But I don’t convince myself. So I try to recall if anyone else was there that day by the river. I hunt along the path for other people, for someone who could take this responsibility from me. But there was no one: not even the man in the shabby coat who likes to feed the birds. Even the river seemed empty. I remember how glad I was, how it made it all seem safe and perfect and somehow meant to happen—that the riverbank was ours alone, that everyone was sheltering from the gathering storm.
I shout to Amber that I’m going down to the corner shop. My cell phone is in my pocket.
Outside it’s cold; when I pass beneath the streetlights, my breath is thick as smoke. The moon shines yellow through a veil of cloud. Halfway to the corner shop, in a pool of shadow where I can scarcely see, I stop and ring Will’s number. As I move my hand, there’s a warning inside me, telling me not to do this, clear and unequivocal. I pay no attention.
“Yes?”
“Will, it’s Ginnie,” I say redundantly.
A silence.
“What is it?” he says then. His voice is level, brisk. It’s his work voice, not the way he ever talks to me.
“I’m sorry to ring you like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. …”
In the background I can hear music, and a woman talking; I don’t know if this voice is his wife’s or on the television. I strain my ears to hear, but the voice is too far away. I try to picture the room where he is, the home he never talks about. I think of my dream, of that perfect family life I envisioned for him—the damask tablecloth, the table set for tea, the jade teapot. In that moment I see so clearly, how little I know of him and how little of him I possess. As though he’s just some dream I had. I hear how he walks away from these sounds, out into a hallway perhaps.
“OK?” he says.
“Will, they’ve found a body in the river.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Near where—you know, near where we go. When we’re together.” It’s as though I need to remind him, because just at this moment I don’t quite believe in our love affair. I can’t imagine that I was ever intimate with this brisk and wary man.
“These things happen,” he says.
“Why I rang—I was thinking about that man—you know, the man I saw on the river path. … Whether I should say something. …”
He cuts me off.
“Look, we need to talk,” he says. “But it’s not a good time for me right now. Couldn’t we speak on Thursday, like we planned?”
“Yes, of course,” I say. “But I wondered …”
“OK then,” he says. He switches off his phone.
As I go back through the front door, Amber’s music blares down at me. A sudden hot rage surges through me.
I go upstairs. The bathroom door is open. There’s a clot of long red hairs in the plug hole, and discarded towels and water all over the floor.
I go into her room without knocking. She’s sitting on her bed eating a Kit Kat, talking on her phone. Her hair always has a rich blackish sheen when it’s wet. It’s hanging everywhere, and she hasn’t begun to towel it—it’s dripping all over her duvet and some schoolbooks that are flung down there.
“Amber, I want that music off.” My voice sounds shrill and ugly to me. But I can’t stop: Anger has its claws in me. “And no wonder you can never eat your dinner if you’re forever stuffing yourself with crap.”
She looks up at me, outraged.
“Mum, for God’s sake, I’m on the phone.”
I pay no attention.
“And you can just go and deal with that bathroom now. It’s a bloody swamp in there.”
“Look, Mum,” she says, “I’m speaking to Katrine.” She articulates the words patiently, as though to someone rather stupid. “I’ll deal with the bathroom when I’ve finished. Just cool it, OK?”
I turn to go.
“I’m so sorry,” she says to Katrine in a sibilant stage whisper. “That was my Mum. I think she’s had a bad day. I expect it’s PMS.”
I go slowly downstairs. The rage has left me, as suddenly as it came. I’m ashamed to have been so angry about wet towels and a Kit Kat. There are too many things I have done that I ought not to have done.
I have one of those dreams where you’re only half awake but believe in the dream that you’ve completely woken. It’s raining again—I can hear the sounds of water—and I dream that the river has come into my room. I can smell its brackish scent, of sea salt and decay. The river rises, above the bed, so my body is partly submerged, and my hands on top of the duvet have the unreal look of the willowherb and balsam, when they’re gradually covered by the rising tide. I know there are things I should do—that I should pile up sandbags to protect my home and children from the flood: But the water holds me there, I can’t move.
