Lasting Damage

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘I’ve nearly got into lots of fights.’

  ‘This one was with a man who said you’d nicked his mate’s chair after he’d said it was taken. You said he’d told you it wasn’t taken.’

  Gibbs shook his head. ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘But you remember seeing me at the Brown Cow?’

  He gave her an odd look. ‘All the time.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘When you saw me.’

  ‘I don’t know. “There’s Charlie’s sister with the posh voice and the massive tits.” What did you think when you saw me?’

  ‘I didn’t think this would happen, not in a million years. Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That neither of us had a clue we’d end up . . . where we are.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Gibbs. ‘How could we know what was going to happen before it happened?’

  ‘But I mean, we didn’t even think we wanted it to happen.’

  ‘So? It was still going to happen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Olivia pushed him off her. ‘Do you think that’s true? That it was going to happen, even then, before we had a clue?’

  Gibbs thought about it. ‘It happened,’ he said. ‘Before it happened, it was going to happen.’

  ‘You think us ending up here together was inevitable?’

  ‘It is now,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Yes, but I mean . . .’ Olivia wondered how best to put the question. ‘Before Charlie and Simon’s wedding, might we either have got together or not got together, or did the possibility that we wouldn’t get together never exist at all?’

  ‘Second one,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Really?’ Liv tried to keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘There was never any possibility that we wouldn’t have an affair – that’s what you really think? So you believe in destiny? You think free will’s an illusion?’

  ‘You’re doing it again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whatever I say, you change it into something I don’t understand, then tell me that’s what I said. There’s no point me saying anything. You write my lines, I don’t care.’

  ‘I’m the one who doesn’t understand,’ Liv groaned. ‘Explain!’

  Gibbs stared up at the ceiling. ‘When something happens, you can look back and say it was always going to happen – because it did. There’s no other choice, once it’s happened.’

  ‘I can’t work out if you’re saying something romantic or not.’

  He shrugged. ‘Not deliberately. Just stating a fact.’

  ‘Okay, then – what do you think about the future?’

  ‘Full of sex.’

  ‘With me?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘No, with Ant and fucking Dec. Obviously with you.’

  ‘I don’t think Debbie’d see it as obvious.’

  ‘Don’t talk about Debbie.’

  ‘Dom wouldn’t either.’

  ‘Or him.’

  ‘What’s in their future? Dom’s and Debbie’s?’

  ‘Not us,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘I used to come here all the time as a student,’ Kit Bowskill told Simon. ‘Loved the place. Ever since, I’ve had a thing about tucked-away pubs down side streets. Never on main roads. A pub on a main road’s all wrong.’ He smiled, took a swig of his Guinness. ‘Sorry. I’m rambling.’

  ‘I’d have come to Silsford,’ Simon told him, sensing his nervousness. ‘Or London. Did you have a reason for wanting to meet here?’

  ‘Like I said: I love the Maypole.’

  Simon kept his eyes on him. Eventually Bowskill flushed and looked away, loosening the knot of his tie. ‘I’m a hopeless liar, as you can see. I was coming to Cambridge tonight anyway. To meet Connie.’

  ‘She’s here?’

  ‘I don’t know if she’s here now, but she told me to meet her at nine thirty.’

  ‘Where?’

  Bowskill looked apologetic. ‘I told her I was meeting you, that you’ve been trying to get in touch with her. She doesn’t want to speak to you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s angry with you for going away without telling her. She went to you for help and you didn’t help her.’

  Evidently Simon failed to conceal his annoyance, because Bowskill said, ‘I wouldn’t take it personally. Con’s angry with everyone at the moment – feels the whole world’s let her down.’

  At the table next to them, three middle-aged men with loud voices were talking about a scholarship – someone had been awarded one who didn’t deserve it; someone who had deserved it hadn’t got it. One of the men was angry about this; Simon tried to block out his words, concentrate on Bowskill’s.

  ‘The house you and Connie nearly bought in 2003,’ he said.

  ‘18 Pardoner Lane?’

