by Lisa Jewell
“Oh,” said Adrian, clutching the arms of his chair, bringing himself up to standing. “Right.”
“We’ll just need your password, if you’re happy to let us have it.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He dictated it to the DI, who scribbled it down on his notepad. “I guess if I can’t trust you lot with my password, we’re all doomed.”
Ian Mickelson looked up at him, half-amused, and said, “Yes. Indeed.”
And then he left, emerging into an unexpectedly hot Kentish Town, feeling strangely euphoric. Something was happening. The events of April 19, 2011, were taking some kind of form. For so long it had felt like a sick joke, a hiccup in the space-time continuum. Maya, walking in front of a bus eight times over the limit when she should have been lying next to him in bed. It lacked context. It lacked depth. It simply was not supposed to have happened. And now, maybe, he could start to shade it in, make it look like something he could comprehend.
And he knew, he just knew, that beautiful, glittering, disappearing Jane had something to do with it.
17
Adrian went straight back to the office after his meeting with DI Mickelson at Kentish Town. He ignored the e-mails in his inbox, the Post-it notes flapping on his screen, the paperwork neatly arranged inside a clear folder with the words: “For the meeting with Brent. Please read and sign ASAP!!” attached to it. He brushed it all aside and he typed the words “Baxter and Cross Acton” into his search engine, sipping gingerly from an overly hot cup of tea as he did so.
He dialed the number on the estate agent’s website and he asked to speak to the manager. The manager wasn’t available so Adrian asked the man on the end of the line, “How long have you worked there?”
The man said, “Eight years.”
Adrian said, “Great! Listen, do you remember a woman called Tiffy or Tiffany?”
“Yeah, yeah, definitely. I remember her.”
“Well, she . . . sorry, my name is Adrian Wolfe. A woman left a phone at my flat some time ago. She didn’t come back to claim it but I traced the phone back to a woman called Tiffany Martin. Your former colleague. She told me the phone was one she’d used when she worked at your agency. She said the phone would have been passed on to her replacement. Now, since all this happened it has come to light that the woman who originally left the phone at my house might know something about the, er . . .” He paused. “Sorry, what’s your name?”
“My name is Abdullah.”
“Great. Thank you. And sorry, this is a bit rambling, Abdullah. But it seems that she might know something about the death of my wife a year ago. Accidental death. Not murder or anything like that. But still, it was a very inexplicable death. Odd, you know, and I’ve never been able to make any sense of it. So, as you can imagine, I’m quite keen to follow any leads I possibly can. And if there is a connection between your agency and the woman, well . . . Anyway, I’m grabbing at straws, I know. I’m desperate. So . . .”
There was a suspended silence on the line. Adrian couldn’t tell which way it was leading.
“God,” said Abdullah eventually. “Is this for real?”
“Yes,” said Adrian, “I’m afraid it is.”
“Well, listen, the boss is out and I’m not sure how much info I can share, but I’m pretty sure Tiff’s phone went to Dolly.”
“Dolly?”
“Yeah. But let me talk to the boss. I really want to help you, but I don’t want to get into any trouble. You know, these days, privacy, all that, I never know where the lines are drawn. It gets tighter all the time.”
“Sure,” said Adrian, feeling pretty certain that Abdullah would have given him Dolly’s bra size if he’d thought Adrian was a potential house-buyer.
“But give me your number. I promise I’ll call you straight back, minute I’ve got the all-clear. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Adrian. “Thank you.”
While he was supposed to be reading the notes for the big meeting with Brent Council and checking the final plans for the last-minute penthouse extension to the shared-ownership block on Goldhurst Road and signing off on the budgets for the last quarter and popping in to see Derek in response to Derek’s scribbled note imploring him to “pop in to see me when you get back,” Adrian read the Dear Bitch e-mails. Again. There were three pages of them and he’d read them all at least six times since Saturday afternoon. He kept waiting for some little turn of phrase, some lightbulb of recognition to jump out and make sense of it all.
The phrases danced in front of his eyes; he’d read them so many times now that they’d started to lose their shape:
Pathetic loser
Home wrecker
Selfish to your core
The worst teacher in the country
You think they all love you so much, but they don’t, OK
Even your own parents hate you
Don’t know what he sees in you, you’re not all that
This last comment hurt him the most. Sweet Maya. She’d been so insecure about her looks. I’m nothing special, she’d say, with an apologetic shrug as if she was somehow letting everyone down by not being more beautiful. She’d delete perfectly nice photos of herself from his phone and sigh over the cheekbones and hairstyles and buttocks of women she perceived to be more attractive than herself. He remembered the way her eyes would follow Caroline about when they were all together, as if she was trying to glean from her some essential trick about how to be beautiful. And he tried to imagine her reading these words, words that backed up all her insecurities. The thought of Maya dying thinking she wasn’t beautiful enough made him want to weep.
He pulled a pen from the pot on his desk and began scribbling his thoughts down.
