by Emma Curtis
Rebecca perches on the edge of her sofa, repainting her toenails and staring at Laura’s face on the screen. She has long hair in the picture, so no one has taken one of her since it was cut. That’s odd; everyone documents their lives these days, don’t they? She’s smiling for the camera, her eyes sparkling. The photo vanishes, and her mother appears, looking tired and anxious, blonde hair tied back, silver-and-jade earrings dangling like dream-catchers. She says the usual things: ‘Laura is such a loving person. She’s a wonderful aunt to her nieces and nephews.’
To Rebecca that is shorthand for doesn’t have anyone in her life right now. She feels a pang of sympathy.
‘Laura, if you’re watching this, please get in touch. We miss you.’
Jenny Maguire stares at the camera, reminding Rebecca of the way Laura would sometimes look at her, as though she was trying to fix her face in her head.
Her imagination starts to work; picturing Laura’s body in the woods, half-covered with leaves, or washed up on the banks of the Thames. Everyone is trained by the media to think the worst these days. She shuts down the news page and silence falls. She checks the time on her phone. She is meeting David at half past two for a late lunch because he’s visiting the care home this morning. It was a minor victory, getting him to agree, but part of her thinks he seized the excuse to get away from his grandparents for a few hours. No matter. He agreed and that’s what counts.
The toenails are possibly over-optimistic, but she believes firmly in the whole-woman approach and she has never yet failed to seduce him. Once her nails are dry she pulls on a pair of black, high-heeled boots, and checks the contents of her bag. While she waits for her car she practises her breathing and tells herself that she is strong and beautiful and wise, and that David needs her now more than ever. She cups her hand over her belly. She’ll tell him at twelve weeks, once she knows it’s safe. There are seven weeks to go until then, and a lot can happen in that time.
The news comes on as she is being driven past Regent’s Park. Laura isn’t the first item – the US president has that honour – but she is the second. Rebecca searches the faces of the women she sees hurrying along the pavement. She has never thought about the logistics of looking for someone before; but the sheer number of square acres, the confusing choices, the eliminations and grunt work it must take, is breathtaking. Laura is somewhere; that’s all anyone knows. Somewhere.
‘It’ll be someone she knows,’ the driver says. ‘It always is. Boyfriend or neighbour.’
‘Could you switch that off? I’m trying to think.’ She has her MacBook on her knee, open on a casting agency website to which she has paid scant attention.
He glances at her in the mirror, then does as he’s asked, adding a quick, ‘Ten-to-one they find it’s a dodgy uncle.’ Like a child determined to have the last word.
That’s the downside of having an account. You get the same drivers and they think they know you. Rebecca doesn’t respond. She feels a flutter of anxiety and thinks, Poor Laura. Please let her be found safe and well.
The cab drops her at the Carlyon Hotel in Kensington. David’s car is parked on the street. She flicks her hair back over her shoulders, smooths down her trench coat, takes a deep, calming breath and walks through the minimalist foyer to the restaurant, nodding a friendly greeting at the black-clad receptionists. It’s busy but intimate, candles lit even at this time of day, and redolent of luxury and money. She can’t help wondering if the fact that this is the first restaurant he took her to after their affair began, is a good omen. Back then he had booked a room for the night.
David is reading a newspaper at a table at the far end. The sight of him gives her an illicit thrill. It’s the thought of the challenge. He doesn’t see her until she is at his side, but then he glances up, smiles and leaps to his feet. He doesn’t look good, she notes as she hands her coat to the greeter and refuses the offer to relieve her of her hefty bag. He has shaved clumsily, his eyes are shadowed, his lips chapped, and the collar of his shirt is dirty. In all the time she has known him, David has never worn the same shirt for more than one day. A chair is pulled out for her, and she sits down.
David has a pale lager in front of him. He starts to fold his newspaper, but she takes it from him. He’s been reading about Laura. The photograph is the one used on television, photoshopped to show what she would look like with short hair.
