“Ben’s away?”
“In Warsaw.”
Simon thought: How could he leave her? How could he do it? He asked, “This person this man when did you first see him?”
“It was three days ago, when I went shopping. Emma was with me. I thought I was imagining things. It was only by chance ... I just happened to notice this man in the supermarket, and then again when we went to lunch.”
“What did he look like?”
“That’s the thing,” she admitted unhappily, “I didn’t really get a look at him.”
“But you think it was the same man?”
“He was wearing this .. . hat.” She sketched a circle in the air over her head. “More of a cap, really. Blue, faded, sort of cotton.”
“And you saw him twice on the same day?”
“Yes.”
“Any other day?”
She clamped her lips together as if to prevent herself from saying anything too hasty. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Sometimes I’m absolutely convinced there’s someone there and then well, I think I’m just being hysterical. The truth is, I’m not sure about any of it any more.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and she tilted her head over as though she might rest it against his arm. She said bleakly, “It’s quite difficult... being here on my own.”
“I bet it is.” Saying this, he thought with fresh fury: Typical of Ben to leave her alone. Typical of his thoughtlessness.
“It’s the practical things,” she said, ‘it’s not being able to go and check the windows easily. Not being able to get upstairs if I hear something. I thought I’d be all right about that, but I’m not.”
She’d been back from the unit exactly three weeks. “Of course you’re not all right about these things,” he cried, kneeling at her side. “Nobody would be. There should be someone here with you all the time.
You shouldn’t be alone.”
“My carer comes in twice a day.”
“But that’s the day.”
She clasped a hand over her eyes.
“It’s all right,” he said, laying his fingers lightly on her arm.
“You’re safe now.”
“It’s not just that, it’s .. .”
He waited uncertainly. Eventually he asked, “There’s something else?”
She bit her lip.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Can’t.”
He waited again before saying firmly, “Well, try to forget about everything now. Just think about getting some sleep. Listen, why I don’t I stay downstairs tonight?” Realising that this might be where she herself slept, he added swiftly, “Or wherever you think I’d make the best guard dog.” He made a feeble joke of it. “Across the front doormat?”
Her hand came away from her face. “I couldn’t ask you to ... I couldn’t.. .” But her relief was transparent. “I phoned Daddy, you see, but I forgot he’d gone to France. And Emma -she was out. And .. .” She fixed him with her extraordinary oval eyes. “You really wouldn’t mind?”
“It’d be an honour,” he said solemnly, feeling a sharp thrill of responsibility and pride. His offer was rewarded by a soft murmur of thanks and the vestige of a smile.
“We’ll leave everything else till tomorrow. Sort it all out then. The police and so on.”
The police?”
“We have to tell them about this man, Catherine.”
She looked unhappy again. “But I’m not sure. I’m not sure it was the same man.”
“We should at least give them a description.”
“But what would I say?”
“Well, the man last night, for example was he tall, medium, short?”
She was already shaking her head. “It was so dark .. .”
“What about the man in the blue cap what sort of height was he?”
She thought about this for some time. “It’s no good ... I just don’t remember. So you see what could I tell them?”
“Well, one way and another, you can’t stay here alone, that’s for sure.”
“I suppose not.”
“I really don’t think it’s safe to stay here. I really don’t!”
But she closed her eyes, beyond discussion. She wanted to sleep upstairs so he carried her there. She was light in his arms. When her hair brushed his cheek it was soft and sweet-smelling, and he drew in its scent as though it might purify him of that other hair in Chigwell. He set up the wheelchair for her and turned on a couple of lights, then, taking the bedding she gave him, bade her a rather formal goodnight.
He took keys and went to re-park the car, calling up to tell her when he left and when he returned. He checked the locks twice, rattling them loudly so she should hear the sound and be reassured. He called a last goodnight, softly, and felt a thrill when she responded. The sofa was comfortable enough, but it was an hour before he slept, and then his night was broken by racing thoughts and anguished dreams. He didn’t sleep deeply until very late, and then woke sluggishly long after he’d meant to, at eight.
He washed as best he could at the basin in the downstairs cloakroom before going into the hall and listening for Catherine. Hearing a muffled sound, he called up to her.
“In the study,” she replied.
The study was a converted bedroom with a small red sofa, a slatted wooden blind at the window, and two desks set against adjoining walls, Ben’s minimal chrome, Catherine’s a battered Victorian antique. In the corner was a round table laden with boxes, books and, perched on the top, one of the hats from Ben’s collection of exotic head wear an embroidered cap, Indian or Tibetan. The walls were decorated with Ben’s school photographs and holiday snaps, but most of all with the hats, everything from solar to pees and helmets to fedoras and deerstalkers, with, in pride of place, a Foreign Legion kepi, complete with neck flap.
He noted the evidence of Ben’s struggle with the intruder, the deep gouge down one side of the Victorian desk, the splintered work top still unrepaired, while a new chair had appeared in place of the one reduced to matchwood. He knew that many of the pictures had new glass in them because he had collected them up himself and taken them to the framers in the first days after the incident.
