by Ali Knight
‘Tea, coffee, me?’ Maggie said suggestively, but her attempt at a joke fell flat. I sensed she was attempting to forge a friendship of sorts, but I wasn’t in the mood. She retreated to her office chair. I thought she might put her feet on her desk, but she leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and got serious. ‘First, we need to go through some photos to clarify who people are.’ I nodded and she handed me an iPad and I swiped through a series of photos. I swiped past Soraya, Gabe’s secretary; Lily; a couple of colleagues from work and two women I didn’t recognise at all. The photos ended. ‘She’s not here,’ I said, frustrated.
‘Not yet.’ Maggie paused. ‘He’s pretty popular, isn’t he?’
‘Everybody loves Gabe.’ I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice, and tried hard to tamp it down.
Maggie stayed silent, watching me with her large, dark eyes. She didn’t miss anything. Maggie would be arrogant enough to believe she could winkle secrets out of people before they’d realised they’d given them up. ‘How did you meet Gabe?’ she asked.
‘At a charity event. We were raising money for women’s education in the Horn of Africa. He was on my table. There was a man sat between us and we just joked and talked right over him all night. I got home and realised I hadn’t laughed like that in longer than I could remember. And that was it, we were off to the races. I was thirty-five, never married. Friends said I was lucky, after so many years, to find a man like Gabe. “He’s a keeper,” they said. Gabe was rich by then, powerful I suppose. But I fell in love with him because he was kind.’
How embellished are the stories we tell after the event to make sense of our lives? Much is omitted, and other bits exaggerated. Gabe had in fact swapped places with the boring man in between us. It was if a colourful butterfly had unexpectedly landed on my wrist and at any moment I expected it to fly away. It was intoxicating, laughing with Gabe that night. Our dinner guests were ignored, we only had space for each other.
I stared straight back at Maggie, but I blushed, and she saw it. I was remembering what had happened after the dessert; the unaccountable intensity of it. Gabe and I had stood together, napkins thrown aside, and he had taken my hand, and pulled me down a flight of back stairs. His hand was so warm, a physical comfort for someone like me who is known for cold hands and feet. And we had kissed out on an empty balcony, his eyes glittering sparks of possibility. And I had pushed him away, suddenly fearful, because I could feel my self-control falling away, like a silk dressing gown off a naked shoulder.
He had paused, smiled his lopsided smile and whispered in my ear, ‘What are we going to do now?’
I knew how to play the seduction game better than anyone. My self-control was something I’d cultivated meticulously over the years, and it had not been easily won. I had worked, and worked hard, to get to that charity auction, to being courted by Gabe on that balcony with him that night. I knew exactly how to play him to get him wanting more, to send him wild with frustrated desire. But with his breath in my ear and his hands on my waist I simply gave in. I threw away the rulebook. I haven’t felt like this in years, I thought. We had sex up against the wall of the stairwell, like a couple of teenagers in the pub car park at closing time. I cried. It came out of nowhere, as if that emotion had been hovering, just beneath the surface, for years. My legs were shaking, and I felt sick in my stomach. He didn’t recoil in horror, he wiped my tears away, as if he was used to women reacting that way. I have always wondered, when I think back now, whether I should have paid more attention to his response at that moment. But I was already lost; love, when it hits, grinds every precaution to dust. I realised that with him, the usual conventions didn’t and wouldn’t apply; giving myself to him was just something I had to do.
Outside the back door of the venue he hugged me. And let me go. He walked away a few steps and seemed to change his mind and came back and put his hands behind my head and kissed me again.
And that night had promised all the good bits that had come after. He phoned the next day, and we married six months later.
But I can’t forget, sat here in Maggie’s office not seven years later, that Gabe had taken me somewhere that night where I had never been. If he could do that to me, a woman who had made it her life to never give something for nothing, what could he do to other women? To that woman in the green dress?
Maggie was still staring at me, waiting. I needed to fill in the silence. ‘Gabe is the kind of man who when he wants something, he goes all out to get it. And I guess that included me.’
