“You don’t go on the M25 to Godalming from here, more to the point,” said Jess.
“But you might use it to go to Sunningdale.”
"Sunningdale?" The girls looked at me, and I realised that I hadn't shared my last bit of research yet, and I needed to share it all, just in case.
“It’s about this company, Hasam. It’s named after Harry and Sam. Harry said Sam was the “bloke I set it up with” but in fact the two founders and initial shareholders were Harry Dawson and Samantha Brize. And the company’s first registered address was in Sunningdale.”
“So that must be where he went.” Maddie was the one to jump on the hypothesis and go from there, leading us down a flow chart of conjecture which at every turn had a 50:50 chance of being right. Or wrong.
“Are you thinking she’s his wife, and they’re still together?” asked Jess.
“Anyone’s guess, like everything else.”
There was a respectful silence, the kind you expect when you tell your friends you have staked your entire fortune on the horse that fell at the first jump.
“I don’t want him back, but I have loads of his stuff at my place.”
“Me too,” added Maddie.
We sipped our coffee, thoughtfully, occasionally bursting out with an idea.
“I know, why don’t we take his stuff down to the house in Godalming? I could just knock on the door, explain the story.” It was a long shot, I realised as I said it.
“To some random family?”
“There's no family moving in, we’ve established that, and I’m pretty certain from the land registry search that his mum lives there. She might even tell me the truth.”
Jess nodded. “You could do that, but take someone with you maybe? Just in case?”
“What about taking it all to Putney? To the guy he’s supposed to be staying with, Paul,” offered Maddie
“You wanna do that, Maddie?”
“Sure. Anything.” Sadness flashed across her face, just for a second.
“How did we get here again?” asked Jess, to nobody in particular.
How we got there I don’t know, but I’m beginning to understand myself because of it. I thought I was a good detective, but a little more curiosity at an earlier stage might have led me somewhere different. My biology teacher once said that I didn’t have an enquiring mind, and he was right. I am no scientist. I am vaguely aware of some basic laws of physics but the rest of it, from how a kettle boils to the sun rising and setting, I have always secretly attributed to a kind of magic that for me preserves the wonder of the world. I let things happen, and only when the whole vessel capsizes do I go into investigatory mode.
With a little more forethought, so much of this subsequent unravelling could have been avoided. Eat cake now, worry about it later, then go into workout overdrive. I never questioned Harry about where he really lived even after it became clear he was lying, I never asked him to show me the Seatseller app on my laptop (after all, it was all on the cloud apparently). I never saw a picture of him with his dog, just the dog on its own on Tinder, which could have been a stock internet picture, I never met any of his friends, or heard the buzz of his office in the background when he was on the phone. I never saw his wallet or his keys. I picked him up and dropped him off at stations, accepted invitations to go on holiday, took his word for everything. At the bottom of it all was my need for it to be true, my wilful blindness to the possibility that it wasn’t. I had told him what I wanted, and he had given it to me. But it was never his to give.
Chapter 21
Wednesday 31 May
I lay in bed for an extra hour and focused on the days that lay ahead. I was supposed to be travelling to Spain with Harry the next day. I wondered what would have happened if things hadn’t gone the way they had, if I’d let him stay, or had made up with him when he went to stay with Maddie. Tomorrow I’d be told sorry there’s been an emergency babe, we’re going to have to postpone the trip. Because it was never going to happen. He had never shown me the tickets, had probably never bought them.
But things had gone this way, and now I had a day to decide what to do with the long weekend of freedom that lay before me. My priority was to get away from London, somewhere he would never find me.
Then I remembered the voucher the girls had given me for my birthday. It was for 3 nights at a little place called the Hideaway, a farm cottage stuck out in the wilds of Dartmoor. From the website I gathered that it was populated mainly by artists and writers, but the emphasis was on peace and seclusion. I called the number on the website, not imagining for a second that there would be a place for me at such short notice. As it turned out, there were no bookings at all as a large group had just cancelled.
"So you are more than welcome, if you don't mind being on your own there. Susan can let you in and she'll just be around the corner if you need her.
I didn’t mind at all. In fact I relished the prospect. I packed a bag, feeling the nerves twisting my stomach in knots as the phone pinged incessantly.
Harry was on the warpath. The messages were erratic, badly spelt, alternately showering me with venom and adoration, vitriol and victimhood. He accused me of lying, of unimaginable dishonesty. I appeased him in a roundabout way, agreeing that I had been dishonest, about the fact I didn’t trust him when it came to his home, Paul’s flat, the Sam part of Hasam, his team of developers, the app, the Spain tickets, booking Tabitha's house, his promise to order wine for the party and pay back the money he owed me. And then he replied thanking me, and that he could prove all those things to be true. I wobbled. He saw my uncertainty and ran with it, repeating how much he loved me, that all he wanted was for us to be together. I wobbled again and steadied myself.
Then there was the small matter of Josh’s work placement. I had seen Paul Rathbone on Facebook, easy to find with the information I had. In fact, the whole Dawson clan was easy to find. Harry’s father was prolific in his posting, and through him I found the mother, stepfather, stepmother, children, sister, stepsister and stepbrother, and almost all of them were somehow connected to Paul. Paul himself was a handsome Essex boy, with a laid-back smirk and aviator shades. He oozed money and fast cars.