‘It’s grim, isn’t it,’ she says. ‘And you know what makes me feel bad? I know so little about her. Not much more than the police. I’ve never asked about her personal life, and she’s never told me anything.’
‘That’s not your fault. Some people like to guard their privacy.’
She hands it back. ‘Do you think she had secrets? I mean, beyond her condition, obviously.’ And that’s no secret any more.
‘We all do, don’t we?’
Rebecca shrugs. ‘I hope to God she’s all right. I keep imagining the worst. When someone disappears like that, they’re usually dead.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s just headlines. She might see the news and walk into a police station today. She might be on her way back home now.’
‘I hope so.’
She scans the menu, hands damp with perspiration. She wipes them surreptitiously on her napkin. David is preoccupied; as twitchy as she is, his brow knitted as he glances over her shoulder, looking for a waitress.
‘How was the home?’
‘The what?’
‘The care home, David. Didn’t you tell me you were going to visit one this morning?’
‘Sorry. It was fine. The staff seemed to be genuinely compassionate, which is the main thing as far as I’m concerned. It’s an old manor house, surrounded by landscaped gardens. They’ve got everything: arts and crafts, tea dances and every kind of therapy. I’ve booked them in on Monday, for a trial fortnight.’
‘A trial?’
He grimaces. ‘Yes. Clients need to show that they can benefit from being there and won’t unsettle the other residents. I’m not stupid. It’s shorthand for good behaviour; three strikes and you’re out. Pity I can’t tell Tony and Georgie that. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed.’
She nods. After the egg incident, they both know how vain a hope that is.
They discuss the problem until their food arrives. Rebecca is having the fish soup with chunky artisan bread drizzled in olive oil and crusted with sea salt, and David, the organic lamb. She declines a glass of wine and asks for fizzy water, expecting him to comment, but the significance of her abstemiousness goes over his head. They don’t speak while they eat, and the silence grows until it becomes uncomfortable. Rebecca puts down her spoon and dabs her lips with her napkin. She can’t finish it. David glances at her, then looks back at his plate, his focus entirely on his lunch. She watches him chew and swallow.
‘I went to see Felicity.’
‘What in Christ’s name did you do that for?’
She bristles. ‘Because I needed to, and I thought she needed to see me. I wanted to give her a chance to say what she had to. We go back a long way. She was my closest friend.’
‘You don’t have close friends.’
‘Right. Thanks, David. That really helps.’
She’s all over the place. It’s Laura and the baby and her ruined friendship; but mostly the baby. It’s astonishing how quickly it has become an entity, a warm-blooded thing whose life she is wholly invested in. She is already awash with emotion.
‘Are you feeling sorry for yourself?’
She pauses, watching him. ‘No. Are you?’
He looks straight into her eyes. ‘No.’
He is, actually. This is all about him; the way he is feeling; the way people are going to perceive him henceforth. His wife has found him out. The man who loves to be loved is going to be an object of hatred to some of his friends, to his adoring in-laws, maybe even to his children, if he isn’t careful. The only people who will still love him are fools like her who are prepared to catch him when he
falls, and his grandparents. And it looks like they won’t know who he is for much longer.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.
‘I haven’t made a decision yet.’
She feels as though she is picking her way along a path strewn with broken glass. ‘You must know what you want.’
‘It’s what you want that matters, Rebecca.’
She doesn’t believe the platitude, but she answers as if she does. ‘I want to be with you. I always have.’
He scratches the side of his neck and sits back, but not before popping the last morsel of meat into his mouth. She finds it galling that he can eat at a time like this.
‘I owe you honesty,’ he says, still chewing. ‘So, I’m telling you this. I’ve worked out what really matters and I’m sorry, but it’s my family. You and I will always have a strong bond and I will treasure what we’ve had together, but that side of things must end. It’s taken the shock of being thrown out to show me what I stand to lose. I’ve taken them for granted for too long.’
