by S. J. Watson
– Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing this evening?
I stop to think. Soon I’ll cook our evening meal, then I might sit with a book. But I don’t want to tell him that.
– I might go out, with friends. Or maybe catch a film.
– Nice.
We talk for a little while longer. He asks me what movies I’ve seen recently, we talk about books and music. It turns out we both love Edward Hopper and have tried but failed to finish Finnegans Wake. It’s pleasurable, but I seem to be getting further and further from finding out whether he’s ever chatted to my sister, or was in Paris in February, or even who I remind him of. After a few more minutes he says:
– Well I’d better get ready, go for dinner.
– And then go on to your bar?
– Possibly. Though I’m not sure I can be bothered now.
– How come?
– I might just come back to the room and see if you’re still online.
There’s another tiny shock of pleasure.
– Would you like that?
– I might.
– I’d like to chat again.
I don’t reply.
– Would you?
I stare at the blinking cursor. For some reason I’m thinking of my time in Berlin, in the squat with Marcus and Frosty and the rest; the sensation of both wanting and not wanting something at the same time.
Again I remind myself who I’m doing this for.
– I would.
We end the conversation. I log off and call Anna.
‘How did it go?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Did it get sexual?’
‘Not really. No.’
‘It will,’ she says.
‘Listen, will you look at his profile online? Let me know if you recognize him?’
She hesitates. I hear her stand up; she’s moving around her apartment. ‘Of course. But I don’t recognize his name. I don’t think he can be one of the ones Kate met. I suppose it’s possible he’s someone she chatted to.’
‘I need to find out.’
‘Just don’t get your hopes up.’
I won’t, I tell her. We talk some more. After we’ve said goodbye I go back online. I can’t help it. I look at Lukas’s profile, at the photographs he’s uploaded. They look completely ordinary. He’s wearing a checked shirt, open at the neck, his face is broad and handsome, his eyes dark. Did he know my sister? Is it possible?
I read the rest of his profile. He describes himself as athletic, he’s a lover of fun, he enjoys reading, music, eating out. When I scroll down I see there’s a link to his Facebook page. I click on it.
He’s used the same picture there, but I hardly look at it. I navigate straight to his timeline and begin to scroll backwards. I go back as far as February. I have to be sure.
There’s a photo of him, standing in the desert next to a man. They have their arms round each other’s shoulders, in triumph. Uluru is in the background. ‘We finally made it!’ says the caption. When Kate was killed he was in Australia.
It doesn’t mean he didn’t know her, though. I think again of what he said. You remind me of someone.
I send a message to Anna: ‘Checked Facebook. He was in Australia.’
I go to bed. It’s later than I think; Hugh’s turned out the light and is already asleep. He’s left the curtains open for me to undress in the light from the street outside. Before I do I check if anyone’s there, but tonight the street is empty, other than a couple walking arm in arm, looking either drunk or in love, it’s hard to tell. I’m naked when I get into bed; I turn on to my side and look at Hugh, silhouetted in the half-light. My husband, I tell myself, as if I need to be reminded of the fact.
I kiss him gently, on his brow. The night is hot and sticky and I can taste the sweat that’s formed there. I turn on to my other side, away from him. My hand goes beneath the covers, between my legs. I can’t help it. It’s the talk, this afternoon. The chat with the guy online. Lukas. Something has been aroused, some desire that is complicated yet undeniable.
I let it come. I’m thinking of Lukas. I can’t help it, even if it does feel like a betrayal. You’re beautiful, he’d said, and the excitement I’d felt had been instant and pure. I imagine him now, he’s saying it over and over, You’re beautiful, you’re gorgeous, I want you, yet for some reason he changes, becomes Marcus. He’s leading me upstairs, we’re in the squat, we’re going to the room we shared, to the mattress on the floor, to the tangle of bedclothes unmade from the night before. I’ve spent the day here alone, he’s been out. But now he’s back, there’s only the two of us. He’s argued with his family, his mother is distraught, she wants him home. Even just for a few weeks, she’d said, but he knows she means for ever. I tell him I’ll support him, if he goes, if he decides he wants to, but I know he won’t. Not now he’s here, and happy. He kisses me. I imagine the smell of him, his smooth skin, the fuzz of hair on his chest. These details – things that I know are half remembrances and half imaginings, a mixture of fantasy and memory – come, and they lead me somewhere, somewhere where I am strong and in control and Kate is alive and everything will be all right.
