Silent as the Grave Read Free Page B

lesser degree ever since; that I will probably continue to feel for the rest of my life.
    As soon as I was well enough to travel, I returned to New York. A sympathetic NYPD sergeant told me all he knew; much more than I wanted to know. Georgina had taken a cocktail of drugs washed down by a bottle of vodka, walked out of the apartment on to the balcony, and kept on going until she hit the sidewalk fifteen storeys below.
    Once I had straightened up my affairs and sold the apartment, I returned to England. I refused any further assignments and resigned rather than embarrass my employers. After a few weeks in London I decided cities were no longer for me. I caught a train north and finished up in my native Yorkshire. A week later I bought a tiny cottage, moved in, and settled down to my new career as a writer.
    I published one factual account of my experiences in Ethiopia under the title War in the Hills . This was the only volume to appear in my own name. For the thrillers that followed I chose a pen name, much to the despair of my agent who bemoaned the loss of marketing opportunities. By then I was uninterested in celebrity status. I just wanted to be left alone to write. I suppose it was as much a form of escapism for me to write the books, as for other people to read them. Gradually, my face, my voice, and my name became less and less well known; which suited me perfectly.
    I settled into my semi-reclusive bachelor existence. Nothing I did constituted a commitment, either to me, or from me; and that also suited me just fine. The occasional insidious notion that I was merely existing rather than living was one I was easily able to dismiss.
    As I said earlier, I’ve never thought of myself as a ladies’ man. Although prior to my marriage there had been one or two youthful flings, I had only become involved in one serious romantic relationship. Harriet Samuels had been introduced to me during my first year at university. She had recently arrived, as had I, and was looking for somewhere to live. She explained at our first meeting that the bed-sitter she was in was located over the noisiest nightclub in the northern hemisphere, and that as the racket was keeping her awake until the small hours of the morning she was constantly falling asleep during lectures.
    I pointed out the advantages of this, as the majority of the lectures I attended seemed to be designed as a cure for insomnia. Harriet acknowledged my point but clinched the debate by telling me how she had missed a full lecture dealing with social unrest in Lower Saxony during the Middle Ages. Convinced by the power of this reasoning and her distress at missing out on so pivotal a discourse, I allowed her to share my flat, share the rent payments, share the cooking, share the cleaning and washing; and, for a glorious period of over two years up to and during our Finals, to share my bed. She did point out that this was having a similar effect on her sleep pattern as the nightclub had, but I was well aware by then that she could have slept through all the lectures in her final year and still walked away with a good degree. She accepted my argument, and later accepted the degree.
    Our separation was as inevitable as our affair had been improbable. Harriet and I belonged in different worlds, socially speaking at least. Harriet’s parents were wealthy. Her father was a very successful businessman, her mother a GP at a private clinic. My father was a clergyman, my mother a primary school teacher. The difference between us was best illustrated by our modes of transport. Harriet arrived for lectures in a Porsche, while I arrived on a bicycle – if I could borrow one, that is.
    It was a long time before I worked out that if Harriet’s parents could afford to buy her a Porsche they could afford far more than the rent she was contributing to our flat. I challenged Harriet about this one night. She grinned and agreed. ‘Daddy wanted to rent a flat for me