His voice came across vast stretches of space. "Why?"
"She couldn't compete with a saint, Simon, so she became a sinner..."
She lurched out of sleep with a sickening jolt and opened her eyes on Alan Protheroe. He was bending over her, and Jinx's immediate thought was that he must be Simon, until relieved recognition told her it wasn't. She looked around rather vaguely. "I was smoking a cigarette."
He pointed to the butt in the ashtray. "I put it out."
"I had a visitor."
"I know. Father Simon Harris. I gave him his marching orders. I was afraid he'd upset you."
"He wouldn't dare," she said with a twisted smile. "He's an Anglo-Catholic priest."
"And Meg's brother," he said, taking the other chair. "Do you like him, Jinx?"
She could feel the inevitable sweat drenching her back again. "He's a sanctimonious prig like his father and mother, and he made his sister into a whore." Her face turned towards this huge, amiable man who was doing his best to care for her, and she felt an incredible urge to reach out and touch him. She wanted to curl up in his lap, feel his arms about her, shelter childlike inside the protection of his strong embrace. Instead, she withdrew to the other corner of her chair and wrapped her thin arms about her chest. "I'm not sure why I said that."
"Because you're angrier with her than you think you are."
"Simon came to apologize."
"For his sister's behavior?"
"I suppose so." She fell silent.
"Is he older or younger than she is?"
"He's a year younger."
"Does Meg look like him?"
"Not really. She's very beautiful."
"Do you like her, Jinx?"
"Yes."
He nodded. "You were dreaming just now, and they didn't look like very happy dreams. Do you want to tell me about them?"
She didn't-couldn't?-answer. Even after ten years, the wound was still raw and she shrank instinctively from anything that might reopen it. Yet there was an extraordinary need within her to convince someone-anyone-of how little Leo had really mattered to her. Do you like her? Yes. Yes. YES. But why did it hurt so much to say it?
"I was dreaming about a man I knew," she said abruptly. "He was beaten to death ten years ago, and I was the one who found him. He had an art gallery in Chelsea. The police think he disturbed some burglars, because the place had been ransacked and several of the paintings stolen. We were supposed to be having dinner but he never turned up, so I went to the gallery to find him. There was blood everywhere. I found him in the storeroom at the back, but I didn't recognize him..." Her voice faltered and she held her fingers to her lips. "He was still alive, but he couldn't say anything because his jaw had been smashed. So he tried to use his eyes to talk to me, but ... I ... couldn't understand what he wanted." She lived the terrible scene again in her mind, her shock, her revulsion, her inadequacy in the face of the bludgeoned bleeding mask that had once been Russell. "And there was nothing I could do except call an ambulance, and watch him die ... I watched him die." She fell silent. Had Russell been in a trap, too?
Protheroe didn't press her to go on. He was content to let her tell the story at her own speed, realizing perhaps that because it was so rarely told it was bound to lack fluency.
"I had nightmares about it for ages, so Adam packed me off to a hypnotherapist. But that just made everything worse. The man was a quack. He encouraged me to confront what disturbed me most about the incident and then put it into perspective, but all he actually succeeded in doing was exacerbating every feeling of guilt I had." She fell silent again, and this time her face took on an introspective look, as if she were revisiting rooms long closed.
Protheroe was more interested in what she hadn't said than what she had. He knew the details of the story already, both from what her father had told him over the phone and from reading the notes made by her psychiatrist. Why hadn't she mentioned, for example, that she and Russell Landy had been married? Or that the murder of her husband had caused her to miscarry at thirteen weeks? Why did she talk about being referred to a hypnotherapist when she had, in fact, been admitted to hospital in a state of near starvation, weighing under six stone, and with very severe depression? He ran his thumb down his jawline and pondered this last thought. She had referred to the therapist as "he," yet the notes he had in his office were written by a woman.
He waited for another minute or two, then prompted her gently when it became clear she was lost in self-absorption. "Did the psychiatrist at Queen Mary's Hospital help you at all, Jinx?"
"You mean the second one, Stephanie Fellowes?"
"Yes."
She seemed to find her position uncomfortable and unlocked her arms to reach for the inevitable cigarette. "When am I going to be allowed outside?" she demanded suddenly, flicking the lighter to the tip and eyeing him through the smoke.
"The sooner the better. We could go now if you like. I've a pretty good arm for leaning on and we can find ourselves a bench away from the madding crowd."
She smiled faintly. "No, thank you. I'll wait till I can manage it alone." She nodded towards her bathroom door. "I've been to the loo a couple of times and had to crawl most of the way, so I'll practice in private for a bit. I'm not particularly keen to have you laugh at me."
"Why would I want to do that?"
She shrugged. "Not in front of me, perhaps, but I'm sure you could work it up into a good story for the golf club." She mimicked his lower register. " 'I say, chaps, have I told you the one about my pet hysteric who drove her car at a concrete pillar, survived by a miracle, then fell flat on her face when she tried to stand up?' "
"Do you always ascribe such base motives to the people who care for you?"
"Stephanie Fellowes certainly thought so." But then I didn't trust her. She blew smoke rings into the air. "You see, I'm not a willing guinea pig. I'd rather live with all my fears, depressions, and obsessions than have clumsy people in hobnailed boots trampling about in my head." She smiled without hostility. "I presume she or my father has told you that I became so depressed I was starving myself?" She looked at him inquiringly and he nodded. "Which one, as a matter of interest? Stephanie or Adam?"
He showed no hesitation about answering. "Both. Stephanie sent me a copy of the notes she took at the time. Your father told me when you first came here."
"Have you met him?"
"No. We spoke on the telephone."
She nodded. "That's how he does business. Technology, particularly the impersonal fax, was invented for Adam. He knows how intimidating it is to deal with someone you never meet. I'd keep it that way if I were you."
"Why?"
"No particular reason."
"He seemed pleasant enough, and he's very concerned for you."
She smiled to herself, and he wondered if she realized how provocative that smile was. As a character she was fascinating to him. She was determined to wean him away from her father-but in the most subtle of fashions-through innuendo rather than fact, sympathy rather than honesty. And he knew he wasn't immune. There was something infinitely appealing about the combination of incisive intellect and physical weakness. Particularly for him, although she couldn't know that.
"So concerned that he hasn't been near me," she pointed out.
"Then phone him and find out why not," he suggested.
She shook her head. "Adam and I never ask each other personal questions. Dr. Protheroe."
"Yet you always call him Adam. I assumed that meant you saw each other as equals."
But that was clearly something she didn't want to discuss. "We were talking about my alleged depression," she said abruptly. '' 'Alleged' being the operative word."
He abandoned the subject. "You wanted to know whether it was Stephanie or Adam who told me you became so depressed that you were starving yourself," he reminded her, "and I said they both had. Shall we go on from there?"