Chapter 16

16

In bed, he lies behind Helena, his right hand on her hip, his lips pressed against the back of her neck. She smells ripe, almost overripe , he thinks, and in the darkness he smiles. She raises a hand and drapes it over his leg, lightly grazing his thigh with her fingernails.

‘I found Emmeline in my office this morning,' he says.

‘Oh?'

‘She called my mother a whore.'

‘ What? ' Helena wriggles away from him, rolling over and propping herself up on one elbow.

He pulls a face. ‘Actually, that's not quite fair. She was calling Vanessa a whore, and then asked if my mother was one, too.'

Helena shakes her head, incredulous. ‘Beck, that's horrible. She's … I honestly think she's becoming deranged.'

Becker rolls on to his back. ‘I don't know,' he says. ‘When I arrived, she was looking through some of those papers I got from Grace Haswell. She'd found a letter from Douglas to Vanessa. It was … explicit .'

‘Really?' Helena slides one leg over his. ‘How explicit?' she breathes into his ear. When Becker laughs, she lies back down, sweeping her hair out of the way so that she can rest her head on his shoulder without it catching. ‘Obviously that can't have made pleasant reading, but it's not like she didn't know. From what I've been told, Douglas was not discreet. And it wasn't like Vanessa was the only one – he was monstrously unfaithful.'

‘I suppose we really ought to feel sorry for her,' Becker says. ‘The whole thing must be humiliating.'

‘Well, maybe,' Helena murmurs. ‘But it's not your fault, is it? Or your mother's.'

‘No, quite.' Becker is looking up at the crack in the ceiling that starts in the far corner and has been tracing its spidery way towards the centre of the room ever since he moved into the lodge three years ago. He ought to do something about that, he thinks, get someone to look at it. Leave it too long and the whole lot'll come down on them. ‘Has Emmeline always been like this?' he asks, but Helena doesn't answer; she shifts in his arms, her breath slowing, deepening, as she falls asleep. He lies awake for a long while, listening to Helena's soft breath, looking up at the crack in the ceiling, praying the roof's not about to cave in.