Exhibit Alexandra

by Natasha Bell

  “Okay,” Marc said.

  DI Jones cleared his throat. “We’ve received the lab reports back from the river.”

  Marc looked at him, a breath caught in his throat.

  “We estimate Alexandra lost two to three pints of blood on the bank there.”

  Marc’s torso crumpled. He held his hands over his head, his breathing rapid and shallow.

  “I know this is hard to hear,” DI Jones continued. “But we’re now working on the theory that your wife’s body was moved after the incident at the river.”

  Marc’s knees began to tremble. He still held his head in his hands, shaking it from side to side. “No, no, no, no,” he murmured. “You’re wrong.”

  Nicola uncrossed her legs. DI Jones glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  Marc looked up, his eyes red but his gaze steady. “What does two to three pints mean? Could she have survived?”

  DI Jones hesitated. “It’s a significant amount, Dr. Southwood.”

  “Is it fatal?” Marc said.

  “Not conclusively so,” said Nicola. “But it’s enough to lead to a loss of consciousness. It’s—”

  “So she could be alive?” Marc said, cutting her off.

  Nicola and DI Jones exchanged a look.

  “She could be alive,” Marc said again. “Why aren’t you out there looking for her?”

  DI Jones leant forward. “Dr. Southwood, if somehow your wife is alive, we will find her, but we will only do that by being realistic about what the evidence indicates. Do you understand?”

  Marc’s nostrils flared, but he nodded. He watched DI Jones’s mouth move as he told him only our family’s DNA had been found on my clothing, that there was a trace of something on my handbag, but it could belong to the thief who stole its contents. “The next step,” he said, “is to petition for Alexandra’s phone and digital records, to try to build as clear a picture of her last movements as possible. We’d also like permission to access yours as well.”

  “Mine?” Marc said.

  DI Jones looked him straight in the eye and Marc felt heat rise to his cheeks.

  “It’s routine,” Nicola said softly.

  Marc scratched his temple. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  DI Jones stared at him for a moment longer. “While we’re here,” he said eventually, “I want to ask about your wife’s work.”

  Marc nodded.

  “You said she was going to do a PhD?”

  “Yes,” Marc said curtly.

  “Why now?”

  Marc shrugged. “The girls are a bit older. Alex has been talking about working full-time again and a PhD would allow her to get a senior lectureship.”

  “So you’d say Alexandra was ambitious?”

  “Of course. She’s the smartest person I know.”

  “And what she wanted was a senior lectureship?”

  Marc nodded.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it, for such a clever, ambitious woman to have waited this long to pursue something she’s so passionate about?”

  “Excuse me?” said Marc.

  “It’s just, we’ve talked to some of your friends and they’ve painted a slightly different picture.”

  Marc narrowed his eyes. “Who has? What did they say?”

  “Did you and your wife ever discuss who would stay home with your children?” DI Jones said, ignoring Marc’s questions.

  Marc glared at him.

  “It’s in everyone’s interest that you co-operate with us, Dr. Southwood. All I’m trying to do is establish if Alexandra was as happy with your arrangements as you say she was.”

  “Of course she was,” Marc said. “Why would I lie? We share the parenting. We support each other.”

  “But you’re the head of your department—that must involve a lot of long hours. It must help to have a wife willing to work part-time.”

  “What are you getting at?” Marc said, his temper flaring. “What exactly has been said?”

  “We’re not getting at anything, Marc,” said Nicola, exchanging a glance with DI Jones. “We’re just trying to fill in some gaps.”

  Marc looked from Nicola to DI Jones and back again, feeling like more than a coffee table separated them.

  After they left, he returned to the living room and picked up the bag of my things. He extracted my toothbrush and clothes, laid them on the table before him. He fished back in the bag and retrieved two crinkled sheets of typed paper. They were single spaced and lacking page numbers and footnotes. An early draft. The title at the top read: “Are Aesthetic Emotions More or Less ‘Real’ Than Those Experienced in Life?” Underneath, hand-scrawled in pen, it said: Or, I Miss Tony Soprano??

