The Last Kiss Goodbye (17 page)

‘He was also a sexually attractive man,’ continued Gorshkov, choosing his words carefully. ‘Some of his most useful pieces of information were obtained not through idle tittle-tattle, but in the bedroom. Breathless embassy secretaries, personal assistants to Whitehall bigwigs, politicians’ wives. One affair was particularly useful. The wife of a War Office minister, Gerald Hamilton.’ He allowed himself a little chuckle at that one. ‘It is amazing what you can find out second-hand.’

Abby shook her head, not wanting to believe any of it.

‘How do we know you are telling the truth?’ she asked recklessly.

Alexei didn’t look offended. ‘My dear, the Cold War is over. My life too is in its final act. You asked me a question, I will tell you what I know. When you are eighty-five years old, there is no point keeping things to yourself.’

‘Alexei, what we really want to know is what happened to Dominic Blake, not whether he was a spy or not.’

‘And why is this important fifty years after his death?’

‘Because the people he loved deserve to know.’

Alexei gave a slow, soft exhale.

‘The problem with being in the intelligence services is that it can make you reckless. You spend so long leading a double life, avoiding detection, taking greater and greater risks, that you believe you have become invincible. Dominic Blake was such a man. A charmed individual in so many ways, a thrillseeker who thought he could do anything.’

‘Like the solo trip into the jungle.’

‘Perhaps today it would be possible. With technology, GPS . . . In 1961 it was a death wish.’

‘Rosamund said he had done a similar trip twelve months before.’

‘And had been luckier. My friend, the life of Dominic Blake was somewhat complex, but his death was relatively straightforward.’

‘He simply ran out of luck,’ said Abby grimly. She glanced at Elliot, who didn’t look convinced.

‘And you’re sure that the KGB or the GRU didn’t have anything to do with his death?’ he asked pointedly.

Alexei hesitated.

‘I don’t know for sure. I doubt it. There were grumbles in the organisation when Dominic became close to Rosamund Bailey. His usefulness depended on the establishment thinking he was one of them, and his relationship with Rosamund put that in danger. But regardless of what you might see in Hollywood spy movies, we do not get rid of our comrades for no apparent reason.’

Alexei had recommended Café Musica for dinner, and eventually they found it, hidden in a warren of alleyways by the river. Apparently he had phoned ahead and told the staff they were coming, as Abby and Elliot were greeted with a smile and led through the restaurant to a terrace at the back overlooking the dark, shimmering water of the River Neva. Abby took a seat and drank in the view. The lights of the ornate buildings opposite twinkled as if tiny bonfires had been lit inside their depths.

‘I can’t believe we’ve taken a restaurant recommendation from a member of the KGB,’ she smiled as she accepted a glass of Russian wine from the waiter.

‘It’s nice to step off the tourist track, regardless of how we got here,’ said Elliot, holding her gaze.

Abby looked away, unsettled by the romance of their surroundings. She wondered if Alexei had chosen this place deliberately. Whether he had thought that her relationship with Elliot was more than professional, a question she did not want to think about too deeply.

‘So what’s the GRU?’ She didn’t doubt that Elliot would know.

‘The KGB collected information on behalf of the Soviet government. The GRU was military intelligence. They were actually rivals. The KGB doesn’t exist any more. It’s called the SVR now, although the GRU still very much exists.’

‘Do you know everything?’ she asked, glancing up from her menu playfully. She caught herself, aware that she was flirting with him.

‘No,’ he smiled, tipping back his wine. ‘I don’t know that much about you.’

She shut the menu and put it on the table in front of her.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘What made you want to be an archivist?’

‘I fell into it.’ She shrugged quickly.

‘How?’

She felt awkward talking about her past, not because she had anything to hide, but because she never thought anyone would be interested.

