Before I Knew You

by Amanda Brookfield

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  He nodded. ‘Sadly, yes. You see, financially, Beth and I had got into some trouble. We were in a rush to sell. From that point of view the fire was convenient.’ He started a ghoulish smile but it collapsed. ‘The insurance, while nowhere near the sale value, will go a long way to getting us – me – off the hook.’

  Sophie laughed sharply. ‘But you don’t burn your house down for money and kill yourself in the process, do you? I never heard anything so ridiculous.’

  ‘I think it’s just the house they’re suspicious about, not Beth … but she did have problems,’ he blurted, ‘I mean, really big problems. It’s why I left – why I had to leave. I can’t go into it now, but it was as if I had married a … a façade. Nothing I thought about her turned out to be true …’ William shook his head, adding thickly, ‘None of which stops me feeling like a total bastard now.’

  Sophie sipped her whisky, weighing up the value of revealing her own glimpses of Beth’s unbalanced mental state, and at the same time pondering the oddness of having been one step ahead on such a matter. She and the American woman had never met and yet, thanks to the house swap, threads of their lives had become enmeshed. She and Beth had known things about each other, big things, all of them more dangerous somehow for their lack of context. But William needed reassurance, she realized, glancing at the forlorn figure huddled at the other end of the sofa, and Beth – poor troubled dead soul, with no recourse now to defend herself – deserved the gentlest handling.

  ‘William?’

  He looked up, blinking.

  ‘Don’t make things worse by blaming yourself. It seems clear to me that Beth, with this party business, was hoping to extend some sort of olive branch, mend bridges and so on.’ Sophie paused, wondering suddenly if she would ever, in their new, horrible circumstances, get Andrew to extend the same courtesy to her. ‘I mean, that’s quite something,’ she pressed on, ‘arranging a surprise gathering that involves a round trip of four thousand-odd miles. You should take heart from that, William. She must have loved you very much, and while I can understand that should make you sad, it’s also rather wonderful.’ Sophie reached across the space between them and squeezed his hand.

  William kept hold of it, stroking her fingers. ‘Thank you, Sophie. I knew you’d be good, after the talk we had that night, I just knew.’

  Sophie glanced at him, taken aback. ‘Yes, it was special for me too.’

  ‘Did you tell Andrew, in the end, how late it got? You said you might not.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Where is he anyway? Didn’t Beth invite him too?’ William threw an anxious glance in the direction of the hall.

  ‘Andrew couldn’t come –’

  ‘Right. Fine. And if the doorbell goes we’re not answering, okay?’

  Sophie nodded, holding out her glass for a refill, her mouth dry. ‘Who else did she know to invite?’ she asked hoarsely.

  William shrugged, pouring more whisky. He kept hold of Sophie’s hand as he did so, shifting the grip so that her fingers were interlaced in his rather than the other way round. ‘She died of smoke inhalation.’ He had locked his gaze on a patch of wall above the TV. ‘Which is better, I suppose, than the alternative.’

  They sat in silence for several minutes, long enough for Sophie’s fingers to grow slightly moist in his grasp. A small insect flew at the bulb above their heads, snagging in the folds of the shade. ‘Andrew left me,’ she said at length, the admission sliding out of her as she had known it would, as it had to. ‘The difficult patch I told you about that night – it turned out to be terminal.’

  William stared at her, his eyes, through the glaze of alcohol, soft with sympathy and dismay. ‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Maybe he, too, decided I wasn’t the woman he thought he had married … that I was a “façade”.’

  ‘Bollocks to that. You’re a … special woman … Fucking special.’

  Sophie almost smiled. He was seriously drunk, she knew. And she wasn’t far behind. ‘Turns out he met someone during our time at your place – and then again on that tour … although I’m not sure of the details. He won’t tell me. But I can’t help thinking, looking back, that maybe it was my fault, for taking my eye off the ball – all that self-obsessing I did, daring to have my own little mid-life crisis, never expecting,’ she let out a tipsy sneer of a giggle, ‘that dear Andrew would choose the same bloody month to have one too. She’s a singer. Prettier … younger, of course. He’s got a job there – in New York. Headmaster of some cathedral school. He’s been plotting it for months. He pretended he wanted me to go with him, but he didn’t really. In February he’s going over to sort things out and then he’ll leave England permanently in the summer.’ Sophie tried to swallow but suddenly her tongue seemed to be in the way, huge, blocking the release of air. ‘It hardly compares to what you,’ she gasped, ‘with poor Beth –’

  ‘Shush. Don’t talk. Come here.’ William held his arm out and she crawled under it. Overhead the fly ricocheted one last time against the hot bulb and flew off, taking its angry buzz to another room.

