The Truth

by Peter James

  Susan took Fergus Donleavy out to lunch, which was the gentlest way she could think of to break the news that he was going to have to rewrite his book. In the airy restaurant above Covent Garden they ate seared tuna, drank Sancerre and talked about everything except the book. Fergus told her that his daughter by his one and only marriage, which had ended years back, was starting psychology at Duke University, North Carolina, in the autumn. ‘Now that you’ve moved into this big house, are you going to start a family?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ She could see that Fergus was afraid he’d touched a raw nerve, and quickly bailed him out: ‘We made a decision not to have one. Didn’t I ever tell you?’

  Fergus cut a slice of tuna and pushed it around to scoop up the juices, but did not eat it. Instead he made a noise somewhere deep in his throat that could have been either approval or disapproval. When he responded, his face was stern, but his voice remained gentle. ‘That was then.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You told me that it was John who didn’t want children because he’d had a terrible childhood. I was under the impression you went along with that, but hoped to change his mind.’

  ‘No,’ she said awkwardly, because he had touched a nerve inside her. ‘The – the move isn’t going to change anything.’

  ‘It’s good that you have such a strong marriage.’

  Susan had to strain to hear his quiet voice against the babble of conversation. ‘Sure,’ she said, almost equally quietly. Fergus knew a lot of people. She was wondering whether to tell him about John’s problems. But she decided that, in spite of their friendship, it would be unprofessional. The purpose of this lunch was Fergus’s book, and she needed to keep the focus on that.

  ‘A lot of people who get married have children because they’ve run out of things to say to each other,’ Fergus said.

  She smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So it’s good that you and your husband still haven’t run out of things to say to each other. If you haven’t run out after seven years, you probably won’t.’

  ‘Did you and your wife run out of things to say to each other?’ she asked.

  Fergus put the piece of fish in his mouth and chewed it slowly. He looked sad, an old wound opening up again. ‘There were a lot of things.’ He fell silent.

  Susan drank some wine, letting the subject drop.

  ‘Something I’ve never asked you,’ Fergus said. ‘How do you cope with the biological urges to be a mother? Or don’t you have them?’

  Susan glanced around the room, checking out who was sitting near them. This was a personal conversation and she didn’t want anyone from work hearing her. The publicity director and three men she did not recognise were seated at a nearby table, engrossed in a heavy discussion. ‘Sure I have them, but I don’t let them dictate the course of my life.’

  Fergus drank some more wine, set down his glass, made that noise again deep in his throat, and murmured, ‘“Stars rule man, but a wise man rules the stars.”’

  ‘That’s smart. Who said it?’

  ‘Francis Barrett, in The Magus.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were knowledgeable about magic.’

  He inclined his head. ‘How well do you know me?’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she said. ‘Not really. We’ve been friends a long time, but I don’t know you.’

  He have a distant smile. ‘How well do you know anyone?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘How well do you know your husband? Do you really know him? Do you know yourself? Do you really know yourself?’

  Susan raised her hands. ‘I – think I do but I – I guess I can’t be sure.’

  ‘None of us knows what we are capable of, until we have to do it.’ Fergus picked up the stub of lime on the side of his plate and squeezed the last drops of juice onto the remains of his tuna.

  ‘I thought you were a scientist,’ she said. ‘Magic is the realm of the paranormal. How do you reconcile that?’

  ‘Arthur C. Clarke once said that magic is any sufficiently advanced technology. I think he’s right. The paranormal is the name we give to things science hasn’t yet found an explanation for.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You think eventually we’ll find explanations for everything?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t know when.’

  ‘Or what they will be?’

  He shrugged. ‘C. I. Lewis said there is no a priori reason for thinking that, when we discover the truth, it will prove interesting.’

  Susan smiled. ‘I hope he’s wrong.’

  Fergus looked at her strangely. ‘I think it’s quite possible he’s wrong.’

  She picked up her glass. ‘So, if none of us knows what we’re capable of, you think few of us ever fulfil our destiny because we are not aware of it?’

  There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘You will. You will fulfil yours.’

  He looked so serious that it made her want to laugh, but she held back hard because he looked so serious. And then she felt uncomfortable. He was no longer looking at her, he was looking through her, into some compartment deep inside her. And he seemed deeply disturbed by what he saw. Almost as if he were afraid.

  She felt a sudden wintry chill blow through her. ‘What is it? What are you looking at?’ she asked.

  But the expression was gone. He replaced it with a smile and changed the subject.

  Chapter Ten

  John hadn’t seen the child on the bicycle.

  He was doing fifty and accelerating hard, in a thirty m.p.h. limit. The rat-run. This was the traffic-dodging route he took home from the office. Because it was through residential streets, he normally took care, but tonight he was going much too fast.

  With that amount of alcohol inside him, he shouldn’t have been driving at all. He’d gone for what should have been a quick sandwich lunch with Archie. It had turned into an oyster-downing session, accompanied by champagne mixed with Guinness, over which Archie had delivered the depressing news that he was having no dice finding investors for the consortium.

