I stared at the photograph that had just fallen from the pile of cuttings. My hand felt cold, colder than any living hand ought to feel.
“Evie? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Wally said.
“That depends,” I said in a small, hollow voice. “Do ghosts photograph?”
* * *
I did not faint, but I must have been green enough to frighten Wally into shoving my head between my knees until I was breathing normally again. He held me there for at least a quarter of an hour, his hand firm on the back of my neck.
“I’m fine,” I said to my knees, my voice sounding marginally stronger. I tried again. “I am fine, really.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“I will hold up a very particular one if you don’t let me sit up,” I warned him. He sprang back and I eased myself to a sitting position. “You must be worried,” I told him. “You didn’t even scold me for saying something unladylike.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a face go that colour,” he replied. “You were positively green.”
“What colour am I now?”
He screwed up his eyes. “A sort of yellowish parchment-white. Not very becoming, if I’m honest. Now, what’s this about ghosts?”
I handed over the snapshot. Wally stared at it, his mouth agape, and after a long moment passed it back. “Where did it come from?”
I shrugged. “There was no envelope. It was simply stuck in with a bunch of letters and cuttings.”
“It means nothing,” he said firmly. “It must have been taken on one of his expeditions before the war. You said Gabriel was always haring off to parts unknown before you married him.”
“Turn it over,” I instructed.
He furrowed his brow as he read the inscription on the back aloud. “‘Damascus, 1920.’ Why the devil would Gabriel be in Damascus?”
I swallowed hard. “I think the better question is why would Gabriel be in Damascus five years after he died?”
Wally rose and went to the drinks tray. A moment later he handed me a whisky and poured another for himself. “Forget the tea. Strong drink is the only solution.”
I obeyed and took a deep swallow, grateful for the burn of it.
“What would he be doing in Damascus?” Wally repeated. “Did he have any connection with that part of the world?”
I nodded. “He was born there. His father was rather high up in the army, posted to the consulate in Damascus when Gabriel was born. And then Gabriel went back to do a brief season of digging there when he was at school studying archaeology.” I paused. “I’m not wrong. It is Gabriel.” It was a statement, but he understood what I was asking.
“It certainly looks like the photographs I’ve seen of him. Perhaps someone put on that inscription for a bit of a joke—a cruel one,” he added. “But people can be spiteful and Gabriel did make rather a lot of enemies in his time. A man cannot be that handsome and successful and still be universally liked. Mark my words, it’s a vicious prank and nothing more.”
I peered at the photograph more closely. “I don’t think so. Look at the corners of the eyes very closely. There are lines there he didn’t have. And there’s something about his jaw even under that disgusting beard. It’s firmer, it’s—” I scrutinised the jaw through a thicket of untidy hair. “It’s resolute...” I said, hesitating. “I’ve always wondered, you know.”
“Wondered?”
“Whether he was actually on the Lusitania. I know it sounds mad to even suggest it. He was on the passenger list. People saw him on the ship once they’d put to sea. And they never recovered a body, so of course, I believed it when they said he’d been lost. At least I think I believed it.”
“But, darling, why wouldn’t he have been on the ship?”
“I don’t know. I just keep thinking of him the last time I saw him, when he left me on that steamer in Shanghai. The whole expedition to China had been such a disaster, I kept telling myself it had to get better but it never did.” I faltered. Wally knew the whole story. He’d been treated to it once during a maudlin night with too much gin and too little sleep. I told him everything—how Gabriel and I had met at a New Year’s Eve party thrown by my friend Delilah, how we had eloped that very night. I described the romantic dash up to Scotland and the hasty wedding. It was our very own fairy tale.
But Gabriel and I hadn’t found our happily ever after. Almost immediately after the wedding he had begun to change. There were mysterious telephone calls and cryptic looks, and we began to quarrel even before we left for his expedition to China. I had thought the trip would be a sort of belated honeymoon, a chance to smooth out the little bumps in Matrimony Road. But China is where it all fell apart. The dashing, impetuous man I’d married had become a stranger almost overnight. He retreated behind a façade of cool detachment, holding himself aloof from me. He avoided my bed and my company, and he broke my heart a thousand different ways but the most painful was with cordial indifference. The man who’d swept me off my feet was nothing like the distant stranger I had left China with, a man who had picked a howling quarrel with me, then quite civilly agreed to let me divorce him. We had left Shanghai on separate ships.
“It was like I never even knew him at all,” I told Wally as I stared at the photograph. “He just escorted me to the ship as politely as if I were an acquaintance and lifted his hat in farewell.” I broke off, swallowing hard. “It’s absurd, but I always hated to think it was the last memory I would ever have of him.”
“You were divorcing him,” Wally pointed out.
“Yes, but it was so unlike him, at least it was unlike the man I thought I married. That moment when I stood on that deck watching him leave was the very worst of it. It was like saying goodbye to a stranger.”
“I don’t suppose most divorces are terribly amicable,” he said reasonably. “After all, no one likes to get chucked away like last night’s dinner.”
“I suppose.”
“And weren’t you the one who asked for a divorce?”
“Yes, but—oh, never mind! I’ve wasted too many years thinking about him already. Let’s just forget this and get on with the trip. Hand me the map book, will you? I want to plot the course across the Caspian.”
I rose hastily and threw the photograph into the fire in a savage gesture then snatched it back almost as quickly. The burned edge of it singed my finger and I sucked at the tender skin, cursing under my breath. I couldn’t bring myself to completely destroy the photograph, and I didn’t want to think too hard about what that might mean. I walked to the wastepaper basket and dropped the photograph inside. “Damn him.”
Wally rose calmly and retrieved it. He put it into my hand, folding my fingers gently around it.
“What did you do that for?” I demanded.
“Because it’s time you stopped running, Evie. For you, Gabriel Starke is past and present, and somewhere, I don’t know how, perhaps your future, as well. You’ll never be free of him if you don’t go and find out.”
“Go?”
He sighed. “Woman, you try my patience. To Damascus. You must go to Damascus and find him if he’s there.”
I blinked up at him. “But why? For what possible purpose?”
“That’s up to you, my dear. Strike him, swear at him, kiss him or kill him, I don’t much care. But you will never bury your dead so long as there is a chance he is still alive in this world.”