The Delusionist

by Rachel Mathias

  The Delusionist

  By Rachel Mathias

  This book is dedicated to Claire Eastaugh (1967-2018), who read the first draft and loved it.

  RIP

  “I stayed up till 2am reading your wonderful novel. Thank you for writing it and especially for sharing all the truths. Fascinating.”

  Prologue

  June 2017

  I can’t see the words I’m typing – just my reflection in the laptop screen, eyes squinting in the sun. When I go indoors and look in the mirror, my face will be red and blotchy, with a white shadow below my chin from looking down at the computer. I notice for the first time how my mouth slopes down slightly to the right, as if I’ve had a stroke on the wrong side. I wonder whether it’s been like that all my life or whether it’s just happened, because of the shock. We have such a preoccupation with the world around us that it’s easy to forget to look at ourselves; then when it’s too late, we find cancerous moles, malignant lumps, and it’s a race against time. There is a lot to be said for the unexamined life.

  You can see why it's called the Hideaway. Women come here for some time alone, to sleep, lie in the garden in a straw hat, pale limbs bravely exposed to the afternoon sun. I wonder what their story is. Mine is pouring onto the page, like evidence, in case I forget what happened and make another mistake. It's therapeutic, Jess would say.

  It’s the first day of June. I don’t remember any other firsts of Junes – you wouldn’t unless it was the anniversary of something, or a significant date you were looking forward to. But I will remember this one. If I’m still alive that is. If he hasn't found me by then.

  Imagine a quagmire, a swamp of crocodiles, sinking sand, somewhere deep and dangerous. The red flag is up but I stride in anyway, thinking myself Indiana Jones, injecting a vial of excitement into my humdrum life. And here I stand, unafraid because it’s not far back to the shore. I know I can make it. Onlookers shake their heads and urge me to escape while there's still time. I nod and throw them a look which says “I need to find it. It’s here somewhere.” A new bride might bravely unscrew the u-bend under the sink to find her wedding ring. A child might run into a road to retrieve a football. But the only reason anyone would wade this deep, risk this much, would be if they were searching for the most valuable thing of all.

  The truth.

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Good manors

  Just a few weeks earlier I was basking in the anticipation of a weekend away. A handful of middle-aged couples were about to be dragged kicking and screaming into what to them was just another fortieth, but to Caroline Holland was the excuse for an extravaganza to rival a Kardashian wedding.

  “Don’t come till four o'clock. We need to get the place ready,” she had cautioned the WhatsApp group a week ahead, but I still found myself passing Thank you for Driving Carefully an hour earlier than the official check-in time. However carefully I drove, there was no way to make the last half mile take sixty minutes. Perhaps I could leave my car at the house and go for a wander, sit outside a village pub with a glass of wine and my book.

  Before I could even hatch a plan, an inconspicuous signpost directed me off the sun-dappled road into a vast gravel drive lined by tall hedges. I turned in, anticipating disappointment, because these places are never as fabulous as the wide-angle lenses make them seem. The drive gradually turned to reveal a vast Georgian manor, even more majestic than it had looked in the photos. This was more than what the website had promised, by a country mile. Two sturdy stone pillars guarded the entrance and wisteria wound its woody way around the front door which stood half open. Either side of the door, sash windows gazed boldly onto a broad expanse of green lawn and rolling countryside beyond. Pulling up at a polite distance from the house (where does one park in a drive the size of a football pitch?) I switched off the engine, and climbed out of the car, closing my eyes against the sun’s welcome rays. It was utter bliss.

  “Hi there!”

  The slam of the door had brought a small, trim figure clad in running gear, ponytail swinging in rhythm to her steps as she jogged over, smiling and waving.

  “I’m Tabitha. Welcome to Highfield Manor. How was the journey?”

