instructor. That'd be just like Jemima. Someone skating her round the rink with his arm round her waist? She'd fall for that. She'd think it meant something when all it meant was that he was keeping her on her feet."
"Like that, was she?" Nkata asked. "Taking things wrong?"
"Always taking things to mean love when they meant nothing of the sort," Hastings said.
ONCE THE POLICE had left him, Robbie Hastings went above stairs. He wanted to remove the smell of dead pony with a shower. He also wanted a place to weep.
He realised how little the police had told him: death in a cemetery somewhere in London and that was all. He also realised how little he had asked them. Not how she had died, not where she had died within the cemetery, and not even when, exactly. Not who had found her. Not what did they know so far. And recognising this, he felt deep shame. He wept for that as much as he wept for the incalculable loss of his little sister. It came to him that as long as he'd had Jemima, no matter where she was, he hadn't ever been completely alone. But now his life seemed finished. He couldn't imagine how he would cope.
But that was the absolute end of what he would allow himself. There were things to be done. He got out of the shower, put on fresh clothes, and went out to the Land Rover. Frank hopped in beside him and together he and the dog traveled west, towards Ringwood. It was slow country driving, which gave him time to think. What he thought of was Jemima and what she had told him in their many conversations after she'd gone to London. What he tried to recall was anything that might have indicated she was on a path to her death.
It could have been a random killing, but he didn't think it was. Not only could he not begin to face the possibility that his sister had merely been the victim of someone who had seen her and decided that she was perfect for one of those sick thrill killings so commonplace these days, but also there was the matter of where she had been. The Jemima he knew didn't go into cemeteries. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of death. She never read obituaries, she didn't go to films if she knew a leading character was going to die, she avoided books with unhappy endings, and she turned newspapers facedown if death was on the front page as it so often was. So if she'd entered a cemetery on her own, she had a reason for doing so. And a reflection on Jemima's life led him to the one reason he didn't really want to consider.
A rendezvous. The latest bloke she'd been mad about was likely married. That wouldn't have mattered to Jemima. Married or single, partnered or partnerless ...These were fine distinctions she wouldn't have made. Where love - as she considered it - was concerned, she would have seen the greater good as making a connection with a man. She would have defined as love whatever it was between them. She would have called it love, and she would have expected it would run the course of love as she saw it: two people fulfilling each other as soul mates - another daft term of hers - and then having miraculously found each other, walking hand in hand into happily ever after. When that did not happen, she would cling and demand. And then what? he asked himself. Then what, Jemima?
He wanted to blame Gordon Jossie for what had happened to his sister. He knew that Jossie had been looking for her. Jemima had told him as much although not how she knew this, so at the time he'd thought it could well be just another one of her fancies. But if Gordon Jossie had been looking and if he had found her, he could have gone up to London ...
Why was the problem. Jossie had another lover now. So had Jemima if she was to be believed. So what was the point? Dog in the manger? It had been known to happen. A bloke is rejected, finds another woman, but still cannot rid his mind of the first one. He decides the only way to scour his brain of the memories associated with her is to eliminate her so he can move on with her replacement.