by Natasha Bell
He bent down, shielding his head behind the lectern. He took a deep breath and then groped for his bag, seeking an alibi for his strange behavior. Slowly, he unfolded himself and looked back out from behind the lectern, waving a pen in the air.
The room was silent.
“Sorry,” Marc said again. He cleared his throat. “Where were we?” He scratched his temple and looked down at his lecture. The words swam before his eyes. He blinked and a tear fell into the middle of his page. Marc looked at the students again, his heart thudding in his chest. He saw faces turn away, mouths whispering into ears. There was a commotion on the left side of the room. Marc turned, his vision blurry. The blond woman with the ponytail was getting out of her seat, climbing toward the end of the row. My husband stared, along with everyone else in the room, as she walked down the stairs and across the small stage toward his lectern.
She was in front of him now. She placed her hand on Marc’s arm. He looked down at the fingers on his shirt.
“Are you okay, Dr. Southwood?” she said. “Should I get someone?”
Marc felt the wetness on his cheeks, became aware of his chest rising and falling, of the feeling like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room.
“I need to, um, I need to go,” he said quietly, searching the woman’s face in panic.
“Of course,” she said. She stepped behind the lectern and picked up his bag. She opened the flap and placed his lecture notes inside, then held out the handle to him. “Will you be okay?”
Marc nodded as he took the bag from her, trying to suppress the urge to sprint.
He murmured apologies as he climbed the stairs to the door, heads turning as he passed each row. At the top of the room he touched his temple and turned back to address them. “This lecture will be rescheduled,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “You’ll get an email from the department.”
He heard the sound of their voices swelling before the door closed behind him and he hurried along the corridor. He didn’t have a plan; he wasn’t going anywhere except away. He turned left, then right, out through the automatic doors and along the covered walkway to the next building. He took the first set of stairs, then wove unthinkingly along the first-floor corridor, past closed doors and posters advertising readings and discussion groups. It wasn’t until he found himself staring at my name that he realized he’d had a destination all along. He stood outside the office I shared with Rosa, staring at our name plaques and the piece of paper telling him my tutorial hours were Tuesdays and Thursdays between one and three, hers were Mondays and Fridays between ten and twelve. Marc’s heart beat in his ears, his kneecaps trembled. What was he doing here? How could he have thought he could give a lecture? What was wrong with him?
A door opened behind him.
“Marc?”
He turned and recognized Paula. She wore a creased man’s suit jacket and a thick silver necklace.
“Are you okay?” she said, putting down her satchel.
“I—I just walked out of a lecture,” he said, as if only just realizing that’s what he’d done.
“Oh Marc,” Paula said. “Don’t worry about that. Come and sit down.” She ushered him into her office and removed her jacket. “Take a seat,” she instructed.
Marc sat in the armchair intended for students during supervisions. He almost felt like a scared little eighteen-year-old, unsure how to act in this strangely adult world.
“Does anyone know where you are?”
Marc shook his head.
“Okay,” said Paula. “Well, I’m going to let the porter know you’re okay in case anyone’s worried. I’m also just going to nip down the hall and cancel my meeting. I’ll be back in one sec, okay?”
Marc nodded and Paula left. He scrunched up his face and willed himself not to lose control. The window was open and he could hear students chatting in the courtyard below. How was it possible everything here was so normal? How could classes and seminars and meetings be going on as if nothing had happened?
Paula returned with two mugs of tea. She handed Marc the one reading Keep Calm and Drink Tea and sat down behind her desk.
She looked at him, her tight, tanned face drawn with concern. “How are you?”
Marc curled his hand around the mug so Paula wouldn’t see the design and feel the need to apologize. “Fine,” he said. “That’s not what matters, is it?”
“It is,” she said. “You need to look after yourself.” Her voice was strict and commanding, but oddly reassuring in its absence of false comfort. I loved Paula for her bluntness. She was highly critical and said what she thought, but it meant on the rare occasion she said something positive you knew she was truly impressed.
“Why?” Marc asked. “What’s the point without Al?”
“All the more point,” Paula said and he recognized the sternness for which students had nicknamed her Bulldog. “You need to remain positive. You need to think of the girls.”
“I’m a husband without a wife,” he said through wet fingers. “I keep wondering if Alex is alone too. Is it too romantic a notion to draw comfort from the idea that we’re alone together? Wherever she is, perhaps she’s thinking of me. Is that ridiculous?”
“No,” Paula said. “It’s not ridiculous. I’m sorry, we’re all sorry. And we’re here for you if you need us.”
They sat in silence for a while, Marc occasionally swallowing a sob and Paula seemingly torn between comforting him and letting him get on with it. He knew he was being morose, knew he should pull himself together and concentrate on helping the police find me. But he felt like he’d been holding it together for days, putting on a brave face for the girls, convincing even himself he was able to work, to function. Paula was the first person who’d asked him how he was that he hadn’t felt he needed to bullshit.
