‘I know.’ Harry hesitated again. ‘Look, I’m sorry turning up like this but I’ve been abroad for work and I didn’t know Caspian had died until I read about the memorial service in the hospital newsletter a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Oh.’ I gazed at him. ‘Are you another gynaecologist?’
‘No.’ Harry smiled and the effect transformed his face, making him seem almost mischievous. ‘I’m a sales rep for a small company . . . Devora Pharmaceuticals. Look, that doesn’t matter.’ His face grew solemn again. ‘Truth is that I hardly knew your husband, but I had to come here today to let you know what he told me.’
‘Sorry?’ Most of the room was hidden from view by the coat rail. I could see Dad out of the corner of my eye. He was looking around, presumably for me. ‘Sorry, I’m not sure what—’
‘Caspian and I met in the bar of the conference hotel,’ Harry interrupted. He looked awkward now, his forehead creased with a frown. ‘We were in a group, drinking, then the two of us got talking, then . . . then Caspian said something. He was tired, a bit drunk. His guard was down. I guessed from what everyone said that you had – have – no idea . . .’
My heart lurched into my mouth. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that my understanding is that everyone including the police think your husband got caught up in a random knife attack, a mugging gone wrong or something.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘It wasn’t random. At least, I don’t think it was.’
The chatter in the room whirled around us. I kept my gaze on Harry’s soft brown eyes. ‘Why . . . why would you say that?’
‘No one was ever caught, were they?’
‘No.’ The police’s investigation had stalled early on thanks to the lack of witnesses and DNA evidence. A hooded man had been seen on CCTV getting into a stolen Vauxhall Astra on the next street shortly after the stabbing but he’d never been identified and the car had never been found, though a burnt-out Astra – number plates removed – was discovered in an Essex wood two weeks later. ‘Why are you saying it wasn’t a random attack? Whoever it was stole all the cash from Caspian’s wallet.’
‘Yeah, I read that when I looked up the story. Murdered for £150. That was the headline, wasn’t it?’
I nodded, wincing at the memory. ‘Why do you think different?’
‘Because your husband told me in that bar he was being threatened.’
‘Threatened?’
‘He hadn’t said anything to you because he didn’t want to worry you, but sometimes we tell strangers things and he told me he thought his life was in danger.’ Harry paused.
‘What else?’ I asked, sensing he was holding something back.
‘He said that the threats were coming from someone specific.’ Harry held my gaze. ‘From someone close to you both.’
2
The light streaming through the window from the fierce January sun dimmed and the chatter of the busy hall faded to a background hum. For a split second my breath caught in my throat. Then the absurdity of what he was saying struck me. I laughed out loud.
‘What are you talking about? The police didn’t . . . No one has said anything about threats, let alone someone close to us.’
‘I know.’ Harry hesitated. ‘Look, I realise this is a lot to take in.’ He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket containing a scribbled number and handed it to me. ‘This is my mobile,’ he said. ‘Call me when you’ve . . . I’m really sorry, I know this is a bad time, I just didn’t know how else to find you . . . to tell you.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Who is this person “close” to us? Did Caspian give you a name? Or a reason?’
‘He thought the threats were something to do with his work as a doctor . . . carrying out abortions.’
We stared at each other. Caspian had performed terminations ever since I’d known him. They were part and parcel of his duties as a gynaecologist, as a surgeon. We’d talked about the ethics of abortions many times during the first year we were together. It had been such a huge and emotive subject in my own strictly Catholic upbringing: firstly with me arguing a pro-choice position from my early teens and later, when I helped Lucy arrange her termination. Our parents were furious when they found out. Mum took it personally that Lucy and I had gone behind her back, while Dad channelled his anger into Shield, a pro-life campaigning organisation which dominated his free time for years.
I couldn’t believe it when I met Caspian and discovered abortion surgery was part of his working life. Caspian himself was characteristically logical on the topic. He didn’t much like carrying out the procedure but refused to disqualify himself as many other doctors did.
