A Double Life

by Flynn Berry

  “Where?” asks James.

  “Tonbridge.”

  “We’d have to leave soon,” he says. James likes betting. The most surprising thing when I followed him was that he went to the dog tracks. He seemed to take a lot of pleasure in it, in filling out his cards and watching the greyhounds, and he was good at it, he often stopped at the desk to collect winnings.

  Beatrice looks up from her phone. “Let’s go,” she says, envisioning the cider tent, no doubt, and running into people she knows.

  “Mum?” asks Alice.

  “You go,” says Rose. “It’s supposed to rain again.”

  “They have tents,” says Alice. “And we can bring umbrellas. Please?”

  I wait, holding my breath, until Rose says, “Fine.” There’s a rush from the table and through the house. James leaves first, without waiting for any passengers, because he wants time to place his bets. Anna and Beatrice put on tight dresses and waxed rain jackets. I stop Alice in the hallway. “I think I’m coming down with something, maybe I shouldn’t be out in the cold today.”

  “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  “No, it’s fine. I have some messages to catch up on for work anyway.”

  “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” she says. “We should be back around four.”

  I watch their cars leave on the security monitor in the front hall, then climb the stairs to the study. James has been in the room since yesterday. The chair and telescope have been moved, and on the desk a gardening manual is open to a section on drainage.

  I find the filing cabinet with his credit card statements and use my phone to photograph the pages. I have to work quickly, there are hundreds of sheets, dating back three years. The process becomes automatic. While taking each picture, I scan the list of transactions. The names of a few spas and massage parlors keep appearing, I should check if any of them has been under investigation.

  The sound of a hoover stops in the hall, and one of the housekeepers knocks on the door to their bedroom. She tries to open it, but I’ve wedged a chair under the handle. After a moment, I hear her leave, and open the next folder.

  When I finish the last statement, I check that the cabinets are closed, that his chair and book are in the correct position. I start going through the images in the corridor before I’ve even reached my room.

  After three hours, my battery dies, and I have to stand to look for the charger. Pins and needles burst down my legs, I haven’t moved from my position.

  This isn’t going to work. He’s been too careful. There are no payments to hotel assistants, airport assistants, or massage services. I’ve looked up every spa that’s appeared so far, and all of them seem reputable.

  The next step will be to go through the payments to London hotels and see if any of them are the cost of a room for the night. Even if I learn that James booked a night at a hotel in London, though, that doesn’t prove what he did in it.

  I carry my phone to the wingback chair by the window. It begins to rain, which is unlucky, they might decide to come home early. I read down the payments from last April. They were in France for half the month, it seems. I start to skim more quickly, and then I see a payment, on the twenty-second of April, for thirty pounds, to AWork.

  I tip my head back and close my eyes.

  James visited the site the day they returned from holiday, which seems like cruel timing. He might have paid to view an escort’s private gallery or to contact her. Two days later, there is a payment for £340 to Mayfair Health. I type in the name, and find a simple website, one page, with a telephone number. I practice first, until my voice sounds easy, cool, entitled.

  “I want to book an appointment for my boyfriend’s birthday,” I say when a woman answers. “We’ve never done this before, can you tell me what to expect?”

  • • •

  James won three hundred pounds at the point-to-point. I hear about it in the front hall as they strip off their wet coats. Then they all disperse into the house, to shower, pack, find something to eat, and I stand alone in the hall, under the tapestry. It’s a battle scene, though so faded you can barely see the figures.

  “Alice,” I say. “Will you go for a walk with me?”

  “Isn’t it raining?”

  “No, not anymore.”

  “I was going to take a bath,” she says.

  “Please?”

  She seems about to say something, then pulls on her coat. We cross the terrace and walk down the lawn, with the house’s bulk behind us. The other guests must be getting ready to leave. It’s dusk, and all of the property is in charcoal. We’re out of sight of the house now, near the church.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say. Alice looks at me with a clear, poised face, and I think that she knows. She’s known since the beginning, I was right about her testing me that day in Hampstead. She used the point-to-point as an excuse to help me, so I’d be alone in the house.

  “I’m so sorry for lying.” I expect Alice to interrupt me, to say that I don’t need to explain, that she guessed months ago. But she’s gone still, and her head is cocked to the side. My throat starts to close. “We met when we were children.”

  Alice has her arms crossed, and she looks disappointed now, irritated, like she wants to be finished with me, done with this, whatever it is.

  I can’t say it directly, the words won’t form, so instead I say, “I’ve been here before. The last time was on Boxing Day, when I was eight and you were—”

  Her head snaps upright. “Lydia?” she says.

  I nod, even though no one except my brother has called me by the name in years.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks. “What have you been doing?”

  “I need your help.”

  She laughs. It’s grown darker, I’m having trouble seeing her face. It strikes me that this is a terrible place for our conversation, in the cold and the damp, that it might make her feel threatened. I hadn’t thought of it, I’d only been worried about someone overhearing us.

