by Adele Parks
It makes him sick.
Alfonso looks up at Daan with a quick hopefulness. He’d like to chat.
Daan wonders, is Alfonso married? Does he have children? Grandchildren? Is he divorced? Lonely. Is that why he keeps such odd and long hours? Does he like being here in this building more than he likes being at home? Daan is surprised these questions have occurred to him now. He has known Alfonso for years, cheerfully greeted him morning and evening, discussing the weather, a parcel, the delivery of white goods. Alfonso is a fixture in Daan’s life and yet he has never felt curious about him until this moment. Daan doesn’t get too involved in people’s private lives. As he was brought up with staff, he knows the dangers of becoming overly familiar with them and blurring the lines, it is tricky to pull back when necessary. And at some point, it is always necessary. Of course, he is friendly, polite. He tips well at Christmas, most likely the best tipper in the entire building by some way. He wants Alfonso to look out for him, take care when receiving deliveries, making hotel bookings, monitoring the external security cameras but he doesn’t want Alfonso to be his friend. His home has to be a sanctuary; he doesn’t need those boundaries flexing. He doesn’t need Alfonso popping up to his floor just to make conversation, he doesn’t need his inquisitiveness, keenness, nosiness.
‘Haven’t seen much of Mrs Janssen this week,’ says Alfonso.
‘No,’ says Daan revealing nothing.
‘Everything all right?’ Alfonso’s gaze slips down the length of Daan’s body. Does he notice the dirty tracksuit, are there tell-tale dark patches of sweat on his T-shirt? Daan thinks he can feel sweat on his top lip, his hair is greasy, his eyes are probably bloodshot, he can’t remember when he was last entirely sober. Daan thinks Alfonso’s question is impertinent, or his gaze. Both. His face turns icy to allow Alfonso to know this is what he is thinking and therefore to close him down, swiftly. Alfonso does clock Daan’s irritation and colours slightly. ‘Oh, sorry, don’t mean to pry. It’s just with the police being here, I started worrying about her. She’s such a nice lady, your wife. Always asks about mine.’
Daan doesn’t want Alfonso to be his friend, but nor does he want him to be an enemy either. Typical that Kai knew Alfonso was married, that she took an interest. She always did appear to be interested in everything and everyone. Bitch.
Daan doesn’t want to answer the question and he learnt long ago that you don’t always have to, so instead he comments, ‘I’m just getting a bit of exercise, taking the stairs rather than the lift. Trying to hit twenty thousand steps a day.’
Alfonso whistles, ‘Twenty thousand? I’m lucky if I hit five thousand. Very sedentary job, mine.’
‘Yes, mine too, but I try.’
‘You wouldn’t find it easier just working out in the gym?’ Alfonso asks.
Daan tries not to look startled at being challenged. ‘Of course, that’s where I’ve just come from.’ It would at least explain why he is sweating, breathless.
‘Oh, I must have missed you. Normally I notice who is working out or swimming.’ Alfonso meets Daan’s gaze. ‘You know, the cameras.’
Daan has forgotten about the internal security cameras. Casting his mind back now he remembers at one residents’ committee meeting an argument between residents as to whether internal cameras were an important security measure or an invasion of privacy. There were enough residents with nefarious goings-on who didn’t want their every move monitored. They’d take the risk of dealing with burglars. Daan hadn’t got involved in the argument, he didn’t much care. He vaguely recalls that the compromise reached was that cameras were installed in the gym and pool but not in the corridors. The argument being something about health and safety in communal areas. He hadn’t understood the reasoning at the time, thought perhaps Alfonso was the only one to benefit because he could ogle the fitties as they exercised. Daan is glad now that there aren’t any cameras in the corridors.
‘I didn’t stay long today. Got there and realised I just didn’t have the energy to work out. Just turned straight back around at the door.’ Daan flashes Alfonso a big smile. Then he remembers that the best form of defence is attack and asks, ‘So why are you skulking around the back stairs, after hours, Alfonso? Anything I need to be concerned about?’
