There was a surge of protest. Partington ignored it. Janet, relieved, let herself be guided from her chair and out of the room: Baxeter was standing right at the back, near the door. He gave no facial reaction and neither did she.
“I’d better escort you to your room,” suggested the diplomat.
“Please,” accepted Janet.
They remained unspeaking in the elevator. In her room Janet said: “Why did you do that down there? Say what you did?”
“From where I was sitting you looked like someone who needed rescuing.”
“What about from where everyone else was sitting?”
“Maybe,” said Partington, unhelpfully.
“Why were you there at all?”
“Same reason why I was in court yesterday,” said Partington. “London still considers you a British national, irrespective of your American marriage. And particularly because of the high profile you’ve achieved. I was holding a watching brief, if you like. And to decide for myself whether you need help, despite what you told me.”
Janet experienced a jolt of embarrassment at the reminder, after what the man had just done. She said: “Thank you,” and decided it was inadequate.
“So do you?” pressed the man.
Yes, but not the sort you could give, Janet thought. She said: “I’m all right.”
Partington remained looking at her, waiting, and Janet guessed he was expecting her to tell him where she’d been the previous evening. She stared back, saying nothing. The man said: “Please, no more escapades.”
Janet realized that the man believed she had been attempting something else involving John Sheridan. She said: “Don’t worry: I won’t do anything silly,” and thought at once it was a ridiculous statement.
“I spoke to Zarpas,” Partington said.
“What about?”
“Your going back to England, during the hearings. He said that after you’d given your evidence you wouldn’t be required until any higher court hearing: the gap could be several months.”
“That was thoughful of you,” said Janet.
“Think about it,” urged the embassy official.
She had to, Janet acknowledged, after Partington had gone. But not yet. Not until… She didn’t know until. Or when. Or how. But she certainly didn’t want to make any decisions yet. She looked at her watch and then the telephone, impatient for Baxeter to make contact. They hadn’t talked about when they would see each other again. Janet was shocked at her sudden doubt, trying to rationalize it. He didn’t need anything more, for whatever he was writing. No further reason then, professionally. And he hadn’t acknowledged her downstairs, when she’d left the press conference. She’d thought at the time that he was being discreet, disguising any association between them, but recognized there could be other reasons. What if he hadn’t meant what he said? That it had all been a come-on, to achieve a one night stand. Wasn’t that what Harriet and her Washington group did all the time, mouth the expected words and pleasantries to get each other into bed and have to strain the following morning to remember each other’s names? It would actually be better that way: easier to lock it away in her mind-lock it away and never ever turn the opening key-if they didn’t see each other again. It wasn’t so difficult alone in her hotel room (and fully dressed and out of bed) to make the resolve. That was definitely what she had to do. She had… The telephone shrilled and Janet snatched it up on the second ring.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I hoped it would be you,” said Janet. “All right, I guess.”
“I’m downstairs.”
“What took you so long to call?”
“Reasons,” he said, enigmatically. “There’s a lot of guys still hanging around. Photographers, too.”
“What the hell for?”
“In the trade it’s known as doorstepping,” he said. “It literally means what it says. You’re a running international story so they’ve got to stay on your doorstep to be ready if anything develops.”
“I want to see you.”
“I’ll come up: be ready to let me in the moment I knock.”
She was and immediately he thrust through the door Janet put her arms out to be held and he brought her close to him, soothing his hand through her hair, curious at her obvious need.
“I thought you said you were all right?”
“They attacked me at the conference,” protested Janet. “Why did they do that? It hasn’t happened before.”
“Only one or two,” Baxeter said. “The majority are still on your side.”
“Why the change at all?”
“Stories like yours, stories that keep going over a long period of time, develop a kind of cycle,” Baxeter tried to explain. “A person is built up into a hero-or in your case heroine-and for a long time everything goes their way. Then, at the slightest whiff of doubt, some change. Having created their pedestal, they start trying to knock it down and their hero with it.”
“That’s stupid!”
“That’s the way it is.” Baxeter smiled. “But it’s nothing for you to worry about. Like I said, it’s only one or two. It’ll all be OK after the full hearing.”
“Zarpas virtually told me it’s my word against theirs. He can’t find Haseeb, and the people at the cafe say they don’t know anything about it,” pointed out Janet.
“The evidence will be found,” promised Baxeter.
“You were a long time calling,” Janet said, again.
“I had something else to do after your conference.”
Janet had become to feel warm, protected once more, in his presence, but it was washed chillingly away by the tone of his voice. “What?” she said.
“My visa’s come through.”
“When are you going?” asked Janet, heavily.
“Tomorrow.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“We’ve been through that,” he reminded her. “We’ve been through it all.”
“If they’re watching downstairs I can’t stay away from here again tonight.”
“And I can’t stay all night here, either.”
They abandoned themselves to an afternoon of absolute love, unthinking, uncaring, unaware of anyone or anything but themselves and the cocoon of Janet’s room. Four times the telephone rang without her answering and once they held each other, laughing silently, as they tried to pick out a muffled conversation outside the repeatedly knocked-upon door. Minutes after the knocking ceased a note was pushed beneath the door but neither was sufficiently interested to get out of bed to see what it said.
The encroaching blackness of evening, the time he had to leave her, darkened their mood. And they were exhausted anyway by the lovemaking which had left them damp and physically aching.
“Can I say something?” asked Baxeter.
“What sort of question is that to ask me?”
“It’s been wonderful,” said the man. “But for one thing.”
“What?” she said, guessing that she knew.
“It was the same with both of us: the frenzy. It was like we were desperate; that it would never happen again.”
“Don’t: there’s no point!”
“It will.”
“I said ‘don’t.’”
“Last night you asked me not to say something else,” he remembered. “That I couldn’t tell you I loved you. Which I do.”
“Come back!” said Janet. “Please come back.”
“I will,” he said. “I know I will.”
“How can you know! ”
“I just know.”
Two hours earlier there would have been hilarity in the cautious way they checked the corridor before Baxeter left, but now there wasn’t. He did it mechanically, ducking back once because of a passing guest, and was then gone without any farewell. Janet stood directly inside the door, head pressed against the wood, and it was several moments before she moved away. The room was completely dark but she didn’t bother to switch on a light: didn’t bother to do anything. She just climbed back inside the wrecked bed and begged for sleep to come, to blot out everything. Which surprisingly it did, very quickly. She was conscious of stirring twice during the night but it was not abrupt wakefulness and she drifted off again.