Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  It’s only later, when I notice the wedding photograph Rachel brought down, that I realise. I keep that picture on my bedside table. What was she doing in our bedroom?

  32 WEEKS

  SERENA

  If it wasn’t for the rain, I’d probably have gone home. There didn’t seem much point in staying. But it started again about five thirty, lashing down, hammering at the skylight over my desk. I hadn’t remembered my umbrella.

  I like being in my studio when it rains: I put the heater on under my desk, listen to the hum of it while I boil the kettle for tea. The studio is in a tiny mews off the high street. Hardly anyone comes down here. It is deliciously quiet. When it rains, that’s all you hear, like a rush of pebbles, a gorgeous white noise. The cobbles in the mews shine when it’s wet, like polished wood. I photographed the rain on the cobbles once, the stones rising out of puddles like tiny islands. It looked like an alien landscape, or the back of a huge crocodile.

  At the back of the studio are the darkroom on one side and my desk on the other. Next to my desk is a corkboard of photographs, art postcards, things I’ve ripped out of newspapers and magazines. Places I’d like to go, one day. A window looks out to the little paved courtyard, where there is just enough space outside for a tiny table and chairs, a few plants in some old milk pails I got from the antiques place in the covered market.

  I grow herbs on the windowsill in white ceramic pots: parsley, rosemary, fresh mint. I use the mint leaves for tea, which I make in my bright green mugs, with spoonfuls of dark brown sugar. I bought the mugs from the woman opposite, who rents the pottery studio. I feel a bit sorry for her. I don’t think she sells much.

  I sip my tea. The sugar makes my baby dart inside me, like a fish. After university, Rory and I went backpacking in Morocco and drank fresh mint tea with sugar while we were camping out in the Atlas Mountains. Cold nights under scratchy wool blankets. The air was so clear, you could almost drink it. In the nearest town, the houses were painted blue to match the huge desert sky.

  There’s a photograph of us there on my corkboard. We are on the ridge of a mountain, him in his grey alpaca jumper, grinning widely, his hair messy, sun-bleached, the snowy peaks reflected in his mirrored sunglasses. He has his arm around me, my hair is blowing over my face and I’m squinting in the sunlight. We are happy. It radiates from the surface of the picture, like heat.

  We’d argued last night. He is still so upset about the interview. He can’t stop talking about it. The journalist had seemed nice, he said, genuinely interested in the development, in the company. In wanting to hear his side of the story. I couldn’t believe he’d been so naive. What did you think would happen? I asked him. You know what people are saying about the development. Why didn’t you just keep your head down? Why did you say yes? I knew the real answer even before I typed the name of the journalist into a search engine, brought up her smiling professional picture. But of course, it wasn’t just about the interview. Not really. He thinks he’s losing his grip.

  He’d stormed upstairs. I knew he was going to have a cigarette on our balcony. He likes to think I don’t know about the cigarettes. Or the coke. He likes to think I don’t know a lot of things. I’d picked up the magazine, thrown it in the recycling. On the cover, his face looked like somebody I didn’t recognise.

  Later that night, when he was asleep, I’d finally committed it to words. The question I typed stared back at me accusingly from the bright, white search box on the screen.

  How do I know if my husband is having an affair?

  I stared at them for a while, and after a few minutes my eyes strained under the white light of the computer. Then, I took a swig of Chablis and hit return.

  Of course, there were thousands of results: articles, quizzes, tick-box guides. How modern, I thought, to turn to a search engine for answers. How many millions of women, I wondered, have sat, as I do now, in a beautiful home, wine glass in hand or a baby in their belly or both, tears pricking at their eyes as they typed these very same words?

  I selected an article at random – one of the checklist-style ones. More Chablis. Then I clicked on it. But I heard Rory’s voice. He’d woken, noticed I was up. I deleted the search history, again. Snapped the laptop down. It is one of those paper-light ones: it had closed noiselessly, like an eyelid.