‘My mum’s drinking got so bad that I was almost taken into care. We avoided it, but I pretty much had to bring myself up. Mum didn’t work. We had no money, no support network. I worked weekend shifts at one of the hotels in Portree, and the owners kept me on the straight and narrow. They were wonderful, big travellers before they decided to settle in Skye. The hotel was full of books and photographs of all the places they had been: Venice to see the Doge’s Palace, Florence to visit the Uffizi, Canada for the Native Indian art. I was interested in it all, and they encouraged me to apply for an art history degree. After that, it was a short hop to thinking about careers in galleries or museums. I got an internship at the V and A. It went from there.’

Saying the words out loud made her think about whether she had been proactive enough in her life. Whether she had let decisions make themselves, or perhaps had been too influenced by others.

The waiter stopped her dwelling on it as he took their order, while Elliot topped up her wine glass. The light was starting to fade and the waiter lit the candle on the table between them. The terrace suddenly became even more magical, and looking up, Abby was caught unawares by how handsome Elliot looked in the soft, flattering glow.

‘So did you believe everything Alexei told us?’ she asked, wondering for one moment if the restaurant might be bugged.

‘Why on earth would he make up such an elaborate lie?’

She didn’t know the answer to that one.

‘I think he was right that Dominic craved excitement,’ she said thoughtfully.

Elliot nodded. ‘That was probably his original motivation, regardless of what Alexei said about hate. I mean, come on, you’re twenty years old, you like beautiful women and fast cars and someone asks you to be a spy. You’re going to take the offer. Or at least seriously bloody think about it. It fits with everything we know about Dominic. His love of danger, his pursuit of glamour.’

‘Can we not talk about it any more?’ said Abby softly. ‘At least not today. It makes me sad, and we’re here in this beautiful, magical place.’

She watched a boat cruise along the Neva, the soft ripple of music radiating from below deck.

‘You know, if we’d come a few weeks earlier, we would have caught the white nights,’ said Elliot as they finished their main course of veal and potatoes and waved away the dessert menu in place of the bill.

‘White nights?’

‘The sun hardly sets and the air is so milky. You could stay up all night and not notice.’

Abby smiled at the romantic image.

‘I have really got to travel more,’ she said, taking a long, wistful swig of wine.

‘No reason not to. Not in this day and age.’

‘Well, I’ve had a passport since I was sixteen, but I’ve only ever used it four times before this week.’

Elliot sat forward, an amused but fascinated look on his face.

‘So where
have
you been, Gordon?’

She started counting them out on her fingers.

‘France on a school trip, a girls’ package holiday to Tenerife, New York, and Turkey for my honeymoon.’

‘Well, the Canaries are practically Africa, New York is the centre of the world and Turkey straddles Asia, so you’re more cosmopolitan than you think,’ he said, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘I’m not. Did the travelling stop once you got married?’

‘Not really. We go to Cornwall twice a year,’ she said, suddenly aware that she was using the present tense. ‘Nick is really into surfing and I just love the colour of the sea down there. We always had this dream that we would move there one day, open a café with a surf school. It was a bit of a pipe dream really, because Nick’s business started to do so well that giving it all up to run a hobby horse seemed out of the question. But for four weeks of the year we went and lived the fantasy. This year has been the first year we haven’t done it. Understandably,’ she added quickly.

She fell silent and played with her napkin.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about Dominic. What are we going to tell Rosamund?’

‘We don’t tell her anything yet.’

She glanced up and saw that Elliot was watching her intently.

‘Do you regret finding the picture? Agreeing to work with me?’

‘Not for a minute,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s fortified me.’

She let her eyes drift out across the river and took a sip of her wine before turning back to Elliot.

‘I haven’t had a great time recently. I’ve hidden myself away, not gone out, not really even spoken to anyone, hoping I could avoid the glaring issues in my life that need sorting out but not quite having the confidence to do that, to move forward.’

‘Throwing yourself into work definitely helps,’ he said, moving his thumb and forefinger up the stem of his glass.

