The Night Visitor

by Lucy Atkins

  Perhaps she’d even try to arrange a sabbatical at some point, so she could immerse herself in the research. She might hire a graduate student for some of the duller legwork, but she’d do the bulk of the research herself this time. She said to Carol, ‘One thing – and this is really important – I want lots of time to write this. It’s going to take me way more than eighteen months this time. You have to build that into the contract, OK?’

  When she hung up she felt numb and shaky, probably from relief. She waited for some kind of elation to kick in, a feeling of triumph, but it didn’t. It was huge, a huge help, but it only got her halfway there – to save their finances she still needed Annabel to be a hit, or some other miracle to occur. She called David’s mobile. He did not pick up. She looked at her watch. It was eight o’clock and she had no idea where he was. She texted him: ‘Good news! Call me.’

  The money would vanish the moment it hit their account, but that was OK. She had to move on and leave this anger and resentment behind. It was only money.

  But of course, it wasn’t only money. The problems with David were much more complicated than that. She got up from the kitchen table and poured herself a large glass of wine. As she shoved the cork back into the bottle, she noticed that her hand was shaking. She felt slightly dizzy, as if she’d turned her head too fast and the room had not quite settled back into place. She could hear the TV in the front room and Marta at the bottom of the stairs calling up in her Americanized Danish voice, ‘Jessica! I have to go out now. You need to brush your teeth, OK. Your mum’s in the kitchen.’ It irritated her that Marta called Jess ‘Jessica’. There was something proprietorial and faintly critical about it. And why didn’t Marta talk to her, rather than shouting up to Jess like this?

  She sipped the wine and watched Marta grab her denim jacket, glance at the hall mirror and run her hand through her short hair. It was still damp from the shower. She was wearing sneakers and a simple grey sweatshirt. At twenty-four, she barely needed to do anything to herself before she went out. The muscles of her thighs looked smooth inside her jeans, her abdomen taut, and as she lifted her arms her breasts lifted too, small and pert beneath the nondescript top. Marta was assured for such a young woman, she knew her own power. The front door slammed.

  Olivia was aware, more and more, that Marta did not like her but now the feeling was becoming mutual. Not saying goodbye was just rude.

  David hadn’t responded to the text. She knew he’d be troubled by the news of these offers for Barry, even though it might save their finances. He’d try to disguise it, but he’d feel put out. They always used to be pushing forwards together, side by side, supporting each other, proud of each other. She wasn’t sure how things had shifted but nowadays they felt almost like adversaries. She wondered if it was ever going to be possible, now, for David simply to be happy for her.

  They were both afraid to open up these discussions because things between them were potentially so rotten. But they couldn’t go on like this. This was no way to live. They had to do something, get counselling, deal with whatever this was. She still felt dizzy, as if she was coming down with something. There was a strange, cold pressure inside her body. She got out her phone and texted him one more time. ‘Where are you?’

  These absences were beginning to feel systemic. It wasn’t just her. He’d withdrawn from Dominic too. It was as if he was afraid of his own son. When they first got back from France – perhaps because of their row on the ferry – he’d tried to tackle Dom, but it hadn’t worked well. Dom’s fury seemed completely entrenched. There had been a final ferocious row a couple of weeks ago in Dom’s bedroom; they’d almost come to blows.

  David came downstairs afterwards with ashy-looking skin. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘They don’t tell you this at the NCT classes.’ He poured himself a large whisky.

  ‘I couldn’t hear what you were saying. Did he tell you why he’s so angry?’

  David shrugged. ‘He’s fifteen.’

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s more than that.’

  ‘You try asking him then.’

  ‘But I have!’

  He looked so weary, his eyes were puffy and his facial muscles limp. Suddenly she could see the disappointed and slightly helpless old man that he might become, and she felt sorry for him. He was a devoted father and this must hurt, not least because he’d always been particularly close to Dom. Since Dom was five they’d gone to watch football matches together at weekends. Paul never wanted to go, he preferred his football on a screen and Jess hated football. But that had stopped now. The two of them used to go to the park some evenings and kick a ball around too. That had also stopped abruptly. She remembered when Dom was nine or ten years old he’d moved his little desk into David’s study and would sit at it pretending that he was writing a book too. David indulged him, though Dom would interrupt him every five seconds. David really was a good father, and Dom used to worship him. He didn’t deserve this brutal adolescent rejection.

