My heart is pounding in my ears like hooves on a tarmac road. ‘I didn’t realise you were home,’ I manage.
‘I got back about half an hour ago.’ Then he says, almost as if it’s an afterthought, ‘Where were you? We waited so long for you in the bar we nearly lost the table.’
I shake my head, trying to collect my thoughts. My pulse won’t slow down, the shock has thrown it into flight mode and it appears to be not yet convinced the danger is past. ‘Agatha, the girl… the birthday girl… she got drunk, very drunk. I had to take her home…’ I watch Angus as I speak, trying to gauge his reaction, but his face is waxy with impassiveness. ‘I sent you messages, I tried to call—’
‘My phone ran out of charge.’
A silence, as if we are both waiting for the other to speak first. It occurs to me that he probably heard me downstairs and has been wondering what on earth I was doing.
Eventually he says, ‘Are you coming to bed or are you going to stand there all night?’
While I was changing in the ladies’ loos I imagined Angus enjoying this dress, anticipated the sense of luminosity that comes from being the object of an admiring gaze, however now that I undoubtedly have his attention the spotlight feels uncomfortable. Extinguishing the bedroom lamp, I shed my clothes as quickly as possible and slide between the covers. For some reason I am careful not to touch him.
‘Why were you sitting up in bed,’ I ask, ‘in the dark?’ The enquiry slips out before I am conscious of formulating it, as if it’s the product of a deeper instinct than logic or intellect.
‘I was about to go to sleep,’ Angus says, ‘but then I thought I should wait, to check you got back safely. I sat up to keep myself awake.’ He sounds slightly offended by my question.
‘Oh.’ There is a pause. I dip my head and kiss his shoulder. ‘Thank you. I’m so sorry I missed the dinner.’
Angus grunts and rolls over, presenting me with the neutrality of his back.
For a while I lie on my back, staring into the dusky grey. I am pretty certain there is an elephant in the room, however try as I might I can’t see where it is standing – or who is standing behind it.
* * *
The next day we wake late. Angus fetches tea. As he goes through his ritual with a teapot and a strainer, I listen to the scraps of noise emanating from the kitchen, expecting him to revisit the issue of The Ivy and the spoiled dinner with his friends as soon as he returns to the bedroom. To my surprise he doesn’t mention the previous evening at all. Instead he hands me my usual mug, we drink the tea and then we have sex. Until the moment his hand settles on my left thigh, I assume we are being careful, stepping into the morning the way, without shoes, you might pick your path across a floor littered with broken glass. However, Angus’s touch is both assertive and assuming, the way I have always known it to be, less of an offer and more an acknowledgement of a gift, as if he is claiming something he already knows to be his. Sliding deep into the den of the bed, the strangeness of the previous evening feels like a figment of my overzealous imagination, an eerie, ephemeral mist that rises from the pages of a storybook and is easily dispersed by the morning sun – or, in this case, the heat of coupling bodies.
The rest of the day is normal, even nice. After a late breakfast we choose a film to watch later, and then Angus says he has to do a couple of hours of work, which gives me an opportunity to mooch around the shops and spend a little money. I wonder how Agatha is faring, but since I don’t have her mobile number the best I can do is send an email to her work address, writing, rather blandly, that I hope she’s feeling OK. It’s a pretty pointless gesture since she probably won’t read it until she gets to the office on Monday.
I’m so relieved to spend a happy day doing exactly the kind of stuff other young professional couples do at the weekend that I even come up with an explanation for the disturbed Sellotape and fallen key. I decide Mark must have removed the Glock while Angus and I were out of the house. Pondering the matter during daylight hours, it suddenly seems to be the obvious solution. Neither the guy with the white ponytail nor his mate has paid me a visit, and if Mark has been watching the house he is likely to know this. Surely the most likely scenario is that Mark telephoned me yesterday evening to say he wanted the gun back, and since I didn’t answer he took advantage of an empty house to let himself in and take it? The only obstacle to verifying this theory is the presence of Angus, who spends the day either with me, or sitting at our dining table with his briefcase and a pile of papers.