  We shook hands, hers light and smooth, mine warm and clammy from the drive. I wanted to apologise. “Journey was great thanks. Really quick, no traffic…”

  I launched into the benefits of taking the A303 rather than the motorway. It wasn’t the quickest route, but Stonehenge has always held a peculiar fascination for me. I am one of those drivers who slows down to marvel at this feat of prehistoric engineering that defies logic and yet makes absolute sense. In another life, I imagine myself celebrating the summer solstice with an earnest band of Druids, while in this one I haven’t even managed to make it out of my 1930s semi in New Malden. It was the most I could do to leave my paper-pushing City job to become a teacher, half-way between lawyer and hippie, and I was settled in that life now, as near as I had known to happy.

  “Make yourself at home. The kettle’s just boiled.” Tabitha was taking my coat, hanging it on one of a row of hooks under the stairs.

  My phone pinged. Caro and James were delayed. A crash on the motorway had closed two lanes and Google Maps was saying it would take an hour to get through the traffic. More pings. Maya and Maddie were just leaving, now planning a new route. Caro was panicking about who’d be there to welcome her guests. I admitted to having arrived early. Caro didn't know whether to tell me off for disobeying her timetable or thank me for stepping in as hostess. After a pause, she just said Wow that's lucky! Get the prosecco in the fridge girl…

  “The games room is just over here.”

  I followed Tabitha into the vast hallway. The house smelt of holidays, of elsewhere, and tension in my shoulders fell away as the reality dawned that this was not home, where laundry hung neglected on bannisters, where odd socks slipped behind radiators and the remains of Sunday lunch lingered in Tupperware until Wednesday. No struggling to parallel park in a space barely as big as the car itself, and no tripping over teenage trainers while lugging bursting Tesco bags over the threshold. The sight and smells that surrounded me promised a different kind of story. Dripping wax clinging to brass candlesticks and red wine stains told tales of decadence and banquets. This wasn’t a place where the inventory was taken on departure day by a lacklustre local agent, and even if it was, then it would be to identify more significant acts of vandalism than the absence of a coaster. I wandered from room to room, inhaling the scent of wood fires and polish, taking in the scuffed floorboards, patches of threadbare carpet, finger marks on the walls, the unnecessary hugeness of it all. At home, there was barely enough space to squeeze between the sofa and the coffee table, and my bedroom was a shoebox. Here my sleeping quarters – as directed by Caro who was sitting in a traffic jam with nothing else to do …First floor, second bedroom on the left, lucky you! Were the size of a tennis court, with a roll top bath, an antique mahogany wardrobe, extravagant tassle-shaded bedside lamps and giant sash windows looking over the garden. I stretched out on the four-poster bed, took a photo and sent it to Harry. He was already online on WhatsApp, waiting for me. He sent me back a smiley face.

  Imagine I’m there with you…

  My body tingled with unfamiliar anticipation as I drifted into a half sleep. I had met him for barely twenty minutes, and yet he was the master of my dreams, the centre of my world.

  It was a whole hour later that I woke up with a start, checked the time and sped downstairs to the kitchen. I was just uncorking a bottle when there was a thud of luggage in the hallway and a loud “Helloooo”.

  It’s a shame you can’t convey by written word the intonation of sound as well as the sound itself, but you can imagine
what a bright and tuneful greeting you might give a great friend on arriving at a sun-drenched eight-bedroom mansion set in idyllic Dorset. It was a very joyful hello indeed.

  “Sal! Perfect timing.”

  I put down the bottle and threw my arms around Sally, whose delighted face echoed the tune of her arrival.

  “Look at this place!” she whispered in awe, as if we were squatters who had struck gold.

  “There’s more. Come with me.”

  The house was a delight to explore, and from Sally there were exclamations at the splendour of our surroundings that other visitors wouldn’t notice. Along our route through the barn, the stables, the outbuildings, we discovered the tennis court, vegetable garden, orchard and finally the hot tub, which looked strangely at home in a leafy corner of the courtyard. Twenty-first century lives were being lived alongside mementos of bygone generations – a reminder that the human race is nothing but a cluster of microscopic dots on the infinite canvas of time. This was a multiplicity of existences piled one on top of the other. Down the centuries, bricks and mortar had been recycled, redecorated, restored to match ever-evolving desires.

