What Alice Knew

by T. A. Cotterell

  He cocked his head to noise from the garden.

  ‘The Amerys. They’re having a barbecue.’

  He nodded without interest. He hadn’t had to listen to the squawks of laughter and clinking of bottles as they set it up, while looking at Caravaggio and waiting and wondering.

  ‘What’s for supper, my darling? I’m starving.’

  ‘How was your day?’

  ‘N’bad. You?’

  ‘Yuh, OK.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I ran into Jemima Langton today.’

  ‘She OK?’

  ‘Yes. I thanked her for the flowers.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Only funny thing was, she said she hadn’t sent any.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So they must’ve been from someone else?’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘I wonder who they were from? ML and three kisses.’

  ‘Beats me.’

  He was completely impassive. In hospital-world, flowers were flowers, a generic statement of solidarity or sympathy, a commoditized currency of thanks. And yet, unless I was imagining it, there seemed some quality of rebuff in his shrug, a sort of inwardness, as if he was wrapping himself around something small and private. I pressed on.

  ‘Because they must have been from someone.’

  ‘That figures.’

  ‘You must have seen someone whose initials were ML recently?’

  He frowned and looked down at his shoes, pretending to rack his brain, still droll, tired from work, not taking it seriously. Maybe it was in my imagination and I was being ridiculous? I dared to hope.

  ‘I don’t know. I see lots of people and I deliver lots of babies, quite a lot of whose mums or dads or maybe even grandparents might have the initials ML.’

  ‘So have you operated on anyone with those initials recently? Or whose husband or parents may have had those initials?’

  ‘Alice, what’s all this about? We were sent some flowers by someone with the initials ML. Big deal. It happens all the time.’

  He was trying, not entirely successfully, to keep the irritation out of his voice. When Ed was hungry he needed to eat.

  ‘But who?’ He frowned, this time for real. ‘And who knew you well enough that only their initials were needed?’

  ‘What is this? The third degree? Someone sent some flowers. It could have been anyone. It could have been wine or chocolates but it was flowers. I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Sometimes people put their names or a nickname or their initials. Sometimes – most of the time – they don’t send anything. I don’t see the big deal. Can we talk about … I don’t know … Are the children in bed yet?’

  There was innocence in his response. I saw a crack of sun through the cloud but I knew I had to press on, to be sure. I had to know.

  ‘And who liked you enough to put three kisses?’

  He shook his head and shrugged. As he did so, I slipped my fingers into the back of the Caravaggio and slid out the blue silk ribbon. It had a velvet clasp. Ed stared at the ribbon, shaking his head, sticking out his bottom lip. He wasn’t acting.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I stared at the ribbon as if doing so would jog his memory.

  ‘I found it in the pocket of your grey suit.’

  He shrugged again and wiped a strand of hair back from his forehead.

  ‘Which you wore to Pete’s party.’

  ‘Look, Alice, I don’t know what that is or where it came from. I’ve never seen it before in my life, I promise. Please can we have some supper now? I’m starving.’

  There was a fatal quaver in his voice. This wasn’t the operating theatre, where his will was unchallenged and his word law. In that moment he had confirmed what I had known but refused to accept since I found the royal blue ribbon choker in the pocket of his jacket: he was guilty as charged. My stomach lurched up and down like the shuttle on a fairground ‘test your strength’ machine and, fighting a momentous sense of collapse, I turned over a page of the Caravaggio, took out the cutting, pushed it across the table, twisting it round so Ed could see. It was a colour photo of Araminta Lyall, the photo that had been in all the papers, cut out of a supplement. It showed her – Minta Lyall, ML xxx – at the gallery party, wearing the cluster of pearls and the royal blue silk ribbon choker that lay on the table between us. Ed glanced at it barely long enough to register what it was. He clenched his teeth, his head went down and the power passed between us.

  Only it wasn’t a power I wanted or could use. The knowledge struck me physically, like a winding blow to the stomach. I gulped for air like a muzzled animal drowning in a colourless liquid. There was orange in the wings of my eyes.

  When it was obvious Ed either had nothing to say or, if he did, he didn’t know how to say it, I dragged myself together just enough to say,

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  He didn’t look at me. The atmosphere was surreal. Ed’s whole being was built on strength and achievement, the strength that had lifted him out of his background and set him down centre stage. I realized it was his will – that, his cast-iron morality and the fact I knew he never looked at other women, he simply wasn’t the type – that had made me blind to the clues for so long. Even sitting there, I couldn’t believe it was true, that he wouldn’t laugh and look me in the eye and give some simple explanation that would funnel my fears away. But Ed’s gaze was fixed on the acorn-leaf motif on the pink glossy child-friendly kitchen table cover and he was fighting to choose the right words. I waited. When he did look up he was ashen-faced and he stared out of the window a long time, avoiding my eye. Eventually he said,

  ‘I don’t remember anything.’

  I looked at the dresser. I wasn’t sure I could bear to listen.

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Please, Ed, don’t humiliate me more than you have to. More than you already have.’

