What Alice Knew

by T. A. Cotterell

He’d stayed late at the party?

  Unlikely bordering on inconceivable, given he was dog-tired and Nell was home alone. Ed never lingered at parties, particularly those filled with junior doctors. He knew they liked to let off steam, which is rather harder to do when your boss is across the room nursing a glass of fizzy water.

  He’d been in a crash?

  Pete’s apartment was somewhere by the river. It would only take five minutes to drive home, half an hour tops if you walked, and you can’t crash on that road, it’s practically a straight line. Besides, if he had, the police or a hospital would have been in touch by now.

  Heart attack?

  At forty-six? A fit, virtually teetotal, never-smoked, tennis-playing forty-six? It would have been a cruel fate if he had. Anyway, again, surely someone would have been in touch?

  Fallen for another woman?

  I was more likely to sleep with another woman.

  Drunk too much and was weaving home right now?

  We are talking about the same Edward Sheahan?

  I woke with a start, instantly remembering, and reached across the bed to feel for Ed. It was empty. Four forty-seven. There was no chance of getting back to sleep. Why hadn’t he come home? I felt for my mobile on the bedside table and switched it on. There was one message. I jabbed at the message icon and the text sprang into life. It was from Vodafone, telling me – oh, who cares what it was telling me? There was nothing Vodafone could tell me that I wanted or needed to hear. I slumped back on the pillows, my heart pounding as if I’d run a marathon rather than simply woken in the night, head spinning with a single question.

  He must have been called out to an emergency home delivery – but after a thirty-six-hour shift? Maybe he was the only one still sober at Pete’s party when the call came? But why hadn’t he texted? It wasn’t possible to be anywhere in the western world for twenty-four hours without access to a phone, let alone in a city in the south of England.

  I decided that if he wasn’t back by nine I would call Pete. That was as early as I reasonably could, the morning after his party. If that didn’t throw anything up I would ring St Anthony’s. It wasn’t ideal. Pete’s discretion was assured, but St Anthony’s? A provincial town is the Aussie outback when it comes to the bushfire of gossip and nowhere is as tinder-dry as a hospital, where doctors and nurses put in long hours, mainly on the patients but sometimes on each other. You can’t blame them, given the proximity, the pressure, the tension, the shared experience. Who else knows what it’s like to tend to a car-crash amputee as they wake from the operation or spend a year watching a cherubic six-year-old who doesn’t understand what is happening to him die of a brain tumour? Maybe the real surprise is that they’re not all at it round the clock. Maybe they are? I lay back on my pillow and the demons swirled in the darkness.

  Eventually I switched on the lamp. I wasn’t up to reading fiction, or poetry, or anything that required brain engagement, so I picked out from the bedside table the book of Pierre Bonnard paintings that Ed had given to me for my birthday. I tried again to decipher his inscription on the title page but Ed’s handwriting was worse than Guy Fawkes’ after he was tortured.

  Bonnard painted his wife Marthe, a miserable shrew by all accounts, 385 times, and continued even after she died. As an unbending act of love his devotion to painting Marthe always seemed to me to be, if in a lower key, on a par with the great ones: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Bonnie and Clyde. So I lay in bed leafing listlessly through the pages and looking at the paintings of Marthe-not-Marthe and found myself wondering: if Ed didn’t return, would I be able to pull things together again?

  Edward Sheahan was my opposite and we were instantly attracted. He came from a humble background. I don’t mean that snobbishly, because I loathe snobbery. Old money was new money once and all that. I mean humble intellectually, educationally. Not that you would have known. Through sheer hard work and his extraordinary talent, Ed had become a celebrated obstetrician, a citizen of the world, in demand, first-class travel, top-dollar conferences, flashy hotels, all that jazzmatazz, but his dad was a postman and his mum a school dinner lady. They were a sweet old couple who’d had Ed late in life – they were already nudging their seventies when I met him – and lived in a tiny bookless house in that no man’s land where South London blurs into Surrey.

