Elinor chose not to answer this uncontentious remark. The pause between them lengthened, and then, in the last moments that preceded sleep she spoke again: ‘You think I’m stupid,’ she said, ‘but I’m not. I know all about you, Henry. And I’ll tell you one thing about us. It’s till death us do part. That’s the way it is. Right?’
‘Right!’ said Henry.
She was snoring quite soon after that, but Henry lay awake for a long time, staring into the darkness, waiting for sleep that would not come. He thought about Elinor, and why he was still with her and what it would be like in the weeks and months and years to come. If there was one single thing that she had that was worth something, it was her mysterious quality. She was so hard to explain. He still didn’t quite know what she would do next in any given situation. He still wasn’t sure what she did or didn’t know about him and what she was planning to do with whatever information she had picked up about him. Killing her would have been a very stupid thing to have done. There was, he decided, as he turned over to address himself to sleep, quite a lot of mileage in her yet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Wimbledon Dharjees are, of course, an entirely fictitious Islamic sect, but the group from which they are alleged to come, the Nizari Ismailis, are a real and well-documented group of Shiite Muslims. A full account of the true, and incredible, story of Hasan the Second, the Twenty-third Imam of the Nizari Ismailis, is to be found in Bernard Lewis’s The Assassins (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967). Robert’s one guide to his assumed religion, Morals and Manners in Islam, a Guide to Islamic Adab, by Marwan Ibrahim Al-Kaysi, was published by the Islamic Foundation in 1986.
Unfaithfully Yours
Nigel Williams
ISBN: 978-1-47210-674-2 (HB) £18.99
ISBN: 978-1-47210-683-4 (Ebook) £12.99
When Elizabeth Price engages a private detective to investigate her husband’s suspected infidelity, she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that will reunite four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few streets away from each other; they are all still married; so how – and why – did they become so estranged? In a series of painfully and often hilariously revealing letters, from love notes to condolence messages, all becomes clear.
Unfaithfully Yours is an uproarious and poignant portrait of four marriages; a tale of late-flowering love and suburban intrigue. It heralds the return of one of our finest comic writers, in peak condition: all hail Nigel Williams, chronicler of England’s sleepy suburbs, where all is not quite as cricket as it seems . . .
‘A brilliantly witty writer.’ Sunday Times
The Wimbledon Poisoner Page 30