  I’d told him a little about the paper I planned to write. We discussed it briefly, but realized we were unlikely to agree. I wanted to do something fun, to depart from the fusty norms of Art History conferences, with their endless slides and attention to the minutest details of the most ancient of paintings. When I got enthusiastic about becoming what I called a “real” academic, I’d dream of being a public intellectual, of writing kooky columns in the Guardian and The New Yorker. Marc teased that wasn’t exactly the highest of academic aspirations and I poked my tongue out and complained he was too boring to understand. He was fully supportive of me doing a PhD, but we both knew he was one of those fusty academics I wanted to riot against. He liked real papers that addressed serious topics. He wanted citations and bibliographies, texts containing actual text, not critical analyzes of Big Brother and Katie Price. I rolled my eyes when he complained about his students’ tenuous theses, before kissing him on the lips and saying, “I love you anyway, Dr. Bore.” There was a kind of equilibrium, we joked, in our academic incompatibility.

  He pushed thoughts of the blood by the river and DI Jones’s questions and who on earth might have said we weren’t happy to the depths of his mind and folded himself on to the sofa, his slippered feet resting on the opposite arm. Okay, Al, he thought. I’ll give your kooky academia a go. My mind’s open.

  ARE AESTHETIC EMOTIONS MORE OR LESS “REAL” THAN THOSE EXPERIENCED IN LIFE? OR, I MISS TONY SOPRANO??

  Over a period of months last year, my husband and I watched the box set, series 1 to 6, of The Sopranos. Like others across the globe, the characters infiltrated our lives like friends and enemies. We spoke about their motivations and predicaments, debated their options and futures. Then they were gone.

  With an unsettlingly abrupt final episode and the last depression of our player’s eject button, they were out of our lives. We discussed the ending for a few days, then moved on to American Horror Story. Now, twelve months later, I still miss the character of Tony Soprano. I miss his presence in my conscious psyche; I miss knowing I can return to his world at the end of a long day.

  I also miss my father, who gave up a long fight with cancer a decade ago. I miss those sweets that tasted like soap, which I was only allowed on holiday when I was a child. I miss my daughters when they’re at school and I miss my student days, when I felt I could achieve anything. I miss being able to read Jane Austen for the first time and fall in love with the characters afresh. I miss Father Christmas and vampires, unicorns and digital watches.

  I miss dozens of things, real and imagined, to varying degrees and with no or a full desire to have them returned to me. But are some of these emotions of a different class? Of differing importance?

  Ed S. Tan distinguishes between A- and R-emotions: Aesthetic and Real emotions. In other words, Art-world and Life-world emotions. He goes on to discuss the differences between emotions related to actual artworks and those related to the things represented within the artworks. I’ll call these A- and A2-emotions. Missing Tony Soprano, who is not a real person and whom I have never met, is an A2 emotion, while mourning the end of the HBO series, which was a feature in my real life,
is an A-emotion.

  All very amusing, but why are both sets of A-emotions considered less worthy than their R- counterparts? Sure, it doesn’t have a truly physical impact on my life if the final blackout ending of The Sopranos means Tony Soprano was shot, whereas my world would spin into turmoil if one of my close friends was hit by a bullet while eating dinner in a restaurant with his family. But is crying during your favorite soap opera really any more ridiculous than shedding tears while reading a tragic story in the newspaper?

  “Real” is a judgmental label, which I blame for some of the value imbalance between R- and A-emotions, but I think it goes deeper. It’s ingrained in our social constructs that, whatever job we choose, religion we sign up to or life philosophy we decide to pursue, we should expect to live essentially like our neighbors: in cookie-cutter molds of birth-to-death cycles. Perhaps it’s a product of capitalism or something more innate. Either way, I’d argue that there’s something quite absurd about holding R-emotions so high above A-s when the R-s are only those that everyone else experiences. On the whole, you and I and the kids down the road will all fall in love, be let down, feel rejected by someone we care about, achieve something we’ve wanted, bury our parents, hold our children, question our god…and so on.

