The reviews were good, not as splendid as Richard Orleton had suggested they might be, but good enough to make Irene feel that she might yet have the freedom she craved. Combined with the drawing power of Peter Callfield’s name, they helped the box office to fill the theatre for several weeks in advance.
Helena went back for the Thursday matinée to test her interpretation of the play against her mother’s and emerged, blinking in the soft light of the warm September evening, certain that she had been right.
That gave her an unusual sense of confidence; not, she told herself, that she had proved a better judge than Miranda, but because her reading of the play suggested that the virulent war between Fin and Irene might not have been her fault after all. If the dissatisfaction that had made Irene so unhappy – and therefore so angry with Fin – had been caused by her loss of the world she had thought she wanted rather than by having to care for someone else’s child, then the grown-up version of that child might at last be able to shed her disabling sense of fault.
Standing on the pavement outside the theatre, hardly aware of the angry rush-hour crowds, the bored tourists, and the smelly traffic, Helena felt an aura of liberation. It was as though her whole body had expanded and yet become nearly weightless. She could move more easily than she had ever done; her lips curved into a smile; she breathed deeply and wanted to burst out singing. Letting the joy spring up through her, unknotting the tensions of years, she tried to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Eventually she had to get out her diary to see that she was due to meet an old friend for a drink before going home to change for dinner with Mike and one of his most important clients.
It was the first such occasion to which he had invited her, and she had been both pleased and alarmed to think that their relationship was about to move on to a more public phase. When she had tried to explain what she felt without sounding either obstructive or weedy, Mike had misunderstood her and assured her that she was unlikely to be bored, even though it was to be a business dinner, since the client concerned was an enormously civilized man with a particular interest in antiques.
‘In fact,’ Mike had said, ‘it was he who first interested me in collecting. You’ll like him, Helena. I’ve wanted you to meet him for some time, not least because it’s possible that he might be able to put some work your way. Asking you to come too isn’t pure selfishness on my part. He could do you some good. If you got on well he could bring in more and distinctly richer clients than the old faithfuls like Katharine Lidstone.’
I’m sure it’s not selfishness, thought Helena as she caught a bus back to Clerkenwell, but even if it were, it wouldn’t matter. Not now. Nothing matters now. All the same, it would be nice if the important, antique-collecting client decided to cancel so that Mike and I could have an evening on our own.
When she got home and saw that there were two messages waiting for her, she wondered whether the force of her wish might have reached the client and made him back out of the arrangement. Laughing at her mixture of sentimentality and superstition, she pressed the ‘play’button on the machine.
‘It’s Irene here,’ came her stepmother’s voice, more agitated than Helena had ever heard it. ‘Could you ring me, please? As soon as you get in. I need … ’Bye.’
There was a beep, a click and then the same voice: ‘Helena, where are you? Have you heard? Please, please ring me as soon as you possibly can. Please. Oh, where are you? Sorry, but do ring when you can. Please.’
Without waiting for anything else, Helena pressed the automatic dialling button for Irene’s number. She must have been sitting beside the telephone for she answered immediately, reciting her number in the same breathless, shaking voice in which she had left the messages. Helena thought that there was something else in the sound as well, a wariness that suggested Irene of all people might be afraid.
‘Irene? It’s me, Helena. What’s happened?’
‘Oh God! Helena, it’s too horrible. I can’t … It’s Ivo.’
The last of the joy in Helena was expelled by a sudden, ferocious griping in her stomach. ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘He’s been arrested.’
Helena sat heavily down on the floor, where she hugged her ribs with her free hand and pressed the telephone receiver to her ear so hard that it hurt.
It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be, she said to herself. What have I done? Ivo hasn’t done anything. I was wrong; I know I was; it was just one of my panics; there wasn’t anything for the police to find. There can’t have been. Ivo? He couldn’t really have been doing it. Does Irene know it was me? Does Ivo? What will happen to us all now?
‘Why?’ she whispered at last as she dammed the torrent of anxieties. ‘What do they think he’s done?’
‘They say he’s been making Ecstasy,’ said Irene, obviously holding on to her voice and her self control only with the greatest difficulty. ‘In that farmhouse in Oxfordshire where we thought he was the caretaker for some rich collector of whatever it was.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Helena’s arms had relaxed and her voice came more easily.
