Chapter Sixty-Six
As evening comes to Covent Garden, Dexter unscrews the top from a bottle of wine and pours Jane a large glass, then himself a small one. “I’ve got a dance class in the morning,” he says, passing her the glass. “Need to keep myself fresh.”
“Well, I have to go to the police tomorrow morning, so I should probably keep myself fresh too, but fuck it, frankly. Anything that can take the edge off the thought of that tiny masked clown pulling a scarf out of a young woman’s ear in a park with a hard-on.
Jesus Christ.” She lifts her glass to Dexter’s.
“Cheers,” she says. “And thank you for being there with me today. Thank you for being such a perfect boy and making this all feel so much less dreadful. I love you.”
She feels a surge of emotion pass through her system.
Tears fill her eyes; her throat tightens.
What is it about all of this that’s bringing her into such a heightened state of emotion?
But the moment she asks herself the question, she already has the answer.
Every step she takes down the path of the Blacks’ life, she takes another step down her own, heading closer and closer toward the core of it all, and she’s not sure she can bear it.
The neglect; the black terror of being a child living in a house with addicts; the blurred lines of uncertainty and fear; the weak, bleeding boundaries between the adult and the child; the helplessness and despair.
She feels it because she knows it, because she lived it.
“You OK?” asks Dexter.
She nods and turns on the smile. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just—it’s all a lot, isn’t it? This whole thing. And soon it’ll be out of my hands. I’ll be heading back to the crusty old money pit, you know, until someone has to cart me off in the back of a pickup truck to the morgue.”
“What happened to you being a private eye?”
Jane sighs. “How can I be a private eye? I live in the sticks with four dogs.”
“Well, bring the dogs to London. Sell the money pit. For God’s sake, Jane. It’s not that deep.”
Jane sighs and then emits a strangulated laugh, half filled with unfallen tears. “You think?”
Dexter puts his arms round her and hugs her. “I don’t think,” he breathes into her ear. “I know.”