He was holding her arm, friendly-like, and she was laughing. You couldn’t help but notice her. Once in the Waterman’s Arms. And another time, in his Mercedes. The windows were tinted but you could still tell it was her.”
“Recently?” asked Janice.
“In the pub, a month or so ago. That time outside the restaurant, I’m not certain, except that it was nippy that day. In the autumn, maybe.”
“And the time in the car?”
“It was just a glimpse, one day when I was taking Sheba for her run. It doesn’t mean anything, that he knew her.”
“No. But we’ll have to have a word with him, just the same,” said Janice, and George thought she didn’t sound any happier at the prospect than he’d felt in telling her what he’d seen.
She finished her tea and stood up. “Thanks, George. I’d better let you tend to your supper.”
With a regretful thought for his potatoes—likely cooked to a crisp—and cold chops, George saw her to the door.
From the walk she turned back and gave him a cheeky grin. “By the way, George—I’m sorry about the Settlement Dance. Tell your Georgie that for me one of these days, would you?”
GORDON FINCH STOOD AT THE WINDOW of his first-floor flat, looking out across East Ferry Road. A breath of cool air stirred the lace curtains. The street lamps had come on, and across the road in Millwall Park the bowlers had given up their game and retired to the pub.
All so normal, all so ordinary. For a moment he held on to the thought that he would turn and life would go on uninterrupted. Annabelle would be standing naked at his kitchen sink, brushing her teeth, holding the mass of her hair back with the other hand to keep it dry. She would lean forward, the angle of the light creating a hollow in the small of her back, highlighting the curve of her hip, then as she straightened the shadows would shift, playing over her skin like a lover’s hands.
From the beginning she’d shed her clothes whenever she walked into his flat, throwing her expensive suits casually over a chair. Sometimes on colder days she slipped on a silk kimono he’d found at a street market. Captivated by the rich colors of the old silk, he’d bought it on impulse. It was the only gift he had given her, hanging ready from a peg on the back of the bathroom door.
He saw the gold and russet folds of the robe fall open, revealing a slice of creamy skin as Annabelle sat at his small table, eating Indian take-away with a plastic fork. The candles he’d stuck in saucers guttered and smoked between them. Laughing, she’d called him a barbarian, but when he challenged her to invite him to her flat for a proper dinner, she refused.
She’d come to him for months before he learned her name, and even then she’d never talked about herself in the ordinary sense. It was only by chance that he’d seen her come out of the Ferry Street flat one day and learned that she lived just down the road—a few blocks and another world away.
Not that he’d needed confirmation that Annabelle Hammond was everything he despised, one of the privileged who take without considering those they trample in the process. Why had he thought he might be the undamaged exception?
Once, straddling him on his narrow bed, she’d held his clarinet between her breasts and asked him if he’d give it up for her. “Don’t be daft,” he’d said, but for a moment the abyss of obsession had opened before him. What might he have done for her, he wondered now, if he hadn’t discovered her betrayal?
