‘Make up for it now,’ Shipley said.
‘Any way I can,’ Novak said.
He’d been asked, he told her, the previous summer, by a regular client of his to contact Lynne Bolsover on his behalf and to offer his assistance if she wanted it.
‘What kind of assistance?’ Shipley asked.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Novak said.
‘This is a murder enquiry, Mr Novak.’
‘I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.’ He paused: ‘My client is a solicitor, but I don’t know if this was official business. All I can tell you is that I did contact the lady back then, arranged to meet her in Asda in Southgate – it’s a big barn of a place, very anonymous, which was how she wanted it.’
‘And?’
‘And very little,’ Novak said. ‘I told her I understood she had some problems and that if she wanted any assistance, my client thought he might be able to help her. She was very jittery about us being seen together – I remember her glancing around before she’d even take my card. She called a few days later, said that even if she did want help, she had no money for fees. I said that as far as I knew, that wouldn’t be an issue. Then, after a moment, she said that if she were to talk to my client, it was vital her husband never find out.’
Shipley waited a second. ‘And?’ she said again.
‘I told her that was understood and gave her my client’s number. So far as I know, she did meet with him once, but nothing more came of it.’ Novak sipped his water, gazed out of the window for a second, then back at Shipley. ‘I remember her as seeming a nice, very nervous person, with a big bruise that she’d tried to cover with make-up, on the left side of her face and neck.’
‘Did you ask her about it?’
‘No.’
‘So what kind of solicitor’s this client of yours? Divorce lawyer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he have a name?’
Novak smiled. ‘Robin Allbeury.’ He paused. ‘I called him before you got here. He’s in Brussels right now, but he said to tell you whatever I could and that he’ll be glad to answer any questions himself when he gets back.’
‘When’s that?’ Irritation kicked in.
‘End of the week.’ Novak preempted her next question. ‘He said he’d appreciate your waiting till then, because he might need to refer to his notes.’
‘Does Mr Allbeury make a habit of offering unofficial “help” to strangers in trouble? Or is it only to women?’
Mike Novak smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, he does.’
Chapter Eleven
Lizzie had spent the rest of the night – after Christopher had bitten and half-choked her in the name of sexual pleasure – sleepless, fully dressed in a tracksuit lying on the bed, debating whether or not to leave, unsure if he’d gone to his dressing room and left the flat, or if he was waiting for her, and neither the prospect of that kind of encounter, nor of driving aimlessly around or maybe checking into a hotel, had appealed to her.
She certainly couldn’t have driven to Marlow at that hour without risking questions from the children or Gilly.
At seven, she’d found him in the kitchen, wearing navy cords and a white T-shirt, a cafetière and mug on the table, unread folded newspapers beside them. He’d risen as she’d come in, had offered her coffee, which she had refused, before filling the jug kettle at the sink to make her own.
Say something.
She’d returned the kettle to its base and switched it on.
Now.
‘I can’t live with this.’
Christopher sat down. ‘Oh, God.’
‘You’ve given me no choice,’ Lizzie said.
‘Oh, God.’ His eyes filled.
‘You can “oh, God” me all you like.’ She felt strengthened by his weakness. ‘And you can cry your eyes out, but it won’t change what you did to me.’
‘What did I do?’ He took off his spectacles, dropped them on the table, his eyes now aghast. ‘Lizzie, darling, what did I do to you?’
‘You know exactly what you did.’
‘No.’ He shook his head, gripped the edge of the table with both hands. ‘No.’
Lizzie’s fear altered, grew to different levels, for the children as well as herself, and she sat down opposite him. ‘Are you claiming not to remember what you did to me less than six hours ago?’
He waited before answering. ‘Not exactly.’
‘So you do remember?’ Disgust filled her, and she began to rise.
‘No, wait, Lizzie. Please. You don’t understand.’
‘No,’ she had agreed. ‘I don’t.’
‘I don’t always, entirely, know what happens when I feel that way.’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t mean black-outs, just. . . details.’
‘Like putting your hand around my neck and—’
‘But I stopped.’ Christopher fumbled with his spectacles, put them on again.
‘Only after I threatened to call the police.’ Lizzie felt sick at the memory. ‘It was assault, Christopher. You hurt me, and you frightened me.’
‘What can I say,’ he said helplessly, ‘except that I’m truly sorry?’
‘Sorry won’t cut it,’ she said, ‘not this time.’ She took a breath. ‘Nor will lying about not remembering details.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said again. ‘How can you? And you can’t begin to understand that, in a way, my coming to you like that is a kind of compliment.’
‘Compliment?’ Outrage made Lizzie feel quite dizzy. ‘You must be mad.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard to see what I mean. I don’t suppose you’ll accept it even after I try to explain.’
Lizzie had ceased to speak then, had sat there silently at their kitchen table, saved just a little, she decided later, by a sense of being somehow outside herself, as if none of it was entirely real.
It was a compliment, Christopher said, because it meant that at long last he was doing what he had always wanted to do: trusting her with his deepest secrets.
‘I thought, you see,’ he said, ‘that I might never be able to do that, that I had no alternative but to keep on taking that side of myself – those needs – to strangers.’