  I watch the rain outside, how it washes the green leaves of the plants in my courtyard, how it pools on my chair, my metal table. I’ll finish my tea and stay another half-hour, wait and see if the storm dies down. But when I reach the last dregs, it seems to be getting worse, the sky darkening into an angry bruise. I flick the kettle on again, decide to get on with some developing. That’s when I hear the knock.

  The first thing I notice about her are her feet. She is wearing lime-green flip-flops; her feet are bare, other than a chipped purple manicure. Her legs are bare, too, even though it’s freezing outside. The rest of her body is shrouded in a huge winter coat, the enormous fur-lined hood pulled down over her eyes, dripping onto the cobbles like the mane of a soggy lion.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I see the chin lift, but I still can’t see her face under the flap of the hood.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. Can I come in? It’s really cold.’

  I stare at her, puzzled.

  ‘I’m sorry – are you my three o’clock?’ I pause. ‘It’s past six.’

  ‘The traffic was really terrible. Is that fresh mint tea? Lovely. Do you mind if I take this off? It’s wet.’

  She turns away from me to hang the coat on the radiator by the front door, like a dead animal. Underneath she is wearing a blue velvet dress. The back of it is very beautiful, though a little old-fashioned. Both of us hear the growl of thunder.

  ‘So close!’ Her voice is excited, like a child’s. ‘We must be right under it.’

  She looks up, as if she is expecting the roof to have blown off. The flash of lightning follows, flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb. I still can’t see her face.

  I clear my throat. I’m not exactly sure what to do about this bedraggled visitor. On the one hand, she is ludicrously late, and I’ve every right to tell her to get lost. On the other, the weather is foul, and apart from her now drenched coat, she is completely underdressed.

  ‘Look, feel free to stay here for a bit,’ I say briskly. ‘But I can’t photograph you today, I’m afraid. I was actually just finishing off a few emails and then leaving. Sorry.’

  The girl is still facing the wall. ‘The thing is, it needs to be today.’ She says it like it’s as much my problem as hers.

  ‘Like I said, I’m sorry.’

  The girl bends down, reaches inside her bag and pulls out a bulging brown envelope. The lip is not sealed. It is full of fifty-pound notes.

  ‘I’ve got the cash with me. And I brought extra for the prints.’

  She places the envelope next to the radiator, under her coat. The rain is still rattling the roof, but the thunder has faded to a low rumble. I clear my throat.

  ‘Sorry, what did you say your name was?’

  Finally, the girl turns round. It takes me a moment to place it. Her strange, childlike face, her dimpled cheeks, her pointed teeth. She smiles.

  ‘You remember me, Serena, don’t you?’

  33 WEEKS

  HELEN

  Daniel has been making an effort lately, I’ve noticed. Work seems to have eased up a bit. Tonight, he is home on time, bouncing in his shiny work shoes, a bulging bag of shopping dumped on the kitchen worktop.

  ‘I got that hot chocolate you like. I saw we were out,’ he is calling from the hallway, hanging up his coat. When I open the bag, I see there are other things I need, too: antacids, vitamin supplements, bath oil, the expensive granola I’ve been devouring bowls of in the middle of the night.

  ‘I thought I could cook, and the new series of Luther is on. Fancy it?’ He pulls off one shoe, then the other, and puts them neatly in the shoe rack, as I’ve asked him to.

  I smile to mys
elf. This is what I wanted it to be like. Nights in, on the sofa. No more eating alone. ‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ I say. ‘Luther sounds good. I’ll help you cook.’

  The rain has stopped, for now. Yellow evening light is seeping through the kitchen window, casting little rainbows over the wooden worktop where it reflects through the oil and vinegar. Outside, birds in the garden are calling over the traffic. Soon, there is a hum of football commentary on the radio; Daniel’s team are playing. The roar of the crowd is far away, just a white noise, like the sizzle of the onions I am frying on the stove. I brush chopped garlic from the board into the pan.

  ‘How was your day?’ I ask Daniel, turning the radio down. As I turn to face him, though, I realise he is not listening to me anymore, or the football. He is pushing piles of paper this way and that on the kitchen table, opening and closing cupboards.

  ‘Where’s my laptop, Helen?’

