A Special Relationship

by Douglas Kennedy

  Which meant that she only had the weekend to track down Jane Sanjay by email ... if, that is, Jane stopped in some internet café to check her email this weekend, and if the less-than-engaged Ms Pepinster bothered to even find her address.

  I waited by the phone all day Friday for a call from Ginny Ricks. None came – even though I did leave two messages with Trudy.

  ‘Sorry, but she’s left for the weekend,’ Trudy said when I called the second time. ‘But I know she’ll be calling you as soon as she gets back from the country on Monday.’

  Ah yes, another weekend in the country – no doubt with her ‘chap’, who was undoubtedly named Simon, and probably was an old Harrovian who now ‘did something in the City’, and spoke in the same honk as his beloved, and favoured Jermyn Street tailoring, and weekend casual by Hackett’s, and no doubt had a lovely cottage on the Sussex Downs, so handy for those summer evenings at the opera at Glyndebourne, where Diane Dexter was on the board, and would be showing off her new acquisition(s) when this year’s season …

  I got up and went into the kitchen – to a small shelf in a cabinet where we kept assorted cookbooks and a London A-to-Z, and a UK road atlas. Litlington in East Sussex was around seventy miles from London – and an easy run from Putney. Before I could stop myself, I phoned Directory Enquiries and asked if there was a listing for a Dexter, D. in Litlington, East Sussex. Sure enough, there was such a listing. I wrote it down. For around a half-hour, I resisted the temptation to pick up the phone. Then I went back to the kitchen bookshelf and dug out a British Telecom guide to their digital phone services, discovering that if you wanted to make a call and not have your number traced (or appear on the other person’s digital display), all you had to do was dial 141.

  But it took another hour – and that evening’s dosage of anti-depressants – to screw up the courage to make the call. Finally, I grabbed the phone, punched in 141, then the number, covered the mouthpiece with my hand, and felt my heart play timpani as it began to ring. On the fifth knell – just as I was about to hang up – it was answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  Tony.

  I hung up, then sat down in a chair, wishing that I was allowed to mix alcohol with my anti-depressants. A belt of vodka would have been most welcomed right now.

  Hearing his voice was …

  No, not heartbreaking. Hardly that. In the week or so since this nightmare began, the one thing I felt towards my husband was rage … especially as it became increasingly clear that he had been hatching this plot for a considerable amount of time. I kept reviewing the last few months in my mind, wondering when his liaison with this Dexter woman began. Trying to fathom where he met her, whether it was a coup de foudre, or was she the predatory type who swept down on a man who (as I well knew) was fantastically weak and easily flattered. I thought back to all of Tony’s late evenings at the paper, his occasional overnight trips to Paris and The Hague, and that wonderfully extended window of opportunity when I was doing time in the psychiatric unit: all those weeks when his wife and child were conveniently being looked after elsewhere, and he could do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted.

  The shit. That was the only word for him. And in the midst of my insane distress about being separated from Jack, my clear, ferocious fury at my husband provided a strange sort of equilibrium; a balance to the guilt and anguish that were otherwise eating away at me like the most virulent form of cancer.

  But hearing his voice on the phone was also like one of those out-of-nowhere slaps across the face that shake you out of a stupor and force you to confront the grim reality of your situation. Before this call, there was a part of my brain that was still trying to carry on as if this was really not happening. It wasn’t exactly denial (to use that hateful term); more something like extreme disbelief, underscored by a fairyland need to convince yourself that, any moment now, this entire sick black farce will end and your former life will be restored to you.

  Now, however, there was no sidestepping the hard cold facts of the matter: he was living in her house, with our son. And he had put into motion the legal machinery to separate me from Jack.

  I had another bad, sleepless night. At seven the next morning, I rang Budget-Rent-A-Car and discovered that they had a branch in the parade of shops near the East Putney tube station. When they opened at eight, I was their first customer, renting a little Nissan for the day – £32.00 all-in, as long as I had it back by eight the next morning. ‘Mind if I pay cash?’ I asked. The clerk looked wary – but, after checking with a superior, he said that cash would be acceptable as long as they could make an imprint of my credit card, just in case there were any additional charges. I handed over my maxed-out Bank of America VISA card and hoped I was well on the road when-and-if they ran a credit check on it.