Catherine was bent over her desk, sorting through a large pile of papers. “Oh, I’m glad you’re here,” she said in a strange intense voice, hardly glancing at him. “Could you reach something for me, please?” Indicating a shelf above her head, she directed him to a ring file that was marked “Clients Corr’. The moment he handed it to her she started leafing through it avidly, snapping the pages across.
He waited uncertainly, casting an eye over Ben’s desk, which was also covered in a chaotic pile of papers. “Would you like tea or coffee?” he asked after a time.
And still she was immersed in her search. “It’s here somewhere ... I just can’t remember which .. .”
“Can I help?”
“I’m looking for a letter.”
“Who from?”
“I don’t know. But it would have been somewhere around November, December. Though it might have been an order .. . God, yes,” she sighed, ‘it could have been an order.”
“What am I looking for?”
“What? Oh, a phone number pencilled on the top of something.”
It was hard to know where to start but he began a desultory shuffle through the letters and bills on the desk.
“No,” Catherine announced, riffling quickly through the file once again. “It’s not here. Could you reach me the suppliers file, please?”
When she’d started on this file he resumed his search of the desk and couldn’t help noticing that there were quite a number of bills in red, as well as a last notice from the electricity company and a threatening letter from the council.
Catherine gave a soft gasp. “Here it is,” she whispered.
He looked over her shoulder and saw a letter from a garden furniture company. Across the top was a number scribbled in pencil. Now that she’d found it, however,
all the energy seemed to drain out of her, and she stared at it gloomily.
Simon pulled up a chair and waited in silence.
“It takes me hours to get up stairs on my own,” she said. “On my bum. And then of course once I’m here I’m lost without my sticks or the wheelchair. So I haven’t really had the chance to look before now. And perhaps .. . I’ve been putting it off.”
She looked at him directly at last. Her eyes were dull with tiredness and he guessed she hadn’t slept much either. “This,” she said, lifting the sheet of paper up like an exhibit, ‘is what the police wanted to know about. This is the number of the nuisance caller.” She dropped the paper onto the desk from thfe tips of her fingers as though it were faintly unclean and began to recount grimly, “One night when I was up here doing the accounts there was a call. I knew who it was straight away because the calls were always the same. Silence but with that strong feeling there was someone there. And quite often, breathing ...
I can’t really describe it. It was only later that I realised the call
had come through on the ordinary phone, not the mobile. They’d always
come through on the mobile before. It was just chance that no one else
rang up in the meantime. So I
dialled 1471, thinking I’d get one of those ‘number not available’ messages. But no this was what I got.”
He reached for the letter and saw a central London number with an exchange that he didn’t recognise. “Did you try the number?”
She propped her head on her hand and closed her eyes for a long moment. “No,” she murmured. “No ... I thought about it but then I decided I didn’t terribly want to find out who was at the other end.” She said heavily, “I was pretty sure it was a woman, you see.” She cast him a defiant look that told him it shouldn’t be too difficult to work out the rest. Then, slowly: “But now I do want to know. I want to know who it is.”
In the silence that followed he groped for the appropriate thing to say, and could think of nothing. It would have been equally false to protest disbelief at the idea of Ben’s infidelity as to sympathise. He felt his eye twitch and rubbed a hand over his forehead to forestall it. Then a memory came back to him in a rush. “But wasn’t it a man} I thought you said it was a man?”
“That’s what I said, yes. I didn’t want them delving into our private life.”
“But that’s what you told Emma.”
“Oh, she got it wrong initially she always gets things wrong and then I didn’t bother to put her right. By that time, I’d realised, you see. And I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You’re sure it was a woman?”
“Oh, yes.”
He looked down at the scribbled figures. “Would you like me to give the number a try?”
“Would you?” In her gaze there was a gleam of fear, but also determination.
He reached across the desk for the phone and, pausing to rehearse some sort of speech, tapped in the number.
It rang, and continued to ring. After a full minute, he raised his eyebrows and she signalled for him to give up.
“Oh, well,” she said.
“Do you want me to find out who the number belongs to?”
“Can you do that?”
“I’ll find a way.”
She thought about it, then shot him a grateful look. “If you would.”
He stood up. “Now, how about some breakfast?” he suggested busily, starting to plan all the other things he would do for her this morning, revelling in his new role as her carer.
She didn’t seem to have heard. She was gazing past him in an unfocused way, fixed on some distant thought. “I’m leaving,” she murmured softly.
He echoed, “Leaving?”
“Leaving here. Going to live somewhere else for a while.”
“I have to say I think that’s very sensible. You can’t stay here alone.”
“What?” She frowned at him as if he had missed the point. “No, I want to live on my own for a while. Somewhere else. I want to leave Ben.” She looked away to the window.
He sat down again, slowly. “Because of this woman?”