  His tone makes me stop what I’m doing.

  ‘I don’t know. Have you tried the study? By your bed?’

  ‘I’m sure it was here. On the table.’

  He turns on his heel, marches upstairs, and I hear him stomping from room to room, the floorboards straining. Then he is back down again.

  ‘I’ve looked everywhere, Helen. It’s gone.’ The use of my name tells me that he suspects it is my fault.

  ‘Well, maybe you left it at the office.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  I toss the celery and risotto rice in with the onions, starting to turn the grains over with a wooden spoon.

  ‘I’ll help you look,’ I tell him. ‘After dinner, though. Did you grate that Parmesan?’

  Daniel starts to hack at the cheese, inexpertly, grating it as if it were Cheddar for a child’s packed lunch, not in the nice flakes I prefer. ‘Bloody hell. How much did this cost, Helen?’ he asks, examining the wrapping.

  I stare at him. ‘I can’t remember. It’s proper stuff, from Modena. Why?’

  He rubs his eyes behind his glasses. ‘We spend so much money, Helen,’ he mutters. He takes his glasses off and rubs at the lenses.

  I look at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  He puts his glasses back on. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Forget it.’

  The truth is, he is right. Shopping has become my therapy, my guilty secret. Sometimes, after my hospital appointment – briefly reassured that everything is, at least for that moment, all right – I will step off the Tube feeling lighter than usual. I will go to the gift shops on Turnpin Lane, telling myself I deserve it. That I have the right to celebrate. I will thumb through the tiny jumpers with knitted animals, the little boxed bonnets and bootees, the baby blankets in pale ice-cream colours, closing my eyes as I finger the softness of the cashmere. Then I watch them being wrapped up for me in tissue and ribbon, turning my credit card over in my hand. Wondering what else I am going to do for the rest of the day.

  He finishes grating the cheese, leaves the dirty grater in the sink. He huffs, rubs the sides of his face with his hands.

  ‘What, Daniel?’

  ‘Do you think you might have taken it out somewhere, left it in a cafe, maybe?’

  I turn away from the cooker and stare at him. It takes me a moment to work out that he is talking about the laptop again. I turn the heat down.

  ‘No, Daniel, I haven’t. I haven’t taken it out of the house. I’ve been with Rachel all day today, I told you. And anyway, why would I take the laptop to a cafe?’

  He exhales loudly. ‘It’d be a lot easier to find things in this house if there wasn’t so much crap everywhere.’ I survey the kitchen table. He has a point. The table is covered with newspapers and magazines I said I’d read but haven’t got round to, a stack of pregnancy books, a TENS machine, an empty bottle of Gaviscon, a yet-to-be-inflated birth ball and pump. He starts lifting the piles of newspapers and magazines from the table with unnecessary aggression, shoving them into the recycling. Leaflets drift out from between the newspaper pages and float onto the floor.

  ‘Hey, don’t throw away the mags. I haven’t read that Rory thing yet.’

  I press my lips together. Too late. I shouldn’t have mentioned the Rory interview. It does nothing for Daniel’s mood. His hand freezes over the bin. He extracts the magazine, and chucks it onto the table.

  ‘Don’t be so cross, Daniel. It’ll turn up.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m just a bit stressed.’

  While Daniel takes out the recycling, I glance over at the magazine. Rory’s face stares up from the front cover in monochrome. He looks unlike himself – menacing, somehow. Something about it reminds me of Daddy, in his bad moments. When he used to get cross, when he was someone else. I haven’t read the interview yet, but the headline is bad enough.

  I stare outside at Daniel. I can see from his movements that he is frustrated with the overflowing bins. He is stuffing the bags in, one after another, even though it’s clear the lid won’t close.

  He and Rory have rowed about the article, I know. After all the controversy, Daniel thinks Rory should have known it would end in tears – a big interview, just as they are poised to unveil the next phase of the development. When it came out, Daniel went mad.