She remained at her desk, for which Marc was grateful, imagining his whole body might melt at the lightest of touches. He tried to breathe evenly, focusing his gaze on the image of a lipsticked woman emerging from shards of crystal adorning the cover of a textbook on Paula’s desk. How, he wondered, had he come to be bursting into tears in this woman’s office, and what must she make of him as a fellow academic?
There was a knock at the door. Marc looked up, panicked. Paula waited while he wiped his eyes and sat up straight, then answered.
It was Veronica, my department secretary, with a couple of young lecturers whose faces Marc recognized but couldn’t name.
“We just wanted to say how sorry we are,” Veronica stepped through the partially open door and the others followed awkwardly. “If there’s anything we can do…”
“Inspector Jones came to search the offices and interview us yesterday,” Paula said, perhaps worried he’d think she’d gossiped.
“We told them everything we could think of, but none of us can believe this has really happened. It’s so unlike Alex,” Veronica drawled, a note of excitement in her voice.
“Thank you for your concern,” Marc said without conviction.
“Well, we’ll leave you to it,” Veronica said. “You know where to find us.”
The other two muttered barely audible sympathy and leapt back out of the office. After Paula closed the door, they heard Veronica’s shrill voice echo in the hallway: “I don’t know how he’s coping. He must be preparing for the worst. It’s only a matter of time before they find a body, don’tcha think?”
“That’s if he doesn’t already know,” one of the lecturers replied as their voices faded. “Almost all crimes are committed by someone the victim…”
“Ignore them,” Paula said, studying Marc’s face for signs of trauma.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I know it’s what everyone’s thinking.” He gave Paula an awkward smile. She turned to her computer and he allowed his features to fall, his gaze resting back on the textbook. This time he read the title, Artis
ts in Focus: Marina Abramović.
“Can I borrow this?” he said.
Paula looked up, then down at the book. She shrugged. “If you like.”
There was another knock at the door and Paula and Marc made eye contact. “Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to tell the porter you’re here,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Marc said. “I can’t exactly hide from the world.”
Paula frowned, but got up to open the door. Nicola and DI Jones stood on the other side.
“Sorry to disturb you,” DI Jones said. “Dr. Southwood, could we have a word?”
Marc nodded and went to stand up, but Paula gestured for him to stay put. “I’ll give you some privacy,” she said, ushering the officers into the room and gathering a couple of things from her desk. She handed Marc the book. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me,” she told him, then left.
DI Jones and Nicola stood awkwardly between Marc and the desk. “We have some new information,” DI Jones said. “It’s not conclusive, but I’m afraid it indicates bad news.”
The muscles in Marc’s throat contracted.
“We think we’ve found some of Alexandra’s things and we’re going to need you to identify them.”
Marc’s hands began to shake in his lap. “W-where?” he managed to stammer.
“By the river,” Nicola said.
“This morning we picked up some teenagers with a number of stolen bicycles,” DI Jones said. “One of them matched the description you gave of Alexandra’s.”
“I don’t understand,” Marc said, his breath shallow.
“We brought the youths in for questioning,” DI Jones said. “One of them admitted to finding the bicycle in question on the riverside path last week. We’re keeping him in, but it seems likely he’s telling the truth. His description led us to an area just along from Millennium Bridge.”
“Why would Al’s things be by the river?” Marc said, his voice suddenly too loud for the room.
“We don’t know yet, Dr. Southwood. The first step is to positively identify them as Alexandra’s.”
“And if they are?”
DI Jones drew a breath, then answered in a softer tone. “We’ve also found blood. We’re treating it as a crime scene.”
* * *
Marc saw students peeking from curtained rooms as he followed DI Jones and Nicola to the police car. They were providing the day’s drama. Newsworthy sightings to be indiscreetly disclosed in campus bars and shared kitchens. Did you see Marc Southwood? Did you hear what happened? My husband’s mind felt like a record player with ten needles trying to play all the tracks at once. He was whizzed through the city, the wordless silence a cacophony in his ears.
Later, he watched the ten o’clock news. DI Jones made the national clips. He stood in front of the river, police tape flapping behind him. “In light of today’s discoveries, we must admit the high probability that Alexandra Southwood has come to harm.”
* * *
This is harder than I thought it would be. I wish I could imagine my husband discovering me gone, sobbing for a couple of hours, and then getting on with his life. I wish I could have woken in the night and unstitched myself from his heart, undone all of the things that tied us together, so he wouldn’t have had to suffer. I wish the same for our babies too, though I can barely bring myself to think of them. That I may never see my children again is almost impossible to contemplate. He asks what I would say to them if I could, what I hope they’ll remember about me. I know he wants me to break. I tell him to get on with it, do what he wants to me, just stop torturing me with these questions. He stands before me in silence, studying me like some specimen he might put in a jar.
1999
MONDAY, AUGUST 16
“It’s strange,” I said, my head on Marc’s chest.
He waited for me to finish my sentence, his eyes following a cloud as it morphed leisurely across the summer sky. We had a couple more hours until we should head over to Patrick and Rebecca’s. There was a new doctor, Frances, at Patrick’s surgery and he’d been talking for weeks about how much we’d get on with her. Rebecca had promised her grandmother’s coq au vin for the occasion.