  By comparison, my upbringing – well-off, intellectually curious, Cambridge – was a shiny bauble. Not that it matters. It didn’t exactly make us happy. I don’t want to sound like Holden Caulfield but I hate all that class stuff, I really do, especially when it’s snobbery kidding itself that it’s talent. Who cares if your maternal grandfather was a direct descendant of Charlemagne? It’s what ends up on your own canvas that counts.

  Ed was totally unfazed by the difference in our upbringings. He was totally unfazed by anything beyond his work and, oh, it was so refreshing. Having read English at university I was outside the trendy Goldsmith’s/YBA scene which dominated (or paralysed, whichever you prefer) art in the late 1990s. It was considered antediluvian to want to paint real people, to want to try to understand humanity and to commit it to canvas. I might as well have joined the tax office. But I knew what I wanted and I was prepared to work like a longshoreman to get there, and so was Ed. I found his absolute belief in what he wanted to do and his refusal to compromise a hugely powerful aphrodisiac.

  Meeting Ed was like entering a whole new world, one pregnant with possibility. He seemed so real compared to the people I had mixed with at school and university, where everyone was obsessed by the witty put-down and who knew who. His bolted-to-the-ground common sense was just what I needed. He was calm and rational and his wry humour made me laugh out loud. He had this solidity which made me feel everything I had done up to that moment was like a piece of Conceptual Art, one which looked clever and sounded interesting but which had nothing tangible to hold on to. I would prefer to sit in a toll booth on a busy bridge than to be a conceptual artist.

  Ed Sheahan was obsessed by obstetrics. Other than playing guitar badly and hitting a tennis ball as hard and as flat as he could, obstetrics was what he did. If he ever had spare time we would head out to Chiswick and walk by the river. We talked about everything – ambitions, families, politics, the past and the future – and refused to agree about which was more important, medicine or art, giving life or making life worth living. He said art was an adornment, not a necessity. I said babies had been born without obstetricians for thousands of years. He said that’s why so many died. I said he was responsible for over-population and insufficient resources. He said, I said. We argued, we laughed, we agreed, we disagreed. We were together.

  He didn’t sleep with me because I had cheese-wire cheekbones and a Camden loft. He didn’t sleep with me because I knew the difference between Duchamp and De Stijl, or because I painted bowls of apples you could imagine crunching into and tasting the juice when you did. In the beginning – damn him – he barely slept with me at all. He was too knackered by his hundred-hour weeks and wretched medical exams.

  I only got back to sleep as a sheet-metal dawn crept between the curtains and didn’t wake until after nine, still exhausted after the four-hour drive, the broken night, a shadow of fear stretching across the empty bed. I reached for my mobile. No missed calls, no messages. I speed-dialled Ed but again there was the irritating click and his voice, deep and reassuring, saying, ‘You have reached the mobile of Edward Sheahan …’ I heard him out and left another message, trying not to sound too concerned. I wrote another text – ‘darling, where r u? call me xx’.

  I rang Pete before I got up. I suspected there would be no answer but he picked up on the second ring. I apologized for calling so early after his party but he said he’d been clearing up for an hour and he sounded cheerful enough to be telling the truth. Pete was confident and polite. He knew where he was heading and that Ed could help him get there. I asked my question.

  ‘Ed?’ My hope died on his tone. It was too quizzical. ‘What do you
mean?’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t come home and he’s not answering his phone. I was just wondering if you knew where he might be.’

  ‘No. I’m afraid I don’t.’ His voice was businesslike but with the perfect hint of concern, enough to empathize, not enough to frighten. Doctors deal with the world as they find it. They work in the grain of its imperfections. ‘To be honest, I haven’t been around much. I was on a course at Guy’s last week and had yesterday off to prepare for the party. We talked a bit at the party but not about work or that sort of thing. Have you tried St Anthony’s?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m about to. I thought he might have been, well, you know, called out from the party or …’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Did he stay late?’

  ‘Um, yes, he did actually, surprisingly late. He seemed to be having a very good time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him have a drink before, let alone several.’

  ‘He was drinking?’

  ‘Yes, he was. Not like Ed at all, I know. In fact he was flying.’

  ‘Great.’

  I tried, perhaps not entirely convincingly, to sound positive. No one needs to know their husband switches from teetotal medic to all-in party animal the moment they’re not around. Pete gave a little cough.

