by Lauren North
I make a cup of tea and head to my bedroom. Our bedroom. I place the mug on Rob’s chest of drawers. He doesn’t have many clothes. Ten T-shirts, a few shirts. Two pairs of jeans. One suit that he hasn’t worn since the interview with Artax, the contractors who employ him to work on the oil rig. The bottom drawer of the chest is where we keep our paperwork. We used to have an entire study for it in the old house, but now it’s crammed into one drawer that’s sagging and broken under the weight of the papers.
The drawer snags as I open it, wobbling the unit and slopping tea over the side of my mug. I force the drawer all the way open and lift out the binders one by one. Household bills, bank statements, insurance, the car details, birth and marriage certificates, all the files I’ve labelled and hole-punched, checked and double-checked. Every time I open one of these folders and add a bill, it blows my mind that I lived the first six years of my marriage without looking at a single bill or paying even a scrap of attention to what was happening under my very nose. What happened to me? I used to look after my finances before Rob. I paid my bills, kept up with the rent, never went overdrawn, but then I fell pregnant so fast and with twins too, and Rob said to leave it all to him and like a fool, I did. Right up until that hot August night.
Sometimes weeks, months even, can go by and I won’t give it more than a passing thought. Other times, it’s like I’m right there all over again. Stupid really. So stupid. Anyone would think it was a trauma – some kind of attack, a mugging – when it was nothing like that, nothing close. But still it haunts me. Not just that night, but me. Stupid, naive, idiotic me, who thought everything was fine.
‘Anna, wake up.’ Rob’s voice had hammered into my sleep.
My eyes had felt sticky, hard to open. I’d only settled Molly an hour before. ‘What’s wrong?’
The bedroom lamp switched on.
‘We have to go.’
‘Go where?’ In my sleep-deprived, mummy-fog brain I thought Rob was talking about going to the supermarket for milk. ‘There’s some coming tomorrow morning. Don’t worry.’
‘Some what?’
‘Milk. Switch off the light.’ I turned over, sleep pulling me away, but then Rob’s hands were back on my shoulders, shaking me again, this time with more force.
‘Anna, you need to get up. We need to pack some things and go.’ His voice was choked with emotion and finally I was alert and sitting up in bed.
‘What’s happened?’
‘My business has collapsed. I’m in trouble,’ he said, pausing to swallow, and I remember watching his Adam’s apple jut out of his neck and the ashen colour of his face in the orange glow of the lamp.
‘What do you mean?’
He covered his face with his hands, a sob shaking his shoulders, and I didn’t know whether to comfort him or shout at him to tell me what the hell he was talking about. ‘I’m in a lot of debt,’ he whispered. ‘The company has been struggling for a long time, but I kept expecting things to turn around. There was a big contract I was pitching for, which would have made everything OK, but I didn’t get it. I’ve just found out.’
‘There will be other contracts,’ I replied, still not grasping what he was telling me.
‘No, Anna. There won’t be. The company has no money. It’s sunk. I’m sunk. I haven’t been able to pay any of the staff.’
‘But why do we have to leave right now? It doesn’t make sense. We can’t run away from debt, Rob. If you owe money then we need to pay it back,’ I said throwing off the covers, but Rob took my arm, turning me to face him, and finally I saw the panic in his eyes, the severity of the situation.
‘Anna, we’re in mortgage arrears up to our eyeballs. The bank are repossessing the house tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? But they can’t do that. It’s ridiculous. We’ve got kids. They have to give some warning.’
His silence said it all.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘They did give you warning, didn’t they? How long have you known?’
‘A month.’
‘A month?’ The volume of my voice jumped up and I forced it back to a whisper. The last thing I needed was a crying child in my arms. ‘Are you kidding me? You’ve known for a month that we were going to be homeless and you didn’t tell me? Well, I’m not leaving. This is our home and I’m not leaving.’
