Tom has been gone almost two hours now, he’ll be back soon from wherever he’s been. I make the bed, put the log and the phone in the bedside table, go downstairs, pour myself one final glass of wine and drink it quickly. I could call her. I could confront her. But what would I say? There’s no moral high ground for me to take. And I’m not sure I could bear it, the delight she would take in telling me that all this time, I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you.
I hear footsteps on the pavement outside and I know it’s him, I know his gait. I shove the wineglass into the sink and I stand there, leaning against the kitchen counter, the blood pounding in my ears.
“Hello,” he says when he sees me. He looks sheepish, he’s weaving just a little.
“They serve beer at the gym now, do they?”
He grins. “I forgot my stuff. I went to the pub.”
Just as I thought. Or just as he thought I would think?
He comes a little closer. “What have you been up to?” he asks me, a smile on his lips. “You look guilty.” He slips his arms around my waist and pulls me close. I can smell the beer on his breath. “Have you been up to no good?”
“Tom . . .”
“Shhh,” he says, and he kisses my mouth, starts unbuttoning my jeans. He turns me around. I don’t want to, but I don’t know how to say no, so I close my eyes and try not to think of him with her, I try to think of the early days, running round to the empty house on Cranham Road, breathless, desperate, hungry.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013
EARLY MORNING
I wake with a fright; it’s still dark. I think I can hear Evie crying, but when I go through to check on her, she’s sleeping deeply, her blanket clutched tightly between closed fists. I go back to bed, but I can’t fall asleep again. All I can think about is the phone in the bedside drawer. I glance over at Tom, lying with his left arm flung out, his head thrown back. I can tell from the cadence of his breathing that he’s far from consciousness. I slip out of bed, open the drawer and take out the phone.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I turn the phone over and over in my hand, preparing myself. I want to know, but I don’t. I want to be sure, but I want so desperately to be wrong. I turn it on. I press one and hold it, I hear the voice mail welcome. I hear that I have no new messages and no saved messages. Would I like to change my greeting? I end the call, but am suddenly gripped by the completely irrational fear that the phone could ring, that Tom would hear it from upstairs, so I slide the French doors open and step outside.
The grass is damp beneath my feet, the air cool, heavy with the scent of rain and roses. I can hear a train in the distance, a slow growl, it’s a long way off. I walk almost as far as the fence before I dial the voice mail again: would I like to change my greeting? Yes, I would. There’s a beep and a pause and then I hear her voice. Her voice, not his. Hi, it’s me, leave a message.
My heart has stopped beating.
It’s not his phone, it’s hers.
I play it again.
Hi, it’s me, leave a message.
It’s her voice.
I can’t move, can’t breathe. I play it again, and again. My throat is closed, I feel as though I’m going to faint, and then the light comes on upstairs.
RACHEL
• • •
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013
EARLY MORNING
One piece of the memory led to the next. It’s as though I’d been blundering about in the dark for days, weeks, months, then finally caught hold of something. Like running my hand along a wall to find my way from one room to the next. Shifting shadows started at last to coalesce, and after a while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I could see.
Not at first. At first, although it felt like a memory, I thought it must be a dream. I sat there, on the sofa, almost paralysed with shock, telling myself that it wouldn’t be the first time I’d misremembered something, wouldn’t be the first time that I’d thought things went a certain way when in fact they had played out differently.
Like that time we went to a party thrown by a colleague of Tom’s, and I was very drunk, but we’d had a good night. I remember kissing Clara good-bye. Clara was the colleague’s wife, a lovely woman, warm and kind. I remember her saying that we should get together again; I remember her holding my hand in hers.
I remembered that so clearly, but it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true the next morning when Tom turned his back on me when I tried to speak to him. I know it isn’t true because he told me how disappointed and embarrassed he was that I’d accused Clara of flirting with him, that I’d been hysterical and abusive.
When I closed my eyes I could feel her hand, warm against my skin, but that didn’t actually happen. What really happened is that Tom had to half carry me out of the house, me crying and shouting all the way, while poor Clara cowered in the kitchen.
So when I closed my eyes, when I drifted into a half dream and found myself in that underpass, I may have been able to feel the cold and smell the rank, stale air, I may have been able to see a figure walking towards me, spitting rage, fist raised, but it wasn’t true. The terror I felt wasn’t real. And when the shadow struck, leaving me there on the ground, crying and bleeding, that wasn’t real, either.
Only it was, and I saw it. It’s so shocking that I can scarcely believe it, but as I watch the sun rise it feels like mist lifting. What he told me was a lie. I didn’t imagine him hitting me. I remember it. Just like I remember saying good-bye to Clara after that party and her hand holding mine. Just like I remember the fear when I found myself on the floor next to that golf club—and I know now, I know for sure that I wasn’t the one swinging it.
