The Other Child

by Lucy Atkins

  ‘Yes, yes, we have.’ She stands up and holds out her hand. ‘I’m Tess.’ His hand is smaller than she’d expected, soft-skinned. Up close his face looks weary and his beard coarse, as if sprinkled with iron filings. The urge to photograph Alex, exactly like this, close up, with the shadows of the cloister etching the lines around his eyes behind the thick-framed glasses, is briefly overwhelming.

  ‘So, is this just a coincidence?’ he says.

  ‘No, not really. I saw you were talking so I came along.’

  ‘And did you enjoy hearing about the Monk’s Garden?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve never been to the museum before.’ She looks around at the courtyard. ‘It’s quite a place.’

  ‘She certainly left her mark.’ He looks around and puts his hands in his pockets. ‘I sometimes feel like this place is more about loss than memories, you know? She’s built it and filled it with timeless objects, but there’s still this sadness at its heart.’ He straightens, and looks at her. ‘But listen, Tess, did you want to talk to me about something?’

  ‘Well, sort of. I just … I kept thinking about bumping into you on the beach. You were so convinced that you knew my husband and, I don’t know … I suppose I just wanted to know why.’

  ‘Because I do know him.’ He maintains steady eye contact.

  ‘He says you mistook him for someone else.’

  ‘And you don’t believe him.’

  ‘Oh no – yes, I do, of course I do.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  She looks across to the other side of courtyard. A man is photographing a woman leaning against a pillar. The camera flashes, illuminating the cloister and the shadowy stone figures behind them.

  ‘You want to know how I know your husband?’

  ‘Well, yes, I want to know how you think you do.’

  ‘Did you see the Monk’s Garden yet? It’s cold out there, but you have a coat and you really can’t come here without seeing it.’

  He guides her through the cloisters, then through a door into a garden. A grey brick path winds away through spindly trees. In the distance traffic hums and roars, but the sounds are muffled by high walls. The sleet has stopped, but it is bitterly cold. She struggles into her coat and they begin to walk, their feet crunching on sprinkled salt and grit.

  ‘OK, so,’ he says, ‘years ago, when your husband was a student at the University of Pittsburgh, he was in the same class as my brother.’

  She feels the chill spread through her chest.

  ‘So?’ Alex slows down. ‘Do you believe me now? They were classmates for a while, until your husband transferred to another school.’

  ‘No – wait – there you go. He didn’t transfer to any other college; he did his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh; it was accelerated, he was there three years not four, and then he went to Harvard Medical School.’

  Alex shakes his head. ‘He did a semester and a half at Pitts, then he left.’

  She feels her shoulders relax. ‘It’s the wrong person, Alex, see? You’ve mixed him up with someone else.’

  ‘I really haven’t.’ Alex shrugs. They both wait, almost patiently, at this impasse. The trees are like tall, silent waiters, balancing frost on their thin, outstretched arms.

  ‘I think this is what I’m most curious about,’ she says, eventually. ‘Why you’re so sure you haven’t mixed him up, when you so obviously have?’

  ‘I recognized him the moment I saw him. He hasn’t changed that much. He’s aged of course, his hair is receding a little,’ Alex’s hand flutters towards his head, ‘but he still looks pretty much the same as when my brother brought him to Florida, when I was twenty years old.’

  ‘Honestly,’ she can’t keep the exasperation out of her voice, ‘you’re thinking of someone different.’

  He slows again and looks at her. ‘I promise you, Tess, I’m not.’

  She walks on, stepping ahead of him.

  ‘This is really silly.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he was only an undergraduate at Pitts for one term.’

  Alex doesn’t have a coat. He must be freezing in his tweed jacket, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the temperature. She clutches her coat around her belly. ‘Why on earth would you keep saying this, Alex?’

  ‘Because I could never ever forget his face.’

  ‘Why not? Why couldn’t you mix his face up with someone else’s? Why couldn’t you have forgotten someone’s face?’

  ‘I could never forget his face, Tess, because he almost killed me.’

  She stops.

