‘She obviously has no money,’ I corrected, gently. ‘Regan would kill for your flat. How much do you and Kit owe, anyway? What kind of figures are we talking about?’
Her answer was mind-boggling: well over a hundred thousand pounds between the two of them. The debt earned almost as much in interest as she did from her job. Was this normal for her age group? It was like a high-interest mortgage on your life.
‘Can your family not help?’
‘My parents haven’t got a bean – we don’t speak, anyway. And my sister would rather finance, I don’t know, a Free All Paedophiles campaign, than help me.’
I’d heard a little from Clare about the enmity between Melia and her sister and it sounded to me like straight-forward sibling rivalry, albeit one that had extended to a falling-out on Melia’s part with her parents. The gist seemed to be that Melia had had the looks and talent growing up, the promise of stardom as an actor, but now the sister had eclipsed her by acquiring a wealthy husband, producing twin sons and launching a business designing school satchels that had already won an entrepreneur award.
‘I wish I could help you, but I haven’t got a whole lot myself.’ I took a long breath. ‘You know the house is Clare’s, don’t you?’
There was a silence and then Melia raised herself onto a bent elbow. Her face blazed. ‘Seriously? I didn’t know, no. I thought you owned it fifty-fifty.’
‘Nope, it’s a hundred per cent hers – held in trust by her parents, in fact, to protect her from thieves like me. I’m as poor as a church mouse.’ Though I sounded blithe enough, I could feel, once more, that new burn of umbrage at the inequality of my position.
‘I had no idea,’ Melia said. There was a darkening in her eyes and I thought, This is it. She thought she’d line me up, she thought we’d set ourselves up with half the proceeds. It made sense that she’d be the sort of woman who didn’t bother with gaps between relationships (in my experience, the better looking someone is, the more likely they are to be an overlapper). And in intuiting this, I understood that I’d exploited her. Let her seduce me when I knew all along I had nothing to offer her, not even an expensive trinket on her birthday.
But she surprised me with her sudden squeezing against me. ‘Well, that makes sense because I’m only ever attracted to men who have nothing. Nothing in monetary terms, I mean.’ Her tone was tender, consoling. ‘You still get to live in an amazing home, have this amazing lifestyle.’
‘You want to make soya lattes for tourists, be my guest. I’ll see if we’ve got an opening.’ Seeing her unable to muster a chuckle, I said, ‘You could have anyone, Melia. Ditch Kit, ditch me, and find someone who can give you what you want. There’s no shame in wanting a great lifestyle. There must be thousands of bankers or tech rich kids who’d be happy to go out with you.’
‘I just told you, I’m not attracted to those guys,’ she said.
It struck me that I would have expected someone Melia’s age to protest that she preferred to be totally self-sufficient, the good feminist, and I said as much now.
‘How am I supposed to be self-sufficient?’ she demanded. ‘I’m paid peanuts at Hayter Armstrong.’
‘You’re a junior in a structured training programme,’ I reminded her. ‘Everyone loves you, you’ll get promoted soon.’
‘It takes too long!’ she cried, frustrated. ‘I don’t want to be rich when I’m old, I want to be rich while I’m young! It would be different if I was starting from scratch, but debt is the worst. It’s like knots tying you to the starting blocks. Every time you move, they just tighten.’
‘Well, don’t marry Kit, whatever you do,’ I said. ‘You’ll only be liable for his debts, as well as your own. Do you not have anything you can sell?’
‘No. Nothing. If the bailiffs came, they’d take the clothes from our backs.’
‘If that happens, come round to Prospect Square and we’ll give you a room for the night. Meanwhile, I think we both need to buy a lottery ticket.’ I cuffed one of her wrists, felt the pulse quicken, and soon I was inside her again and doing my best to take her mind off her misfortunes, if only for the short term.
Later, in a smaller voice, more maudlin now than angry, she said, ‘I can’t have anyone I want. There’s something about me, something that puts people off.’
Her mind had looped back to what I’d said about bankers. ‘What do you mean? What thing?’