  So far the only firm commitment John had had was from Harvey Addison, who had agreed to invest twenty-five thousand pounds, subject to them raising the rest of the money.

  The lawsuit. Zak Danziger, that was the problem. Archie had told him yet again at lunch today that John had to settle that damned suit. And John had tried really hard to do that in the last fortnight. They’d even had a meeting at Danziger’s lawyer’s office, at which John had had to restrain himself from lashing out at the arrogant little composer. Danziger had strutted in an hour late, his wiry hair gelled back into what looked like a fantail, his ratty face covered in designer stubble, his denim suit ornamented with diamanté studs, and proceeded to call John, in rapid succession, a shit, a thief and a capitalist turd.

  John told Archie that his own counsel’s opinion was that Danziger’s case might look strong on the surface but had holes in it. He had advised John there was a fair chance that Danziger would eventually realise this and that they should be able to settle out of court, before legal costs rocketed, for a few hundred thousand pounds – well within the insurance limits. The problem was, as Archie had pointed out in response, what would happen if Danziger refused to settle?

  Then when John had got back to the office, Gareth had cornered him. His partner was in a bad state, shaking with nerves and on the edge of one of his famous tantrums, telling John he was seriously worried about him.

  That was rich coming from Gareth, whose erratic behaviour caused John constant anxiety, particularly if Gareth was ever left to deal on his own with a major client. But today John had listened to him, aware that Gareth was right. Apparently all the sales team had been complaining that John’s mind seemed totally off the ball. He hadn’t been returning phone calls, or responding to e-mails or snail mail, nothing.

  And it was true, he thought guiltily. All he had done for the past two weeks was write proposals to banks and fund-raisers, make phone
call after phone call to everyone he had ever met who might either be a likely prospect or know one, and turn up to meeting after meeting at which he was mostly told the same thing: ‘Great company, great products, sort out the lawsuit, come back and talk to us again.’

  He still hadn’t told Gareth the truth, knowing that not only would Gareth freak out but he would immediately tell everyone he knew because he was hopeless at keeping anything secret. In many aspects of business, Gareth had a mental and emotional age of seven. All geniuses have their flaws and this was Gareth’s.

  John was frightened that as soon as word got out his staff would start looking around for other jobs. His competitors would be hovering like vultures. He had a moral duty to tell them all soon so that they would not find themselves out of work with just a few hours’ notice, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not while there was still hope. And there was hope, there had to be. As he drove, fuelled by the two pints – or maybe three – of real ale he had just downed with Gareth, John felt a renewed charge of optimism.

  Harvey Addison had pledged twenty-five thousand and they weren’t making enough use of his name. Surely he could use Harvey’s commitment to encourage others? The gynaecologist was famous: he had his own daytime television show on BBC 1, with huge ratings. He tried to think of a way to capitalise on Harvey as he drove.

  A single spat of rain burst like an insect on the windscreen, startling him. The sky was dark, heavy, laden. They were going out tonight to some smart function, something to do with Susan’s work, but he couldn’t remember what. The beer was kicking in now, making him feel drunk, and he could not see much more than a blur beyond the end of the BMW’s bonnet. He saw the square hulk of a removals truck ahead, parked along the kerb. As he raced towards it, doing over sixty now, he saw a faint glint, something red, shiny, moving out fast, straight into his path.

  It was the front wheel of a bicycle.

  Susan looked anxiously at her watch. It was twenty to seven and they were due in the City, half an hour’s drive away, at seven thirty. John had promised to be home in good time so that they didn’t have to rush, but he still wasn’t back.

  She balled her hands and banged her knuckles impatiently together. Come on, hon. She wanted them to get there early because it was at the pre-dinner drinks, when they could circulate, that they would have the best chance of finding people whom they might interest in DigiTrak, and they had already agreed a strategy on how they would work the room when they got there.

  Susan, who was much less shy than John, was good at getting on with it at parties and introducing herself to people. She would work the pack until she found a financier, then signal to John, who would come over and be introduced by her. She would move on, hunting out another prospect.

  She was already changed, wearing the black silk dress that she felt she had worn too many times and which was starting to feel tired, even if it didn’t look tired – although, with luck, there wouldn’t be anyone at the dinner tonight who had seen it before. She wasn’t even sure there’d be anyone at the dinner they would even know.

  Determined to dress to kill, she’d changed earrings, necklaces, brooches and shoes half a dozen times before she was satisfied that she looked classy rather than showy.

  Come on, John, darling. Come on!

  She tried phoning his mobile, but it was not switched on and debated whether to try the office. But he would have left by now, surely?

  She sat down on a sofa in the living room, in front of the marble fireplace, and admired the colour scheme and the paintwork. She was really pleased with the soft, warm effect of Not Quite White and it looked stunningly elegant with the contrasting black woodwork. As soon as they’d hung up their pictures and paintings, which they planned to do this weekend, and got the grey and white striped curtains, which should be arriving next week, the room would really come alive.