  It was disconcerting to see David so upset by Dom, he really seemed lost. Perhaps his failure to finish Trust had undermined his confidence in other areas of his life. She’d always imagined that David would grow more powerful as he aged. They’d both assumed that his career would go from strength to strength. Ten years ago, when Intuition was an international bestseller and newspaper editors were taking him out to dinner and offering him great sums to be their columnist, it would have seemed inconceivable that he could ever stall and waver like this.

  This was probably why he’d made such catastrophic errors with their finances. He wanted to do something spectacular again. He had, perhaps unconsciously, set out to show her – and himself – that he wasn’t finished, that he was still capable of magical thinking and inspired acts.

  She had realized that night, after his row with Dom, as she watched him drain the whisky and pour another glass, that she was not the innocent one. He was right that she’d been preoccupied with work and with Vivian and with keeping Dom from catastrophe, and she’d failed to appreciate how deep David’s crisis was becoming. She’d failed to tune in and support him. Perhaps he was right that she had become self-obsessed and egotistical, perhaps she’d allowed him to push her away because it was easier than facing the problems in their marriage.

  She made herself go over and put her arms round him. She felt his familiar, broad shoulder under her cheek, his warm back under the scratchy wool of his jumper. He’d stiffened at first, hesitated, but then buried his face in her hair and she knew that they still loved each other, despite the mess they were in. She told herself she’d help him to dig his way out of this – she’d be there for him. As soon as the book launch was over. He pulled away, downed the whisky and put the empty glass in the sink. ‘Right.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’ve got to finish this hunches talk, for Washington.’

  They were not going to sort this out before the book launch party, or immediately after it. He’d be home from Washington the day before the party, but then he was to go away again the day after to give a speech at a so-called ‘Lifestyle Institute’ in Copenhagen. These bookings were lucrative and he was turning nothing down.

  She got up from the kitchen table. When their debt was finally paid, David would be able to be home more. Maybe that would help. She had to stop wasting time now. She still had work to do. Term was about to start, she had her coursework to finalize, as well as a book endorsement to write and an overdue blog for History Today. And she needed to check on the final launch party RSVPs. But first she had to get Jess to go to bed, Paul to do his homework and Dom to come home.

  ‘Jess? Did you brush your teeth?’ She walked slowly upstairs to Jess’s room, picking up a sports sock, a hairbrush and a tattered biology GCSE textbook as she went. ‘Jess?’

  Since France, Jess had reverted to some of her more babyish habits. She wanted a story every night and was anxious if Olivia or David weren’t there to read it to her; Marta would not do. Olivia had tried to factor this into her day and had mostly
managed it, but it was clear that what had happened in France had left psychological scars. David had been talking to Jess about managing her anxiety, they had a whole system worked out, with ‘Worry Times’ and relaxation strategies, but she suspected that Jess needed actual therapy. She had nightmares sometimes where she’d run screaming out of her bedroom. Olivia would lurch out of bed thinking that there was a stalker crawling through the window and she’d find Jess quaking on the landing, only half awake, shocked by the force of her own subconscious.

  Jess was lying in a dank nest of stuffed animals. She looked more normal now that her hair had grown a bit. It had been trimmed in a salon and it was now an unremarkable mousy brown bob. Olivia still found it hard to look at sometimes. It felt like a reminder that disturbing and inexplicable things could happen in the blink of an eye.

  She noticed that Jess had squeezed herself into an old Lion King nightie that had been her favourite when she was about six. She must have dug it out from the charity bag that Marta had failed to take to Oxfam.