‘I don’t know what it is. If I knew, I’d eliminate it and bag a billionaire. Fuck feminism.’
Superficial though her desires were, I was nonetheless impressed with her self-awareness. Because she was right, there was something, something that might have brought pause to a man less devil-may-care than Kit: a sense that she would not be satisfied by convention. These men had had an instinct, perhaps, that there could be trouble long term.
We lay in silence for a while, staring at the ceiling. For all the house’s technological bells and whistles, the ceilings were featureless. No cornicing and ceiling roses, just the smooth blank lid of a box.
No, in this room, the only beauty, the only poetry was in Melia’s face. The line of her nose and jaw, the rich blaze of her eye. I thought, Doesn’t she realize being young is priceless? Clare had as good as admitted she would trade her fortune for a second stab at youth; unlike love, unlike happiness, you couldn’t buy it.
Only as we dressed and tidied up after ourselves did she abandon the subject of money – not that I was any keener on the next one.
‘She’s worried about you, you know. Clare.’
‘Is she? How do you know that?’
‘We had lunch yesterday and she confided in me.’
I frowned. ‘You had lunch, just the two of you? Now that we’re, you know, wouldn’t it be more politic not to do that?’
‘More “politic”?’ Her smile was mischievous. ‘Why? You think we’ll compare notes and plot against you?’
I couldn’t believe how cavalier she was. ‘But aren’t you worried you’ll slip up?’
‘I’m a good actor, remember? Seriously, don’t worry, she doesn’t suspect. She’s fixated on Kit, thinks he’s leading you astray with all the drinking.’
‘Really? Well, she told me you said Steve was leading him astray.’
‘I did say that, yes.’ Melia kissed me, long eyelashes skimming my skin. ‘Misdirection, darling. This Steve guy’s the big bad wolf. Doesn’t matter who it is, really, just so long as no one’s looking our way.’
Evidently, she’d come into this affair with skills honed. On the wall beyond, I caught her narrow smile in one of the mirrors. They were like cameras in the room, catching hidden angles, exposing guarded emotions. Making strangers of us.
12
April 2019
We had our first sun in April and there were colours in the river besides the familiar brown: metallics of silver, pewter and gold. The city’s magnolias were flowering and, when the boat’s doors opened, there was even the odd snatch of bird-song. As we sailed under Tower Bridge towards ultramarine skies, it was impossible not to feel the rejuvenating spirit of a new dawn. Not to mention the resurgent arrogance of a new adulterer.
Melia’s assessment was accurate: Clare had no idea. To her, Melia and Kit continued to be the younger couple we socialized with, the couple who were hedonistic, provocative, occasionally explosive.
I remember one scene at Prospect Square – it must have been several weeks into the affair – when we found ourselves refereeing a row between them.
Kit, obviously knowing which buttons to press the deepest, had made some admiring remark about Melia’s sister. There’d been a photo of one of her product lines in the previous weekend’s Sunday Times Style section. ‘Looks like I picked the wrong sister,’ he said, and even a casual bystander would have picked up on the goading.
‘Should’ve thrown your hat in the ring, see how you got on,’ Melia said, coldly.
‘Yeah, I should.’
‘You’d have soon found out she’s only interes
ted in money.’ ‘Well, that doesn’t sound at all familiar, does it?’ Kit taunted her.
It was childish stuff, but soon Melia was weeping in the kitchen and being comforted by Clare, and he, claiming he wasn’t going to pander to her oversensitivity, went out to the front doorstep to smoke.
Instinct told me to even up the numbers. Outside, the wind was high and the tops of the lime trees shivered and swayed like cheerleaders’ pompoms, fanning the scent of a thousand spring evenings before this one: the stone underfoot, balsam from the trees in the square, the faint briny scent of the river.
‘Sorry about Me,’ Kit said, his mouth obscured by smoke. ‘She’s always been weird about her sister.’
‘Clare said something about that,’ I said, vaguely.
‘Actually, she’s weird about everything at the moment,’ he added.