‘How can I turn my back?’ he used to say. ‘It would be hypocritical. The women making this choice aren’t doing it because it’s easy. It’s hard for them too and if I support the intellectual idea of it I can’t run away from the application.’
We even argued about it in the months after Rufus was born when – ironically – the pro-life lessons that had been drummed into me as a child reasserted themselves with a short-lived but fiercely felt intensity that shocked me, even at the time. Caspian stayed calm in the face of my tears as he repeated his belief that if abortions were legal he was obliged to carry them out. As usual, he won me over with his implacable reasoning and the steady, solid way he made his arguments: nothing ever loud or emotional.
Having had my own children the years passed and my revulsion at abortion subsided again. No, that’s not quite right. I was never revolted at the thought, merely upset. Which Caspian always said he was too. Intellectually I agreed with him. Always. It was just that for a time the prospect of getting rid of a foetus appalled me – a visceral reaction which had never wholly left me since and which Caspian, I’m certain, never shared.
‘Your family is Catholic, isn’t it?’ Harry asked, his voice low and intent.
‘Ye-es,’ I acknowledged, my anxieties rising. ‘Why . . .? What are you saying?’ Was Harry implying the person ‘close to me’ who was threatening my husband was a member of my own family?
Harry hesitated.
‘What did Caspian actually tell—?’ I started.
‘Francesca?’ Jacqueline was waving a leather-gloved hand in my direction. ‘Francesca, the car’s ready.’
I stared helplessly at Harry. He gave his head the tiniest of shakes, then leaned forward so I could feel the brush of his lips against my ear.
‘Call me,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know.’ He turned and hurried away.
‘What was that about?’ Jacqueline asked, glancing after Harry.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
But as I got into the car with my family, all I could think about was Harry’s claim. The more I thought about it, the more preposterous it seemed. For a start, I couldn’t imagine anyone threatening my husband. Threats belonged to a more dramatic world than the one solid, dependable Caspian lived in. And if somebody had threatened him, why wouldn’t he have told me about it? In fact, why on earth would he have confided in a stranger in a bar? Caspian was reserved. Definitely not in the habit of revealing personal information to people he didn’t know.
On top of all that, why hadn’t Harry gone to the police and let them deal with it? Why had he come to me? Harry’s words echoed in my head.
The threats were coming from someone . . . close to you both.
Was that why he’d come to me? To warn me?
A shiver snaked down my spine. Preposterous or not, I needed to know more.
As soon as I got home I called the number Harry had given me.
‘Hello?’ I could hear the smile in Harry’s voice. ‘Is that Fran?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I need to know exactly what my husband told you.’
I paced up and down Ayesha’s living room the following morning, waiting for Harry to arrive. He had suggested we met in central London, but when I’d called Ayesha to look after Ruby while I was gone – Rufus already being out a
t a friend’s house – Ayesha first winkled the whole story out of me in typically persistent fashion, then insisted I invited him round to her flat.
‘Far safer, girl,’ she’d said in her no-nonsense way. ‘Me and Lori will be in the house too, in case he turns nasty.’
I wasn’t sure how much protection Ayesha and her teenage daughter would really offer, but Ayesha wasn’t a person you argued with. We’d been friends since we met at Newcastle University seventeen or so years ago. It had been the first proper week of lectures. I was miserable, away from home for the first time and realising that the outspoken, go-getting teenager I’d found it easy to be in the small, white, narrow world of school was totally intimidated by the daring, drug-experimenting girls in my shared residence. I’d escaped to the library and was doodling, pretending to read a psychology text book and seriously contemplating getting the next train home to my parents and Lucy.