  “Look, the original feeding trough. Even the bridles are still hanging up.” Sally ran the leather between her fingers. “I want to live here!”

  Sally is one of those people who can see straight through the bullshit to the important stuff. She notices things that give places real history and meaning. Someone else might say – “ohh look, an Aga!” but to Sal, Agas are London. This was the country. This was real life. She was more interested in the pantry, the set of bells above the door to summon servants to their masters. I could imagine rolling pastry and taking up her ladyship’s tea in the morning. I would have got on with the servants better than the lords and ladies. Too much pretence and insincerity; and then there are the corsets, which squeeze the last drop of identity out of you. Did they do that to themselves just to satisfy men? The thought makes me shudder, but that's ironic, given what happened next.

  We were back at the front of the house now. I retrieved the Prosecco from the hall table and poured two glasses. Beyond the garden, chunky gorse hedges bordered fields of oilseed rape, and in the middle distance, shadowy clusters of ash and oak trees stood alongside lush green squares dotted with lambs. I watched her take it all in. Sal is sometimes mistaken for Charlie Dimmock, and when she enthuses about nature I always wonder if she is practising for when times are hard and she has to make her fortune as a professional lookalike.

  “This is totally amazing. Picture postcard gorgeous, even by my country mouse standards.”

  We slid onto the benches at the picnic table and drank to the wonderfulness of life.

  “I know. I can’t believe I’m staying in this place for four whole days. I’m already dreading going home.” In my head I was on Rightmove already, drawing the boundaries with my forefinger on the screen, setting the virtual parameters of my new worry-free rural existence, watching the list of possibilities, from picturesque farmhouse cottages to palatial estates, come tumbling into view.

  “Oh my God, don’t say that. It’s hardly started.” Sally topped up the glasses which didn’t need topping up. “Get that down you.”

  “Sorry, yes that was a lot more despondent than it should have been. I take it back. I have this habit of clinging to things dreading they are going to disappear suddenly.” It was an old adage in my world of armchair psychotherapy but relevant nonetheless. She gave me a reassuring smile – the kind that draws a line under thoughts that need no more discussion.

  “Enjoy it while you have it. So….who else is coming? My sister always leaves me in the dark. Probably only invited me because someone pulled out.”

  "Stop it! It’s the same lot from ten years ago. All couples. All still together. Amazing really, when you think about it.” I didn’t often think about it, and when I did, it was mostly with incomprehension. How could you possibly maintain someone’s interest for twenty whole years? Either they were superb lovers or even better liars.

  “Give them time,” said Sally.

  “I wouldn’t wish divorce on anyone, would you?”

  “I think it really depends on the situation. Yours was difficult. Adam was ill, it all became too much. What choice did you have?”

  “But it shouldn’t have been too much for me. He was the one who was ill. I had no excuse.”

  “You had every reason, never mind excuse. He was a different person suddenly; you weren’t getting the love anymore. It was like a part of him had broken away, and you were left with the shell.”

  “I know, but I still feel guilty about his illness, that it was to do with me, that I was somehow too much.”

  “Too much? Do you honestly think you could single-handedly cause someone to have a nervous breakdown?”

  “Well, yes, maybe.” I meant it. A perpetually vulnerable partner has a way of making you feel responsible, the clumsy one who has trodden all over their delicate constitution with spiky heels.

  “Well you couldn’t. Take it from me. Your marriage breakdown is not your fault. Now cheer me up with some rom com stories. I’ve been longing to hear what’s been going on.”

  It was always like this with Sally, ever since our simultaneous divorces had thrown us together in panic three years earlier. She had become more of a friend than her married sister, who, much as I loved her, was living in a cosy bubble of love that felt alien to me. Sal and I had a shared trauma, an understanding of how it felt when that bubble burst. Now with our new-found autonomy yielding adventure after adventure, each of us was confident in the other’s ability to produce a riveting tale of our exploits, conquests and defeats, which in turn would be met with exactly the right measure of empathy and humour. We were each other’s doctor, therapist, personal morale booster, life support system. Eventually she cajoled me into starting the debrief session.