  My luck held. He simply ran the card through his old manual machine, then had me sign several rental forms, and handed me the keys.

  Traffic was light all the way south. I made the market town of Lewes in around ninety minutes – and stopped to ask directions to Litlington. It was another fifteen minutes southeast – past gently rolling fields and the occasional farm shop. Then I turned right at a sign marked Alfriston/Litlington, and found myself entering a picture postcardy image of Elysian England. I had driven into a well-heeled fantasy, of the sort that only serious money could buy. I knew I was looking for a house called Forest Cottage. I got lucky – driving down a particularly winding road, my eyes glancing at every small house sign, I noticed the plain painted marker half buried in some undergrowth. I braked and started to negotiate the steep narrow drive.

  Halfway up this avenue, the thought struck me: what am I going to do when I get to her house? What am I going to say? I had no planned speech, no strategy or game plan. I just wanted to see Jack.

  When I reached the top of the drive, I came to a gate. I parked the car. I got out. I walked to the gate and looked up at the pleasant, two-storey farmhouse around a hundred yards away. It appeared as well maintained as the manicured grounds surrounding it. There was a newish Land Rover parked by the front door. I decided that I would simply open the gate, walk up the drive, knock on the door, and see what would happen. There was a delusional part of me that thought: all I need to do is show my face, and Tony and this woman will be so ashamed of what they’ve done, they’ll hand over Jack to me on the spot …

  Suddenly, the front door opened and there she was. A tall woman. Very elegant. Good cheekbones. Short black hair, lightly flecked with grey. Dressed in expensive casual clothes: black jeans, a black leather jacket, a designer variation on walking boots, a grey turtleneck sweater ... all of which, even from a distance, radiated money. And strapped around her neck was one of those baby slings, in which sat …

  I nearly shouted his name. I caught myself. Perhaps because I was just so stunned by the sight of this woman – this stranger — with my son slung across her chest, acting as if he was her own child.

  She was heading towards her Land Rover. Then she saw me. I didn’t know if she’d ever been shown a photograph of me – but as soon as she caught sight of me at the gate she knew. She stopped. She looked genuinely startled. There was a long, endless moment where we simply looked at each other, not knowing what to say next. Instinctively, she put her arms around Jack, then suddenly pulled them away, realizing …

  What? That she had committed the ultimate theft, the most despicable form of larceny imaginable?

  My hands gripped the gate. I wanted to run up to her and seize my son and dash back to the car and …

  But I simply couldn’t move. Maybe it was the wallop of what I was seeing, the absolute horror of watching that woman cradle my son. Or maybe it was a paralytic sort of fear, coupled with the disquieting realization that if I overstepped the boundaries here – and created a scene – I would simply be giving them further ammunition against me. Even being here, I knew, was an insane tactic … and one that might rebound on me big time. But … but... I had to know. I had to see for myself. And I
had to see Jack. And now …

  She suddenly turned away from me, heading back to the house, her gait anxious, her arms clutching Jack again.

  ‘Tony …’ I heard her shout. And I was gone. Hurrying back to the car, throwing it into reverse, making a fast U-turn, and shooting back down the drive. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, I could see Tony standing beside her, watching my car disappear.

  I drove non-stop out of Litlington and back to the main road, pulling over into a lay-by, cutting the engine, placing my head against the steering wheel, and not being able to move for a very long time.

  After around ten minutes, I forced myself to sit back up in the seat, turn the ignition key, put the car into gear, and head back towards London. I don’t remember exactly how I got there. Some basic autopilot took over. I made it back to Putney. I dropped the car back to Budget, garnering a quizzical look from the clerk behind the desk when I handed in the keys so early. An hour later, I was lying on my bed at home, having taken double the recommended dose of anti-depressants, feeling it deaden all pain, rendering me inert, inoperative for the rest of the day. That night, I also took double the dose of sleeping pills. It did the trick – comatose for eight hours, up in a fog until dawn. At which point, I started the double-dosing of anti-depressants again.