In the evening we see the film – each clutching a plastic tumbler of wine, with a bucket of popcorn lodged between us – and then we go for an Indian. It’s not until halfway through the meal, when the chicken bhuna and lamb jalfrezi are steaming nicely on burners heated by tea lights, that Angus says, as he helps himself from the oval dish, ‘I did tell you, didn’t I, that I have to go away tomorrow for a few days?’
‘Tomorrow? No’ – my fork drips onion and coriander sauce onto my plate as it dangles in mid-air – ‘you haven’t mentioned it before.’
‘Oh,’ – Angus doesn’t pause, tipping a fluffy pile of rice onto his plate – ‘I thought we’d already discussed it. I’m flying to New York. I need to have a face-to-face meeting with the real-estate guys.’
‘Right.’ I haven’t moved a muscle. It crosses my mind that the unexpected trip might be my punishment for missing The Ivy, but the notion is so outlandish, so childish, I let it go. ‘Angus, tomorrow is Sunday.’ My voice comes out sadder and smaller than I intended.
‘I have to be in New York first thing Monday morning, and if I arrive in good time tomorrow I can visit the location myself prior to the meeting.’
I nod; his logic is unimpeachable, although absurdly my throat is choking up.
My fiancé, busy with popadoms and chutneys, finally pauses to meet my gaze. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘No… well, a little.’ I pull an exaggerated rueful face, let him see my disappointment. ‘I’ll miss you. It rather spoils the weekend.’
I suppose subconsciously I’m expecting him to apologise, say that he will miss me too, or even reach for my hand. Instead, the muscles around his eyes contract fractionally; there is a triumphant narrowing of his irises.
‘Good,’ he says, ‘I like it when you miss me.’ And he begins to eat again.
It turns out the flight is an early one. By 5.00 a.m. I’m sitting in bed with my arms curled round my knees and a cardigan across my shoulders. The heating has not yet kicked into action and although I’ve pushed back the curtains the glass remains black and empty.
‘You’re not taking much,’ I say, watching Angus fold a polo-neck shirt and some underwear into a carry-on bag. ‘Don’t you need a suit?’ He is dressed in dark denim jeans and a grey Armani sweatshirt.
‘The meetings will be very casual, and I’ll be back by Wednesday.’ He drops a washbag into the case and zips it up with an air of purpose that feels incompatible with both the day and the hour. As if waiting in the wings for that particular cue, the husky rumble of an engine gathers volume and then treads water immediately outside our window.
‘That’s my cab.’ Angus grabs his sheepskin coat from the back of the bedroom chair before kissing me briefly with cool lips. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ Picking up the case he hurries out the bedroom. In quick succession I hear the thump of the front door and the lighter slam of a car door, followed a moment later by the tapering drone of the departing taxi.
The sudden wash of silence leaves me feeling both alone and wrong-footed, the same jarring feeling as when you misjudge a flight of stairs and take a step downwards only to find you have reached the bottom already. I make a half-hearted effort to go back to sleep but within minutes I’ve given up and I’m in the sitting room contemplating the wooden chest. Although I’m still wearing the cardigan over my nightdress and have added a pair of fluffy socks to the fetching ensemble, I’m still shivering. A part of me doesn’t want to look inside the box, the part that is h
appy to proceed with the comforting hypothesis that Mark has reclaimed his property. Nevertheless, I know I have to find out for certain – face the proverbial music – even if my record of facing up to unpalatable truths has left something to be desired in the past.
I wait for ten more minutes, on the off-chance Angus returns in a panic for a forgotten passport or lost papers, and then I go through the fiddle of the previous evening in reverse to extract the key from its new bed of tape. When I open the lid the only visible item inside the chest is the crumpled white blanket. I lift out the bundle and sit down on the sofa before unpacking the wool a fold at a time, like a game of pass the parcel in which I control when and if the music stops. There is nothing there. I even stand up and shake the blanket as if it were a sand-infused picnic rug, but there is no sudden thump of a falling firearm, no ricochet across the carpet, and the lack of noise is louder than the sound of any dropped gun. It shouts to the watching house that my dark little adventure, my unfortunate escapade, is over and, rather piously, that there is no need for me to ever have contact with Mark again.
