This new smell was something different, though. She followed her nose and it took her into the sitting room and over to the wood burner. She lit it every night at this time of year to add some cheer to the place, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there was a smell of cold wood cinders. But this time there was something else.
Opening the stove door, she saw very clearly that there was a layer of new ashes on top of what she would normally rake over in the evening to set a new fire. They were blacker and flatter than the log ash and quite smooth, more flakes than crumbs. She picked some up in her fingers and they disintegrated straight to dust, but lifting them to her nose Polly knew immediately what they were. Paper. Burned paper.
So David had come back to the house and burned paper. Why?
Polly sat back on her heels feeling almost dizzy. It was so weird. What on earth would he have burned? Couldn’t he have shredded it, or at least taken it away with him? Whatever could it be?
She leaned down and put her head almost inside the stove to see if she could read any of the remains, but they were stubbornly black. Standing up, she rubbed her hands to dust the ashes from them, feeling quite nauseous with the strangeness of this new development. Then, fired by curiosity, she ran up the stairs to the top floor where David’s office was.
She’d been through all his things a couple of times already, rifling his filing cabinet, taking down his books and shaking the pages to see if anything was folded between them, deriving some pleasure from messing it all up a bit. David was organised to the point of obsession. Over the years she’d forced him to lighten up a bit in the kitchen, but in his office his ridiculous standards ruled, all books filed alphabetically within categories, a row of identical yellow pencils in a line beside an A4 pad of paper on his otherwise empty desk.
When they’d first met, the contrast between David’s work room and her father’s study, with books, papers and empty mugs on every surface, had amused her. Now his office just seemed cold and detached.
She stood in front of the closed door and felt uneasy again. Hadn’t she left it open after throwing some post on his desk that morning? Polly didn’t like closed doors.
Turning the handle she found it was locked, with no key in it.
A chill ran down her back. Was he in there?
‘David?’ she called out.
Nothing. Was he in there dead? She crouched down and peered through the keyhole, but she could hardly see anything and felt ridiculous doing it – but this was a ridiculous situation, she told herself. Not able to get into a room in her own house.
Standing up, she rattled the door handle and shouted through it.
‘Open up, if you’re in there, you coward!’
There was no reply, and she felt instinctively now that he wasn’t in there – dead or alive. But she wasn’t prepared to leave it at that. The locked door stared back at her like another gross insult.
Polly stood glaring at it, trying to summon all her yoga-centredness to come to terms with this new challenge – the sort of thing she was always telling other people to do – but all her years of meditation were not enough to deal with this. Her shock and curiosity had turned into a cold fury. She kicked the door as hard as she could, but it didn’t do much more than hurt her foot.
So it turned out it wasn’t as easy to kick in a door as it looked on cop shows, but she was too sick of David’s weird secrecy to give up. She ran down to the utility room, to grab a claw hammer and a chisel out of his tool box.
A few jabs from the chisel splintered the wood, then jamming the curved end of the hammer into the gash and pulling it back towards her, she was able to prise part of the panel right off. Then she knocked the rest of it out with the chisel and suddenly she could see into the room.
Her heart thumping, she leaned down and looked through the gap.
Nothing. No one there. But it was back to its normal sterile tidy state.
All the books she’d dropped on the floor and the filing cabinet drawers she’d left hanging open had been returned to their former order. The post she’d thrown on the desk – catalogues and academic journals – was gone. She was glad he knew she’d been through his office, but felt irrationally furious that during his clandestine visit to the house he’d taken the time to tidy it all again.
Fuck him, she thought, standing up and kicking the hammer out of the way in her anger. Tomorrow she was getting a bloody locksmith. If David wanted to go off for six months, he didn’t get to dictate which rooms Polly was allowed to go into in her own house.
By 9.30 p.m. Polly was starting to feel a bit disappointed in Lucas, but hadn’t entirely given up on him. She’d eaten her chicken legs and left his on the kitchen counter covered in tin foil.
He’d said he be home for dinner by eight and hadn’t answered the text she’d sent him at eight forty-five. She’d tried calling his phone, but it went straight to his voicemail. She didn’t leave a message. She couldn’t trust herself not to get hysterical, and the last thing she wanted was to dump her unhappiness about the insane situation with his father – and now his sister – on him.
Separation, she reminded herself. Lucas’s non-appearance and David’s desertion, or whatever it even was, were two separate issues and she mustn’t bundle them up into one big toxic ball.
While she’d been calling Lucas, Clemmie had left another emotional message and a text begging Polly to call her back. Taking her glass of red wine into the small room on the ground floor, which she used as a study now it was no longer required as a playroom, Polly wrote Clemmie an email instead.
Darling Clemms,
Please don’t fret. I still love you, nothing can change that, you are my golden girl always.
We’ll speak soon, but I just need some time to digest all this. I’m cross with your dad for putting you in this situation – not with you, but I just need some time to process it.
It will all be fine. I’ll call you tomorrow, sweet pea.
All my love always
Mum xxx
P.S. And I’ll take Digger back!
