The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

She was toying absently with her glass, staring vacantly at some spot on the table. It was as though he wasn’t there. He felt an anger welling in him. He did appreciate that she was going through an emotional crisis – the death of her mother, the discovery that her father was alive. But she was refusing to share it with him, to let him in, to let him help. Now he was feeling used. Why had she asked him to take her out for a meal, and then sat through it silent and morose, refusing to give a direct answer to any of his questions? He restrained an impulse to snap at her, and asked with a patience that he did not feel, ‘Why won’t he see you?’

She lifted her head and seemed surprised. ‘Oh, it’s not that he won’t see me. He can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he – he’s out of the country. He doesn’t even know I know he’s alive.’

‘So how do you know he’s out of the country?’

She sighed. She hadn’t wanted to go into it all. She could have told him over the phone what she was going to do, but felt she at least owed him an explanation in person. But faced with him like this, she wasn’t finding it easy. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said.

‘I’ve got time.’

She hesitated, then reached a decision, drained her glass and said, ‘Alright, I’ll tell you. But take me home first.’ She didn’t want a row in the restaurant.

He bit back a retort and signalled the waiter that he wanted the bill.

They drove back to the house in silence. He glanced at her once or twice, but she was still miles away. The house was cold and dark when they got in, and she lit the gas fire in the living room, drawing the curtains and turning on a small table lamp. ‘You want a drink?’ she asked.

‘I’m driving.’

She nodded and poured herself a large gin and tonic.

He said, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough already?’

‘No,’ she replied simply. ‘If I want to get pissed I’ll get pissed.’ She took her glass, almost defiantly, and squatted on the rug in front of the fire. He sat in her mother’s armchair and thought how childish she was being. What had he ever seen in her? She was a good-looking girl, intelligent, brimming with potential. But if he had once believed it was a potential he could shape, he was already beginning to entertain doubts. It wasn’t as though they even had any kind of sexual relationship. She’d always been strange about that, as if sex frightened her. And, like most things about her, he didn’t begin to understand because she would never tell him. Anything. She was like a book with an exotic title that excited the interest. But she had never allowed him to open it.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You were going to tell me.’

She looked at him and wondered why she had felt she owed him anything. She didn’t love him. Oh, she had thought so at first. He was so good-looking. Thick red hair swept back from a fine face. A voice that came from his boots. He looked as though he should have led a Bohemian existence in the Paris of the nineteen-twenties. And he had seemed so caring and sincere at first, with all his deeply held views on social justice. Social justice! she thought with irony. The only social justice he was interested in was his own. He was so possessive about everything: his job, his future, his life. And she was just another of his possessions. The only reason, it occurred to her, that he hadn’t already given up on her was because he would have counted it a failure. His failure. And David couldn’t bear to fail at anything. And, yet, in spite of it all, there was something about him she still liked. She shied away from the idea that it was the sense of safety she felt with him. She wanted to believe it was more than that.

‘Well, are you going to tell me or aren’t you?’ he asked. She sipped her gin then took a deep breath and told him. Everything. The mews house in Chelsea where there was never any reply, the searches through the phone book, the visit to the Sergeant’s house, everything that he had told her, everything she had told him. David listened gravely, just letting her talk. It occurred to him that it would make a good feature for one of the Sunday papers, then he was shocked that he had even thought of it and realized how little he really cared. It worried him, sometimes, how little he felt for other people, how little their problems touched him. Life was all a performance, the way you were expected to behave. And hurt was only what you felt, never what the other person felt. He decided to be sympathetic.

He sat down on the floor beside her, slipping an arm around her waist, squeezing her gently, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. He ran his hand back through her hair, then traced the line of her nose, lips and chin lightly with his fingers. The smell of her perfume, the warmth of her closeness, began a stirring in his loins and quickened his heart. What was it about her that made him want her so much? ‘Poor Lisa,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You must have thought me very unsympathetic.’ For the first time he felt he was making progress. That she was on the point of opening up the book to him at last. And he relaxed as he felt her respond to his touch.

Lisa closed her eyes and felt the drink spinning her head. She should have known David would understand. But she’d been frightened to give him the chance. He’d been so antagonistic when she had gone to see the