As she ran Maria could feel Clive’s eyes following her through the car window as it passed.
It was ten years before Maria saw David again, the night of the party. Ten years managed partly by pointed avoidance on both their parts, and partly by summers David chose to spend in the family house in Provence, or holidaying with friends elsewhere rather than Greece, according to her mother’s unsolicited updates. David was fine – better than that, David was thriving. Whilst she passed her teenage years in the place she had lived her whole life, barely going further than Skiathos, a couple of islands along from here, finally applying for a place at university in Athens, David was off exploring the world, following the path his father had carved out for him.
As time passed, Maria’s guilt turned into denial that she ever could have helped. After all, she was a child. She couldn’t be sure of what she had seen, or whether it had any real bearing on what had happened to Artemis that night. What good would a vague recounting do for David other than to make him more confused? Besides, she was scared. What she had seen had terrified her, even if she couldn’t be sure exactly what it was. It wasn’t her fault, not really. She couldn’t have stopped it. And David was OK, he was leading a great life, the kind of life she could only have dreamed of for herself.
Eventually denial settled into a different kind of guilt. Without the immediacy of what had passed, she found herself able to sit with what had happened and process it in a way that had previously been impossible. David had needed her and she had run in the other direction, quite literally. He had been her friend and he had believed he’d loved her, whether or not he knew what love was, and Maria hadn’t tried hard enough to help him deal with the pain of finding his mother dead, even if for the reason that she was so young and his pain was so big, so raw, and that she had been scared.
No, she hadn’t done the right thing, but she’d been a child and she wasn’t to blame for Artemis’ death. Clive was.
It was exactly a decade after the night when she had come across David holding the gun in his father’s study that she saw him again. Maria was home from university in Athens. Clive was hosting a party, her mother said, as if smelling her new-found weakness, presenting it not so much as a suggestion as a fait accompli.
‘Maria, I never ask anything of you. Please. How long has it been? Clive always asks after you and they know you are back from Athens. You don’t have to stay long.’
In the intervening years, the house had changed almost beyond recognition. The dark stone kitchen had been replaced by Carrara marble and brass fittings; an infinity pool stood in the place of the one where she and David would throw in pennies and then race to see who could dive in and pull them out first.
The moment she stepped inside the house, she regretted it. Despite everything Clive had done to crush the memories of what had happened on this very spot, this was where Artemis had died.
And then she saw him. David – a man in place of the boy. And with him, a woman. Anna.
Maria had left the party as quickly as she could, but not before her mother had told David and his girlfriend about Maria’s plans to study in London. Maria had squirmed as Athena spoke, wishing the ground would swallow her whole, and David’s reaction had been so sweet, his offer of renewed friendship so genuine that the sense of guilt that sat in her gut once again sharpened into a blade.
‘If you need somewhere to stay, or … If you ever need anything … It would be lovely to see you.’
She had toyed with the idea for a moment. Maybe it would be nice to see him again; she had felt a rush of affection amidst the remorse as he stood in front of her, grinning in his ridiculously formal shirt, the sort his father would have worn. But what would be the point? This was no longer the boy she had known, just as she wasn’t the same girl. Too much time had passed. Besides, from the look Anna gave her, she could tell his girlfriend wouldn’t appreciate having an old family friend around.
Maria had felt it, like a jolt of electricity as he’d kissed her goodbye on the cheek. And for a split second it was like no time had passed since that night on the track, but then they pulled away and her eyes briefly met his and she struggled to hold his gaze, the swell of emotions rising up in her once more.
No, there would be no point pursuing a friendship with David. She could see, even then, that it wouldn’t end well. Though she couldn’t have foreseen exactly how, or how badly.
The move to London, a few months later, was supposed to be the big thing that happened in her life, the chance to start again, but somehow Clive managed to ruin that, too. She should have run for her life the moment she heard mention of his name on her mother’s lips in relation to her planned year abroad, but she didn’t.
‘Clive was asking after you, as he always does, and I told him about your plan to study in London for a year and— What? I happened to mention it while I was on my break and he said straight away that you can stay at his flat for as long as you like.’
Maria felt a pulsing in her chest at the mention of it. Was it excitement or revulsion? It was of course possible to feel both at once.
‘He won’t be there much. He’s working abroad for months and when he is there, you would have your own room, of course. Oh Maria, it’s so lovely. He showed me pictures. Right in the middle of Central London, on this grand square. The apartment is beautiful.’
‘And what does he want in return?’
‘Maria, he doesn’t want anything. What more does he need? He is a rich man, and we are like family to him … I’m telling you, Maria, I know you don’t want to believe it, but Clive Witherall is a good man. Artemis wasn’t well when she said those things. Do you understand me? Anyone who can do that to themselves … To her son … Well, she wasn’t right, in the end. She was sick.’ Athena cupped her daughter’s chin with her hand. ‘Maria, Artemis was my best friend and I loved her like a sister, but the woman was paranoid.’