It was bolshie, rude, but it does the job. Alfonso looks defensive. ‘I’m not skulking, just checking about. Doing my job. Seeing everything is OK before I clock off for the weekend.’ He is self-justifying which makes a person appear shifty. ‘One of the residents said she’s heard things.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Well, she wasn’t sure. Some shouting or crying, she said. It might have just been someone’s TV.’
Daan and Alfonso meet one another’s eyes and neither likes what they see. ‘What do you make of this pandemic business?’ Daan asks.
‘I don’t know what to make of it.’
‘My guess is we will all be locked down next week.’
‘You think?’
‘Most likely. You’ll probably be better staying at home. I’ll send out an email to the residents, if you like, confirming that.’
‘Well, we’ll see, shall we?’ counters Alfonso. ‘No need to action anything yet. I’ll come in if I can.’
‘Oh, I think it’s better to be safe than sorry.’
Alfonso nods, as Daan knew he would and he turns away, heads back down the stairs. Daan waits until he hears his footsteps fade to nothing, the sound of the door opening back to reception, then carries on upwards.
27
Kylie
Thursday 19th March
I need to keep communicating. I need to answer the questions asked and even those that haven’t been put to me yet. Carefully, I push on. ‘I realised that planning an enormous, expensive wedding was not only cruel but unsafe,’ I admit. ‘Even though I was going under a different name, there was always the risk of being physically recognised. You both moved in different circles but the further I widened those circles, the greater the risk of being found out. I had to draw in. Make both lives smaller.’
Daan had lots of family, friends and people from work he wanted to invite, he assumed I would want the same, I immediately vetoed colleagues, that was the easiest win.
‘I don’t want to get married in front of a room full of co-workers,’ I’d argued.
‘Why not?’
‘It doesn’t feel intimate enough. Co-workers are transient, they are not friends.’
‘OK, if that’s how you feel.’ He looked a little bit disappointed but wanted me to be happy. Brightening, he added, ‘I’m really looking forward to meeting your friends, though.’ He never had and he must have thought that was odd. He was the sort of boyfriend women would generally want to show off.
‘They’re looking forward to meeting you too,’ I lied. ‘It’s just my closest friends don’t live in London, and they all have young families so are pretty absorbed in their own lives.’
‘Tell me about them again. So, there’s Ginny, who you met in college. She’s married with two kids, right? And Emma is a single mum. Tell me a little more about Alex, you hardly talk about her.’
I hardly talked about any of them. Despite his probing questions, I tried to keep them at a distance. These women he named are my actual uni friends, but they all know Mark well, and there was no way I could ask any of them to the wedding; they were all at my first one. Why did he have to be a concerned and interested sort of boyfriend? I remember kissing him to distract him. Leading him to the bedroom.
‘I kept telling myself that there wasn’t going to be a wedding and yet I found myself arguing for one that would be possible, feasible.’ I told him my preference was for an intimate gathering. I told him my mother was too sick to attend, I’d already said my father was dead. I said that I was an only child, never once mentioning my three half-brothers.
I remember him asking, ‘Are there any aunts or uncles? Cousins?’
‘No, none. Both my parents were only children too.�
��
‘God, that’s awful, Kai.’
He wrapped his arms around me, his sense of protectiveness heightened because he thought I was all alone in the world. I pushed on. ‘Besides, it’s not about the big day, is it? It’s about us.’
Daan agreed to a small wedding in the end. He loved me, was wild about me back then, which is sometimes bigger than love and he softened. I loved him deeply too. Love him.
I love them both. There’s another inconvenient truth.
Yes, even now. I don’t know which I should hate for locking me up, so I continue to love them both.
I have sometimes wondered, perhaps I should have insisted on a massive do, one that necessitated a two-year engagement to secure the perfect venue, to have a dress handmade in France and shipped to me. If I had done that there would have been an opportunity to walk away. Wouldn’t there? But I didn’t do that. I booked a private room for twenty at The Ivy, I bought a dress from Harvey Nics, sent out invitations. I made it happen.
