by Karen Swan
Laura looked back through the doors at the car pulling away from the kerb. It was a matt-black Porsche. She couldn’t see who was driving, but she clocked the first few characters on the number plate: B5H.
She leaned against the pillar as she heard the lift take Cat back upstairs, back to Rob, waiting alone in their room for her. She wondered what Cat was going to tell him – what lie? Because it was abundantly clear from where she was standing that the man in the car was no mere friend.
Chapter Forty-One
The studio was freezing – literally. Small icicles were forming on the insides of the windows, and Laura had to put on a pair of gloves to set the fire. She boiled the kettle four times too, just to get the steam to heat up the air temperature. The snow was newer and thicker on the ground here in Suffolk, though thankfully her train journey home had been unproblematic and the roads had been gritted so the taxi had had no problems getting her to the yard.
Laura wandered over to the east window, a mug of hot chocolate in her hands to warm her up. The flame in the stove was still green and cool, but the sounds of it flickering brought a little life into the room, at least. The locksmith had done his job and it was clear neither Fee nor Jack had been able to enter in her absence.
Her breath quickened at the thought of them, just a mile away from here. She tried to imagine them cuddled up on the grey sofa, watching the X Factor final and ploughing their way through a cheap bottle of red. She wondered whether Fee would have succeeded where she’d failed and persuaded Jack to let them have their Saturday-night takeaway on their laps after all. She tried to envisage Fee lying in his arms in her bed, with her clothes still hanging in the wardrobe, her book still sitting unread on the table. Fee stepping into another woman’s life, picking up the pieces just like . . . just like she had done four years earlier.
It had been five days since Jack had turned his back on her, five days since she’d left their cottage and drifted between four different homes – here, Kitty’s, Cat and Rob’s, the hotel in Kensington . . . She would have to go back to the cottage tomorrow and pack some fresh clothes. There was no washing machine in the studio and she couldn’t keep buying new socks and knickers every few days. She also needed some more milk and proper food. Dinner tonight would have to be the emergency tin of chicken soup she’d managed not to eat in almost three years – it was going to be a long way from the kobe beef she’d enjoyed last night.
Last night – another land. She closed her eyes and a slideshow of images flashed behind her eyelids like cine film, jerky and silent. She remembered the look in Rob’s eyes across the table as he’d tried to stop her – save her – during the bids; the way his body had felt, pressed against hers, as they’d danced; the exhaustion in his face after he’d sat up all night to make sure she was okay; the sadness in his voice this morning as they’d retreated from each other . . .
Had it been for nothing? Were the two of them battling with doing the right thing when the marriage was all but dead anyway? She’d been up close and personal with them for over a week, and for all Rob’s insistent declarations of passionate love, there was also a constant dissatisfaction between the two of them that hummed like a high-volt cable, as though there was too much power. But then weren’t people most desperate – most alive – in their death throes? Didn’t a drowning man fight for survival with an intensity that was never required in normal life?
Or was it all the other way round? Was she the desperate one – looking for reasons that could justify her feelings for Rob? What if Cat really had been with friends? Perhaps she had simply mistaken her chemically induced euphoria as love? Cat had, after all, been as high as her, and look what she’d done – blown a small fortune on a bid, just to prove a point.
Laura stared out into the night, watching the distant lights of a tanker ship blinking on the horizon. It had begun to sleet again, and the occasional snowflake fluttered past the windowpanes, startling her slightly each time. She was jittery and confused – still crashing – and her head was pounding – hardly ideal, given that she had to work for the next two days solid if she was going to pull together the stock for the party as well as finish Cat’s necklace.
Of the three charms that remained – Rob’s, Olive’s and Min’s – she knew what she was doing for only one of them. She turned away from the night and unlocked the safe – hidden behind a cardboard box beneath the bench – pulling out stackable trays of charms she had built up in the past four years and setting them along the counter. Some had been fashioned purely to develop her technical ability; others were ideas she hadn’t been able to resist, like the silver squirrel holding a real acorn, inspired by a 1950s children’s print. One tray was of antiques, bought as happy-go-lucky aides-memoires on her travels before she’d decided to make this her career.