‘So, as romances go, it was straightforward,’ Maggie said.
‘Yes,’ I lied. I chose not to tell her the downsides, the sceptical faces when people heard I was a woman with nothing who married a younger, rich widower, six months after meeting him. ‘Gosh, you make it sound so easy,’ a woman casually let slip to me at a party. It’s not easy. Lying next to the man you love as he cries himself to sleep over his dead wife, as he murmurs Clara’s name in his sleep.
Try that for easy.
We tailed off into silence. Maggie watched me for a few moments, then shifted in her seat and began again. ‘Gabe went to Connaught Tower yesterday and stood around on a high floor for a while, looking out. I was unsure what he was doing, do you have any idea?’
I was back on safer ground and felt more confident again. ‘That’s a ritual of his. Gabe is Bosnian but he grew up in Vukovar, in Croatia. The town was completely destroyed in the Balkan war of the 1990s. The population was decimated, his parents were killed in a mortar attack on their house. He fled to London. The night before he and his wife Clara left, they climbed the water tower, the highest point in Vukovar, and looked out through the mortar-shell holes at their destroyed world. The sun was setting. And I think at that moment he swore that he would never stand to see destruction like that again. Clara and he came to London as refugees, like so many before and after them.’
‘I thought Moreau was a French name.’
‘He changed his name and Clara’s. He wanted to obliterate his painful past. He was called Buric. He picked Moreau simply because he liked the sound of it.’
‘It’s some story,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s done very well for himself.’
‘He worked very hard, worked three jobs, took risks and got lucky. He went into property right when prices started rising and it has paid off. But only in the last few years has he really made his money. We’ve built thousands of council homes, good quality homes, all over this city over the years. His life now is very different from where he started when he first arrived here. After Clara died, he took to going to stand at the high places, always looking west, to take a moment, I suppose, to think about his dead wife, his old life.’ I tried very hard to keep the bitterness from my voice. ‘Did you notice how he holds his right arm?’
‘I was going to ask you about that,’ Maggie said.
‘He injured it when the car went off the bridge and into the river and it’s never been right since. He has restricted movement in the lower arm and constant pain.’ There was a pause, Maggie was content for me to keep talking. ‘I was lucky to meet Gabe. He allowed – well, his money allowed me to really expand the charity work. I’ve always wanted to give kids in this country – this city – the opportunity to make their lives better, to overcome their disadvantaged backgrounds. He and I saw eye to eye on that. We have achieved great things. We’re very passionate about that.’
I didn’t tell Maggie that I couldn’t have kids. That Gabe and I tried, over and over again for years when we were first together, but it never happened. We tried one round of IVF, and that failed too. And then we accepted our defeat, and we smiled bravely for Alice, and I forced myself to believe that she was enough. When I saw couples with toddlers, and the jealousy threatened to overwhelm me, I scolded myself that I was lucky to have such a beautiful daughter. That she was the child I would never have. And I pretend now that our failure doesn’t matter; that he and I had moved on. But the fact remains Gabe had a baby, and I never did.
‘Why did you never have children?’ Maggie asked.
I swallowed and shrugged. ‘It just never happened that way.’ I gave Maggie a pathetic smile that stank of an apology when none needed to be given.
She moved on, like it was too small a detail to dwell on. ‘He made a call from Connaught Tower on what I think is another phone. If I’m correct, the next few days should give us something.’
‘I’ve searched every inch of the house, I haven’t found an extra phone, or even an extra contract.’
‘They are easy things to hide.’
I didn’t like hearing that. ‘With your cases, how often have you found something by the end of the first week?’ I asked.
‘With the majority we have some kind of lead to go on. A flat they entered that we then check out, a hotel room that needs further investigation.
‘You could take it as a compliment,’ Maggie said. ‘If he is having an affair, he’s keeping it very, very quiet. His behaviour so far is all within the range of normal,’ she added.
I felt a flash of anger. I opened my handbag and pulled out the envelope with the cash in it. I handed it over and Maggie pulled out the notes, licked her finger and began to count, the bills feeding through her adept fingers.
