by Karen Swan
‘Not my finest hour.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. The Sand Monster was pretty special too,’ she grinned.
He took a deep gulp of his wine. ‘I’m going to drink faster if all my greatest hits are going to be dredged up tonight.’
Dredged. The word had become fixed in her mind with the first video she’d seen of the Connors – her first glimpse of Marina, so beautiful and witty and driven, the two of them on the cusp of change, only hours away from becoming a family . . . She fell silent.
Ted was quiet too, though she sensed their not talking didn’t bother him. She sensed his eyes on her again too, and she stared determinedly at her own feet. It was all she could do.
‘So do you have to stay in New York for your job?’ she mumbled, aware of how pedestrian her conversation seemed. Her social skills weren’t as polished as his – or Julianne’s, or Erin’s, or Marina’s no doubt.
‘Not necessarily. I’m a finance director at an investment bank. I guess I could work anywhere – Zurich, Paris, Singapore, London.’
‘Oh.’
They lapsed into another small silence that felt big, and Ro felt her heart begin to hammer from the strain of trying to hit an easy note. There was no one to defer to, no one who could interrupt, no Hump or Florence or Melodie for her to hide behind like a little girl behind her mother’s skirts. There wasn’t even a soundtrack of traffic or surf to sink back into, only the resounding silence that pulsed around them like a heat haze, pointing out that they were here and they were alone.
She exhaled nervously, biting her lip as she peered through the trees.
‘You know, it’s strange to think you probably know so much about us – me . . . and yet I know practically nothing about you. It hardly seems fair.’
‘It is a bit weird, I guess. But I’ve had clients say that to me before,’ she said quickly, hoping he’d pick up on her reinforcement of their professional status and take the point. ‘So you’re not alone.’
‘Oh no, I am.’
She glanced at him quizzically.
He recrossed his ankles, angling his body very slightly towards her. ‘For example, I bet none of your other clients has asked you who Matt is.’
The mention of Matt’s name had the same effect on her as Julianne’s earlier – shocking, like a slap – and she recoiled. ‘Matt?’
‘You were calling for him the day you were attacked.’ Images from that afternoon – how he’d picked her up from the floor, stroked her hand as she drifted to sleep – flashed through her mind like memory cards.
He waited a moment, before laughing shortly. ‘You’re determined not to tell me, aren’t you?’
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She didn’t think this conversation – or where it might be heading – was funny.
‘You just won’t let me know what I’m up against.’ His voice was quiet, but he could have hollered, such was the fright he gave her.
‘Matt’s my boyfriend,’ she said quickly, knowing that would close the conversation down.
His eyes covered her face, though she wouldn’t look at him. She just wouldn’t. ‘Is it serious?’ he asked.
‘Exceptionally.’ She nodded earnestly, making him laugh. And her too. Exceptionally?
‘Oh. Well . . .’ His eyes stayed on her. ‘So then I guess that answers my other question about you and Hump. Whenever I see you together, you’re always laughing and . . . well, he seems to take every opportunity he can to touch you.’
Jealous? He was jealous of Hump? Her heart accelerated at the realization. She looked away, her fingers playing with the stem of the glass. She couldn’t stay here. ‘He’s my friend. Nothing more.’
She took a deep glug of wine. Maybe she could swim back. It would certainly be safer.
They fell quiet again.
‘What about you and Julianne?’ she blurted out, as surprised as he was by her question. ‘Is that serious?’
‘Exceptionally not.’
She smiled, taking the tease on the chin, using it to hide the relief that his words unlocked. ‘Oh.’
Silence.
‘So when you say “exceptionally serious”, you mean . . .’
‘Imminently engaged. Next month, in fact.’
‘Oh. That serious.’ He nodded, looking away finally.
More silence.
Awkward.
He shifted position suddenly. ‘So then . . . where the hell is he? Why is he never around?’ He sounded exasperated, his light tone of moments earlier gone now.
