He turned to face me, leaving David in the foyer. ‘Now, how was the journey? What did you think of the old seaplane?’
David and Clive decided to take a boat-trip one morning a few days into our holiday.
‘No, you two go, it will be nice. Father–son bonding time,’ I said when David invited me along, my mind flashing to the spinner dolphins I had read about in the resort brochure, performing their tricks on the surface before sinking back under water to devour their prey.
Kissing David lightly on the cheek, I watched them leave, their steps merging into one as they disappeared towards the jetty.
I had spent the morning on the beach, wading in the shallows, miniature whitetip sharks playing at my feet. Turning occasionally towards the girls, I could see them sleeping under the shade of the palms, Maria watching over them, her body forming a natural barricade.
From this distance, I felt a swell of gratitude towards her, for the way she cared for my children so diligently. Gratitude increasingly tinged with the ache of regret that I could never be for them what she was; the easy confidence with which she tended to their every need always outstripping my own.
The truth was, I was desperate to be alone. Ever since we had arrived, David had barely stopped hovering over me as if checking for visible signs of improvement. Beyond that, he could not seem to settle. In the way I had noticed happen whenever he was around his father, he was like a child, desperate constantly for approval. The combination was exhausting.
The resort was arranged in such a way that even at full capacity, as it was at this time of year, it was easy to believe you were one of just a handful of people there. Clive’s repeat custom meant that we were both left alone and fully waited on in the simultaneous fashion that only the most efficient hotels can manage.
As I walked back to my towel, Maria looked up, her mouth wide with warmth. Unlike me, she suited the sun: her body opening up like a petal under its touch; her skin had turned a nut-brown within hours of landing.
‘I’m so sorry, I need to go back to the hut for a moment. Could you watch the girls?’
She stood, dusting the sand off her knees, her slight, boyish frame exposed in demure black shorts.
At the prospect of being left alone with the girls for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt my chest constrict, my heart spiralling in a Catherine wheel of emotions. Pride trailed by joy, guilt, and then terror. The complex knot of feelings that clung together in my throat threatened to choke me. From nowhere, there was a flash and for a split second I saw the sea pull back, rising up and crashing down on us; a coconut swinging precariously at the top of the tree above my daughters’ heads.
‘Will you be long?’
The desperation was clear in my voice and Maria paused, placing her hand briefly on my shoulder, brushing away the intrusive thoughts.
‘It is OK. You don’t need me. I promise.’
And in that moment, I believed her.
CHAPTER 38
Maria
I left her there on the sand, the girls snoozing on their mats under the shade of a palm, anxiety coursing through her every movement as she shuffled to and fro, like a wolf guarding its kill.
Tapping my fingers against the pocket of my shorts, I felt the outline of the key-card I had lifted from her bag as she swam, without ever venturing more than a metre or so from the shore. It was tucked into the inside pocket of her bag, along with her second phone, the one she kept in the cupboard in the bathroom; the one she used to contact him.
The walkway was clear as I moved towards the beach hut. Just to be sure, I walked first towards the door of my own hut, turning briefly to survey the area. Only once I was certain the coast was clear did I move quickly across to the next-door suite, holding the key-card against the sensor and waiting for the consenting click.
Inside, the room was still in the same state as it had been left that morning, the maid yet to descend and perform her tricks. Briefly, I imagined her taking in the discarded underwear by the bed, the stain just visible on the sheet where the duvet had been pulled back.
A damp towel had been strewn over a leather armchair, half-drunk glasses of water abandoned on the bedside tables. Knowing I only had a few minutes, I set straight to work, moving quickly towards the suitcase, which lay unzipped in the corner of the room.
Feeling along the inside, with no luck, I moved to the cupboards, running my hands through the layers of David’s soft cottons and silks, along rows of neatly hanging shirts and through to the back of the wardrobe.
As my hand made contact with the back of the cupboard, I sensed something that made my whole body freeze, the adrenaline rising so that I could almost feel it on the surface of my skin. It wasn’t so much a sound as a transmission of facts, received by some receptor in my brain that worked with a sense I could not name. The same instinct that makes a person look around them when they feel they’re being watched.
There was no way I could have heard the hand on the door, but in that instant I knew it was there. The inside of the cupboard was suddenly cloying with the smell of David’s aftershave, Anna’s elusive scent bleeding in at the edges.
If I were to bundle the clothes to one side, I could quite easily hide in here, holding my breath inside my body. But if I were caught like that, if it were David who had returned in search of swimming trunks? That would be the end of everything.
In a moment of lucidity, in what could realistically only have been a second later, I pulled myself back into the room just in time to hear the slight turn of the handle, and then a voice.
Before I could think it through properly, before I could be sure of what I thought I had heard, the words rushed out of me. ‘No, please! Later!’
There was a moment’s pause and then, just as I thought my heart would rise out through my throat, the tension on the door handle loosened, followed by a placatory mumble and the gentle clatter of the housekeeping trolley moving away.