  And then it was Monday, and the phone was ringing.

  ‘It’s Ginny Ricks here,’ my lawyer said, sounding terse, preoccupied. ‘Sorry we couldn’t chat on Friday – another ghastly day in court. But just to bring you up to speed on everything – Deirdre has finished all the witness statements, which we are lodging at court this afternoon. I’ll be instructing the barrister today, and the hearing’s at the High Court tomorrow morning at ten-thirty. You know where that is, don’t you?’

  ‘Well … uh … I’m not …’

  ‘The Strand. Can’t miss it. Ask anyone. And I’ll have Deirdre positioned just outside the main entrance to spot you coming in. We’ll be outside the courtroom somewhere within the building. And I presume you have something smart, but simple to wear. A suit would be best. Black even better.’

  ‘I’ll see what … sorry, I …’

  I lost track of the sentence.

  ‘Are you all right, Sally?’ she asked, sounding a little impatient with my vagueness.

  ‘Bad night …’ I managed to say.

  ‘Sounds like a desperately bad night. And I hope you’ll ensure that you have a far better night tonight – because, though you will not be called upon to testify tomorrow, the judge will be looking you over, and should you seem somewhat out-of-it, that will definitely raise concerns. And additional concerns are about the last thing we need right now.’

  ‘I promise to be … there,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I should certainly hope so,’ she said.

  Sandy had been away all weekend with her kids at a friend’s house on the Cape – so we hadn’t spoken. Immediately she could hear the fog in my voice. Immediately she guessed that tranquillizers were being taken in excessive amounts. I tried to reassure her. I failed. She pressed to know if something further had happened to tip me into this Valley of the Dolls state. I couldn’t tell her about the weekend visit to East Sussex – and the sight of Jack in her arms. Part of it was due to the fact that, beneath my druggy haze, I felt so ashamed and humiliated about having gone down there in the first place. But I also knew that Sandy herself was still in a desperately fragile state. Her sadness and regret – the sense of loss for a man whom she had so clearly adored, even after he discarded her like a broken-down armchair – was both poignant and unnerving. And I knew that she would obsessively worry for the next twenty-four hours if I revealed the reality of my current mental state. Not, of course, that she wasn’t terrified about the outcome of tomorrow’s hearing.

  ‘You must call me the moment you’ve heard the judge’s decision. What did your lawyer tell you today?’

  ‘Not much. Just … well, we’ll see I guess.’

  ‘Sally – how many anti-depressants are you taking right now?’

  ‘The recommended dose.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Why would I …’

  I shut my eyes as yet another sentence lost its way somewhere between my brain and my mouth.

  ‘Now you’re really scaring me,’ she said.

  ‘Think, I dunno, maybe one too many earlier.’

  ‘Well, don’t take any more for the rest of the night.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You promise me?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  Of course, I popped one shortly thereafter. I didn’t need sleeping pills that night – because the extra dosage of anti-depressants packed a sucker punch. But then, at five that morning, I snapped back into consciousness, feeling toxic, feverish, ill. Like someone who had just crashed out of an extended flight in the druggy stratosphere ... which, indeed, I had.

  I sat in a hot bath for an hour, a steaming washcloth over my face for most of the time. I dried my hair, I ignored the haggard face in the mirror, I went into the kitchen and made a cafetière of coffee. I drank it all. Then I made another pot and drained it too. When I returned to the bathroom and attempted damage limitation with the use of pancake base and heavy applications of eyeliner, my hands were shaking. Toxicity, caffeine overload, terror. The most oppressive terror imaginable. Because I was about to be judged – and though I kept telling myself that Ginny Ricks knew what she was doing, I still feared the worst.

  I dressed in my best black suit, and touched up my face with a bit more pancake to mask the dark rings beneath my eyes. Then I walked to the tube. On the District Line to Temple, I fit right in with the morning rush hour crowd – I was just another suit, avoiding eye contact with my fellow passengers in true London fashion, stoically dealing with the overcrowded train, the cloying humidity, the deep indifferent silence of the citizenry en route to work. Only, unlike them, I was en route to discover whether or not I’d get to see my baby son again.

