Troubled Blood

“So then at last,” said Oonagh, “she tells me she’s learned her lesson, I was right all along, she’s never going back to him, that’s it, finito.”

“Did she get the photographs back?” asked Robin.

“First t’ing I asked, when I found out they were back together. She said he’d told her he’d destroyed them. She believed it, too.”

“You didn’t?”

“O’ course I didn’t,” said Oonagh. “I’d seen him, when she t’reatened him with his pillow dream. That was a frightened man. He’d never have destroyed anyt’ing that gave him bargaining power over her.

“Would it be all right if I get another cappuccino?” asked Oonagh apologetically. “My t’roat’s dry, all this talking.”

“Of course,” said Strike, hailing a waiter, and ordering fresh coffees all round.

Oonagh pointed at Robin’s Fortnum’s bag.

“Been stocking up for Christmas, too?”

“Oh, no, I’ve been buying a present for my new niece. She was born this morning,” said Robin, smiling.

“Congratulations,” said Strike, who was surprised Robin hadn’t already told him.

“Oh, how lovely,” said Oonagh. “My fifth grandchild arrived last month.”

The interval while waiting for the fresh coffees was filled by Oonagh showing Robin pictures of her grandchildren, and Robin showing Oonagh the two pictures she had of Annabel Marie.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” said Oonagh, peering through her purple reading glasses at the picture on Robin’s phone. She included Strike in the question, but, seeing only an angry-looking, bald monkey, his acquiescence was half-hearted.

When the coffees had arrived and the waiter moved away again, Robin said,

“While I remember… would you happen to know if Margot had family or friends in Leamington Spa?”

“Leamington Spa?” repeated Oonagh, frowning. “Let’s see… one of the gorls at the club was from… no, that was King’s Lynn. They’re similar sorts of names, aren’t they? I can’t remember anyone from there, no… Why?”

“We’ve heard a man claimed to have seen her there, a week after she disappeared.”

“There were a few sightings after, right enough. Nothing in any of them. None of them made sense. Leamington Spa, that’s a new one.”

She took a sip of her cappuccino. Robin asked,

“Did you still see a lot of each other, once Margot went off to medical school?”

“Oh yeah, because she was still working at the club part time. How she did it all, studying, working, supporting her family… living on nerves and chocolate, skinny as ever. And then, at the start of her second year, she met Roy.”

Oonagh sighed.

“Even the cleverest people can be bloody stupid when it comes to their love lives,” she said. “In fact, I sometimes t’ink, the cleverer they are with books, the stupider they are with sex. Margot t’ought she’d learned her lesson, that she’d grown up. She couldn’t see that it was classic rebound. He might’ve looked as different from Satchwell as you could get, but really, it was more of the same.

“Roy had the kind of background Margot would’ve loved. Books, travel, culture, you know. See, there were gaps in what Margot knew. She was insecure about not knowing about the right fork, the right words. ‘Napkin’ instead of ‘serviette.’ All that snobby English stuff.

“Roy was mad for her, mind you. It wasn’t all one way. I could see what the appeal was: she was like nothing he’d ever known before. She shocked him, but she fascinated him: the Playboy Club and her work ethic, her feminist ideas, supporting her mammy and daddy. They had arguments, intellectual arguments, you know.

“But there was something bloodless about the man. Not wet exactly, but—” Oonagh gave a sudden laugh. “‘Bloodless’—you’ll know about his bleeding problem?”

“Yes,” said Robin. “Von Something Disease?”

“Dat’s the one,” said Oonagh. “He’d been cossetted and wrapped up in cotton wool all his life by his mother, who was a horror. I met her a few times. That woman gave me the respect you’d give something you’d got stuck on your shoe.

“And Roy was… still waters run deep, I suppose sums it up. He didn’t show a lot of emotion. Their flirtation wasn’t all sex, it really was ideas with them. Not that he wasn’t good-looking. He was handsome, in a kind of… limp way. As different from Satchwell as you could imagine. Pretty boy, all eyes and floppy hair.

“But he was a manipulator. A little bit of disapproval here, a cold look there. He loved how different Margot was, but it still made him uncomfortable. He wanted a woman the exact opposite to his mother, but he wanted Mammy to approve. So the fault lines were dere from the beginning.

“And he could sulk,” said Oonagh. “I hate a sulker, now. My mother was the same. T’irty years she wouldn’t talk to me, because I moved to London. She finally gave in so she could meet her grandchildren, but then my sister got tipsy at Christmas and let it slip I’d left the church and joined the Anglicans, we were finished forever. Playboy, she could forgive. Proddy, never.

“Even when they were dating, Roy would stop talking to Margot for days at a time. She told me once he cut her off for a week. She lost patience, she said, ‘I’m off.’ That brought him round sharp enough. I said, what was he sulking about? And it was the club. He hated her working there. I said, ‘Is he offering to support your family, while you study?’ ‘Oh, he doesn’t like the idea of other men ogling me,’ she says. Girls like that idea, that little bit of possessiveness. They t’ink it means he only wants her, when o’ course, it’s the other way round. He only wants her available to him. He’s still free to look at other girls, and Roy had other people interested in him, girls from his own background. He was a pretty boy with a lot of family money. Well,” said Oonagh, “look at little cousin Cynthia, lurking in the wings.”

“Did you know Cynthia?” asked Robin.

“Met her once or twice, at their house. Mousy little thing. She never spoke more than two words to me,” said Oonagh. “But she made Roy feel good about himself. Laughing loike a drain at all his jokes. Such as they were.”

“Margot and Roy must have married right after medical school, did they?”

“Dat’s right. I was a bridesmaid. She went into general practice. Roy was a high-flier, he went into one of the big teaching hospitals, I can’t remember which.

“Roy’s parents had this very nice big house with huge lawns and all the rest of it. After his father died, which was just before they had Anna, the mother made it over to Roy. Margot’s name wasn’t on the deeds, I remember her telling me dat. But Roy loved the idea of bringing up his family in the same house he’d grown up in, and it was beautiful, right enough, out near Hampton Court. So the mother-in-law moved out and Roy and Margot moved in.

“Except, of course, the mother-in-law felt she had the right to walk back in any time she felt like it, because she’d given it to them and she still looked on it as more hers than Margot’s.”

“Did you and Margot still see a lot of each other?” asked Robin.

“We did,” said Oonagh. “We used to try and meet at least once every couple of weeks. Real best friends, we were. Even after she married Roy, she wanted to hold on to me. They had their middle-class friends, o’ course, but I t’ink,” said Oonagh, her voice thickening, “I t’ink she knew I’d always be on her side, you see. She was moving in circles where she felt alone.”

“At home, or at work, too?” asked Robin.

“At home, she was a fish out of water,” said Oonagh. “Roy’s house, Roy’s family, Roy’s friends, Roy’s everyt’ing. She saw her own mammy and daddy plenty, but it was hard, the daddy being in his wheelchair, to get him out to the big house. I t’ink the Bamboroughs felt intimidated by Roy and his mother. So Margot used to go back to Stepney to see them. She was still supporting them financially. Ran herself ragged between all her different commitments.”

“And how were things at work?”

“Uphill, all the way,” said Oonagh. “There weren’t that many women doctors back then, and she was young and working class and that practice she ended up at, the St. John’s one, she felt alone. It wasn’t a happy place,” said Oonagh, echoing Dr. Gupta. “Being Margot, she wanted to try and make it better. That was Margot’s whole ethos: make it better. Make it work. Look after everyone. Solve the problem. She tried to bring them together as a team, even though she was the one being bullied.”

“Who was bullying her?”