Not moving from the door, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Did it have David’s smell? Coffee, for sure, and books. But both of them strongly overlaid by the sterile sting of cleaning products, so not a lot else. And while she didn’t want to believe it, there was the undeniable hint of coal-tar soap. Not many people used it any more. Yet that wasn’t evidence in itself. She’d have to go and look.
Walking tentatively along the hallway, she peeped into the bedroom and the bathroom as she went. There was no one there. The kitchen – which had been completely refitted – was also empty, leaving just the sitting room.
The door was closed and she paused outside it, feeling even more nervous than she had coming in through the front door. There was something so deliberate about the way the door had been left shut.
As she reached down and took hold of the handle, she almost hoped it would be locked like his office at home had been, but it opened normally. She was hugely relieved to find no one was inside.
Having established that David, or whoever lived there now, was out, Polly quickly went back into the other rooms to look at them more closely. Opening the bathroom cabinet, she had to admit to herself she was looking for signs of a woman – make-up, tampons, perfume – but there was nothing like that there. It was resolutely male, containing David’s preferred shaving foam and Nivea Men face cream, which he also used.
That could be just a coincidence, she told herself. Millions of men used those products . . .
But then she spotted the bottle of Yohji Homme. Of course it could be pure coincidence again, but when she picked it up and smelled the cap she knew immediately it was the original 1999 formulation, not the new version that was released in 2013.
She’d tracked the original down for him online after they’d discontinued it, because its unique combination of strong lavender and liquorice was the only the men’s fragrance David had ever been really enthusiastic about. He loved liquorice.
Polly closed her eyes and put her hands on the basin, letting it take her weight as a wave of dizziness swept over her. That pretty much clinched it. He’d held on to the lease of this flat for over twenty years without her knowing. And now he was living in it again, without telling her why.
When she’d recovered, a quick flick through the kitchen cupboards – torturously tidy, with everything perfectly lined up – revealed they were stocked with David’s usual staple foods, including a bag of his favourite strong coffee from the Algerian roasters in Old Compton Street.
Then she went through to the bedroom. The wardrobe was full of clothes she knew: shirts she’d ironed hundreds of times, sweaters she’d bought him.
How could you have that level of intimacy with someone, yet know them as little as it seemed she actually had?
She could remember packing everything they’d had in this flat up with him and then unpacking it in their new place – their family home – together. She’d been so excited. And now it turned out he’d come back and secretly refurnished this one. He’d even had the kitchen refitted! There was nothing casual about any of this. The whole time they’d been married he’d had a secret separate life going on.
Polly went back into the sitting room, wondering what she was looking for now. What more evidence did she need that he was not committed to his marriage to her in any normal way – and never had been?
It was pretty clear he wasn’t shacked up there with another woman or another man. She would have been able to recognise someone else’s clothes, another toothbrush. And there wasn’t another person’s smell. So it didn’t seem to involve a third party, but she still yearned to find something, anything, to explain it all.
A quick glance round the room showed he had refurnished it with very little imagination, mostly from IKEA. As long as everything was neat and very clean, David had never cared about interior design. There was a sofa – the same as the one they’d moved out – a desk and, of course, bookshelves, all the books perfectly aligned to the front of the shelf, filed by genre and author names in alphabetic order.
She ran her eyes over the spines and it was all the usual stuff she would expect to find on David’s shelves – academic history, some classic novels, the last few Booker Prize winners and some male-interest thrillers.
Feeling cheated that, after the courage it had taken to come into the flat like this, she still knew no more about why he was living in it, she sat down at the desk and pulled open the drawers, to find just odds and ends of stationery, bills, some receipts – nothing helpful.
She slammed the last one shut in frustration, deciding she’d had enough of David’s creepy hideaway – and as she didn’t want him to come back and find her here, it was time to leave.
Then, as she stood up to go, her eye fell on a business card propped up against a pencil pot. The name on it made her pick it up and look more closely.
It read, ‘Maxine Thurloe, Psychotherapist’, followed by a cluster of academic and professional acronyms.
She stared down at it, frowning. Wasn’t that her Maxine, who came to yoga? Polly was sure that was her surname. The card had a Belsize Park address and she was a psychotherapist by profession. It must be her. But why the hell did David have her card?
After taking a quick photo of it with her phone, Polly carefully propped the card up again where she’d found it and turned to head out, pausing to look at a calendar on the wall next to the desk.
Of course. David always had a wall calendar. He’d never made the adjustment to online, saying he needed to see his life written down to remember it. This one featured photographs of deserted Cold War bunkers, such a typically bleak David subject that Polly almost laughed.
She looked at the entry for that day and read, in his distinctive small neat handwriting: ‘11 a.m. Maxine.’
So that was where he was at this very moment: with Maxine, presumably having a professional appointment. He bloody needs it, thought Polly, with his recent behaviour.
Leafing back through the pages, she saw the same entry on all the previous Thursdays in March, February and January. Then, flipping forwards, there it was again: the same appointment, every week.