‘But this work, your work, has done more than that. You asked why I became an archivist. When I was younger, I loved the idea of being a journalist, but it always felt beyond me. I remember in my first week of uni I went down to the student paper. I put my face against the window of the office and I just stood there, looking in, too afraid to open the door. To be honest, that could be the story of my life.’

Elliot glanced at the bill and put a handful of roubles on the table.

‘Abby, believe me when I say you’re a bloody good journalist. The way you were with Gorshkov . . . direct, fearless. People with ten years’ experience, let alone ten minutes’, couldn’t charm the pants off him and get him to talk the way you did. I was proud of you.’

‘Fearless. I like that word.’

She noticed a frown line between his eyes.

‘Come back to the hotel with me.’

For a moment she almost missed what he had said.

His eyes challenged hers and her heart started beating faster, and before she knew it, she was nodding.

He stood up, and held out his hand for her to take. She felt her cheeks flame with shame and desire as they weaved through the tables out into the alley, where the crisp night air cooled her cheeks but not her longing.

Still holding her hand, he spun her round and kissed her, his moist, wine-scented lips pressing against hers and pushing them apart. His hands were holding her face now and she could hardly breathe as they stepped back against a wall.

‘Let’s hope the hotel isn’t too far from here,’ he said, nuzzling her ear lobe. ‘I’ve no idea what the Russian laws against indecency are like.’

There was time to think about what she was doing during the five-minute taxi ride to the hotel, but she didn’t let herself. She felt as if she were being carried along by the breeze, like a crisp autumn leaf turning and bobbing helplessly in a gust of wind.

They walked through the lobby holding hands, not saying anything, not even looking at each other. But as soon as the lift doors closed, they came together and kissed once more, softer but still impatient. Heady with the promise of what was to come.

There was a ‘ping’ and the doors opened on the fourth floor. Elliot put his arm around her shoulders as they walked and then ran to the door of her room, forcing the key card into the lock until they fell inside, not bothering to switch on the lights.

This time, she kissed him. She drank him in, enjoying the faint smell of his aftershave, the raw sensation of his tongue in her mouth. She couldn’t ever remember a kiss like this. Pure longing and heady desire.

She could feel his fingers unbuttoning her jeans, and the only way she could respond was to do the same with his. Pulling her T-shirt over her head, he unclipped her bra and rubbed his palm across her nipple.

‘Why didn’t we do this sooner?’ he whispered, rolling her knickers over her hips with one smooth movement.

She groaned as a fierce tingle seared between her legs, but the noise was lost in his mouth.

By the time they got to the bed, they were both naked. His body was as incredible as she had suspected. Sculpted torso, wide shoulders that narrowed to his hips. She lay back and he straddled her, scooping down to kiss her neck, her belly and her breasts. She tipped her head in pleasure, and he parted her thighs, licking his fingers and pushing them inside her, stroking her and then easing himself into her until she was dizzy with pleasure and all she could think about was how good he felt, how good he made her feel. She felt the sweet swell of orgasm gather in her belly, drawing it tight and making every nerve ending contract in desire. He quickened his pace, kissing her with hunger, with longing, and she grabbed his hair, pulling him closer, desperate to feel him deeper and deeper inside her. She gasped as her body seemed to lift higher and higher, exploding into one almighty release of pure, undiluted pleasure that made her cry out loud.

‘That was good,’ moaned Elliot, collapsing on top of her.

‘Sensational,’ she agreed, realising at that moment that nothing could ever be just sex.

Chapter Nineteen

Abby and Ginny had signed up for a course of ten Pilates lessons. It had sounded simple enough. Fifty-five minutes long, a smiling, benevolent-looking fifty-something teacher – or so she had seemed from her photograph on the website – and a bunch of testimonials confirming how it had improved people’s posture no end. But the hour-long class that Abby had just taken with her sister-in-law could only be described as torture – leg pulses that seemed easy enough after the first couple, but after sixty repetitions fired a burning sensation from thigh to toe.