She hadn’t realised until she typed the last sentence that she was actually missing the smelly old hound. The house was so deadly still and quiet without him. The skitter of his nails as he trotted across the wooden floorboards had become a welcome distraction. The deadly silence of the house was one of the worst things about this cruelly imposed purdah she was in, not having David’s beloved music playing all the time.
He said he needed it to make his brain work properly and Polly loved it. He had wonderfully eclectic taste and she never knew what she’d wake up to – David Bowie, Debussy, dubstep . . . She’d tried putting it on herself, but whatever track she played reminded her of him and happy family times so much she’d had to turn it straight off again.
And it felt even stranger in the house on her own tonight, knowing that David had been there earlier. The lingering sense of intrusion made the isolation more acute. With all that, on top of the horrible scene with Clemmie, Polly sat in front of her computer’s glowing screen, feeling at her lowest ebb since David had left.
Her beloved home, where her children’s heights were recorded on the kitchen wall, where they’d had so many lovely birthday parties and Christmases, felt more like a theme-park fright ride than a sheltered haven.
‘Solitary – the silent prison of secrets,’ thought Polly. ‘Dare you spend a night in it?’
She didn’t want to, but neither did she feel like going out on her own at nine-thirty on a Tuesday night. There wasn’t even anyone she could call for a casual chat.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have any friends. She had her yoga gang and lots of fun new acquaintances from the perfume world, but they weren’t the kind of pals you rang up. They were more a case of who was there in the moment, or chatting on Facebook.
With her old friends it was tricky for a different reason. She and David were a popular couple, with a busy social life – or they had been. It was true they didn’t go out nearly a
s much as they used to, but she’d just put that down to getting a bit older. That wasn’t the issue now, though. The truth was she was avoiding people, because it meant making up some nonsense to explain where David was.
Apart from David’s – outrageous – instructions that she mustn’t tell anyone, she didn’t want to. It made her feel oddly ashamed. Like she was some kind of failure for being in this situation. It had been fine at Christmas parties because she’d really thought he was on a research trip to Nepal then, but if she saw anyone now, she’d have to lie about it. Yet another humiliation his selfishness had imposed on her.
What made it even more insufferable was his expecting her to honour his plea not to tell anyone about his absence – without giving her a reason for it. How could she keep a secret if she didn’t even know what it was?
She just couldn’t get past why, after twenty-five years together, he didn’t think she would support him in whatever he was going through. She could understand why he might not want the university to know he was having a meltdown, but why couldn’t he trust her enough?
She’d spent hours wondering what the hell it could be to demand such strictures. The first thing she’d thought of was that he was coming to terms with being gay – but she really didn’t think that was it. Their sex life, while not exactly chandelier-swinging, wasn’t that tragic for a couple who’d been together for twenty-five years.
Polly sipped her wine and ran through the scenarios again. Was he on the run from some kind of crime? Or debt?
Was he a secret gambler who’d mortgaged the house without telling her? She didn’t think it was that, because he’d left all their financial affairs in typically ultra efficient order. His salary was being paid into their joint account to cover the bills, plus he’d parked quite a large sum in Polly’s private account in case of emergency.
Had he defrauded the university in some way? Cheated on expenses? Fabricated research? Plagiarised?
Was he a functioning heroin addict who’d decided it was time to go into secret rehab?
They’d known people for whom all those things had been realities, but she was sure he would have told her if it had been any of them.
Perhaps he was a spy and murderous Russians were pursuing him with radioactive cups of tea . . .
Enough, thought Polly, closing her eyes, as something like panic started to rise in her chest. Enough thinking about things I can’t change. Exist only in the moment. Breathe. She sat still for a while, slowing her breathing and concentrating only on that. In. Out. Hold. In. Out. Hold.
When she opened her eyes again, she felt much better and opened Facebook for a distraction. She was sick of this anxiety; she needed some cute baby animal photos.
Scrolling down the usual mixture of funny videos, outrageous deeds by American politicians, adorable hedgehogs, Buzzfeed quizzes and other people’s dinners, she came across a post that made her smile. It was a photograph of her very best friend, Lori, holding two ice-cream cones up to her head like Viking horns.
#summer #beach #livingthedream #Sydney #sosueme, read the caption.
Darling Lori. The one person Polly felt she could tell about her situation, without expecting that she would be judged as some kind of hideous old loser whose husband just couldn’t stand to be around her. Or a gullible idiot, who couldn’t see that he was off having a wild affair with someone.
Polly glanced at the clock. Ten-fifteen at night in London; it would be nine-fifteen in the morning in Sydney. Summer, January holidays. No wonder she was at the beach.
Polly picked up her phone and hit FaceTime.
Lori answered immediately.
‘Poll Star!’ she exclaimed. ‘How are you, darls? We’re on the beach, look . . .’
She did a three-sixty and Polly took in the white sand, the slightly choppy waves, the trees coming right down to the edge of the beach.
‘Watson’s Bay?’ she asked.
‘You’re not wrong,’ said Lori. ‘Got here at eight, to get a park.’
