‘I had someone break into the house and take them,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not mad at me.’
‘Mad at you?’ The truth was I didn’t know what I felt about it. ‘Why? If you’d asked, I would have given you your letters.’
‘I know you would’ve. Now that I’ve met you, I’m just so sorry about everything. But you must see that not everybody is as nice as you are. I had a lot to lose.’
‘So Mr Delamitri has no idea about you and my uncle?’
‘Mr O’Brien,’ she said. ‘Delamitri is my maiden name. And no, he doesn’t.’
I said nothing. I was befuddled.
‘I came to apologise,’ said Mrs Delamitri. ‘These things can be very upsetting. Believe me, I know. The last thing in the world I wanted was for you to feel unsafe in your home. I hope this will put your mind at rest.’
‘So what did you do? You just looked under “Burglar” in the Yellow Pages and someone broke down my door?’
‘It’s not quite that simple, but if you have money, most things can be arranged.’
‘What if I’d interrupted these guys?’
‘These men are professionals, Damien. They wouldn’t have harmed you in any way.’
‘Well, while they were getting your letters, they also took the opportunity to steal my money, and passports, and my air ticket out of here.’ I was counting out my losses loudly on my fingers and she tried to silence me with a discreet Shush. ‘Did you pay them to do that or was it freelance work?’
‘That was unavoidable. Tug — one of the …’
‘Thieves?’ I suggested.
‘He said we had to make it look like a random break-in. It took them almost an hour to find anything a random burglar would be interested in.’
‘Well, I’m relieved he’s happy.’
She took my hand. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’
I wanted to tell her that her simpering little-girl routine might have worked on Patrick, but she was old enough to be my mother. I sulked for a while, enjoying the view and going over the sequence of events in my brain. Mrs Delamitri fiddled with her handbag. ‘Here,’ she said. When I looked over at her, there was a cheque for five thousand dollars folded in half by my wineglass.
‘I can’t accept that,’ I told her.
‘Damien, don’t be proud. I want to make amends. You have every right to be angry with me. I don’t want anyone else to be the victim of my selfishness.’
As the afternoon had gone on, I noticed Mrs Delamitri’s accent meandering between Boston’s North End and somewhere in the Cotswolds. The idea that Mr O’Brien and I were victims of her selfishness seemed part of the same aspirational self-deception: that she was the star-crossed lover of a famous writer.
‘Believe me,’ she added tartly, ‘I spent quite a bit more than that having your house broken into.’
‘You know what’s strange, though,’ I said. ‘I could have sworn those files were on Patrick’s desk when I went to the house after the funeral.’
She looked very sneaky for a moment. ‘How many times in your life have you done something really foolish, Damien?’
‘Probably not as often as I ought to,’ I said.
‘You have to put yourself in my position. I was distraught. I was in a hurting place.’
‘You were composed enough to organise a fairly efficient burglary.’
‘Not the first time.’
‘The first time?’
‘Janine and I came with a ladder. It was her idea. I’m — I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying I’m not proud of what I’ve done.’
‘You burgled the house twice?’
‘I had no idea where the letters were. We took the boxes because they were the first thing we could find. Then Janine decided she wanted the skull.’
‘She just took a shine to it?’
‘I told her to leave it behind. It was Patrick’s. All I wanted was what belonged to me. But Janine’s like that. She’s creative.’ Mrs Delamitri made it sound like a medical condition — like diabetes. ‘Once she gets an idea in her head, she just runs with it. Well, we argued about it. I told her it would be terrible feng shui — I mean, it’s basically the head of a dead person. Can you imagine? Then I was sure I heard someone coming. We rushed out. Janine took the skull and sprained her ankle on the way down. I had to carry her to the car. I warned her about the skull’
I had a mental image of Janine and Mrs Delamitri struggling up and down the ladder in shoulder pads and high-heel shoes. Or possibly, Mrs Delamitri would have bought a special outfit for cat burglary — a one-piece black number with a matching mask by Donna Karan.
When the waiter brought the bill over, Mrs Delamitri slipped him a credit card made out of some rare metal — titanium or zinc or something.
‘But the letters weren’t in the boxes, so you had to hire professionals to do the job properly,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, Damien.’
‘What had you stolen, the first time?’
‘I really don’t know. I mean — I have an idea that there’s some bills and stuff. This probably sounds silly after everything I said, but I wanted to respect his privacy.’
Far out to sea, a three-masted yacht was under sail and carving a chevron into the deep blue water.
‘What will you do now?’ she asked.
‘Go back and have a swim,’ I said.
‘I meant more generally.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, and for the first time, my uncertainty seemed like a virtue. I knew that I would leave the island as soon as the cheque cleared. I wanted to go somewhere where I could have a life of my own, but where or what that might be, I couldn’t say.
*
She talked about Patrick on the drive back. ‘I saw him last year about this time.’
‘Did you stay at the house?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t spend the night with him. Not in the same bed. He had terrible dreams. I used to hear him crying out and I’d want to go to him. But I always stopped myself.’
‘Was he on medication?’
‘Two or three kinds. For the depression and the mood swings. He could just about keep it together living the way he did.’
‘Yeah, seeing people in homoeopathically small doses.’
‘I loved him, you know,’ she said. ‘But there was always this feeling that he’d done something awful. I kind of felt bad for thinking it about him …’
We talked about funny things Patrick had said or done. I recounted Patrick’s description of the fungus on the saucepan of soup that had been sitting on Edgar Huvas’s stove for three days. ‘It looked like an echidna!’ ‘What’s an echidna?’ I had asked. ‘It’s a species of anteater. Green, and hairy, and, I might add, inedible.’
Mrs Delamitri pressed a button and the top of the car folded up in a slow, creaky way like an old woman settling into a chair. I closed my eyes against the sudden sunlight and drifted off into a pleasant alcoholic reverie.
The clocks in the house were striking five in a dishevelled chorus of bongs and plinks. Nathan had gone home and left a note inside the front door saying he would be back to finish off in the morning.
I grabbed a couple of towels and we went down to the beach. I swam lazily in the cold water, while Mrs Delamitri took off her shoes and paddled along the shoreline.
Afterwards, we sat on the towels and I smoked one of her cigarettes.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘For what?’
‘For lunch, for the money. For bothering to tell me the truth.’
‘Oh … Don’t mention it.’ She smiled, but I thought she looked a little sad.