‘What text?’ she says again to Joe. He turns in a tiny, useless circle, his hands in his hair. He pauses, then speaks again. ‘Let’s …’ he says, but doesn’t finish the sentence, as he leads her down the corridor, back to their neat, small room full of the moonlight she only just left behind, when everything felt different.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ he says, standing by their bed.
‘What?’ Lydia’s eyes narrow as she watches him, mystified. He’s wearing a pink towel and a t-shirt, an absurd combination. What is he doing? He puts his hands in his hair and the motion pulls up his top.
‘Something’s happened,’ he says. He sits down and his bare feet dangle off the high bed. Then he stands again, whips off the towel and pulls on a pair of jogging bottoms. Lydia watches in the dispassionate, intimate way of the married couple.
She is eerily calm. She never thought she would be, if her worst nightmare came true – some betrayal by Joe, quite what she is not yet sure – but she is completely calm.
‘What’s happened?’ she says.
Joe knots his hands together in his lap. ‘I wanted to send this text,’ he says, biting his lip. Behind him is a kettle and set of cups, dusty with disuse, and three white crosses on the wall. His eyes go to the left and the right. Lydia tries to hold his gaze to her, but she can’t. It’s like trying to anchor a boat to the air.
‘What text?’
‘To Evan.’
‘At the practice?’ Lydia says in surprise.
‘Yeah – he –’
‘He’s in charge, right?’
Lydia stares at Joe. He is so obviously thinking on his feet. She raises her hands, palms to him. ‘I don’t deal with liars,’ she says. ‘Get your story straight.’
‘No, no,’ Joe says, panic crossing his features, turning down his mouth, drawing together his brows like he is a cartoon of himself. She’s shocked him. He once called her ruthless, and she’s never forgotten. ‘You have to become ruthless in my situation,’ she’d told him icily. When you are forced to cut off your parents, no other subsequent separation is as difficult. All around Lydia, she notices people putting up with things, settling, living alongside people who make them miserable, and she swears that will never be her.
‘How can you say that to me?’ he says.
Lydia feels a stab of guilt. It’s fair to say that Joe is her ally in life, has never given her reason to doubt him. Doesn’t have a phone passcode; it contains only photo albums full of dogs and cats anyway – he takes a photograph of every animal he cures, adding them to an album called Homeward Bound.
‘I promise,’ he says now. ‘It was Evan.’ He rubs at his forehead. ‘Sorry. The practice is – I didn’t want to worry you.’
Lydia sits on their pillows, waiting for the explanation.
‘It’s struggling a bit – Evan’s had a … he’s fucked up. We’re deciding what to do about it.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Just did an unnecessary procedure,’ Joe says.
‘Right. What did he do?’
‘Ultrasound because he knew the owners were rich.’
‘I see.’
‘Yeah, I mean, he shouldn’t have done it. He’s flat broke. And I won’t make him partner,’ Joe says, a small, self-deprecating smile sneaking out.
‘Why is he broke?’ she asks.
‘His divorce,’ Joe says. He’s edging more closely to her and, God, she can’t resist this man. He smells of musk and sun and he accepts her exactly – exactly – as she is, empties the bathroom bin each week of its many pregnancy tests, only smiling wryly, not saying anything at all. She feels high on the relief of this, that the text is nothing. Thank God for nothing! ‘He actually got a second job, a delivery driver. I think his wife really stung him on maintenance.’
‘Oh, wow.’ She smiles at him, shifting closer. And it is then that he does it: he angles his phone just slightly away from her. A tiny movement she wouldn’t usually notice.
‘Can I see your phone, please?’ she asks. She tries to breathe deeply, not let herself get suckered by this man who loves animals and her.
‘See what?’
‘Your phone.’ She holds out a palm, flat, expectant.
Joe looks exactly like somebody who doesn’t want to give his phone to his wife. His body turns away from her again, physically curling in on itself like somebody with stomach pains.
‘Joe,’ she says softly.
He reaches a hand to his pocket, but it’s merely a gesture. It’s going to accompany his explanation of why he can’t hand over his phone. There is no smoke without fire, to Lydia, and so she simply says, ‘Okay,’ and turns away from him, stalking into the bathroom to get a glass of water.