‘It’s not our home any more. I’m so sorry, Anna.’ Rob’s shoulders shook and the tears rolled down his face. ‘I know I should’ve told you, but I really thought I’d get this contract and could get us out of this mess before you found out.’
Before I found out? He’d been lying to me for weeks, months, God knows how long, but I couldn’t process the lies. My mind was stuck on our house, our home which was no longer ours.
‘The joint account,’ I said suddenly. ‘There’s thousands in there. I saw a statement just the other day.’
‘That’s all we’ve got left. The credit cards are maxed out.’
‘What credit cards?’
Rob’s sadness turned hard before my eyes. ‘How did you think we paid for all this shit, Anna? New TVs, a new pushchair because the wheel squeaked on the old one—’
‘That wasn’t the only reason,’ I hissed back. ‘And if I’d known we were broke, I wouldn’t have bought it, but you didn’t tell me, did you?’
‘I was trying to protect you.’
‘Don’t you dare blame me for this.’
He dropped his head into his hands. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. This is all me.’
The anger between us dissolved as quickly as it arrived and I slumped on the bed and sighed. Nothing we said to each other was going to change what was happening.
‘Where are we going to go?’ I asked, wondering how my mum would feel about a call in the middle of the night and all of us cramming into my old bedroom. Not happy, I thought. For a woman who’d never taken any interest in my life or the lives of her grandchildren, she had a lot to say about Rob and my marriage. I didn’t think I could face the told-you-so look in her eyes and her sharp belittling words. I never liked him. I told you from the start. Too much of a charmer, that one.
‘I’ve found a flat for us on the outskirts of Ipswich,’ Rob said. ‘It’s small but it’s only temporary until I find a job.’
‘Ipswich? Are you mad? We can’t leave London. What about our friends, the girls’ school, Molly’s nursery?’ My life is what I meant.
‘It’s less than two hours away. Ipswich has a couple of good engineering firms nearby. It’s my best chance at finding work.’
‘But you said you’d never work for anyone but yourself.’
‘I don’t have a choice. Look, we can still come back and visit, but right now I’m worried about what the lads will do, Anna. They’re angry.’
‘They’re not the only ones.’ It hit me then that Rob had found us a place to stay. It wasn’t something he’d done in the last hour. Or even the last day. There would have been paperwork and references. A deposit to pay. ‘I can’t believe this. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘Please, Anna. Please, for me and for the kids, can we pack now and get away and talk about this later. I’ll tell you everything. No more secrets, I promise.’
I bit back the tears, the hurt, the anger, the questions that pummelled my head, and tried to concentrate on packing everything we needed that would fit into the back of Rob’s van. We were halfway to Ipswich when I realized I’d forgotten the new pushchair.
CHAPTER 33
Anna
The memory leaves my pulse racing, my mouth dry, my face burning crimson. I push it away and reach for the final folder. Rob’s stuff is written on a sticky label across the top and it occurs to me as I lift it out and sit on the bed how little I know about the company Rob works for.
We should’ve planned for this. I should know who to call if I can’t reach Rob. There should be a number pinned on the fridge and saved in my phone, a name, a contact, anyone who can tell me it’s all OK. I must have worried about it. I must have s
uggested we needed a plan, but it all happened so quickly and Rob was gone in a whirlwind of ‘Don’t worry,’ and ‘Everything will be fine,’ and it was. He came back every three months and he called every Sunday and so I never asked again.
I sip my tea and flip through the papers in Rob’s folder. It’s a jumble. No dividers or Post-it notes in sight. There are old letters sent to his company. A dissolution notice from Companies House. An eviction letter from the premises he leased. Reminders of our life before.
There is no contract for Artax here, no paperwork for his current employment. I wonder where else he’d keep it. I make a half-hearted search of the house. I look on the bookshelves and in the drawer in the kitchen where we keep the manuals for the appliances. I climb the loft ladder and search a few dusty boxes, but I find nothing.
In the end I Google the company and find a number for their Human Resources department. A man answers on the second ring.