Ecstasy? she thought. It’s absurd. Ivo’s always despised drugs and drug-takers. Anyway, he wouldn’t be so stupid.
She pushed her left hand through her hair and then bit the thumbnail.
‘How do they know?’ she asked aloud. ‘I mean, what evidence have they got?’
‘I don’t know,’ Irene wailed. ‘Fin’s got the best possible solicitor to Ivo and he’s being interviewed now. I don’t know any more than that. We’re waiting. I had to talk to someone. Helena …’
‘Has he been charged?’
‘Yes: with manufacturing and supplying a Class A controlled substance.’
‘But how could he have done anything like that? Ivo of all people. I can’t believe it. I really can’t.’
‘They say … Fin said it’s not all that difficult for a chemist to make it. I …’
‘But Ivo? Surely not.’ The mixture of guilt, fear and a shocking kind of excitement, which disgusted her, was making Helena’s head buzz and feel dangerously unstable on her neck. ‘What … ? I mean, how is Fin … ? Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Shall I come round? Would that help?’
‘Can you? Fin’s had to be in court today; a drugs case, too, which must be hell for him. He said he’d go to the police station as soon as he could to wait until they let Ivo out on bail and bring him back here.’
‘Will they?’
‘They must. He’s not the sort who’ll do any of the things that mean you can’t get bail. They must see that. The solicitor will get them to see it. Fin will bring him back here, but, then … Oh, God! Helena, do you suppose it could possibly be true? And if it is, what’ll happen to him?’
‘I’ve no idea. It seems impossible. Who’s with you? Where’s Jane?’
‘She went back yesterday, before it all happened. There isn’t anyone here. I’m waiting for Fin to bring Ivo back.’
‘But term hasn’t started yet, has it?’ Helena knew that Jane’s whereabouts were not relevant to any of the thoughts or feelings that must have been driving Irene at that moment but she had to keep talking in order to stop herself blurting out her own part in Ivo’s disaster.
‘No, but she thought she’d go anyway. There were things she needed from the library that she couldn’t get hold of anywhere in London.’
‘Oh, I see. Right. Well, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Helena took a couple of minutes to ring Mike, whose secretary said that he was in a meeting.
‘Damn! Could you please tell him that I won’t be able to come to the dinner tonight?’ said Helena. ‘Tell him I’m really sorry, but there’s a family crisis and I have to go to my stepmother’s now. I’ll ring him when I can, as soon as I can. Will you tell him that I’m seriously sorry, but that I can’t help it?’
‘Certainly.’
Banging down the receiver, Helena reactivated the burglar alarm, locked the house behind her and ran to her van. She could not think of anything but Irene, Ivo and what might happen to them all as she drove to Knightsbridge. Later she assumed that she must have stopped at red lights and used her brakes and indicator and steering wheel at all the right moments, but she was not conscious of any of them at the time.
She let herself into the house in Herbert Crescent and stood for a moment in silence. The hall seemed even darker than usual, and for once it was quite flowerless. She called Irene’s name, had no answer and started opening doors to look for her. There was no-one in the kitchen, the dining room or the drawing room.
Pushing open the door of Irene’s study last, Helena saw her sitting in the swivel chair in front of her desk. She was very pale and her whole body shook. Her eyes stared intently at Helena and it took her a moment to realize that Irene had not even registered her presence.
‘Hello,’ she said gently.
Irene started and then smiled. She looked dreadful, still wearing the scarlet and black dressing gown she must have put on when the telephone rang at half past six that morning. It was flapping open over a heavily creased white nightgown, on which she had spilled coffee. Her hair had been pinned up earlier in the day, but half of it had come out of the pins. Helena thought that she looked as though she ought to be dancing in the mad scene in Giselle or wandering across a stage as the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth.
‘Fin rang,’ Irene said in a voice that sounded almost lifeless. ‘They’ve got some real evidence.’
‘They can’t have.’ All Helena’s fears of what Ivo might or might not have been involved with rushed back to taunt her. ‘What sort of evidence?’
‘Things they found in the farmhouse.’
‘But the house is someone else’s,’ protested Helena, forgetting for a moment that it was not.
When she did remember, she realized at last how Ivo had been able to afford it. She wondered how much Miranda had really known of his activities, and whether that first piece of information had been designed to lead to precisely what had happened. Helena shuddered as she considered the possibility that Miranda might have orchestrated the whole drama as revenge against Irene. It was difficult to believe that anyone could have been so cruelly manipulative, but it would be stupid to pretend that it was impossible.
