Later we sat in the hotel lounge, tired after our walk. We drank tea, and read our books. Someone had lit a fire, even though we didn’t need it; one solitary log quietly smouldering away. We dozed in the heat, lost from ourselves, until it was time to go back to the comparative chill of our room and get ready for dinner. We phoned Melanie, so that we could speak to the children. I spoke to Melanie first, putting on that bright, tinny voice that I so often caught myself using around her. David sat on the bed and watched me, and he heard it too.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘We’re having a fantastic time.’
There was chaos in Melanie’s house. I knew there would be, at that time of the day, on a Saturday evening. I could hear it in the background; I could hear Jake, who had probably just turned up with Kelly, shouting over the noise of the others. But it was OK for Sam and Ella to be in that chaos, to be part of it. It was good for them; such a change from the quiet of our house. It was always so lively at Melanie’s. I convinced myself that Sam and Ella enjoyed being there.
I said my brief hellos to the children. I could barely hear them over all that noise. David sat on the bed, waiting for his turn to speak.
And then I watched him as he spoke to them, though I pretended not to. I saw how hard he concentrated, straining to hear the answers to his questions. ‘What did you get up to today? I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.’ I saw how he frowned, trying to hear their replies. I saw how much he missed them. And when he hung up, he muttered, ‘God.’
‘What?’ I said.
For a second it was on his lips to comment on the chaos of Melanie’s house, and of his unease at his children being in that chaos. I saw the words as clearly as if they were written in a bubble and my defences rose. But he bit them back. ‘Let’s go and have dinner,’ he said instead, his voice flat, denying all expression.
This time we did have time for our walk around the garden, and our drink in the bar. And we made a better effort to relax over dinner, planting smiles on our faces, talking about the children, the house; easy, safe topics. Yet absurd as it was, I felt self-conscious. I had put on some make-up, something I hadn’t done for years. A little grey eye-shadow and mascara, and a touch of pink blusher on my wind-blown cheeks. I’d felt like a clown putting it on, so unnatural was it to me. I was wearing the same dress as the night before because it was the only decent dress I possessed, but I’d put a different cardigan on over it. Did I pass muster? Did I do? Or did I look as I felt; like someone who’d forgotten how to try suddenly trying far too hard.
That night, we made love, but I remember it for all the wrong reasons. Looking back, it felt just like payment due. Obligatory, almost. David went through the motions as if he couldn’t avoid it after I’d arranged this supposedly romantic weekend away. Bad sex is worse than no sex but much, much worse surely is indifferent sex. Our bodies banged together but we could not connect, and when he rolled away from me loneliness engulfed me like a blanket.
I don’t think he was really with me at all, all weekend. Not in mind, not in soul.
The next day we went for another walk and had lunch at a pub. Even to me the whole exercise seemed a bit pointless now, spending all that money to stay just ten minutes up the road from our home; to walk where we could walk anytime if we ever got round to it, to have lunch in such a local pub. Pointless, and more than a little bit silly. As soon as we reasonably could we drove back to the station car park to pick up my car, and then I followed David to Melanie’s to pick up the children. I cried as I drove, alone now, in my car. I cried out loud, with my mouth open and my face all screwed up; angry, angry tears. I wonder if he looked in his mirror, and saw me.
David didn’t go in to Melanie’s; that was for me to do, even though he was so impatient now to see Ella and Sam. He waited outside, making some pretence of having parked the car in a dodgy spot and needing to keep an eye on it. David didn’t much like Melanie but he liked her living arrangements even less. So I had to go in alone, clambering over the mattress just inside the door and all the sleeping bags and God knows what else, forcing a bright happy smile onto my face and saying what a good time we had had. Melanie, of course, must have seen straight through the pretence.
