“Did he or Yanina admit that they both pretended she was Jeanette when we went around?”
“I don’t know. That wasn’t mentioned. And that was a second question. You said only one. I mean it, Beth. You can let this take over your life if you want, but I’m not letting it take over mine. If you want Pollard to do something else . . .”
“I don’t want him to do anything.”
“He spooned it.” Zannah’s voice rings with contempt.
“I’m the one who needs to find out what’s going on,” I say, thinking about Pam Swain’s podcast exercise: you imagine that each choice goes amazingly well, and then you choose which of those ideal outcomes would be the most ideal. It doesn’t work at all. My choice number two was leaving it up to Pollard to do what needs to be done. That’s the one I chose, in my head, and look how it’s turned out.
Or maybe Pam’s exercise works brilliantly . . .
Yes. It does. You can’t choose between two alternatives without thinking realistically about the people involved.
With Pollard being who he is, with his level of interest and care, and doing things in the way that he does them as a result, choice number two has already gone as well as it could have. For it to go any better, you’d need to replace Pollard with someone more determined, more obsessed, more willing to do whatever it takes—ideally, someone who once loved Flora Braid and her children.
I’d need to replace him with me. Which means choice number one is the right answer. “I have to do it myself,” I tell Dom. “I’m the only person who can or ever would.”
“What does that mean?” he asks. “Please don’t say what I think you’re about to say.”
“It means going to Florida.”
18
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi Dom,
I’m at Heathrow. My plane’s delayed by two hours—great!
I don’t think it’s ever happened before that I’ve left the house with you refusing to speak to me or say good-bye. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s fair. We’ve never disagreed about anything serious before, not once in our whole marriage. About this one thing we disagree, and that ought to be fine. Married couples don’t always have to agree about everything.
You think a trip to Florida is an unnecessary expense. I don’t. I need to do this. I think Flora and her kids might be in real trouble, and I can’t just ignore that fear. No, she’s not my friend anymore, but if I hadn’t been so blinkered and pig-headed twelve years ago, maybe she still would be. I have to do what I can, and either I’ll be able to help or I won’t. Or I’ll find my help isn’t needed and I’ve been wrong about everything. Either way, I’ll be glad I tried. And if I’m creating drama where there’s no need, if I find out that I’ve been totally wrong to make a fuss, then I’ll be relieved—and it will have been worth the money to find that out, because you’re not the only one who wants their life back. I do too.
I wouldn’t force you to go to Florida and spend more time on this, knowing you didn’t want to. That wouldn’t be fair. Can’t you see that you trying to stop me when I feel I need to go is unfair too? I don’t think it’s irresponsible of me to go. I think it’s the opposite.
All right, I’m going to stop now because I sound like a two-year-old: “It’s not fair!” I’ll be back as soon as I can, and the kids will be fine. Work will be fine. I sent a nice email to all my regulars and they all got back to me saying they understand completely, even though I hardly told them anything. I don’t think I’m going to lose a single client. Zannah says she’ll help around the house while I’m gone, and Ben won’t worry as long as you don’t panic him by making him think I’ve done something crazy. Instead, you could tell him that you support my decision to go to America, or at least that you understand it.
I’ll ring you when I get to my hotel if it isn’t too late.
B xxx
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I’m glad you emailed. Sorry I was off with you when you left. I’m just worried. But, yeah, I could have expressed it better. At the risk of sounding like a selfish twat, your safety is all I care about, not Flora’s, and I don’t like the idea of you walking up to Lewis Braid and calling him a liar to his face. The guy’s not right in the head. He never was. We just didn’t care because we were young and undiscriminating, and he threw great parties and was fun to hang around with (except when he wasn’t). But I’ve been thinking—imagine being Flora all these years, having to live with him and deal with his bad side as well as his good side. He was always dead set on getting his way, and that tendency’ll only have gotten worse as he’s aged. For me, that explains why Flora’s stressed and miserable, and why she ran away from you. If she feels trapped, if their relationship has turned ugly and she’s too scared to leave him, she might not want you to see that. Neither of them would want you to see it.
