‘You can tell me one thing, Theakis—and one thing only. You can tell me right now, to my face, just what the hell you think you’re playing at! And what the hell makes you think you have the slightest business in keeping my sister’s money from her?’
With total, absolute control, Theo froze.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
VICKY was washing out a jumper. It was two in the morning, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t sleep. Not these days. If she went to bed she simply lay awake, staring up the ceiling, listening to the dying sound of traffic outside in the street.
Thinking.
In the dark it was impossible not to think.
Not to feel.
She would lie there, hour after hour, staring upwards, her emotions stripped naked.
As naked as her body had once been.
Thinking about that. Remembering.
So that was why she was standing here at the kitchen sink, in her thin cotton bathrobe, her hands in suds, rhythmically squeezing warm, soapy water through the woollen jumper. On the draining board a soggy pile of washed clothes was accumulating, waiting to be rinsed. On the other side of the sink was a heap of more clothes to wash. She’d set the radio to a classical music station, and it was playing softly from the top of the cooker. It wasn’t a very good choice of music right now, however. Strauss’s Four Last Songs.
The terrible, ravishing, dying elegies wound in and out of her, the voice of the soprano tearing at her with emotion.
But she must not feel emotion. It was forbidden to her. Forbidden absolutely.
So she went on rhythmically squeezing and dipping, squeezing and dipping.
The sound of the key in the lock made her freeze.
Then she jerked around. The kitchen area of the studio flat was separated from the living/sleeping area by a half-wall that was designed as a breakfast bar, with cupboards underneath for compact storage. An archway to the right of it shielded the front door via a tiny coat lobby.
‘Jem?’
Her voice was sharp. He was the only person to have a key both to the block of flats and her own studio.
There was no answer, so she hurriedly, panicking, seized an unwashed garment and hastily mopped the suds from her hands with it. Then she seized a kitchen knife from the knife-block by the toaster. She turned around, heart pounding with fear.
Shock and disbelief blasted through her. The knife dropped from her hand, her fingers suddenly nerveless.
Theo stood in the archway.
He tossed the keys onto the breakfast bar.
‘Jem lent them to me,’ he said.
Faintness washed over her.
‘Jem?’ Her voice was weak. Uncomprehending.
‘He came to see me,’ Theo said conversationally. His voice sounded normal, its familiar deep, faintly accented tones no different from what they had always been in the days when he had spoken to her in such a conversational manner.
But his eyes held the dark glitter that had been in them the last time she had seen him.
Her heart started to pound. Not with the panicked fear of a burglar that she had first felt. With a familiar, heavy pounding that she was very, very used to.
Which was impossible. Because what Theo had just said to her was impossible.
‘Jem’s in Devon,’ she said.