Free The Japanese Girl by Winston Graham Page A

it down on the card table with a bang and opened the box, took out an ear-ring and slapped it on the table beside the box.
    â€˜I’ve only just got hold of it,’ he said angrily. ‘It’s been in my family apparently for a time, but I hadn’t seen it before. I wondered if it was a match for the one you have, so I brought it along to show you and compare it. But as it happened I decided not to take it out when you showed us yours.’
    Bob Loveridge was looking hard at Peter while he spoke. We all were some distance from the table. Nobody made a move.
    Peter said irritably: ‘For God’s sake look at it! There it is. That’s the one I brought. It isn’t yours, Bob, but I think it makes a pair.’
    Bob Loveridge walked slowly to the table and picked up – well, picked up – the ear-ring. He held it for us all to see, turned it round, smoothed a thumb and finger over the pearl. His face was quite white, like someone who’d had bad news. Then he suddenly offered it to his daughter. Lucille’s hair shook in a violent negative.
    Humphrey French moved across and stared at the ear-ring but didn’t touch it. Then he shrugged and looked expressively across at Peter. I did not move.
    Peter said again: ‘I think it makes a pair. That’s if we ever find the other one.’
    Loveridge said slowly: ‘I suppose you – meant it as a joke.’
    â€˜Daddy,’ Lucille said, ‘if we –’
    â€˜A joke?’ said Peter. ‘No, it was no joke.’
    â€˜I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Loveridge. ‘I was only trying to find a – a reasonable excuse for you for trying on – such a – such a damned silly trick .’
    â€˜Silly trick!’ Peter said between his teeth. ‘That’s my ear-ring!’
    â€˜Can you prove it?’
    â€˜Why the hell should I?’
    â€˜I’d like to hear you try.’
    â€˜Well, you’re going to be disappointed! It’s exactly what I said before – either you trust and believe in someone or you don’t –’
    â€˜I’m sorry, Peter,’ Bob said. ‘We’ve got a little beyond that, I’m afraid. I don’t like what’s happened and I’m not going to pretend to.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, too,’ said Peter, staring directly back at him.
    Bob said: ‘Can you find your own way out?’
    Peter glanced around – at me, at Captain French, briefly at Lucille.
    â€˜ Right ,’ he said. ‘ Right . I’ll go. Good night and be damned to the lot of you!’
    And he went. As he moved I spoke his name, having some unformed impulse to try and save the complete break. But whatever I had said at that moment would have been useless. Maybe the only one who could have stopped him was Lucille, and she was as tongue-tied as any of us.
    The front door slammed.
    The following day I had a visitor. The place I’d rented from my friend was the top floor of a Victorian house in Fulham-pretending-to-be-Chelsea. It wasn’t huge even by the standards of today: a poky bedroom with a shared bath, but the studio was big and had a north light, and one cooked one’s meals on a gas-ring in the corner.
    It was Lucille Loveridge, whom I might have expected but somehow hadn’t. I’d never really reached the heart-missing-a-beat stage with her; but welcoming her there, stained shirt and brash in hand, I thought how exactly right she was for me, the shape, the colour, the smell, the grace of good moving and a personality that immediately went click-click with mine. She lit the whole place up.
    We talked for a bit generally, and she drew her cheeks in over a nervous cigarette while she looked at some of my recent pictures. I’d recently gone through a Fauvist phase and was just coming out for air at the other side. I tried to explain this to her and she nodded and was dutifully intelligent, but I knew only