Another tray was filled with the earliest charms she had made. She couldn’t take them to London with her – they weren’t anywhere close to being good enough quality to sell; she’d just been cutting her teeth when she’d made them, but she had a strong sentimental attachment to them. Her eyes tripped over them like a child’s over sweet jars: the old-fashioned phone box, a Venetian mask where one of the eyes was misshapen; a jack-in-the box that didn’t open properly; an enamelled emerald-green four-leafed clover; a slightly lopsided wedding cake; a lockable treasure chest; an Easter egg; a dice on which she’d repeated the ‘four’ dots twice; a rocking horse that looked more like a rocking donkey . . .
There were hundreds of charms in total, stockpiled as references, waiting to tell a stranger’s story. But what would tell Olive’s? She looked at them each in turn, her eyes falling upon every single one. She could remember almost word for word the torturous interview and ran over some obvious images – Truffle the pony, a bit, a horseshoe, a grooming brush? Or their last holiday in Cornwall – the crab, the shell, a bucket and spade? But they seemed too shiny, too idyllic, to honestly represent that fatally fractured relationship, and she well remembered Rob’s smile as he’d insisted on warts. He wanted the truth spelled out – ‘Don’t edit to be kind’ – and she couldn’t pretend the sisters were close. The reality was that their relationship was defined by the loss of Daniel, but how did you put an image to something that wasn’t there?
She sat down on the sofa, positioned the digital recorder beside her and switched it on. Min’s uncharismatic voice filled the room.
‘I couldn’t go on justifying her salary when she was basically a glorified tea-girl.’
Laura stopped the machine as she remembered another small detail that had been lost in the broad strokes of last night’s events – Cat had told Ben Jackson she was still working at Min’s gallery. She had fluidly and easily lied. At the time, Laura had put it down to pride. It was one thing saving face in front of an estranged acquaintance, but her own husband? They certainly didn’t need the money. Laura bit her lip. She knew Cat – for some other reason – must be lying about it to Rob too. It was the only explanation for why he didn’t know his wife had been sacked; if he did, he surely never would have included Min on the project. They weren’t friends, colleagues or even in touch. She switched it on again.
‘I do often see her around and about, but she never comes in.’ She clicked it off again. Laura felt her head begin to swim with too much and too little information all at once. She knew Cat was lying about her job, but she didn’t know why; she knew Cat was still travelling into Holland Park every week, but she didn’t know why. And she knew it meant Cat had been lying to her husband for two years. Two years! But she didn’t know why.
Old Grey woke her early the next morning with his droning wing beat outside the east window. She’d worked till late, but her body was still on hyperdrive, her mind racing with what had to be done. Her eyes focused slowly and she remembered that there was nothing to be done now. On the necklace anyway. It was finished.
Laura reached out from the sofa and picked it up off the table, the attached charms tinkling delicately like wind chimes. She he
ld it up, feeling a rush of pride at what she had created. Even without the emotional resonance behind it, the bracelet was an object of stunning beauty. Any woman – the glamorous Cat Blake included – would wear this with pride.
Her fingers brushed the individual charms lightly. She had done it again – a life remembered, another one recorded for posterity. It wasn’t a perfect life by any means, though many people held it to be: its incumbent was beautiful but flawed, spoilt and selfish but also kind and unquestionably generous; a woman who couldn’t be pinned down to just one interpretation. She was a polished jewel honed from inauspicious beginnings, and as multifaceted as a diamond: a wife, a sister, a first love, a friend – not necessarily excelling in any of those capacities, but then who ever said she had to? She was loved by the people on this necklace, anyway. Laura didn’t have the answers to all her questions about Cat, but then did anyone ever know someone else in complete fullness? Did anyone even have the right to complete ownership of another person’s history, secrets and dreams?