I wanted to be his wife.
‘I hired a bridesmaid. Who knew that such a service even exists? But it does. I found a discreet advert nestled in the back of a glossy wedding magazine,’ I confess.
I called the mobile number. A polite young woman named Jess answered. ‘Who needs to hire bridesmaids?’ I asked her. I had carefully worked out what I planned to say my reasons for calling were; I wanted to check that my lie was within the realms of possibility. Besides, I wondered what other shadowy reasons people had to justify hiring a woman to do the most intimate job a girlfriend could do. I couldn’t believe there were many women committing bigamy who needed to keep their wedding on the downlow.
‘Women who want their actual friends to enjoy the wedding and not be burdened down with too many tasks,’ Jess replied lightly and brightly. ‘Or maybe to even up the numbers, if you have, say, three close friends but want four bridesmaids to make the photos symmetrical. It is a flourishing business.’ She had a sweet, sing-song voice. I guessed she was probably born and bred somewhere like Surrey, she was most likely gifted a pony when she was five, her father loved her and her mother. Her reality was light years away from mine. Even the sanitised reasons for wanting to hire a bridesmaid seemed peculiar to me, but she appeared to accept them. Her trustfulness made it easier for me.
‘My family don’t approve of my husband,’ I told her, ‘so they are boycotting the wedding. My sister should have been bridesmaid. I can’t bear the idea of anyone else doing her job.’ It was a complicated lie because I had no sister and if she said anything to Daan, my cover would be blown. ‘I’d need you to be one hundred per cent discreet. I don’t even want my husband to know they are not a real friend.’
‘OK.’
She didn’t ask but I felt compelled to plod on. ‘Because I don’t want him to feel any more awful about coming between me and my loved ones. He knows my family have boycotted the wedding, but not my friends.’
‘Wow, your friends too.’ It was clear she was now wondering what my fiancé had done to upset everyone so thoroughly.
‘My friends are mostly from my childhood, my family are making them choose sides.’ I knew I should stop talking. The more I said, the less convincing the story was. I’ve since learnt that the best lies are brief and rooted in truth. I’ve got better at being bad.
‘My family have very niche issues,’ I commented.
‘Takes all sorts. I’m not here to judge. So, let’s get some details about this wedding, shall we?’
Once I revealed the budget, Jess gently suggested that she could put me in touch with a couple of actors who ‘regularly play the role of wedding guests’. I realised her sing-song voice was deceptive. Maybe her father hadn’t loved her mother. Maybe she knew more about the dark side of the world than I initially assumed.
‘How does that work?’
‘Well, they are given roles and characters before the wedding, much like you do at a murder mystery evening.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s no biggie. It’s just a way of evening up the seating.’ When I hesitated, she added, ‘It helps avoid any awkward or potentially embarrassing questions. They can be such a downer at a wedding.’
‘What might it cost?’
‘Well, for my services, the bridesmaid and say five guests were looking at—’ She named a sum that made me inwardly gasp. ‘Good value for money when you consider what’s at stake,’ she added, leaving me in no doubt that she understood that I was far from a normal bride, concerned with something borrowed, something blue; I was submerged in a world of subterfuge and dishonesty.
And after the wedding, there was the honeymoon. I told Mark I was away with work. My previously demanding role afforded me a cover. Daan wanted to spend two weeks on a remote island somewhere, drinking cocktails, rolling around on white sand. I agreed to five days in Venice, said I couldn’t leave my sick mother for longer than that. I felt superstitious about saying my mother was ill when she was well, but she’d always been quite wearing as a parent, not especially supportive. I told myself she owed me this. When she moved back to Australia I grasped at the convenience her absence offered me.
Lie after lie stacked up but the lies stopped tugging on my conscience. They became easier. They became part of me. I never thought of telling the truth. Leaving one or the other of them wasn’t an option for me. And it went smoothly. I was able to glide through weeks and months, into the first year. Beyond.