I bit the bullet and sent him a message on Facebook.
“Hi Paul, you don’t know me but a friend of yours suggested that you might be able to offer work experience for my son who is looking for a week’s work from 26 June. No worries if not poss but just thought I’d follow up.”
The reply was almost instant. He told me the office was in Putney and could Josh get there easily,. We closed the deal.
“That sounds fine. Give me a call Friday.” I put a reminder in my phone to call him. It was like having a present to open in two days’ time. So much would come together once I had spoken to him. Paul Rathbone was the gateway to the truth when it came to Harry Dawson’s real life. And there would be no more wobbles because I would have my certainty at last.
There was only one thing left for me to do before I left. I gathered his possessions and drove them round to Maddie’s house. She had a new plan which was to leave his belongings with a neighbour and join me on the retreat at some point over the weekend. There were various messages between her and Harry as he changed his plans and his methods for collection, but she stuck to her guns and wasn’t going to be in the house, at any cost, when he or the courier arrived.
As I set off for Devon, Harry spotted my WhatsApp status had changed to “rien de rien…” and jumped on it, sending me the Edith Piaf video on YouTube and more poignant messages about how he missed me, needed to be holding me. I melted at his words, regretted everything I had said or suspected and wanted nothing more than to turn the clock back and comply, believe. I pulled into a layby to reply to him. I told him I understood, but I needed some time to think.
Then, just as I softened, he flipped again, telling me that I had sabotaged this relationship like I sabotaged everything. I said maybe I should reflect on that and sent him Peter Ske
llern's Put out the Flame. I needed him to stay peaceful as long as possible. I told him I was going to stay with a friend for the weekend, and a few minutes later he was asking, apologetically, whether I was alone. I sent him a laughing voice recording as I drove down the A3 “of course I’m on my own, yes, I’m on my own,” and he said how lovely it was to hear my voice, and apologised for his burst of jealousy, said it wouldn’t happen again. He didn't mention the fact that we were booked on a plane to Spain the following day.
When he was calm, I was calm. When the temperature of our messages went up, I stressed and smoked. That was the pattern he had me in, like the old tennis game on the very first Atari in the eighties, I was constantly moving to catch the next ball. I never thought to let it go past, because I was afraid, I still don’t know exactly what of, but he had me. He still had me. To extricate myself, to stop myself falling headlong back into his trap, I needed to remind myself that none of it was true. On a sudden whim, I took the Godalming turn-off. I needed to pay whoever really lived in that house another visit.
I don’t know what I expected to find or do when I got there. When I arrived, I parked around the corner and walked back and up the drive to the front door. The ornaments were still on the windowsill, and photo frames were visible on the sills in the upstairs bedrooms. Two cars were in the drive, the Golf I’d seen before and the convertible Beetle which he had said belonged to his mother. The love cushion was no longer on the back seat of the Golf, neither was the charger cable plugged into the dashboard, and a beige jumper was slung across the passenger seat. This car wasn’t off the road, it was in regular use.
The doorbell rang unanswered. The house bore the hallmarks of a couple on holiday. Through the kitchen window I saw gleaming surfaces, an upturned washing up bowl and cloths hanging over the taps. The door from the hall to the TV room was closed. I opened the bins again, this time photographing the recycling. I had no idea why I did that at the time, but later that day I zoomed in and googled the headlines of the Telegraph to determine when the house had last been occupied. A week ago. It was half term. Harry's mother was a teacher. It all made sense.
Back in the car, I hand wrote a letter to Harry's parents Daniel and Jo, telling them who I was, and that I had met and had a relationship with their son Jonathan, who I knew as Harry. I told them we had split up because he had lied to me, that I didn’t know why, that I had nothing to lose or gain now but was just curious as to what was going on and what was behind the elaborate stories I had been told. I tried to appeal to his mother on the sisterhood angle, but realised the motherhood issue might trump it. The letter was articulate, legible even, and amazingly the words flowed without any need for crossings out or asterisks. But even as I wrote it I knew I couldn’t post it. I didn’t have an envelope, and posting a piece of paper through the door left it open for anyone to read, and if Harry came by for any reason then I would be toast. I contemplated driving to a shop to buy an envelope, then I had a better idea.
The neighbours to the right didn’t answer. The windows were open, cars were in the drive but they chose not to come to the door, for which I am grateful because that sent me round the corner. And that’s how I met Julie.
She opened the door to me without hesitation. They say that when you set eyes on someone for the first time you make your judgement of them in seconds. Your decision to trust, like, love a person is made by your eyes and your heart in a joint venture of the soul. I looked at Julie and saw myself in her. She was my age, my height, and had an indefinable expression that filled me with hope.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, but do you have just a couple of minutes?”
There must have been a split second where she struggled to think of a single reason to say yes, and in that moment I managed to say a few more words I know this sounds very odd, but I’m just trying to find something out, and it’s to do with a scam and it’s about one of your neighbours…. The words came out like bullets, clumsy, dangerous, scattergun. I looked at her with begging in my eyes and held out my hand tentatively.