  “I want to find my father,” I say, and my voice sounds hollow, though I’m still hopeful. Alice is kind and thoughtful. She knows what happened to Emma and my mum.

  “Stay away from me,” she says.

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “I’m nothing to do with this. My parents are nothing to do with this.”

  “No, I don’t want to involve them.”

  “They almost went to prison because of your mum,” she says.

  “Please, Alice, it’s a small thing, it wouldn’t take you much time.” She starts to walk away from me, climbing the slope towards the hemlocks. To her back, I say, “You have to help me.”

  “Go home.”

  “I know something about your family.”

  She turns, shaking her head. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “I don’t want to tell you,” I say, and she keeps walking. “Please just help me.” She slips a little on the wet grass, then catches her balance. I follow her. We pass between the hemlocks and the house appears in front of us, vast and solid, with tiles of lit windows. “Your father hires prostitutes.”

  Alice sighs. “No. I’m sorry, but no, he doesn’t.”

  I hold out my phone. “Do you want to call her?”

  She’s started to cry. “Bitch.”

  • • •

  Afterwards, I call a cab to the train station. Alice waits with me outside the house. Neither of us says anything. We haven’t spoken since I explained what I want her to do now.

  The cab is coming up the drive. The headlights appear first, raking the side of the house, then us.

  We don’t say goodbye. When I turn around in my seat, Alice is still standing on the gravel with the house above her, and her expression is taut and stricken. Then she and the house are gone, and we’re driving
down the hill and through the gate.

  31

  I WONDER IF MUM would be ashamed of me. Alice will do what I asked, because she doesn’t want her mum to learn that her husband visits escorts. Her mum who, this year, had breast cancer.

  I wince, and settle on the floor next to Jasper. He’s asleep, making soft, hushing sounds, and I lie with my head on his chest. I stay there for a long time, like being near the dog will make me good again, will clear away what I’ve done.

  Alice is going to ask Sam where my father is living now. She’s going to tell him that she can’t ask her parents without worrying them, but has always been curious. He’ll enjoy it, I think, being the one to tell her, to initiate her into the secret. He’s less discreet than her parents.

  “Why don’t you ask my dad yourself?” she asked.

  “He might warn my father,” I said. “If you ask Sam, no one will suspect anything.”

  She’s supposed to be meeting Sam for dinner next week. I don’t know if this will work. Alice might tell her parents about me, though I doubt it, I think she’d be too embarrassed to confront her father, and she’d want to protect her mum. She’ll want this to go away, to pretend it never happened.

  * * *

  —

  I HAD A PLAN for how to cope with the waiting. During the day I’d be busy with work, and afterwards I’d meet friends at restaurants or go see a film every night until Alice and Sam’s dinner. But Robbie had another seizure. He was unconscious for four minutes, and his convulsions tore muscles in his back.

  Every night after work, I take the tube to the Royal Free to see him. He’s on an antipsychotic for the withdrawal, and a sleeping medication. The doses seem to be stronger than last time. He’s foggy, not himself, and I leave every visit stunned.

  * * *

  —

  I’M WAITING for the tube platform at Belsize Park when Alice sends me a text. It says, “Hvar Town, Croatia.”

  My first thought on the platform, with the phone in my hand, is of Emma. And how unfair it is that he’s alive, that he’s been alive all these years, and she hasn’t.

  I never really knew Emma. I adored her, but I only knew the parts of her that she would allow an eight-year-old to see, which strikes me now as an immeasurable loss.

  * * *

  —

  AT THE HOSPITAL, I sit next to Robbie. I don’t tell him about Ashdown, or what I learned. He’s tired. When he goes to the bathroom, his back is hunched, and he has to hold on to the wall for balance. I’ll do anything, I think. I’ll do anything to make this stop.

  PART THREE

  SCOTLAND

  32

  I’VE SPENT a lot of time reading about war criminals. I wanted to know what people do, after they’ve done something terrible, how they spend their time. The ones who interested me the most had gone into hiding and lived in secret for years. One was a Nazi who moved to Ireland after the war. He bought a yellow house with gingerbread trim in the countryside and began to raise lambs.

  I want to know what this man thought about while farming, how he felt when he remembered the things he’d done. It must have had some effect. A tormenting one, hopefully, but maybe not. Maybe having a hidden life gave his current one glamour, allowed him to take more pleasure in country life than he would have otherwise.

  Another former Nazi in Ireland became a publisher of academic textbooks, and another joined a country club in Dublin.

  I’ve read a lot about Radovan Karadžić, who arranged the murders of thousands of Croat and Muslim civilians during the Yugoslavia war. After the war, after The Hague indicted him for war crimes, he disappeared. While in hiding, he published a book of poems under his real name. He also became a New Age healer. He performed acupuncture and became a specialist in sex therapy, helping couples trying to conceive. I wonder if it was a kind of joke on his part, or if he believed he had healing powers.

