They small-talked for a while—about her father, curry recipes, and of course the cricket. Of the latter two subjects, Madeleine knew little, but Wickramaratne’s enthusiasm more than compensated.
Eventually, Madeleine was able to raise the matter for which she had come.
“Oh, yes, your blood sample. What would you like to know, Madeleine?”
Madeleine hesitated. She should tell Wickramaratne that she already knew where the blood came from, but she didn’t, waiting instead for him to tell her.
“The blood type is B negative. The source is a female.”
“Female?”
“There were uterine cells present. The blood is menstrual.”
“Menstrual?” Madeleine swallowed as agony caught in her throat.
“Yes, yes.” His head bobbed vigorously up and down. “It’s unlikely the stain was the result of some kind of violence. There’s nothing untoward about it at all.”
“On the face of it.” Madeleine forced a smile. It was an effort.
“Yes, yes, prima facie. In your hands, I’m sure it will be much more interesting.” Wickramaratne returned the sheet to her in a plastic bag, and had her sign her books while he speculated about how she would use the information he had given her. He didn’t once ask where the sheet had come from and why it was important. Madeleine was grateful, but she did wonder what he actually thought crime-writers did.
She got through pleasantries, thanked her father’s friend for his help and left him to his real work.
Back in the car, Madeleine sat. She felt over-aware—her impulse to shut down, to close her eyes and cover her ears and retreat. She didn’t want to start thinking because she knew what conclusions awaited her there. She didn’t want to know that for a while.
“Maddie,” Edward whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhhh.” Madeleine could feel his arms around her and that was all she could take at that moment. She just wanted to rest her head on Edward’s shoulder and not think about Hugh. Minutes of nothing became hours. Occasionally a passing Samaritan would tap on the window and ask if she was okay. She’d respond with a nod, a tentative wave, or say she was waiting for her husband.
And then Madeleine let the thought through.
She was O positive. The blood in her bed could not have been hers. There had been another woman in her bed and Hugh had lied about it. She rested her head on the steering wheel, fighting waves of nausea and fury. And through all of this, Edward McGinnity held her and in doing so reminded her that he was there, and that he had made love to her in that bed.
“You’re different,” she wept. “You’re not real.”
Flight
Edward turned off the headlights and allowed the car to idle for a few minutes. He rested his head on the steering wheel wondering for a moment if he had imagined the SUV. He climbed out and walked around behind the vehicle. The back light cover was smashed and the rear bumper badly dented. He hadn’t imagined it completely. But the pursuit…he’d not seen the SUV again after doubling back. Was he allowing the stress to get to him?
He let himself into the house, disarming the security system as he did so. The living room had not yet been returned to order after Elliot Kaufman’s accident and the subsequent police investigation. Edward hadn’t had the time to restore the contents of his bookshelves which sat in piles on the sideboard. He’d cleaned up the broken glass, but the collection of Matchbox cars had not been returned. The yellow Vauxhall Cresta was in his pocket and he touched it now like some kind of talisman—warding off what, he did not know.
Edward was caught by a sudden feeling that he did not want to be here, that he wished to be anywhere but here. The decision to go came soon thereafter. A change of scene. Someplace quiet where he could write, where he could clear space in his head, someplace he could explore Madeleine without distraction. He ran up to the bedroom and pulled a duffel bag from beneath a pile of running shoes and tennis racquets in the cupboard. He stuffed it with enough clothes for a few days as well as his notebooks. He glanced up at the nude on his wall, the painted muse who had seen him through all the struggles of his craft in the past. “This is not good-bye,” he said smiling at her. “I just need to untangle some things and then I’ll be back. I promise.”
He considered for a moment whether he should ring Denholm or Leith to tell them of his plans, such as they were. A call when he got there would suffice, he decided. At the moment he had no idea where he was going to end up.
Edward was reminded of the damage to his car when he threw his bag into the boot. Still, it was on the whole cosmetic…he’d worry about repairs later once he’d found a place where he could write.
“Are you running away?” Madeleine whispered.
He started the car. “From what, Maddie?”
“I’m not sure…the police, I guess.”
He laughed. “They’ll never take me alive!” he said. “Come on, Maddie, we’re both better than that.”
“Better what?”
He paused. “Writers,” he said finally. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll be perfectly contactable—all they have to do is ring.”
Madeleine nodded. “Okay.”
“What about you?” he asked tilting his head. “Are you ever going to get out of this car and confront Hugh?”
Madeleine frowned. She could see the house and Hugh’s car in the driveway from where she sat parked across the road. It was drizzling and misty and the house looked cosy and quaint, like it belonged on the lid of a tin of shortbread. The young greens in the garden seemed to glow in this light. Her house, her garden. It was all about to change. The moment she walked into that house there would be no going back. There was already no going back.
And yet some part of her resisted, clung, bargained. Madeleine wondered what would happen if she said nothing. Would Hugh return to her? Would he give up the woman with B negative blood? Could they put it behind them as they had the miscarriages? What if she never told him that she knew? Madeleine closed her eyes…she was so confused, so angry and hurt.