Maybe I’m being over the top. I heard something on the radio this morning about coercive control in relationships. Some of the behaviors that were discussed sounded a bit like Lewis even as he was before, even without the getting-worse-with-age factor. That might have influenced me. Just don’t meet him alone in any secluded places, okay? He might make a pass for all you know, and not take no for an answer.
This memory has just come back to me, a second ago: Lewis and I were having a drink at The Baron of Beef once and I said, “I wouldn’t put anything past you, Braid” (I can’t remember what made me say it) and he said, “You’d be right not to, Rom-com Dom.” I still don’t think he’d harm any children, though. That’d be a step too far even for him. But you’re right: we can disagree about that. I just want to know that you’re fine. Stay safe and come home soon.
D x
19
It’s a little after eight in the evening, Florida time, when I arrive at the Delray Beach Marriott Hotel. According to my stiff body and aching brain, it’s past one in the morning. The check-in desk, less than a minute’s walk from the entrance doors, looks unfeasibly far away. Instead of feeling as if I’ve arrived, I’m looking at the reception staff and thinking, “Right, last leg of the journey, one final push.” The prospect of having to fish out my passport and credit card, sign forms and make small talk makes me want to lie down on the floor and close my eyes.
The high-ceilinged lobby smells of several things all at once: mainly the sea, grilled meat, leather and suntan lotion. There’s a heap of suitcases on the floor that looks as if it might once have been a pile. Children hop around them, try to sit on them, end up pushing them over. Grown-ups scoop their offspring up off the tiled floor and try to shush them. One little boy breaks free of his mother, runs over to a potted tree by the side of the entrance door and sticks his hands into the soil it’s planted in.
Eventually, the suitcases and families are all processed and I’m at the front of the line for the reception desk. I hand over what I’m asked for and sign where I’m told to. Eventually, I get to my room, which contains two double beds. I lie down on one of them, stretch out and think about what I need to do before I can go to sleep: ring Dom, eat something . . .
Then I’m opening my eyes, feeling groggy. My throat is dry and my bladder is uncomfortably full. What time is it? How long have I been asleep?
It takes me longer than it should to find my bag where I dropped it, on the far side of the other double bed, and pull out my phone.
It’s 4 a.m., local time. My phone changed time zones in the taxi from the airport to the hotel, when I checked Lewis, Thomas and Emily Braid’s social media accounts. None of them had posted anything new since I last looked.
Four a.m. That means I’ve been asleep for seven hours straight: conked out in my clothes, without brushing my teeth. And now I can’t get into bed properly and sleep because I’ve done my night already and done it wrong.
I go to the bathroom and turn on the light. Good: there’s a bathtub as
well as a shower. And a little bottle of bubble bath lined up alongside the shampoo and conditioner. A long, hot, scented bath should be all I need to make me feel better. And food. Breakfast probably doesn’t start till 6 a.m., but I can’t wait till then. I’m starving.
What time will Lewis Braid get to his office? Seven thirty?
Or not at all, maybe. He might be on his way to the airport to fly to Japan on business, and you’ll have wasted your time and money.
My stomach lurches at the thought. Then I realize it’s not necessarily true. I might be able to find out more with Lewis gone than with him here in Florida. He won’t have warned his colleagues not to tell me anything because it wouldn’t occur to him that I’d turn up. If he’s away on a business trip, I might be able to get his home address from someone if I play it right. I could go to the house, and if Flora’s still here, which she might well be if Lewis wants to keep her well away from me . . .
Don’t get carried away. Flora might not have been in America when she rang you. Lewis could have rigged it so that it looked as if that was where they were calling from.
They might both be in England.
Then where are seventeen-year-old Thomas and fifteen-year-old Emily? Home alone?