No. She had fulfilled her brief. Hand on heart, with the information she did have, every charm was honest and true – even Min’s. She had listened to the interview over and over until, as the last traces of the drug disappeared and her mind became more balanced again, she had realized that Rob had wanted her to represent not a personal relationship but a professional achievement – the Exposure exhibition.
Laura looked at the charm she had given him: a tiny compass with red arrowed hands. She had known from their conversation on the plane that this would be his charm, simply from the way he’d talked about his beautiful wife. Cat was, in the words of Auden, his north, his south, his east, his west. His everything.
Her hand fell to her chest, the charms pressed against her skin like little knuckles, as she fought back the tears that sprang at her eyes. All the people she’d once been everything to were gone for ever. She was nothing to anyone.
Laura dressed quickly, defiantly converting desolation into action. It wasn’t yet eight, but Jack and Arthur would be out for their walk before breakfast and the cottage would be empty. (Well, if Fee wasn’t sleeping in, that was. She still slept like a teenager.) She wanted to get this over and done with, without confrontation or angry scenes. Jack and Fee – if they were even bothering to check for her – would see that Dolly wasn’t parked in her usual spot in the yard and would assume she was still away. Where did they think she had gone to? she wondered. They both knew there was no family to take her in, nor friends. Or at least, not friends they had met. Would Fee guess? She had been jealous enough of Kitty.
The towpath was slippery – semi-thawed snow had iced over the mud during the night – and Laura trod carefully beside the brown and swirling water. She had scarcely been here in the past week, but she still instinctively knew the tide times. She would have just under two hours to get back here before the water level rose too high to cross.
In town, it was quiet. Sunday. The shops wouldn’t be opening for a while, and down side alleys the bins bulged with black sacks, waiting for the council refuse collections on Monday. Laura stopped outside Dorothy Perkins – the shaggy ‘rock princess’ jacket she’d been considering for Fee was in the window. It would have looked so good on her too.
She continued walking, shivering without a hat or gloves to put on, and she made a mental note to remember to pack those too. She pulled out her phone and called for a taxi to collect her from the cottage in half an hour. There would be too much to carry all the way to the studio, but at least if she was dropped at the top of the footpath, she could manage the rest.
She stopped as she turned into Pudding Street. The thatched roofs looked so pretty in the snow – like snowflakes caught on eyelashes – and the whitewashed walls looked greenish by comparison. She could see all her neighbours’ Christmas-tree lights sparkling in the matching bay windows that were repeated in every house, and her own red door gleamed back at her, naked. There was still no wreath above the knocker.
Laura looked up at the bedroom window. The curtains were open and neatly pulled back, a faint light from the landing beyond just visible. She couldn’t see any movement inside. She waited ten minutes, feeling self-conscious to be loitering outside her own house, before walking up to the door and pressing her ear to it. There was nothing to be heard. She crouched down and peered through the letterbox. There was nothing to be seen either – just her Joules mac hanging on the peg above her red wellies besides Jack’s mustard duffle coat and Timberlands. Arthur’s lead – which hung from its own hook – was gone. They were out.
Quickly, she let herself in, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could in case Fee should be up there still sleeping after all. She crept silently up the stairs, her heart pounding from fear of what she’d find, but the bed was empty; no one was in.
She sagged against the door frame, looking in at her own bedroom. Already she’d lost her sense of ownership over it. It was like looking around a house that was for sale, feeling slightly voyeuristic, peering into the intimacy of other people’s lives. The patchwork quilt she’d loved so much at the market – Jack had bought it for her even though it was overpriced and clearly not antique, in spite of what the stallholder had said – was neatly pulled to the top and smoothed in typical Jack fashion, and the lace cushions were arranged on their points, just the way she liked them to be. The square box on the mantelpiece was untouched – she could tell by the faint dust lines; there was water in only one glass on Jack’s side of the bed, and his favourite grey Nordic jumper had been draped carefully over the bottom bedstead.