‘Don’t ever underestimate him, that would be a mistake,’ I said.
She didn’t pause until she got to a nice round number. ‘Why do you say that?’ She turned the money sideways and knocked the notes together on the desk and placed them in the drawer.
‘He killed the woman he loved when his car veered off the bridge and went into the water. He suffered life-changing injuries. Anyone who can live, survive and thrive, after that, is easily a match for you.’
CHAPTER 17
Alice
Five weeks and six days before
It was late afternoon when I woke up with what can only be described as the back of my head shot away.
Oh my God, what a night out in Vauxhall.
It had been coming back to me in vibrant staccato images that weren’t linear. There was a dwarf on stage! And a bar that was set up inside an old camper van – it was so amazing! And jugglers. Were they throwing fire? There was fire somewhere. Lily kept dragging me away from the wall into the middle of the dance floor where two women in silver catsuits were dancing.
Lily was shouting in my ear and giggling; she made me down a red drink in a plastic beaker. We danced a lot, I think, but I couldn’t really remember. I felt scared and then I didn’t want to let go of her hand.
Lily dragged us over to talk to Milo. I felt so good, being there with him. I couldn’t remember what he was saying. He had lots of friends, everyone was so nice to me. He was fist-bumping this guy and that, his voice sonic-booming, his hand on my arm warm and cold at the same time.
I had been so happy then!
Somewhere in that endless night of noise and lights, Lily and I left with Milo and other people and went back to his flat. As the party ebbed and flowed around us we gravitated towards each other, ending up squashed on a sofa together.
We started talking about our mums, for he had lost his at a young age, just like me. And I had started jabbering at him about Momma and how no one understood what it was to lose her so young. And Milo had listened, he hadn’t pretended, he had really understood. We had talked for so long! I had found a kindred soul, someone who understood my pain.
When his hand touched my forearm the hairs on my arms stood up like sunflowers on a cloudless day.
I couldn’t remember exactly what I had said to him after that. From Momma I must have moved on to talk to him about school, about Lily, about all my life goals that I wanted to achieve and at what age I wanted to complete them. I remember him smiling, I remember a sensation overload, my lolling head, the warm sticky leather of Milo’s battered sofa, the room turning, slow and stately as a Ferris wheel.
Then later, or maybe it was before, Lily’s face was looming over me, she was laughing hysterically, high pink spots on her cheeks. ‘You’re tripping off your nuts, Alice! Dance, come on!’ Her face split with a smile and she twisted away, her long slender fingers moving in a wave.
Later, back on the sofa again, Milo picked up a lock of my hair and ran his fingers down the squeaky strands. He bent over and kissed my neck, the ridge of my collarbone. His lips were so soft and warm and I felt the strongest pull of desire in the pit of my stomach. I feasted on the mesmerising curve of his eyebrow, the white tips of his teeth as he spoke. And then the room was spinning fast, the Ferris wheel had become a rollercoaster and I didn’t like it and I couldn’t get off and he was asking me questions, more and more questions, I couldn’t remember what about, and then my hands were freezing cold and I was shaking and engulfed by hot, shameful tears. I was so scared, more scared than I had ever been, because emotions I couldn’t control were tumbling over themselves inside my head and heart.
I saw a look on Milo’s face I didn’t like and suddenly he was dragging me to the window and trying to get it open and I vomited repeatedly out of the window as people pushed and fought to get away from me.
I woke up in just a pair of knickers in Milo’s bed, my head in his armpit, our bodies sticky with sweat and tangled in a sheet. I needed the loo and slipped away from him, plucking one of his T-shirts off the floor and holding it to me as I went. I stepped across the narrow corridor into the toilet. He was still asleep, his arms thrown trusting and wide, when I came back into the room. I needed to find Lily and bent down to pick up my bra off the floor. When I stood up, his eyes were open and he was staring at me from the bed.
‘You’re holding that bra like it’s a weapon,’ he said.