I need to think of a way to make Lewis’s colleagues give me his home address. I searched online in the hope of finding a home address but nothing came up, so my obvious first port of call is Lewis’s workplace, which was easy to find.
I chose this hotel because the offices of VersaNova are only a seven-minute drive away. So close. I try not to let myself believe this means I’m close to getting the answers I want. The more I hope this is nearly over, the more disappointed I’ll be if my trip achieves nothing.
I dial the number for room service and skim-read the menu while I wait for someone to answer. Breakfast doesn’t start till five thirty, so I order a pepperoni pizza from the all-night menu, telling myself that Italians must do it all the time. Then I brush my teeth, run my hands through my hair and wash my face, so that the waiter I’m about to meet won’t mistake me for a scarecrow. The food, when it arrives, is delicious. I sit at the long black desk beneath the large TV screen on the wall, enjoying my early, inappropriate breakfast, and knowing I’d enjoy it more if I didn’t think I might soon be face-to-face with Lewis Braid.
I’ve witnessed Lewis’s anger a few times. Once in a restaurant, he yelled at a group of women at the next table who were making too much noise, and made such a forceful impression on them that they paid up and left before their main courses had been served—but I’ve never seen him angry with me. Not yet. How will he react when I turn up at his office, uninvited? Will he morph into a monster the way Camilla Hosmer did in Zannah’s low-budget film?
Or maybe he’s a monster already. It’s so easy to believe that the label only fits infamous historical figures and mug-shot faces we see on the news. When it’s someone in our personal life—someone we’ve sat laughing with in a pub, someone who’s punted us down the River Cam singing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” in a cheesy American accent—it’s hard to believe that their true nature might be monstrous.
I think again about the incident in the restaurant. It happened while we were all still students. Flora and Lewis had only been an item for a few months. Two of the women from the noisy group were crying as they left the restaurant. I can’t remember precisely what Lewis yelled at them, but it wasn’t only about the racket they were making; it was more personal than that. He insulted their appearances and their intelligence—wittily and with his usual articulate brio, since every occasion and opportunity had to be The Lewis Braid Show. He wanted to solve the noise problem, but not as much as he wanted to make everyone else in the restaurant laugh.
None of us did. We looked down at the floor and wished it would swallow us up. I remember feeling ashamed to be out for dinner with someone who could behave in that way. Flora turned bright red and mumbled, “Lew-is,” as she always did. He never normally had trouble raising a laugh, but he misjudged his audience on this occasion and took it too far.
Assuming I find him today, I’m going to need to talk to him alone in order to get anywhere.
I wonder if he’ll deem it worth staging The Lewis Braid Show for me alone. Probably. One person is still an audience, though a small one. I expect his first move will be an attempt to lavish hospitality on me. “Beth! What a fantastic surprise! It’s so great to see you. Let me take you on a boat trip/to the best beach for miles around/to a baseball game!”
When he realizes that I’m as determined to know the truth as he is to keep it from me, will the friendly façade slip? And the question that really interests me: if it does, what will I see?
* * *
By 8 a.m., I’m already so tired that I could sleep for another seven hours if I let my eyes close. No chance of that. Not with Lewis Braid maybe about to arrive at any moment.
I’m sitting in the back of a taxi in the vast outdoor car park that belongs to his company, VersaNova. My driver called it a “parking lot.” It’s so well landscaped and generously proportioned, it almost seems to be the main point of this whole exercise—as if someone designed an enormous, attractive car park first, for its own sake, and then said, “You know what? It’s a shame to waste this—let’s put the head office of a multi-million-dollar tech company next to it.”
Despite the early hour, I’m not the only person here. There are plenty of other cars around. None, yet, looks expensive enough to belong to Lewis Braid.