‘Strangers?’ Lizzie echoed softly.
‘Prostitutes.’ He saw the devastation in her face. ‘Lizzie, it was just as repugnant to me.’
‘I doubt that very much.’ Her voice shook.
‘How could you imagine otherwise?’
‘I don’t want to imagine it at all.’
Christopher reached across to try and take her hand, but she snatched it away, staring at him as if she’d never really seen him before.
‘I’ve tried so hard,’ he said, ‘ever since I first met you, done everything in my power to help make your life as happy and fulfilled as possible.’ He shrugged, as if what he was telling her was normal, commonplace. ‘I suppose I’ve just begun thinking that maybe you might be willing to try and do the same for me.’
‘How?’ Suddenly Lizzie sounded almost shrill. ‘By fulfilling these needs of yours? By taking the place of these other poor bloody women, these strangers?’
‘I made a mistake,’ Christopher said, bleakly. ‘A terrible mistake.’
‘And that’s supposed to stop me leaving you?’
‘Leaving me?’ He was horrified. ‘You can’t leave me, Lizzie.’
‘I can’t stay with you. I can’t live with a man so out of control he can assault me when the need strikes him. If it weren’t so appalling, I think I’d laugh.’
‘Please don’t laugh at me, Lizzie.’ Christopher was on his feet again, beseeching her. ‘Or rather, do laugh at me, do whatever you feel like. Just don’t talk about leaving me.’
‘Why would I stay? How can I stay?’
‘To help your husband,’ he said. ‘The father of your children.’
He had sat down again, had told her that he loved them all utterly and completely, that they were everything to him. He said that
he couldn’t face life without her, and when she told him, in disgust, that he was being pathetic, he admitted that he supposed he was exactly that, that he was both ridiculous and very weak.
‘That’s a hard thing for a man like myself to admit, Lizzie.’
She didn’t speak.
‘I’ve had these needs,’ Christopher had gone on, ‘for more years than I can remember. I’ve tried stopping, believe me, but that never lasts for long.’ He’d paused. ‘It’s a form of addiction.’
‘Is that a diagnosis?’ Lizzie asked wryly.
‘It is.’
‘You’ve seen someone about it?’ She was very cool.
‘Once,’ he answered. ‘A long time ago.’
‘Why only once?’
‘It was too humiliating for me.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘How could you? All the years of guilt and shame, trying to find ways to hide it, hide from it so that I could carry on with the rest of my life – the worthwhile part. I told myself, when it all got too much, that at least on balance the good I was doing might outweigh my weakness.’
‘And did you believe that?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he replied. ‘I do believe that, on the whole, Lizzie, I am – if not a good man – not a bad one either.’ He paused. ‘I think I’m a good father – at least I hope I am.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course you are.’
She had realized later that she had still been in a state of shock at that point, that, as she’d sat there listening to him that morning, a part of her had been horribly fascinated by the self-abasement of a man who’d always seemed so controlled and dignified.
‘I need you, Lizzie,’ he told her. ‘I need you so badly. If I still have you, I can go on with my work, caring for my patients, helping the charity.’
‘And if I leave you, all that stops? Is that what you’d have me believe?’
‘If you leave me,’ Christopher answered quietly, ‘then yes, I do think all the rest might have to stop.’ He paused. ‘I honestly don’t think I could go on without you. Believe me or don’t, but it’s the truth.’
She had said nothing for a long time.
‘If I stay,’ she said at last, ‘will you agree to be treated?’
‘Anything.’
‘I don’t want anything,’ Lizzie had said quite violently. ‘I want your word that you will seek treatment – now, right away – and that you will never, ever abuse me or any other woman in any way again. Because otherwise, I shall most certainly leave you and take our sons, and nothing you say or do will stop me.’
She stopped, and he waited for a moment.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘Yes. That’s all.’
‘You have my word,’ he said.
She stood up at last, her legs weak, looked down at him. ‘I’m doing this for Edward and Jack,’ she said. ‘Giving you this chance. Because you’re right about that, at least. You are – have been – a good father.’
‘Thank you.’ Christopher reached out and caught her hand, held it, his own fingers cold. ‘You won’t regret it.’
‘I hope not.’ Lizzie had paused. ‘Now please let go of me.’
He let her hand go. ‘I thought—’
‘I don’t want you touching me,’ she said. ‘Not when we’re alone. Not till I know I can trust you again. Which may never happen, Christopher.’
A little of the gratitude had left his eyes then, pushed out by an unmistakable tinge of resentment. ‘I didn’t know you had such a hard side, Lizzie.’
‘Then apparently,’ she had said, ‘neither of us has ever known the other as well as we thought we did.’
When Lizzie had realized, soon after, that she was pregnant again, she had done her best to try to contemplate termination, but had found it simply impossible.
Another brother, or a sister, for Edward and Jack.
Joy had kicked in, ousting dismay.
And so the marriage had gone on, Lizzie still wary of Christopher, grieving for the end of her trust in him but relieved that he at least seemed, judging by his restraint with her, to be doing as she had asked. She asked him from time to time if he was still receiving treatment, and, when he said that he was being counselled, asked no more, for she had no wish to know more, and she supposed it might be healthier for what was left of their marriage if she could leave him at least a vestige of self-respect.