I heard Ayesha before I saw her. She was shouting at the librarian for some act of perceived pettiness. I don’t remember the details, just Ayesha’s wide, appalled eyes and the force with which she made her arguments. She was dressed in something asymmetric and flowing, with red and orange ribbons wound through her hair. The librarian, a frowsy woman twice her age and several inches taller, was gaping. Because despite her intense manner, the smile never left Ayesha’s face. I remember thinking she was beautiful – all shiny black hair and caramel skin – and that whoever she was, she looked capable of ruling the world. And then the librarian nodded and Ayesha leaned forward and hugged her – which really took my breath away. As she flounced out she paused by the desk where I was working.
‘You look interesting,’ she said. Still smiling, infuriatingly haughty and utterly charming. ‘Let’s get coffee.’
My jaw dropped as Ayesha swept my books into my bag and marched off. I followed in her wake, as baffled by my own compliance as I was, already, completely under her spell.
We talked for two hours straight in the university café. Ayesha, it turned out, was not only flamboyant and direct – but also a fantastic listener. She constantly gave advice, but never in a way that felt undermining. And her reaction to my sudden outpouring of homesickness was characteristically brief:
‘Sucks, girl. We need to dress you up and get you out. Like to a party.’
I agreed, with only a small show of reluctance. I’d seen myself as a rebel at home and school, a big fish. But so far at uni I’d been docile . . . a plankton. I longed to party. And I sensed, rightly, that Ayesha would know exactly where to find the most fun on campus.
All that seemed a long time ago as I carried on pacing across Ayesha’s living room.
‘Hey, Mum, can I go with Lori for ice cream at Mariner’s?’ Ruby bounded in, breathless and wide-eyed.
‘I guess,’ I said, as Lori herself appeared in the doorway.
Lori was Ayesha’s only child – a sweet-natured doll of a girl who, if she lacked her mother’s verve, had certainly inherited her generosity of spirit and her beauty. She was almost sixteen and in her GCSE year. Not that exams figured largely in her thinking. Lori had been saying since she was six that all she wanted to do was look after children and, right now, she was applying for jobs at local private nurseries.
I opened my mouth, but before I could speak Ayesha butted in. ‘She knows, don’t you, Lori?’
Lori nodded. ‘Be careful of strangers, hold Ruby’s hand crossing the road and only one scoop of ice cream or you’ll spoil your lunch,’ she said with a grin. Despite her softer, calmer nature there were times when she strongly reminded me of her mother.
I grinned back, gave Ruby a hug and watched out of the window as the girls skipped off down the road. Mariner’s was in Putney, only a short bus ride away. In truth I was glad Ruby would be out of the house for Harry’s visit.
‘No sign of the handsome stranger?’ Ayesha asked.
I shook my head.
‘I told you you should have let me come to the memorial, I could have checked him over for you.’ Ayesha flumped down on the sofa with a groan. Her furniture was old, but covered in flame-coloured silks and wools. She had a fabulous knack of combining colours which I totally lacked and often added a new throw to her collection of burnt oranges and hot pinks.
‘I didn’t say he was handsome,’ I said absently.
‘Bet he is though.’ Ayesha snorted. ‘Beware of strangers bearing bad news, as they say.’
‘Actually they say beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’
‘That’s a bit racist.’
‘Don’t start.’
This low-level bickering characterised the friendship which the two of us had established that first term at uni. We’d been close ever since, keeping in touch all through the following spring and summer when Ayesha moved to London to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer – she was talented, but had started too old and was never sufficiently disciplined. She came back to Newcastle that autumn with her tail between her legs to pick up her degree. And almost immediately discovered she was pregnant with Lori after a random one-night stand.
There was never any question in Ayesha’s mind that she might not have the baby. She still thought then she might get involved in the dance world somehow. After we left uni – me with my degree, Ayesha with Lori – we moved into a shared flat in Southfields, west London – one of Dad’s many property investments, where we stayed for a nominal rent. I watched as Ayesha grappled with the demands of single motherhood and gradually let go of her dance world ambitions and took a job in hospital administration.