‘This is Frank,’ he says by way of hello.
‘Oh hi, I’m sorry to trouble you, but my husband works for your company and—’
‘Name?’ he asks, cutting me off.
‘Robert James.’
‘Date of birth?’ he asks as I hear the tap tap of his keyboard.
I reel it off, knowing the digits as well as I know my own.
More tapping, then a pause.
‘I’m sorry, there’s no one with that name working for us,’ he says, his tone signalling the end of the conversation.
‘What?’ I huff a laugh at his comment. ‘But he does. He’s worked for you for four years.’
The man sighs, the air rattling in my ear. ‘Every employee’s name, address, contact details, location and job title is logged on our database the day they start. If your husband worked for us, his name would be on my screen, and it isn’t. There’s nothing I can do. Is it possible he’s working with a different contracting firm? We’re not the only ones who do this.’
‘I … I don’t think so. He definitely said Artax,’ I reply, my words full of conviction but my tone shrill.
‘I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.’
He ends the call and I stare at my phone for a long time, fighting the desire to phone the number again and speak to someone else. I’m not wrong. I’m not mistaken. Rob showed me the Artax website. The red banner that’s open on my laptop right now. He clicked through pages and pages of their security systems, and held my hand in his as he talked me through the lengths they go to to protect their employees. And now it seems Rob isn’t one of them. So where the hell is he?
It’s safer than working directly for the oil company. Artax will look after me. They’ll sort out my airport transfers, they’ll make sure I’m safe. Rob’s words ring in my mind. Those exact words. I lapped them up, committed them to memory, to trawl out and replay any time the worry mounted too high.
Who else can I contact? What else can I do?
Rob has mentioned a few friends he works with. Sash and Gilbo and Obinna. No surnames. Just a mention here and there. I played cards with Sash last night again, or Gilbo told me the funniest joke the other day.
They could be fake. Rob could’ve lied. The thought isn’t new. It doesn’t leap into my head. More a slow stepping out of the shadows, and for the first time I don’t chase it away. Rob wouldn’t lie to me, except he’s done it before, so maybe he would.
I find myself picking at the last few years of our lives, at everything I know about my husband. I picture Rob’s face on the iPad screen. He always sits close to the camera, a bushy black beard taking up most of his face that he won’t shave until he’s home again. What was in the background? A small room. A plain beige curtain, a desk, an armchair. It could’ve been anywhere. It could’ve been on the other side of the world, or the other side of the street.
The black spots disappear and a clarity returns to my thoughts. If I’m going to accept that Rob has lied to me, which really there can be no doubt about, then I also need to face another possibility, one that sends a shooting panic pulsing through my body – Rob could have run away.
If he was dead or kidnapped – tied up, a hood covering his head – wouldn’t I have heard? Wouldn’t it have been on the news? British man kidnapped from oil rig in Nigeria.
Two days have passed since he should have called. Nine days since we last heard from him and I have to face this other possibility.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’s run away. It wouldn’t even be the second. Rob told me about his time in Cardiff on our fifth date. The woman he was living with who thought they’d marry, the job at her father’s engineering firm, the life mapped out for him. ‘I woke up one day and I knew I had to get away. I was living a life I didn’t want, with a woman I didn’t love and a job I hated. Every day I stayed it made it harder to leave.’ So he packed his bags and left and I was so in love by that point that I didn’t spend a single second thinking about the woman he left behind and the devastation he caused.
That was twenty years ago, a voice pipes up in my thoughts. And he has children now. A family.
I close my eyes and see a thousand images of Rob with the kids. Molly, his baby girl, tipped upside down in a fireman’s carry and squealing with delight as he lifts her up to bed. Charging around the garden with Harrie. Sat at the table with Elise, patiently explaining long division, going over and over it, late into the evening, heads bent, snacking on popcorn, until the calculations don’t feel impossible to her any more. Sitting front row at every show, every competition, every assembly he can make, beaming from ear to ear with joy and love.