‘Lyds.’
‘You’ve made your position very clear,’ she says to him when he arrives. ‘There is something on that’ – she points to his pocket, at the rectangular embossed shape – ‘that you don’t want me to see.’
‘I deleted Evan’s text. It was stupid. Because it made me anxious.’
‘Show me the phone or fuck off.’
Something flits across his face, but Lydia can’t read it. Can’t name it. Something like anguish. His eyes crease at their corners. He shows his teeth. ‘No,’ he says.
In 1995 Lydia’s mother was given a choice. Leave with Lydia to keep her safe, or stay. And she stayed. And so Lydia will never stay. Not with somebody who hurts her. She lives with Joe’s sharpness on the basis that she is never on the receiving end of it. He might be rude about dog owners and people who cut him up in traffic. He might say he hates how Evan has to say, ‘The mighty, mighty York,’ whenever he talks about where he’s from, but Joe never ridicules Lydia.
‘Okay, then. Your choice,’ she says.
Joe starts brushing his teeth. Lydia looks at him in the mirror for a few seconds, wondering what all this means.
As they get ready in silence, she looks at Joe’s body from under lowered lashes. He looks hunched. Despite herself, Lydia feels a rolling wave of sympathy for him, like shivery thunder moving across her body. No, she tells herself. No. We do not feel sympathy for people who cause us pain. She gets into bed and turns deliberately away from him.
Lydia wakes because Joe isn’t sleeping. It’s impossible to sleep next to somebody who is turning over, disturbing the sheets, obviously frustrated. Like trying to sleep through an argument, only Joe seems to be having it with himself.
She rolls over and opens her eyes, looking at Joe’s back. He must sense this, and turns to face her. They look at each other for a few seconds in the darkness.
The whites of his eyes look blue in the shifting moonlight, which moves in shadows across their bed, like the night sky is turning over as he is too.
‘What’s going on, Joe?’ she whispers. She can only say it here, eye to eye in the night-time, not able to see any of his body language.
‘Nothing,’ he says, but he comes closer to her. A warm hand arrives in hers underneath the duvet, and she closes her eyes.
‘I promise, there is nothing happening that you need to know about,’ he says, but his words are sad, dampened, laced with fuzz. ‘I want you to trust me.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ Lydia says immediately. ‘Not when you’re like this.’ She lies back, removing her hand from his, thinking. ‘What do you mean, that I need to know about?’
He shifts closer to her, and he rests his head on her chest, their legs entwined. He breathes deeply in and out, an almost-sigh. It’s the only sound in their room, even though the window is open.
‘I mean that – okay. Something has happened that – if you know about it – will make your life worse.’
‘About Evan’s ultrasound?’
There is just the slightest hesitation. ‘No.’
‘Well, I think I need to know what,’ Lydia says, sitting up, moving him off her.
‘You don’t,’ Joe says.
‘I’m – Joe.’
‘Look. Something’s happe
ned. In the business. And, if I tell you – then –’
‘Is it illegal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does it affect me?’
A beat. ‘No.’
‘You can’t –’
‘I’m not going to tell you, Lyds,’ Joe says gently, lying propped up on one elbow. She can’t make out anything except the vague shape of him, his shoulder and his eyes.
‘What sort of thing is it? I should know, shouldn’t I? Even if it is illegal.’
‘You won’t want to know. It’s for …’ Joe’s gaze shifts to the window, then back at her. ‘This is for your own good. I promise,’ he says. ‘When have I ever given you reason not to trust me?’ He waits for her to answer, and then, when he catches her expression, he adds, ‘Not them, not your family.’ An earnest hand to his chest. ‘Me. Me.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘You don’t need to say it that way.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says immediately, earnestly. ‘My bad.’
‘You haven’t,’ she says softly. ‘You haven’t ever given me a reason not to trust you.’
‘Then,’ he says, like it is a full sentence.
‘Are you helping somebody?’ she says. ‘Is this a kestrel situation?’