  Olivia didn’t know why she felt so irritated with Marta these days, but these small gestures of resistance seemed faintly aggressive. The younger woman’s physical presence had also begun to feel intrusive. Marta moved through the house soundlessly, on light, bare feet, and would appear, abruptly, in rooms, as if she had been standing listening and waiting for the right moment to enter. But other than Dom, who had gone from teenaged embarrassment to complete avoidance of Marta, no one else seemed to mind her. In fact, David had become oblivious to the au pair, too caught up in his own troubles to notice or care whether she disapproved of them or not. They were never at the table any more with a bottle of wine when Olivia got home, in the evenings; Marta now either went to hot yoga or out with friends. She was due to start her Master’s in a year, but a year felt too long to keep her on. Then again, the last thing Olivia needed was to have to find a new au pair.

  Of course, it was possible that Marta was just picking up on the family tensions. Jess was not easy at the moment and would have meltdowns over small things. Paul rarely left a screen and when forced to he was passively truculent. And Dom, of course, was either foul or absent. He left the house every morning, hooded and hunched in his headphones, and if she was lucky she’d get a text after school to say he was at a friend’s house. When home, he communicated in grunts, or by one-word texts. He also openly despised Marta, which could not be easy for her.

  ‘Mum? Can you even hear me?’ Jess was propped up on her elbow, looking cross.

  ‘Sorry.’ She went over to the bed. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, what?’

  ‘I said, did you check my window?’

  ‘Yes, yes. We covered that in Worry Time, didn’t we? Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, my love. You’re in your lovely home, I’m here, everything’s safe and sound.’ It felt like a lie.

  Her eyes fell on Aesop’s Fables. They were short. ‘Oh!’ She made herself sound excited. ‘We haven’t read these for years, have we? I love Aesop’s Fables.’

  ‘But Dad was reading me this.’ Jess held up a thick book by Philip Pullman.

  ‘Then I’d better not read that or he’ll be cross with me.’ Olivia pulled down the book of fables. ‘I used to love these when I was your age.’ She remembered the one about a fox carrying the gingerbread man across the river on its back. She’d been fascinated by the idea that helpful people could have malevolent intentions.

  She flipped to the contents page and Jess burrowed beneath the covers. A fable or two would not take more than a few minutes, then she could deal with the boys and go and shut herself in the study.

  A title caught her eye. ‘The Scarab and the Eagle.’ ‘Hey, look, I’d forgotten there’s one about a dung beetle. You remember me telling you about your grandfather, who discovered the dung beetle in an amber fossil and named it after me? We saw it in the Oxford museum that time?’

  ‘I wish he called a beetle after me.’

  ‘You weren’t alive, darling. He never even met you. He’d have definitely named a dung beetle after you if he had. Archaeocopris jess.’

  ‘I don’t want a dung beetle, that’s disgusting! I want a nice, pretty beetle.’

  ‘Dung beetles can be really pretty. Some of them are like little jewels. They have magical powers too. Did you know they are the only creatures, except humans, who can navigate using the Milky Way?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘What else? Well, the Ancient Egyptians loved them, King Tutankhamun was buried with a green stone dung beetle – a scarab – sitting on his heart. It meant he’d rise up again.’

  Jess looked unimpressed.

  Olivia found the page and began to read the story of the dung beetle who pleaded with the golden eagle to spare the life of a hare. When the eagle ignored the beetle and killed the hare, the beetle was enraged. She found the eagle’s nest and destroyed her eggs. In despair, the golden eagle flew to Zeus for protection and this time Zeus let her lay her eggs in his lap. The eagle thought she was unreachable, up there with the gods, but she’d underestimated the dung beetle’s grudge. The beetle flew around Zeus’s head, making him leap up so that all the eggs rolled off his lap and smashed again.

  Jess scowled at that. ‘I don’t get it. Why did she do that?’

  ‘For revenge. Because the eagle disrespected her. She underestimated the beetle.’

  ‘But the dung beetle was evil, too, wasn’t she? She killed the eggs.’

  ‘Well yes, but only because the eagle was being so superior and horrid.’

  Jess’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then they’re both as bad as each other.’

