‘I can’t just not think about it. It exists. It’s a physical thing.’
‘Think of it as a science, not an art.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything to me.’
‘IQ not EQ. Try to think logically, not emotionally. We’ve got this far. If we can survive a few more weeks, the heat will die down, the police will lose heart, other crimes will be committed and one day they’ll announce they’re winding down this investigation. There’s plenty of scope for them to decide it was an accident. She slipped, she tripped, she didn’t take the drugs, she took too many drugs – boom, we’re in the clear. Life will go on as it always did.’
I twisted my hand out of his, feeling his reluctance to let go.
‘Sometimes I could hit you you’re so fucking rational.’
‘It’s the way it is.’
‘No. It’s the way you are. “It” is infinite and out of our control.’
‘Darling, there’s nothing we can do except sit tight and ride out the storm.’
‘It’s also a question of what’s right and what’s wrong.’
Ed picked up my hand again and studied it as if he was trying to see the world as a portrait painter.
‘You know, in medicine sometimes there is no right and wrong. Sometimes there’s no possibility of a perfect outcome. Things happen that are beyond anyone’s control. As a doctor one sometimes takes decisions and then just hopes for the best. Sometimes you get lucky, but sometimes … It’s all about getting the best possible outcome, because the situation is such that perfection is not a realistic outcome. Humanity isn’t perfect. Life isn’t perfect. You have to learn to live with that.’
‘I guess that’s the difference between us. I believe in aiming for perfection, trying to grasp that underlying truth. I may never get there, but I know it’s out there, that perfect colour, the perfect composition, the perfect insight that ties it all together, and I always shoot for it.’
‘Which probably guarantees disappointment or failure.’
He was right, of course, as per, and in a single sentence had explained perfectly why so many artists are crushed by life. But it was a depressing line, an acceptance of fate, of second best, an idea I would fight all my life to refute.
‘At least my way it’s a glorious failure. At least there is hope. I will always have the knowledge I shot for the sun. That’s how things improve.’
Ed nodded thoughtfully. I pulled my hand away. I could tell he didn’t agree but he wanted to humour me because he could sense my fragility. You couldn’t fault him as a husband – in that way. Wednesday had burned me far more than it had affected him, yet I had to be strong if we were going to survive. He said gently,
‘We have to live in this world.’
‘Which doesn’t make it any easier to take.’
‘You’ll go mad if you spend your life trying to make it something else.’
‘I feel I’m being squeezed out of shape.’
‘Darling, you have to remember we’re doing this for the children. We mustn’t let this appalling accident ruin their lives. I won’t pretend it’s easy for either of us living like this and if I could apologize enough or turn back the clock or do anything to make it up to you, I would, you know that. But I can’t, and that’s why you need to keep yourself occupied right now. It’s the only way we’re going to get through.’
I knew he was genuine. If he could have done anything to reverse time he would have, but I was suffocated by the oppressive heat in the room and our situation. I no longer felt in control of my own life and there was nothing he could do to change that. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to go on doing what I had always wanted to do – to hear people’s stories, to analyse and understand them, to paint their portraits. A lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t hide it. Ed wrapped a broad arm around my shoulder and kissed me softly, affectionately, encouragingly on the cheek. I didn’t move.
‘Nothing lasts forever, my darling. But remember, when you feel unhappy, we’re in this together, all of us. Be strong.’
The sun was sinking into Ashton Court, ducking into the trees, stretching the shadows. I glanced at his hand on my arm and shook involuntarily. My skin had goose pimples. Ed didn’t say anything. He had strong hands, surgeon’s hands, a life-giver’s hands. A life-taker’s hands.
On Saturday afternoon I took an old tartan rug on to the lawn to lie like a cat in the sun. Ed was on call and had been called, Nell had gone to meet a friend for strawberry milkshakes in the village and Arthur was high in the house building a jet engine out of moulded plastic. He didn’t like the sun. I had tried to find things to do around the house, and had even gone up to my studio, but I was too listless and couldn’t concentrate. The only benefit of not knowing who was sitting for my new portrait was I didn’t have to do any research or even think about it, which may have been just as well. So I decided not to fight the frustration and prickliness I felt simply by being in my studio, but to go outside to sunbathe and try to relax under that great azure bowl of a sky. I picked up Franny and Zooey, which I had to re-read for book club, and took it into the garden with a tall lemonade, the ice crackling in the glass and sticking together like lashed barrels at sea. The grass was turning brown, victim of the recent dry weather and the cowboys who laid our lawn without digging deep enough to lay sufficient soil. They cut so many corners our slim rectangle might as well have been octagonal.
I had scarcely settled when the doorbell rang at the front of the house. I toyed with not answering – who comes to the front door mid-afternoon on a scorching Saturday? Evangelical Christians? Window cleaners touting for business? – but I knew Arthur wouldn’t budge from his bedroom. In case it was Amazon (Arthur’s birthday was hoving into view) I put down Salinger, pushed my sunglasses on to my forehead and dragged myself up and through the house, plunging into darkness and back into light as I opened the front door into the squinting sunshine.