And she had her boys and her unborn child to focus on.
Sophie had come into their world the following spring. A dainty, sweet-tempered daughter, golden-haired with dark-blue eyes, born into the outward ideal that was the Wade family. Christopher had been ecstatic, had continued – Lizzie had never had the slightest doubt that this side of him was utterly genuine – to be a loving, giving, well-balanced father.
That September, six months after Sophie’s birth, having obtained a prescription from Dr Hilda Kapur, their GP in Marlow, for the Pill, Lizzie had let Christopher make love to her again. It was very tentative and almost sad, in view of what they had shared in her ignorant, more innocent past, but Christopher seemed so glad of the breakthrough, so grateful and filled with optimism that Lizzie decided that forgiveness had been the right thing, for all their sakes, that happiness, albeit of a diluted kind, might once again be in reach.
And then, five months later, the Wade family’s world fell apart.
Chapter Twelve
The promise of self-control Tony Patston had made to Joanne after Irina’s first birthday had proven empty. On the contrary, he’d begun drinking more, his growing alcohol dependence equating, so far as he was concerned, with what he had begun to see as the source of all his troubles: the little cuckoo in his semi-detached nest. Without drink, Tony felt increasingly tetchy, unable to cope with his money problems and with the cuckoo’s incessant squawking; with a few pints sunk, he felt better, more capable of magnanimity, but incapable of stopping at those few, and soon after that the better feelings drained away and the reddening mists of anger began to overwhelm him.
He hit the child regularly. ‘Just a smack’, he maintained. ‘Not with a belt, like my dad used on me.’
Small mercy so far as Irina and her mother were concerned. The sound and sight of his slaps against Irina’s skin made Joanne’s stomach clench with rage, made her want to lash out at him, screaming out her feelings, but on the two occasions she had done that, Tony had turned back to the child and actually punched her.
‘Your punishment,’ he told his wife as Irina wailed.
‘You bastard,’ Joanne wept. ‘You filthy bastard.’
He’d raised his right hand. ‘Want me to give her another one?’
‘No!’ she’d screamed. ‘If you need to hit someone, for God’s sake hit me!’
Tony had dropped his hand. ‘I don’t want to hit you,’ he had said.
Joanne had longed to report him, or at least tell someone, either her mum or Nicki next door, but she knew she couldn’t, knew as well as Tony that she would never, could never, do that, because then the truth would come out and they would take her little girl away.
Maybe, she wondered sometimes, that might be better for Irina.
No, she answered herself each time, it would not, because Irina loved her, because she was her mother.
Not her real mother.
Real enough, she told the voice in her head, fiercely. Real enough to love her, passionately, desperately.
Enough for both parents.
It was not enough. Far too much of Irina’s development between the ages of one and three had been influenced by tension, fear and pain. Joanne knew it, shared it, but felt ever more helpless and inadequate as she observed Irina reverting, in one way, to how she had been when she’d first come to them.
Soon after her second birthday, she had stopped crying.
‘Bloody hell,’ Tony said, after three or so evenings of peace. ‘This is great.’
‘Yes,�
� Joanne had said quietly.
‘About fucking time,’ he’d added.
Joanne had said nothing after that, because the silence was making her feel sick, because she realized what had created it. Like an animal submitting to a whip, Irina, feisty little girl that she had been, had finally learned that it was better, infinitely less painful, not to cry.
‘Good, strong character,’ Joanne remembered Dr Mellor saying.
She’d wondered, shuddering, what the paediatrician might say now.
The peace hadn’t lasted. Irina’s new introversion and lack of responsiveness had begun to irk Tony almost as much as the crying had.
‘All I asked for was a loving child,’ he had told Joanne.
‘She is loving,’ Joanne had said, fearfully.
‘With you, not me.’
‘Maybe if you—’ She stopped.
‘What? Maybe if I what, Joanne?’
‘Nothing,’ she’d said, quietly. ‘I know you try.’
‘Bloody right, I try,’ Tony had said. ‘I sweat blood for her, and what do I get for it – an ungrateful kid who hates my guts.’
‘She doesn’t hate you,’ Joanne had protested. ‘You wanted her quiet, so that’s what she’s given you.’
And Tony, as usual, had gone to the pub.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack’s tendency to stumble had been sufficiently apparent, when he was only two, for Lizzie to have mentioned it to Dr Anna Mellor during his annual check-up, but the paediatrician – married to Peter Szell, a cardiologist and a close friend of Christopher’s – had been reassuring, had pointed out, after her examination, that falling was perfectly usual in new walkers.
Lizzie had put it, if not completely out of her mind, at least to the back.
‘He’s so gorgeous,’ grandmother Angela had said, everyone had said, for Jack, with his beautiful grey eyes and golden hair and happy disposition, was decidedly gorgeous.
Edward adored his little brother, but teased him frequently as they grew.
‘You’re so slow,’ he complained when they played together.
‘He’s only little,’ Christopher had reminded him. ‘You have to be patient.’
‘I am,’ Edward had said, ‘but he’s so clumsy.’
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