I feel my finger move instinctively to his face, following the contours of his cheeks on the screen. The bed, once too small, is too big now, too still. The silence I had longed for as he had lain beside me is suddenly all-consuming.
It is the first time I have let myself think of him since he … I push back tears as the image of his body crushed and torn beneath twisted metal swells, unbidden, within me, rising through the pressure of the sleeping pills.
Hugging the pillow to my face, I hear the cries catch in my throat, the sound amplified through the duck-down pressed against my face. David would know what to do, he would know how to comfort the children in a way I could never fathom. Instinctively, he would place his hand on theirs, drawing them in, his breath pressing against their cheeks. He would make them safe.
But it is not just the girls who need him now, and there is only one person to blame. This is your fault. There is a hissing sound and it is a second before I realise it is my own voice, directed at Harry, blotting out the memory of Meg’s words; the thought of him expanding in my head along with the endless lies.
Trying his number again on my second phone, the same automated female voice tells me to leave a message after the tone.
Fuck you, Harry. I picture his face and let the phone drop onto the covers.
The sound of ringing, a few minutes later, forces me to sit bolt upright in bed, picking up the receiver. But as I do so I see the screen is blank. It is another two rings before I remember my main phone, discarded on the floor beside my bed.
Lifting it resentfully, I read the words ‘Unknown Number’, my finger instinctively hovering over the ‘cancel’ button.
It will be Meg, no doubt.
Except, it could also be the girls’ teacher. She had failed to hide her horror at the prospect of the twins returning so soon after their father’s funeral, being more concerned at the prospect of having to confront the girls’ grief, no doubt, than for the welfare of Rose and Stella. The truth is, while I believe the girls are better off busy than wallowing in their loss, it is equally true that I am too afraid of their sorrow, even more so.
I bring the screen towards my face. When I see his name, my body freezes, the way it always has; the spectre of him so much more overwhelming than the actual person.
For a moment I am grateful. Clive will know what to do. Clive, the only connection to David I have left.
Pushing myself to sitting position, I press the green button, clearing my throat before I speak, but he gets in there first.
‘Anna? It’s me.’
My voice floats somewhere outside my body as I listen to him read out the address of the solicitor’s office where we arrange to meet the following day, a faceless building a stone’s throw from Queen Square.
‘David’s will. We need to wrap things up.’
His words sound hollow; there is something in his voice I cannot read. I hear him topping up his glass at the end of the line.
‘Where are you now?’
I need to picture him as he talks, picture his loss, as a separate matter from my own. I try to summon some sense of justice from the ultimate evening of scores. His son snatched from him, just as the children killed as a result of the chemical dump had been snatched from their parents. But in the end, I feel nothing.
‘Can you be there by nine?’
I nod before speaking. ‘Yes.’
‘And the girls?’
‘They’ll be at nursery.’
Clive is quiet for a moment. ‘Good.’ He pauses and then adds, ‘He loved you, you know?’
His voice has shifted. I inhale sharply, feeling my breath slice against my sides like a knife.
CHAPTER 69
Maria
David and I spent the morning in our usual spot, seated at the back of one of the chain coffee shops on Caledonian Road. It was a stone’s throw from the football pitches where he played on Saturday mornings, and a short walk from the library where I had spent the past two hours staring at a blank page, no longer interested in the pile of books in my backpack, passing the time before his game was over and we would take our place opposite one another, the strip-lighting illuminating the Formica countertop.
It was the sort of place David could count on not being discovered by anyone he knew, and his hand rested on mine, his thumb moving back and forth against my knuckle.
He had been distant all morning. Driving from the house he remained silent, without so much as attempting to stroke my knee. By the time he finally joined me at the coffee shop, I was terrified of what might be on his mind. But then, with only the slightest prompting, the floodgates opened. If ever I needed proof that I was his confidante, this was it. As soon as he had started to speak, he could not stop.
‘I didn’t believe my father at first, when he told me. We had gone for dinner, the three of us, to celebrate Anna’s promotion. It was the loveliest night, and then she went home early and my dad and I went on for a drink at his club. We had just found out Anna was pregnant and I knew she didn’t want me to say anything, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was so bloody excited.
‘As soon as we were in the cab on the way there, I felt him change. I assumed, at first, he was distracted by work or something else. We got to the club, we ordered drinks and as soon as they arrived, I told him. I blurted it out. Anna was pregnant. We were having a baby. I didn’t know then that there were two of them. But it turns out that was the least of the things I didn’t know.’
David let out a laugh and shifted slightly in his seat, silent for a moment before continuing. ‘When I told him, he didn’t say anything at first. It was as if he hadn’t heard me; he just answered that he had something important to tell me. I remember his words exactly. He said, “David, I’m not sure how else to say this, but your friend, Anna, she’s not who you think she is.”’
The movements of David’s thumb stopped and he looked up at me, his eyes almost glazed.