  ‘That was the address?’

  Bowskill nodded.

  ‘Connie doesn’t think so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She told Sam and Ian Grint that it was number 17. 17 Pardoner Lane.’

  ‘She’s misremembered, in that case,’ said Bowskill. ‘It was number 18.’

  ‘Why would she get it wrong?’

  ‘Why does anyone get anything wrong? If I sat here and listed everything Connie’s been wrong about in the last six months, we’d still be here next Tuesday.’

  Simon nodded. ‘You must be pretty angry with her.’

  ‘I’m not allowed to be, am I? I wish I could believe she’d deliberately set out to ruin both our lives – then at least I’d be able to hate her. As it is, I’m living in an anonymous box in London, surrounded by lots of other suits in their anonymous boxes, banished from the home I’ve spent years creating – from scratch, almost. Melrose Cottage was a wreck when we bought it. It wasn’t Connie who sanded the floors, tiled the fireplaces, landscaped the garden – it was me. And now she’s booted me out. Yeah, I’d love to be angry with her, but it’s not her that’s doing all this, it’s . . . I don’t know, something that’s got into her, some madness. She hasn’t got a clue what she’s doing from one minute to the next. She’s not Connie any more – that’s the worst thing about all this.’ Bowskill blinked away tears, no doubt hoping Simon hadn’t noticed them.

  ‘I’ve just come from Pardoner Lane. The house you didn’t buy in 2003 was number 18.’

  ‘So you believe me?’

  A question Simon was keen to avoid answering, especially now that Bowskill was looking more confident. Believing had nothing to do with it; Simon had checked the facts for himself. His confidence was in his own findings, not in Kit Bowskill. Still, he had other more personal questions he wanted to ask, and it wouldn’t do any harm to go as far as he could down the feel-good route. ‘18 Pardoner Lane’s next door to the Beth Dutton Centre, so there’s no argument,’ he said. ‘You’re right and Connie’s wrong. About the house number, anyway. She got everything else right: the iron railings, the Victorian architecture, the sash windows. Number 17’s on the other side of the road.’

  Its owners, a friendly middle-aged couple, had invited Simon in for a coffee and looked disappointed when he’d said there was no need, he only had one quick question for them. They had bought the house brand new in 2001, since which time it had never been on the market. Yes, they remembered number 18 going up for sale in 2003. It was snapped up within weeks, they told Simon, and the same thing happened when it came up for sale again last year. ‘We considered buying it, actually – both times. It’s got more kerb-appeal than ours and bigger rooms. Unfortunately, that was reflected in the price. And when we thought about it, it seemed crazy to move across the road – though it doesn’t make sense really, that, does it? It’s like when you go out for a meal and someone orders the thing you want and you think, “Oh, well, I can’t have that now that she’s having it”, and you end up ordering something you don’t like half as much!’

  Simon had nodded
, bemused. He tended to avoid restaurants, but still, he felt he ought to have known what 17 Pardoner Lane’s owner was talking about, and he didn’t. He spent too much of his time nodding at things that made no sense to him, for politeness’ sake.

  ‘I need to ask you a personal question,’ he told Bowskill.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Your parents.’

  The reaction was unmistakeable: instant resentment. Of Simon, for having asked, or of Mr and Mrs Bowskill senior? Simon couldn’t tell. He knew a little bit about them, thanks to Connie. Their names were Nigel and Barbara and they lived in Bracknell, Berkshire. They ran their own business: something to do with making lasers which were used for fingerprinting.

  Bowskill had regained his composure. ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘Connie told you I’m no longer in contact with them. I take it she told you why?’

  ‘She told me she’d never really understood why.’

  ‘That’s bu—’ Bowskill caught hold of his anger. A strained smile replaced his scowl. ‘That’s simply not true. Connie knows perfectly well what happened.’

  ‘Do you mind telling me?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I can’t see why you’d care. What’s it got to do with anything?’