‘He’s travelling for six months in Asia. Back in September. That’s when I return home.’
‘To the UK.’
‘Right.’
Another minute passed, both of them locked in their thoughts, the late summer breeze rippling over them in the dying day.
‘So you’re in a serious relationship, about to get engaged and leaving for home in a few weeks,’ he murmured, his eyes on the pale stretch of water that could be glimpsed through the trees. ‘I think I preferred it when I knew nothing about you.’
He was aiming for levity, but the subtext – that he cared about her, that he wanted her . . . She put her glass down on the deck. They couldn’t keep the conversation neutral after this. It was beginning to come out; he was making them acknowledge what couldn’t be – and shouldn’t ever be – recognized. One of them had to do the decent thing and go, while they still could.
‘Look, I think I’ll head off to bed. I’m really tired.’
He sat up. ‘But what about dinner? Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No, I think sleep’s what my body’s calling for right now.’ Lie. Lie. Lie. It was not calling for that.
‘Really?’ He sounded disappointed, but she kept her eyes well away from his, as usual. ‘OK, well, let me show you to your room.’
‘It’s fine, really. You stay here and enjoy the sunset. I’m sure I’ll find it. How hard can it be, right?’ she joked, looking at the tiny cabin.
‘Still, I’ll turn the lights on for you. They’re oil-fired, so there’s a knack to them.’
Dammit. He curled up his long legs and stood up beside her. For just a moment she felt his nearness, the hairs on her arms standing on end as though trying to reach out to him, but she kept on staring into the bottom of her wine glass until he moved away.
They wandered inside, Ted opening the door onto a small room, maybe only twice the size of the box room, with a double bed in the middle dressed with old lace sheets and painted wooden pegs for hanging up clothes all the way round the walls.
‘It’s so lovely,’ she said quietly, sure she could hear the sound of her own heart pounding and trying to stand as far away from him as she could in the small room.
He walked round to light the wall lamps, and as he came back towards her, she could have sworn the walls were moving inwards, making the small space smaller, pushing them together . . .
And then she remembered something suddenly – the perfect diversion! ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said, rifling in her camera bag, almost weeping with relief that she had pulled all those crazy hours working over the past week.
‘It’s your film,’ she said, handing over a DVD, scrawled with ‘CONNORS’ in black marker pen. ‘I finished editing it this week. I thought maybe you’d like to look it over sometime and just check it’s what you were after before . . . well, before I get the shoot printed up. Because then we’re pretty much done, so . . .’
‘Oh.’ He took it from her, almost warily, swallowing as he held it in his hands. ‘I’ll get you something to wear,’ he murmured finally, the atmosphere between them different now, as she’d predicted it would be after bringing Marina into the room with them.
‘Thanks.’ She waited. There was just ‘goodnight’ to get through and she’d be home and dry. She took the camera off her neck and kneaded her muscles, which were tired from supporting its weight all day long. She put it on the bedside cabinet, then for good measure decided it would be safer in the drawer �
�� a habit from childhood ever since she’d once knocked her water glass in her sleep and ruined the Kodak she’d bought with her pocket money. She slid open the drawer.
A small oval-framed photograph – sepia-tinted – was lying in there. It was of a young woman and, judging by the clothes she was wearing, had been taken at least forty years ago. The paper had begun to crack with age, but even with the slight overexposure, Ro knew instantly who it was.
‘Here you are,’ Ted said, coming back in with a folded T-shirt and a still-boxed toothbrush. ‘I always keep a spare in the bag in case the—’
‘This is Florence,’ Ro said, cutting him off and holding up the photograph.
Ted stepped forward and looked at it. ‘Yes.’
‘Why . . . ?’ Ro’s eyes scanned the room, but it gave away nothing. ‘Is this Florence’s house?’
Ted nodded. ‘Yes. Why? What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ she demanded. ‘Why are we here?’
