In Too Deep

by Samantha Hayes

The room falls silent.

  Mum turns around slowly.

  More officers come in through the front door, instinctively surrounding Dad. The sirens and flashing lights from outside burst through my senses. I feel raw, unreal.

  ‘Jacob phoned me that afternoon,’ Dad goes on, his face wet with tears and snot. ‘It was after the end of school. I was away from home that day – from our home,’ he says, looking at me and Mum. ‘Jacob was in a terrible state. He was crying, said he’d seen something bad online. It was to do with a school project. He’d seen me in a newspaper article with . . . with my wife.’ He turns to Susan.

  ‘The restaurant award,’ Susan whispers, hugging herself. ‘There was a prize-giving at the hotel and the local papers were there.’ She moves closer to Rick. ‘I remember, you tried everything to get out of being in that photograph.’

  Dad wails unintelligibly, shaking his head and rocking back and forth.

  ‘I had to go to him quickly. My boy knew stuff he shouldn’t. I wanted to explain, find a way to make him keep quiet.’ Dad retches several times. ‘But not like that,’ he says, looking panicked. ‘After all those years of somehow making it work, after living with my wrong decision for so long, I couldn’t let it end in that way.’

  ‘Go on,’ PC Lane says. There’s complete silence in the room, just the occasional car cruising past outside. She’s jotting things down in her notebook.

  ‘I was . . . I was Phil.’ He’s shaking his head. ‘I was driving to the hotel for a couple of days when Jacob phoned. You thought I was away filming.’ Dad looks at Mum. ‘So I turned around and headed to where Jacob said he was. I was in the wrong car, but figured I could explain that away to a kid . . . tell him it was a hire car or something.

  ‘He’d recently started high school and he told me he’d taken the wrong bus because he was so upset by what he’d seen online. He’d ended up in the countryside between villages. That’s when he phoned me.’

  I want to block my ears, shut it all out. But like everyone else in the room, I listen intently.

  ‘He called you on the phone you use when you’re Rick?’ Kath asks blankly.

  Dad nods. ‘I was driving the Range Rover and I was wearing the wrong clothes. I wasn’t the father he knew, but I had to get to him.’

  There’s more deep, guttural sobbing, which makes me start, too. And Mum. In all the times we’ve hugged and comforted each other through our tragedy, in our triangle of grief, Dad knew.

  ‘I drove fast to get to him. Probably too fast, but I had to stop him from phoning you, Gina. I’d told him not to call anyone.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Mum whispers. She turns away, unable to look at him.

  Dad stares at the wall. ‘He just came out of nowhere. I didn’t know he’d started walking. I came round the bend too fast and I wasn’t sure what it was at first. Perhaps a dog . . . an animal.’

  He sucks in breath, trying to keep his voice steady.

  ‘I jammed on the brakes but it was too late. Whatever it was had hit the front of my car, gone up over the windscreen and flown off behind. I reversed back at speed . . . then there was a bump, so I pulled forward again.’

  Dad wails.

  ‘I got out of the car. I saw his backpack. I recognised his shoes. But I didn’t recognise my son.’

  He hangs his head low, deep down between his drawn-up knees.

  ‘Then I got back in my car and I drove away.’

  The silence is bigger than the room.

  ‘Did you administer any kind of first aid, Mr Forrester?’ PC Lane asks. ‘Did you check to see if your son was alive?’

  Dad shakes his head.

  ‘No, I was too scared. I just drove away. I didn’t believe what I’d done. I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d killed my own son.’

  I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d killed my own father.

  PC Lane arrests Dad again on suspicion of manslaughter. He struggles up off the floor and is manhandled out to the police car by several officers.

  I can’t look at him.

  Mum and Susan are speaking to officers again – Mum crying and hysterical, Susan calm. There’s so much noise around me, so much going on, and I feel weaker and weaker, yet there’s only one person I really want in all of this.

  Only one person who can put his arms around me and make it all better.