For a time she sat, having imaginary conversations with Hugh and with B negative woman. She rehearsed righteous fury, vengefulness, dignified indifference. And Edward watched her. Eventually she drove the Mercedes through the gate, and walked into her house.
Hugh Lamond looked up from the sink.
“Hello, Maddie. Where have you been?”
Madeleine hesitated. This was the moment. The moment in which she would decide the rest of her life.
Hugh dried up a second wineglass and she decided. “I had an appointment with a forensic pathologist.”
“Research?” he asked already losing interest.
“No.” She extracted the plastic envelope containing the bloodstained sheet from her bag. Her hand was shaking. She was scared…not of Hugh, but scared.
Hugh’s face became dark and hard. He glanced at the envelope, but the full fury of his scrutiny he reserved for Madeleine.
“Don’t be frightened,” Edward said as he saw her waver, panic. “I’m here with you.”
She calmed. “This blood wasn’t drawn, Hugh. It wasn’t in a vial.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Madeleine faltered. She hadn’t been prepared for so blatant an admission. She was not sure what to say next. “What…who…whose blood is it?”
“Do you really want to know? Or have you come with a story that will suit you better?”
“Just tell me!” Madeleine was shouting now.
“It’s a patient’s.”
“You’re sleeping with one of your patients?”
Hugh moved towards her and then stepped back as if restraint required him to keep some distance. His nostrils flared as he exhaled. “I wasn’t sleeping with her. She was lying down while I called an ambulance.”
“What was she doing here, H
ugh?”
“She’s a maternity patient. She came to the house because she started to cramp and panicked and, like every other person in town, she knows where I live. I realised she was probably miscarrying and told her to lay down while I called an ambulance.”
“In our bedroom?” Madeleine was incredulous…how stupid did he think she was?
“She needed to use the bathroom. I told her to use our en suite because nobody’s cleaned the other one in weeks! She became lightheaded when she came out and our bed was the nearest.” Hugh’s voice was just slightly unsteady.
“Then why did you tell me you’d broken a vial of blood?” Madeleine demanded with just a note of touché.
“Because the patient is a sixteen-year-old girl who wanted and is entitled to privacy!”
“I’m your wife, Hugh! You’re talking about something which supposedly happened in our bed!”
“Yes, you’re my wife!” Hugh shouted back now. “Why don’t you act like it? Why don’t you trust me instead of running around like some demented Mata Hari?”
“How dare you!” Madeleine couldn’t contain her fury. It pumped through every artery and vein, seized every organ with a kind of crazed outrage. “You deceived me! Don’t make it sound like it’s my fault!”
“I told one lie, to respect a patient’s privacy and because the subject of miscarriage is not one you can handle with any degree of reason.” Hugh’s voice lowered dangerously. “And you respond by calling in the bloody CSI! It’s not normal, Maddie!”
Madeleine wanted to hit him. Curse at him. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. When had she started crying? She did not know. Perhaps weeks ago.
“You can’t see how delusional you’ve become, can you, Maddie? You always had so much going on in your head…I loved that about you…but you’ve let it take over. You can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what you’ve made up. Don’t think I haven’t seen you talking to yourself or, worse still, to him!”
Madeleine stepped back now. “That’s just—” she began.
“Where you’d prefer to be!” Hugh spat. “With him and all your other made-up people, solving imaginary murders! You’re sick, Maddie. You can’t see it but I can.”
“Trust me, I’m a doctor,” Madeleine said coldly. “Only I can’t trust you, can I, Hugh? You lie to me when it suits you and you expect me to believe the second lie when the first is revealed!”
Hugh sighed. He regarded his wife silently for a moment. “Darling, I think you’re having a breakdown of some sort. It’s no wonder, after what you’ve been through.”
“What I’ve been through?”
“The miscarriages.”
“You went through that, too, Hugh. Perhaps you’re the one having the breakdown. Some kind of midlife crisis complete with a mistress!”
“You’re wrong, Maddie.”
Madeleine shook her head. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” She grabbed her bag from the table. “I have work to do.”
She went into their bedroom only to grab pyjamas from the lowboy and shut herself in the spare room. It didn’t have a bed but the retired couch was large enough to sleep on. There was an old quilt in the blanket box which doubled as a coffee table. With it wrapped around her Madeleine retreated, shrinking into the worn cushions. She felt like she was drowning and yet she had an overwhelming urge to let go of the side.
“Are you running now?” Edward asked.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you are running.”
“Hugh might be telling the truth.”
“About what, exactly?”
“The patient…the blood.”
“If you were writing this story, Maddie, would he be telling the truth?”
“This is my life, not a story,” Madeleine replied uncertainly. “Real life is full of coincidences and scenarios too far-fetched for fiction.”
“It’s also full of liars. In fiction the only liar is the author himself.”
Madeleine groaned. “What does that mean?”
Edward smiled. He loved her lack of pretension. “When you write you know who the liars are, or at least who they could be. In real life, liars are—” he searched for the word, “unexpected.”
“You’re thinking about Willow?”
“Not just about Willow. But, yes, Willow.”