  There is a finite number of R-emotions—a very large finite number, but a finite number nonetheless—from which each of us will lucky-dip only a tiny percentage. But the A-s are different. Artists have been working for millennia to manipulate our emotional responses to their work: to create a whole new pool of emotions and feelings, and to seek original thought and unique experiences. Surely, for that reason alone, the A-s should have a higher place on the shelf of worth.

  I’m not saying R-s do not hurt and sting and make your flesh ache with longing, but why must we cling to them when they have been felt over and over for centuries with no evolution? Would it not be more sensible to pursue the unknown? To seek the edge of human experience, experiment with manipulating and controlling emotions rather than sitting back and waiting for the world to tell us what to feel? The artist who makes me cry shows far more talent, far more skill, than the boyfriend who dumps me. One has thought with precision about her product, considered its impact on me, the viewer, rehearsing and tweaking her performance, while the other has simply followed some gut instinct, some evolutionary impulse to cut his losses and flee. And while the inadvertently Darwinian of the two might crush my heart and seem like the most tragic thing in the world for some minuscule moment in my trivial existence, the artist and her art, should it be of suitable worth, will live on beyond my heartbreak and beyond her own lifetime, framed in galleries, reperformed for decades, or merely played on screens across the globe. Sad as the implications about individual human worth might be, I’d hazard a guess that more people miss Tony Soprano than my dad.

  * * *

  The draft ended there. Marc stared at the pages in his hands. I’d touched these sheets, typed the words and thought the thoughts. He wanted them to connect me to him, to bleed through his fingertips and bring me back. But was I really arguing manufactured happiness and pain had more worth than the real things? Where did that leave him now? Should he have been heading off to a gallery and reveling in conceptual genius rather than worrying about my whereabouts? Should he write me off like DI Jones so clearly had and go find some emotional catharsis at the cinema?

  “Fucking hell, Al,” he said aloud, crumpling the papers in his hands. He bundled my clothes and toothbrush from the table and carried them upstairs. He dumped everything on the bed and reached for the overnight bags above the wardrobe. They were packed one inside another and he pulled them apart until he had all four gaping wide on the bed. Hands shaking, he shoved the things the police had returned in one, then turned to my dressing table with another. He scooped my hairbrush and moisturizers and makeup unceremoniously into the bag, tears wetting his cheeks. He sank to the floor, the bag in his lap. He closed his eyes and saw blood and gangsters and TV violence on the backs of his lids. My husband’s limbs shook as he gave way to those real emotions I’d tried to dismiss. The bag fell from his lap, my things spilling over the floor. He opened his eyes and scrambled to pick them up, fumbling with the fabric of the bag. His fingers touched something hard in the lining. Something small and rectangular and distinctively familiar. He felt around for the hidden zip to the inside pocket and pulled out three burgundy passports. He thumbed them each clumsily open, looking for the photographs, checking what he probably already suspected. He saw Lizzie’s face, Charlotte’s and his own.

  * * *

  I’ve been alone with my thoughts for too long. He hasn’t visited me for three days. There’s a tray with food waiting each morning when I wake up, but I’ve had no human contact. I tried to stay up last night, to see the tray being brought, but I couldn’t. Even when I’m awake, my thoughts are foggy.

  I imagined it would be a relief if he stopped coming, but it’s worse. I want to disappear into my memories, to snooze and dream of my life before. Instead, I have nightmares, both asleep and awake. I try to hold on to what we had, to think of our happiness, our home, our beautiful family, but it’s like I see it through a broken window. The cracks distort everything. The hours bleed into each other, nothing to punctuate my torturous thoughts. I keep thinking I hear his laugh or the key in the lock. I turn, but it’s just in my mind. He’s in my mind. I can’t escape.

  I’m going to stop eating. It’s the only control I have. It’ll be hard, but I’ve endured worse. I think of those who have done it before me. The body is just a tool. So far he’s used mine against me. Now it’s my turn.