  At least, she thought ruefully, the place would be looking wonderful if they did have to put it back on the market. But she wasn’t going to dwell on that now. John needed her to be positive, and she needed to be positive herself. If you believed in something enough you could make it happen. If she and John showed people that they believed DigiTrak had a future, that must help.

  She picked up the latest copies of Publishing News and the Bookseller, which never reached her desk until several days after they had arrived at Magellan Lowry, and scanned the Company News and the Who’s Moved Where columns, checking for new rumours about the impending takeover or whether anyone she knew had been promoted into a position where they might be able to offer her a new job if the crunch came.

  Then she remembered that the garbage men collected early on Thursday mornings, and busied herself emptying the waste-bins into a large black bin-liner, which she carried out through the side door in the kitchen.

  As she opened the door, she was surprised by the wind that had got up and felt a few spots of rain. Fergus Donleavy’s words at lunch today echoed again inside her head. They had been disturbing her all afternoon.

  ‘You will. You will fulfil yours.’

  Destiny.

  And although he appeared to have seen it, Fergus had refused to tell her what her destiny was. He would not say another word on the subject other than to assure her that it was nothing, nothing at all, and that she should forget it.

  But she couldn’t forget it. She had a sense that Fergus had a deeper interest in the paranormal than he had let on. Lunch had left her with a deep chill, a sense of foreboding that was haunting her now even more deeply.

  As she lifted the dustbin lid, a small piece of paper blew out into her face, then fell to the ground. As she picked it up, she saw it was a lottery ticket, with all seven rows filled in, and as she was about to put it back into the bin, she noticed more in there. Dozens of them.

  ‘Christ.’

  She scooped out a handful: a piece of eggshell fell away from one. All carried last Saturday’s date. Doing a quick, rough count she reckoned there were about forty. At seven pounds each, John must have spent over two hundred and fifty pounds on the lottery and had said nothing.

  She wondered, alarmed, whether he had turned to any other forms of gambling. During the first couple of years of their marriage, he had played in a regular weekly poker school but had stopped when he had got too busy with DigiTrak. She knew he gambled with his friends, quite ludicrously high stakes sometimes, on their regular Saturday-morning golf games.

  A thought struck her: could John have been lying to her about their financial problems? Had gambling debts caused them, not business problems?

  No, that was ridiculous. She knew John too well: he liked a flutter but he was not an addict.

  But then something else she remembered from her lunch with Fergus began to disturb her.

  How well do you know anyone? How well do you know your husband? Do you really know him? Do you know yourself?

  And she realised that Fergus was right. She didn’t know John, didn’t really know him, and he probably didn’t really know her either. They just knew little bits about each other, like pieces of a jigsaw that slowly gave you more and more of the picture the longer you were together. She wondered if all couples were like that, strangers who never realised they were strangers.

  The kitchen door slammed, and she looked around guiltily as if she was prying, which in a way, she felt, she was, dumped the black garbage bag on top of the tickets, and put the dustbin lid firmly back on.

  Going inside, she puzzled again about why Fergus Donleavy had looked so strange, so frightened. She wondered if he was just playing some game with her head, but she didn’t think so. Fergus was not the kind of man to mess with people’s heads.

  Was he psychic? She couldn’t get his expression out of her mind. She could picture it vividly, the way he had been looking at her, seeing something.

  Her destiny?

  Whatever he’d said in denial, he had seen something there.

  And it was bad.

  John could see the child
’s face. A girl, short blonde hair cut in a fringe, and she hadn’t seen him. She still had not seen him.

  His foot was rammed to the floor and the car was juddering and grating violently as the anti-lock brakes gripped and released. He tried to find the horn, missed, his hand jamming uselessly against the boss of the steering wheel.

  And she kept on coming, kept pedalling out from behind that removals truck, filling the whole road in front of him.

  Filling his whole windscreen.

  John didn’t have time to think, he was just reacting, his ears numb, ringing with the yowl of his tyres on the tarmac. He caught a glimpse of a skip on the other side of the road stacked with broken plasterboard.

  The girl had seen him now. Her mouth was open, she was staring at him, she braked, stopped dead, dropped her feet onto the tarmac. The dumb girl had stopped dead in front of him.

  Get out of –

  He jerked the wheel over, and the car swerved wildly. The skip disappeared, then he saw it again, close, too close, it felt for an instant as if he was motionless and the skip was hurtling across ice towards him.

  He felt the impact even before he heard it, even before he’d had time to swing the wheel again. The car bounced off, like a dodgem, rocked, then a tremendous metallic boom exploded in his ears.

  Then silence.

  John sat shaking, unsure in which direction he was facing, trying desperately to orient himself. Trying to see the girl.

  Oh, Christ, where was she?

  Then he saw her behind him. She had dismounted and was holding her bicycle, staring at him. There didn’t seem to be any expression on her face, no shock, no relief, no surprise, nothing. Blank.

  He’d missed her.

  She was all right.

  He had hit the skip instead.

  His brain was working jerkily, fumbling with bits of information. The noise. People would have heard the noise. At any moment they would start running out of their houses. But they didn’t. Nothing was happening. Just the silence, and the girl staring at him expressionlessly.