Knows she has two parents
Knows she is a teacher
Knows she is my third wife
Knows when she is at home
Knows what she looks like
Knows the names of people in her family
“Think they love you. They don’t.” Suggests someone on periphery of family
References to physical appearance sound bitchy. Suggests written by a woman
He stopped and looked up. Would “Jane” really have known so much about Maya? Surely not. Adrian had known everyone in Maya’s life: her headmistress, her weird best friend, her cousins in Maidstone, a couple of friends from teacher training college, the new friend from the posh school, what was her name? Holly. Yes. Holly Patch. He could even remember her surname. He’d met everyone. He was sure he had. Maya wasn’t a great collector of people. She was fussy, like him. So if it wasn’t “Jane,” then who the hell else knew so much about his wife? One of his ex-wives? Could it be? No. No way. Not possible. Susie and Caroline were too clever, too secure, too wrapped up in their own lives to waste time sending poison e-mails. Cat? Pearl? Could it be? Could it be that these e-mails had come from one of his own daughters?
Could it?
“No.” He said this out loud as if to ensure that his subconscious would hear it, too. “No.” The thought was unpalatable to him. His girls. His angels.
His mobile phone rang. He sighed and put down the notebook and pen. “Yes,” he said.
“Is that Adrian Wolfe?”
“Speaking.”
“Oh, hi, my name is Dolly Patel. I was just talking to my colleague, Abdullah, about your problem with the phone. I’m not sure how helpful I can be. But it might be something, you never know . . .”
“Oh. Good. Great. Thank you.” Adrian sat up straight and grabbed a pen and paper.
“My bag was stolen, from the hall table of a house I was showing clients around. I’d left the door on the latch for the next viewers. My phone was in it. Well, at least I think it was in it. I wasn’t really using it then, I’d been given a smartphone. But I’m pretty sure it was. Apparently there’ve been loads of similar crimes on that street.
Opportunists. They found my bag down a hedge around the corner. But the phone was gone, and my purse. So . . .”
“So . . .” Adrian’s pen was suspended above his notepad, his breath drawn.
“So, that’s it really. That was about two months ago. The phone never showed up. The police tried to trace the SIM but it wasn’t being used. So. Game over.”
“The police had the SIM number?”
“Yeah. But, like I said, the thief wasn’t using it.”
“I wonder . . .” He shuffled through the papers on his desk, looking for DI Mickelson’s number. He found it and covered it over with his hands. “Good. OK. Thank you, Dolly. Actually, yes, that is helpful. Or potentially. Thank you very, very much.”
“Good luck,” she said. “I’m really sorry about your wife.”
“Yes,” said Adrian, “so am I.”
Within sixty seconds of Adrian’s hanging up the phone to Dolly Patel, he was taking a call from Caroline.
“Hi, hello,” he greeted her distractedly.
“Adrian. Listen. I’ve had a call from the school. From Otis’s school. He’s not there. He’s not answering his phone.” Her voice broke slightly. “I’m quite worried.”
Adrian took his hand from the piece of paper and touched his heart with it. “What? Since when?”
“I don’t know. They called about an hour ago. I’ve been phoning and phoning him ever since. I just thought, you know, he was bunking off. So I texted him, saying if he went straight into school, he wouldn’t be in trouble. That was half an hour ago. No reply. And he’s still not in school. I’m really scared. What shall I do? What shall I do?”
“But it’s nearly lunchtime,” said Adrian incredulously. “That means he’s been missing from school for the whole morning.”
“I know! I know! I was at . . . at an appointment. I had my phone switched off. And he’s done this before, you know, he’s bunked off before.”
“He has?”
“Yes! Not much. Just a couple of times. About a year ago. After Maya died. You know. So I thought he was just, you know, skiving. But now I’m thinking . . . Christ, he’s so beautiful. And so secretive. All those hours on the Internet. He could be talking to anyone! He might have met someone! You know. Someone pretending to be a cute fourteen-year-old girl. I’m shitting myself. I’m shitting myself!”
“Where are you?”
“At home! I’m at home!” Her voice had reached a pitch several octaves above her usual cool alto.
“Stay there. I’m coming. I’m coming right now.”
18
By the time he got to the house in Islington, Otis was sitting on the armchair in the kitchen with a dog on his lap looking bullishly ashamed of himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said before Adrian had even opened his mouth. His fingers plucked at the dog’s fur and his eyes bored into the floor.
“Jesus,” said Adrian.
Caroline was standing against the kitchen counter, flicking her thumbnail against her fingernail.
He leaned over Otis and tried to hold him. His son allowed this, but didn’t reciprocate.
“So,” he said, sitting opposite him. “What happened?”
Otis shrugged. “I just didn’t want to go into school.”
“And why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I left it at home. By accident.”
Adrian sighed. “Christ,” he said, “didn’t it occur to you that me and your mum might be worried about you?”
Otis shrugged again, tossing his head slightly to get his pop-star curls out of his eyes. “I said I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Yes, but . . .” He looked up at Caroline. “Where did they find him?”
“They didn’t. I did. Just happened upon him on my way home. Outside the tube. Sitting on a bench, like a tramp.”
“What!” He turned back to Otis. “Sitting outside the tube? What on earth . . .”
“I just . . .” He pulled harder at the dog’s fur. “I was just thinking. That’s all. I can never think in this house.”