‘It was the night of my father’s party, in Greece, that they had found out. The one where I finally saw you again. The funny thing was, he already knew there was a mole, he’d got wind of it from one of his contacts, but he thought it was Jeff. Jeff was always a loose cannon, and my father assumed he was the one selling him out. So he had Jorgos follow him, and Jorgos caught her coming out of the study. After that, my father checked the camera, and it was all there. My girlfriend, the love of my life, snooping around in his office.’
David shook his head, laughing to himself, before biting his lip.
‘And you know, I still didn’t believe him. Despite everything. I convinced myself it was an honest mistake, that she had just been looking for a pen or …’ He shook his head. ‘I know, fucking ridiculous. But what … I was supposed to believe that she was a spy? I was supposed to believe the woman I was in love with, the woman carrying my baby, was using me to …’
His voice trailed off, and then started again.
‘For a while I blamed Jeff. I thought he and Jorgos must have been in on it together … setting Anna up in order to cover their own tracks.’
My throat was constricting. For want of something to distract my hands, I reached for my cup and took a sip, the coffee unexpectedly hot, scalding my lip.
‘But my dad, he wouldn’t give up; he wouldn’t stop going on and on about how she was a fraud. He had seen her passport. She wasn’t born in Wiltshire at the airbase at Boscombe Down, like she told us; she was born in Surrey, and that is exactly where she grew up. An unremarkable life in an unremarkable family, as she stayed until she met me … Her mother wasn’t even dead.’
His fingers were pressed against the side of the table, his knuckles white. But his voice wavered with disbelief rather than anger.
‘But even then, I kept thinking there’s got to be an explanation. For months, I believed there had to be an explanation. But my dad wouldn’t drop it, so eventually I set a trap. A few weeks before she was due to give birth, I went out and left my father’s laptop on the table next to my bed. An
d I actually felt bad. Even doing that, doubting her just for a second. Then I came home, and it was the day she went into labour – in our room. I came back and her waters had broken, and next to her was the computer, under the duvet on the floor, and it was on. And when I looked at her, her face … That was it. I knew.’
Unaffected by my silence, David had hardly paused for breath, something inside him having opened that could not easily be closed again before purging years’ worth of stale, festering emotions. And then he stopped.
For several minutes, we sat in silence, his eyes set somewhere in the distance while the memories churned around his head, until once more the words spilled out.
The coffee in front of me was cold and grey by the time he spoke again.
‘You know, I might have felt like a fool, if it hadn’t also been made clear that she had no idea who she was actually working for. All of this, and she hadn’t even bothered to check. Can you imagine that?’
I felt a prickle of hairs along my arms.
‘That man, that reject journalist scum she was fucking – did I tell you that bit? No? Oh yeah, she was bending over for him at the same time as taking every penny my family ever gave her, lapping up every opportunity we offered. And the girls, they—’
He looked up, and then something stopped him continuing with his sentence. He picked up the stirrer and moved it absent-mindedly around in his cup.
‘You know, sometimes I try to picture her face the moment the penny drops at how she’s been played. Oh, to be a fly on the wall the moment she discovers that all along she was actually working for one of the biggest crooks in Central Africa.’
He was talking to himself now. Whether or not I was present was neither here nor there. I was the one into whose arms he fell, believing he had already been more betrayed than he could ever be.
CHAPTER 70
Maria
It was nearly two weeks after that Saturday with David that I finally heard from Felicity again. I had been making my way back from church, when she stepped out from the shadows in Holly Walk. It was the first time she had ever approached me so close to home and the audacity of it unnerved me.
‘Let’s walk,’ she said, leading the way along the backstreets towards West Heath. She stopped at a small café and ordered tea for both of us.
I had imagined she would jump out of her skin when I told her what David had said: that the corporate investigation into TradeSmart’s business had actually been commissioned by Francisco Nguema, who hired the company to investigate the mercaptan spill in Equatorial Guinea with the sole intention of finding out how traceable his own role in the affair could be.
‘From what I’ve been looking into, it seems Nguema used a company registered in the UK, Strategic Services – ostensibly owned by Witherall and Mayhew, but with himself as a silent shareholder. Presumably this made it easier for him to move goods in and out of the country, undetected. British cargo: such a reputable nation – who would question it? In return, he offered TradeSmart the kind of contacts and access that a corrupt warlord can afford in Central Africa …’
But she hardly blinked.
‘Oh, we know all about that.’
‘You knew? But I don’t understand.’
The idea to me was unfathomable at the time, but Felicity shrugged as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
‘Think about it. You’re the client – you’re paying this private investigations firm God knows how much money – so they are never going to hand you over to the authorities, regardless of what they find. It’s the perfect testing ground, isn’t it? Who better to pay to test your own fallibility – your own traceability – than an esteemed UK investigations company? The same company that has some of the country’s biggest corporations, from banks and law firms to newspapers, as clients – using ex-MI6, ex-MI5, ex-coppers, journalists, some of the world’s greatest analysts, to do its dirty work, without ever asking awkward questions – and without ever sharing the results with anyone but you?’
I nodded, letting her pick up the paper cup of tea before I spoke quickly, desperate to catch her attention.
