Cool Repentance (27 page)

'Maybe I'll come up to London more often. Lark is over for me. I have to find another hermitage - perhaps I'll find a hermitage convenient for the capital if such a thing exists. A commuter's hermitage. I might ask you out to dinner, Jemima Shore Investigator. Would you accept?'

Jemima thought of their conversation in Gregory's cottage and gave her famous smile, the lovely wide deliberate one which made people of both sexes think she was a sweet person and fall in love with her on television. 'I warn you,' she said. 'Vulnerable I may be, but emotionally insecure I am not. Not in the slightest. And I've no intention of starting now.'

'Oh don't apologize,' Gregory gave a grand wave of the hand. 'I was thinking of changing my type anyway. Keeping up with the times. Isn't it supposed to be good for one's art? You would know about that sort of thing.'

He took her hand and found she was clutching a sea-shell. She had found it in the pocket of her red jacket. It was the souvenir cockleshell which Cherry had presented to her that first Sunday morning by the sea.

Gregory bent and kissed the hand which held the shell.

'Would you accept?' he repeated. 'I might ask you to more than that. Do you like France?'

'Pre-revolutionary Paris?' enquired Jemima. She was still smiling but by now it was the unforced smile familiar to her friends.

'Yes, if you like. Other things might follow. We could discuss that.'

'Paris anyway,' said Jemima Shore.