“I’m Rachel by the way."
This seemed to put her at ease.
“I’m Julie. Nice to meet you Rachel. So how can I help?” She was holding onto the collar of a golden retriever with one hand, while the other held the door open. I still had something to prove, and the pressure to find the right words sent me stumbling over them instead.
“Thank you so much. I just wanted to ask, how well do you know your neighbours?”
“Daniel and Jo?” Not that well, just to say hello to, really.
“It’s their house then, I mean they live there? Alone?”
“Yes, well, yes. Why?”
“They don’t have a son, called Harry who lives there with them?”
She frowned and shook her head. “They have a son, Daniel's stepson, called Jonathan, who doesn’t live there anymore, but I sometimes see him around when they’re away.”
“Oh yes of course, Jonathan, I forgot.” That made sense. I wasn’t imagining things then. “So do you know Jonathan?”
“He’s done lots of odd jobs for me over the years. He put up some fencing here for me last Saturday.” She indicated the boundary dividing her place from the neighbours.
“He did that for you? That’s very kind and neighbourly of him.”
“Well it’s his job, isn’t it?”
“Really? I thought he worked in the city? He told me…” I hesitated, wondering how much to divulge. “He told me he was an app developer, runs his own software development company in Liverpool Street.”
Julie blanched visibly and her hand tightened on the dog’s collar. “He's worked for the council as a gardener, since, well, I don’t know…” Her voice drifted off. I was remembering Maddie talking about how he had sorted out her garden so professionally.
“Could you tell me anything else about him? Anything at all? It’s just that I met him online, a few weeks ago, some stuff happened and I don’t think he's – well, I think there is something very weird going on.”
“Has he hurt you?” Her face suddenly clouded. The door opened a fraction further and I could see into the warm kitchen, where sunlight flooded in from the back.
“No, he hasn’t been violent. Why, has he done that before?”
She glanced over her shoulder, through a side window which looked over the neighbours’ garden. “Not that I really know about, or not exactly” she said, in a quieter voice. Do you want to come in?”
We chatted some more. I asked about the Mercedes and the motorbikes. She’d never seen him drive anywhere, not for a long time anyway. Her hands twitched in her lap.
“There was an accident,” she added, lowering her voice as if he might be there, waiting in the hallway. “Someone died.”
“Oh my God.” It took what seemed like an eternity for the words to sink in. My stomach turned somersaults. “Killed?”
“Terrible, I know.”
“Who died?”
“I don’t know. It was all very hush hush.”
“He was drunk, and driving?”
“I don’t know the details, but possibly, yes.”
“Was he …. Is he an alcoholic, do you know?”
“When he came to the door to do the fencing the other day, I could smell it on his breath.”
“In the afternoon?”
“About two thirty. Last Saturday it would have been. I think he could see me wince because he started apologising and saying he’d had a session the night before. And he was driving, I think. There was a car I didn’t recognise. I remember being surprised at the car, given what had happened.”
“That would have been my car. He borrowed it.” To go to Putney, I thought. To see a house, he had told me.
Then I confessed to Julie, because I couldn’t confess to my children, that he had been driving us around for weeks, in my car.
We let that sink in, biting our lips, thinking the same thing.
“You said he hasn’t hurt you?”
/> “No, not yet, not like that, but…”
“Like what then?”
“It’s nothing, nothing that I can put my finger on. That’s the whole problem.”
“I think maybe steer clear of him, if you can.”
“I will. Thanks Julie.” I got up to go. We swapped numbers. I promised her I’d say nothing about what she had told me, and asked her not to mention my visit to anyone. Jo and Daniel might need a separate visit, but now the chasm between appearance and reality seemed so deep that I couldn’t imagine how to broach the subject. I tore up the letter slowly. What I hadn't mentioned to Julie, but what I couldn't stop thinking about as I drove away, was that I had recognised the golden retriever.
Back on the A303 heading south-west into the lowering sun, I passed Stonehenge again, a sturdy and constant backdrop to our hapless human exploits. I pulled over in a layby and closed my eyes, breathed and thought about peace. In the distance, tiny figures moved around the giant stones which stood rigid against the sky. I remember visiting the site back in the seventies before the cordons and barriers went up. I hate barriers. I want to run through them and touch what lies beyond. I want what I can’t have. How do you stop wanting what you can’t have? Somewhere along the line we need to submit to higher authority, but with every bone in my body I want to break through it, make possible what isn’t, find the truth, touch it, feel it.
The drive to Devon was uneventful after that, and I arrived at the cottage by nightfall, ready to unzip my laptop and finish marking some exam papers I had set for my students. But it was never opened. I procrastinated again. I blame that on what happened next.
“So there’s Cathy and Jen tonight, when they come back from wherever they are, but they go tomorrow night, so you’ll be alone after that.” Susan, who managed the house in between retreats, was inching her ample body down the stairs in front of me, creaking in unison with the bannister. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” she panted, easing herself into the kitchen, one hand on each side of the doorframe.
The Delusionist Page 14