I leaned back against the cupboard, just for a moment, before running to the door, lifting the paper sign hanging from the handle, turning it to ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ and stretching my hand out of the hut, my fingers fumbling for a grip; keeping my body hidden from view as I hung the notice on the front of the door.
Turning back into the room, aware that time was running out, I moved quickly towards David’s side of the bed, and then Anna’s, feeling with my fingers along the area between the mattress and the leather bed-frame. After a moment, I felt my skin strike against cold metal.
Closing my eyes for a moment, in gratitude, I pulled out the laptop and laid it on the bed in front of me. Working hard to keep my fingers steady, I pulled the stick from my other pocket and slid it into the USB port, waiting for a moment until the screen lit up.
CHAPTER 39
Anna
I enjoyed the feeling of the water beating against my back the following morning. It was a moment that was entirely mine, when I could luxuriate in feelings rather than thoughts; the scrape of the loofah against my arm, the steam rising from my pores, my fingers pressing against the hollows of my eyes. A moment in which I was neither Anna nor Marianne, a rare moment in which to simply be.
‘I’m so sorry, I’ve had an email from one of our clients in Europe, they want to do a call …’
It was David in the doorway to the shower-room, his voice cutting through the gentle roar of the water. I jumped back, pulling my arms against my chest, scared, as I found myself sometimes when he caught me deep in thought, that he would see through me simply by looking.
The relentlessness of constantly pretending, of living various versions of my life that were never quite my own had started to take its toll. Despite the constant charade, there was one role-change whose power I had never anticipated. In becoming a mother, I found myself consumed with fundamental shifts, both physical and emotional, over which I had no authority. Sometimes it felt like that lack of control could be the thing to bring the whole world I had created tumbling down.
‘Careful, who did you think it was?’
David raised his hand, by way of placation. Before I could reply, he had gone, the door slamming shut as he disappeared with his laptop.
I took my time dressing, flicking through the international news channels, cartoons and documentaries, until a film flashed on the screen – the same one Harry and I had watched that first evening together, my first night in Meg’s flat.
The thought of him now filled me with a dull pain. The ease with which he had leaned in to kiss me, a few days later. The inevitability of it. How he had held my eye up until the last moment before our skin touched.
For a moment, I thought of Meg too.
By the time David returned to the room, the film was coming to an end. I was perched at the end of the bed, my wet hair still unbrushed, the bedclothes where I had been sitting by now cold and damp.
Aware of the tear-stains on my cheek, I leapt up, pulling at my towel, rolling my eyes.
‘Are you OK? Has something happened?’
I laughed.
‘God no, sorry. That film, it gets me every time. Are you hungry?’
Breakfast was still being served in the restaurant overlooking the beach. Inside the restaurant, each wall was lined with silver platters brimming with cold organic meats, obscure cheeses, sushi, hot plates of curries, exotic fruits and twenty different types of muesli, cereals and breads.
We ate on the terrace, the girls head-to-toe on a cashmere rug at our feet.
‘What do you fancy? If you don’t see it, they can make it for you.’
David was fiddling with Stella’s sunhat, pulling the brim low over her sleeping eyes.
‘I’m fine with toast.’
‘I thought you said you were starving, but suit yourself.’ David pushed back his chair, surveying the room as he made his way towards the cooked breakfast.
Standing, making my way to the edge of the terrace, drawn by the boats on the horizon, I spotted Clive a little way along the beach, his panama gleaming in the morning sun, his face the colour of cooked bacon as he made his way towards us.
About to raise my hand in hello, I realised he was turning towards the bar, which stood a way back from the beach. With David still at the buffet, his back to me, I pulled back slightly so that I could not be seen as I watched Clive take a chair, pulling out his phone and looking at the screen while a waiter brought him coffee.
He had just taken his first sip when I spotted someone walking towards him.
Noticing, too, Clive held his hand out to the man who was approaching the table. Dressed in a cream linen suit, which shone out against his black skin, there was something about the man that was familiar, and as he turned to address the waiter, revealing his face, I realised it was the man from the photo in Clive’s office. At that moment Rose cried out in her sleep, her arms shooting above her head.
Moving quickly back towards the table, I reached down as David’s footsteps sounded behind me.
‘Are you going to pick her up?’
His voice was appraising.
‘I am, I’m just supporting her head properly first.’
‘I wasn’t criticising.’
Rose’s tiny body writhed in my arms with a surprising amount of force, and the power with which she resisted my embrace caught me off-guard.
‘Your dad is over there.’
I stood in an attempt to soothe her as David followed my line of sight.
‘So he is.’
‘Who is that man he’s talking to?’
I tried to keep my voice light as Rose wailed into my chest, the other diners turning their heads briefly to show their distaste.
David pulled a bottle of milk from the changing bag Maria had packed for us, watching my expression as he handed it to me. By this point Rose was screaming, her face strained and blood-red with fury.
‘She won’t take it.’
The tension in my body was rising to match hers as she swung her face from side to side, spitting the nib of the bottle from her mouth as though I were trying to gag her.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Anna. Let me.’