‘Mightn’t he just have been an accessory?’ she asked hopefully.
Irene shook her head. More of her hair came out of its pins. She laid her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. Helena had never seen Irene cry before and did not know how to deal with it. She put her right hand on Irene’s back and felt her flinch.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, taking her hand away.
At that Irene looked up. Her face was streaked with tears and remnants of the previous day’s mascara.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Irene, trying to smile at her. ‘There are a lot of people who may have to take some of the guilt for this, but you’re not one of them.’
Helena waited, unable to say anything. She had never found it hard to blame herself for any disaster that struck the people she loved, and the memory of her call to Crimestoppers made it even easier than usual.
‘I just can’t work out where it was we went so dreadfully wrong,’ said Irene after a while. ‘Should I have let Fin smack him whenever he wanted to? Was it the way we argued when he was growing up? Did we discipline him too much or too little? Was it the money I used to send him secretly when he was at school? Or the way Fin always tried to keep him poor? What was it?’
‘Irene.’ Helena tried to sound sensible and as though she might know the answers to some of the questions. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. Ivo’s twenty-three. He’s left home. He makes his own choices. You can’t take responsibility for what he does a hundred miles away. You mustn’t. You get let off responsibility for your children when they reach adulthood.’
‘I thought I knew him.’ Irene blinked and then sniffed. ‘I thought he loved me. But I can’t have known anything about him at all.’
‘You sound as though you’re sure he did it,’ said Helena. ‘The police do make mistakes, you know. Perhaps Ivo was only a front for someone else.’
‘Even if he was, he’ll be sent down for it. The courts are savage with everyone when it comes to Ecstasy. He’s bound to have to do time.’
‘I suppose so, but presumably it’ll be somewhere like Ford. Surely Ivo’s just the sort of person who goes there rather than one of the grim Victorian horrors.’
‘Not straight away,’ said Irene. There was unmistakable fear in her huge dark eyes. ‘They nearly always send them to one of the tough places first to give them a shock. Even if he gets to Ford later, how will he bear it? He’s so young, so …’
Helena sat down on the small sofa that stood against the wall next to Irene’s desk and turned the swivel chair so that Irene was facing her.
‘Listen. Ivo is tough. We’ve always known that. And incredibly charming. He’ll make them all like him wherever he is and whoever they are. It’s one of the things he’s always been able to do. And it’s not as though he’ll go down for one of the really dangerous things. I mean he won’t have to be a Rule 22 prisoner or whatever it’s called. He hasn’t killed a child or raped them or anything. He’ll probably be a bit of a hero. You mustn’t have nightmares about what’ll happen to him. No-one’s going to beat Ivo up, or … or do anything like that. He’ll make the screws like him and at the same time persuade the other inmates that he’s the most rebellious, most powerful one among them all; just as he did at school.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes, he did. Look, Irene, try not to worry so much. What was it that writer said? I can’t even remember who it was, but something about prison being not much worse than a second-rate public school.’
Helena tried to laugh, but her own imagination was showing her all sorts of pictures of what might happen to Ivo in prison. Most of them were born of fiction she had read and television films she had seen, but they were none the less awful for that.
‘No. But what will he do for the rest of his life? With something like that hanging over him?’ Irene sobbed once and mopped her eyes on the hem of her nightgown. ‘He’s only twenty-three. Helena, I can’t bear it. He’s thrown his life away, just like I … I wanted him to have everything, but he’s thrown it away.’
‘I know.’ Helena took her hand and tried to think of something comforting to say, but there was nothing.
Irene held her hand, sniffing and blinking away the tears that kept on filling her eyes and seeping down over her cheekbones. ‘Sorry. I know it must be awful for you, too.’
‘And Fin and Jane,’ said Helena as a way of controlling her ludicrous, destructive urge to confess to Irene that it was she who had made the police search Ivo’s farmhouse. She knew that it was only self-indulgence that was urging her to speak; her confession would do no good whatever to Irene and would take away a lot that she valued. There would be no possibility of forgiveness, and the only reason to confess would be in order to be forgiven.