‘David’s leaving. He’s found out the girls aren’t his, and he’s moving to the Maldives. He’s asked me to go with him.’
I expected her to pounce on my words, but slowly she took a sip of her tea before placing the cup carefully back on the table in front of her. ‘And I suppose Anna knows about none of this?’
She didn’t wait for my reply. We had never discussed Anna’s role in all of this, though of course if I had figured out what she was involved in with Harry, there was little doubt that MI6 had too.
‘Poor Anna.’ Felicity rolled her eyes. ‘We actually tried to recruit her for ourselves a couple of times, thinking if she would work for them, there would be little reason why she wouldn’t work for us, as well. So we dug around a bit more and it turned out she had no idea what she was involved in. Frankly, I think she’s a liability. I’m rather pleased we didn’t get her on board. One has to be so careful.’
She sighed perfunctorily, before dismissing the thought and drawing breath.
‘Look, Maria. The reason I wanted to meet you today is to tell you that the case has been pulled.’
‘What?’
‘The situation I mentioned, it’s been resolved.’ She smiled, as if this was good news.
‘So they are being charged?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Actually, no. But turns out it isn’t our problem any more. The situation we needed to resolve in our territory has been otherwise dealt with, and, well, this is no longer our concern, or yours for that matter. So, you’re off the hook.’
The breath caught in my throat as I processed the meaning of what she was saying.
‘But, the arms dealing, the people trafficking … What do you mean?’
I felt my voice rising. A man on a nearby table lifted his head from his laptop and flashed a look in my direction.
Felicity shrugged.
‘Like you said when we first met, TradeSmart isn’t registered in the UK. The spill, it’s a matter for the African authorities.’
‘But you said they would just get away with it if it stayed in Africa – you said there would be enough back-handers to—’
‘Oh Maria, look, I’m sorry but you’re not getting this. This is no longer my case. Frankly, it’s no longer anything to do with you. If I were you, I would go back to Greece, take the money you’ve earned and get on with your life. Or continue your studies here. Live. Don’t take it so personally, hey? You’ve been brilliant. We have so appreciated having you onside.’
CHAPTER 71
Anna
‘Is Clive not joining us?’
I follow the solicitor’s brisk pace into his office, a large square space, empty except for a desk in the middle, one chair either side. A window runs the length of the room, exposing a blank sky.
‘Couldn’t make it, I’m afraid. He had an urgent appointment. Please do sit down.’
He is younger than I had expected, dressed in a suit with no tie, his hair pulled behind his ears. I half-expect him to perch at the corner of the table rather than to sit, but eventually he moves into the chair opposite mine, leaning back, his legs spread wide apart.
The room is airless and stale. Self-consciously, I press down my skirt, undoing one of the buttons on my suit jacket, feeling overdressed, suffocated by the smell of my own perfume.
‘As I believe Clive mentioned to you on the phone, I’m James McCann and I’m overseeing the estate of David Witherall. Please accept my sincere condolences for your loss. I didn’t know David long, but he was, by all accounts, an exceptional man.’
I nod, wishing I had accepted the secretary’s offer of a drink when I arrived. My mouth is dry, my tongue sticking to the side of my teeth.
‘I won’t keep you long. There are just some papers to sign, but first, although Clive couldn’t be here, there was something he wanted me to give you.’
I hold the sol
icitor’s eye as he hands me the envelope – A4, brown paper – his expression blank.
Not daring to look away, I let my fingers slip inside, slowly pulling out a larger piece of paper, folded in half to fit.
It takes me a moment to realise that I have to unfold the sheet. When I do, I see it is a printout of a newspaper article, with tomorrow’s date in the top corner.
‘Please do go ahead …’ He hurries me with his hands, smiling as he flicks through papers on his desk. ‘As I say, Clive really was gutted he couldn’t be here with you for this.’
My throat closing in on itself, I focus my eyes on the words in my hands, alongside a photo of myself and David, taken the night of the charity auction; there is a slight smile on David’s face, his eyes turned towards me as I stare absently at the camera.
The late socialite David Witherall has claimed responsibility for the dumping of tons of toxic waste in Equatorial Guinea, causing the death of innocent civilians including children and babies.
In a letter exclusively obtained by this newspaper, Witherall, heir to the leading trading company TradeSmart, admitted he and his wife, magazine editor Anna Witherall, had masterminded the chemical dump in a bid to avoid necessary treatment costs to dispose of the toxic waste product.
The CEO and heir to the TradeSmart business, which was worth $76 billion at the time of the dump, hired a small local firm to illegally dispose of raw toxic waste, near a children’s playground in a residential area of Equatorial Guinea, along with his then-girlfriend.
Organised by the pair when they were in their early twenties, while living together in the Witherall family home in Hampstead where they hosted frequent parties, more than 300 tons of the deadly chemical compound mercaptan, referred to in emails between the company’s staff as ‘slops’ and ‘crap’, was offloaded in a residential area in Bata. As a result, 22 died and hundreds more suffered symptoms including burns and respiratory problems. The case has also been linked to a spate of miscarriages in the surrounding area.
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