No matter how tempting it might have been, Maria declined Clive’s offer. No amount of money could have forced her to take that man’s charity. But when the opportunity came up for the job as a nanny to newborn twins Stella and Rose, within weeks of her landing in London and finding herself holed up in a grubby room above a shop on Green Lanes, paying the rent by scraping fat off the fryer at a local burger joint, Maria felt herself say yes. It had come as a shock, at first, to find out that Anna was pregnant. She hadn’t been showing at the party so she must have been in the very early stages. And then a moment of jealousy, which quickly faded. And how slippery her moral high ground had been; how easily the justifications had slid off her tongue: it wasn’t David’s fault, what his father was like. It wasn’t David’s children who were to blame. Besides, she owed it to their grandmother, didn’t she, to help in any way she could? Perhaps this was the chance to make up for never having told David what she knew about Clive and what had happened that night.
Ultimately, she wasn’t in a position to pass up a well-paid job. It would only be for a year and then, once she had saved up some money, she would return to her course. She had no way of knowing, before the fact, the true nature of the work she was going to undertake, or the price they would all pay. If she had, she would have barricaded herself within the safety of the island.
Maria
London, a few years ago
Felicity’s approach, when it came, had been seamless. Had they been watching her and Athena in Greece for years, and overheard their conversations about Clive? Had they been listening in when she rang home from the house when David and Anna were at work, and inferred Maria’s feelings about David’s father, when her mother asked after him? Maria could never be sure, but what was certain was that the offer when it came felt like a chance for atonement. The opportunity she had been waiting for, for years.
David and Anna had taken the girls to visit their grandfather, leaving Maria to head off to the British Library for the day, the clouds hanging low overhead as she made her way from King’s Cross tube station along the Euston Road. Sh
e had been living at the house for a month by now, since deferring her course in order to work and save up money as a nanny to babies Stella and Rose. If she was ever going to go back to her degree in Political Science and International Relations, she would need to keep up with her studies.
Without a valid student card, she couldn’t access the readers’ rooms and instead was sitting on one of the single tables lining the wall in the coffee shop of the library, her notes spread in front of her, when a woman approached.
‘Do you mind? Don’t worry, I won’t be long,’ she had said with that insincerely apologetic manner British women would often affect before doing exactly what they pleased.
Maria had smiled that it was no problem and the woman had gestured towards a particularly dense textbook on the political economy of good government, brimming with Post-it notes, which she had bought with her first pay cheque from David.
‘Gosh, that looks intense,’ the woman said.
‘Intense is one word for it,’ Maria replied, the conversation then moving back and forth so easily that by the time Felicity showed up again, a few weeks later, and again, before finally making her intentions known, Maria had already been drawn in. It wasn’t David who MI6 was interested in, Felicity made that clear – it was Clive. Spying on David, and subsequently Anna, was merely a means to an end – an end that none of them, including Maria, could ever have foreseen.
In the initial weeks after Maria’s arrival at the house in London, Anna barely left her room other than occasional trips to the bathroom where Artemis’ old perfume bottles were laid out like artefacts in a mausoleum. The lingering smell of David’s mother, which had caused Maria to jolt when she first noticed it, became a bolstering presence, reminding Maria of what Clive had done.
Despite Anna’s coolness towards everyone and everything, including the girls, it was hard not to feel sorry for her, Maria found as the weeks rolled on. What at first appeared as an aloof uninterest in the world around her revealed itself as a kind of absence, as if her spirit was somewhere else, her body left behind, useless to the young daughters it should have been able to nurture. To call it postpartum depression, as the health visitors had, conferring as they left the house, out of earshot of Anna, seemed too simplistic. At first Maria couldn’t recognise what she was seeing, but eventually it came to her: it was fear.
Some days, Maria would sense a pair of eyes on her as she rocked the girls to sleep in the nursery and she would look up to find Anna hovering in the doorway, as if scared to step inside. With time, though, Anna grew more confident, taking the girls out by herself for periods in the double buggy. It was on one of these days, as she performed her usual sweep of the house, armed with a bottle of multi-purpose spray and a cloth in case anyone should find her and ask what she was doing, that Maria found Anna’s second phone at the back of the cupboard in the bathroom. At first she wondered if it was a trap. It had almost been too easy. Was Anna really so stupid as to hide it there, barely encrypted and logging every piece of correspondence she and Harry shared – information Maria had been able to take right back to Felicity at MI6? But time and again, Maria’s suspicions were confirmed. Anna wasn’t terrible, she was something far more dangerous. Anna was vulnerable, and she was careless.
It was only a matter of time until she was found out.
That October, the family travelled to Provence. Maria tended to wake early with the girls, the soft autumn light drifting through the shutters. Anna seemed to be up half the night – Maria could hear her padding along the hallway to the bathroom, as she often did at home in those early days after the twins were born. But unlike the hallway there, which felt hemmed in despite the elaborate work that had been done on the house the Christmas after the girls were born – the interiors transformed into the sort of place they featured in the luxury magazine where Anna worked – the house in France was light and airy, the horizon from every window reminding Maria of home.