Philips. No rank known.
He stood quite still in a prune chunky-collared shirt, three buttons undone, and a copper-coloured leather jacket with a stretchy waist. His chest was frothy with hair. The fat brass buckle of his leather belt shone in the sun. Standing there in too-tight jeans and cowboy boots with vertical calligraphy he looked less like an extra from Starsky & Hutch than a midnight cowboy. He should have packed a piece in a shoulder-holster. Instead his mobile was in a dinky little pouch attached to his belt, which made him look as threatening as a tennis umpire. Nevertheless, I felt a spasm of fear and tried to switch my brain into gear.
‘Mrs Sheahan, I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday. May I come in?’
That Brummie accent. He didn’t look sorry. I didn’t reply. I wanted him to know that if I genuinely had any choice the door would be shut in his face. He, or one of his leaky colleagues, no doubt taking baksheesh from the press, was directly responsible for what had happened to me in the road three days before. His antennae were fizzing, I’ll give him that.
‘Look, I’m sorry about what happened on Wednesday. It shouldn’t’ve. I don’t know who told them.’
I let a long pause develop before, wordlessly, I stood aside. He nodded and brushed past me into the house, turning right into the kitchen as if he’d been directed. I didn’t offer him anything but just watched from the doorway, my mind working overtime, while he slowly looked around the room before moving over to the island and perching on a stool. He lifted his left leg across his right knee and picked at some imaginary dirt where the spurs should have been on his boot.
‘Nice place.’
I didn’t answer. I had no desire to spend my Saturday making small talk with someone who’d given me the third degree earlier in the week. He nodded towards the other stool. I paused a fraction of a second, to make the point I didn’t quite trust him, before moving over and pulling it out. My obvious disdain snapped him on to business.
‘OK, Mrs Sheahan, I’ll get straight to the point: what would you say if I said your husband was seen leaving
Montpelier in the early evening on the night of the murder?’
Time stopped. Philips’s eyes cut into me and I was conscious my jaw had slackened and my mouth stopped working. It might be a trick question. I had to play it straight, just stick to the story. I shrugged. The movement released my tongue.
‘I’d say it’s not possible. At least during the time I was with him. Then he was at home with the children. He was still here when I got back from book club.’
‘And what time did you say he got to Brandon Hill?’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to ask him?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘I dunno. Four thirty?’
‘And you joined him at?’
‘At five thirty, six?’
‘So he could have been seen leaving Montpelier on foot at, say, five o’clock?’
‘Not if he was on Brandon Hill.’
‘If he was on Brandon Hill.’
I gave a theatrical cough to show I was trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
‘I thought we’d been through all this.’
Philips shifted on his stool. There was a glitter of gold from his necklace.
‘And after he got home, he didn’t go out again?’
‘No.’
‘Not to get milk? A beer?’
‘He doesn’t drink.’
‘Of course he doesn’t. Milk then.’
‘No.’
‘But you weren’t here.’
‘The children would have told me.’
‘That he went to buy milk?’
‘That he went out.’
‘What if it was after they went to bed?’
‘I thought you said early evening? Nell doesn’t go to bed until ten-ish, and Arthur was awake when I got home. Wasn’t the girl murdered around six?’
‘That’s the theory. And that’s when he was seen on Stokes Croft. Does that sound like a coincidence?’
‘It sounds like mistaken identity.’
‘Mrs Sheahan, I only have your word he was on Brandon Hill. What would you say if I said the person who says they saw him knows you well?’
‘I’d say the person doesn’t know us as well as they think they do if they seriously believe my husband is a murderer.’
I felt a surge of hope. He didn’t have the killer Q. If he did he would have turned up formally, with warrant and handcuffs, not sidled in to ask a favour on a Saturday afternoon.
‘So you don’t accept any possibility of this having happened?’
‘Nope. I don’t suppose I’m allowed to ask who …’
‘You can always ask.’
Philips enjoyed his power. His badge meant he could go anywhere, ask anything, confront anyone, and answer nothing. His eyes swept confidently around the room, the renegade cop in his very own feature film. He’d washed his hair. It bushed over his collar.
‘Have you been to see my husband?’
‘A colleague …’ he tailed off deliberately.
‘So you thought you’d come round here and see if you could trick or bully me into confessing to something that never happened?’
He stared at me. I held his stare, giving as good as I got.
‘I came to ask—’
‘And you’ve asked. And the answer hasn’t changed.’ I felt a Mother-like hauteur creeping into my tone. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you today, officer?’
‘Are either of your children here?’
‘Arthur’s upstairs.’
‘Could I have a quick word with him?’
I made to go to get him but he raised an arm.
‘Could you just call him, please?’