“She surprised me too,” Madeleine said quietly. But she wondered. Was it Willow Meriwether’s actions or her own that surprised her? Madeleine was aware that she no longer wanted Edward to love Willow. Was that behind Willow’s betrayal? And then, deep in her gut, a sour thought fermented: Was Hugh right?
A knock on the door. “Maddie?”
Madeleine said nothing.
The door opened. Hugh stood silhouetted against the bright light of the hallway. He held a steaming mug and plate of buttered toast. “You didn’t eat. I brought you a cup of tea.” He smiled slightly, tentatively. “Jeeves’ night off, you know.”
Madeleine might have thanked him if she hadn’t been crying already.
Hugh set the plate and mug down on the blanket box. He squatted beside the couch without making a move to touch his weeping wife. “Maddie, how about you go see Dr. McCauley tomorrow? Just talk it over with him. It might help.”
Madeleine tried to pull herself together.
Hugh rubbed his face. “I hate to see you so unhappy, Darling. I know you’re angry with me at the moment but—” He shook his head. “Let’s not go into all that again, for now anyway. Can’t you just see McCauley one more time? If it doesn’t help, we’ll try something else. But, Maddie, we just can’t go on like this.” He picked up the tea and held it out to her.
Madeleine took it and pressed the mug against her lips. The warmth of it was calming. Against the china her lips stopped trembling. She nodded. “Okay,” she said hoarsely, her eyes fixed on the tea.
Still he didn’t try to touch her. Madeleine was honestly not sure if she wanted him to, and yet she felt strangely disappointed, rejected.
“I’ll call him,” he said standing. “Try to get some sleep. Hopefully, it won’t seem so bleak in the morning.”
The light narrowed and disappeared as he closed the door behind him. In the darkness, Madeleine remained. The confusion churned. Her leg moved restlessly, like she was bouncing an invisible child on her knee, and her fingers tapped an agitated accelerating rhythm until finally she allowed them to reach for the laptop.
Tomorrow she would deal with the tawdry machinations of life, the negotiations, the practicalities, the reasoning. She would see Dr. McCauley. She would be objective, and rational, and sane. But tonight…tonight she would escape with Edward McGinnity
Return
The docks were well-maintained, recently painted and colour-coordinated. The boats moored here were polished indulgent vessels of gleaming timbers and burnished chrome—pleasure craft which left the café-lined port only occasionally when conditions on the bay were perfect. They waited like tethered swans for release on the warmer days when the wind did not cut so bitterly over the water.
Edward grabbed his duffel bag from the boot. The docks were empty of life but for an old man drinking on the deck of the yacht in the second mooring. The Lady Galadriel was, if he remembered correctly, moored a little further up the wharf. Andy Finlay had purchased the boat from a client some years ago. He’d taken Edward out on it occasionally and entrusted his ward with the knowledge of where the spare key was hidden.
It had been a cheap ship-in-a-bottle on display at the service station where he’d stopped to refuel that made Edward think of The Lady Galadriel. By then, it was late so he had driven straight to the dock, resolving to call Finlay the following morning for permission to stay on the boat.
The key was where he’d expected, taped to the lid of the box which contained the spare life jackets. The
cabin smelled fresh—recently cleaned. Edward supposed that there was a regular maintenance and cleaning crew who kept the boat seaworthy or at least worthy of mooring at this address. He couldn’t remember Andy Finlay mentioning the boat in years; he doubted the lawyer had set foot aboard in quite some time.
The cabin was large, with separate living and dining areas and two bedrooms below. The refrigerator was empty but Edward had purchased milk and a packet of chocolate biscuits at the service station. There was coffee in the cupboard. That would do him for a while.
Edward set his notebook and fountain pen on the coffee table and tossed a few cushions off the couch to make room for himself. The cabin was cool, not uncomfortably so but enough to make him aware of the air on his skin. He couldn’t remember if he needed to run the engine to use the heating so he left it, rummaging through his duffel bag to find a pullover instead.
He was looking forward to returning to Madeleine, though in truth he’d been with her for some time. She was always there beside him now, to talk to, to make love to, but her story was more than that. The narrative was poised. Madeleine had been confronted with truth and betrayal. All that remained was what she would do. Edward toyed with the idea of the end. He felt changed by Madeleine d’Leon, but perhaps that was as it should be. Perhaps that was the secret of genesis. He could hear her laughing at that thought.
“It’s just a story, Ned…not the Bible.”
He picked up his pen, admiring her simple belief in story for its own sake, without the self-consciousness of saying something more than what happened. Perhaps that’s what he was seeking through her, the purity of story without the shackles of secondary meaning.
Again he could see her rolling her eyes.
He smiled and began to write.
***
Madeleine tried to mask the darkness under her eyes with a lighter foundation, but the result just made her look pale. For a moment she contemplated whether eyeliner would disguise or enhance the redness. Concluding the latter, she left her eyes alone.
Hugh had made her appointment with McCauley for ten. And he’d been kind that morning, bringing her tea and then ducking into town for fresh croissants and brioche. And yet she wanted to be angry with Hugh. Madeleine feared she would lose herself if she could not hang on to that anger. She’d rung Leith when her husband departed for the bakery.
Crossing the Lines Page 20