  ‘Alice, you have to believe me. One moment I’m in her flat so drunk I can barely stand, the next I wake up in a bed and that girl—’

  ‘Araminta.’

  ‘Is next to me.’

  ‘And so you had sex with her?’

  ‘No! I was completely horrified. It was the morning. I was in a stranger’s flat in bed with someone I didn’t know. Someone I didn’t even fancy. I was horrified. Appalled. Terrified.’

  His voice was earnest and pleading, desperate to be believed. There was no self-pity in the mix.

  ‘That’s not very gallant.’

  ‘Please, Alice. I’m trying to explain.’

  I felt anger transforming into grief, an imperfect world, a small hard thing building in me.

  ‘So explain: you didn’t have sex with her?’

  Ed stared at the table. Finally he lifted his head and looked directly at me.

  ‘Not then.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. In the night.’

  I felt contempt rising.

  ‘You don’t know? That’s ridiculous! What do you mean you don’t know? You must know. Either you did or you didn’t.’

  He looked as if he was about to respond but he stopped, like a barren woman with a sadness too large to articulate. I said nothing. I didn’t want feelings. I needed facts.

  ‘She said we did. Only I can’t remember it – but then I can’t really remember anything about the night.’

  ‘But you must remember that?’

  ‘I don’t. I promise. I haven’t been that drunk for … I don’t know … ever. Even after Finals or at my own stag night. I mean, the whole night is pretty much a blank from the moment I got to Montpelier.’

  ‘Why would she say you had sex with her if you didn’t?’

  Ed rubbed his forehead unhappily. It didn’t make me feel sorry for him, or any less betrayed.

  ‘I don’t know. Only …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, Pete told me she always went for older men, particularly married men. Maybe that’s why?’

  ‘Oh my
God! You told Pete?’

  ‘No! Of course not. He said it when I told him a few of us had ended up back at her flat.’

  ‘How many really ended up back at her flat?’

  ‘I can’t remember’ – he shot me a nervous glance – ‘five or six, seven maybe? Anyway, Pete said she was damaged goods and I should watch out. Not that he had to tell me by then. Obviously I didn’t say anything …’

  ‘You saw her again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And slept with her again?’

  ‘No.’ He sounded worn out. This was the exhaustion of someone fundamentally honest who had been required to live a lie. ‘But she turned up at St Anthony’s on the Monday. I told Karen I was too busy to see her. It was a nightmare.’ He glanced at me hopefully. ‘I hated the deception. What I had done to us.’

  ‘Spare me.’

  ‘Honestly, darling, if I could just go back—’

  ‘You and me both.’

  He looked at me bleakly. Was I going to kick him out? Well, was I? The gazillion-dollar question. Even I didn’t know the answer. I hadn’t had time to work it out, to balance the deed against either continuing or bursting a fifteen-year bubble. I hadn’t had time to understand it in the context of our lives and, more importantly, to think about what was best for Nell and Arthur. I hadn’t had time to prepare myself for the pain that was growing inside me or to create a strategy to cope.

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘She wouldn’t leave me alone.’

  ‘She was the woman who rang pretending to be from some charity?’

  He nodded glumly.

  ‘She told me she had hung around here, followed you and the kids in the village.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I thought of Arthur walking back from school, kicking stones and buying sweets, impervious to anything and everyone. ‘That’s really creepy.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s what I was up against. And she texted me the whole time, here and at work, saying how much she loved me, how we would be so good together. I had, I don’t know, maybe a hundred texts from her in four days, ranging from expressions of undying love to venomous accusations that I was avoiding her – often in the same text. She was a complete crackpot. When I said there had been a major misunderstanding, she sent a load of abusive messages.’

  ‘So you changed the password on your mobile.’

  ‘I had to.’ He leant forward in his chair and put his hands on the table. They were pale and hairless. He had nothing to hide any more. ‘Believe me, it was a nightmare.’

  ‘Fatal Attraction.’

  He looked desperate, consumed by guilt. No wonder he hadn’t been sleeping. But it was no longer about him. It was about me, about all of us, about how we survived his elemental breach of trust. I didn’t know how to do that. I couldn’t tell how I felt. This was the hinge of my life, but I couldn’t bring myself to look across to the far side. There was a honk of laughter from the Amerys’ barbecue.

  ‘So you went to see her.’

  ‘Just to tell her to leave me alone. To tell her I didn’t love her and never would.’

  ‘And how did she take that? Lust but no love?’

  ‘That was pretty much what she said. That I had obligations. That I couldn’t just sleep with her one night and walk away as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘How unreasonable.’

  He licked dry lips. ‘She said it would never have happened if I wasn’t unhappy at home. Claimed it was only the symptom of underlying problems between you and me, maybe even ones I didn’t realize were there.’

  I laughed bitterly.

  ‘So it was my fault?’

  ‘I told her I was perfectly happy at home.’

  ‘How gratifying.’

  ‘You have to believe me, darling.’

  He reached across the table but I withdrew my hand. I still couldn’t take it in that Ed, straight-as-a-die Ed, had cheated on me. I had seen it so often – Charlie Snape, Paul Whorle, Rory Nester, the man who went on a course to find himself but found Amber instead – but there had always been structural reasons why it happened, symptom and cause.

