Read Online Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie - Free Book Online Page A

manage somehow. I could stop at Harrowby’s in the morning, once I’ve been to check on Mum.”
    “You can’t ask questions officially unless Erika’s filed a complaint,” he protested.
    “I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Gemma said firmly. “Official or not.”

CHAPTER 5
    …auctioneering was for centuries regarded as a rather raffish—even dishonourable—activity.
    —Peter Watson,
Sotheby’s: Inside Story
    Gemma took the Central Line straight to St. Paul’s tube station, glad that it was Sunday and the crowds were light, and grateful that for once the weekend tube closures hadn’t affected her travel. Emerging into the sunlight, she walked west up Newgate Street, worry over her mum running like a treadmill in her head.
    That afternoon, she had got on the Internet and looked up types of leukemia, treatments, and prognoses. The prospects had terrified her.
    But as she passed an opening leading to St. Paul’s Churchyard, she glanced up and stopped, transfixed. A slice of the cathedral appeared in the narrow gap, the great dome dead center, like a jewel in the eye of the needle, glowing in the setting sun.
    A man bumped into her and she murmured, “Sorry,” but still she hesitated, then on an impulse turned and walked down into the churchyard itself. The weekday City bankers were absent, and sheguessed it was mostly tourists who sat on the cathedral steps, faces turned to catch the last of the afternoon warmth. The days were lengthening. It would be summer before she knew it, and for just an instant the passage of time seemed inexorably fast.
    A sudden hollow feeling possessed her, and for a moment she considered going in, then chided herself. She hadn’t any idea how to pray, and would feel silly trying.
    And besides, she thought St. Paul’s, glorious as it was, was more a commemoration of Christopher Wren than an offering to God. She turned back, and as she threaded her way towards Newgate Street, she wondered if Wren would have liked the pristine and sterile place his City had become. In his day it would have been teeming with refuse and smells and colors, and the cathedral would have risen out of the muck, a monument to higher things. What awe must have filled people as they looked at it, and what was there now to take its place?
    Giving herself a mental shake, she lengthened her stride and left St. Paul’s behind. But as she reached the hospital, its ancient walls looked grim as battlements, and she had to steel herself to walk in through the main gate.
    The courtyard, with its gentle fountain, came as a relief, and shrill childish voices echoed through the open space—familiar voices, Gemma realized, as she saw a flash of red curls bob up on the far side of the fountain. It was her niece and nephew, playing hide-and-seek, her brother-in-law watching.
    Spotting her, the children ran over, wrapping themselves around her legs with welcoming shrieks of “Auntie Gemma!” Gemma knelt to hug them, and in the process little Tiffani somehow managed to transfer chewing gum to Gemma’s hair, while, with a shout of glee, Brendan clouted her in the side of the head with a plastic lorry.
    “Well,” she addressed her brother-in-law, Gerry, as she disentangled herself and tried to pick the pink sticky gobs from her hair, “they’re in good form, don’t you think, Ger?”
    Gerry nodded agreeably from his bench. “Expect so. Can’t do a thing with them, myself.” He folded his hands over his paunch with an air of satisfaction. Gemma could have sworn he’d put on a stone since she’d seen him at the New Year.
    “For heaven’s sake, Gerry, there are ill people here,” she retorted, giving in to exasperation.
    “And your point is?” The look he gave her was not half so friendly, and left her wondering if he was really as dim as he seemed. It occurred to her that it was quite possible he thought her a self-righteous cow, and went out of his way to let the children misbehave just to irritate