  “So, catch me up…”

  “On what exactly?” I pretended not to know what she was talking about, but she just grinned her knowing grin, tilted her head sideways and leaned forward, hands clasped.

  “Men, of course. I haven’t heard about anyone since Jealous Craig and his amazing drinking binges.”

  “And his amazing empty wallet,” I added.

  “Money isn’t everything.”

  “You know I don’t care about money. But when not having it becomes an excuse for greeting your girlfriend at the door wearing pyjama bottoms and a dirty T-shirt we are entering a whole other stratosphere.”

  “Not giving a shit. That is a deal breaker.” She shook her head in mock horror.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he did give a shit. He said he did, and he was kind of desperate for love, or at least looking after, which I am good at, got the T-shirt. But it was more that he didn’t have a clue about what might be nice for me, what I’d think was – I don’t know, attractive? I mean it was early days and he was already at the pipe and slippers stage.”

  “Maybe that was what he wanted.”

  It was true. I hadn’t given much thought to what Craig might have wanted from a relationship. But then it was over before it had even begun. Turning up at his flat to find him all dressed down for a night on the sofa watching telly had left me deflated, disappointed, and led to the kind of self-reflection that only results in self-recrimination. It must have been my fault. I wasn’t worth the effort. To add to the magnificence of our mismatch, on the rare occasions that we were out together in public, he would drink to the point where he could barely stand, and then would hurl insults at any man who dared speak to me.

  “Maybe he wanted me to save him from himself. If he didn’t go out, he wouldn’t fuck things up. It was the jealous drunk rage in the end that did it,” I summarised, remembering hurling the final goodbye over my shoulder. “Find your own way home Craig, I’ve had enough.”

  “It’s a shame he couldn’t hold it together, just be normal.”

  “I’m wondering if anyone is normal.”

  “So where have
you been looking for normal? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  Although Sally was just as likely as me to hurtle headlong into unpromising romantic liaisons, she had her limits, and one of them was what she called ‘swipey dating’. So I braced myself, took a gulp of prosecco.

  “Tinder.” There. It was out. I watched her grimace and shake her head, but grinned back, defiant, fighting the urge to defend myself with the usual platitudes like “Everybody’s on Tinder” and “Where else am I supposed to find someone? I only ever meet mums and kids in my job.”

  But the expected disapproval didn’t materialise. “Nothing like getting straight back on the horse.” She said, and my shoulders relaxed in relief. “So what have you found on there so far?”

  “Actually, I have met someone who is, well, a possibility.”

  “A possibility? Have you met in real life?”

  “Yes. This morning.”

  Sally took a sip of her drink and motioned with wide eyes and a nod for me to carry on.

  “I stopped on the way down the A3, near where he lives. We went for a coffee.”

  “And?”

  “He was – well, it was like we’d known each other all our lives. I just felt comfortable, like it was meant to be.”

  This was bordering on the magical, the fatalistic, which was exactly my style, but an instant red flag to anyone else.

  “Whoa, steady old girl. Back up a bit.” Now I was the horse. I swung my leg over the bench to face the sun, avoid her wry smile. She knew that deep down I was being facetious, and she knew I knew she knew. That was the way it was with people you really know well.

  And that was the way it had been with Harry.

  Chapter 2

  A man’s job

  It was around nine thirty when I pulled into a space on Guildford High Street and flipped open the mirror to put the finishing touches to my makeup before he arrived. I should have been to the hairdressers, got my roots done, at least plucked my eyebrows. I was an absolute mess in comparison to the coiffed and polished Surrey mums tottering down the pavement. I was just about to add another layer of extra heavy-duty mascara, just so I had a fighting chance, when I caught sight of him in the mirror, ambling up the road, nonchalant and empty-handed except for a phone. He had clearly just stepped out of his penthouse flat to pick up a coffee for a tall blonde model called Cassandra, who was dozing between silk sheets in a fragrant negligée, her cascading lustrous hair spread across the pillow. I wanted to be her. Or one of the tottering mums. Or almost anyone except my clumsy awkward self.