  ‘Obviously I’m not suggesting that when the cat’s away …’

  Ed had always said that not only did Pete have all the clinical skills, he was also as smooth as ivory.

  ‘Of course.’ I matched his lightness of tone. I meant it too. The last time Ed looked at another woman was the day before he met me.

  ‘I’m not sure what time he went. I didn’t see him leave but he wasn’t there at the death. Last I saw he was talking to a girl who’s an art student down here, Araminta Lyall, and a man who’s a picture dealer in London. It all looked quite involved. Do you want me to do some digging?’

  ‘Um, no, not yet, it’s fine. There’s bound to be some perfectly simple explanation.’

  ‘OK, well, whatever. I’m sure there is. Just let me know if you want me to.’

  ‘Thank you. Oh and well done on your exams. You must be delighted.’

  He was, but typically he was far too sensitive to be triumphant when I was stressed. He brushed it off and moments later he was gone. I dialled St Anthony’s. A receptionist with a warm Dublin lilt answered. No, as far as she was aware there had been no sign of or word from Ed since he left yesterday evening, sometime after seven.

  As we signed off my eye caught a photograph of Arthur on holiday in Spain when he was six. He was grinning malevolently, lolling in a plastic canoe, all skinny legs and arms, sharp angles, like an insect. Beads of water glittered on his lightly tanned skin. He had leapt in it as Nell crouched at the poolside, lining it up for sunbathing. Little did he know – and it didn’t show in the photograph – Ed was underwater behind him, about to surface and tip him out, turning Nell’s out-of-shot rage into the triumphant cackle of justice. Where was Ed now? Was he about to surface? Nine thirty-five. I would call the police in two and a half hours. I lay back on his side of the bed and watched the slanted light move across the ceiling.

  When someone disappears unexpectedly you can’t help the most outlandish possibilities entering your head. As I hopped out of bed it occurred to me that maybe Ed had for some reason gone straight from the party on one of his trips, either to a medical conference or to do pro bono work in the Third World. But if he had, why hadn’t he told me? Could I have forgotten? I do have history. I once worked through a dinner party having spoken to Ed at seven and said I would finish a corner of a painting and meet him there. The next time I looked up from the easel it was midnight and he was standing in the doorway of my studio. Could that have happened again? I had been working ferociously hard for the last three weeks, racking up sixteen-hour days in my studio as I touched up Jean-Dominique Laborde for the BP Portrait Award (Monsieur Laborde having unhelpfully cut short his Paris sitting to fly to Singapore), completed my still life Peach, Knife, Dead Rose for the RWA show, and researched and prepared the Applegarth portrait, which was more work than one might have thought because to paint Julie I also had to understand Ray. So it was possible – just – that Ed had told me he was going somewhere and I simply hadn’t taken it in.

  Of course, if he had gone on a business trip he would have taken a suitcase and clothes. So I went to the cupboard where we kept the bags and suitcases. There was, as usual, a pile of holdalls, backpacks, rucksacks and sausage bags reaching back into the darkness. I pulled them out one by one and there, glimpsed before I held it, was his travel bag. I let out a long slow sigh because he never travelled without it. There was no business trip.

  I looked in his wardrobe but it was impossible to tell if any clothes were missing. Ed had so many shirts it was like a scene out of American Psycho. What else could have happened? Something at work? Something I’ve missed? Our marriage isn’t always perfect – whose is? – but without tempting fate, we have it pretty good. Everyone is healthy. Ed and I communicate. We both know you have to love your partner for their faults. Anyone can love someone for the good bits. And he’s just not the sort of man who chucks everything in to reinvent himself as a rare book seller in Baton Rouge or stream-of-consciousness poet in Popocatépetl. I got dressed and headed down to the kitchen.

  Waiting for my toast to pop up and the coffee to filter, I convinced myself I was getting worked up over nothing. There was bound to be a perfectly straightforward explanation. It wasn’t unknown for Ed to be called out to an emergency. Some could last twenty hours, life-and-death stuff under conditions that didn’t always allow him to stroll outside to make a leisurely call. That sort of labour didn’t punch the clock. It was also possible the Irish girl on the desk was new, or hadn’t known, or had only just come on duty, or simply wasn’t at her sharpest on a Sunday morning. I clicked on my mobile: 9.57. Two hours and I’d call the police. Then I’d wake Nell.