The dream changes. The lights come on; this is a dream of daytime, ordinary and banal. I’m in a warehouse—one of those furniture megastores where you go to buy flat-pack furniture and insubstantial sofas with abrupt Scandinavian names. I walk down the aisles of the warehouse, between banks of shelves that stretch up to the ceiling, big metal shelves with a lot of space between them; they hold bundles loosely wrapped in cloth, and I see that these are bodies stacked like carpets or rolls of curtain fabric. I know this is one of the dead houses, but I don’t feel any fear, just a kind of certainty. All the bodies are turned away, so I can’t see their faces. I reach to the two bodies nearest me and try to turn them over; they’re heavy, drenched, and it takes all my strength to shift them. Their hair is dripping, as though they’ve just been pulled from the deep. One of them has tangled hair of that dark color that red hair goes when it’s soaked, as though there’s a lot of black in it. With a very great effort, I turn the bodies toward me. They have the faces of my children, just as I knew they would.
CHAPTER 26
I WAIT IN THE MIRRORED BAR. I listen to the music and look at my newspaper, though none of it makes sense.
He comes on time. He kisses me. He’s just the same as ever. I feel a huge relief.
I drive toward the river house just as I always do. But halfway there I find myself stopping and pulling over the curb.
“What is it?” he says. “What’s the matter?”
“Perhaps we should go somewhere else,” I say.
He strokes my hair, but he’s a little impatient.
“There isn’t anywhere else to go,” he says. “We’ve been into all that.”
“Maybe we could—you know—find a hotel, like we keep saying we will,” I say without conviction. “Get a room somewhere.”
“There isn’t time,” he says. “I’ve got to get back by half past two.”
“It just seems weird going back there—after what happened.”
“Bad things happen everywhere,” he says. “They don’t leave anything behind.”
“But what about the police? Maybe there will still be police there.”
“No. They’ve finished,” he says.
I just sit there for a moment, don’t start up the car.
He cups my face in his hands; his skin is very warm. I press my mouth into his palm.
“Ginnie,” he says, “I really want to make love to you. But we don’t have to if you’re not sure.”
He pulls me toward him and kisses me.
“I’m sure,” I tell him.
The car park is churned up, and on the path there are tire tracks where vehicles wouldn’t normally go, but otherwise it is all much as it always was. It’s a cold, bright day; frost has left its white footprints in the shaded places, and in the sun the grass is heavy and bright with moisture. You can hear people playing football, perhaps on a school playing field, their voices echoey in the stillness, as though the sound bounces off the hard rim of the sky. The swans are close to the riverbank. As we pass, one takes off with a great clatter from the still, sepia water.
We walk on down the path. There, at the foot of a willow that droops down into the water, someone has left a bunch of flowers in cellophan
e. The flowers are dying, finished off by the cold. I see him look, but neither of us says anything.
I want to make sure that everything is right between us; I’m longing to explain.
“Will—about Tuesday night—I wanted …”
He turns and puts a finger on my lips.
“Not now,” he says. “We’ll talk about it later.”
At the river house he untwists the wire. It’s chilly, colder than the path outside. Even the thin winter sun had a bit of warmth in it. The spiders have been busy, their webs forming huge, soft festoons across the corners. I feel a shiver of some inchoate emotion—anger, perhaps, and a sense that our secret place has been spoiled.
“Will, I’m not sure …”
He pushes my hair away from my face. I turn a little, so if by mistake I opened my eyes I still couldn’t see down the river path.
“You’re so jumpy,” he says. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
He kisses me, his tongue exploring my mouth.
I’ve brought the blanket. We lie down. Today I want him on top of me, his warmth and weight and urgency, wanting to hide in him. His body tells me how he loves me. I start to shake as he moves his hand on me.
