slowly tilted to one side. She said, "What on earth are you talking about? What tickets?
What receipts? What did Rob Hastings claim I did?"
He'd claimed nothing, of course. Gordon had merely concluded. And he'd done that because it seemed to him that, unless someone had surreptitiously gone through his rubbish, no one else could have come across those items save Gina. He said, "Rob told me the cops in Lyndhurst have what proves I was in London that day. The day she died."
"But you weren't." Gina's voice sounded perfectly reasonable. "You were in Holland.
You went about the reeds because those from Turkey are becoming rubbish. You didn't keep the tickets to Holland, so you had to say you were working that day. And Cliff told the police - that man and woman from Scotland Yard - that you were working because you knew they'd think you were lying if you didn't produce those tickets. And that's what happened."
"No. What happened is I went to London. What happened is that I met Jemima in the place she died. On the day she died."
"Don't say that!"
"It's the truth. But when I left her, she was alive. She was sitting on a stone bench at the edge of a clearing where there's an old chapel and she was alive. I'd not got from her what I wanted to get, but I didn't hurt her. I came home the next day so you'd think I'd gone to Holland, and I threw those tickets in the rubbish bin. That's where you found them."
"No," she said. "Absolutely not. And if I had found them and been confused by them, I would've talked to you. I would've asked you why you lied to me. You know that, Gordon."
"So how do the cops - "
"Rob Hastings told you they have the tickets?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Then Rob Hastings is lying. He wants you to be blamed. He wants you to ...I don't know ...to do something crazy so the police will think...Good heavens, Gordon, he could've gone through the rubbish himself, found those tickets, and handed them over to the police. Or he could be holding on to them, just waiting for the moment to use them against you. Or if not him, then someone else with equal dislike for you. But why would I do anything with any tickets other than simply talk to you about them? Have I the slightest reason to do something that might cause you trouble? Look at me. Have I?"
"If you thought that I'd hurt Jemima ..."
"Why on earth would I think that? You were through with each other, you and Jemima.
You told me that and I believed you."
"It was true."
"Then ... ?"
He said nothing.
She approached him. He could tell she was hesitant, as if he were an anxious animal in need of calming. And she was just as anxious, he could tell. What he couldn't sense was the source of her anxiety: his paranoia? his accusations? her guilt? the desperation each of them felt to be believed by the other? And why was there desperation at all? He knew for a certainty what he had to lose. But what had she?
She seemed to hear the question, and she said, "So few people have anything good between them. Don't you see that?"
He didn't reply, but he felt compelled to look at her, right into her eyes, and the fact of this compulsion made him tear his gaze from her and look anywhere else, which was out of the window. He turned to it. He could see the paddock and the ponies within it.
He said slowly, "You said you were afraid of them. But you went inside. You were in there with them. So you weren't afraid, were you? Because if you were, you wouldn't have gone inside for any reason."
"The horses? Gordon, I tried to explain - "
"You would have just waited for me to release them onto the forest again. You knew I'd do that eventually. I'd have to do it. Then it would have been perfectly safe to go in but then you wouldn't have had a reason, would you."
"Gordon. Gordon." She was near him now. "Listen to yourself. That doesn't make sense."
Like an animal, he could smell her, so close was she. The odour was faint, but it combined the scent she wore, a light sheen of perspiration, and something else. He thought it might be fear. Equally, he thought it might be discovery. His discovery