He smiles at that. ‘Yeah,’ he says. He flaps a hand uselessly in the night air, then lets it fall back on to the bed. ‘You could say that.’
It’s light, but early, when Lydia wakes. Joe is gone again. She stands at the window. The sky is stippled, violet clouds with pink edges, like a messy child’s painting. She wonders where he is. She sees him in the distance, with Cathy again, at the edge of the grounds of their villa. She has her hands on her hips. His position is defensive. She knows it well. Lydia stares at both of them.
She will keep an eye on this, she decides. Listen out.
The longer she looks, the more she sees.
29.
Joe
Joe did send that text.
He went back into the city. He travelled in on an evening bus, the sky an intense peach beyond the dirty windows. He’d stayed standing up for the duration of the journey, even though it was empty, wanting to burn off some of his nervous energy, his fingers sliding down the plastic pole in the centre of the bus.
A man sitting behind a grey, old-fashioned till greeted Joe in a long Italian sentence, and he shrugged his shoulders apologetically and said hello in English. He reached into one of the cabinets and pulled out a Nokia. Black. It easily fit in the palm of his hand. He took it to the man and paid for it.
‘A second phone for the second woman!’ the man said. ‘Very private.’ He had a knowing smile. Joe left in a panic, his hood up, the area checked for CCTV, out into the blazing orange sunset.
It was, he reasoned, better to take the risk and lessen their chances of getting caught. Better to do x than y. Better to risk a than b. Joe’s life had become a series of bad situations, of rocks and hard places, and he was tired of it. He was so tired of it he could have sat down right there in the street and cried. He could have almost walked right over there to the police station and handed himself in. Handed in his whole family. Bought a gun from a similar shop to this and shot himself in the head.
Instead, Joe went into a dingy side alley with the phone and powered it up. Good. It had ten euros on it. Joe could hardly work it. It was so old, the keys made sounds as he pushed them, an electronic, retro sound like playing Tetris. He typed out the message into Google Translate, then checked it over. God, he wished Cathy had come.
I served the missing man this morning. I work in a bar in Padua.
Ho servito l’uomo scomparso questa mattina. Lavoro in un bar a Padova.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he had pressed send.
On the way back, he bought three Italian pastries. Whenever he’s stressed, he eats, always has done. He usually mitigates this by counting calories on an app he’s too embarrassed to admit he uses. But he scoffed these, all one thousand calories of them, as though the butter and the sugar could fill him up, could cover up his secrets, could squash them down and suffocate them completely.
30.
Cathy
Cathy is no stranger to moping, though nobody knows it. She is sitting at the kitchen table, alone, as she does often in England, only this time with a different brand of tea. Manuel. Italian tea. It doesn’t taste the same.
She is thinking about Lydia’s stricken face and wondering what sort of husband her brother is being at the moment. How Lydia must feel. So in the dark. Knowing, surely, that something is happening, but not what. It is strange to consider her brother in this way. As a spouse and not as a sibling.
She sat just like this at home, in the early spring, drinking Tetley. She’d been on a date with the owner of a giant house rabbit called Leonard. In the second consult, when she’d diagnosed the dacryocystitis – blocked tear ducts – the owner had asked for her number.
‘For a consult?’ she’d said.
‘For a coffee.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh – no,’ he’d said, looking for a second at her expression. He was huge, this Pete Green who liked giant rabbits and daytime consults. A mountain of a man. ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry.’
‘Oh – I just – sorry,’ Cathy had said. ‘Coffee would be good.’
She’d looked forward to it all week. She’d practised in front of the mirror, adopting Frannie’s easy body language. She’d made a list on her phone of topics to talk about, if she dried up. Because that is what always happens to Cathy. She can’t think of anything to say. What a stupid problem to have, she often thinks, but it is a problem nevertheless.
They’d met in the evening in a venue that was a cross between a bar and a café. It had been one of those glum, rainy spring evenings that felt like it could be autumn. Dark-wood beams rested up ahead, pendulous lights hung down like stars. ‘It’s so dark in here I can’t fucking see,’ Pete had said, which had made her smile. Rain spattered the floor-length windows and washed the street outside.