Laura turned and walked into the bathroom. She looked around for make-up, cheap perfume, neon bangles or glittery nail polish – anything that told her Fee was here – but all she could smell was Jack’s deodorant. She wasn’t fooled. Fee wouldn’t move in before Laura had moved out.
Unless . . . unless they were staying at Fee’s. They knew she would have to come back sooner or later to collect her things. How much easier it would be for everyone if they continued their affair away from home until it was clear Laura wasn’t coming back.
Well, she’d make it easy for them. Marching back to the bedroom, she heaved down her large suitcase on wheels. She pulled out her underwear drawer and tipped it upside down angrily, so that bras, knickers, socks and tights fell out in a jumbled mass. Then she took her two other pairs of jeans, a funnel-necked fleece, all her T-shirts and pyjamas, the snazziest party dress she owned – beige lace, Reiss in the sale – and her high heels (all red), and jammed them into the suitcase. She walked over to the dressing table and had just begun to rifle through her make-up and jewellery box when she heard the front door slam.
She froze. Downstairs she could hear the muffled ‘pop’ of Arthur’s padded feet on the stone floor as he trotted over to his water bowl, the tinkle of the brassware as Jack replaced the lead on the hook. There was no sound of his footsteps, though, and she imagined him standing at the foot of the stairs, sensing her presence.
Then she heard him turn into the kitchen, the sound of water hissing through the pipes as he opened the taps and filled the kettle. Laura looked around the room as though scanning for exits, but she knew perfectly well there was nowhere to go. The back door led straight off the kitchen. The only way out was the way she’d come in.
She sank on to the bed, her face in her hands. How could it be she was hiding from Jack? Him of all people. He’d always been her safety net. That had been the point – he was safe! He would never hurt her or leave her or let her down. They were connected in ways no one else could ever understand. No one except Fee. Her tears fell quickly, but they were silent at least.
Laura listened for sounds of him moving around downstairs, but everything was quiet. She thought of Arthur curling up in his bed, happy to sleep after his run. But what were they doing back so soon? Sunday was always Arthur’s treat day when she and Jack took him on an extra-long walk up to the lighthouse.
In her pocket, a text buzzed on her
mobile – the taxi was outside. She had to be quick. The bollards meant the driver wouldn’t be able to get down this street, and anything more than a minute of waiting and he’d get out and ring the bell.
Zipping her bag as quietly as she could, Laura heaved the suitcase off the bed and carried it to the top of the stairs. It was so big her hands didn’t meet round it, but her adrenalin was pumping and she felt at that moment that she could have carried a car. Carefully, knowing exactly where the creaks were, she zigzagged her way down the staircase. One misstep would tell Jack she was here.
At the bottom she stopped, hoping Arthur was already zonked out in his bed. If he detected her scent . . . She was desperate to see him and ruffle his ears, but not right now. He would lead Jack straight to her. The doorway to the kitchen was on her right and she held her breath, listening. She could hear Jack breathing – he was close, just a couple of feet away. In her mind’s eye she could see him perched on the arm of the small teal sofa opposite the tiny fireplace reading the Sports section. She almost thought she could smell him – that sweet, familiar smell that had soothed her like balm in those first terrifying days . . .
Slowly and silently, she reached her arm out and put her hand on the handle. The latch retreated into its shell and she pulled open the door without a sound. The world – still sleepy – gently poked its head in and she could hear the sound of the taxi’s engine rumbling further down the street. She lifted the suitcase over the threshold in both arms and stepped out on to the pavement. And the only sound she heard before the door clicked shut was a single escaped sob.
Chapter Forty-Two
‘So.’
‘So.’
‘How are you feeling?’ Cat asked tentatively as Laura buckled her seat belt.
‘So-so,’ Laura shrugged, folding her hands in her lap. ‘You?’