Thursday, 11:45
The Velmont Hotel stood like a palace over the Tyne, great yellow blocks of stone stacked in a rising pyramid of arched windows. Jo felt a wave of nausea as they walked through the opulent lobby; the environment was perfect, but she had never been less correctly dressed for a venue in her life. Thank God for Chen, who sashayed in all silver and cinnabar—a lure for those who would otherwise be staring at the neurodivergent misfit in jeans and T-shirt. At least Gwilym had a waistcoat on.
“The restaurant occupies the top floor,” Chen explained, still leading the charge. “You can see the whole city.”
“Part of it is open—part under a solarium,” Arthur said as they climbed into the lift. “We watched the rain fall from a table there. Number 24. We requested it whenever we came back.”
Jo pursed her lips. Memory was a curious puzzle box; whole years might be shoved together under a generic cover. Just a four-cornered brick of a thing, uninteresting until the trigger was located, the mechanism sprung. Arthur had been pulling out little treasures, surprising himself that he remembered, shocked that he had ever forgotten. Jo understood. Everything in her own head worked that way; the difference, she supposed, was that she knew it—and could find her way back to almost anything. People laughed about Sherlock’s mind-palace, but it was a real strategy, first described in a case about Russian reporter Solomon Shereshevsky in 1968. Events, memories, words had color and taste and form; he built those into structures inside his own head. Jo’s memory worked that way, too; for years she thought everyone else’s did. She was right, and wrong. The capability was there, but so was interference, the constant turbulent tide of emotion, and something Jo never counted on: the desire to unknow. Her mother forgot so much. She’d forgotten the times she hurt Jo, forgotten things that were unpleasant to remember. Jo kept them all, but she wondered now if that were a blessing . . . or not.
“Here we are, my lovelies,” Chen said as the doors opened to a rich purple interior. As promised, great colorful squares graced the walls—Chen’s modernist work.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Gwilym said, still escorting Chen, “how did you come to choose Augustus John for study when your styles are so different?”
“Are they different?” Chen asked. “Brush stroke and subject, yes. But I like to think mine are as psychological as his own.”
“John grew more expressionist as he ages, too,” Jo added.
Chen released herself from Gwilym with a laugh. “Artists change! A concept more than one admirer confuses.
“Jill! We haven’t lunched!” Jill turned out to be a robust woman of fifty and the daytime manager for Velmont’s signature restaurant. She cheek-kissed Chen and took her by the delicate fingers.
“How have you been? Would you like your usual table?”
“Not today, dear; I’ve brought friends. This is Jo Jones and Gwilym . . .” Failing his surname, she added, “Welshman. And I think you know Arthur?” Arthur had been lingering behind in the room’s foyer. When he joined them, Jill gave a little gasp of delight.
“My God, Arthur! It’s been years!”
“I know,” he said quietly. Chen took his arm.
“Table 24, I think,” she said.
* * *
People spoke about the view of Paris, sometimes of London, and often of New York—cityscapes that had been painted, photographed, framed and studied. Jo had never seen the Newcastle skyline among them, but looking out from the clear glass dome into a horizon of great stone and steel bridges, buildings and an honest-to-God castle couldn’t fail to impress. Then there was brunch, which included, among other things, caviar and crab cakes.
Arthur ordered a croque madame in honor of Aiden and ate it, misty-eyed. Mostly, Chen did the talking, her voice a gentle hum surrounding them with news of art and of the city. She made occasional clicks as she spoke, not a tic so much as moments of verbal affirmation. Jo began to rely on them, counting like a clock. She could happily listen to Chen all day, a background for a wondering mind. It was Arthur, finally, who broke the reverie.
“This has been a very unusual Thursday,” he said, smiling over his finished plate.
“A good one, I hope?” Gwilym asked. “Considering a bunch of strangers descended on you before breakfast.”
“Chen and I aren’t strangers,” Arthur said. “Or at least, we weren’t. Before.” He cleared his throat over the unsaid bit. “And I hope you and Jo aren’t strangers any longer.”
“Cheers to that.” Gwilym lifted champagne, and they toasted to grief and recovery.
“It all seems such an elaborate setup for a brunch, however,” Arthur said.
Jo had been thinking that, too. Maybe the table number had been a clue? Maybe one of Chen’s paintings? But no one else was looking for them and maybe—probably—there weren’t any more clues to find. She wriggled in her chair; sometimes, things simply ended. Sometimes.
But not this time.
Jill had returned with the bill, which Chen took upon herself. But Jill had also brought something with her.
“I had nearly forgotten about this,” she said. “Honestly, I might still if you hadn’t sat here.” She placed a paper take-away bag on the white linen—just in front of Arthur. “I had firm instructions, and I promised I would hold onto this until you came back to the restaurant,” she said. “Aiden said that you coming back here was the sign you’d be ready to open it, and no sooner. I didn’t think it would be five years. You’re lucky no one tried to resell it!”
MacAdams reached into the bag and produced a bottle of wine.
“A—a 1999 burgundy,” he said, his breath catching.