“Oh Jesus Christ.” Adrian ran his fingers through his hair. “Listen, mate—”
“Don’t call me mate. It’s not cool.”
“Sorry. Son. If you were meeting someone, you can tell us. OK? We won’t be cross.”
Otis’s brow furrowed and he said in that horrible deprecating tone of voice that all his children apart from Beau used when they talked to him, “Meeting someone? Why the hell would I be meeting someone? I don’t know anyone.”
“No, no, of course not. But you spend a lot of time on the Internet. There are people . . .”
“Yes. I know. I do know. Old men pretending to be teenagers so that they can stick their willies up my bum. I know. And I wasn’t meeting anyone. I’m not an idiot.”
Adrian exhaled, relieved and reassured. He and Caroline shared a look.
“So, what were you thinking about?”
He shrugged. “Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Otis gently pushed the dog off his lap and got to his feet. “You know, actually, Mum, Dad, I think I’d like to go into school now.” He said this less as a pronouncement of surrender than as an expression of disgust.
“Fine,” said Caroline, looking at her watch. “But I’m walking you to the gate.”
Otis shrugged. “Whatever.”
“I’ll come too,” said Adrian.
Otis remained virtually silent as they walked the ten minutes to his school. Caroline said, “There’ll have to be a punishment, of course, you know that?”
“Fine,” said Otis.
They both hugged him at the gates and watched him skulking across the playground to the school office.
They turned to each other as the heavy swing doors banged shut in his wake and his dark head disappeared up the corridor. “Got time for a quick coffee?” said Adrian.
Caroline looked at her watch again. She sighed. “Yeah. Sure. Why not. But really quick. I’ve got a meeting at two p.m.”
They went into a Starbucks and arranged themselves on armchairs set either side of a low table, the only free seats in the place. Caroline had an Earl Gray tea; he had a black Americano. He watched Caroline squeeze out her teabag with her fingertips, so measured, so elegant, her handsome face still unlined, exactly as it had been the first time he saw her. She brushed her damp fingers against the lapel of her jacket, unthinkingly tracing the outline of her breast as she did so, and Adrian felt a stirring of sexual desire. He closed his eyes, feeling wrong-footed, embarrassed by himself.
He had never been so long without sex before. He had, on average, taking into consideration the fallow periods that surrounded the gestation and emergence of five babies, had sex an average of once a fortnight since he’d left home. And now he was fourteen months down the line of unwanted abstention. Longer if you took into account the last few weeks with Maya, when she had been . . . well, anyway. He and Maya had been having sex pretty much every night before that. From 356 shags a year to nothing, virtually overnight. It was no wonder he was looking at his ex-wife inappropriately.
“So,” said Caroline, holding her cup halfway to her mouth, oblivious. “Theories?”
“What?”
“Theories? About Otis?”
“God, no. Nothing. I mean, you said he did this before. After Maya?”
Caroline nodded. “Yes. Twice. We made all kinds of exceptions for him.” She glanced at Adrian and read the question in his expression. “I didn’t tell you. I thought you had enough to deal with. I protected you from a lot. We protected you from a lot.”
Adrian nodded understandingly.
“But that was different,” she continued. “He was with friends then. Doing what boys do. Mucking about. You know. None of this sitting-on-benches business, staring into space. I mean,
if I hadn’t come back on the tube, if I’d got a taxi, say, I wouldn’t even have seen him there. He might still be sitting there now, for Christ’s sake.”
They sat quietly for a moment, thinking, and then sighed in unison.
“Is he doing all right at school?” said Adrian, already knowing the answer but asking the question out of a sense of desperation.
“Yes, yes.” Caroline nodded. “He’s doing so well at school. You know, his creative writing is amazing. I mean, I really think he has the potential . . .”
“Yeah, I know, I read that thing he wrote, you know, about the time-traveling girl . . .”
“Yes! Wasn’t that incredible? So imaginative . . .”
“But so well executed too. I mean, he’d really thought it all through, hadn’t he? All the complexities . . . And really getting into the mind-set of a girl.”
“I know. I know.”
Caroline rubbed her elbows and smiled up at Adrian. “Our brilliant children,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “Thank you.”
She looked at him with barbed curiosity.
“I mean, for raising them. For letting me . . . for being so . . .” He swallowed hard as he realized with some horror that he was on the verge of tears. “Thank you,” he said once he’d brought his emotions into check, “for being such a brilliant mother.”
She gazed at him impassively. Then she looked at her watch.
He could feel that they were running out of time. Out of time for what? he wondered.
She drank half her tea and began to put things back into her bag. “I should . . .”
“Yes.” He picked up his coffee.
“You don’t have to rush off. You stay.”
“No,” he said, “no. I should go. I should probably . . .” He tailed off with no clear idea about what exactly he should be doing.
Caroline zipped up her bag. “Oh,” she said. “The e-mails. I didn’t ask. What happened about the e-mails? Have you managed . . . ?”
“No,” he said, piling sugar wrappers into his empty coffee cup. “I’ve left the laptop with the computer-crimes unit. They’re going to give me a ring at some point.” He shrugged. “Don’t suppose they’ll find anything though.”