That was quite a speech. It takes a moment to process.
‘You’re dumping me?’ She’s always known it’s a possibility, but still, it isn’t an outcome she’s ever seriously entertained. She’s incredulous.
‘Don’t say it like that.’
He reaches across the table and takes her hand, tightening his hold when she tries to tug it out of his grip. This isn’t right, she thinks. This is me: Rebecca Munro. I am extraordinary. He doesn’t get to treat me this way.
‘We’re here because you don’t want a scene,’ she says.
He hasn’t chosen this place for a romantic meal followed by reconciliation sex in one of the sumptuous bedrooms, he has chosen it because of its reverent and monastic atmosphere. This is not a place to raise your voice.
He doesn’t respond. What is there to say? It’s so obvious, it’s laughable. The man she has loved for so long is a coward. She has been set adrift, and he’s putting his coat on and calling the waiter over with an arrogant click of his fingers.
‘Bill please. Can I drop you somewhere?’ he adds.
It’s a punch in the gut. ‘No, thank you.’ Her voice is stiff and unnatural, as is the way she is sitting, as if she is about to leap up, one hand gripped round the strap of her bag, the other clenched, white-knuckled, on the back of the chair.
‘Don’t be like that, love. You know how I feel about you. If it hadn’t come out, we could have carried on indefinitely, but I’ve got too much on my plate right now.’ His face clouds. ‘I’m not dealing with all this particularly well.’
He gazes into her eyes and despite the red rims and the shadows underneath, despite the deepening lines around his mouth, she feels nothing except an abject desire to throw herself at his feet. She is horrified at herself, disgusted. She should be walking away with her head held high.
She remembers the day her father finally had enough and left her mother. She remembers how, as a ten-year-old, she begged him not to go. Literally got down on her knees. She is not doing that again. She’ll wait and pick her moment. It isn’t over.
He bends and kisses her on the cheek, lingering. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be the person you want me to be, but it’s all I can do to keep the company running and stop myself going insane. I need my marriage and my home, and, much as it pains me, I have to sacrifice us. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I won’t miss you desperately.’
God, he still expects her to make him feel better. ‘Save it, David.’
She marches up to a waitress and demands her coat. She is not going to beg or humiliate herself further. He is going to regret leaving her. Felicity can’t give him what he craves. Does he imagine he’ll be content with that? Will he tell his wife he gets off on being punished? She doubts it.
48
Laura
‘THE BAR WAS hired by a company called IdTech Solutions,’ David says. ‘Does that tell you what you wanted to know?’
I hang my head. So, there it is. Elliot Hill. It makes perfect sense; why he didn’t want Phoebe to get involved with me, his ambivalence towards me; the way he kissed me on the night of the GZ party. How could I have been so stupid? I could kick myself for not realizing the moment he told me where he worked. He’s been stalking me, probably for as long as they’ve lived in the flat. I wonder how it started. Did I fail to acknowledge him once too often? Did he set traps to see if his hunch was right? Does he know someone else who suffers from face-blindness to the degree I do? Did he pay attention to the media coverage a couple of years ago when a celebrity admitted to having the condition?
I look up and nod.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry that happened to you, and I’m even more sorry that you thought it was me. I don’t know what’s happened to my life.’ He sits down on the edge of the bed and pats my leg, as though I’m a dog. ‘I want you to know that if I could do anything to turn the clock back, I would.’
He won’t look at me. Do people ever look hard at those they intend to kill? You’d have to be pretty cold to look into the face of your victim, into her eyes and her soul. I am so tired and wretched, so damp and sore. Part of me wishes he’d get it over with; because no one is going to come.
Two more nights pass. By now the room smells of sweat and urine and I don’t know what else. Something pungent: a combination of mice and damp perhaps. Whatever; it’s revolting. It’s still dark but it could be one in the morning or it could be five. The house is quiet, its occupants either asleep or brooding.