  To kill time, and to take my mind off worst-case scenarios, I walked up to Clifton Village to do the mundane jobs I had been putting off. It was a low grey day, the clouds slouching like hooded teenagers, the air warm and damp. As I walked through the village, through shoppers with no cares beyond finding the best cut of sirloin, the ripest avocado, I could only imagine unlikely explanations and plead with higher beings I didn’t even believe in for one more chance to complain about Ed playing the same song three notches too loud, three thousand times too often, or leaving dirty sports gear in a pile in the bathroom. I saw him everywhere: darting into shops, disappearing around corners, hair swept back, pink-cheeked, eyes soft and grey and amused, his self-reliance bordering on solitude. I bought mushrooms and asparagus in Reg the Veg to make his favourite risotto for lunch. But all the time I was checking my mobile and the tightness was growing in my stomach, gnawing away at the idea I should have heard from someone.

  At 10.52 I was wondering whether I should go to the Clifton Cobbler to pick up Arthur’s school shoes or to the flower shop on Waterloo Street to lose myself in the beautiful colours and arrangements, when a voice said,

  ‘Alice?’

  I turned. A slight woman of about my age was standing under the faded awning of the jeweller’s. She was wearing dark-blue dungarees and calf-height Doc Martens. Her hair was short and dyed peroxide. An Oxfam bag hung from her shoulder.

  ‘Alice …?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi! Lucy Rennell. From school. You remember?’

  The moment she said ‘Lucy’ I knew who she was. Even though her face was thicker and her cheeks more rounded, a cartoon rat that had become a mouse, she retained the waif-like figure and wary look I remembered. Lucy had been in my dormitory. We were never close but always friendly.

  ‘Lucy Rennell! What are you doing here?’

  Even as I said it I was praying she wouldn’t say she lived in Bristol. I hadn’t kept up with anyone from school, not because I disliked them but because my life had taken a different route. The last thing I
wanted was Lucy Rennell living a hundred yards away, taking me back into my past. As an artist, if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards.

  ‘I’m visiting my niece. She’s just finished her first year at Bristol Uni.’

  I nodded, trying to keep my relief from showing, which only made me remember Ed and realize that until he reappeared from wherever he was there was no possibility of relief. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I – oh …’ I’d lost concentration. You do when someone you haven’t seen for twenty years asks a question while you are wondering why your husband has disappeared.

  ‘Do you live here?’

  I clicked back into the present. ‘Yes … yes I do. Just down the hill.’

  ‘That’s great. Married?’

  I nodded. Having established she was only visiting I could afford to be friendly. We ran through our respective lives, twenty years of hope and love and work concertinaed into bite-sized images. Lucy worked in charity in the world’s hottest spots. She had always wanted to do the right thing.

  Lucy still saw girls from school. She reeled off names, girls I remembered but hadn’t thought about for years. If you spend most of your life abroad your English life freezes the moment you leave, in Lucy’s case the day she left school and headed out to work for MSF in Niger. I made inquisitive noises. My old school friends had become teachers, nurses, bankers’ wives, mums, small-time entrepreneurs, artisan bakers, floppy-hatted Sunday-afternoon painters, boutique owners, amateur jockeys. Even as the names rolled off her tongue I steeled myself for her inevitable question, ‘Do you still see anyone from school?’

  ‘I don’t really.’

  I frowned as if struggling to understand why this should be.

  ‘Except Marnie Latham.’

  ‘Marnie Latham? I definitely don’t see Marnie Latham.’

  Her face clouded.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I ran into her a couple of years back in London. We were hailing the same cab. As we were going in the same direction, we shared. She was very friendly, as though nothing had happened, yet she was still, I don’t know, a little bit odd. Apparently she’s successful in fashion somewhere up north …’ She cast a sweetly self-deprecating glance at her dungarees. ‘Anyway, she said she hadn’t kept up with anyone except you.’