  He meant the world to me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say as two paramedics wrap me in a blanket and strap me on to a carry-chair. I’m shivering.

  I glance back at Mum as I’m wheeled out. She catches my eye, telling the officers she wants to go with me.

  I still love Tom, yet differently now. And I know he loves me, too.

  That never need change, I think, which makes me manage a tiny smile as they push me out to the waiting ambulance.

  Gina

  It’s late by the time I get back home.

  The taxi pulls up outside, the engine idling. I pay and get out, heading up the path, trying not to think about how many different people at different ages have come up and down it.

  I unlock the front door, fumbling with the key in the lock that feels foreign to me after only a few days.

  It’s as if I never even lived here.

  ‘I sat over there and watched your house,’ Susan says. ‘Last November.’

  We stand together on the top step and my eyes follow where she’s pointing. I don’t remember anyone sitting in their car, viewing my life from another perspective.

  Susan sighs, lowering her hand. It’s only just starting to sink in what all of this means, how I feel, what the future holds. That my husband’s other wife is here, standing beside me, about to enter my home. But oddly, there is no room for anger or hate between us. In fact, right now, it feels like the opposite. I was right to trust her, my initial suspicion having transformed into a strange need for friendship. I know she feels the same, and though it could be a temporary reaction – an intense need for comfort from the only other person who could possibly understand, a counterfeit attachment born out of our loss – we decided together, peacefully, that it would be beneficial to be together this evening.

  Suddenly Paula is on my mind, her wise, comforting words wrapping around me like a light shawl – she’s always there when I need her, yet never intrusive or overbearing.

  It’s time to look after you now, Gina, she’d said, her hands drawing the shape of a protective dome around me. Time to use what you’ve discovered about yourself and go on with your life.

  ‘When Phil came out of your house wearing clothes I didn’t recognise, I thought my mind was playing tricks. He kissed you so tenderly, I could see he loved you.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say through the semi-darkness. There’s a chill in the air.

  ‘He walked off down the street with a spring in his step that I’d never seen before. I got back in the car and followed him slowly, pulling over every hundred yards or so, watching as he talked on his phone a couple of times. He got on a bus, which I also followed, and ended up at the railway station.’

  I take Susan’s hand. We don’t deserve this.

  ‘I left the car on double yellow lines and ran in after him. I had to be certain it was him. Do you understand that?’

  I give a tiny nod.

  ‘I watched him buy a ticket. My head was telling me one thing, my heart quite another.’ Susan laughs, turns away to hide the tears in her eyes, but I see them glinting in the street light.

  ‘You already knew it was him . . .’ I say, saving her the pain.

  She returns the nod. ‘He phoned me later. He sounded the same as ever, and I acted as normally as I could. In fact, it was a lot easier than I thought. I asked him about Dubai, where he was meant to be, and he told me his news. He even sent me the view from his hotel that evening, probably taken off the internet.’

  ‘He must have had two phones,’ I say. ‘One for each of us.’

  I think about this, wondering how he prevented his two lives from becoming entangled for
so long. The logistics make me shudder. One day would be hard enough, let alone years and years.

  I push the door open and we go inside the house.

  My house.

  It feels cold. Unlived in.

  I will try to change that.

  ‘Welcome,’ I say, closing the door behind us. We’re both still for a moment. ‘Rick was standing exactly where you’re standing the last time I saw him.’

  She turns slowly, looks about. ‘Rick . . . or Phil?’ she says.

  ‘Phil or Rick?’ I reply, but there is no answer to that.

  I take her coat and pick up the mail. It’s mainly junk, but there’s a handwritten letter addressed to the parent or guardian of Hannah Forrester. Curious, I tear it open, skimming the messy writing. My heart clenches as I take it in. It’s only brief, but nevertheless puzzling. A social worker calling himself James Newton says he spoke to Hannah in a pub ten days ago. He had some concerns about her.

  While I’m unable to be specific about her problems, he wrote, I felt I should inform someone close. Do call on the number below should you need advice.