I don’t know what to do. I run upstairs, pull on a pair of jeans and some trainers, run back downstairs. I dial their number, the landline, and let it ring a couple of times, then I hang up. I don’t know what to do. I make coffee, let it go cold, dial Detective Riley’s number, then hang up straightaway. She won’t believe me. I know she won’t.
I head out to the station. It’s a Sunday service, the first train isn’t for half an hour, so there’s nothing to do but sit there on a bench, going round and round, from disbelief to desperation and back again.
Everything is a lie. I didn’t imagine him hitting me. I didn’t imagine him walking away from me quickly, his fists clenched. I saw him turn, shout. I saw him walking down the road with a woman, I saw him getting into the car with her. I didn’t imagine it. And I realize then that it’s all very simple, so very simple. I do remember, it’s just that I had confused two memories. I’d inserted the image of Anna, walking away from me in her blue dress, into another scenario: Tom and a woman getting into a car. Because of course that woman wasn’t wearing a blue dress, she was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. She was Megan.
ANNA
• • •
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013
EARLY MORNING
I hurl the phone over the fence, as far as I can; it lands somewhere on the edge of the scree at the top of the embankment. I think I can hear it rolling down towards the track. I think I can still hear her voice. Hi. It’s me. Leave a message. I think I might be hearing her voice for a long time to come.
He’s at the bottom of the stairs by the time I get back to the house. He’s watching me, blinking, bleary-eyed, struggling out of sleep.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say, but I can hear the tremor in my voice.
“What were you doing outside?”
“I thought I heard someone,” I tell him. “Something woke me. I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“The phone rang,” he says, rubbing his eyes.
I clasp my hands together to stop them shaking. “What? What phone?”
“The phone.” He’s looking at me as though I’m insane. “The phone rang. Someone called and hung up.”
&nb
sp; “Oh. I don’t know. I don’t know who that was.”
He laughs. “Of course you don’t. Are you all right?” He comes across to me and puts his arms around my waist. “You’re being weird.” He holds me for a bit, his head bowed against my chest. “You should’ve woken me if you heard something,” he says. “You shouldn’t be going out there on your own. That’s my job.”
“I’m fine,” I say, but I have to clench my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. He kisses my lips, pushes his tongue into my mouth.
“Let’s go back to bed,” he says.
“I think I’m going to have a coffee,” I say, trying to pull away from him.
He’s not letting me go. His arms are tight around me, his hand gripping the back of my neck.
“Come on,” he says. “Come with me. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
RACHEL
• • •
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013
MORNING
I’m not really sure what to do, so I just ring the doorbell. I wonder whether I should have called first. It’s not polite to turn up early on a Sunday morning without calling, is it? I start to giggle. I feel slightly hysterical. I don’t really know what I’m doing.
No one comes to the door. The hysterical feeling grows as I walk round the side of the house, down the little passageway. I have the strongest feeling of déjà vu. That morning, when I came to the house, when I took the little girl. I never meant her any harm. I’m sure of that now.
I can hear her chattering as I make my way along the path in the cool shadow of the house, and I wonder whether I’m imagining things. But no, there she is, and Anna, too, sitting on the patio. I call out to her and hoist myself over the fence. She looks at me. I expect shock, or anger, but she barely even looks surprised.
“Hello, Rachel,” she says. She gets to her feet, taking her child by the hand, drawing her to her side. She looks at me, unsmiling, calm. Her eyes are red, her face pale, scrubbed, devoid of makeup.
“What do you want?” she asks.
“I rang the doorbell,” I tell her.
“I didn’t hear it,” she says, hoisting the child up onto her hip. She half turns away from me, as though she’s about to go into the house, but then she just stops. I don’t understand why she’s not yelling at me.
“Where’s Tom, Anna?”
“He went out. Army boys get-together.”
“We need to go, Anna,” I say, and she starts to laugh.
ANNA
• • •
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013
MORNING
For some reason, the whole thing seems very funny all of a sudden. Poor fat Rachel standing in my garden, all red and sweaty, telling me we need to go. We need to go.
“Where are we going?” I ask her when I stop laughing, and she just looks at me, blank, lost for words. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Evie squirms and complains and I put her back down. My skin still feels hot and tender from where I scrubbed myself in the shower this morning; the inside of my mouth, my cheeks, my tongue, they feel bitten.
“When will he be back?” she asks me.
“Not for a while yet, I shouldn’t think.”
I’ve no idea when he’ll be back, in fact. Sometimes he can spend whole days at the climbing wall. Or I thought he spent whole days at the climbing wall. Now I don’t know.
I do know that he’s taken the gym bag; it can’t be long before he discovers that the phone is gone.
I was thinking of taking Evie and going to my sister’s for a while, but the phone is troubling me. What if someone finds it? There are workers on this stretch of track all the time; one of them might find it and hand it in to the police. It has my fingerprints on it.
Then I was thinking that perhaps it wouldn’t be all that difficult to get it back, but I’d have to wait until nighttime so no one would see me.