For want of a better plan of action at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning I wrap myself in the blanket and put on Netflix. I picture Angus checking in at Heathrow, the weary clamour of travelling people who have been up for hours and are quickly losing track of time and place. I decide that I miss him and then, a moment later, a little renegade thought that has misread the script entirely pokes its head into my woollen cocoon to murmur that Angus being away presents the perfect opportunity to see Mark. I distract myself by watching a series that features numerous no-doubt fictional adventures in the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, which rather comfortingly make my own exploits seem pretty tame.
Eventually I must fall asleep because when I am next aware of thinking anything the room is light, I am too hot, and Mary is in the arms of yet another nobleman. I pull myself free of the blanket and double it into ever-decreasing squares. I decide to stow it back in the chest, and this is what I am doing, stooping forward with the soft block of wool, when I see the Glock winking up at me from the depths of the trunk like a bad joke, like treasure on the bottom of the seabed.
I dump the blanket onto the sofa, lean into the chest and touch the black-resin casing as if I don’t quite trust my eyes. It is possible, I suppose, that the gun detached itself from the cover, but I know how snugly the package was wrapped and the chances of it burrowing free are even less likely than those of the key detaching itself from the mirror.
I turn off Mary and her antics with her latest lover and take the Glock out of the chest. Although its presence is a shock, my right hand is already flickering over the barrel as if acquainting itself with the contours of an unfamiliar but intriguing face. I decide, quite consciously, that I should put the gun away while I make myself some breakfast and work out what to do, yet instead I find myself wandering around the room, not pacing exactly, more exploring how it feels to go walk about with a gun in my hand.
It fires without warning. My arm jerks upwards with the recoil, throwing me off balance and causing me to stumble into the staircase. The sound is so ear-splitting that for a moment I mistake it for pain and think I have shot myself. My heart and throat pulse together as I sweep the floor at my feet, expecting to see the blood pooling around my lovely fluffy bedsocks, staining the cream cashmere with scarlet paint. To my relief the carpet is clean and bare, apart from the pair of heels I was wearing the night before and probably discarded en route upstairs. Tripping over them must have caused my grip on the butt to tighten automatically, my finger to press the trigger. It is the obvious explanation, it accounts very well for what has just happened, except, of course, that part of the story in which the gun is supposed to be a fake.
As the final laps of noise recede, I stare at the deceitful Glock before transporting it very slowly to the dining room table and placing it next to the fruit dish – still life, but with a twist. For a moment I stop, poised for the arrival of a concerned neighbour, but this is London and it probably takes more than one gunshot to get somebody out of bed on a Sunday morning. When it is clear no one is coming I hunt around for the damage. Eventually I find evidence of the bullet’s impact just above the shelf next to the television. Our beautiful bespoke joinery has a hole in the back of the cabinet, a scar, like an eye gouged out that is about the size of a ten-pence piece. It is lucky the trajectory wasn’t six inches further to the left or else it would have shattered the TV screen. Nevertheless, I don’t fancy explaining to Angus the reason why the paintwork is no longer in the same pristine condition it was when he left for the States.
After rummaging around in the kitchen cupboards for a minute or two, I find the object of my search, a large china bowl that Angus and I bought on a short trip to Lisbon; the same weekend he proposed. Perhaps I should have marked the occasion with a more significant purchase than a piece of pottery decorated with azaleas, however once it’s perched on the shelf next to the television the bowl does a fine job of concealing the bullet hole.
I manage to hold off about half an hour before I finally succumb to the peculiarity of the morning and phone Mark. I try to guess what he might be doing on a Sunday and realise I have absolutely no notion at all. I have no clear idea of how he spends even his working days, but my sense of his leisure time, his home life, is vague to the point of being a blank page.
He picks up after only two or three rings, breathing heavily. ‘Claire?’ he says quickly. ‘Thanks for getting back to me but I can’t speak right now.’
‘Wait!’ I say, because he sounds like he is about to hang up. His call to me on Friday evening seems so long ago that I’m momentarily taken aback he assumes that is why I have contacted him. ‘I need to speak to you.’