It couldn’t have been a figment of my imagination, the disgust in David’s eyes as he pulled our daughter from my trembling arms and held her against himself, humming a low vibrato for long enough that her cry calmed to a low ripple. How could someone who seemed to love me so much one minute show such disdain the next? Worse still, the pain I felt in these moments when he suddenly blew cold reminded me that I needed him more than I cared to admit.
‘Here you are, hush little one.’
Moving away from me, he shifted our daughter in his arms and placed the bottle against her mouth gently until she pressed her mouth into it, her eyes rolling in her head, her cheeks finally sucking gratefully.
I picked up my coffee cup, turning my face to the water as the other diners returned their attention to their meals.
‘We have a reservation at the restaurant at eight thirty.’
David walked out of the bathroom, fully dressed, rubbing some sort of ointment into the tips of his hair. The smell of sandalwood drifted over the bed as he passed by where I lay back against a pile of cushions, browsing through the news channels, my hair swathed in a thick white towel, another wrapped around my body.
‘You’re going out again?’
‘I told you, this is a working holiday. Given how much time I’ve taken off recently to support you, I can hardly swan off and expect—’
‘I understand, I was just asking.’
‘We can’t both sit around all day, someone has to make the money.’
His tone was mock light-hearted.
‘I’m joking, you know that. I just want you to rest. It’s important you get better. That’s why we’re here. OK, so it’s seven fifteen now. I’ll meet you at the restaurant as soon as I can, but my father will be there at eight fifteen – why don’t you meet him there and I’ll be along when I’m done?’
David lingered in the doorway a moment.
‘Wear something nice. Yes?’
There was something about the sight of Clive and that man on the beach that morning that I could not shake. Did I know what I was going to do as I pulled out my computer from my bag, minutes after David left the room? Did I know what I was looking for, let alone what I would find?
It took what felt like an age for the computer to warm up, the screen creaking to life as I pulled out the Wi-Fi code from the leather-bound brochure on the coffee table, remembering Harry’s words as I tapped in the numbers – the words he had offered, that evening on the Embankment, once I had finally calmed down.
‘As you say, these are shipping records. If you take the export and import data, you can see what each ship landing in Equatorial Guinea on any given day was carrying. Each substance has a code. Mercaptan isn’t officially an import, as it’s a waste product, but it too has a code. So we can see, on the week we’re interested in, in the days leading up to the chemical spillage, two ships arrived in Bata carrying this mercaptan sulphur product.’
He sighed, running a finger over his chin as he continued.
‘I can’t believe you held out on giving me this,’ he reprimanded me without making eye contact. ‘But to be honest, I should have thought of it earlier. This kind of information, it can be bought, if you know the right websites to try. There are plenty of companies who collate trading data and sell it, normally to people interested in making investment decisions.’
I had nodded, my eyes running over endless columns as he continued.
‘If you have the bill of lading, for example, you can see what goes onto a ship, and what comes off the other side. Once it is on the ship, the value of the cargo is frozen. In the oil trade that is important because you load up at a certain point and then you wait for the price to get to the right level again. That’s pretty valuable information if you’re wondering what to invest in, and when.’
‘And what are these numbers?’
I had pointed
to a series of codes.
‘Those? I’m not sure …’
That was when his phone had rung, his eyes narrowing as he rejected the call. Was I imagining his skin burning as he turned back to me?
‘You can take it if you want. She’ll be worried – whoever she is.’ I looked away.
He had shaken his head, but he wasn’t denying that there was another woman, and I would have been a fool to imagine there would not be.
Before I could say anything he took my phone and selected the images, sending them to himself and then leaning forward to kiss me. I turned so that his stubble brushed sharply against my ear.
After what felt like an age, the computer came to life, a welcome sea breeze blowing in through the open terrace doors.
Glancing over my shoulder, out of habit, I opened Google, and realised I had no idea what to type. Scouring the photos on the phone in front of me for clues as to what I was looking for, I decided to start at the top and work my way down through the columns of numbers, typing out each into a customs data site in order to work out what they were.
My foot was dead under my leg, almost an hour later, as I finished working my way through deciphering the items on board the two ships that had landed in Equatorial Guinea in the days leading to the chemical spillage: cotton T-shirts, DVD players, construction materials … mercaptan sulphur. Still, that was nothing out of the ordinary – not officially at least, if one were assuming that the waste from the chemicals on board was to be disposed of responsibly.
Almost ready to give up, I shifted position on the bed, my eyes growing hot with tiredness, as I spotted another code, separate from the others, in the top left-hand corner of the first page. Studying it more closely, I noted the prefix: PEN, which I typed into the search engine, scrolling for three pages of Google links offering biros for sale, and websites for various organisations that could have no link to the shipping records in front of me. Then I saw it, the words Private Enterprise Number, and I felt a rush of adrenaline, a proximity to something that I could not explain. My finger hovering over the mousepad for a moment, I clicked the link and my body seized with excitement as the page loaded on the screen in front of me.
The Most Difficult Thing Page 21