She said in the same dreamlike murmur, “I knew he wasn’t going to be the easiest man to live with. I knew that I was going to have to be the one to make it work.” She paused and for a time he thought she wasn’t going to go on. “It wasn’t that he wasn’t keen to try he was. Still is, in a way. He loves the idea of marriage. That’s the trouble, really he idealises it, he sees it as something separate, which it isn’t it’s just a relationship with a label. You still have to get through all the day-to-day things. He didn’t want to see the difficulties, he didn’t want to think of it as anything but perfect, special, sort of apart.” She took a long breath. For an instant she focused on him before resuming her scrutiny of the window. “I knew he’d be away a lot. I knew he’d look at other women. I knew that eventually the practicalities of marriage would wear him down and he’d feel disappointed in it and that he’d be unfaithful. What I didn’t expect was for it to happen quite so quickly. I thought it would take years and years, a couple of children, boredom, the usual things. And then I imagined I’d probably take a deep breath and decide to live with it, pretend it wasn’t happening, do what the smart women do, rise above it. In one way, I knew it was bad to be thinking like that, right at the start of our marriage, but I told myself it was realistic, it was practical, it was the price of loving someone .. . complicated. What I hadn’t allowed for was .. .” She trailed off. She grew so still that she might have been in a trance. “What I hadn’t allowed for’, she said at last with an effort, ‘was to find that I was no longer loved. I think almost anything’s bearable if you feel you’re loved. Oh, he does all the practical things, he’s there for me, he declares he’ll never leave me, but it’s like a mantra, something he keeps repeating to make himself believe it. It’s like a grim act of faith for him, a penance. The truth is .. .” She swallowed suddenly, a tremor of emotion filled her eyes. “The truth is he doesn’t love me any more. Not as I am now, anyway. This new person wasn’t part of the deal. This new person is too .. . different.” She gave a smile that shocked him, it was so bitter. “Oh, his intentions are good, he tries to love me. But the fact is he can’t.” She inhaled sharply. “And that’s all there is to it.”
Simon could hardly breathe for the ache in his heart. Never had he felt such tenderness, such a wish to protect and defend another human being.
Catherine absent-mindedly touched the papers on the desk. “Just to add to everything else, we’re broke. Not just a little broke either horrendously terrifyingly broke. Normally .. . well, I’d stay and see it through. I’d wait till we’d sorted ourselves out. But’ the fire leapt into her face ‘he’s been spending money on this or another person. That’s what really hurts! That’s what I can’t take! We’ve remortgaged the house, we’ve risked everything and he’s been taking some woman to expensive restaurants.” Grabbing a piece of paper off the desk, she brandished it furiously. “One of those bloody places in the food guide with Michelin stars, for God’s sake! Two hundred and fifty fucking quid!”
Simon concealed an uneasy shiver. His admiration was threatened by dismay. It offended him to see Catherine in such a state of anger. Her dignity had seemed unshakeable, her courage fierce enough to withstand anything; it unsettled him to see her stripped of the very qualities that had always set her apart.
“So ... I’m leaving today,” she announced in an uneven voice.
“But where will you go?”
“A friend’s place.”
“Emma’s?”
“No. Somewhere else. Somewhere secret.”
Immediately he saw a hidden place that only the two of them would know about, a place of clandestine visits and secret phone calls, where he would care for her. His spirits soared again, and he said passionately, “Somewhere you’ll be safe.”
“Yes.”
“Somewhere no one can follow you.”
“Somewhere Ben can’t find me and talk me into coming back,” she said.
“I know myself too well, you see. I’d weaken. And I mustn’t do that. I must have time on my own. I must have time to think. And to work again. I must have my work. It’s hopeless here!” She was getting upset again. “I can’t get to my desk unless Ben’s here to carry me up or I spend hours bumming my way up on my own. And I hate it downstairs, I hate it! I can’t work down there!”
Again he was disconcerted by her fretfulness, which was somehow unworthy of her.
“So where is this place?” he asked.
“Oh ... in the middle of town.”
“Is it suitable? Will you be able to manage there?”
“I’ll manage,” she said with a touch of bravado.
“When do you want to go? I’ll drive you.”
“No, no. You’ve done enough. No ... And I’ve so much to sort out before I leave.” She grimaced at the pile of papers.
“Let me do that,” he said. “Sort it all out.”
“Thanks, but it’s all bills. Though God only knows how I’m going to pay them.”
That’s what I mean. I’ll do it.”
She looked slightly shocked at the idea; money was an intimacy too far.
“No. Thanks, but no.”
He didn’t argue. “I’ll wait downstairs then. Until you’re ready to leave.”
She avoided his eye. “Emma’s going to take me,” she blurted. “It’s best that no one knows where I’m going.”
His heart lurched painfully. The familiar coldness came over him. “I wouldn’t tell anyone,” he said stiffly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t. But I couldn’t have you knowing and not Ben it wouldn’t be right.”
“Well, Emma’s not going to keep the secret long, is she?” He tried to suppress the peevishness in his voice. “Ben’ll soon wheedle it out of her.”
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