  I left the tube at Temple and walked up to The Strand. I was an hour early (I certainly couldn’t afford to be late for this event), so I sat in a coffee bar, trying to quell my nerves. I didn’t succeed. I had been warned by Ginny Ricks that my husband might not show up at the hearing (‘he’s not bound by law to be there – and can let his legal team handle everything for him’) but even the outside chance that he might make an appearance terrified me. Because I didn’t know how I’d react if brought face-to-face with him.

  At ten-fifteen, I approached the High Court and walked up the steps. A young woman – plain, bespectacled, in a black raincoat over a simple grey suit – was waiting by the entrance doors. She looked at me questioningly. I nodded.

  ‘Deirdre Pepinster,’ she said with a nod. ‘We’re this way.’

  She led us through security to a large vaulted marble hall. It was like being in a church – with high vaulted ceilings, shadowy lighting, the echo of voices, and a constant parade of human traffic. We said nothing as we walked through the hall and then down assorted corridors. This was fine by me as I was becoming increasingly nervous. After several turns, we came to a door, outside which were several benches. Ginny Ricks was already seated on one of them, in conversation with an anaemic looking man in his forties, dressed in a very grey suit.

  ‘This is Paul Halliwell, your barrister,’ Ginny Ricks said.

  He proffered his hand.

  ‘I’ve just received the witness statements this morning,’ he said, ‘but everything seems to be in order.’

  Alarm bells went off in my head.

  ‘What do you mean, you just received the statements?’ I said.

  ‘I meant to call you about this late last night,’ Ginny Ricks said. ‘The barrister I’d instructed fell ill ... so I had to find a substitute. But really, not to worry. Paul is very experienced—’

  ‘But he’s just looking at the statements now—’

  We were interrupted by the arrival of the other side. At first sight, they were li
ke an identikit version of my team: a thin, grey man; a big-boned blonde woman, exuding high maintenance – a few years older than Ginny Ricks, but very much graduates from the same ‘noblesse oblige’ school. They all seemed to know each other – though, as I quickly realized, the grey man was Tony’s solicitor, whereas the ‘to the manor born’ blonde was his barrister. I watched her watching me as she spoke with the others – the occasional cool sideways glance, during which she was sizing me up, taking the measure of me, putting a face to all that she had been told about me.

  Paul Halliwell came out and pulled me aside.

  ‘You know that this is merely an Interim Hearing, which you are not obliged to sit through, as it can be a bit stressful.’

  ‘I have to be there,’ I said, wanting to add, Unlike my husband, who’s sent others to do his dirty work for him.

  ‘Fine, fine, it’s obviously better, because the judge knows you really care about the outcome. Now, I’m just going to have a quick read of all this,’ he said, brandishing the witness statements, ‘but it does seem very straightforward. The report from the doctor at hospital is the key here. Very encouraged by your progress, and so forth. About the fact that you threatened your baby ... I presume you were tired, yes?’

  ‘I hadn’t slept in days.’

  ‘And you never in any way physically harmed your son?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘That’s fine then. The key here is that there was nothing violently aberrant in your behaviour towards your baby that would convince the court you pose a risk to the child …’

  ‘As I told Ginny Ricks …’

  On cue, she poked her head into our conversation and said, ‘I’ve just been told we’re starting in five minutes.’

  ‘Fear not,’ Paul Halliwell said. ‘It will all be fine.’

  The courtroom was a panelled Victorian room with leaded windows. The Judge had a large chair at the front. Facing him were six rows of benches. Tony’s team sat on one side of the courtroom, his barrister in the first bench, the solicitors behind him. My barrister sat in the same bench as Tony’s, but on the opposing side of the court. I sat in the second row with Ginny Ricks and Deirdre. They informed me that, at this sort of hearing, the barristers didn’t have to wear wigs and the judge wouldn’t be in robes.