  22

  New York, that February afternoon, was forbidding. The sleet and wind didn’t fall so much as drive at horizontal angles, as if pummelling for gaps in the population’s armoury of winter clothes. Tumbling into the warm, brightly lit foyer of Geoff and Ann’s apartment block, shaking the ice particles out of his hat, and a scarf he had had the foresight to buy at Heathrow, Andrew felt like a soldier escaping a battlefield. The city took energy, there was no denying that. But twenty-four hours in and he was still buzzing – up for anything.

  As he waited for the lift, he thought of Meredith, her long, fine-boned body curled into his after they had made love that morning, her fabulous chestnut hair like flames across his chest. She had agreed to the continued need for secrecy like a lamb, putting such a good supporting case about not wanting to shock her parents that by the end Andrew had been almost worried. Could she really love him that much if she was so easily – so willingly – able to bury their relationship from sight? The governors of St Thomas’s had been behind his own reasoning about continued discretion, their grave, formal dismay at the news that he would be taking up the post without a wife not being an obvious invitation to reveal that he had embarked on a relationship with a twenty-six-year-old music student.

  The dust would settle, Andrew assured himself, stepping into the lift. It was just a question of playing his cards right, allowing time to pass. Once he was in the swing of the job and the separation from Sophie old news, then – and only then – would it be right to brave the glare of social limelight with his exquisite, gifted darling Meredith at his side. The age-gap would no doubt cause a raised eyebrow or two at first – until it became apparent what a great couple they were, how integrally tuned to each other’s needs, how beyond the trivialities of whatever number of years either of them had so far spent on the planet.

  Meredith said she had sensed the pull between them right from the start – during their first encounter over small-talk and orange juice in August. For Andrew it had taken a little longer, not out of any private doubts so much as the sheer terror of acknowledging something so momentous, so life-changing. He had ended the Connecticut holiday certain that they were excellent friends, but it was only when Meredith had had the guts to knock on his hotel bedroom door on the night after Ann’s impromptu cocktail gathering at the Algonquin that he had capitulated fully to other, stronger, instincts. The rest of the trip had passed in a blitz of similar secret encounters, each more intense than the last, each confirming – in both their eyes – that they were old souls whose paths had been destined to coincide.

  Looking back, Andrew still didn’t know how he had found the wherewithal to tell Sophie about the cathedral-school headship in the manner that he had. If she had leapt at the idea of living in New York, he wasn’t sure what he would have done, beyond the certainty that it would have
involved seeing Meredith anyway, carrying on an affair, probably, until his marriage collapsed under the pressure of it. As it was, Sophie’s sordid, sorry holiday-romance confession had fallen into his lap like a miracle, even if things had got a little messy later on.

  While the lift moved upwards, taking its time, Andrew flicked open his phone. There was a message from Meredith, along with the decidedly unflattering photo she had taken of him in the hotel room that morning, sitting up in bed looking horribly close to his age – lined, balding, white, flabby. Andrew chuckled, but deleted it instantly. His grabbing at food, as he did these days, had resulted in the beginnings of an annoying paunch. He had vowed to get rid of it the moment he left England for good. When he blurted as much out loud, Meredith had sweetly, if a little disconcertingly, written a list of gyms in the Midtown area on the top page of a small fluorescent-pink pad, carefully tearing it off and stowing it for him in the back flap of his wallet.