  ‘Just interested.’ Simon tried to make it sound incidental. No reason to tell Bowskill it was the main reason he’d wanted to meet him. ‘As someone whose own parents are on the trying side . . .’

  ‘But if you hit rock-bottom, they’d be there for you, wouldn’t they?’ said Bowskill. ‘In an emergency, they’d do whatever it took – they’d look after you.’

  Simon had never thought about it. In her younger days, throughout his childhood, his mother had stifled him with her nurturing, treated him as if he was made of glass and might break if he did anything rash like go round to a friend’s house. Now, it was hard to imagine Kathleen looking after anybody. She’d lost her air of authority a long time ago. Although she was only sixty-one and had no health problems, she moved and spoke like a frail old relic shuffling ever closer to annihilation. Simon had often imagined meeting her as a stranger, what he’d think of her. Asked to guess her age and story, he’d have said eighty for sure, and at some stage she must have been mugged at knife-point by teenage thugs and lost the will to live.

  He opened his mouth to say that in the direst of emergencies he would go to a whole range of people – including complete strangers – before he would involve his mother, but Bowskill was on a roll. ‘What parents wouldn’t help their child? I haven’t got siblings, so it’s not as if there’s any competition for their attention. I wasn’t asking them to donate their kidneys.’

  ‘What happened?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Connie was disintegrating. Physically and mentally – shouting in her sleep, nightmares, her hair was falling out. I was properly worried about her. I thought . . . well, she didn’t, so it’s not tempting fate to say it: I thought she might do something stupid.’

  Simon nodded. Properly worried about her. As opposed to pretending to worry about her? Was that what Bowskill was doing this time round?

  ‘Mum and Dad made it clear I could expect no help from them.’

  ‘Did you ask for their help?’

  ‘Oh, yes. There was nothing ambiguous about it. I asked, they said no.’

  ‘What did you want them to do, exactly?’

  ‘Has Connie told you about her parents?’ Bowskill asked. ‘That they brainwash her and browbeat her, cripple her thought processes so that she can’t think for herself?’

  Simon shook his head. ‘She mentioned them being difficult. About you moving to Cambridge.’

  Bowskill laughed. ‘Understatement isn’t usually Connie’s strong point,’ he said. ‘Nice to know she’s expanding her repertoire.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Simon asked. ‘With your parents?’

  ‘Connie needed to get away from her family, especially her mother. I don’t know why I’m talking in the past tense – she still does. I was hoping Mum would act as a mother figure, just temporarily – you know, boost her confidence, tell her she could have the life she wanted, achieve whatever she set out to achieve. I told her myself until I was sick of the sound of my own voice, but it had no effect. I’m only one person, and I’m not a parent, I’m an equal. No matter what I said, I wasn’t enough to replace Connie’s family, however bad for her they were – and she knew perfectly well the harm they were doing her, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t see it. But . . . she was scared to go against her mum, who didn’t want her to move to Cambridge. It was hopeless. I knew I’d never lure her away from her family unless I had . . . well, something more than myself to offer her. She and Mum had always got on well, Mum and Dad claimed to love her like their own daughter, but . . . when it came to it, when I asked them to rally round and be a family for Connie, they said, “No thanks, we’d rather not get involved.” ’

  ‘Do you think they were wary of encouraging her to go against her own parents?’ Simon asked. ‘They didn’t want to interfere?’

  ‘No,’ said Bowskill flatly. ‘Nothing to do with that. They don’t give a shit about Val and Geoff Monk, only about themselves. They didn’t want to put themselves out, simple as that. Started spluttering about the need to stand on one’s own two feet, dependency not being good for people . . . It was disgusting, frankly – a complete abnegation of responsibility. I’d never do that to my child, if I had one. I looked at them and thought, “Who are you? Why am I bothering with you?” That was it – I haven’t spoken to them since.’

  ‘Sounds rough,’ said Simon. He tried to produce a cheerless expression to match Bowskill’s, hide his satisfaction. He’d had a theory, and although he hadn’t yet been proved right, everything Bowskill had just said indicated that he soon would be.