‘Jane.’ Irene sounded so harsh that Helena shuddered. ‘D’you know? When I rang to tell her what had happened she didn’t ask any questions or sympathize with him or anything like that. She just said: “Now perhaps you’ll listen to me sometimes and see that I might have some value too. All my life I’ve had perfect Ivo dinned into me. Now perhaps you’ll have the grace to admit that he’s not perfect.” At least, I think it was something like that.’
‘Poor Jane,’ said Helena, jerked away from her guilt for a moment.
Irene looked at her and drew back, letting her hand go. There was hostility in her eyes, even dislike.
‘What did you say to her?’ Helena asked quickly, needing to re-establish friendly contact as soon as possible.
‘Nothing. I couldn’t. She banged the telephone down before I could say anything.’
‘But you do see what she means, don’t you?’ Screwing up her courage, Helena made herself add: ‘Irene, she has got a point, hasn’t she? I mean, if Ivo really has done this?’
‘So you resented him, too, did you? I must say, you hid it a great deal better than she did.’ Irene’s voice was quiet but still very cold.
‘No,’ said Helena, feeling as though she were biting down hard onto a holed tooth. ‘I have never resented Ivo. I’ve always loved him; you must know that. But didn’t we all ignore Jane except when she was being difficult and then tell her off? That’s my memory of it all.’
‘But she was difficult,’ wailed Irene, forgetting all the insights she had had into Jane’s state of mind on the morning of the play. ‘And Ivo was always so nice, so helpful, such fun. Of course we … Oh, what does any of it matter now?’
‘And such a liar, too, perhaps?’ said Helena, recognizing Irene’s attempts to justify her anger with Jane.
She did not know what to say or do to help. Eventually she made some tea for them both and tried to talk about the good parts of the past, about the things Ivo had said and done throughout his life that were undeniably kind, but none of it helped. In the end, recognizing that there was nothing she could do for Irene, she decided to do something for herself.
‘Do you know why the police ever came to suspect Ivo in the first place?’
‘All we know is that they received information. Fin said that’s not surprising. One of the bigger operators probably wanted him out of the way and put the police on to him.’
Well, that’s something, said Helena to herself. At least they’re not going to try to find out who did it. As though the reassurance made her think more clearly she began to feel anger instead of guilt. She might have given in to panic, but Ivo had broken the law. For once he was the one who ought to carry the blame, not her.
‘They may have been watching him for ages. In fact,’ Irene paused, looking both surprised and ashamed. ‘In fact it could have been his name on some list or other that alerted the Customs officer’s attention when I flew back from Amsterdam.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? When Richard and I came back from our trip last May, we were stopped and searched for drugs. He was furious at first, although I thought it was reasonable. And then I was furious when he told me that he did sometimes use marijuana. You see, I assumed it was his fault we were searched. But perhaps it happened because they were already suspicious of Ivo and his name was on some list. After all my air ticket was in the name of I. Webton. Oh, hell!’
Helena could not think of any way to comfort her. At half past eight they both heard the sound of a key in the front door and then Fin’s voice, so stern that no-one who had not known him extremely well would have discerned the unhappiness in it: ‘Go to your mother.’ There was the sound of Ivo’s voice, the words undistinguishable, and then Fin spoke again: ‘Go and see her and then you may go upstairs.’
Helena got up at once. ‘Look, Irene, I’ll get out of the way.’
She brushed past Ivo as she left the study, but she would not look at him.
‘Helena, my dear, how good of you to come,’ said Fin, almost smiling at her as he put his briefcase down on the hall chest where the rugs were kept. ‘I might have known you would. You’ve always been a good girl.’
He looked towards the study door, which Ivo had firmly closed, and led the way into the kitchen. He emptied the stale water from the kettle, refilled it and switched it on.
‘How did Irene seem to you?’ he asked, not looking at Helena.
‘Worried,’ she said, sitting down on one of the old-fashioned, plastic-seated Festival of Britain chairs that she had always hated. ‘And angry, I think, and ashamed, and all the things you might expect. What about you?’
Fin turned and leaned against the worktop. He looked older, and the skin of his chin and neck seemed even dryer and more folded in on itself than usual. Helena felt sorry for him, but she did not know how to comfort him. He had never asked for her help or responded to any overture she had ever made. She realised that she did not know him at all.
‘I’m not sure that I know,’ he said at last.
‘What?’ Helena had not meant to sound so irritable and shook her head. ‘Sorry. Do you think he did do it?’