“What’s strange?” Marc asked eventually, propping himself on his elbows to look at me. The movement forced me to shift too, prising my eyes from a pair of ducks gliding with the current. Staring at the ducks, I’d been able to imagine us alone on some private riverbank in the middle of nowhere, at harmony with each other and nature. Sitting up, I was forced to acknowledge those we were sharing this privacy with: the dog walkers and cyclists crossing the bridge, the ice-cream truck on the opposite bank and the students picnicking and pretending to study.
“That I’m so happy here,” I replied, turning my attention back to the water. My ducks had gone.
“Why’s that strange?” Marc asked, a touch of nervousness in his voice.
“I don’t mean bad strange,” I said quickly, swiveling my head so I could meet his eyes. Had I said the wrong thing? I was trying to be honest, to share myself. Perhaps I just needed to explain. “Not bad strange, but curious. It’s an odd feeling for me, being so supremely content, especially so far away from the things I thought would make me happy. I almost feel like a different person.”
Marc tensed. I laid my palm over his heart. “Don’t—please, I mean it, I’m happy. You make me happy. It’s just weird when I think about my life last year, about how desperately I wanted to stay in Chicago and live, I don’t know, in a way that mattered.”
“Does this not matter?” he said.
“That’s not what I mean. You’re twisting my words. It’s just, for so long I’ve felt this anger and passion, this need to escape all this niceness. I mean, if you’d met me in a seminar having a shouting match with my tutor about the art industry’s inherent race and gender biases and told me a year later I’d be lying by the river in York eating grapes from the market and feeling this disgustingly, gushingly in love, I’d have punched you.”
“I didn’t mean to interfere with your plans. I’m sorry,” Marc said with a smile, but also an edge in his voice that made me wonder if it was really a joke.
“You should be!” I said, deciding not to push it. I sat up and reached my arms around him. My fingers crawled over his skin, tickling his sides until he squirmed as I panted, “I. Might. Have. Been. The. Next. Marina. Abramović. Your. Hideously. Amazing. Love. Has. Denied. The. World. My. Art.”
“The next who?” Marc said, gasping for breath between giggles.
“You philistine!” I said, rolling my eyes. “Fine, the next Andy Warhol or Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin.”
“You wanted to be the next Tracey Emin?” Marc said. “More like I’ve spared the world. I’m a hero!”
I growled in frustration and Marc took the opportunity to end the tickling by grabbing my hands and pinning me to the grass.
“I love you,” I said seriously, that second struck by the magnitude of the declaration.
He hovered above me, studying my features. I looked up at him, wishing I could read his thoughts. Was this strange for him too? He seemed so comfortable and at ease. Did he have no angst, no worries, no guilt? How to explain that I’d feel closer to him if he did, if he admitted he didn’t have a clue either. We could wade into the murky, mysterious water and glide into the unknown together. But Marc seemed okay. He seemed happy being happy, like it was natural and enough. Like it needed no extra thought.
One Week Gone
Nicola led Marc back along the dead-end path to the right of the bridge. He knew what to expect this time, but his hands still shook in his pockets, his tongue felt swollen in his mouth. At the end of the path, nestled between the trees and the water, there was a square of tape. Inside, my blue coat and gray scarf lay crumpled as if I’d just shed them. Marc had cried out when he saw them the day before, a guttural, almost
animal wail. This morning he clenched his teeth and forced himself to keep walking.
My handbag was cordoned off by more tape, tipped upside down and missing various items, including my purse and phone. A tire print blemished the mud. Closer to the bank lay a shoe and my houndstooth jumper, a dark stain spread along the side of the torso. They sat on an irregular shadow of black mud and leaves. Smaller bits of tape marked other shadows.
“Is that bl—” Marc had tried to ask yesterday, but crumpled before he could say the word. DI Jones hadn’t answered. Instead he’d quietly asked if Marc was sure the belongings were mine. All my husband had been able to do was nod.
“We’re continuing to question the individual who took the bike,” Nicola said now. “We need to establish a timeline. He says he found the bike last Friday, but denies ransacking the bag. He says he didn’t see the blood. It’s possible he’s telling the truth, but he may just be scared—”
“What if he’s lying?” I imagine Marc interrupting. Nicola and DI Jones had looked at the evidence and settled on a narrative, but my husband couldn’t do the same. As obvious as it seemed and as tempting as a conclusive explanation was right then, I know that even with my blood and belongings displayed before him Marc was ready to clutch at anything. He was desperate for an answer that didn’t lie in the depths of the Ouse.
“What if this guy did something to Alex?” Marc said. “Or took her somewhere? Who is he? What do you know about him?”
Nicola couldn’t tell him much except that the individual in question was a minor with no prior convictions and he appeared to be co-operating fully. “We’re not discounting anything at this stage,” she said. “But we’re working on the assumption that these items have been here since last Thursday and that both the bike and Alexandra’s belongings were taken sometime on Friday, before any appeals went out. After that it seems likely the thief or thieves may have been too worried to report what they found.”