Now that I’m here at his workplace, in the full light of a day that promises to be warm and sunny, the thoughts I was thinking in my hotel room a few hours ago seem almost deranged. I came pretty close to wondering if Lewis was evil. He and Flora might be mixed up in something strange and unsavory—I’m certain they are, in fact—but there’s a lot of distance between unsavory and monstrous. Lewis Braid is hardly a murderous villain.
You can handle him. You can handle the encounter you’re about to have.
Assuming he comes into the office today.
I stare at the tanned, tire-shaped bulges of skin at the base of my taxi driver’s skull and wish I could feel as calm as he seems. He’s been luxuriating in silence all the way from the Marriott to VersaNova, as if wanting me to notice that it’s a deliberate lifestyle choice. When I asked if he’d be happy to wait for as long as I need him to this morning, he did some slow, relaxed nodding. He has the manner of someone who would only emit words if you pierced a thick plastic seal inside him, turned him upside down and squeezed him hard.
I sit up straight as a car that looks like a contender pulls into the lot. It’s low, flat, waxed to a powerful shine. No roof.
It’s him. Lewis.
I open the taxi’s passenger door. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I say to my driver as if he’s urged me to hurry. His eyes are half closed. I’m not sure he’s fully awake.
Lewis is quicker at getting out of cars than I am. By the time I’m out, he’s several feet ahead, swinging a large black leather bag around and humming a tune—a gratingly fast-paced, bouncy one, if you’re jet-lagged. Whatever he’s hiding, he doesn’t seem unduly worried about it.
He hasn’t seen me. He’s marching along briskly. Soon he’ll reach the building, go inside, and then I’ll have to deal with doormen, receptionists and probably security checks in order to get to him. He’ll have a choice about whether to see me or not, whereas if I can get his attention now . . .
I open my mouth to yell his name, then notice that he’s stopped suddenly, on the steps up to the revolving entrance door. He pulls a phone out of his pocket. Slowly, I move closer. He’s facing the building, and has no idea that I’m approaching.
If he turns around and sees me, I’ll say, “Hi, Lewis,” as if I wanted him to notice me. Which I did, until this phone call happened. Now I’m hoping I can get close enough to listen, unobserved. The change in his body language tells me it isn’t a run-of-the-mill conversation that he’s having.
He looks braced, somehow—as if the outcome of the call matters to him a lot. Maybe this is what all high-powered business calls look like.
I creep as close to him as I dare, then duck in between two cars and kneel down so that I won’t be visible if he decides he’d like a change of view while making his call. I hear him say, “Are you ready for Daily Responses? What?” he snaps. It sounds as if he’s been told something he wasn’t expecting to hear and doesn’t like it much. “Ten minutes late, yes. Where are you?” he barks at whoever he’s speaking to. “And where should you be?” he asks in the exact same tone after a short pause.
From cheery, haven’t-a-care-in-the-world tune hummer to ice-cold Condemnatron boss in a few seconds. This is familiar; Lewis’s demeanor used to change with dazzling speed when I knew him. In a minute he might be humming merrily again.
I hope so. That’ll make it easier for me to pop up as soon as this phone call is over with my carefully rehearsed, “Hey, Lewis. You said I should come and visit you in Florida, so here I am!”
“And what are you?” he asks whoever he’s speaking to.
Is he hoping for a response along the lines of “I’m a complete and utter fool whose entire life is a comprehensive failure”? It sounds like it. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s out of a job before the day is over.
“Good,” says Lewis, sounding placated. Evidently his interlocutor has said the right thing. “I’ll see you later.”
Maybe the correct answer to “What are you?” and the one supplied, was “On my way in right now to apologize profusely and beg your forgiveness.”
I wonder what Daily Responses is. Is Lewis on his way there now? It sounds like a strange kind of religious service—like the masses I used to attend at my Catholic school. They involved prayers and responses. VersaNova must have a daily ritual that’s the secular equivalent. This being America, it probably involves yoga, green tea and affirmations.
Perfect Little Children Page 21