But as excitement surges through me, an image sneaks into my mind. It’s whole and complete, as though I’m remembering something I’ve seen. A man and a woman, naked and anonymous, like an image from pornography. The man is standing behind the woman—he has his hands around her throat; his fingers are pressing into her. It’s precise and clear and many-colored, floating as dream images float; I can’t switch it off or get rid of it. I don’t know if it excites me: maybe it does, I don’t know. It just stays there, ’til I come: It won’t be pushed away.
Afterward he lies beside me, holding me for a moment.
“There. That was OK, wasn’t it?” he says. “It looked as though it was OK.”
I kiss him. “I’ve been in a weird mood. Sorry. I’m just not quite myself.”
He strokes my hair.
“Ginnie, you think too much,” he says.
We walk back past the fleet of swans, and the flowers in their wrap of cellophane, and the boy on Eel Pie Island. As always, just for a second or two, I think that it’s a living child. When you’re by the river it’s hard to tell what’s real.
“I’ve got time for a drink,” he says as we go to the car.
This makes me happy. I always hate it when he leaves too soon. Really, I’d like to spend hours together after making love. I’d like to drowse, our limbs entangled, to watch him as he’s sleeping, to see the flickering under his eyelids when he dreams. But I know I can’t have that, and a drink is much better than nothing.
We go back to the bar. He has Coke; I have whiskey. We sit on the terrace, in our coats, though really it’s too cold for me. There’s a low, dazzling sun. He puts his sunglasses on.
His hands rest on the table between us; I look at his hands, at the thin dark hairs on the backs of his fingers, the lilac net of veins inside his wrists. I think how much I love him. I want to reach out, to press his hand between mine again, to drag my finger along the smooth skin inside his arms. I would like to hold on to this moment, to keep it like this forever: him sitting quietly here with me in the winter garden.
He leans toward me. His expression is unreadable because of the sunglasses.
“Ginnie. I was at home when you rang. You mustn’t do that. You mustn’t ever ring in the evening, when I could be at home.”
“I won’t do it again,” I say. “I know it’s difficult for you. But I was just so worried. About that man I saw. That he was something to do with—you know, what’s happened.”
“For God’s sake, Ginnie.”
“I mean—what shall we do?”
“What shall we do? It’s not us, Ginnie, it’s you. I didn’t see anything.”
I’m studying his face. But all I can see in his lenses is my own reflection—distorted, like the face of the moon in a children’s nursery rhyme.
“But—d’you think I should tell someone?” I say.
“Look,” he says. He’s trying to be reasonable, but I can hear the edge of exasperation in his voice. “Tell me again what you think you saw.”
“It was a man running.”
“So?”
“It was something about him—I don’t know, he made me feel afraid. … I had this mad idea that he was looking for us. But maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe that wasn’t what he was looking for.”
“Ginnie, you saw whatever you saw. But I just don’t get why you think this was so significant.”
“It was just a feeling …” My voice trails off; it seems so flimsy and insubstantial, what I was going to say. I take a slow breath. “But I’ve learned to trust my feelings, in the kind of work I do. Clem and I, we quote this at one another—how someone makes you feel is information. …”
He makes a rapid gesture, as if he’s flicking something away.
“Listen,” he says. “She can’t have been killed on the river path in broad daylight. Or dumped there, come to that. No one—however deranged—would do that. Not in such an exposed place with all the traffic on the river. It can’t have been the man you saw.”
This soothes me; it sounds so reasonable. It’s what I want—for him to reassure me—so I can close this door in my head and never open it again. But I have to pursue it a little further, to be completely sure.
“But—mightn’t he have gone back to the place where he left her? Perhaps to check her body hadn’t come to the surface?”
He shrugs. “Unlikely,” he says.
“I just want to be certain. To know I’ve done the right thing.”
“Yeah, well.” He twists his mouth, as though he has a bitter taste. “It isn’t always exactly obvious just what the right thing is.”
If only I hadn’t had my eyes open: if only I hadn’t seen. But I did see. What you see can hurt you.