I didn’t like to think when it was that the two of them had begun bickering, that it might have been about the same time that she began a relationship with me. Was she angry with him because he’d failed to notice he was now sharing her? The thought made me dizzy with unease. Why on earth hadn’t I made adjustments by now, manoeuvred Clare and myself into distancing ourselves from them as a couple? I suppose I feared it might have the opposite effect and stir her suspicions. It’s the classic giveaway, after all: avoid someone you’ve always got on with or act less relaxed when you’ve previously been perfectly at ease.
The problem was that all four of us were boozers and drinking together made it dangerously easy for either Melia or me to make some insider allusion we shouldn’t, or give an absentminded physical touch that just-good-friends never would.
I was saved from commenting on Melia’s ‘weirdness’ by racing clouds uncovering the moon, its soft light falling on the square in front of us and stealing Kit’s attention.
‘Do you need a key to get in there?’ he asked.
‘Yes. All the residents have one. It only opens to the public once a year on an open garden scheme.’ I had no idea if Melia had yet passed on the information that the house was owned by Clare’s family, but standing there on the old, broad steps, I felt as deep a sense of surrender as I ever had to the intimate power of my home square.
‘What are those trees, even?’ Kit said.
‘They’re “even” planes and limes. There’re loads of shrubs in there, as well. Some flowerbeds. We all contribute to a fund that pays a gardener.’
He sighed, exhaling a mix of awe and resentment. ‘How the hell do you get to live in a place like this? I bet there’s not a single resident here under forty.’ Sod’s law, a taxi pulled up at that very moment on the west side of the square, releasing a chorus of upmarket middle-aged voices.
‘Actually, there are quite a few families with grown-up kids still living at home,’ I said.
‘Poor little posh kids,’ he sneered, and the look he cast me was unnervingly knowing. Knowing of something specific, like my intimacy with his girlfriend? Or generalized, the hardwired superiority of youth? He knew better, he just hadn’t yet had the chance to prove it to the world.
‘You’re not the only one, Kit, you know,’ I said, in a low voice.
‘The only one what?’
‘Suffering from the housing crisis. Some would say you’re doing pretty well. You’ve got a place to yourselves, you don’t have to share a kitchen and bathroom with strangers. There’s not that much to complain about.’
He blew smoke in my direction. ‘Okay, boomer.’
He had a way of defusing conflict, of making me laugh. ‘Gen X, thank you very much, snowflake.’
We stood for a minute listening to the music coming through the living-room window, the sixties hits playing on in spite of the breakdown of the group.
‘Great playlist,’ he said. ‘Who’s this again?’
‘The Zombies.’
‘Yeah, I’m liking all your sixties stuff. Music was definitely better in your day.’
‘You know I was born in 1971, right? And I wasn’t actually alive when these songs were out?’
‘I do have some basic numeracy,’ he scoffed. He lit a second cigarette, lifting his chin as he did. The song played on – It’s too late to say you’re sorry – and I ignored the quiver the words sent across my skin. ‘Want one?’ he offered.
‘Go on then.’ When you haven’t smoked for years – Clare and I had given up together on her fortieth birthday – the first hit is painful, like self-harm. Then again, inhaling fumes from the London roads is said to be equivalent to smoking ten a day. ‘I remember when ciggies were two quid,’ I said.
‘I fucking don’t want to know,’ Kit said. ‘Crap music, overpriced fags, extortionate rent. What other reasons do I have to slit my wrists?’
‘Climate change?’ I said, not without sympathy. Life was exciting for me – perilously so – but I didn’t envy the world Kit and Melia had inherited. Thank God Clare and I had no kids, no stake in the future.
As if to mark the sentiment, there was the distant blare of a vessel on the river, a reminder that the water was right there and would flow long after we’d left this city. In response – or so it seemed – a fox cried out from some hidden corner of the square, sharp as a tile-cutter.
‘Jamie,’ Kit said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t do it, will you?’
My breath caught in my throat. ‘Do what?’
‘Take her side. Melia’s, I mean. I know Clare will, women always stick together, but you don’t need to fall for her drama.’
‘There are no sides to take,’ I said firmly, though raised voices behind the door announced Melia’s continued distress and plans for an immediate departure.