It was comforting to Polly just to see her friend’s smiling face and to be reminded of all the times they’d taken their kids to that very beach together when they were little. So many shared memories.
‘So, all good with you, then?’ asked Lori, settling herself down on her towel. ‘Clems and Luca-loo well?’
‘Yes, we’re all good,’ said Polly, lightly. If she was going to tell Lori what was going on with David, she couldn’t just launch into it. She had to choose the right moment to bring the subject up. ‘Your crew?’
‘We’re all fine. The kids came home for Chrissie, which was nice. Can’t wait for them to go now – only joshing. Nearly!’
‘How’s Rich?’ asked Polly, not wanting to be taken off guard by having Lori ask her about David first.
‘His usual moody old self,’ said Lori, laughing. ‘But he’s not bad. He says David’s off on some big research trip, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ said Polly, slightly too quickly. ‘He’s gone to Nepal. Initially. He’s got a six-month sabbatical.’
‘Nepal? Weren’t you tempted to go with him?’ asked Lori. ‘You could have done a yoga thing there.’
Polly took a deep breath, thinking this was the moment to start telling Lori why she hadn’t gone with David, but before she could begin, Lori started speaking again.
‘Mind you,’ she said. ‘People think it’s great, gallivanting around the world with your history-professor husband, but mostly they just go to really boring shitholes. I remember spending two weeks in France once with Rich, all on bloody battlefields. Christ, it was boring. Why couldn’t he be a historian of Paris shoe shops?’
Polly laughed, but she felt winded. She hadn’t missed Lori’s passing reference to Rich’s new academic status. He was a professor now. David still wasn’t. And Polly realised, with a lurch of her stomach, that her adored best friend – the one person she thought she could open up to about David’s disturbing behaviour – was very much the one person she couldn’t tell. Because although Rich and David were good friends, they were also close rivals in a narrow historical field. Rich’s speciality was the ANZAC–British war effort, while David looked at all the colonial forces, but it was a big enough cross-over to be tricky at times.
And David had told her ages ago that as soon as the big job came up at King’s College, Rich would be on a plane back to London to try and grab it. He’d said it was inevitable that one day they’d either be fighting for the same gig – or Rich would be his boss.
Either way, Polly could see that telling Rich’s wife that David was either on the run from Interpol or having some kind of severe mid-life crisis would not be politic.
Feeling almost sick with disappointment that she couldn’t even be real with her best friend, Polly got the conversation back onto more general chat, asking about mutual friends, but now she was finding it hard to concentrate, constantly policing her thoughts before she turned them into words. It was exhausting.
After they said goodbye and made a promise to Skype each other soon for a longer chat, Polly felt she’d never been more alone. She took her now-empty wine glass back to the kitchen and refilled it, then settled down to write the post about Brick Lane for the blog. Anything to stop herself thinking about her situation.
By the time she finished it, her eyes were closing as she sat at the desk. Bed and oblivion seemed like a welcome prospect, so, after putting Lucas’s chicken legs in the fridge and writing him a note, she went upstairs.
She’d just closed her eyes when she remembered something.
Turning on the light, she fished The Darkest Hour out of her bedside cabinet and sprayed herself with it liberally.
Wednesday, 6 January
Polly was woken from what felt like a bottomless sleep by a loud crashing sound. She sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding with fear.
What the hell had it been? Should she go down to see or lock the door and stay in the room with her phone in her hand, ready to dial the police?
/> She bitterly regretted leaving Digger with Clemmie. His loud bark would have been a very welcome comfort in this situation.
Even as she was wondering what to do, she was almost overwhelmed by the smell that filled the room, more like a fog than a fragrance. Oh yes, The Darkest Hour. She glanced at the clock. Four ten in the morning. It really was the darkest bloody hour, and waking suddenly in an unlit room seemed to make the heady mix of tuberose and patchouli even more powerful. It was too much.
There was another noise. Not loud like the first one, but definitely inside the house.
She froze. Then, almost petrified with fear, she crept over and carefully opened the bedroom door – to distinctly hear the word ‘Muuuum . . .’
She ran down the stairs to find Lucas sprawled face down on the hall floor, the console table tipped on its side, the big crystal vase of flowers smashed, water and lilies all over the tiled floor, the ceramic bowl they kept keys in broken into pieces, keys scattered.
‘Oh, Lucas,’ she said, crossly taking in the state of him. He smelled terrible – of roll-up cigarettes and stale beer and something else she couldn’t quite identify, sickly and metallic.
He turned his head towards her and she could see he was cross-eyed drunk. Then he lifted one hand and she saw that blood was flowing from it.
That was the other smell. Her stomach churned.
‘Cut m’self,’ he stammered out, then she saw his back spasm, and he retched.
‘Shit!’ said Polly, wondering how the hell she was going to get him up on her own, with razor-sharp bits of glass on the floor all around him. At least he was lying on his front, so if he did vomit, he was less likely to choke on it.
‘Stay there,’ she said stupidly. ‘I’m going to get some shoes on.’
She ran back upstairs, put on some heavy boots and opened the drawer where David kept his thickest leather gloves.
The Scent of You Page 7