I moved out when I met Caspian to whom she introduced me in the pub near the hospital where they both worked. ‘Great,’ she said, once it was clear Caspian and I were a serious item. ‘I can see I’m going to be hoisted to homelessness by my own matchmaking petard.’ But Dad wouldn’t hear of it. He was always incredibly caring towards Ayesha who, as he put it, had made the right choice for her baby by going through with the pregnancy instead of succumbing to the ‘easy and foul temptation’ of an abortion. Dad insisted that Ayesha and Lori should stay on in the flat – and they still lived there, just five minutes around the corner from my own house.
A sharp rap on the front door made me catch my breath. Ayesha sat bolt upright, hands theatrically extended in front of her.
‘You get it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be upstairs if you need me.’
My heart thudded as I opened the door. Harry stood in the porch, a smile on his face. There was an openness in the way he carried himself and in the warmth of his dark eyes that instantly reassured me. It was raining lightly outside and Harry dusted the drops from his hair, sleeking it back off his angular face.
‘Come in,’ I said.
As Harry followed me into the living room all the questions I’d been trying not to think about for the past twenty-four hours zoomed around my head.
‘I’m glad you got in touch,’ Harry said. He looked around, taking in the purples and pinks of the couch under the far window. ‘This isn’t your place?’
‘No.’ I hesitated. It was hard, now I was face to face with him, to plunge straight into the conversation we needed to have, but no way could I manage any small talk either. ‘Er, look . . .’ I grimaced. ‘I’ll get straight to the point . . . the things you said yesterday, about my husband . . .’
‘Mmm.’ Harry nodded intently, a sympathetic look on his face. ‘It must have sounded kind of ridiculous.’ He paused. ‘And yet I’m guessing you found you couldn’t stop wondering about it?’
I looked away, not wanting to reveal how accurate his words were. I cleared my throat and forced myself to face him again.
‘I just need to know exactly what you meant . . .’
Harry perched on the scarlet armchair, removing the heart-shaped cushion and placing it on the floor. I took a seat opposite.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let me tell you exactly what happened. As I already explained, I met your husband in the bar of the conference hotel. He’d had a few drinks so . . . well, I??
?d say he was gently pissed. Everyone was. It was a long and, I have to say, fairly dull day.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I spoke to him both nights.’
‘He and I got chatting,’ Harry went on. ‘He said how he hated these sort of conferences, especially when they were abroad . . .’
‘He did.’ I smiled, remembering how resentful Caspian would get about having to travel to places where he only ever saw the inside of meeting rooms and conference halls.
‘. . . And how he missed you and the kids.’
A lump stuck in my throat. Unable to speak, I nodded.
‘So . . .’ Harry hesitated. ‘I said he sounded happily married, that I envied him.’
‘You’re not happily married?’ I asked.
‘Not married at all.’ Harry smiled and I wondered, fleetingly, what was behind that smile. I couldn’t imagine he had any problem attracting women. ‘So . . . I asked what the secret was.’
I leaned forward.
‘Your husband said he had no idea, he’d just been lucky, then he laughed and said, “Though I guess communication is important, like everyone tells you.” ’
‘Caspian said that?’ It didn’t sound like the sort of thing my husband would come out with, especially not to a total stranger.
‘As I said, we were all a bit pissed.’ Harry smoothed his still-damp hair off his face. ‘Then Caspian went on . . . “Not that I tell my wife everything.” ’
My stomach tightened. ‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Of course I made a prat of myself and gave it large with some joke about him having a girlfriend at every conference, which is when the whole conversation takes a turn and your husband gets all serious and . . . well, at first I think he’s really offended because he’s shaking his head and going, “No, not like that, not that at all.” ’
‘Okay,’ I said. This sounded more like Caspian. If he had a fault it was a tendency to earnestness and the missing of jokes, which generally led to him putting a dampener on whatever fun was happening around him.
‘Then your husband lowers his voice and whispers in my ear: “I’m being threatened,” he says, “I’ve had messages. I’ve destroyed them but . . . they were threats against my life.” ’