She went back to the January page. Maxine had come to yoga for the first time with Shirlee for that special New Year’s Day class, when they’d had the inaugural breakfast, so she particularly remembered the date. How odd to think she had then seen David the following week. Was that the first time?
She thought for a moment, then went over to the filing cabinet on the other side of the room and pulled open the top drawer, then the second, where she found what she was looking for: a file marked ‘Calendars’.
Polly sighed. How well she knew his habits, yet how little it seemed she really knew him. She fished out the one from the previous year – Second World War tanks – and sure enough, practically all the Thursdays going back right through it had that same appointment with Maxine every Thursday. So he’d been seeing her for at least fifteen months – even when he was still living at home.
But the big question that was vexing Polly now was this: did Maxine know that her patient David Goodwin was Polly’s husband?
She’d never taken his surname, she was still Polly Masterson-Mackay, so there wasn’t that clue to flag it. So was it perhaps just a simple matter of London geography? Maxine lived and worked in Belsize Park, so Polly’s yoga class was pretty handy. Ten minutes’ drive, or you could walk it in half an hour.
But her clinic wouldn’t be very convenient for David in his working week, she thought, even when he was still living at home. Then Polly remembered that for quite a while he had been going to the office later one day each week. He’d given her some reason for it, which she hadn’t even taken in. She’d just accepted it. And yes, thinking back – it was Thursdays.
So he hadn’t been going late to King’s College every Thursday. He’d been taking the whole morning off, going to see Maxine at 11 a.m. and then going into work.
As she stood there at David’s filing cabinet, al
l the possible scenarios started to jump around in her head. Had Maxine known from the outset that her yoga teacher was the wife of one of her longstanding regular patients, and had she come along with Shirlee despite that – or, for some reason, because of it? Or had she not realised until she’d been going for a while and then kept coming anyway? After all, how many historians with yoga teacher wives called Polly and kids called Clemmie and Lucas were there in North London? There’s no way she wouldn’t have made the connection.
Polly couldn’t bear to think that Maxine might have been sitting in her kitchen knowing everything that was going on, when Polly herself hadn’t – but equally, from what she knew of Maxine, she just couldn’t imagine her doing something so deceitful.
Then something else occurred to her. Maxine hadn’t been to yoga for two weeks. She’d suddenly stopped coming, claiming she had too much on. Was that all connected somehow?
For a moment Polly thought her head might explode from the pressure of all the things she didn’t know. It was like living in a giant riddle and she didn’t think she could stand it any more.
She reached into her bag for her phone, opening her Favourites list for Chum’s number. Her finger hovered over his name. She longed to tell him where she was and what she’d just discovered – just hearing his voice would be a comfort – but she stopped herself. He wasn’t the right person to talk to about it.
Not because she felt she owed David that respect – she felt she owed him less with every new thing she found out about his hidden life. But because she didn’t want to taint her fledgling relationship with Chum with baggage from her last one. She wanted to keep that precious thing pure and special, as long as she could.
Before she threw the phone back in her bag, she checked the time. Twelve-fifteen. Shrink sessions always lasted about an hour, didn’t they? Which meant David’s would have been over at least a quarter of an hour ago; he could be back at any time.
She hastily pushed the calendar back into the drawer, closed the door to the sitting room behind her and rushed out of the flat – but as she was about to turn the key in the deadlock she paused for a moment, then went back inside.
Going straight to the bathroom, she grabbed the bottle of Yohji Homme out of the cupboard and stuffed it in her pocket. She hoped its strange disappearance would make him feel as bewildered as she permanently did.
Polly looked at the large glass of red wine on the table in front of her and wondered if she could down it in one. Her brain was still throbbing from the shock of confirming that David was living in his old flat – and then finding Maxine’s card on his desk.
And it was the same Maxine, the one who came to her yoga classes and stayed for breakfast. Or used to. She’d checked her yogi bears email list as soon as she’d got home and confirmed Maxine’s was the same as the one on the card.
She still didn’t know where to file this latest revelation in her head and knew she wouldn’t be able to until she had all the facts. In the meantime, it was yet another hole in the fabric of her life. It was beginning to feel like a string vest, there were so many missing bits.
She didn’t know how she would have got through the rest of the day if she hadn’t had this dinner with Lucas to look forward to, a treat at his favourite steak house, just fifteen minutes walk from home, before he went back to uni the next morning. He was going back early to do extra band practice. Clemmie had gone the day before.
Lucas had just texted to say he was going to be a few minutes late, and she’d resolved to spend it calming her mind by just sitting and being – not looking at her phone and trying not to think; she’d done way too much of that today already. The wine was helping, she decided, as she looked out of the window at the darkening street, the cars and buses swishing past, the street lights shining.
Lucas arrived in a flurry of long limbs, messy dark hair and the precious hugs a grown-up boy gives his mother. Just seeing him was like a balm for Polly’s hectic mind.
‘Have you ordered for me?’ he asked.
‘Rib eye, well done, no salad, extra chips, mayo on the side, Becks served in the bottle,’ said Polly. ‘Not yet, but I know what to ask for.’
