He heard the taxi pull away behind him, and rang the doorbell. The climbing roses over the porch were in leaf but not yet in bud. The lawn had had its first cut. The door opened.
She had been Primrose Hinds. Their marriage had lasted eighteen years in which time he had never touched another woman. She was the daughter of Charlie 'The Slash' Hinds who had emphysema, a hot temper, and a regular address in the Scrubs, and who was flash. From his father-in-law he had learned all that was wrong about a lifestyle. Primrose was his Princess. She knew everything about him, she was as discreet as her father was not, she was the only person he fully trusted. He could have bought his Princess a castle, covered her with jewellery and lived the celebrity existence, as others did. She had never worked since their marriage, at which no photographs were taken by guests and no official snapper was employed. A year after the wedding, a doctor had told her that she was unable to have children.
'Good to see you, Mister, good to have you h o m e… '
He kissed her, on the cheek. It was not a kiss of devotion but of true friendship. Later she would give him the numbers of the new mobile phones that the Cards had dropped off, and when the house was last scanned for bugs, and where the vans were in the road for the cameras. She was a pretty woman, an inch or so taller than him, and had a good throat and good ankles. He had insisted that she never visited him in Brixton, never came to the gallery for the magistrate's committal hearing or travelled down to the Old Bailey. He protected his Princess from prying, peering, stripping eyes.