  Apparently, he hadn’t even known Rory had done an interview – Rory hadn’t warned the client or anything. He told Rory he was an idiot, asked why the hell he hadn’t talked to him before he agreed to it. Rory had snapped that that was rich coming from Daniel, and why hadn’t Daniel mentioned the fact he was moving the company’s money offshore, and how had he imagined that was going to look. Daniel said it wasn’t dodgy, everyone did it, it was just good accounting, and what would Rory know about that since he had never taken the slightest interest in keeping the company’s finances on track. I didn’t like the sound of it. I hate it when they fall out.

  Daniel is back in the kitchen, washing his hands. ‘I’m out again on Monday night, I’m afraid,’ he says, raising his voice over the water. ‘With the client. To try and repair some of the damage.’ He dries his hands on the tea towel, then throws it back on the side in a heap.

  ‘All right. You haven’t forgotten about Rory’s birthday dinner this weekend, though, have you?’

  Daniel blinks. He obviously had.

  ‘Do we have to … go to that?’

  ‘Daniel, he’s my brother and your business partner! Of course we have to. Come on, the article can’t have been that bad.’

  ‘Yeah, well, like you said, you haven’t read the article. It was bad.’

  I sigh, wondering how we have ended up arguing again, when the evening started so well. I pour a glass of Sauvignon Blanc into the risotto. It bubbles up quickly, soaks into the rice. I turn the heat up, make sure the alcohol is evaporated. I smell it over the pan, heady, disorientating for a moment, then gone.

  ‘Want a glass?’ I pour some of the wine, pass it to him. I’ve been discouraging his drinking lately, since his performance at Rory and Serena’s, but this feels like an easy peace offering. Daniel seems mollified by the gesture. He looks at the glass, stops rummaging for his laptop. ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Think I’ll have a beer, though.’ He reaches into the fridge. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Except I’m still getting these cold calls all the time.’

  Daniel frowns. ‘Sorry, I keep meaning to get that landline disconnected.’

  I shake my head. ‘These are weird, though. It seems to be the same company calling, saying something about a new mortgage, or a remortgage. They’re saying I’ve applied for one.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t, have you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘So just put the phone down, Helen. That’s the whole thing – they want to keep you on the line, get you talking about your finances. You just have to hang up.’

  I bite my lip. I’m sure Daniel is right. But the woman was really persistent earlier. She knew my full name, our address, our current mortgage provider. She had insisted I was the one who had requested the application. I’d hung up, but it
had nagged at me. It hadn’t felt like the people calling about PPI claims, or asking whether I’d been in an accident.

  ‘I honestly wouldn’t worry,’ Daniel says. ‘They’re clever, some of them. They can buy data on you, find out stuff that makes them sound genuine.’

  ‘I guess.’

  I stir the risotto, adding the stock slowly, ladle by ladle, moving it around the pan before it bubbles.

  ‘Oh, also, I bumped into Rachel in the deer park earlier,’ I say, changing the subject.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yeah. It started raining so we went to the Maritime Museum. Had a coffee.’

  ‘That sounds nice.’

  I frown. ‘Yes,’ I say distractedly.

  Daniel closes the fridge door and leans back against it, fiddling with the bottle opener on his key ring. He is smiling at me.

  ‘Why are you making that face, if it was nice?’

  I glance up at him as I stir, wondering if I should share my thoughts with him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say eventually. ‘I mean, do you think it’s weird, how I keep bumping in to her all the time?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like when I was having lunch with Katie. That she just happened to be there, sitting at the best table, reading Katie’s newspaper article.’

  He considers this.

  ‘And how she turned up here unannounced that time, when you were away?’

  Daniel looks at me blankly. It’s obvious he’s forgotten what I am talking about.

  ‘I told you about this,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘She knew I was alone, that you were away. And she just turned up uninvited. With a picnic. She pretty much let herself in.’

  Daniel pauses. Then he bursts out laughing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Just doesn’t exactly sound like the crime of the century to me. Your pregnant friend, turning up with a picnic, hoping for a cuppa and a chat.’

  I force myself to laugh along. ‘OK, fine,’ I say. ‘It just felt a bit much, that’s all.’ I pour some more stock into the rice.