I stood at the bottom of the stairs and called, more than once. Eventually Arthur appeared, dishevelled, holding a magic wand, at first bewildered then delighted to be questioned by a real detective in plain clothes with a real badge. How cool was that? Not that there was anything plain about Philips’s get-up. He could only have gone undercover in Studio 54. Arthur listened carefully and tried to look as grown-up as it is possible to look in cut-off jeans and a Futurama T-shirt, pipe-cleaner arms poking out of the sleeves. Philips asked his question. I prayed silently to the God I didn’t believe in that he wouldn’t say anything about Ed being ‘unhappy’ or crying on the night of the accident. I was ready with the placental abruption story, appropriately vague as to date, but that could be checked against the records. It didn’t mean it couldn’t have come back to bite Ed days or weeks later when he was feeling low. Arthur hesitated. ‘Go on, darling.’ Arthur said yes, Ed had been with them after he got home that night.
‘Got home from where?’
Arthur frowned and looked at me. I nodded. Answer the man.
‘Work, I suppose.’
Philips glanced at me. Satisfied now? He turned back to Arthur, unwilling to let the fish off the hook so quickly.
‘You suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he was the same as ever?’
‘Yes.’
‘No different to any other night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not stressed or anything?’
‘Well …’
‘Go on …’
‘Yes.’
‘He did seem stressed?’
I could feel Philips glance at me but I didn’t meet his eye. Instead I continued looking at Arthur, who looked quickly from Philips to me and back again, willing him not to go further.
‘Yes.’
Philips’s voice softened, as if it was holding out a shiny sweet. ‘How did he seem stressed?’
‘I meant yes he was no different to any other night.’
I breathed out, not too obviously. I could see the air coming out of Philips’s balloon. He was trying not to look as if he was enticing a schoolboy into a car.
‘And he stayed in the whole time? Didn’t pop out at all, not to Clifton Village to pick up some food?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes to which?’
‘He stayed in.’
Philips blew his cheeks out. ‘OK, that’s great, thanks very much. You can go now.’
Arthur looked briefly at me and I nodded. He shot back up the stairs. My chest was still heaving. I looked at Philips – what now? He stuck out his bottom lip like a petulant child and nodded ruminatively.
‘That’s all – for now. You can have your Saturday back.’
‘Thanks.’
He got off his stool. It was the moment he would have touched his Stetson if he’d had one. He narrowed his eyes like the Marlboro Man and said,
‘You know, Mrs Sheahan, something doesn’t feel right here.’ I shrugged but didn’t say anything. ‘It’s just a feeling, but in my game you learn to trust your gut.’ I stared at him impassively. I disliked him and his self-confidence. It made me determined to support Ed until it was over. Philips could feel whatever he wanted but unless the game changed he would never be able to prove it. ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this. I will. You can be sure of that.’ I moved towards the door but he raised a hand. ‘Don’t bother. I’ll see myself out.’
When he’d gone I went up to Arthur’s bedroom. He was kneeling on the floor with a frown of concentration, clicking one minute piece of grey plastic into another, consulting the heavily folded instructions in forty-eight languages as he did so. Without looking up he said,
‘What did the man want?’
‘Oh, it was just after the other day. He just wanted to confirm a couple of things.’
‘Why did he want to ask me?’
‘He was just checking what we said about Daddy being here.’
Arthur looked up quickly.
‘Is Daddy in trouble?’
‘No.’
He frowned, suspicious. ‘With the police?’
‘No. It’s nothing.’
‘Was it the night Daddy was crying?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t tell him that.’
‘No, you didn’t. Which is probably right. Because everythi
ng you tell him just makes him ask more questions.’
‘Why was he crying?’
‘See what I mean!’
‘Well?’
‘He’d just had a terrible day at the hospital. A little baby died. He thought he should have saved her. Why didn’t you tell the man he was crying?’
Arthur looked thoughtful. He was obviously thinking: was that how it worked? Who’d want to be a doctor if it was?
‘I didn’t know what day he was talking about but I wanted to be helpful so I just said yes to everything.’
‘Amsterdam?’
I put my book face-down on my lap and adjusted my position against the pillow. I was lying on our bed reading the ‘Zooey’ section of Franny and Zooey, windows open, a pitiful breeze trying but failing to cool the baking air, the walls a brilliant white. Of the two novellas I’d always preferred ‘Franny’. Ed stood in the doorway. His cheeks were shining the way they do when he has given me a present or hopes he has surprised me.
‘Amsterdam. You and me. Next weekend. Two nights. Museum passes included. You need a break.’
I had never been to Amsterdam but I had always wanted to see Rembrandt’s late self-portraits in the flesh. They were the first properly psychological self-portraits ever painted; psychological in the modern sense, by which I mean they should have been painted after the clever men who populated the cafés of Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century had published their theories, not before.
‘What about the chil—’
‘Sorted.’
I felt as if there was water in my ears. I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to go but I didn’t want to go. I wanted to see Amsterdam. It seemed ridiculous I had never been to a city so close and so beautiful, and the Rijksmuseum was a glaring omission in my first-hand viewing, but I also knew I didn’t want to spend two days alone and in such proximity to Ed, without my own space, no matter the artistic benefit, no matter how seductive the city. It was impossible to articulate, but I needed to see less of him just then, not more. I needed my studio at hand to escape to, even if I had been reduced to sketching my own hands over and over, front and back, pencil or charcoal, as if I was in a losing battle to find something tangible to hold on to.
What Alice Knew Page 14