Jill placed a hand on his shoulder. “Aiden bought the last bottle we had. I was—we were all—so sorry to hear of his passing. There’s also an envelope.” She pointed to the bag and then retreated from an increasingly emotional Arthur. He’d pulled out a square envelope with trembling fingers.
“I—I can’t open it,” he said. “Jo?”
Jo took it in hand, another letter from Aiden, posthumous, awaiting fruition. She unsealed it with her butter knife and lifted out a folded piece of paper . . . and a tiny, flat key. It lay in her hand; nothing special, no marks. Too small to be a door key.
“What’s it say?” Gwilym begged.
Jo pursed her lips. “It says, ‘Go get an ice cream, and this time you pay.’”
Finding an ice cream in Newcastle in May wasn’t difficult. Little carts dotted the parks and side streets, proffering the usual fare plus not a few rum-raisin possibilities that Jo still hadn’t got used to.
“Was there someplace specific you used to go?” Gwilym asked. They were walking Quayside under a warm sun.
“Not really,” Arthur said. “To be honest, Aiden preferred pastry to ice cream. He had two favorite pastry shops in town.”
“Do you like it, though?” Jo asked. The note had been singular imperative; not “let’s get ice cream,” but “you” get it.
Arthur considered. “I fancy strawberry. Though not for my figure.” He paused, smiling. “Hans and Pepper love it, of course. Vanilla.”
“Pup cones,” Chen observed sagely. “I remember.”
They were coming up, at last, to a little blue cart. The sides had been decorated with cartoon children and oversize treats. Gwilym was already ordering an iced lolly. They did have strawberry and Jo purchased one for Arthur and one for herself. Chen declined: “No dairy, pet.”
“There must be something,” Jo said as they sought a bench to recline on. “Ice cream doesn’t explain the key.” When Arthur recovered from the initial shock of it, each had turned over the key in careful fingers. Gwilym suggested a bicycle key, Chen a jewelry box. Aiden didn’t ride, however, and had only a single ring, worn from his schooldays.
“The wine is special,” Jo said. “It’s about your first meeting, your first date, your first drink together.”
“I’m not sure I remember our first ice cream,” Arthur said, helping Chen to a seat and then lowering himself beside her. Jo looked again at the key in her palm.
“It’s about more than ice cream,” she said. Chen tapped the ground gently with her umbrella.
“Aye. More than paintings or wines or dinner tables. It’s about Aiden. And about you, Arthur.” She closed her eyes and gave herself a little shake, earrings shimmering. “Arthur and his Ægle. The brave one and the stuck one.”
Jo bit her lip; she’d not been the only one to see that, then.
“Only Aiden was done being stuck,” Chen went on, eyes open and trained upon Arthur’s leading-man features. “Done, I say. Told Jo, and now I’m telling you. He was going to beat cancer and come home a changed man.”
“Except he didn’t,” Arthur said.
Jo had left her ice cream to melt by mistake; she dropped it into the bin and tried to unstick her fingers with a napkin.
“We know that now,” she said. “But all this—the doll, the painting, the wine. It’s from before. Before it was too late.”
“I’m not sure it makes a difference,” Arthur said, but Jo had caught the thread and was winding it.
“It does. I’m an idiot—of course it does.” She turned in place. Before it was too late. It was too late for Aiden to mend things with his sister, Jo’s mother. It was too late for him to have a relationship with Jo. Too late for Jo to know her father. It had been too late for Evelyn and William, too. Everything about their family was too late. And Aiden wasn’t going to let it happen again if he could help it. He had cancer, but meant to beat it. “Don’t you see? You weren’t supposed to be making this journey with us. You were supposed to be doing it with a recovered Aiden. He would have been here.”
“Does that mean there’s no clue for the key?” Gwilym asked. “Is it a metaphor, like the key to my heart?”
Arthur winced. “Aiden didn’t go in for cliché,” he said.
“Of course not. This man arranged a painting clue and secret messages!” Jo was flapping her hands at the wrist, looking for an outlet to the restless energy. Her brain was circling something, all bells ringing. They were on a treasure hunt—it had a beginning on a rainy night in August . . . Inception. Itinerate. Iconography. It would also have an end.
“Arthur, I don’t need to know that first time you ate ice cream with Aiden,” Jo said suddenly. “I need to know the last time.”
For a moment, Arthur’s face was a blank. Then his mouth drew down, eyes casting away to the distance over the Tyne.
“Oh.” He’d balled up his dessert napkin between his fists. “November. One of those strange warm days. He’d been staying with me, seeing the oncologist here. We took a walk, ended up near a stand like this one. I’d brought the dogs and—they had their share. He paid because—”
They waited in silence as Arthur mastered his emotions.
“He said he was selling the flat in York,” he said at last. “‘I’ll soon be flush,’ he said. ‘So I’ll get this one.’”
“Next time, you pay,” Gwilym added.
“We talked about joined households. He teased me about my choice in financial establishments—I work there, after all.”
Jo felt her breath catch. The bank. Arthur’s own bank. She held up the key, a key not unlike the one for her mother’s safe-deposit box.
“Let’s go there,” she said. “I think something is waiting for you.”