Free The Innocents by Francesca Segal Page A

I’m living, and that should be enough. Call me a mess if you want, but still, you know, I get through the day. Do what you’ve gotta do. I don’t know about someone to look after me, I look after myself okay. But it would be”—she paused—“nice, I suppose, if someone got it. Just a little. Just a part of it.”
    The ache that Adam felt at that moment was surprising and acute. He hurt for her. With her self-possession and guarded irony, Ellie did not encourage anyone to remember what she had suffered; until now he had not really let himself imagine. And he felt ashamed—of himself, and of all of them. Minutes before he had been lecturing her pompously about her necklines, and she had shown him that he was ridiculous. She had come home to her family and was lonelier here than anywhere, and that could not be right.
    “I’m lonely,” he said, suddenly.
    She sighed, and the timbre of her sigh could have resonated with anything from exhaustion to despair. She let her head drop back on the arm of the sofa. Beside him he could see nothing but the curve of a white neck, light gleaming across her jutting collarbone; the shadowed hollow at the base of her throat. There was such exposure in the position that she seemed naked before him and the desire to touch her, which he had battled ever since she stood over him in Ziva’s hallway, became unbearable. Whatever it was that she had awoken in him, it was both impossible and indefensible. He got up and crossed the small room, heading for anything that might save him.
    “Adam—” she started, but her BlackBerry began to ring, a different song this time. Now it was Jay-Z in an Empire State of Mind, and she scrambled to her feet to answer it with more fervor than he had ever seen in her. Jay-Z was barely in his flow when she had snatched up the phone and breathed, “Hi, baby,” in a voice that made Adam’s stomach turn. It was the sight of his jacket hanging by the front door that galvanized him into action, and he was already holding it and striding out into the courtyard before he realized what he’d done. Rocky barked. Through the window Ellie was waving him back, but that she did not call aloud to him made him all the more determined to leave. She shrugged and turned away, and as he passed between the moss green benches, he heard her saying, “But how was the auction, baby?”
    That evening Adam had no trouble choosing Rachel’s song. “She’s the One” by Robbie Williams was a return to his previous form—a simple melody and an expression of the overwhelming relief that he had felt when, driving home from Bethnal Green, he reached King’s Cross and the streets became familiar. He had regained his bearings then and had known for certain that he was heading in the right direction. Rachel was the one. But the knowledge hadn’t stopped him from listening to the Jay-Z song that Ellie had saved on her phone in order to glean any clues that it might offer to her relationship with the mystery caller, nor could it erase the memory of her sinking into the sofa, head thrown back, the image of a vast, provoking tongue glittering across her chest. And it did not prevent him, an hour later, from returning to his computer laughing with delighted satisfaction that he had finally been able to capture the strains of a tune that had been tickling at the edges of his consciousness. He found it online, an American blues track called “I’m Trying to Make London My Home,” and sent the song, with its glorious harmonica riffs and simple, apposite lyrics, to Ellie. She might associate Manhattan with the men of her past life, but London was still up for the taking.

7

    The next day the sky was pale November white, and the stiff grass of Hampstead Heath crunched frozen underfoot. The Heath was quiet, sparsely populated with dog walkers and the odd brave, chilly family. A magpie, ink black and striped with azure, scratched and hopped beneath the beeches.
    “Thank you for the Robbie