I realise that I’ve stayed in my head, confessed very little to my captor when I hear the typewriter keys being bashed again. It’s as though he has kept track of my internal monologue and drawn the same conclusion.
You’re a fucking liar.
The anger and impatience bleed from every word. ‘Yes, I told lies, but I didn’t break hearts! I didn’t abandon my children. I didn’t hurt anyone!’ I yell back. It sounds selfish, maybe even unhinged, but the ease of the situation allowed me to believe it was OK. What I was doing was OK. And wasn’t it? For four years? Wasn’t it? Mark thought I was working harder than ever, heading towards a promotion and a larger salary, which we needed as a family, but he could never provide and Daan respected my commitment to my sick mother. My absences stopped him from getting bored of me, made him hungry for me. I gave them the marriages they wanted. I reach for the cold tea on the tray, but I am weak and shaky. As I unscrew the cap the bottle slips from my grasp. It spills over me and the floor. ‘No, no, no,’ I moan. Fleetingly, I consider licking the floor, like a beast. I just stop myself in time because the smell of my own faeces hits. Frustrated, unthinking, I fling the bottle at the door. It’s plastic so doesn’t smash. ‘What harm was I doing?’ I demand. ‘What fucking harm? The old adage is true. Right? What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’
I hear the keys of the typewriter once more.
But I do know now.
And I am hurt.
So I am going to hurt you.
28
Fiona
Saturday 21st March
Fiona doesn’t know how, or even if, she should tell Mark that she recognises Daan’s address. His name. She could explain that she once pitched for a client who lived in the spectacularly impressive block. The exclusive apartments in that development are worth millions. The place is serviced and pet-friendly on the fashionable border of the financial district. It is dreamy. Telling Mark about Daan’s extreme wealth can’t help. It would just add fuel to the fire that was so obviously raging inside him.
The apartment that she pitched to transform was on the fourteenth floor. It was big but not quite the star of the show. Within just half an hour of being in the potential client’s company, it became clear that Mrs Federova was obsessed with the penthouse apartment and Daan Janssen, the ‘very handsome’ man who lived in it. She spoke about ‘the masterful design and modern luxury uniquely embodied in the three-bedroom, four-bathroom duplex penthouse’. She repeated the facts as though she was reading them from a brochure, her accent thickening as she practical
ly salivated when sharing details about the wraparound terrace that offered ‘truly unparalleled’ views. What Mrs Federova seemed to covet most was the outside space that the penthouse boasted. ‘There is a wood-burning fireplace, a fully equipped outdoor stainless steel kitchen, a sun deck, hot tub, private outdoor shower, a jacuzzi and a sauna,’ she informed Fiona, with ill-disguised jealousy.
To think that had all been Leigh’s. It was mind-blowing.
Fiona pitched for the job although she doubted she would ever be able to completely satisfy the client. Fiona couldn’t gift Mrs Federova the biggest pad, which is what she really hankered after. Fiona had noticed that about rich people, they were rarely content with their own wealth however much that was but often obsessed with the greater wealth of others. Why couldn’t people be more grateful? she wondered. If she had a fraction of what others had, she would be gratified, gladdened.
Fiona takes the tube to Daan Janssen’s apartment. It’s not an especially pleasant journey. People are becoming increasingly nervous about the media attention on the virus. She doesn’t know what to believe. Is there a real threat? It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. The reporting of the origin of the disease seems smeared with prejudice and designed to create fear. The Asian passengers on the tube are wearing facemasks, other passengers stare at them with a mix of envy and resentment. Anyone who coughs is glared at. Fiona stands for the journey. She spreads her legs and bends her knees to find balance as the tube judders, she doesn’t want to touch a railing.
Fiona recalls the apartment she had pitched to transform. The floors were a decent-quality hardwood but pocked by small rugs that, whilst charming in a cottage, looked provincial and out of place in the spacious, urban dwelling. It never failed to surprise her how many people with a lot of money had no taste at all. She’d noted with some pleasure that the furniture was quality but dated, knowing she’d be able to make inroads and improvements easily. Quick wins tended to lure in clients.