  2001

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24

  Patrick had neither shaved nor dressed when we arrived. He flipped the latch and let the front door swing on its hinges as he padded barefoot down the hall, his dressing gown billowing behind him. Fran caught my eye as we followed him through. Patrick’s brother, Rob, was down the road filling in the paperwork for a rental van and we had both Marc’s and Fran’s cars, but it soon became clear it’d take us multiple trips and most of the day.

  Fran put the kettle on and Marc and I sat Patrick down at the dining table to make a list.

  “Where should we start?” Marc said. Patrick made a low groaning sound and lay his head on his arms.

  Rebecca had taken five-year-old Pip and gone to stay at her mum’s. Patrick said she was thinking of moving back to Castleford permanently, commuting to her dance school from there. I thought of the sugar plum fairy I’d helped into her costume backstage last Christmas, of Rebecca running around placating children and parents alike. Patrick started sobbing again, trying and failing to get the words out to tell us what they’d discussed about custody and visitations.

  Marc placed his hand on Patrick’s shoulder. I wondered if I’d ever seen them touch before. “Buddy,” Marc said.

  Fran and I left them in the kitchen. “Let’s start in the bedroom,” she said and I was relieved to have her take charge.

  “How’s Ollie?” I asked as we pulled two suitcases from beneath the bed.

  “Stuck at work,” Fran said. “Someone called in sick, so he’s on a double. I don’t know why he’s always the one who gets conned into it, seems like nobody else ever does anything.”

  “That’s awful,” I said. Fran always complained more about Ollie’s work than he did, as if by having her rant about the hours and the way the owner treated her staff, Ollie was somehow free to actually enjoy his job. I loved listening to his animated stories about the stupid things people asked for, about the stresses of life as a chef.

  Fran and I took one side of the bed each and began to tackle the wardrobes and drawers. At least clothes were pretty obvious to divide into his and hers, but it felt almost criminal to be in such close proximity to Rebecca’s things. I looked at her makeup and lotions, the blond hairs wrapped around the prongs of her hairbrush.

  “It f
eels like a crime scene,” I said. “Like their life’s frozen in time.”

  Fran nodded. “No wonder he’s been in such a state, here in this house alone.”

  I knelt to pull another bag from beneath the bed. Inside were leotards in a variety of colors, folded and squashed in with tulle and netting. I thought of the Christmas show again, watching Rebecca waving her arms and whispering from the side of the stage while thirty six- and seven-year-olds stumbled through pliés and pas de chats. We’d helped her strike the set afterward, made it to the pub for last orders. Patrick had ordered “a bottle of this fine establishment’s cheapest fizz.” The barman had looked like he was about to deck him. I felt like we’d laughed the entire night.

  I zipped up the duffel and pushed it back beneath the bed. We finished with Patrick’s clothes and I found Rob in the living room sorting DVDs and books into estimated piles. Patrick came in periodically and plucked one or two to put in a different pile. Marc followed with cardboard boxes and parcel tape. Fran took a box from Marc and began gathering up photographs and trinkets. I watched her dump a slate coaster embossed with the words “Happily Ever After,” then three photo albums without bothering to check their contents. It occurred to me what she was doing and I took a box from Marc to follow suit, scanning shelves and surfaces for the most triggering items.

  “What will they do with this stuff?” I asked after Marc had led Patrick upstairs.

  Fran shrugged. “Put it in storage. Throw it away eventually.”

  “It’s so sad,” I said, thinking of the wedding album on our shelf, the cushion covers I’d made from my dress.

  “It is,” said Fran.

  We’d had the conversation, of course. The one I’m pretty sure every couple has but can never admit. “One in three marriages ends in divorce, so who’s it going to be?” We’d been sitting on the living room floor, wrapping presents and smiling about how perfect our first Christmas as husband and wife was going to be. Marc snorted when I said it, gave me that “you can’t be serious” look. But I led and tempted him into the conversation and eventually we made a list.