“Poor baby.”
Tracy wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her tiny baby bump against the small of his back. She’d been feeling exhausted recently, a side effect of the pregnancy according to Alan—Dr. McBride—but so far had avoided morning sickness and the smell of food didn’t bother her. Tonight she’d prepared Jeff a special dinner of spaghetti carbonara. A delicious scent of bacon, cheese and cream wafted through from the kitchen.
“I’ve got something for you. To cheer you up.”
She led Jeff into the drawing room, a beautifully proportioned Georgian living room with high ceilings, wide oak floorboards and original sash windows overlooking the richly planted “Queen Anne,” British slang for a front garden.
“You already cheered me up,” said Jeff, sinking into the sofa. “How are you feeling today, beautiful?”
“I’m fine.” Tracy handed him a gin and tonic with ice and lemon. “But this is gonna cheer you up more. At least I hope it will.”
She pulled a small, black leather box out of her pocket and handed it to him, a little nervously. She knew there was a chance Jeff might take the gift the wrong way, and she desperately wanted to please him, to bring a touch of their old life back with all its fun and excitement.
“Let’s just say I went to a lot of trouble to get ahold of it.”
Jeff opened the box. Tracy watched, delighted, as his eyes widened.
“Where did you get this?”
She grinned. “Where do you think?”
“My God.” Jeff gasped. “It’s the real thing, isn’t it? I thought for a second it might be a really good copy.”
“A copy? Please.” Tracy sounded offended. “Copies are for the hoi polloi, darling. Only the best for you.”
Jeff stood up. Tracy thought he was coming over to kiss her, but when he looked up she saw that his eyes were alight with anger.
“Are you out of your mind?” He held the coin up to her face accusingly. In his hand was the silver coin of Cynethryth of Mercia, one of the British Museum’s rarest treasures. “You stole this.”
“Yes. For you.” Tracy looked confused. “I know how much it meant to you. Besides, you said it yourself. Nothing could be more Anglo-Saxon than a bit of looting.”
She smiled. Jeff didn’t smile back.
“That was a joke!” He looked at her aghast. “How did you . . . when . . . ?”
“The day your exhibition opened. I knew the other Saxon rooms would be totally empty. All anyone was interested in was Merovingian Treasures. So I set off the fire alarm, slipped into the south wing, and, well . . . I just took it. Those cases aren’t even alarmed,” she added, a note of disdain in her voice. “It’s like if it isn’t the Elgin Marbles or the Rosetta Stone, no one cares.”
“Everybody cares!” said Jeff furiously. “I care. In any case, those cases are locked. Where did you get the key?”
Tracy looked at him as if he were mad.
“I copied yours, of course. Really, darling, it’s not exactly rocket science. I Googled the coin, after you said you liked it so much, and I got a copy made at a little jeweler in the East End. Then I swapped it out for the original. Easy.”
Jeff was speechless.
Upset by his reaction, Tracy added defiantly, “And you know what? No one noticed the difference! No one except you even looks at that thing. Why shouldn’t you have it?”
“Because it’s not mine!” Jeff said, exasperated. “It belongs to the nation. I’ve been trusted to protect it, Tracy. And now my wife, my own wife, goes and steals it!”
“I thought you’d be pleased.” Tears welled up in Tracy’s eyes.
“Well, I’m not.”
She couldn’t understand Jeff’s reaction. Especially after she’d gone to so much trouble. He used to be proud of me when I pulled off jobs like that. No one had been hurt, after all. The old Jeff would have been pleased, amused, delighted. Tracy wanted the old Jeff back.
Jeff was staring down at the coin in his hand, shaking his head in disbelief. “Rebecca said she thought you seemed distracted on opening day,” he murmured. “I remember she asked me if there was anything up with you.”
“Oh, Rebecca said something, did she?” Tracy shot back angrily. “Well, bully for Rebecca! I’ll bet perfect little Rebecca would never sink so low as to steal a national treasure, now, would she?”
