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Anything! A note. A card. A message sent through my father. It didn’t matter what as long as it was from you. But nothing came. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t understand. And in the end, when I could face it, I just waited for the news that you’d finally married Helen.”
    “Married Helen ?” St. James demanded incredulously. He didn’t stop to consider how or why their conversation was escalating so rapidly into an argument. “How in God’s name could you even think that?”
    “What else was I to think?”
    “You might have had the sense to start out with what existed between the two of us before you left England.”
    Tears sprang into her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously. “Oh, I thought of that, all right. Every night, every morning, I thought of that, Simon. Lying in my bed, trying to come up with a single good reason to get on in my life. Living in a void. Living in hell. Are you pleased to know it? Are you satisfied now? Missing you. Wanting you. It was torture. A disease.”
    “With Tommy the cure.”
    “Absolutely. Thank God. With Tommy the cure. So get out of here. Now. Leave me alone.”
    “I’ll leave, all right. It would hardly do to have me here in the love nest when Tommy arrives to claim what he’s paid for.” He pointed crudely at each object as he spoke. “Tea laid out nicely. Soft music playing. And the lady herself, ready and waiting. I can see I’d get just a bit in the way. Especially if he’s in a rush.”
    Deborah backed away from him. “What he’s paid for? Is that why you’re here? Is that what you think? That I’m too worthless and stupid to support myself? That this is Tommy’s flat? Who am I then, Simon? Who bloody well am I? His bauble? Some scrubber? His tart?” She didn’t wait for the answer. “Get out of my flat.”
    Not yet, he decided. By God, not yet. “You talk a pretty piece about torture, don’t you? So what the hell do you think these three years have been like for me? And how do you imagine I felt waiting to see you, last night, hour after hour—after three goddamned years—and knowing now you were here all that time with him?”
    “I don’t care how you felt! Whatever it was, it couldn’t come close to the misery you foisted on me.”
    “What a compliment to your lover! Are you sure misery is the word you want to use?”
    “It comes back to that, doesn’t it? Sex is the issue. Who’s screwing Deb. Well, here’s your chance, Simon. Go ahead. Have me. Make up for lost time. There’s the bed. Go on.” He didn’t reply. “Come on. Screw me. Have me for a quickie. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Damn you, isn’t it?”
    When still he was silent, she reached in a fury for the first available object that came into her hand. She threw it at him with all her strength, and it crashed and splintered against the wall near his head. They both saw too late that in her rage she had destroyed his gift to a long ago childhood birthday, a porcelain swan.
    The act ended anger.
    Deborah started to speak, a fist at her lips, as if she were seeking the first horrified words of apology. But St. James felt beyond hearing another word. He looked down at the broken fragments on the floor and crushed them into powder beneath his foot, a single sharp movement with which he demonstrated that love, like clay, can be pitiably friable.
    With a cry, Deborah rushed across the room to where a few pieces lay beyond his reach. She picked them up.
    “I hate you!” Tears finally coursed down her cheeks. “I hate you! This is just the sort of thing I’d expect you to do. And why not when everything about you is crippled. You think it’s just your stupid leg, don’t you, but you’re crippled inside, and by God, that’s worse.”
    Her words knifed the air, every nightmare come to life. St. James flinched from their strength and moved towards the door. He felt numb, weak, and primarily conscious of the terrible awkwardness of his gait, as if it were magnified