Cabernet and was wondering how much longer he could realistically spend out here in his car when he saw the front door of the house open and Flavia run down the steps and go striding off down the hill. In a second Lorimer was out of his car and closing on her.
She turned a corner before he could reach her and entered a small parade of shops, going into a brightly lit 24-hour supermarket called Emporio Mondiale. Lorimer followed her in, after only the briefest of hesitations, but she was nowhere to be seen. Blinking in the brilliant white light, he carefully checked a few of the labyrinth of tall aisles – teetering battlements of sanitary napkins and toilet rolls, kitchen towels, disposable nappies and dog biscuits. Then he saw her bent over an ice-cream freezer, rummaging in its lower depths, and backed off, a little breathless, then composed himself, but when he advanced forward again she had gone.
He headed straight to the checkout, where a solitary Ethiopian girl was patiently counting through a mass of brown coins that an old lady was unearthing from a cavernous handbag – but no Flavia. Christ, where was she? Perhaps she’d gone back out the entrance? And he raced back the way he had come. Then he saw her: vanishing down a side alley that led to the newspapers. He decided that a flanking move was the correct choice here and so ducked down breads and breakfast cereals, heading for the spice jar whirligig and the cabinet of dreadful salads.
He turned the corner at the bottom and she fired a blast of air freshener at him. Pfffft. He caught a farinaceous gust of sweet-smelling violets full in the face and sneezed several times.
‘I don’t like being followed,’ she said, replacing the aerosol. She was wearing sunglasses and a bulky old leather jacket with a hood and many zips. He was sure her eyes would be red and weepy beneath the opaque green glass.
‘What’s he done to you?’ Lorimer blurted out. ‘If he’s hit you – I’ll –’
‘He’s actually been talking about you, or rather shouting about you, for the last half hour. That’s why I had to get out. He claims he saw you at some smart party.’
‘You do know that he attacked me. Tried to club me on the head.’ All his old outrage returned. ‘After you had told him about our so-called affair.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Your husband tried to hit me over the head with a club.’
‘Gilbert? –’
‘What did you tell him we’d been up to?’
‘He was in a terrible rage and I was frightened. And angry – so, well, I made all sorts of things up, said it had been going on for over a year. Maybe that’s what set him off? He did go thundering out of the house. Was it you who knocked his teeth out? He said he’d been mugged.’
‘It was self-defence. He tried to hit me with one of his fucking juggling clubs.’
‘There’s a lot of pent-up rage in you, isn’t there, Lorimer?’ She took down another aerosol spray from the shelf and enveloped him in a cloud of something piney.
‘Don’t! For God’s sake!’
‘We can’t see each other.’ She glanced nervously over her shoulder. ‘God knows what would happen if he came into the shop now.’
‘Does he hit you?’
‘He’s incredibly fit and strong. Sometimes he gets me in these grips. Shakes me about, twists my arms.’
‘Animal.’ Lorimer felt a form of pure rage sluice through him, of the sort crusaders might have experienced at the sight of a holy shrine desecrated, he imagined. He rummaged in his pockets and took out his bunch of keys, threading two off and holding them out to her.
‘Take them, please. If you ever need a place to be safe, to get away from him where he can’t find you. You can go here.’
She did not take them. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a house I’ve bought. Pretty much empty. In Silvertown, a place called Albion Village, number 3. You can go there, escape him if he gets violent again.’
‘Silvertown? Albion Village? What kind of a place is that? Sounds like a children’s book.’
‘Sort of development near Albert Dock, by the City airport.’
‘One of those modern developments? Little boxes?’
‘Well… yes. Sort of
‘Why do you want to buy a little cardboard house like that, miles from anywhere, when you’ve got a perfectly good place in Pimlico? I don’t get it.’
He sighed. He felt a sudden urge to tell her, especially as she now