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s … The moral of the story is you should never ignore someone just because they seem old or dull or ugly or insignificant or weaker than you. And you should never think you’re better than someone because you’re more influential, or you’ve got more important friends.’

  ‘That’s a stupid story!’ Jess turned away and stared at the wall. ‘I hate dung beetles.’

  As she put the book away and stroked Jess’s head, she thought of Vivian, sitting all alone in gloomy Ileford. As she kissed her daughter goodnight, the same cold and shaky sensation passed through her.

  She wondered if she had disrespected Vivian, or underestimated her.

  Vivian

  Ileford Manor

  The trees are flinging leaves around, shaking their jagged limbs at the smeared and murky sky, so today I have decided to stay indoors. I have to make an important decision and to do that I must gather my data. I am trying to recall all the times she has lied.

  It is clear as I go back over the past eighteen months that my original hypothesis about Olivia Sweetman was correct: she is a mimicking species. She pretends to be kind, reasonable and morally upstanding, but when it comes to protecting her own interests she is capable of anything. I set out to prove this at the start, but then I allowed myself to be seduced by her charm and by the hope of an interesting collaborative future and I lost sight of my original objective.

  When I look back on the past eighteen months with an analytical eye, Olivia’s true nature actually never wavered. I just failed to see it.

  Take the book jacket. She wanted permission to use the library portrait. It is certainly a striking image and I can see why it appealed to her. The woman wears a dress the colour of clotted cream, her hair masses beneath an extravagant hat of the correct period. She is conventionally beautiful. She has an elegant neck, big eyes, a full mouth. I think the portrait is something Lady Burley picked up at an auction in the 1980s, but I have no paperwork to prove that. I told Olivia this.

  She decided to use it anyway. To get around the issue of it not actually being Annabel, they inserted a disclaimer on the inside cover, where few readers would notice. ‘It doesn’t matter too much if it’s Annabel, as long as it makes people want to buy the book,’ Olivia laughed. ‘It just gives people something to pin their imagination to.’

  But surely the whole point of imagination is tha
t it doesn’t need to be pinned to anything – least of all to a lie.

  Thoughts of pinning always bring me back to beetles, I can’t help it – specifically, the act of removing their genitalia with a hooked pin to display next to the specimen.

  Beetles can be accomplished mimics too and sometimes the only way to be sure of a species is to dissect and identify the genitalia. Removing a beetle’s genitals can be tricky, not least because some beetles are minuscule; they can be as tiny as a pinhead. You have to insert the hooked pin through the midline of the end plates, then find the genitalia, which lie inside the beetle’s abdomen, just to the right. These are then pulled out and secured to the board next to the specimen like little punctuation marks. They alone are proof of a beetle’s true nature. I have often felt that it is a shame the same cannot be done for humans. It would be so useful to know exactly what one is dealing with.

  My father was an excellent mimic, not just of people – he would have made a good impressionist – but of animals too. He did impressive imitations of a pig, a cockerel, a donkey and a vixen’s bark, as well as a whole range of birdcalls. He also liked to play-act. I remember once he took me to the Ashdown Forest. It was rare for him to spend time with me. I must have been very young, perhaps nine or ten. I was, I think, a rather trying child, anxious and self-contained. I remember that day not just because it was unusual, but because he made me taste a boletus fungi and as I swallowed it he let out a blood-curdling scream and covered his mouth with his hands, begging me to spit it out, gabbling that he’d made a mistake, that the mushroom was deadly. ‘Say goodbye, Vivian, say goodbye to your old pa!’ Real tears sprang into his eyes. I think he even fell to his knees.

  At that time, before drink completely ruined him, he was still active in the village amateur dramatic society. With his thin moustache, he looked a little like Clark Gable, if you could ignore the Sussex burr. He had been drinking that day in the woods, I assume, either that or he was under a lot of pressure. I remember, when I’d finished spitting and retching onto the bracken, his laughter would not stop. It was so loud and wild that it made the rooks panic from the trees. He had an idiosyncratic sense of humour.