her hotel in Sway, he understood that being convinced by Gina had more to do with how he wanted things to be than how things actually were. That, indeed, served as a good description of his entire adult life, he thought morosely. There had been at least two years of that life - those years after he'd first met Jemima and become enmeshed with her - when he'd developed a fantasy future. It had seemed as if the fantasy could be turned into reality because of Jemima herself and because she'd seemed to need him so. She'd appeared to need him the way a plant needs decent soil and adequate water, and he'd reckoned that that kind of need would make the mere fact of having a man in her life more important than who the man was. She'd seemed exactly what he'd been looking for, although he hadn't been looking at all. There had been no sense to looking, he'd decided. Not when the world he had constructed for himself - or perhaps, better said, the world that had been constructed for him - could come crashing down round his ears at any time. And then, suddenly, there she had been on Longslade Bottom with her brother and his dog. And there he had been with Tess. And she had been the one to make "the first move," as it was called. An invitation to her brother's house, which was her own house, an invitation for drinks on a Sunday afternoon although he didn't drink, couldn't and wouldn't ever risk a drink.
He'd gone because of her eyes. Ridiculous now to think that's why he'd driven to Burley to see her again but that was it. He'd never seen anyone with two entirely different-coloured eyes, and he'd liked studying them, or at least that was what he'd told himself. So he'd gone.
And the rest of it ... ? What did it matter? The rest had brought him to where he was now.
Her hair was longer those months later when he saw her in London after she'd left him. It seemed a bit lighter as well, but that could have been a trick of memory. As to the remainder of the package that was Jemima: She was all the same.
He hadn't understood at first why she'd chosen the cemetery in Stoke Newington for their meeting, but when he saw the place with its winding paths, ruined monuments, and unrestrained growth of vegetation he realised her choice had had to do with not being seen in his company. This should have reassured him about her intentions, but still he'd wanted to hear it from her lips. He'd also wanted both the coin and the stone returned to him. Those he was determined to have. He had to have them because if she kept them in her possession, there was no telling what she'd do with them.
She'd said, "So how did you find me? I know about the postcards. But how ... ?
Who ... ?"
He said he didn't know who'd phoned him, just that it was a bloke's voice, telling him about the cigar shop in Covent Garden.
She'd said, "A man," to herself, not to him. She seemed to be going over in her mind the various possibilities. There would, he knew, likely be many. Jemima had never gone in for friendship with other women in a big way, but men she had sought, men who somehow completed her in ways that friendship with women never could. He wondered if that was why Jemima had died. Perhaps a man had misunderstood the nature of her need, wanting something from her that far exceeded what she wanted from him. It explained in some ways the phone call he'd received, which itself could be described as a betrayal, a tit for tat as it were, you don't do what I want and I turn you over to ...well, to whoever seems to be looking for you because I don't care who it is, I only want to balance the scales in which you and I do harm to each other.
He'd said, "Have you told anyone?"
"That's why you've been looking for me?"
"Jemima, have you told anyone?"
"Do you actually think I'd want anyone to know?"
He could see her point although he felt it like a wound she was inflicting upon him instead of merely an answer to his question. Still, there was something in the way she said it that made him doubt her. He knew her