  Chapter 17

  Friday 23 July 2010

  ‘Connie.’

  Don’t look pleased to see me. You won’t be, once you’ve heard what I’ve got to say.

  ‘Thanks for coming.’ He’s not your husband. He’s a stranger. This is a business meeting.

  I try to pass Kit a menu but he pushes it away. He smells of beer. We’re in the restaurant at the Doubletree by Hilton Garden House, Selina Gane’s hotel and now mine too. I checked in an hour ago.

  ‘Not hungry?’ I say. ‘I’m not either.’ It seems a shame. The food would probably be good. The lime green and purple velvet upholstery looks expensive. It makes me think of the dead woman’s dress; the colours are the same.

  I put the menus down on the table, pour us both some water.

  ‘Don’t play games,’ Kit says. ‘Why are we here?’ He’s still on his feet, poised for flight, unwilling to commit to a conversation with me without knowing what its subject will be.

  ‘I’m staying here.’ I don’t tell him that Selina Gane is too. Of course, he might know that already.

  ‘You’re . . .’ His breathing speeds up, like someone running. I wonder if he’s thinking about escape. How hard is it for him to stay where he is? ‘You walk out of your own birthday party without any explanation . . .’

  ‘The birthday party was the explanation. That and the dress you bought me.’

  ‘I swear to God, Con . . .’

  ‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘I don’t care. I need to talk to you about something else. Sit down. Sit.’

  Reluctantly, he lowers himself into a chair across the table from me. He looks as unrelaxed as I’ve ever seen a person look – shoulders hunched, jaw rigid, red in the face. ‘We ought to discuss work,’ he says.

  ‘Go ahead.’ This is a business meeting, after all. You can’t invite your husband to a business meeting and then tell him he can’t talk about work.

  ‘You’re Nulli’s business and financial director. All the strategy originates with you, all the planning . . . You’re the one who makes sure everyone gets paid. I can slog my guts out, my team can do the same, but we’re wasting our time if you’re not doing your bit.’

  ‘Agreed,’ I say.

/>   ‘If you don’t keep on top of things, Nulli falls apart.’

  ‘And you don’t think I’m keeping on top of things?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I haven’t been, no,’ I admit. ‘Not since I saw that woman’s body on Roundthehouses. But it’s been less than a week. The company’s not going to crumble to dust because I’ve neglected the paperwork for a week. Anyway, all this is irrelevant. This time next year, Nulli’s unlikely to exist.’

  The colour drains from Kit’s face. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re bright, you’re determined,’ I say briskly, deciding I ought to offer him some compensation for losing both his wife and his business. ‘You’ll start another company without me. I’m sure it’ll do very well.’

  Kit’s mouth and eyes start to move – random twitches, uncoordinated. He doesn’t think this can be happening to him. I know how he feels.

  ‘How can you . . . ?’

  I’m sorry. I don’t love you any less than I did before all this happened. I trust you less, like you less, am more willing to cause you pain, but the love hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible – would you, Kit?

  I resist the urge to explain, knowing it wouldn’t help.

  ‘How can you calmly sit there and announce your intention to destroy everything we’ve got?’ Kit’s voice is hollow, hoarse. ‘Our marriage, our company . . .’

  ‘I need you to read something.’ I pull the letter out of my bag and pass it across the table to him. ‘I wanted you to see it before Selina Gane does. Once you’ve approved it, I’ll push it under her door. She’s staying here too. Did you know that?’

  Kit shakes his head slowly, his eyes wide, fixed on my handwritten words.

  I expected it to be hard, but it was the easiest letter I’ve ever written. I assumed, for the purposes of the exercise, that Selina Gane was innocent, and I explained everything, or at least as much as I could explain: finding her address in Kit’s SatNav, my suspicions and fears, how they led me to wait outside her house and follow her, how in retrospect I wish I’d been more upfront about it, spoken to her directly. That’s what she’ll want if she’s as frightened and baffled as I am, I thought: a straightforward letter of clarification and apology, one innocent person to another.