Lucas grinned.
‘Fillet, medium rare, no chips, extra salad, large red,’ he said.
‘That’s me,’ said Polly, ‘medium rare.’
‘I think you’re very rare,’ said Lucas. ‘A jewel among women.’
They ordered their food and chatted about general things, Polly relishing the novelty of living in the moment and not having to analyse any element of it, everything open and at face value. Just loving her son’s company and his stories about the band and what they were planning for their next step towards world domination, starting with his determination to get a gig at the university union. His vital young energy was so refreshing.
‘So how was your day, Mum?’ he asked, taking her off guard. ‘What did you get up to?’
Polly hesitated before replying. Should she tell him about the flat? The strange connection with Maxine? Both things? Neither?
‘Fine,’ she said in the end. ‘Nothing special.’
‘Really?’ said Lucas. ‘Because you look like you’ve been run over. Why don’t you tell me what really happened today. Where did you go this morning? When I got up you’d already gone out.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Polly.
‘Mum,’ said Lucas, leaning over the table towards her, ‘I’m your son, I can read your face like a Snapchat post. I’ve had nearly twenty years to learn when I can ask for an extra biscuit or when it’s better to leave it, and what I’m reading on your face at this moment is some kind of stress situation. I would not be asking you for a Garibaldi right now. The biscuit tin is closed.’
Polly said nothing, although she couldn’t help smiling. Apart from Lucas’s general adorability, the mention of Garibaldis had made her think of Chum.
‘Tell me, Mum,’ said Lucas. ‘I know it’s going to be something about Dad and I can take it. I’m not going to freak out. I’m here to support you, so spill.’
‘I know where your father is living,’ said Polly, feeling her happy mood dissolve.
‘So do I,’ said Lucas, raising his beer bottle to her, before taking a large swig. ‘He’s living in a block of flats near Holborn Tube station.’
‘How on earth do you know that?’ asked Polly.
‘I followed him,’ said Lucas. ‘That day you went to see your friend last week I seized my opportunity. I rang Maureen and asked her what time he would leave the office on that particular day and then I waited outside King’s where he couldn’t see me but I could see him, and then I followed him back to Holborn. It was quite fun, in a super-weird way. I felt like a spy in a film.’
Polly’s head was working overtime.
‘So that was over a week ago?’ she said. ‘I went to see . . . my friend . . . last Wednesday.’
Lucas nodded.
‘Yeah, it worked out perfectly that you didn’t come home until late that night and Clemmie was out too. Gave me time to compose myself afterwards. I watched four Harry Potter films and ate a whole tub of maple pecan ice cream. And quite a lot of double chocolate chip.’
He grinned. The little boy again for a moment. Polly’s heart clenched.
‘But why didn’t you tell me the next day?’ asked Polly.
‘It had to be the right moment,’ said Lucas, ‘and you seemed so happy last week, with Clemmie and me at home, and Shirlee and Guy being hilarious, and that really fun lunch we all had with Granny and your uppy-downy friend Edward and his dad. I didn’t want to burst your bubble. I made a decision I’d tell you just before I went back to Brighton, so here we are.’
‘Does Clemmie know?’ asked Polly
‘No, I had to tell you first,’ said Lucas, he took a pull on his beer. ‘How did you find out?’
‘It was a hunch,’ said Polly. ‘When Maureen said he was living at a WC1 address I had a good idea where it would be, and it turned out I was
right.’
‘But he wasn’t there, was he?’ said Lucas.
‘No,’ said Polly. ‘And how do you know that, Eagle Eye junior spy?’
‘Because he’s gone away.’ He paused, slumping back in his chair and looking more serious. ‘I made him talk to me.’
‘He was there?’ said Polly.
Lucas nodded.
‘Didn’t he try to run away again?’ said Polly.
‘Yeah,’ said Lucas, ‘but I made sure he couldn’t . . .’
He sat up again and pushed his plate to one side, the steak unfinished, and put his arms on the table, folded.
‘We can take that home for Digger . . . I followed him to the building, and just before he went inside, I grabbed him and pinned him to the wall. Made him talk to me.’
He paused for a moment and screwed his eyes up really tight. Polly could see he was trying not to cry and put her hand on his arm.
‘Sweetheart . . .’ she said.
‘I’m stronger than him, Mum,’ he said, in a small, tight voice. ‘It’s so odd, but he’s got quite puny. He tried to fight me off, but then he just went limp. It was horrible. And I think after what happened at King’s that time, he might be a little bit scared of me.’
‘You’re amazing, Lucas,’ she said. ‘Amazing for having the courage to do this.’
He drained his beer and signalled to a passing waiter for another.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to take to drink again, but I could do with one more to get through telling you this – do you want some more wine?’
She nodded. ‘In the circs, yes – and go on with what you were telling me. So what did you say to him?’’
Lucas sighed sadly.
‘I told him I wanted answers. I said the way he’s treated you – and me and Clemmie, but you particularly – is unforgivable, and that we need an explanation and to know what his plans are. Has he left us or what?’
The Scent of You Page 34