  ‘You want the whole story now?’ Alex shoves his hands into his pockets, his eyes fixed on her face. She nods.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I was on spring break with my girlfriend Patti, my brother and a couple of his friends, including Chuck.’

  ‘Chuck? My husband’s called Greg.’

  ‘Well, in those days he was called Chuck, and he’d zeroed in on Patti; he was constantly by her side, making her laugh, bringing her cocktails, rolling her joints. I could tell she was attracted to him – why wouldn’t she be? He had a supreme self-confidence, he was very good-looking, athletic, charismatic, slightly wild, and very, very smart. He seemed to know something about everything, like he had a photographic memory or something. Anyway, I pretended not to take him seriously, but there was a lot of tension between us, for obvious reasons.’

  The path twists back on itself and she realizes that they are crossing a spot where they’d walked just a few minutes before. The garden is tiny. She hugs her coat tighter, burying her chin in her scarf.

  ‘So, one day,’ Alex continues, ‘he offered to take me cave diving – he said he had a licence. I knew he probably didn’t, but I didn’t want to lose face in front of Patti, so I went. We hired the gear and drove down the coast. Chuck went in first and I followed, but I had a bad feeling, I knew how stupid it was. There was an underwater sign saying, ‘Go no further. There is nothing in this cave worth dying for.’ We went past it, into a tunnel. Chuck went first and I followed. It was only just wider than my body with the air tank, and there wasn’t even enough room to bend my knees so I just focused on the inch of rock ahead of me. And then I got wedged. I couldn’t turn around, I couldn’t move and I felt the beginning of panic – I don’t know if you’ve ever felt real panic, Tess, but it’s like this electric feeling in your spine, this icy blankness spreading through the back of your brain. I was trying to calm myself – I already knew that panic kills divers. I’ve read up about it since, and a lot of divers drown because they panic. Sometimes they remove their own air tank.’

  ‘They do that?’

  ‘Nobody knows why – it’s maybe the body’s instinct to be free? I don’t know. But anyway, I was tugging on the lead rope and after a bit I saw Chuck’s mask. He came up so his face was against mine. I remember there was this dead look in his eyes – no warmth, no reassurance, no emotion, nothing. He shoved a hand past my shoulder to my air tank. I guess he released it because I could move again.’

  ‘So he saved you.’

  Alex ignores her. ‘We got through the tunnel and dropped into a cave but there was silt, the water was thick with it, there was no visibility at all. I’d already decided to go back, but I was feeling really panicky and I couldn’t see Chuck. I somehow made it back through the tunnel, but then I couldn’t move, I couldn’t get up to the surface. The last thing I remember, I was standing in a beautiful garden, talking to my mom and telling her I loved her.’

  ‘You were drowning? How did you survive?’

  ‘Pure luck that a couple of experienced divers found me and got me out. I was in bad shape; I had to be airlifted to hospital.’

  She realizes she has been holding her breath.

  ‘And what about Chuck?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He must have come up after you.’

  ‘He did, but I never saw him again. People saw him, he returned the hire car – but he didn’t show up back at the condo,
didn’t collect his things, didn’t come to the hospital and after the break he wasn’t at Pitts anymore. Nobody knew where he’d gone.’

  ‘You never saw him again?’

  ‘Not till two weeks ago on my local beach.’

  There is no point arguing with Alex. He has clearly convinced himself that his nemesis has returned. She can see why a claustrophobic near-death experience like this would leave emotional scars.

  ‘It sounds terrifying,’ she says, ‘but you should know that Greg doesn’t scuba dive, he really doesn’t.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Alex gives a hollow laugh. ‘Well, nor do I. Anymore.’

  She is beginning to shiver and her feet are growing painfully numb.

  ‘Alex, you really have got the wrong man. If it makes you feel better, I’ve seen all Greg’s college paperwork, from Pittsburgh and Harvard. He is not this cave-diving lunatic, he’s a paediatric cardiac surgeon.’

  ‘He is, huh? Well, I guess he did something good with his life after all.’ They are back where they started by the museum door. Alex stands in front of it, blocking her way.

  ‘He isn’t your man, Alex.’