‘Why wouldn’t we be? She said we could use it.’
‘Oh, I bet she did!’ Ro crossed her arms across her chest. She remembered his confidence earlier: It’s been promised to us.
Ted looked at her, seemingly confused, and for the first time in the course of the day, she felt the distance between them grow, not contract.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, she doesn’t refuse anything you suggest, does she? You’ve got her twisted round your little finger. Is this all part of the plan? You want to get your hands on this as well as Grey Mists?’
‘Ro!’ Ted said firmly. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about you trying to swindle Florence out of her estate,’ she said, the words bursting out of her with a force that came from transposing one high emotion into another. She watched the new expression bloom in his eyes and felt the distance between them grow further still. ‘I know all about it. I figured it out – you, always there at just the right moment to “help out”, play the good Samaritan in her times of distress.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking a—’
‘No? Was it just supposed to be coincidence that you happened to be at the Golden Pear seconds after the attack, or that you just happened to be at the house when she turned on the shower?’ she asked, her voice dripping with a sarcasm that took no account of the horror on his face. ‘And then you use the threat of something happening to her grandchildren to finally force her to sell? What kind of person does that? Who draws children into something like that? You’re a father! Where’s your sense of decency? Of compassion? Does money really matter that much to you?’
He didn’t answer. Ro thought he looked too shocked to reply, but she wasn’t going to fall for his denials. She had resisted the charm offensive; this she could handle with ease.
‘She might be taken in by you, but I’m not. I’m going to the police and to hell with proof. They can investigate you and find out what I already know, because I’ve seen the other side of you, remember? You put on the charm to keep people off the scent – and you’re bloody good at it, I’ll give you that – but I’ve seen your temper and how it makes you behave to people you think have crossed you—’
‘Just stop right there!’ he said sharply, grabbing her by the wrists, the same anger in his eyes that she had seen once before, that day on the beach. A moment passed as he saw the truth of what she really thought about him for the first time and an expression of something closing down crossed his features. He looked down and saw he was holding her and he let go – almost violently – shaking with anger. When he spoke, she almost had to strain to hear.
‘I was at the cafe that day because I had arranged to meet Florence there for lunch; and I was at the house because I was dropping off the children for her; and the reason I cared about what happened to her grandchildren is because they are my children!’
‘Your . . . ?’ Ro echoed, as she suddenly felt a niggle that had lodged in the back of her mind wrest free like an air bubble and rise to the surface. Mine heart . . . Mommy’s bed . . .
‘She’s their grandmother! And she will always be their grandmother. That doesn’t stop just because her daughter’s dead!’
‘Marina’s . . . ?’ Ro felt like she’d been double-punched, a quick one-two manoeuvre, the blood pooling to her feet as shock after shock assailed her. ‘But she never—’
‘What? Talked about it? No! Because she can’t! She can’t make sense of it. None of us can.’ His voice broke and he turned away, his head dropped, his shoulders pinched up to his ears.
‘I thought you . . . you divor . . .’
He turned back to her, his eyes cold. ‘You’ve clearly thought a lot of things about me.’
‘Ted, I—’
‘She killed herself. Five weeks after Finn was born. Puerperal psychosis, it’s called, a severe form of postnatal depression. Walked out in front of a truck.’
Ro’s hands slapped across her mouth, tears streaming instantly down her cheeks at the true, unthinkable horror of what had really happened to his family, so much worse than she could ever have imagined. The despair in Ella’s eyes mirrored in the husband’s now standing before her.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she wept, her voice cracked and hoarse. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I thought—’
‘Save it.’ He stared back at her with a contempt she found devastating. ‘I’m really not interested in what you think. Not anymore . . . I want you out of here first thing.’
And he walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind him – so as not to wake the kids.
Ro clutched the pillow, burrowing her face in it as another sob hiccupped through her. How could she have been so wrong? How could she have thrown those conspiracies and slanders at him when he’d already been through so much?