‘Oh, yes, he did it all right,’ said Fin grimly, looking much less pathetic. Helena began to feel just a little sorry for Ivo.
‘You sound angry with him.’
‘Of course I’m angry,’ said Fin, sounding quite as irritable as Helena had been. ‘And all the other things you ascribed to Irene. I’m so angry that I can hardly see, but until I can understand why he did it I can’t tell which of all my feelings is legitimate.’
‘And you feel only legitimate emotions, do you?’ she asked, staring at him. ‘Lucky you.’
‘What? No, of course not. Don’t be silly.’
There’s no need to sound so impatient, she thought, loathing the way he had once more cast her in the role of the unsympathetic child, the one who could not be bothered even to try to understand what he meant, or do what he wanted, the one in the way, the one who caused all the trouble; the one he disliked.
‘And you, Helena: what are you feeling?’
She shrugged and tried to shrug off the sullenness, too. It would not help and it made her feel exactly like the useless child he had always thought she was.
‘Rage, fear, sympathy, and …’
‘And what?’
Unable to confess to excitement, she let her eyelids close in order to hide her thoughts. She heard Fin move and when she looked again saw that he was methodically making a pot of tea in the way he had been taught nearly sixty years earlier.
‘My mother always said that tea is the only thing to drink in a crisis,’ he said, sounding at his most conversational. ‘She was probably right. Milk? I can’t remember.’
‘Yes, please, but no sugar or anything.’
He put a mug in front of her and poured tea into it before pushing a milk bottle across the table towards her.
‘Some of Jane’s satisfaction perhaps?’ he asked. When Helena kept silent, he added really quite gently: ‘It wouldn’t be surprising, you know. You must have been very jealous of Ivo when he came to displace you.’
She shook her head, and drank. The steam from the tea condensed on her eyes and made them water.
‘Miranda says …’
‘Says what?’ Helena demanded angrily. ‘You mean you’ve been to see her today of all days?’
‘She’s appearing in one of the courts at the Old Bailey,’ he said stiffly. ‘When she heard what had happened she sent me a note.’
‘And then you saw her,’ said Helena, outraged at the thought of Irene alone in Herbert Crescent while Fin sought solace from Miranda.
‘Sometimes I need support, too, you know,’ he said mildly enough. ‘I know that all your loyalty has always been given to your stepmother, but your mother and I …’ He shook his head as though his hair were full of water.
‘Is it so surprising when Irene is the only one who’s ever really cared what happens to me?’
Fin looked shocked, then hurt, but he did not answer.
‘I owe her everything. Even you must see that.’
He nodded, but it was not enough for Helena. All she could think of to do for Irene just then was make Fin admit how important she was so that he might treat her properly at last.
‘He says he did it for money. Just for money and for pleasure.’
Fin and Helena both turned to see Irene standing in the doorway, looking more than ever like the mad tragic heroine of an opera or a ballet.
‘He isn’t even ashamed of it, just furious with whoever it was who turned the police on him. I don’t know him any more. There is nothing in him that I recognize at all. And then I look at him and he’s just Ivo. I …’
To Helena’s astonishment, Fin got stiffly to his feet and took Irene in his arms, cradling her against him, stroking her untidy hair. She was as tall as he and much bulkier and yet he seemed the acme of protectiveness.
‘Oh, Fin, I don’t think I can bear it.’
‘Come upstairs, my darling love,’ said Fin, swinging round so that he could urge her forward with one arm behind her back, the other smoothing the hair away from her messy, tear-stained face. Neither of them looked back.
Helena sat at the kitchen table, thinking to herself: he loves her; he actually loves her after all. And she him. Why have they baited each other all these years?
Finding no answer to her own question, still reeling from the astonishing revelation of their affection, Helena sat waiting for someone to appear and tell her to stay or go. She could not think what to do and it did not seem possible to slink off home and leave them all to their distress. She had always looked after them all; she could not just go.
The sun set and the room grew greyer and greyer but she made no move to switch on the lights. The tea in the mug between her hands was quite cold when she saw the kitchen door move at last. She had heard no-one on the stairs.
The door opened more widely and she saw Ivo peering round it. He looked put out to see her there.
‘I thought you’d gone. Where are the parents?’
‘Upstairs. I haven’t gone home because it didn’t seem quite the right thing to do in such a crisis. Are you hungry? I’m sure there’s something you could have. Shall I have a look?’