  ‘Then why,’ Alex says, ‘did he threaten me?’

  ‘Sorry?’ She folds both arms around her belly, shakes her head. ‘What?’

  ‘I followed the two of you back to your hotel after you left the café – I guess he didn’t mention that either, huh?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You looked kind of fragile. I just didn’t have the heart to confront him again in front of you, so I waited in the hotel lobby. I was still there, an hour or so later, when he came out for a run – and that’s when he threatened me.’

  She remembers sleeping that afternoon, the dull, dead sleep, and Greg coming back into the room, flushed with adrenalin.

  ‘I confronted him – I was angry – and he forced me outside and round the corner, into the alley. That’s when he put his hand round my throat and told me that if I didn’t leave him alone I’d regret it.’

  She can see the tension on Alex’s face, a mixture of fear and outrage. He is not making this up.

  ‘Listen, I don’t make a habit of identifying him on beaches. This is the first time in thirty years that I’ve seen him and I knew him, right away.’

  ‘OK, I need to get going.’ She steps forwards in the hope that he will let her through the door, but he doesn’t move.

  ‘What was he doing in Marblehead, Tess?’ Alex narrows his eyes. ‘Was he looking for me?’

  ‘No – what? No. Look, Alex, it’s really cold, it’s getting late, I’m very tired. I have to get home to my son – the babysitter will be …’

  ‘A son?’ Alex frowns. ‘You have a son?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do, and I need to get back to him now.’ There is nobody else in the garden. Some of the lights in the museum have been switched off and they are standing in shadows.

  Alex glances at her belly. ‘When’s your baby due?’

  ‘In five weeks.’ She lifts her chin and looks into his eyes. He blinks and looks away, perhaps suppressing whatever unpalatable thought has just crossed his mind. ‘I’m cold, Alex, I need to go.’

  There is a pause, then he says, ‘Of course, I’m sorry,’ and steps aside, holding the door open for her. She moves quickly through it and into the cloister, but he catches her up.

  ‘Ever heard of Jacques Cousteau?’

  ‘The deep-sea explorer.’

  ‘Yes. And you know the closest he ever came to death?’

  ‘No, no, I really don’t.’ She wonders how unstable Alex actually is.

  ‘It was on a cave dive.’

  ‘Really?’ She looks around for the exit, barely listening, just wanting to get away.

  ‘There’s this spring in the south of France.’ Alex walks next to her and keeps talking. ‘Every year, for just a few weeks in early springtime, it turns into a huge gushing fountain. For generations it baffled the village and then in the nineteenth century an underwater explorer called Ottonelli built a little zinc boat and went down to solve the mystery. He died.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She decides it is best just to let Alex talk. The rooms they are passing are dark and the corridor feels longer than it did on the way in.

  ‘Later on another diver called Signor Negri, decided to try. Negri didn’t solve the mystery of the spring either, but he did make it back up and gave a detailed account of a network of underwater caves; he even described finding Ottonelli’s zinc boat.’

  She spots the lobby, and a security guard, and feels herself relax. Alex is still talking.

  ‘A few years on, Cousteau decided to try. He used Negri’s detailed directions but, fifty feet down and very confused, he realized he’d been duped. Negri’s descriptions bore no relation to the topography – and there was no zinc boat. Without the right equipment, Cousteau was in big trouble. He wrote in his autobiography that it was by far the closest he ever came to death.’

  ‘I don’t get why anybody would want to squeeze through underwater caves.’

  Alex isn’t listening.

  ‘He worked out that Negri hadn’t got any further than a ledge fifteen feet down – he’d made everything else up.’

  She sees the cloakroom.

  ‘Really? … Well, I—’

  ‘Tess.’ Alex stops and puts a hand on her arm, squeezing it, looking into her eyes now. ‘Negri drew a map of every tunnel, ledge and turn. He gave measurements, precise depths, a poetic description of Ottonelli’s zinc boat – it never occurred to Cousteau to question Negri’s story. If a story is outrageous enough, complete enough, we just assume it’s true.’

