In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(50)

“Then there's another way to look at Andy Maiden protecting his wife, isn't there, Tommy?” St. James finally said.

“What's that, then?”

“He may be doing it for another reason. The worst possible reason, in fact.”

“Medea in Derbyshire?” Lynley asked. “Christ. That's horrific, Simon. And when mothers kill, the child's generally young. I'll be pressed for a motive if things go that way.”

“Medea would have argued that she had one.”

In the midst of dealing with one of Nicola's many disappearances prior to the family's move to Derbyshire, Nan Maiden would have been incredulous had anyone suggested to her that there would come a day when she would yearn for something as simple as a teenager's running away from home in a fit of temper. When Nicola had disappeared in the past, her mother had reacted the only way she knew: with a mixture of terror, anger, and despair. She'd phoned the girl's friends, she'd alerted the police, and she'd taken to the streets to trackher down. She'd been capable of nothing else until she'd known her child was safe.

That Nicola would vanish into the streets of London always intensified Nan's worry. For anything could happen on the streets of London. A teenaged girl could be raped; she could be seduced into the netherworld of narcotics; she could be beaten; she could be maimed.

There was one prospective consequence of Nicola's running off that Nan never considered, however: that her daughter had been murdered. The thought simply didn't bear dwelling upon. Not because murder never happened to young girls, but because if it happened to this particular young girl, her mother had no idea how she herself would go on.

And now it had happened. Not during those tempestuous teenage years when Nicola was insisting on autonomy, independence, and what she'd called “the right to self-determination, Mum. We're not living in the Middle Ages, you know.” Not during that torturous period when making a demand of her parents—whether it was for something simple and concrete like a new CD or something complex and nebulous like personal freedom—was no less than an unspoken threat to vanish for a day or a week or a month if that demand wasn't met. But now, when she was an adult, when locking her door and nailing closed her window were actions that were supposed to be not only unthinkable but also unnecessary.

Yet that's exactly what I should have done, Nan thought brokenly. I should have locked her in, tied her to her bed, and refused to let her out of my sight.

“I know what I want,” Nicola had declared so many times throughout the years. “And this is it.”

Nan had heard that in the voice of the seven-year-old who wanted Barbie, Barbie's house, Barbie's car, and every item of clothing that could be slid onto the impossibly shaped plastic figure that was supposed to be the epitome of femininity. In the cry of the twelve-year-old who could not exist another moment unless she was allowed to wear make-up, stockings, and four-inch-high heels. In the black moods of the fifteen-year-old who wanted a separate telephone line, a pair of in-line skates, a holiday in Spain without the burden of her parents along. Nicola had always wanted what Nicola wanted at the moment when Nicola wanted it. And many times over the years, it had seemed so much easier just to give in than to face a day, a week, or a fortnight of her disappearance.

But now Nan wished with all her heart that her daughter had simply chosen to run off again. And she felt the hundredweight of guilt dragging down on her for the occasions during Nicola's adolescence when, faced with yet another of her daughter s petulant flights from home, she'd even for an instant harboured the notion that it would be better to have had Nicola die at birth than not to know where she was or if she'd ever be found at all.

In the laundry room of the old hunting lodge, Nan Maiden clutched one of her daughter's cotton shirts to her chest as if the shirt could metamorphose into Nicola herself. Without a thought that she was doing so, she raised the collar of that shirt to her nose and breathed in the scent that was her child, the mixture of gardenias and pears from the lotions and shampoo that Nicola had used, the acrid odour of her perspiration. Nan discovered that she could visualise Nicola on the last occasion when she'd worn the shirt: on a recent bike ride with Christian-Louis once the Sunday afternoon lunches had all been served.

The French chef had always found Nicola attractive—what man hadn't?—and Nicola had observed the interest in his eyes and had not ignored it. That was her talent: pulling men without effort. She didn't do it to prove anything to herself or to anyone else. She simply did it, as if she gave off a peculiar emanation that was transmitted solely to males.

In Nicola's childhood, Nan had fretted over her sexual powers and what price they might exact from the girl. In Nicola's adulthood, Nan saw that the price had finally been paid.

“The purpose of parenthood is to bring up children who stand on their own as autonomous adults, not as clones,” Nicola had said. “I'm responsible for my destiny, Mum. My life has nothing to do with you.”

Why did children say such things? Nan wondered. How could they believe that the choices they made and the end they faced touched no lives other than their own? The way that events had unfolded for Nicola had everything to do with her mother simply because she was her mother. For one did not give birth and then spare no thought to the future of one's treasured child.

And now she was dead. Sweet Jesus God, there would never be another crash-bang entrance of Nicola coming home for a holiday, of Nicola returning from a hike on the moors, of Nicola slugging her way inside the lodge with carrier bags of groceries dangling from her arms, of Nicola back from a date with Julian all laughter and chatter about what they'd done. Sweet Jesus God, Nan Maiden thought. Her lovely, tempestuous, incorrigible child was truly gone. The pain of that knowledge was an iron band growing tight round Nan's heart. She didn't think she'd be able to endure it. So she did what she had usually done when the feelings were too much to be borne. She continued to work.