  Andrew continued scrolling, hoping for a message from Milly. He had sent her two texts before boarding, saying goodbye, asking if there was anything she wanted him to buy during his visit. Olivia, mute since the Meredith business had come out, might well be lost to him, but Milly, in spite of having been the one to bring matters to a head, was showing distinct signs of thawing. And he would never give up on her, Andrew vowed, never. She needed a bit more work, that was all, reassurance of her importance to him, concrete plans for visits – they would work it out somehow.

  He snapped his phone shut and stepped out of the lift. Sixteen years of love and closeness and music couldn’t just stop, not with someone as warm and open as his younger daughter. Technology – emails, phones – would always offer a lifeline. And he had heard about something called Skype recently, which sounded worth investigating. Visual and verbal contact across thousands of miles – a colleague at St Joseph’s with a back-packing twenty-year-old had said it was the only reason he and his wife ever managed a decent night’s sleep.

  Andrew strode along the passageway, unconsciously clenching his fists. He had a lover who loved him, he reminded himself, turning on his heel with a hiss of irritation when it became apparent he had gone the wrong way. A lover with alabaster skin and a voice to rival an angel’s. How could he have imagined he would ever achieve lasting happiness with a woman who was tone deaf anyway? A woman with a sneaking preference for Abba to La Traviata. A woman, who – in their final months at least – had bestowed sexual favours like some devilish opponent in a chess game? A woman who flirted with fat Americans the moment his back was turned. A woman busy, no doubt, poisoning his daughters against him at that very moment …

  By the time he reached Geoff and Ann’s door he was in something of a lather, in spite of having removed his coat.

  ‘Andrew.’ Ann took a step back, beaming at him before they kissed. She wore high heels and a clinging, low-cut bottle-green dress of such obvious distinction that Andrew wondered, with some dismay, whether he wasn’t to be the only dinner guest. He tried to peer at the long dining table to see how many places were laid, but a Japanese screen of white silk had been erected to partition it away. ‘This is a celebration,’ Ann declared firmly, waving at him to follow her into the leg-bend of the sitting room. ‘I’ve made margaritas. Geoff is running late … So, what’s new?’ She threw him a look of wifely forbearance. ‘It was margaritas, wasn’t it, that time at the Algonquin?’

  ‘Er … yes, it was.’

  ‘You so had me going, that night, you naughty man, telling me it was all over, that the interview had been a disaster. And now look at you,’ she exclaimed, spinning round and clapping her hands. ‘The new headmaster of St Thomas’s Cathedral School of New York. Are you still pinching yourself? And why are you staying at that stupid hotel? That’s what I want to know. Didn’t you think I would look after you well enough?’

  Andrew smiled uncertainly, aware that under the glare of Ann’s energy some of his own New York buzz was in danger of draining away. ‘My priority had to be being near the school … I’ve already had one meeting there, and there are several more to go.’

  ‘But I could have driven you downtown whenever you wanted,’ Ann cried. ‘In fact, I declare myself officially offended and you are going to have to work really hard to make it up to me.’

  An oval plate of canapés had been set on the long glass-topped coffee-table, along with several spindly-stemmed cocktail glasses, their rims crisp with salt, and a large stainless-steel cocktail shaker. Ann seized the shaker and then quickly put it down, crossing to join Andrew, who had drifted over to the wall of windows. The park, behind the icy rain, looked grainy and caged.

  ‘Nice to be inside, huh?’ She spoke softly, placing a hand on his arm. ‘I knew you’d get the appointment, Andrew, I just knew. A more deserving, fitting candidate it would have been hard for them to find … and as for Sophie, I just want to say –’

  ‘Nothing – please, if you don’t mind, Ann.’

  She stopped, mouth open, a flash of something like hurt in her eyes. ‘But of course, forgive me.’ A few minutes later they were seated on the leather sofa, toasting his success with their cocktails and talking through the logistics of his imminent move across the Atlantic. Ann fired question after question and Andrew tried to enjoy supplying the answers, wondering all the while how long Geoff would be and whether it would be rude to ask. Under pressure from his companion, he had soon eaten so many morsels off the plate next to them that Ann excused herself to fetch more. Watching her stride away, her wedge heels thwacking in a way that comically belied the elegance of the green dress, Andrew found himself recalling Sophie’s goggle-eyed incomprehension that he should have been won round by the wife of his oldest friend. We think Ann is silly, don’t we? I thought we thought Ann was silly.

