‘I need you to trust me,’ I said.
‘But you’re not coming back. Whatever.’
I shook my head.
I saw her jaw tighten. I knew she wanted to ask me how I could do this when I had told her I loved her. I knew she had a million questions, and she no longer knew the answer to the biggest one. I knew she wanted to ask me to stay. But she wanted to stay with her daughter more.
‘Why won’t you trust me enough to talk to me?’ she said.
Because I can’t make you choose, I told her silently. But I can carry that burden for you. ‘Do you always ask so many questions?’ I said jokingly. But I didn’t laugh. I stepped forward and held her, feeling her stiffen in my arms, and knew that my heart was broken.
Night falls swiftly in Silver Bay. And, as with any small town, it comes with a rhythm of its own: birds declare the end of day with increasing fervour, then fall silent; cars edge into driveways; children are called in, bouncing or dragging their feet, for their supper; somewhere in the distance a hysterical small dog barks, warning of the end of the world. In Silver Bay there were other layers of nightfall: the sound of pans clattering through the open kitchen window, the creaking of warped lock-up doors, the hiss and grind of tyres in sand down the coast road as the fishermen readied their boats, the grunting and good-natured shouting of those launching their vessels from the shore. And then, as the sun sank slowly behind the hills, the winking advent of the bay’s lights, silence, and the occasional distant illumination of an oil tanker on the horizon, and then, finally, blackness. A blackness into which you can project almost anything: the song of an unseen whale, the beating of a heart, the endlessness of an unwanted future.
I watched it all as I sat in the leather armchair. And, given the momentous nature of what was about to happen, of what had already happened, my final conversation of that day was almost anticlimactic.
‘Vanessa?’
She had picked up on the second ring. I gazed out of the window and then, perhaps more sharply than I’d intended, pulled down the blind.
‘Mike . . .’ She let out a long breath. ‘I wasn’t sure when you’d call.’
She sounded unsure of herself. I wondered how long she had been waiting. I had promised to call several hours previously, but had sat in the room, staring at the phone, my fingers refusing to hit the keys. ‘Mike?’
‘You still want me?’
‘Do you want me?’
I closed my eyes. ‘We’ve been through a lot,’ I said. ‘We’ve hurt each other. But I’ll give it a go. I really will give it a go.’
I was almost relieved when she didn’t say anything.
‘When’s your flight home?’ she said.
Twenty-five
Monica
I didn’t tell Mike I was going to do it: I was worried he’d tell me not to, that he just wanted me to do what we’d discussed, and stop fretting about the detail. I guessed he was royally pissed off with me – he’d left increasingly strident messages on my voicemail and every time I switched on my mobile phone it seemed there was a missed-call alert from Australia. Last night he must have called a hundred times, warning me not to speak to anyone until I’d talked to him.
But I couldn’t ring him back, not until at least some of this made sense. I couldn’t talk to him until I understood what was going on. I’m not the greatest journalist in the world – I’ve never fooled myself that I’m much more than a jobbing hack – but I know when something odd’s going on, and my blood was up. In one respect at least I’m like my brother: I’m thorough. So, on my one weekday off, I headed to Surrey, caught a cab from the station to the address I’d scribbled on a piece of paper, and shortly after ten I was standing outside a large house in Virginia Water.
‘Nice place,’ the cabbie said, peering at it through the windscreen as he scribbled a receipt.
‘Yes – I’m scouting locations for a p**n film,’ I said. ‘Their rates are very good, apparently.’ I grinned as he drove off. Mike’s girlfriend could have that one on me.
I soon saw that I wouldn’t be able to check out the house as I’d planned: it was surrounded by high hedges, and was so far from the road that I would have drawn attention to myself walking up the long drive. I had wanted to take a quiet look, maybe glean some clues about its inhabitants, its history, work out what I was trying to find. Instead I stood at the bottom of the drive, half hidden by a tree, outside the five-bar gate, and waited.
It was a big mock-Tudor affair, with leaded windows, the kind of house I imagine accountants aspire to. (This may be a slur on either accountants or mock-Tudor houses – but I live in a two-bedroom flat above a burger bar and, according to my friends, have no taste.) The lawns and flowerbeds were tidy enough, even in October, to suggest a gardener’s vigilant attention. Five or six bedrooms, I thought, staring at it from the roadside. At least three bathrooms. Lots of carpet and expensive curtains. A Volvo estate stood in the drive, and pricy wooden play equipment in the damp garden. I shivered, despite my thick coat. There was something cold about that house, despite its affluence, and I didn’t think I was being fanciful. Mike had told me what had gone on inside it, and I couldn’t help but imagine that young woman looking out at the drive as she tried to plot her escape.
Several cars drove by, their occupants turning to stare at me as they passed. It was not the kind of area where people tended to walk, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. As I was considering where to move to, I caught sight of a woman walking past an upstairs window: a flash of a pale jumper, short dark hair in a neat bob. It was probably the wife. I wondered what he had told her about his previous life. I wondered whether she, too, was planning her getaway, or whether he treated her well. Whether it was a marriage of equals. Then I thought of what Liza had told my brother and wondered whether love had blinded him to the possibility that she was lying to him. How else to explain any of this? How else to explain such huge holes in what she had described?
As I considered what to do next, a girl in a thick blue jumper and jeans came round the side of the house. She might have left the door open; from inside I could just hear the dull murmur of the radio, then the sound of a baby crying and being pacified. As I ducked back, she walked towards me, to the end of the drive, and made to pick up the post from the mailbox. I stepped out from behind the tree, trying to look as if I had just been passing. ‘Hello there. Is Mr Villiers in?’ I asked. My breath left little clouds of vapour in the air.