I’m aware that Rachel is still talking, she’s asking me questions. I haven’t been listening to her. I feel so tired.
“Anna,” she says, coming closer to me, those intense dark eyes searching mine. “Have you ever met any of them?”
“Met who?”
“His friends from the army. Have you ever actually been introduced to any of them?” I shake my head. “Do you not think that’s odd?” It strikes me then that what’s really odd is her showing up in my garden first thing on a Sunday morning.
“Not really,” I say. “They’re part of another life. Another of his lives. Like you are. Like you were supposed to be, anyway, but we can’t seem to get rid of you.” She flinches, wounded. “What are you doing here, Rachel?”
“You know why I’m here,” she says. “You know that something . . . something has been going on.” She has this earnest look on her face, as though she’s concerned about me. Under different circumstances, it might be touching.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” I say, and she nods.
I make the coffee and we sit side by side on the patio in silence that feels almost companionable. “What were you suggesting?” I ask her. “That Tom’s friends from the army don’t really exist? That he made them up? That he’s actually off with some other woman?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Rachel?” She looks at me then and I can see in her eyes that she’s afraid. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Have you ever met Tom’s family?” she asks me. “His parents?”
“No. They’re not talking. They stopped talking to him when he ran off with me.”
She shakes her head. “That isn’t true,” she says. “I’ve never met them, either. They don’t even know me, so why would they care about his leaving me?”
There’s darkness in my head, right at the back of my skull. I’ve been trying to keep it at bay ever since I heard her voice on the phone, but now it starts to swell, it blooms.
“I don’t believe you,” I say. “Why would he lie about that?”
“Because he lies about everything.”
I get to my feet and walk away from her. I feel annoyed with her for telling me this. I feel annoyed with myself, because I think I do believe her. I think I’ve always known that Tom lies. It’s just that in the past, his lies tended to suit me.
“He is a good liar,” I say to her. “You were totally clueless for ages, weren’t you? All those months we were meeting up, fucking each other’s brains out in that house on Cranham Road, and you never suspected a thing.”
She swallows, bites her lip hard. “Megan,” she says. “What about Megan?”
“I know. They had an affair.” The words sound strange to me—this is the first time that I’ve said them out loud. He cheated on me. He cheated on me. “I’m sure that amuses you,” I say to her, “but she’s gone now, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Anna . . .”
The darkness gets bigger; it’s pushing at the edges of my skull, clouding my vision. I grab Evie by the hand and start to drag her inside. She protests vociferously.
“Anna . . .”
“They had an affair. That’s it. Nothing else. It doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“That he killed her?”
“Don’t say that!” I find myself yelling at her. “Don’t say that in front of my child.”
I give Evie her midmorning snack, which she eats without complaint for the first time in weeks. It’s almost as though she knows that I have other things to worry about, and I adore her for it. I feel immeasurably calmer when we go back outside, even if Rachel is still there, standing down at the bottom of the garden by the fence, watching one of the trains go past. After a while, when she realizes that I’m back outside, she walks towards me.
“You like them, don’t you?” I say. “The trains. I hate them. Absolutely bloody loathe them.”
She gives me a half smile. I notice
that she has a deep dimple on the left side of her face. I’ve never seen that before. I suppose I haven’t seen her smile very often. Ever.
“Another thing he lied about,” she says. “He told me you loved this house, loved everything about it, even the trains. He told me that you wouldn’t dream of finding a new place, that you wanted to move in here with him, even if I had been here first.”
I shake my head. “Why on earth would he tell you that?” I ask her. “It’s utter bullshit. I’ve been trying to get him to sell this house for two years.”
She shrugs. “Because he lies, Anna. All the time.”
The darkness blossoms. I pull Evie onto my lap and she sits there quite contentedly, she’s getting sleepy in the sunshine. “So all those phone calls . . .” I say. It’s only really starting to make sense now. “They weren’t from you? I mean, I know some of them were, but some—”
“Were from Megan? Yes, I imagine so.”
It’s odd, because I know now that all this time I’ve been hating the wrong woman, and yet knowing this doesn’t make me dislike Rachel any less. If anything, seeing her like this, calm, concerned, sober, I’m starting to see what she once was and I resent her more, because I’m starting to see what he must have seen in her. What he must have loved.
I glance down at my watch. It’s after eleven. He left around eight, I think. It might even have been earlier. He must know about the phone by now. He must have known for quite some time. Perhaps he thinks it fell out of the bag. Perhaps he imagines it’s under the bed upstairs.
“How long have you known?” I ask her. “About the affair.”
“I didn’t,” she says. “Until today. I mean I don’t know what was going on. I just know . . .” Thankfully she falls silent, because I’m not sure I can stand hearing her talk about my husband’s infidelity. The thought that she and I—fat, sad Rachel and I—are now in the same boat is unbearable.