Abby couldn’t help but think that it was some sort of punishment for what had happened in St Petersburg. Of course she had woken up feeling guilty in that gigantic four-poster bed in the Russian hotel. That was what happened when you opened your eyes and found yourself lying naked next to a man when you were still technically married to someone else.

When she thought back to it, as she had done almost every hour of the intervening four days, the idea of sleeping with Elliot Hall was as alien as the weird Cyrillic letters she’d seen on signs and posters all over St Petersburg. Girls like her – normal, ordinary, nice girls – just didn’t have nights like that with men they barely knew in exotic hotels a thousand miles away from home.

But guilt wasn’t the only emotion she had felt when she’d woken up in bed with Elliot. Abby didn’t really have anything to compare it with – she had only slept with two men other than Nick Gordon, both of those brief sexual liaisons occurring in her first year at university, boys rather than men – but her catalogue of experience was enough to tell her that the sex and the chemistry she had experienced with Elliot was pretty potent. So she hadn’t just felt guilty; she had felt exhilarated, she had felt sexy, she had felt like a completely different person, as if she had shed a dour and weathered old skin, and for that, the Scottish Presbyterian in her felt as if she needed to be punished. Pilates style.

‘I enjoyed that,’ smiled Ginny, rolling up her mat and pushing it into her Louis Vuitton tote.

She hadn’t even broken sweat, whereas Abby could feel perspiration dripping down her temples and the back of her neck. She wanted to go home, have a cold shower and go to sleep, but she knew that escape was not an option.

They showered and dressed and walked out into the balmy evening sun that was shrouding the South Bank in soft golden light.

‘So how was Russia?’ asked Ginny, fastening back her shoulder-length hair as they left the studio. They hadn’t had a chance to talk properly before the class; Ginny, being Ginny, had turned up minutes before it was due to start. As a consequence, Abby had felt tense for the entire hour, wondering where any conversation with her sister-in-law might lead.

‘Revealing,’ she said, instantly regretting her choice of words. She imagined Elliot’s mouth on her nipple, his hand between her thighs, and felt a flush of colour.

‘Get what you want?’

She nodded tightly, offering a silent prayer of thanks that the workout had been tough, otherwise her colour would have been a dead giveaway.

‘So who was it you had to meet?’

Abby knew that Ginny was not going to let it drop.

‘You’re not going to believe it, but a member of the KGB. It was fascinating. He lives in this old people’s home for retired intelligence.’

‘The KGB?’ said Ginny with a look of disbelief. ‘What was this all for?’

‘We’re tracking down the story behind a Peruvian jungle exploration,’ Abby replied, not wanting to link her trip to the
Last Goodbye
photograph too closely. Ginny was a wily fox. It was just a couple of short hops between seeing the photo in the
Chronicle
, noticing that the story had been written by the celebrated Elliot Hall and wondering who on earth she had gone to St Petersburg with.

‘Still up for dinner?’ Ginny said, as Abby breathed a silent sigh of relief that this line of conversation was not going to be pursued.

‘How about Mexican?’ said Abby, pointing in the direction of Wahaca.

‘How about a drink first?’ In true Ginny style, her words were more like an order.

‘We can drink at Wahaca. They have those delicious
caipirinhas
.’

‘I haven’t been to the BFI bar for ages,’ said Ginny as they walked past it. ‘Let’s just pop in for one.’

Abby agreed. She liked the BFI. When they’d first moved to London, she and Nick had become members, and spent every weekend watching specially curated programmes, from Jim Jarmusch movies to Hitchcock classics to world cinema gems.

She pushed open the door and walked to the bar area. She was still thinking about the old days, how she couldn’t even remember the last time she had been to the cinema with Nick, and that was when she saw him.

At first she thought it was a mirage, before it dawned on her what Ginny had done.

‘It’s an ambush. I’m guilty,’ said her sister-in-law, holding up her hands. ‘But you have to talk to him, Abby. You owe it to each other to at least try before it gets all legal.’