“No, she wouldn’t,” said Jeff.
“Because she’s not a dishonest con artist like me, right?”
Jeff shrugged as if to say, If the shoe fits.
Tears of anger and humiliation streamed down Tracy’s cheeks. “Your little girlfriend may be better than me—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Jeff snapped. “Rebecca isn’t my girlfriend.”
“But if she’s better than me, she’s better than you too, Jeff. Have you forgotten who you are? You’re a con artist, Jeff Stevens. You may have retired, but you’ve got a twenty-year life of crime behind you, my friend! So don’t you come playing the high-handed saint with . . .”
Tracy stopped abruptly, like a child freezing in a game of musical statues.
“What?” said Jeff.
Tracy stared at him, her eyes wide and desperate, like a rabbit about to be shot. Then she looked down. Droplets of blood, dark and heavy, fell slowly from between her legs onto the floorboards.
She started to sob.
“All right, sweetheart. Don’t panic.” Jeff dropped the coin and put his arms around her. This was Tracy, his Tracy. What was he thinking, getting so angry with her in her condition. “It’ll be okay. Just lie down.”
Jeff ran for the phone. “I need an ambulance. Yes, Forty-five Eaton Square. As fast as you can, please.”
CHAPTER 4
BELGRAVIA WAS PARTICULARLY BEAUTIFUL in the springtime, Jeff Stevens thought as he set out from Eaton Square in the direction of Hyde Park. The cherry trees lining the Georgian streets were all in bloom, an eruption of white that mirrored the white stucco facades and laid a snowy carpet over the uneven paving stones. Frequent rain had left the grass in Chester and Belgrave Square a glowing, vibrant green. And everywhere people seemed cheerful and renewed, grateful to have emerged from another long, gray, relentless London winter.
For Jeff and Tracy Stevens, the winter had been longer than most. Tracy’s miscarriage had hit both of them hard, but Jeff carried an extra burden of guilt, afraid that it was the fight they’d had over that stupid Mercian coin that had triggered it. He had discreetly returned the coin months ago, and no one at the British Museum had been any the wiser. But the damage that had been done to his relationship with Tracy was not so easy to fix.
They still loved each other. Of that there was no doubt. But the coin incident had forced them both to realize that they’d been papering over some pretty seismic cracks within the marriage. Perhaps it was Tracy’s struggle to conceive that had obscured them? Or Jeff’s total immersion in his new job? Or both? Whatever the cause, the bottom line was that Jeff had changed since they gave up their old life of heists and capers. And Tracy, fundamentally, had not.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t prepared to give up the actual act of committing crimes. That she could do. The stealing of the Saxon coin had been a one-shot deal, which she had no intention of repeating. It was more that there was a part of her identity, an important part, that she didn’t want to let go of. Jeff, at long last, was starting to understand this.
He still hoped that a child would eventually fill the void for Tracy, the way that his passion for antiquities had filled the void for him. They began IVF with high hopes. But as one cycle failed, and then a second, Jeff could only stand by and watch helplessly as the dark sadness inside his wife grew bigger and bigger, like a tumor nothing seemed able to stop.
Jeff tried to make Tracy whole with his love. He started coming home early from work, took her on romantic vacations and surprised her with all sorts of thoughtful gifts: a vintage oil painting of the quarter of New Orleans where Tracy had grown up; a beautiful leather-bound book on the history of flamenco, the dance to which Jeff and Tracy had first fallen in love; a pair of jet earrings from the Whitby coast, where the two of them had once spent a memorably awful weekend in a dreadful hotel, but where Tracy had become intoxicated with the wild, moorland landscape.
Tracy was touched by all of them. But the sadness remained.
“It sounds like depression,” Rebecca suggested tentatively, listening to Jeff pour his heart out over tea in the museum café. “Has she seen anybody?”
“Like a shrink, you mean? No. Tracy doesn’t believe in all that stuff.”