As she burst onto the doorstep, Kit and I moved to one side, making no eye contact.
‘Kit, you’d better walk her home,’ Clare said, a concession not to the three or four mean streets of St Mary’s that separated our houses so much as a criticism of Kit’s neglect of his girlfriend’s emotional needs.
‘Sure,’ he said, and we watched them leave, Melia stalking away in heeled boots, Kit keeping pace, the end of his cigarette burning orange by his side.
He made some attempt to touch her – put an arm around her perhaps – and her screech split the night: ‘Do NOT touch me!’ And then they were gone from the square and our surveillance.
‘That went well,’ Clare said, as we set about wedging wine glasses into the dishwasher and scraping leftover food into the bin.
‘Didn’t it?’
‘Why’s she so sensitive? And why does he have to be so insensitive? You know she thinks he’s screwing that woman on the boat.’
I was taken aback. ‘What woman? You mean Gretchen? I very much doubt it.’
Clare raised an eyebrow. ‘And yet you knew who I meant straightaway.’
‘Only because we don’t know any other women on the boat.’ Though suspecting another sleight of misdirection on Melia’s part, I was nervous of talk of infidelity, regardless of the participants, especially so soon after that exchange with Kit. What would Clare do if she found out about Melia and me? Grab a knife and slice my throat, or turn away, rocking with laughter? ‘I honestly think this is how they like to conduct their relationship. They enjoy tormenting each other,’ I said.
‘I agree. Probably this is how their parents behaved,’ Clare said. ‘They think it’s normal.’
Even with the advantage of sleeping with one of the subjects, I couldn’t match her psychological insight.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I like Kit, but I wonder if she might be better off with a different kind of guy. Someone who gives her what she craves.’
I gulped. ‘What does she crave?’
‘To live her dreams.’ Catching herself in a rare moment of sentimentality, Clare gave a self-deprecating chortle. ‘What she thinks are her dreams, I should say. Anyway, if they go on like this, something bad could happen.’
‘I was just thinking that,’ I agreed.
13
27 December
2019
It’s approaching 9.30 and our coffees are finished. Though I could get up and leave any time I choose, I have to admit there’s a rogue part of me that’s appreciating this opportunity to order my thoughts, to take my disjointed history with Melia and turn it into something more cohesive. I’ve warmed up, I suppose.
Still busy, I text Regan.
Parry collects up the cups and flattens them in one fist, placing them on the rough cardboard tray. It seems to me his fingers have the potential for precision, even cruelty – I imagine him plucking the legs from an insect. I look beyond him, scanning the banners in the space below us, marketing for a series of festive concerts by the London Philharmonic in the New Year, until he says, almost kindly, ‘What you have to remember, Jamie, is one person’s version of events is never the only one.’
Does he mean that Melia’s said something different about our affair? That’s hard to believe. Or is he referring then to this other witness they’ve got up their sleeve? Either way, I’m not delivering the easy solution to the mystery of Kit’s disappearance that they’d hoped for. I’m guilty of sleeping with his wife, I’ve admitted that, but they want more. They’re stuck.
‘In my experience, no two people ever remember things exactly the same way,’ I say, equably. ‘Sometimes you wouldn’t know it was the same event.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he agrees. ‘You must know that from previous incidents.’
‘What d’you mean?’ My brows rise so high I can feel my forehead corrugating. My injured thumb is starting to itch inside its dressing.
‘I mean, maybe now might be a good time to talk about what happened in July of last year.’
It’s a swerve of direction so violent, I feel whiplashed. What could possibly link my helping them with their inquiries involving my missing friend with a mental health episode suffered a year and a half ago among total strangers? Is this what he discovered in his prolonged coffee run? Did it come up on the police database or was it the result of a quick google? Certainly, there is no reason for Melia to have mentioned it. I hold his gaze, defensive, almost proud; let him know I’m unimpressed with these tactics. They obviously don’t realize yet that they can trip me up a hundred times and it won’t change the fact that I have not harmed Kit.
The Other Passenger Page 8