‘It’s already got legal,’ Abby said, panic in her voice and a knot of fear in her stomach. She didn’t want to see him. Couldn’t see him. Not now, only four days after she had woken up in bed with another man. All week she had been asking herself over and over again how this made her any better than her husband, and had come to the conclusion that it didn’t. Her moral high ground was gone, and without it she felt vulnerable, exposed and culpable.

‘Even your solicitor has recommended you try counselling,’ hissed Ginny, standing behind Abby so she had nowhere to go but forwards, into the bar.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Nick’s solicitor has told him exactly the same thing.’

Abby turned round and looked at her with surprise, a stab of panic the only sensation she could register.

‘Nick has been to see a solicitor?’ she repeated.

‘What did you expect? He’s not going to wait around for ever.’

The bar was busy but Nick had found a table. Nick was always the type to find a table. He gave a tense smile as they approached, as well he might after their last confrontation in Hyde Park, and Abby had to fight every instinct not to run away.

She was glad to see he had dressed up, even if there was a series of creases in the arms of his suit. Abby imagined him pressing it on the creaky ironing board they kept in the airing cupboard. The old Abby would have done it for him, tutting a little perhaps, but doing it anyway, because that was what a wife did, wasn’t it? But that was the old Abby. Not the one who flew to St Petersburg alone and got secrets out of former Soviet spies.

‘What are you drinking?’ said Ginny, her breeziness an attempt to hide the awkwardness of the situation.

‘Just a lime and soda,’ said Abby. She could have done with a stiff vodka or two, but she knew she needed to keep her head straight.

‘Yes, the same,’ said Nick cordially.

What are we doing? thought Abby with a sinking feeling. They were already talking like complete strangers after a matter of weeks. She wanted to grab him and yell, ‘It’s me! Your wife!’ But it wasn’t that simple.

‘Ginny told me about your job,’ said Nick, when she had gone to the bar. ‘I called you and left a message. Twice.’

‘To commiserate?’

‘Well it’s pretty shitty. I can’t believe Stephen would do that to you. You keep that place together.’

‘I haven’t lost my job,’ she said with as much dignity as she could manage. ‘I’ve only had my hours cut. Besides, I’m making them up with some freelance work.’

They fell into silence and were saved by Ginny arriving with two glasses, which she put down in front of them.

‘Well, you both know why you’re here. I’ll make myself scarce,’ she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

‘You’re leaving?’ said Abby and Nick simultaneously.

Ginny smiled. ‘See? You still think the same way. No point me getting in the middle of it, is there?’ She reached out and squeezed their hands. ‘For God’s sake, sort something out. You love each other too much to let this get the better of you.’

Abby grabbed her drink and took a gulp, wishing she had gone for the vodka after all.

Ginny handed them both an appointment card.

‘Before I go, you’re booked in here. Dr Naylor. Six thirty on the twenty-fifth. She’s in Clapham, so it’s convenient for both of you.’

‘Who is Dr Naylor?’

‘Nick will explain. Now I have to go.’

They watched her leave, watched her browse the book stalls under the bridge, turning to look back at them before she faded away.

‘Dr Naylor. Is she putting us up for psychiatric evaluation?’

‘She’s a marriage counsellor.’

‘An overqualified one,’ smiled Abby, looking at the long list of initials after her name.

‘Ginny says she’s the best, but I bet she’s just got her name out of the back of
Tatler
.’

‘Nothing but the best for Ginny,’ Abby replied.

‘So was your trip to St Petersburg the freelance work?’

Abby didn’t doubt that Ginny had told him every single detail she had revealed on the morning she had gone to the airport.

‘Sort of,’ she said, searching his expression for any suspicion. ‘Interest has picked up in the archive after the exhibition the other week. I needed to do some more research on one of the photos.’

‘Did you go on your own?’