I hear a muffled, barked instruction, as though he has spoken to someone with his hand over the phone. Then, ‘What is it?’ His tone suggests I might have a second or two of his attention at most.
‘Did you take the gun out of the chest?’
‘What?’ Another inaudible comment to a third party, then a pause as if he is walking into another room, before he says more softly, ‘Christ! Is it missing?’
‘No, not missing, but I think the trunk has been unlocked. And when I looked this morning the gun had fallen out of the blanket I used to wrap it up.’
His sigh is one of relief tinged with annoyance. ‘You’re being paranoid. Nobody else knows about the gun.’
‘You haven’t moved it, then?’ I’ve drifted over to the table and find myself lifting up the Glock, slotting the butt into my palm. I think of it lying in the chest, under the blanket. I don’t understand how it could have tunnelled free all by itself.
‘Me? No, of course I haven’t.’ In a much louder voice to someone else, he says, ‘I’m coming. I’ll just be a couple of seconds.’ His voice drops into the receiver again. ‘I have to go.’
‘I need to speak to you properly,’ I say, firmly, insistently. My assertiveness surprises me. I add my pièce de resistance, sounding, I think, impressively casual. ‘By the way, the gun – the Glock – is not a dummy. I know it’s real because I’ve just shot a hole in the wall of the living room.’
There is a silence in which all I can hear is a hollow rattling, as if somebody is wheeling a supermarket trolley along the pavement directly outside the window. Finally, Mark says, speaking quickly, ‘OK, meet me this afternoon. Come to Tottenham Court Road tube station at four.’
Before I can ask any questions, he cuts off the call.
Chapter Seventeen
After a small detour, I arrive at the station slightly after four. Although I travel through this space every day on my way to work, there is a subtle change to the vibe on a Sunday afternoon. On reaching ground level the same stew of noise hits you in the face but there are fewer suits and more tourists, less the smell of money, more the stink of fast food, while the cranes and diggers renovating Centre Point have fallen still behind the forests of mesh fencing and orange-striped cones. My vibe is differ
ent too. I’m wearing a grey wool coat belonging to Angus that is long enough to brush my ankles and I’ve pinned my hair into a loose bun on top of my head. If I had used a pale lipstick, the style would be straight from the sixties, the sex-kitten look of Brigitte Bardot. Instead, however, I’ve chosen a hungry, bright coral. All kittens grow into cats.
Mark isn’t waiting for me and as the numbers on my watch flick to five- and then ten-past four there is still no sign of him. I glance across the street at the other entrance to the tube station but the only figure of note is a small black Lab hunched dismally beside the paper coffee cup that his owner is using as a begging bowl. Above the Centre Point tower the sky is slowly turning winter pink, which I dimly remember might be good news for London’s shepherds. Crossing my arms to stop the cold from seeping between the folds of wool, I try to make myself concentrate on counting the endless floors of concrete.
A second later there is a hand on my shoulder.
‘Thirty-three.’
I pivot round into the bulk of Mark and the lanolin smell of a leather coat. Long and chocolate-brown, it’s the kind of thing Daniel would wear. Would have worn.
‘What?’
‘Centre Point, it has thirty-three storeys.’
I am about to berate him for being late, but the fact of his presence is already diluting my resolve. His breath grazes my face, warm and sweet and smelling of wine, the full-bodied kind of red that accompanies a good joint of roast beef. My Sunday lunch was tuna forked straight from the tin, as the Glock and I considered each other across the top of the Ikea dining table.
Mark leans forward, and my skin quivers, anticipating the kiss. Instead he says, ‘Come on, let’s get out of the cold.’
I assume he means a coffee shop or a bar, but we bypass several of those, march beyond the Dominion Theatre and turn down a side alley. A moment later I am following him into an apartment building. We cross the deserted foyer and head into a lift that judders upwards, pauses rather alarmingly and then begins to climb again. At the top is a hallway of doors. Mark rummages in a briefcase before extracting an oddly large bunch of keys. It takes him several attempts to find the right one and then we are inside a small apartment, the only redeeming feature of which is the view; in the dusk the lights from the city bedazzle like ships on an ocean that is stippled with fluorescence.
The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist Page 17