They’d drunk coffee and shared carrot cake, then ordered a pot of tea, which was brought to them by a waitress so stroppy they’d been shaking with laughter. They’d watched the sky fade to black outside. Cathy remembers odd details of it: wrapping her hands around the warm mug. Seeing a virtual stranger’s eyes in candlelight. Parting ways on a cold spring night.
She thought it had gone well. They’d laughed, hadn’t they? There weren’t as many awkward silences as usual? She hadn’t panicked in the bathroom about small talk, or blushed so much she wanted to run out?
Cathy had made a cup of tea when she arrived home and sat at her kitchen table, just as she is now. She buried herself in paperwork, and then the text came through. Credit to him, he was straight up. A lovely evening but better off as friends. She had put her head into her hands, then, looking at Macca and feeling her loneliness. Macca couldn’t speak. He couldn’t ease it. Sometimes it was so bad that she wanted to phone some sort of hotline. Hire an assistant, a robot, to sit opposite her and simply witness her drinking this cup of tea. Otherwise, basically it’s as if it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.
In Verona, she goes to bed eventually, around four or five. She’s woken at nine by a knock on the door. She goes downstairs, pyjama-clad and anxious, and sees two shifting forms through the window. It’s the police again. Carabinieri. Black and red uniforms, a warning sign, like poisonous insects. Her stomach falls off a cliff. They know. They know. They’ve seen her. They’ve seen Joe. And now it’s time. They could only keep running for so long, like trying to stay ahead of a tsunami.
Cathy opens the door with shaking hands. ‘Hello,’ she says.
‘Catherine,’ one officer says, a new one, a blond, tall man. She meets his eyes and tries not to look terrified, waiting for him to speak, for him to arrest her, to caution her in Italian, to ask for Frannie. They’ve found the body. They’ve found CCT
V footage. They’ve found the blood. The hire-car company has reported them. She holds her breath as he opens his mouth to speak.
‘We have come to inform you,’ he says. Cathy’s chest is tight.
But, as she roots around herself she finds, lodged in next to the fear and the shame, a little shard of relief. That it is over. That the worst has happened.
‘We just wanted to let you know that as things are now, you are safe to fly tomorrow,’ he says. ‘But if we say we need you for longer, to assist the police with their enquiries, you must not board. We thank you for your help in the investigation. We may be in touch. But, for now,’ he says, an unreadable expression on his face, ‘in case you were wondering – you’re free to leave.’
Cathy says something, she’s not sure what – some pleasantry – and closes the door. Her entire body is covered in sweat, her shoulders up around her ears. There’s no way they didn’t notice.
She sits back at the kitchen table where she was a few hours or days ago, she is no longer sure, and thinks about that relief. And now, in its place, she finds disappointment. A not unusual combination to her, but she wonders if, this time, it’ll be the time she leaps. That one day she might confess.
She presses a hand to her stomach where the guilt is living and tries to squash it down, but it doesn’t work, nothing works. Only confession would work. She looks up at the Jesus above the door and confesses to him, out loud, the first person she tells.
They’re flying home today, but Frannie is still by the pool. Cathy has been thinking about her. About her explanations for Will’s injuries and the lack of ambulance. About how she said she couldn’t stop, after she hit him, but changed the meaning of that just slightly when pressed, like a media spin doctor. I couldn’t stop, she said. And then she said she meant she couldn’t stop immediately. How fast was she even going? Why has she got a lawyer?
She stands to go and pack, and as she does so she stares across the pool at Frannie. A perfect lemon tree sits behind her. She looks like she’s on a photoshoot for a magazine. There are almost more lemons than leaves, hanging point-downwards, like teardrops, waiting to fall. Frannie is staring back at Cathy. Goosebumps break out across Cathy’s shoulders, though she’s not sure why. Eventually, Frannie puts on her sunglasses, covering up her eyes. Cathy waves and points upstairs, wanting to dispel the atmosphere. When she looks up, she still can’t see Frannie’s eyes, but she’s sure they’re on her, tracking her every move.
That Night Page 13