He’s an amazing dad. Patient and kind, silly and fun. Always making us laugh. That is the Rob I know and those images, those memories, are incongruous with a man who would run away without a goodbye, who would lie to me over and over and over again.
At my laptop, I type oil companies Nigeria into Google and watch dozens of names appear. I change the search to offshore oil company Nigeria, and find only two names.
The number for the first company is a labyrinth of press two for this and one for that and it’s forever before I find myself at the end and explaining my search for my husband into a recorded message. It’s only when I’ve hung up that I realize I forgot to give the UK dialling code before my number.
The second company feels just as futile, but eventually I find myself talking to an actual person and try to explain what I want – to find my husband.
‘You are press,’ the woman on the phone says in heavily accented English.
‘No, I’m not. I’m just the wife of a man who works on one of the Nigerian oil rigs.’
‘Does he work for us?’
‘I … I don’t know.’
‘You’re British, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘British press?’ Her question sounds like an accusation.
‘No, I’m not.’
When it becomes apparent that I’m not giving up, the woman reluctantly takes my number and promises to speak to her supervisor and return my call tomorrow. I have zero faith that she will do either of those things.
Reality dawns slow and hard. The only way for me to contact Rob is through his phone and he’s not answering. In fact, the last few times I’ve tried his phone it’s been off.
I’m still staring at my phone as a message from Kat arrives.
Fancy a cuppa? Xx
I close my eyes and imagine sitting with Kat right now, whiling the afternoon away. Would I tell her what I’ve learned about Rob? No. She’d ask me if I think he’s lied and I can’t bear to hear that question or the hurried ‘No,’ I’d reply.
After we left London, left our lives behind and squished ourselves into that flat with five-year-old Elise and Harrie, confused and climbing the walls, little Molly too young to understand or remember, but fractious and crying constantly; after the shock had worn away and I was faced with our new reality, I made Rob promise never to lie to me again, never to hide anything. And he did promise. He got down on his knees and begged for
my forgiveness and I gave it to him because what choice did I have? Split up our family and take our children to live with my mother and her toxic words? Or find myself a flat I could afford, worse than the one we were already living in? Get a full-time job. Deprive my children of their father and leave them with a mother working too many hours of the day. Despite everything I still loved Rob. I still love him now.
It’s the doorbell that saves me from my thoughts. I leap up, grateful for the distraction, but that feeling drops – a glass shattering to the floor – when I see who is standing on my doorstep.
CHAPTER 34
Anna
Sue Stockton looks older than her forty-eight years. I know she’s the same age as Dean, but with her short copper-blonde hair blown by the cold wind, and her lips pursed – her brows too – she looks closer to sixty. But it’s the daggers shooting from her gaze that grab me by the throat and leave my mouth gaping. I might as well have a neon flashing GUILTY sign above my head.
Her slight frame is outlined by a bright blue sky streaked with the pale yellow of the autumn sun. From the corner of my eye I see June by the hedge that separates our front gardens. She’s holding a pair of gardening loppers, her hands busy, but her gaze is fixed on us. On Dean’s wife, standing in a pair of muddied jeans and a long navy parka. She’s wearing wellies and holding a lead attached to a scrambling bundle of soft amber fur. The dog yips, breaking the silence. He pulls at the lead, standing on his hind legs as though wondering why my attention is on his owner and not him.
Sue gasps. ‘So you’re the slapper who’s sleeping with my husband.’ The words are ice cold and delivered with the impact I’m sure Sue was aiming for.
I stand agog, my head dizzy, playing catch-up with the scene unfolding in front of me.
So you’re the slapper.
My heart pounds in my chest as my head moves from side to side. ‘No,’ I say, finding my voice. ‘You’re mistaken.’ My tone is weak and I’m not even sure I believe me.
‘You are Anna James, aren’t you?’ Sue asks, uncertainty crossing her face.