My hand, my fingers, move in circles. I try to think of Hugh, a version of Hugh, an idealized Hugh who has never existed. I imagine the way he’d look at me, the way he used to look at me, his eyes leaving my face, travelling down, pausing first at my neck and then again at my breasts before flashing lower for just the briefest of moments before coming back to my face. His appraisal would take three seconds, maybe four. I imagine letting my eyes follow the same path his had taken, taking in his unshaven chin, the black hair that pokes from under his shirt, his chest, the buckle on his belt. I imagine him leaning in to speak to me, the smell of his aftershave, the faint scent of his breath, like chewed leather. I imagine him kissing me, this idealized Hugh, who is really Lukas, who is really Marcus.
My hand moves faster, my body lifts then falls away. I’m free. I’ve become lightness and air, nothing but energy.
Chapter Eleven
I sit with a glass of sparkling water. Adrienne is late.
The restaurant is brand new. Even Bob had found it difficult to get us a table, according to Adrienne, and as someone who writes restaurant reviews he rarely struggles. I hadn’t been able to decide what to wear and in the end had gone for a simple sleeveless dress with a check print, plus the necklace Hugh bought me for Christmas and perfume from my favourite bottle. It’s been so long since I’ve been out for dinner it’d felt like getting ready for a date, and now I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been stood up.
Eventually I see her coming in. She waves then comes over to the table.
‘Darling!’ She kisses me on both cheeks then we sit down. She puts her bag under her chair. ‘Right . . .’ She grabs the menu, still talking as she reads. ‘Sorry I’m late. The tube was delayed. “Passenger action”, they call it.’ She looks up. ‘Some selfish prick who’d had enough and decided to ruin everyone else’s day.’ I smile. It’s a black humour that we can share; I know she doesn’t mean it. How can she, after what happened to
Kate? ‘You don’t mind if I have a drink?’
I shake my head and she orders a glass of Chablis, then tells me I ought to have the lobster. She’s always been a whirlwind, but tonight she seems almost in too much of a rush. I wonder if she’s trying to compensate for being late, or maybe she’s anxious about something.
‘Now,’ she says, once her drink has arrived. Her voice becomes relaxed and reassuring. ‘How are you?’ I shrug, but she holds up her hand. ‘And don’t give me any of that “I’m fine” crap. How are you really?’
‘I am fine. Honestly.’ She looks at me, an expression of exaggerated disappointment on her face. ‘Mostly,’ I add.
She pushes the bread that’s arrived towards me, but I ignore it. ‘How long has it been, now? It must be four months?’
For the first time I don’t know immediately, I have to work it out. I’ve stopped counting the days and weeks; perhaps it’s the first evidence of progress. I’m strangely pleased.
‘Almost five.’
She smiles sadly. I know she understands how I feel, more than most. A few years ago her stepfather died suddenly, a heart attack, while he was driving. They’d been close; the intensity of her grief had shocked her.
‘Are they any nearer to working out what happened?’ For a moment her expression seems to change; she looks almost hungry, unless I’m imagining it. I’ve seen it before, it’s the journalist in her; she can’t help herself. She wants the details.
‘You mean, who did it? Not yet. They’re not really telling us very much . . .’ I let the conversation evaporate. It feels like every week that goes by makes it less likely they’ll catch them, but I don’t want to put that into words.
‘How’s Hugh?’
‘He’s okay, you know?’ I think for a moment. I can be honest with her. ‘Actually, sometimes I think he’s almost glad.’
Do I? Or am I just saying that because sometimes I still worry that I am?
She tilts her head. ‘Glad?’
‘Oh, I don’t mean glad that she’s dead. It’s just . . . sometimes I think he just likes the fact that it makes things simpler, I guess. With Connor.’ I hesitate. ‘Maybe he’s right. They’ve certainly seemed much closer, recently.’
I look up at Adrienne. She knows that I’d been worried that if it ever went to the courts they’d uphold Connor’s right to choose.
‘I’ve known Hugh since for ever, Julia. He’s always liked things to be neat and tidy. But he’s not glad. Don’t be too hard on him.’
I feel empty, like I want to share everything with Adrienne, to offload it, to hand it over and find some peace.
‘He’s not even there most of the time.’
‘Darling, hasn’t he always been like that?’ She drinks some of her wine. A wave of desire hits me, the first for weeks. I tell myself to ride it out. She carries on speaking, but I have to struggle to concentrate. ‘They all are. We marry them because they’re successful, ambitious, whatever. Then that’s the very thing that takes them away from us. It was the same with Steve, and now it’s the same with Bob. I barely see him, he’s so busy . . .’
I centre myself. It’s different for her. She has a challenging career of her own. She can take herself away from her husband as easily as he takes himself away from her. But I don’t want to argue.
‘You’re seeing someone?’