We sip our drinks. In the thin, clear light, the shadows of our hands on the table are sharp, as though cut with a blade. I’m very alert, sensing the anger that’s hidden under his words, watching for clues to his mood: as a wife might watch her husband, as my mother used to watch my father, always vigilant. How did this happen? I push the thought away.
There’s a scrap of music as someone goes into the bar—a saxophone, indolent, caressing, singing out for a moment, then abruptly silenced with the closing of the door.
“Who was she?” I say. “The woman who was killed?”
“They don’t know yet. You’ll see it in the paper, once she’s been identified.” He sips his Coke. “Roger’s in charge of the investigation.”
“Roger?” This gives me a cold feeling. “That’s a weird coincidence, isn’t it?”
He shrugs.
“Why? It’s his kind of case.”
He finishes his Coke and pushes the glass away. When he frowns there are hard lines etched around his mouth and his eyes.
“You need to think about what we’ve got to lose,” he says. “I mean, it would be a total fucking disaster if this got out.”
“Yes, of course. For me too.”
I know this: I think it often; we have talked about it, promised each other. That what we will seek to do above all is to keep our love affair absolutely secret. But when he says this, my eyes fill up with tears.
Maybe he feels he’s been too abrupt.
“Look, you know I love you,” he says.
“I love you too,” I tell him.
He puts his hand on mine.
“You’ll just forget all about this?”
I nod.
I think for a moment—what happens to people like us, to secret lovers, at the end of the affair? How do you keep going? You’d be plunged into all that grief, and you’d never be able to show it, ever, ever. What happens then?
“I’d better go. I’m getting late,” he says.
“I could drop you off somewhere.”
“But you haven’t finished your drink.”
He gets up, reaches across to kiss me lightly on the lips.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
I feel a thread of sadness that makes me want to cling. And I wonder if I’ve been kidding myself, pretending it’s all so easy: that I’m so strong and independent, that I can let him go. Have I been lying to myself about this all along?
“Next week?” he says.
“Yes, please …”
He smiles at the please.
I watch him go. The melted frost on the grass has a cold glitter. I watch his grace as he walks down the path and out of the winter garden and away from me.
CHAPTER 27
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, Greg is working in the university library, and Amber is going shopping with Jamila—there are sequined ballerina shoes Jamila really needs.
“Amber, I could be out later,” I tell her. “D’you have your keys and your phone?”
“Mum, you ought to know by now,” says Amber, rather wearily. “I never go anywhere without my phone.”
When she’s gone, I call Max and invite myself over.
It’s a half-hour drive to Max’s house. I pass the high, mossy wall that goes around the convent garden, and the Victorian waterworks, where seagulls bob on the reservoir like scraps of discarded paper. There’s a fair at Hampton Court. For much of the way the road goes close to the river. It must have been very pleasant here before London encroached and heavy traffic started coming through. There are old timbered houses, a Norman church, and an antiquarian bookshop where, years ago, the girls and I spent a leisurely afternoon. It was crammed and disorderly, books overflowing the shelves and heaped on the floor in piles as tall as a child. Baroque motets were playing, and there were tatty sofas covered in rose-red velvet, and everything had its soft gray bloom of dust. The spines of the books cracked when you opened them, a small, sharp sound like the breaking of tiny bones. The proprietor had an ancient greatcoat and the voice of an Oxford don and a week’s worth of stubble; he sat and read in the back room. Through the window behind him you could see a tiny courtyard, enclosed and enchanted, with statuary and vines, the ground gray with the leaves of many autumns, and on a wrought-iron table a candelabra with burned-down stubs of candle: You could picture him drinking there on summer evenings. We found many treasures—a Gulliver’s Travels illustrated by Rackham that I bought for Ursula; an edition of Dante’s Inferno. I read the first stanza of the Dante to the girls, the lines about finding yourself in a dark wood where the right way was lost, speaking in a hushed voice. The pages were roughly cut but thick and edged with gold.
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