Dawn leaches in, grey and murky, cheered only by the competing songs of a robin and a blackbird. My musical ear is better than my ear for voices and I can distinguish birdsong with remarkable accuracy, given the opportunity to concentrate and I’ve had plenty of that recently.
The morning gropes its way inside. The room has become so familiar that I could describe it with my eyes closed. I know every cobweb, every crack in the ceiling, every forgotten possession.
Downstairs someone is getting up. The tap runs, and the pipes knock.
Voices. Tony and Georgie tentatively embracing the day, not sure which decade of their lives they are in. I imagine them slowly adjusting, coming downstairs to find a thirty-something David instead of their teenage grandson. I hope they never find out what he’s done.
Another half hour passes before David comes in. He gives me breakfast, Weetabix again; not much of a last meal. What time does he intend to kill me?
I beg. I say, ‘Please, David. Please, please. Let me go. I promise you I won’t say a word. Don’t do this!’
But his expression is blank, as though he’s absented himself, emotionally detached himself from the reality of me; my humanity, my warm body, my mind, my beating heart.
It sounds as though he’s dragging cases out to the car and heaving them in. Next time he leaves the house, he’s with his grandparents, wheedling and promising, his patience wafer thin.
Hours later he’s back. I recognize the engine’s hum even before the wheels touch the gravel. I know the sound as it slows to take the corner. I can predict the clean and satisfying thunk of the door thudding shut. I know how many steps it is from car to door and the sound of David’s key in the lock. I know the moment of stillness before Georgie and Tony go into a twitter, and how he will soothe and reassure them. But this time, I don’t hear them, and I realize he’s returned alone. The house is empty but for me and him.
I know his footstep on the bottom stair.
I spit and whip my head from side to side as water and chemicals bubble in my throat. David holds me down with a hand on my shoulder, the other over my mouth, but I’m like a fish, writhing and slippery, unable to think clearly. Some of the pills have gone down, David posting them one at a time, pressing them through my closed lips and clenched teeth, then clamping his hand down again.
He shoves a cloth in my mouth, poking in more and more of it until it’s so tightly packed that I gag. Pills that I’ve kept, hamster-like, in my chee
ks are dissolving. I try to get at them with my tongue, to push out the bitter, chalky residue.
Veins pulse at David’s temples as he struggles to contain me. He probably imagined a more passive victim. Best-laid plans, as Rebecca once said. Without warning, he drops down on to the floor and folds himself over, and I think that he might be having a stroke, but he clasps his hands behind his neck and rocks. Even in my terror I can guess what he’s feeling; the shock at how fast events have moved, the desperation to salvage his life and his good name. If I wasn’t so scared, I would feel sorry for him. I think he’s realized that, whatever happens today, even if it goes his way, he will never get out of this.
The phone rings and I recognize the ringtone from his mobile. He kneels in the middle of the room, completely still, staring at the door, reminding me of the lemurs in London Zoo. When it stops, the landline starts up and again he doesn’t move. It rings on and on, echoing through the house, a lonely sound that captures my desperation in its rhythm.
49
Rebecca
SOMEONE IS SHOUTING outside her office. Rebecca ignores it. She has been picking her way through the budget proposals that the cost controller sent her. She is not impressed with him – he’s little more than an accountant and doesn’t always understand the workings of this industry. She makes a note to suggest cutting the build and prep time or possibly hiring a cheaper stage. It’ll piss off the producer, but she knows how it works. Maxine Lorimer is a fierce little woman with the instincts of a battle-hardened Viking. Rebecca chews the end of her biro, wondering whether she could argue for one less shoot day. No David this morning. She’s thankful for that. After what happened between them, she spent the rest of the weekend in shock, but this morning she forced herself out of it, determined to behave as though nothing has changed. It’s a hell of a lot easier without him here.
The voices get louder. In frustration, she slams her hands down on her desk, stands up and marches to the door, throwing it open.