  She realizes, then, what Alex is saying. ‘I know my husband,’ she says, ‘if that’s what this is about.’

  ‘Do you? Well, I thought I knew my wife – my soon to be ex-wife – until I discovered that she’d been having an affair with my closest friend. For twelve years.’ He rubs a hand over his beard ‘Twelve years, Tess! We have three children – eleven-year-old twins, a fifteen-year-old daughter, a beautiful apartment in Back Bay, a weekend place in Marblehead, our careers are great, our kids go to great schools, we have a charmed life – and it’s all an elaborate lie.’

  His skin has gone grey, his eyes sunken. She realizes then that this is not about Greg at all, it’s about Alex’s disintegrating life: the shock, pain and grief of betrayal – the loss. She doesn’t need to be afraid of Alex’s memories – they are obviously warped by this current nightmare. Memories are always shaped by the present, and Alex’s present is clearly a mess.

  ‘I’m really sorry. It sounds incredibly painful.’

  ‘Yes, well, it is. I guess I knew deep down that things weren’t perfect, but it never occurred to me that the two of them were capable of that level of deceit. My God …’ He swallows, as if struggling to breathe. ‘The lies they told, Tess …’

  Alex is, she realizes, effectively back in that underwater cave – trapped, abandoned, blinded, facing what feels like annihilation. She wants to comfort him, but there is nothing she could do or say that would make this any easier for him. They hover by the glass doors. The last visitors are pulling on hats and gloves, winding scarves around their necks, talking in low voices. Behind them, a guard says, ‘We’re closing now, sir, ma’am.’

  Alex’s eyes are bloodshot. ‘I’m sorry Tess,’ he says. ‘I know I’ve talked a lot, but you seem like a nice person, a kind person, and you have your baby on the way – and a little boy, too. You need to know what kind of man you’re married to. We should exchange numbers.’

  She finds herself agreeing, even though she has no desire to see Alex again. He puts his phone back into his pocket after they’ve swapped numbers, and looks into her eyes. ‘You know, to see Chuck Novak again in my hometown, on the beach where I walk my dog, it was—’

  She recoils. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chuck Novak?’

  ‘Yes—’

  The glass walls seem t
o shift, closing in on her, and she turns, without saying goodbye – steps through the doors, out into the freezing night. She walks as fast as she can though her boots are slipping on the ice and sleet needles her scalp. The city roars and belches all around, and as she gets to the corner she stops, disorientated by the lights and the noise, the teetering buildings, the smoky sky. She has to get home – she has to get home to Joe – but she can’t remember the way; all the roads look the same and she has no idea which one to take.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It takes a while, on the phone to Nell the next morning, to explain what happened with Alex.

  ‘The main thing is he called him Chuck Novak, Nell. Chuck – Charles, Carlo? This is feeling less and less like coincidence.’ A pallid winter sun appears low in the sky, illuminating the cold steel of the kitchen.

  ‘All right, OK, this is so confusing.’ Nell takes a sip of something. Radio 4 is burbling in the background. She imagines Nell standing in her messy kitchen with a cake in the oven, the wood-burner crackling. ‘Carlo Novak’s library card was from the University of Pennsylvania, wasn’t it? Is the University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh?’

  ‘No, the University of Pennsylvania is in Philadelphia, I googled it on the way home last night.’

  ‘But Pittsburgh’s in Pennsylvania, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but Philadelphia is in Pennsylvania too.’

  Nell laughs. ‘This is baffling.’

  ‘I know, but the geography doesn’t matter – the point is they’re two different universities, in cities hundreds of miles apart. Greg was never at college in Philadelphia, he was an undergraduate in Pittsburgh, then he went to Harvard Med School.’ She reaches up and tucks a loose strand of Christmas lights back over the window ledge.

  There is a pause. ‘So Alex is wrong, obviously.’

  ‘Yes, of course he is. But there’s got to be some connection between Greg and Carlo Novak; there has to be. So, what am I missing here?’

  ‘What you’re missing,’ Nell says firmly, ‘is Greg. You have to ask him – you have to tell him what Alex said and talk to him about all this.’