  In the kitchen Ann made herself breathe deeply. Geoff would be ages yet. Geoff was always ages so long as business wasn’t concerned. Five minutes meant twenty. One hour meant two. ‘Andy won’t mind,’ he had joked on the phone. ‘He knows me well. And, Christ, we’re going to have the bastard on our doorstep every day of the year soon enough.’

  Oh, she hoped so. She really hoped so. Leaving the canapés, Ann tiptoed into her dressing room to check her face, running a comb through her hair and then spraying a cloud of perfume and stepping into it. She had left the newspaper article about the fire on her dressing-table, but now wondered whether to produce it. He knew of the Stapleton tragedy, obviously. She herself had told him about it by email. But Ann didn’t feel she had wrung enough from the subject yet, especially not her own private trauma of probably having been the last person to see Beth Stapleton alive. She wanted to tell Andrew all the terrible poignant details – the smell of alcohol on the woman’s breath, the emaciated appearance that had torn at her heart as she drove away. And the extraordinary business of the cat returning too, padding round the smoky ruins, she was longing to get to that, to see the tremble of wonderment in his face.

  Taking the cutting, she hurried back along the corridor to the sitting room, only to find herself staring at two heads over the back of the sofa instead of one.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ Geoff cried, in a mocking voice, raising one arm, before resuming his conversation with Andrew.

  ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because I have a key.’ Geoff winked at Andrew. ‘Hey, do we have anything to eat with this stuff?’ He raised his other hand, which contained his cocktail glass. ‘It’s got quite a kick.’

  Ann sloped back to the kitchen and retrieved the restocked plate of salmon-and-cream-cheese rolls. Spotting the newspaper article as she set the plate down, Geoff snatched it from her hands and launched into a discussion about the tragedy with Andrew, covering everything from Beth’s pitiful state to the miracle of Dido’s return and concluding with a dramatic tale about a client’s dog walking back across two states after a separation. ‘The animal chose the husband!’ Geoff exclaimed, slapping his thigh, and then sliding seamlessly into full buddy-client mo
de, telling Andrew that every aspect of his capacities both as a friend and a divorce lawyer were entirely at his disposal. ‘Anything you want – if Sophie plays hard-ball – anything you need, I’m your man.’

  And what had she wanted anyway? Ann scolded herself, sinking deeper into her chair as the conversation between the two men continued. Andrew’s attention. Andrew’s admiration. Andrew’s gratitude. Her husband’s oldest friend had never really liked her and then he had. That was the simple truth of it. As the weeks ticked by and the news of his separation from Sophie had sunk in, she had found herself in a state of suppressed excitement, wanting more. Wherever it led.

  But now, suddenly, it didn’t feel like it would lead anywhere. There had been something – a connection – but it had passed. Had he used her? Was that it? Ann watched their guest closely, feeling an unlikely fluttering of empathy for Sophie, who presumably knew better than anyone what it was to have had and lost the glow of Andrew’s attention. And there was a faint mark on his neck, she noticed, bluish, like a bruise, sitting just above the collar line of his shirt. It made her think of Meredith and the rumours, rumours that she herself – with mounting vexation – had quashed. For when Andrew had referred in the past, during their close patch, to the ‘pull’ of New York, he had meant her, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he meant her?

  ‘Any more of this stuff, babes? It’s going down rather well.’ Geoff waggled the empty cocktail shaker at his wife, still so focused on Andrew that he didn’t bother to look at her, not even when she took it from his hands.

  ‘Your throw.’

  ‘Oh, crumbs, what do we need?’

  ‘At least five.’

  Sophie closed her eyes and flung the dice so hard that it bounced off the kitchen table and landed on the floor. When it proved to be a six, a vigorous debate ensued as to whether the throw was valid. Alfie, who at his own insistence was playing solo, got particularly heated, while George and Milly, smugly certain of a third victory in a row, announced that the adults were welcome to cheat if it made them feel good. Whooping at their cheek, William retrieved the dice and handed it back to Sophie, saying he had every faith his partner could repeat her achievement within the confines of the table.