  There are good people in the world, I think, folding up the letter and taking Susan through to the kitchen. But what was Hannah doing in a pub? Then I remember the night she was meant to be at Emma’s house but didn’t show up. She obviously poured her heart out to a stranger instead of me. I’ve been so blind to my daughter’s needs – been so blind to everything.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ I say, flicking on all the lights.

  Earlier, Susan insisted I stay at the hotel, but because Hannah was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital here in Oxford, I wanted to be close.

  She was doing well, the doctor reported before I left, and would likely be home in a day or two. She had a mild wound infection that antibiotics would sort out quickly, but her main problem was that she’d been up and about too soon after the operation.

  It was then that I tentatively suggested to Susan that she come back with me so we could talk, stay the night if it was easier. I was testing the waters. Seeing if she was now as curious about me as I was about her. It felt strange, of course, to be spending time with the woman I now knew to be as much a part of Rick’s life as I was, but there was a burning itch inside me that I knew would only get worse if I didn’t scratch it. This was the only way I was going to get information, in the short term anyway, and information was what I craved. I suspected she felt the same.

  She hesitated for a moment, but then agreed, saying she’d let Tom know her plans, and also asking if he could take care of Cooper for me. The staff would manage without her for one night, and besides, like me, she said we had a lot to talk about.

  I open the fridge. There are just enough ingredients to make a simple meal.

  ‘Chilli and rice OK with you?’ Neither of us are hungry, but it’s a distraction at least.

  We look at each other for a moment, then both burst out laughing at the stupidity of such a mundane task. Then our laughter turns to tears and we’re in each other’s arms, the stream of light from the fridge cast across us.

  I pluck two tissues from the box on the table.

  ‘Chilli is perfect,’ she replies, peeking inside my fridge. ‘And look, you have wine too.’

  There are several bottles of white in the door, but I get the other things out first. Then I pour Susan a glass and make a cup of tea for myself.

  ‘You’re not having one?’ she says.

  ‘Not tonight,’ I say, knowing for sure that some things are definitely in the past.

  Half an hour later we’re sitting at the kitchen table, picking at our food – which is decent, but neither of us has an appetite. I can’t help wondering what she used to cook for Rick, if they would eat in the hotel restaurant, or privately upstairs in the flat. A line of pain cuts through me.

  Our conversation hops about, unpicking the stitches of our lives – of Rick’s lives – even though we know we will never fully untangle the matted threads.

  But we don’t need to.

  We just need to talk. To tread a strange, private dance around each other, hoping to find a missing piece of ourselves.

  ‘It was Phil’s idea to buy Evalina Street,’ Susan says, playing with her rice. ‘That was years ago now. He used my money.’

  ‘I just don’t know how he managed it,’ I say, mustering the last bit of emotion I have left for him. Logistics, I know, will come much later. For me this is all about feelings, and I hate that I have them for Susan. She loved Rick when I wasn’t there, after all, as if she was a broken-off part of me, a better part of me.

  ‘My heart fucking bleeds for him.’ She pours herself more wine.

  ‘Do you think he planned it, or just fell into it?’

  ‘Knowing Phil, it would have been pre-planned,’ she says without hesitation. ‘He always knew what he wanted.’

  I think about this, scanning over our lives together. My heart tells me the opposite.

  My tender husband.

  His large, gentle hands cupping the delicate heads of our newborns; making daisy chains with Hannah; patiently kicking a ball with Jacob. Everything from nappies at night to the school run to grabbing a pizza on a Friday evening. It was all spontaneous. Haphazard.

  ‘And knowing him as I do,’ I say, my eyes filling up again, ‘I think he just fell in love with us both. He was always terrible at decisions.’ I let out a little laugh.

  Susan puts down her glass rather too heavily.

  We chew over Rick’s lives, agreeing that his non-existent job was the backbone of the deceit, and that Evalina Street was where the transformations took place. The unrentable property. Passed from one agent to another over the years. Rick’s swap-over place.

  Rick to Phil. Phil to Rick.