‘Yes,’ she said with another stab of guilt. She felt sick at the ease with which the lies started. A little fib at first that snowballed until you didn’t even know the correct version of the truth. A voice in her head pointed out that she had travelled to St Petersburg alone, even if she was met at the airport by the man she had gone on to have sex with three times in one night. But it only made her feel a tiny bit better.

Nick smiled. ‘I have to admit, I had visions of you on a romantic break with Stephen.’

‘Can you imagine?’ she said, laughing nervously.

There was a brief silence, and Abby felt herself soften, not so much from relief as an unwillingness to have another confrontation.

She knew that couples could have the same arguments again and again – sometimes for the entire duration of a marriage – but she didn’t want a rerun of their angry, accusatory confrontation in Hyde Park. Not only was the thought of it exhausting, she wasn’t entirely sure she could continue avoiding the truth about St Petersburg.

‘You’d like Russia,’ she said eventually. ‘I was apprehensive about going, but it was pretty amazing. The architecture is incredible: all these fading baroque facades and peeling gold leaf. I’m not sure it was real gold leaf, but it looked beautiful and shiny and majestic. It’s a city for princesses. And the Metro! Some of the stations even had chandeliers.’

‘They were designed as palaces for the people, so they’re full of marble and glass. They look old and elegant, but the network only opened in the 1950s.’

She looked at him in surprise, though she wasn’t sure why. Nick had always been able to teach her things. His general knowledge was vast, but he was never pompous with his information. She couldn’t help comparing him to Elliot, who sometimes seemed to assume that he was there to educate her.

‘I’ve always wanted to go to St Petersburg. We should have gone,’ said Nick, looking at her.

‘Nick, we never used to go anywhere other than Cornwall.’

‘I thought that was what we both wanted.’

‘Clearly not. I never knew you had this burning desire to go to Russia.’

‘Well, perhaps we stopped communicating a long time before we separated,’ he said, not unkindly.

‘You know I love Cornwall,’ she said, remembering the beach barbecues they used to have: the little metal tins, the Lincolnshire sausages bought from the Co-op, the banana ketchup that made them laugh every time they bought it but which they both found secretly delicious.

She saw him glance down at her ring finger and notice that her wedding band was no longer there. Without thinking, she put her left hand on her knee under the table.

‘We got into a rut, didn’t we?’ she said, feeling a knot of nostalgia. ‘I mean, look at us now. A few weeks ago we’d never have done this, would we?’

‘Done what?’

Abby gestured around the bar.

‘This. Met for a drink by the river. Most of the time you were working in town, and I’m only a couple of tube stops away. Why did we never do this? We could have had lunch, gone to the Tate. I’m a bloody art history graduate and how many times have I been to the Tate?’

‘I bought you membership for your birthday last year.’

‘Yes, you did.’

She looked at him and their eyes locked, and suddenly she wanted to make sense of everything that had happened.

‘When was the last time we came into a bar just to talk? That was all we used to do before we were married.’

‘Things change, Abby. Priorities change.’

‘What do you mean?’

Nick shrugged. ‘Well, you stopped drinking for one thing.’

The comment hung in the air between them. To an outsider, it would have seemed innocuous, but within their private language it said everything.

‘It wasn’t all about getting pregnant, Nick. You changed too.’

He’d become quieter, more serious. The quirky, spontaneous side of him, that had made him jump off a cliff in Turkey or buy that horrible lime-green VW beetle, that part of Nick had silently slipped away. She looked across at the man she had promised to spend her life with and saw a stranger. Perhaps he saw the same thing too.

‘Abby, I’ve worked twelve-hour days for the past six years. Spontaneity tends to go out of the window.’

‘It doesn’t have to. I flew to Russia with forty-eight hours’ notice; I got a fast-tracked visa and everything. And do you know what? It felt brilliant.’

He looked at her with a chink of hope, like a Monopoly player just handed a get-out-of-jail-free card, and pushed his hand into his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper. Abby recognised the name of the Cornish estate agency immediately, because she’d been on this website a hundred times, dreaming of their little cottage, their business, their shabby-chic hotel.