It was an old farmhouse renovated in soft pale stone, surrounded by lavender fields. Maria was sitting at the edge of the pool, her bare feet skimming the surface of the water as she watched the girls teeter on the grass on unsteady legs, when David emerged from the entrance of the house. She could feel his eyes on her as he made his way down the grass bank. He smiled as he approached, standing for a while, both of them watching Stella and Rose, who were building a tower out of blocks. After a moment, Stella watched Rose add a brick, and then, waiting for her sister’s back to turn, pushed the whole tower over.
Rose turned and burst into tears and Maria frowned, holding open her arms. Rose bustled towards her, seeking comfort in her arms while David gently chastised Stella who cried out furiously.
Maria laughed, winking reassuringly at David. ‘Don’t take it personally. It’s just their age – the terrible twos, you say in England?’
Holding Rose gently against her chest, she called out, ‘Stella, be kind,’ in her mother tongue.
‘You’re teaching them Greek?’ David said and Maria flushed, releasing Rose and encouraging her to go and play with her sister.
‘Sorry, I thought it would be …’
‘Don’t apologise,’ David said. ‘It’s excellent for them to have the basis of another language when they’re so young. If you stay around long enough, hopefully they will learn it thoroughly.’
He held her eye until she looked away.
‘Do you remember the pool at the house in Greece, when we were kids?’ he said after a moment once the girls were happily playing again, their fracas already forgotten.
Maria paused, something inside her shifting. ‘Of course.’
‘They were happy days, weren’t they?’ David said, more of a question than a statement of fact.
‘They were.’ She nodded and when she looked up, his eyes moved away from hers. She swallowed, the silence between them throbbing, and then David spoke again, wiping his face with his sleeve sharply, as if dabbing at invisible tears, his voice like that of a different person.
Maria looked up and from the corner of her eye saw Clive standing on the terrace, looking down at them, though she couldn’t make out his expression.
‘So, I wondered if you could take the girls out for the day?’ David said, composed now.
‘Really? But I thought Anna wanted to spend time with them—’
‘Perhaps you could take them into town?’ he continued, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Anna’s sleeping in late again, and Jeff and May will be over soon.’
‘Of course.’ Feeling the dynamics between them adjust back to the role of employer and hired help, Maria lifted her feet out of the pool, her jaw clenched.
She stood without looking at him. ‘Come on, girls,’ she said, tidying away the blocks. As she turned back towards the house, David’s hand brushed against hers. ‘Thank you for being here,’ he said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper.
Maria woke the girls, who had napped in the buggy, as they returned to the house later that afternoon. There were no cars parked in the front drive and from the silence she assumed everyone was out. She put nursery rhymes on the television in the main living room and kept an eye on the twins through the glass door as she moved through into the connecting kitchen. She had been frustrated not to be here while Jeff and May were around, their lips loosened by the inevitable drink, so that she might have had a chance of overhearing something she could take back to Felicity.
She filled the kettle, allowing her eyes to move freely around the room. There were no bags or coats left discarded downstairs and she could hardly go searching upstairs while the girls were awake. Pulling a cup from the cupboard, she searched for a cafetière. Clive always insisted on being in charge of coffee-making while they were in France, making a show of this rare act of generosity, and her hands moved between the cupboards until she felt her fingers run over a box tucked in the far back corner.
Pulling it out, she looked at the box of sleeping pills, turning it over and reading David’s name stuck on the front. What was
David doing with sleeping pills? If there was one thing she knew, from the nights when she lay awake listening to Anna rustling through the house, David’s light snoring emanating from the open bedroom door, it was that he had no problem with insomnia. Of course, the heavy sleeping could have been the result of taking the pills, and yet the flash of memory was so immediate, so instinctive, it was as if her brain had intentionally held it there within easy reach, waiting for her to connect the dots: David, at the kitchen counter the night before, having insisted on serving up dinner, despite Maria’s insistence that she could do it. He had flinched when she came in again a moment later, turning and holding something behind his back, his expression as if he had been caught in the middle of some illicit act.
But this was David, she reminded herself. He couldn’t have been lacing Anna’s food. And yet the more she let the possibility sink in, the more it made dreadful sense.
Anna had drunk wine over the course of the afternoon, but still it was unsettling how woozy she had seemed before excusing herself from the table and heading up to bed early, the previous evening. Unusually, there had been no sound of her in the night, and she had still been out cold when Maria went out this morning with the twins.
Maria’s fingers trembled slightly as she replaced the packet of pills, gently closing the cupboard door as if suddenly aware that she might be being watched. She turned slowly so that her back was against the counter, jumping as she spotted the outline of Anna’s body sprawled across the middle of the garden, through the glass doors.
Heartbeat rising, Maria moved towards the closed back door. As she approached, the image became clearer – Anna was not injured or collapsed but simply dozing under a tree. Hurrying back to the living room, she turned off the television, her chest straining with the possible implications of the stash of pills.
Stella wriggled off the sofa, Rose following more cautiously, and Maria took her hand as they moved through the house. ‘Look, Mummy’s outside,’ she said, opening the back door and leading the twins towards their mother, an empty glass of wine on the grass beside her.
The Second Woman Page 24