  ‘The place exasperated me,’ Susan says. ‘I’d given up on it ever being done up and rented out.’

  I overheard Susan saying the same thing to Kath earlier.

  ‘Phil didn’t like it when I interfered,’ she tells me. ‘When I transferred the management to Watkins & Lowe last year, he said he’d heard terrible things about them. He was desperate to move to another agent.’

  When Susan spilled this to a confused Kath, I had to cover my ears. I couldn’t take any more. Had Adrian found out Rick’s dirty secret? Was he turning the thumbscrews on us both?

  But his underhanded goings-on have paled into insignificance now. I plan on handing in my notice first thing tomorrow. I have enough money to tide me over for a couple of months as well as a good CV. I’ll find another job, even if it’s waiting tables.

  ‘It was hard to keep quiet about what I knew,’ Susan says. ‘But knowledge is power, as they say.’ She drains her glass. Her eyes turn cloudy for a moment, hardened by the memory.

  I swallow drily, sipping on my tea.

  ‘When I saw the newspaper piece about Phil’s . . . Rick’s disappearance, that’s when I decided to . . .’ she makes a pained expression, ‘to find out more, to discover what it was Phil saw in you that he didn’t have in me. So I came up with the hotel booking idea. I wanted you on home ground.’ She pauses, but then laughs inappropriately. ‘Your daughter too. After all, Tom was still in pieces.’

  ‘I don’t know how you functioned, knowing all of this but with Phil thinking everything was fine, still travelling all the time.’

  She seems suddenly tense, perhaps from the wine. I collect up our half-empty plates and put them beside the sink.

  ‘It was difficult,’ she says, eyeing me. ‘Anyway, I was used to him being away. Back in the early days of our marriage, the arrangement had mostly suited us. I was busy with the hotel, and while I adore . . . adored Phil, there was little time in my life for anything else.’ She part hiccups, part lets out a sob.

  ‘And later, after Tom came along?’

  We both fall silent again, each doing the maths. Tom and Hannah were born within a few months of each other.

  ‘Phil has always been focused on his career, so by then it was jus
t the way we lived. We had nannies and au pairs over the years. Phil made good money.’

  That is when we both stop and think hard.

  Phil doesn’t make good money at all. There is no job with an oil company. When he was away supposedly working, he was with me. His occasional film-making trips and family visits took him back to Susan. I realise he probably faked that work too, no doubt showing off someone else’s films as his own when Hannah or I asked to see them. The web of his life has been based on our trust. And we’ve given it to him unconditionally.

  ‘Rick not getting on with his parents, them disliking me, was all a ploy then,’ I say quietly, thinking of all the times he visited them at Christmas by himself.

  ‘But his parents died years ago,’ Susan says. ‘And they left him a load of money.’ We sit and work it all out – an impossible equation.

  I recall the time he came back from Edinburgh, bursting into my flat, my life.

  He mentioned a woman. There was a glow about him, though I refused to see it, preferring to believe he was all mine.

  Susan. Though I didn’t know it then.

  She told me in the taxi that they’d met in Oxford, describing how he’d followed her up to Edinburgh when she’d gone there to study, following her down again several years later. ‘He told me he loved me, promised me marriage. Promised me the earth . . .’

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  Even back then, he’d been in way too deep.

  ‘I’m actually glad Hannah and Tom met,’ I say, staring into my mug. ‘It was wrong, but oh so right in many ways.’

  Susan smiles and agrees. She turns her empty glass round and round between her fingers, then sloshes in more wine from the bottle, knocking half of it back.

  ‘After I’d gone to deliver Tom’s present to Hannah, I had to tell him that I’d seen her with another boy. I needed to make sure it was over in that way between them.’

  I nod, grateful to her. No mother would want that to continue.

  Then she explains how Tom met Hannah, about Phil’s lost phone. ‘They were smitten from the start.’

  I take a moment to soak this in. Such a random occurrence, yet it began the unravelling, the disentanglement. No wonder Rick wanted Hannah to study elsewhere.