By the time I’d got Sam and Ella and all their things rounded up and outside on the street David was pacing up and down like a dog, so anxious to be gone. As soon as he saw his children I felt myself disappear from his consciousness like a puff of smoke. The three of them went back to the house in his car. And again I followed, and again I cried. And when we got home I busied myself with sorting out the washing and getting it on, and cooking dinner. Sam and Ella disappeared to their rooms, both of them no doubt glad to be alone again in their own space, and David tended to his emails, and his post, and whatever else he had so missed while he was away. We hid behind the routine of domesticity. At home, we didn’t have to talk. We could avoid each other, in different rooms, each of us busy with different tasks.
Later, much later, when I’d had my bath and was about to go to bed, I came downstairs to get a glass of water. Sam and Ella were both in bed, and David, I thought, was catching the end of the news on TV. But he wasn’t in the living room, and the TV wasn’t on. I don’t know what instinct drove me, but suddenly I knew to be silent. He was in the den. I could hear him speaking, but not what he said. His voice was soft, low. Quietly, I walked across the living-room floor. The door of the den was open, and he was standing just inside, facing away from me with his phone to his ear, listening now. I stood in the doorway; if he looked round he would see me straight away. I wanted him to see me; I wanted him to smile and put his phone away and for this all to be normal. My heart was pounding so hard he had to know I was there and yet it seemed like an age before he realized. He spoke again into his phone. He said, ‘Yes. Yes, I will. Me too.’ And then, ‘Goodbye.’
He must have sensed me standing there then because suddenly his shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly, and the muscles in the back of his neck beneath the neat edge of his hairline tensed for a moment before he carefully turned around, holding that phone behind him, slipping it into his back pocket.
He smiled at me, too widely, too brightly. ‘I just needed to check something about work,’ he said. ‘It’s not important.’
I didn’t question him. I didn’t say, ‘Who would you be phoning about work at gone 10.30 on a Sunday night before a bank holiday?’ I didn’t query him at all. Fear, and my need to believe him, held me back.
But that night, I lay awake, long, long into the early hours. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t shut down my body or my mind. My senses were pitched on alert, every instinct screaming. I thought back over the weekend, picking it apart; I scrutinized every awkwardness, every silence, every difference so acutely felt. I thought of his guarded politeness over dinner and of his distance; the constant awareness of words unsaid.
I turned my head on the pillow and stared through the dark at David sleeping beside me. I listened to the heavy sigh of his breathing, to the irritating click at the back of his throat every second or third breath. And I thought of all the nights when he wasn’t here; all those nights he spent in London, elsewhere. Suspicion crawled across my skin.
But I trusted David. I always had. It was inconceivable for me to do otherwise. He was a good man; decent, honourable and loyal. How offended he would be if he knew that I doubted him, how hurt.
David wouldn’t cheat on me, surely?
Yet through my head came the sound of his voice as he spoke into his phone. I heard it like an echo, repeated over and over. It was the way he said goodbye, his tone so warm, so tender.
He used to speak to me like that.
FOURTEEN
I slept poorly and woke late with a headache. David was already up, and downstairs. I could hear the radio playing in the kitchen, and the banging of cupboard doors, the clunk of cups and plates. Ella was down there too; I could hear them talking to each other, her voice high-pitched and clear, carrying straight up to my b
edroom, his a soft, low background burr.
I lay there for a long time, not wanting to be awake, not wanting to face the day. Last night’s fears weighed heavily in my body, still there, like lead in my veins. I could smell toast, ordinary, comforting. Sunlight filtered through the gap in the curtains. I couldn’t bring myself to move.
Soon the bedroom door opened, and David came in, bringing me a cup of tea. So quietly he crept across the carpet, so carefully he placed the cup on my bedside table. I could feel him looking down at me and opened my eyes. He was dressed in jeans and an old sweatshirt; gardening clothes. He hadn’t yet shaved and his dark hair, which on weekdays he kept so neatly groomed, was ruffled and untamed. Yet still he was handsome. He smiled at me but I couldn’t smile back.
‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ he said.
And I said, ‘Thank you.’
David’s eyes are blue like mine, but darker, and looking up at him in the dim room I couldn’t read them at all. What was he thinking? What was he hiding? Doubt twisted inside me, a hard, tight knot.
‘How are you feeling?’ he said, and there in his voice was that tenderness, that same kindness, that he had used on the phone, last night.
I swallowed hard. I managed to say, ‘Fine.’
He stood there for a moment more. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well. I better get started.’
He’d planned to sort the garden. The bushes at the back needed cutting away and the patch beside the shed sorting out. When I came downstairs he was out there, digging over the flower bed. I watched him through the kitchen window. Ella was out there too, sitting on that rusty old swing and idly rocking from side to side, chatting to her dad and watching him work. I could hear the murmur of their voices through the open window; hers rambling non-stop about everything from horses to Abbie’s new pet mouse to favourite pizza toppings and back to horses again; his offering replies when required and chiding her to get off the swing and come and help him. Eventually she did, rocking the swing up high first and then leaping off to land almost on top of him. She had her own spade; a pink-handled thing my parents had given her for her birthday. She picked it up from the ground where it was lying and dug it into the mud, scooping up the dirt and flinging it, any which way.
‘No, Ella, not like that,’ I heard David say. ‘We’re turning the mud over, not digging holes.’
‘But I like digging holes,’ Ella said, and she carried on, no help at all.
David stopped, to stretch his back. He rammed the spade into the ground like a spike, put his hands on his hips and arched backwards slightly. Ella did the same, copying him, exaggerating every move. David wiped his forearm up across his forehead; she did the same. He yawned; she yawned. He shook his head and laughed; she shook her head too and then collapsed in a fit of the giggles as he grabbed hold of her in a hug, tickling her.
I watched them for a long time.
Then Sam came into the kitchen, and I moved away from the window.
‘Morning, Sam,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
He grunted in reply. And he kept himself turned away from me, rummaging in the cupboard for cereal, opening the fridge for milk. By the set of his shoulders I knew he wished I wasn’t there. What is it with boys? When he was little he was so sweet and so open, so loving towards me, more affectionate than Ella was. And yet now he could barely bring himself to look at me, and if I should dare to touch him he would shrink from me, prickly as a hedgehog.
He sat at the table, hunched over his cornflakes, willing me to leave him alone.
But I couldn’t leave him alone. ‘You OK, sweetie?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said without looking at me. ‘Don’t keep asking me.’
He finished his cornflakes. As quickly as he could, he got away.
Soon Sam too was outside with the others, much more relaxed around David than he ever was with me. Was it because I was his mother, maybe? Was it because he thought mothers were for babies? What did I know about teenage boys? I’d no brother of my own and spent most of my teenage years in an all girls’ school. I only knew how much it hurt to be rejected by Sam, and that I loved him and worried about him endlessly. Yet that love and worry were the very things that seemed to push him away from me.
It was another beautiful day, sunny and warm, but I stayed in the kitchen, busying myself with chores, with making lunch. I would have liked to have gone out into the garden and joined them but I couldn’t bring myself to. I was too tense, too trapped with foreboding. So I watched them from the window, my husband and my children, out there in the sunshine. I watched them as though I was watching a film, and I took it all in; the laughter, the chat, the movement of their bodies in the bright light of the day. How idyllic it looked. How perfect.
David kept his phone in the pocket of his jeans. But later, when he came in from the garden, he put it down in the bowl on the sideboard, alongside his wallet and keys.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he said.
I should have left it at that. I should have wrapped up my life as it was, safe, and kept it so. After all, a guilty man wouldn’t part with his phone so easily, surely?
‘You should have come outside,’ David said, hesitating in the kitchen doorway.
I was sorting Sam’s football kit at the time, I remember, rinsing muddy socks under the tap. I shrugged a shoulder in reply, not meeting his eye. He stood there, watching me.
