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She smiled back. “It’s certainly given me more confidence. Darren doesn’t worry me anything like as much as he thinks he does.” Her face changed then. A shadow seemed to pass across it. She drew herself up to the table and leant towards him. “The burglary worries me, though. A lot.”
“Whoever it was only wanted the ring.”
“Yes. But why? Gabriel never told me he had it, you know. He kept it locked away. I only realized it was here when Isbister started cataloguing the contents. It isn’t hugely valuable. And the only people known to have an interest in it, Barney and Humphrey Tozer, were set to secure it at the auction.”
“Somebody else obviously wanted it for themselves and couldn’t afford to outbid Barney. Does it really matter who that was?”
“It might. A
“What things?”
“It was A
“Why should anyone care so much about a three-hundred-year-old ring?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine. That’s why I thought A
“I don’t see how. The ring stolen last night never even belonged to Admiral Shovell. Metherell put me right on that. The admiral’s ring was looted by a local woman when his body was washed up on St. Mary’s. She owned up to what she’d done on her deathbed years later and the parish priest returned the ring to the Shovell family. It can’t possibly have ended up with the Tozers.”
“Oh, but it can. Metherell obviously doesn’t know the full story.”
Harding’s curiosity was aroused. “Doesn’t he?”
“A
“What did A
“Basically, that Shovell’s ring and the Tozers’ ring are one and the same.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know. I was never interested enough to try and get A
“Do you think she knows who stole the ring?”
“She might. Who had cause to steal it, at any rate.” Hayley finished her coffee and set the empty cup down, staring across at Harding as she did so. “But you ought to understand this. She promised me she’d never do anything that risked alerting Nathan to my whereabouts. And she’s a woman of her word. She won’t tell you a thing-she won’t even speak to you-unless I ask her to.”
“And would you be willing… to ask her?”
“I’m not sure. I’m really not. But…” She pressed her hands together in a gesture he recalled from their first meeting. “I’ll think about it while I’m taking a bath.” She smiled. “I need one. You’re welcome to stay. We can talk again afterwards. Unless, of course…” Her look grew hesitant. “Unless you feel you have to go.”
“No,” he said, noting the sudden lightening of her gaze. “I’m happy to stay.”
FIFTEEN
It was not what he had expected. Not exactly, anyway. She had asked him to stay. She had not wanted to be alone. Nor had he. At first she had only asked him to hold her and he knew enough about her past to do no more than that. Soon enough, though, they had made love, once in the small, still, silent hours, then once again as dawn crept in greyly around them.
It did not feel like a betrayal of Carol. Indeed, it set his affair with her in its proper context. Sex by appointment, during engineered afternoons, at his apartment in Villefranche, had never been like this. He wanted to cradle Hayley in his arms, he wanted to caress and protect her, far more than he wanted to savour the moment when she stared up into his eyes and he could hold back no longer. This he remembered and recognized as the begi
“I can trust you, can’t I, Tim?” she asked as they lay together in the serenity of early morning.
“You can, yes,” he assured her.
“Why does this feel so right?”
“Because it is, I suppose.”
“A lot’s gone wrong in my life.”
“I know.”
“I need that to change.”
“Maybe it just has.”
“You won’t let Nathan find me, will you-you won’t lead him to me?”
“Of course not.”
“And you won’t go looking for him while you’re in London?”
“No. I won’t.”
Late the previous evening Hayley had called A
“I won’t go near him, Hayley. I promise.”
“Good.” She kissed him. “You’re still going to London, though, aren’t you?”
“I think I have to.”
“Is it really the ring you’re looking for? Or is it Kerry?”
“I told Barney I’d do my best to find out what’s going on. So, I have to speak to A
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“You must have wondered, though. If the person you’re certain you’ve met before isn’t me, but Kerry.”
“How would I have met her?”
“If the diving expedition hadn’t ended in disaster, you might have bumped into each other in Penzance in August 1999.”
“But it did. And we didn’t.”
“Are you sure? I was reading a book recently about the latest ideas in cosmology. The Universe Next Door. Part of Gabriel’s library. Strictly speaking, it should be in the auction. Technically, I stole it. Anyway, cosmologists apparently think there’s an alternative universe out there somewhere for every alternative reality. Which means, in one version of this world, you did meet Kerry. Perhaps that’s what your mind’s trying to tell you.”
“By that rationale, there’s a version in which you and I met before as well.”
“And one in which we never meet at all.”
“I guess so.” He looked into her eyes. “But let’s not go there.”
He left reluctantly and hastily, while it was still too early for Isbister’s crew to arrive and start preparing for the auction-an auction from which Lot 641 would now be omitted. The postman was making his rounds, but no one else was about as Harding hurried along Polwithen Road through a chill grey morning, with the taste of Hayley’s farewell kiss still lingering on his lips and the joys of the night still alive in his mind.
He spent no longer at the Mount Prospect than the few minutes he needed to pack his bag and the few more minutes it took to check out. He should have phoned Barney, of course, and told him what he was doing. But he phoned no one. Neither Barney nor Carol would be able to contact him now, since they had no way of knowing he had recovered his mobile. And that was how he wanted it. Whatever the future held, the present was a tangle of unanswered questions and conflicting obligations. He believed his life was better for what had happened between him and Hayley but he knew it was no easier. Far from it.
Pursuing the possibility that A