He laughed and switched on the lights, making Helena blink in their brightness.
‘Yes, but, criminal though I apparently am, I’m not incapable of opening a tin of beans.’
He moved to the larder, took out a can, found the tin opener and a saucepan. Helena watched as he made himself four pieces of toast, spread them thickly with butter, emptied the heated beans onto two of them and brought the plateful to the kitchen table, where he proceeded to eat.
‘It doesn’t seem to have affected your appetite,’ she said eventually.
He looked up in surprise and then smiled. She saw what Irene had meant. He did look exactly the same as he had always done, with the same affection shining out of his dark eyes.
‘Oh yes it has. It’s made me a lot hungrier than usual. I’d have been down here sooner if I hadn’t wanted to make sure the parents were out of the way first. There’s nothing to say and I can’t take all these questions. Why, why, why? On and on. I’m sick of it.’
‘Are there any answers?’
‘Plenty.’
Helena wanted to ask him all sorts of things, but she was not sure he would have replied to any of them.
‘How long has it been going on?’ she said at last.
He shook his head. ‘Don’t you start, Hella, please. I’ve been fielding questions all day. I don’t want to talk about it and you don’t want to hear. Believe me. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about Mike. Jane seems to like him and so does my mother.’
‘I’m not sure there’s anything to tell,’ Helena said, deciding that she did not want to share anything about Mike with Ivo any longer. ‘I was supposed to be dining with him tonight, but …’
‘You were summoned to deal with the fallout, were you? Sorry about that.’ He scraped up the last of the tomato sauce on his plate, put his knife and fork together tidily and said: ‘I’m knackered. I’m going to bed.’
She put out a hand to stop him leaving. He took it between both of his for a moment.
‘You’re all sweaty,’ he said. ‘You’re not afraid of me, are you?’
‘Of you? No.’
‘You don’t need to be scared for me either.’ He bent down and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll do all right, you know. I’m a survivor.’
‘Before you go, Ivo, tell me one thing.’
‘If I must.’
‘The desk. Where did it come from?’
‘I told you,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘From my banking friend who decided it didn’t fit with his modern Italian furniture.’
She shrugged. ‘You mean the story was true?’
‘Yes. Of course. Well, in essentials.’
‘Ah. Only in essentials. I see. Which bit wasn’t essential, then?’
Ivo smiled in a mixture of amusement, pity and mischief. ‘The bank manager. True to all my father’s precepts, I’ve never borrowed any money in my life. My trouble these last two years has been disposing of the bloody stuff, not acquiring it. The desk was amazingly expensive, but still a relatively good deal, I think.’
‘Was it the one that had been stolen, the one I saw written up in Find?’
‘I’ve no idea. All I know is that my mate George bought it at auction about four months before I took it off his hands. He made a tidy profit out of me, but that’s fair enough. I was planning to flog it for even more once you’d tarted it up.’
‘Oh, I see. So the aunt who bequeathed it to him wasn’t one of the essentials of the story either?’
‘No. Is that it or is there anything else you can’t stop yourself asking?’
‘There is one other thing,’ said Helena slowly. ‘I’ve been wondering whether you ever worried at all about the people who took your drugs.’
Ivo shrugged. ‘Why should I? Do car manufacturers worry about the fools who drive so badly that they kill each other? No, of course they don’t. The market’s supposed to rule all our lives these days. Well, there’s a market for what I produced and I satisfied it. The fact that it’s made up of idiots who’ll cheerfully risk their lives for a few hours of excitement or whatever it is they think E will give them isn’t my problem.’
‘But it’s against the law.’
‘So?’
‘Don’t you think that’s important?’
‘Of course not.’ He laughed. ‘As you know perfectly well, I’ve never shared your terror of breaking rules. And I needed the money.’
‘I don’t believe you care as little as that,’ said Helena. ‘I can’t.’ Ivo shrugged again and then laid his hand flat against his neck. ‘Too bad. I’m off. I’ve had it up to here with questions. ’Night.’
When he had left her, Helena stopped trying to make sense of any of it. She patiently cleaned up after him, as she had always done, tidying away the evidence of his supper. Then she tore a piece of paper off the roll Irene kept for shopping lists and wrote a short note to explain why she had gone and that she would be available at any time of the day or night if Irene should need her.