I grinned, held my arm up high and twisted my bra round and round like a rodeo rider at a Texas fair. I saw his eyes widen in appreciative surprise. Some women would have been embarrassed at how we had awoken, wondering at the cross-currents after a night together, but I refused to be one of those girls. I loved Milo, and he loved me. He grinned back and sat up in bed, the muscles in his back and arms catching the sunlight. He gave his hair a good scratch with both hands and threw the sheet off and stood up. He was puppy-dog bouncy.
‘Well, good morning,’ he said, coming towards me with his erection pushing at his Y-fronts. We played an amusing game of him trying to kiss me as I struggled into my clothes. Eventually he sighed in defeat then hurried into his jeans and threw on a T-shirt that had been balled up on the floor.
‘I guess you’re feeling better now?’ he asked. ‘You were pretty ill last night at one point, ranting and raving all over the place.’
‘Better out than in, I suppose,’ and we both laughed.
I moved down the stairs and Milo followed, holding my hand. A huge black man in a scuffed leather jacket came out of the kitchen holding a can of Red Bull. ‘Boo!’ he said loudly, and I jumped back against the wall. ‘I’m only kidding,’ the man said, ‘girl looks petrified, Milo!’
‘Leave her alone,’ Milo said good-naturedly. ‘This is Larry, by the way.’
Larry held his hand up in a flat-palmed American Indian salute.
I slid along the wall past Larry and into the kitchen; I rinsed the dregs from a plastic cup and drank some water. Milo put his hand on my back and I turned round. He wasn’t like any guy I had met before. He didn’t talk earnestly about university options or brag about how well he skied. He was older and rougher. There was a raw energy to him that suggested dangerous possibilities.
He didn’t take his eyes off me, his earlier jokes abandoned. I looked at him and I couldn’t look away. ‘There’s just something about you,’ he mumbled. He pulled me slowly to his chest and held me against his T-shirt, which smelled of smoke and late nights and promise. ‘I feel like I already know you,’ he said. And the Ferris wheel journey of last night began again and I softened against him. He leaned down and kissed me.
I felt myself falling, plunging through delicious barriers until I stumbled backwards, my eyes wide open with the shocking possibil
ity of it. ‘You’re so gorgeous,’ the words were out of my mouth before I could even think what I was saying, what the effect of them might be. He grinned and put his hand on the wall, his jokey demeanour signalling his victory.
I blushed to the roots of my hair, which made his grin wider. ‘You’re laughing at me!’
He began to protest and put his hands on my hips, drawing me closer to him. He kissed my ear, but I twisted away, a flare of anger igniting in me. I headed for the front door, the heat of the day hit me as I opened it. I heard Milo behind me.
‘Don’t go,’ he said, burying his face in my hair, but I was keen to be gone now, to preserve what little dignity I felt I had left. He kissed me as I pulled away.
I was nearly at Connaught Tower when I heard Lily’s voice.
‘Slow down, Alice!’ I waited for her to catch up. She grabbed me and linked arms and we stumbled in a slow meander across a patch of scrubby grass. Her face had ballooned on chemicals and not enough sleep, her glossy mane was a lank tangle round her shoulders. ‘Oh God, I’m desperate for a wee,’ she said. She pulled her pants down and squatted on the grass.
‘Lily, someone might see!’ I glanced nervously around, astonished at Lily’s lack of decorum, her lack of control. The headmistress at school flashed before me, all that money that had been spent and here was one of her pupils, fanny being tickled by the grass.
‘Who gives a shit. Just be thankful I’m not in a playsuit.’
And suddenly we were laughing uncontrollably, rolling around on the floor flapping our arms.
‘What a night!’ Lily said, half lying on the ground. ‘That’ll go down in the book.’
‘What book?’
Lily slowly got to her feet, testing to see how steady she was. ‘The book of living, Alice. You’re finally beginning to read it. Losing control, Alice, it’s fun. You need to have more fun.’ She leaned into me, hoping maybe I could steer her upright. I felt the warmth of her arm through my skin. It felt so good. ‘Milo likes you,’ she said, digging her elbow into my ribs and giving me a conspiratorial look.