She had been in bed for hours now and she wasn’t even close to sleeping. She had lain on top of the sheets, listening to him moving about in the living room, too ashamed to try to apologize, to try to explain that she’d had Florence’s best interests at heart, to let him know that she’d thrown all those words at him wanting to push him away, terrified by the feelings he aroused in her. Even when she’d thought the very, very worst of him, she’d still wanted him. It had been easier to believe the worst in him than confront the worst in her.
She pushed the T-shirt back up to her face, smelling it, smelling him, a scent she remembered from that first day on the beach when he’d held her in the ocean and she’d twisted into him, trying to protect her camera – something in her, then, had known, had understood the chemistry and told her to keep back, keep away from him, keep pushing back. Don’t let him close. Don’t let him in. He’s dangerous and to be seen as such . . .
She sat up suddenly, something else dislodging in her mind from that first day on the beach. The photos. She scrunched her eyes shut . . . The children – they’d been throwing something in the water. What was it? What was it?
The truth drifted up like a cold hand in black water . . . A white rose.
Her thoughts slowed down, clarity shining on her like a sunbeam. She had arrived at the end of May. Finn had been born on 18 April. Five weeks earlier.
Oh no. No. It had been the third anniversary of Marina’s death and . . . and she’d just casually photographed them, ‘a pretty scene’, intruded in the most private of all ceremonies.
She threw off the covers. She had to tell him. Before she left for the last time, she had to tell him how sorry she was, that she understood now, everything. He was the man she’d feared most after all, the man she’d seen in the home videos and in her dreams and in her subconscious when she’d tried to find Matt. He was the man she’d hoped he wouldn’t be – because then she’d risk everything.
He would freeze her out, she already knew that, but she had to say the words anyway. Because she had to live with this night – the things she’d said and what they’d have done.
She opened the door, peering out into the small,
dark hall. The children’s door was shut. Holding her breath, she tiptoed through to the main room. It was dark, but she could hear voices, see a dim glow coming from the other side of the sofa.
She advanced slowly, scared even to breathe, trying to find the words to put this right when she knew there were none. It was done.
A portable DVD player was sitting on a small stool; Ro saw the footage of Marina breastfeeding Ella, knew it would splice into the segment with her with the cabbage leaf and her joke about gratitude to goulash . . . She looked at Marina moving, laughing – so beautiful, so witty, so independent. A woman Ro could never hope to be. How could she be gone?
Ted was lying on his side, his body rigid, one hand pinched over his face as he paused the footage with the other, unable to keep watching. Hesitantly, she took a step closer, a floorboard creaking beneath her weight, and he sat upright in a sudden, fierce movement, his face turned up to hers. Before she could stop herself, though words wouldn’t come, her hand was on his cheek, trying to wipe away the tears that had fallen tonight and so many others before. His eyes took her in – her regret, her sadness, her longing, her here in his T-shirt – and in the next moment, he had pulled her down to him, his mouth on hers finally. Finally.
She gasped for air, for a moment’s clarity, pushing herself up so that she straddled him. Their eyes locked and she knew this was it – the final moment, the one before no return, the one she had been both dreading and waiting for since her first ten minutes here. And then she pulled his T-shirt over her head and tipped her head back, groaning as she felt his mouth on her breasts. She closed her eyes, knowing she was walking off the cliff, but she let go anyway . . . and realized she could fly.
Chapter Thirty-One
They sailed back through the Sound, drove slowly through the streets, and Ro wondered how everything continued to look the same when the world had changed overnight. She kept waiting for reality to bite back. All night, as she’d looked into his eyes, explored him, listened to the sound of his heart beating and she knew it would catch her up sooner or later – the magnitude of what she’d done would bear down upon her like a fury, for she had stolen this night, stepped off her own path and into someone else’s life, and it was a perfect fit. Lying in his arms had felt like home.