‘You OK?’ he said.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You seem to be in a strange mood.’
I said nothing, but I could feel the colour bleeding into my face. I concentrated on my task, willing myself not to speak. I dared not speak; one word and the demons would come tumbling out.
‘Well,’ he said eventually. ‘I better go and get clean.’
I listened to hear his footsteps on the stairs, to the opening and closing of doors, and then the rushing of water through the pipes as he ran the shower. Sam had come in earlier and was now in the living room watching TV. Ella was outside still, back on the swing, singing to herself, rocking back and forth.
I picked up his phone. I unlocked it easily enough, though I wished that I couldn’t; I wished I could be spared this. I wasn’t looking because I wanted to find evidence; I was looking because I wanted to find nothing. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted to be ashamed of myself for ever so much as suspecting him . . . and I was ashamed, sneaking, prying like this.
I scrolled through his contacts; there were so many of them, all unknown to me. So many people in his daily life that I had never even heard of, but that is the nature of his work. I looked through his call register, at calls made, and up came a number for 10.35 last night, unidentified. I scrolled down, and there was the same number, so often, too often. I memorized it, saying it over and over in my head. I scrolled through his contacts, couldn’t match that number. I checked his texts, found nothing. My heart was pounding now, banging against my ribs. I switched back to calls made, double-checked the number. I flicked to calls received, and there it was. Again, and again, and again.
My hands were shaking but I hunted for a pen, for a scrap of paper to write on. I scribbled down that number, and then I threw David’s phone back down where I’d found it, wanting it out of my hands. It could be nothing, I told myself. It could be nothing. But I felt as if I’d been punched. I didn’t know what to do. I could hear the chatter and laughter from the TV next door, the floorboards creaking above. Outside, Ella slid off the swing and started walking towards the house. I stuffed the piece of paper with the number on under the fruit bowl, out of sight. And I went back to my washing, my head numb, my heart beating wildly in my chest, fast as a jack-hammer.
All week that piece of paper stayed there, hidden under the fruit bowl. I didn’t touch it, I didn’t look at it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I told myself I was being paranoid, stupid. It wasn’t unusual for David to make the odd work call at weekends, so why did this one hav
e to be any different? It wasn’t as if he said anything out of the ordinary to whoever it was he was speaking to, anything . . . incriminating.
But it was how he said it.
Half term was busy. I had not a minute to myself. I had to ferry Ella back and forth to the stables every day where she was helping with the horses, make trips to the town. Sam had end-of-term exams coming up and getting him to revise meant standing over him, checking that he got down to it, seeing that he wasn’t just idling on Facebook instead. On Wednesday, Melanie came round with her kids. She quizzed me about the weekend, about our stay at The Lamb. She wanted to know all about the rooms, the food, what we did in the evening.
‘I’ve never been in there, ever,’ she said. ‘Looks way too expensive for me. Still, I’m curious to know what it’s like.’
How easy it was for me to wax lyrical about the hotel itself. I described it to her in detail; the open fires, the bedroom, the beautiful candlelit restaurant. I told her about what we ate, and what we drank, about the quality of the sheets that we slept on. Oh yes, with such passion I could talk about the hotel.
Thankfully, she didn’t ask for details about us.
David came home quite early on Wednesday night, just before nine. I heard his car on the drive, surprised, not expecting him back so soon.
‘I had a meeting that finished early,’ he said. ‘I managed to get away.’ Then, ‘How are you?’ he said. ‘How are the kids?’ He asked about my day. He stood in the kitchen with me while I cooked him pasta, chatting about inconsequential, mundane things and I responded, politely, somewhat unnerved by the novelty of him coming home. Before he ate he went off to chat to Ella and Sam. I stayed in the kitchen and listened to them talking and laughing, each of them vying for his attention. How ordinary it seemed and yet how strange.
The Safest Place Page 11