I feel myself recoil. She knows, I think. About Lukas. Even though there’s nothing to know. We’re still chatting regularly, and though I try to tell myself there’s no reason to think so, I keep thinking he must’ve known Kate. I can’t work him out, and so I keep going back.
‘What—?’ I say to Adrienne now, but she interrupts.
‘A therapist, I mean?’
Of course. My panic recedes. ‘Oh, right. No, I’m not.’
There’s a moment of silence. She doesn’t take her eyes off me; she’s appraising me, trying to work out why I’d reacted as I had.
‘Julia? If you don’t want to talk about it . . .’
I do, though. I do want to talk about it, and she’s my oldest friend.
‘You remember I said I might go online? To get the list of people Kate was talking to?’
‘Yes. You said you’d changed your mind.’
I’m silent.
‘Julia?’
‘There was someone I wasn’t sure about.’
She puts down her glass and raises her eyebrows. ‘Go on . . .’
‘He visits Paris. He messaged me. I convinced myself he might be someone Kate was talking to. Someone the police don’t know about.’
‘So you gave his details to the authorities?’
Still I say nothing.
‘Julia . . . ?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Why?’
‘I need to be sure . . . I’m just talking to him. I’m trying to find out what he knows.’
‘Darling, are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘What’s the alternative? Give his name to the police—?’
‘Yes! That’s exactly what you should do!’
‘I don’t want to frighten him off and, besides, they’d probably just ignore it.’
‘Of course they wouldn’t ignore it! Why would they do that, Julia? They have a duty to investigate it. He lives in Paris, it should be easy enough.’
I don’t tell her he lives in Milan. ‘I know what I’m doing. We’ve only chatted once or twice.’
It’s a lie, an understatement. I’m trying to backtrack. Things have developed. He turns his video on now and has asked me to turn mine on, though I haven’t, yet. He tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me he wishes there could be a way I could be there with him, and even though I feel guilty for lying to him, I tell him I wish that, too. Our conversations end with him telling me he’s loved talking to me, that he can’t wait until we can chat again. He tells me to look after myself, to be careful. And because it would be impolite not to, because I just can’t figure him out, I say the same things to him.
It feels cruel, sometimes. I don’t mean it, and yet he clearly likes me, or likes the person he thinks I am.
‘He knows where you live?’
I shake my head. The other day I made a mistake and mentioned the tube. I’d had to confess that I was in London, not Paris, but he knows no more than that.
‘No, of course not.’
There’s a long pause. ‘So, what do you talk about?’
I don’t reply, which is an answer in itself.
‘You are very vulnerable right now, Julia. You’re sure you know what you’re doing?’
I nod. ‘Of course.’ But she doesn’t look convinced.
‘You like him.’
I shake my head again. ‘No. It’s not like that. It’s just . . . there seems to be a connection there. And I wonder whether that connection has anything to do with Kate.’
‘In what way?’
‘You know how close we used to be. It felt almost psychic. And, well—’
‘You think if you feel a connection with this man then it must be relevant?’
I don’t answer. It’s exactly what I think. She has no idea what a difference it makes, this feeling that I’m at least doing something useful, something that might lead Connor and me to resolution and a place of safety.
‘Julia.’ She looks stern. ‘You look like a teenager who’s got a massive crush on a boy in the next year up.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ I mean it, but I don’t sound convincing, even to myself. Is it really how I feel? I can’t deny I’ve looked forward to Lukas’s messages.
Maybe it’s not about the investigation at all. Maybe it’s because now I know how Kate must have felt, chatting to those men; I can feel closer to her. I know her world.
‘You know,’ I say, ‘even if it is futile, a waste of time, so what? I’m just trying to do something to get over the death of my sister.’
‘So you told this guy about her?’
I say no, but I’m lying. The other day I’d had a bad morning after a sleepless night and I couldn’t stop thinking about Kate. He could tell something was wrong. He kept asking me if everything was all right, whether there was anything he could do. I couldn’t help myself. I told him.
He said he was so sorry to hear my sister had died, and asked me how. I was about to tell him the truth when I realized it would be a mistake. I told him it was suicide. There was a long moment when I wondered what he was going to say, and then he said again how sorry he was, and that he wished he could put his arms around me, be there for me.
He said he understood, and it’d felt good. For a moment I almost felt bad for wondering whether he might be somehow involved in my sister’s death. Almost.
‘Well, that’s something, at least. Are you having sex?’
‘Of course not!’ I say, but I’m thinking about how it makes me feel when he turns his camera on, when I can see him respond to my messages, smile at me, wave at me when he says goodbye. Do I want him?