  Why had it happened to us? Ed had his failings, of course he did, they were the flipside of the qualities that made him great, but we were happy and straying was not – should not – have been amongst them. This was about trust and betrayal, about people being true to who they are. That is what I fight for in every portrait I have ever painted: to understand and to know, not to condemn.

  ‘Go on.’ I wanted to sound strong but my voice was wobbling.

  ‘So I went to see her. I had to. Otherwise she was going to make sure you found out.’

  ‘And we couldn’t have that.’

  ‘I did think about telling you myself.’

  ‘But decided not to?’

  ‘It wasn’t just for my sake. Remember what you said about Rory? That he was a bastard for telling Michaela about Flashing Amber because he put the burden of the choice over whether to leave or stay on her. Leave and she screwed up the children; stay and she looked like a doormat. So I decided, rightly or wrongly, to live with it myself. But when she started coming on with flowers and texts and so on I had to see her and put an end to it.’

  ‘Put an end to it?’

  ‘You know what I mean. So I went there and told her it had been a terrible mistake and I was sorry but I loved you and only you and I loved my children and there was no future in me and her as a couple and we would only cause each other and a heap of other people a whole lot of unhappiness if we saw each other again.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘Not well, to be honest.’

  ‘Did you see her again after you told her?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘That’s convenient.’

  He shrugged. But I sensed some latent quality of evasion in his shrug. I had painted Ed too often. His skin was colourless and dry. It was as if he was willing his version into reality. But Ed is not a good liar. I felt fear snaking down my back like cold sweat.

  ‘OK, so let’s get this straight: she’s all over you, bugging you a million times a day, phoning, texting, sending flowers, turning up at work, ringing me here, following the kids around and so on, until you say, “Look, I’m sorry, dear, but this just isn’t going to work because I’m married” – and straight away she says, this fucked-up woman who always wants a married man, she says, “Oh forgive me, I didn’t realize! I am sorry! I didn’t realize when I googled you and your wife and hung around and watched your children come and go and spied on your life and rang your wife that you were happily married! My mistake! Of course I’ll leave you alone.” Is that how it happened?’

  Ed looked down at the table.

  ‘She was very angry. Said she’d been used—’

  ‘This thirty-two-year-old woman said she’d been used? That she hadn’t been able to make her own decisions?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But nevertheless said she would leave you in peace?’

  ‘I didn’t give her any choice. It wasn’t going to happen.’

  A vein began to throb on Ed’s forehead.

  ‘When did you tell her it was over?’

  ‘The night I went round. Not that “it” had ever started.’

  ‘Which day was that?’

  Ed screwed up his face and glanced at the cornice.

  ‘Um … the Tuesday, I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Or maybe it was the Wednesday.’

  ‘What time on the Wednesday?’

  ‘What time?’ He checked an irritable intonation. ‘Why does that matter?’

  Because I was ravenous. I needed to know everything. Only if I understood absolutely everything was there a chance I could process the facts in such a way that I might somehow be able to cope. Ed owed me that. He owed our marriage that. He owed our children that. I stayed silent. He ground his teeth, his jaw moving minutely.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  ‘So Neil did see you.’
/>
  Ed nodded.

  ‘How late?’

  ‘Around teatime?’

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘Her flat.’

  ‘Her flat? Around teatime on Wednesday?’ A dark form, hitherto submerged, began to take shape in the depths. ‘You know what that means?’

  Ed stared at me. His tongue was working but his lips were desert-dry. Beads of sweat glittered along his hairline.

  ‘I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Stop right there.

  Can you imagine what it’s like to hear your husband, the celebrated obstetrician, pillar of the community, say, totally seriously, to a question you didn’t even ask, ‘I didn’t kill her’?

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t. But it does mean you were probably the last person to see her alive. Did you tell the police that?’

  In spite of the kaleidoscopic turmoil inside me, my voice sounded weirdly calm.

  He shook his head. I tipped my chair backwards as I tell the children not to do, balancing on the tips of my toes, trying to take it all in.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was frightened.’

  ‘Frightened? Ed – for fuck’s sake, a girl’s died! There’s a murderer out there.’

  ‘I know. But I’m frightened they’ll think I did it.’

  He gritted his teeth and looked at the floor, closing in on himself the way he does under pressure. He glanced at his watch as if he might find the answer there. It was my wedding present to him.

  ‘But you might have seen the murderer. You have to tell them. You may have seen something that’s not important to you but which may give them the clue they need to find the killer.’

  He frowned and gave a small thoughtful nod, as if he was considering that possibility for the first time. For a moment I thought he was, but it suddenly struck me that couldn’t possibly be true. He must have thought of little else since her death was announced. He must have known exactly what time he arrived at and left her flat. Not ‘around teatime’. And I suddenly realized that if he was lying to me about the time and with that dishonest little nod then – oh my God – no! – I pushed my chair backwards, as if I was subconsciously trying to get away.