  I won’t need to read these case studies anymore. I won’t have to guess at what my father has been doing, or who he has become, or what sort of house he lives in. I’m going to watch him, for my own sake, for the twenty-six years I’ve spent wondering, and then I’m going to call the police.

  * * *

  —

  AT HEATHROW, I collect my ticket from the machine, pass through security, and walk to the gate. I’ve been in this terminal before. I’ve ordered a flat white at that café, bought magazines from that stand, watched the planes from that window, all of which seems strange now, like this time should be entirely different.

  I try to call Robbie again as the other passengers line up to board, but he doesn’t answer. We had an argument yesterday at his flat. He was sitting on his bed with his back against the wall while I pleaded with him to enter a detox. I said, “All I’m asking you to do is come downstairs with me and get in the car. You don’t have to do anything else. Why is that so hard?”

  “I can’t.”

  “What about an outpatient detox? You can still sleep here.” He shook his head. “Why not?”

  “Don’t shout at me,” he said.

  “I’m not shouting.”

  “Jesus. No wonder you’re still single.”

  I laughed in surprise. It was good, though, I wanted him to be angry. “What about you, Robbie? When was your last girlfriend?”

  We went off then, shouting at the top of our voices, until I realized that both of us wanted our mum to come in and tell us to stop fighting. I started to cry, and Robbie sat with his head down.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Can you leave now?” he said. “I need to sleep.”

  I send him another message, then lift my bag and board the plane. I watch through the window until we’re over the Adriatic. Every so often the clouds break and I can see container ships far below. I still can’t believe that I am on a plane to the place where my father lives. The flight to Croatia is only three hours. He’s only been three hours away, all this time.

  At the gate, the other passengers click off their seat belts and open the bins. Two women in the aisle are speaking in Croat. I wonder if he’s learned the language.

  The line at passport control isn’t very long. It’s the middle of September now, past the high season. The official looks at me, then at my passport picture, and writes something on my embarkation card. I enter another room and speak with a different official, answering his questions carefully, presenting the address of my hotel in Hvar Town. I try to hide my delight. They don’t think I look like my passport picture, it’s worked.

  After Alice sent me the text, I bought a ticket to Split. I asked Anton for leave to care for a family member. I’ve worked with him for seven years now, he trusts that I’d only ask in a crisis. I didn’t say which family member, but he knows about Robbie and why I’ve had to miss work before. Anton said, “How long do you need? A month?”

  Robbie is ill. I am taking care of him, in a way, but I’m still worried I’ll be punished for the lie, that something will happen to him.

  In the immigration room, the official studies my documents. After work yesterday, I stopped at a chemist’s and bought a box of henna hair dye. At home, I put on the flimsy plastic gloves that came in the box, leaned over the sink, and squirted the dye into my hair, the smell of it burning in my nose. Jasper lifted his snout in the air, whined, and went into the bedroom. After rinsing out the dye, I dried my hair, then showered again. The color’s already started to fade and turn rusty from being washed.

  Last week, as soon as I left Ashdown, I read interviews with actresses in which they described changing their appearance for a role, and made a list of the foods they ate to gain weight. At the supermarket, I filled a cart with cakes, crisps, doughnuts. These foods had the added benefit of making my skin break out, as the actresses had said they would.

  I plucked my eyebrows, so they’re quite thin now. I changed the part in my
hair and cut sharper bangs. I looked at pictures of tourists and backpackers on islands in Croatia, then bought tank tops with lace trim, harem pants, cork sandals. I found a few photographs of myself as a child. My face was narrower, my features slighter. My hair was brown and much shorter, and I didn’t have bangs. My father won’t recognize me. He might not have even without any of these preparations, he hasn’t seen me since I was eight.

  The official returns my documents and stamps my passport. I smile at him and walk through the airport to the cab rank. When we arrive at the terminal, the ferry to Hvar has just left. It’s an island in a chain off the Dalmatian coast, I learned. A lot of tourists sail from island to island in the summer, the water is apparently very clear. Even here, in the crowded harbor, it’s already clear, a striking greenish blue.

  I buy a ticket and spend an hour waiting on a bench outside the ferry terminal. My bare arms start to redden in the sun. Two French backpackers stand near me. I’m dressed almost identically to the girl, in a tight top with thin straps, loose pants, and sandals, though she also has bracelets and a small silver toe ring.

  When the next ferry arrives, the line of waiting cars switch on their engines and slowly drive on board. The ferry isn’t full. One of the French backpackers stretches across a row of seats to sleep. An old Croatian couple divide the sections of a newspaper between them. I buy a burek, a phyllo pastry filled with cheese, and carry it onto the deck. The air smells of smoke and fuel. Below me, the metal ramp clanks each time another car drives onto the ferry. I look back at the tall limestone cliffs rising behind the coast, the Dinaric mountains. Villagers fled over them during the Mongol invasions, I read. A horn sounds, and the ferry pulls away from the dock. We’ll be at Hvar in two hours.

  As the ferry travels to sea, I watch the Dinaric mountains grow distant. They’re vast enough that my father must be able to see them from the island.