To Tell You the Truth, page 12
“Yes.”
“Right. It’s just that we’ve been calling around local structural engineering firms and none of them have a record of any of their engineers visiting that day.”
“I don’t think it was an official visit. He called in because he was passing. They’d been trying and failing to get hold of each other to make an arrangement. Or that’s what Dan said.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe he wasn’t an engineer,” I added. “Maybe I remembered that wrong. He might have been a surveyor, or a builder. He was something to do with the house, though. I’m sure of that, because Dan was, is, organizing the renovation.”
“Right,” she said. “It would be helpful if you could remember exactly.”
“I know. I’m sorry but I don’t. I’d had a few drinks.”
“At your neighbors’ party?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “We’ve begun interviews with your neighbors,” she said.
I felt a throbbing in my head and a tightening around my chest. “Don’t talk,” Eliza said, but I couldn’t stand the pressure of keeping everything to myself any longer. “Talk to me, not her, then,” Eliza said, but I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out what was on my mind:
“I think my husband might have been having an affair with my neighbor Sasha Morell. She lives in the first house on the lane.” My words tumbled out. “I witnessed them having an intimate moment. At least I think I did.”
I told DS Bright what I’d seen. It felt like a relief to say it. She made careful notes, her notepad angled away from me so I couldn’t see what she was writing.
“We’ll bear that in mind,” she said.
When we’d gotten home and were alone, Eliza said, “You should never have told her that. It gives you motive.”
“Motive for what?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
My blood ran cold.
“Why didn’t you answer me, before? Where did you go?” I asked.
“I wanted to see what you would do without me.”
She said it innocuously, but the sheer unprecedented nature of it made it feel like a threat.
“Eliza,” I said. “For the second time: Did you do something to Dan?”
But she had gone again. It seemed as if she had decided she would only be around for the conversations she wanted to have. It tore at me. Was this betrayal or malice? Something else? Little shreds of anxiety fell around me, and also little pieces of my heart because I had loved Eliza for as long as I could remember. I’d loved her even before I’d loved Teddy.
24.
Max called.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
My insides flip-flopped.
“I’ve had a call from a tabloid journalist,” he continued. “Is Dan missing?” His tone sounded incredulous but there was also an unmistakable and cold undertone of gravity.
“How did they know?” I whispered.
“Police departments are leaky sieves. I’m so sorry, Lucy.”
Of course, I knew that an inquisitive journalist’s best friend is a police officer with a mouth like a torn pocket. My family had felt the full, life-shattering repercussions of intense tabloid interest in us after Teddy disappeared and I had never gotten over my fear of being a target of it again one day.
“The tabloids?” I wanted to confirm. If they started to look into me, it was only a matter of time before they discovered who I’d been.
“I’m afraid so. Look, Angela is going to call you because she wants to offer you her PR people. We know how you feel about publicity, but I think you have to take her up on this. We need to try to manage it.”
I took the call from Angela. My heart was thumping in my throat. She spoke urgently and clearly. I pictured her mouth enunciating the words, lipstick stretching and cracking.
“This is so awful for you. You’re a private person, Lucy, we’re very respectful of that, but please let us help you here.”
I heard myself agree. Or perhaps it was Eliza. I didn’t know how to handle this on my own.
“Please expect a call from my colleague Noah. He’s going to take care of everything and will be in touch very soon. In the meantime, I think it’s great that you’ve got the book to work on, to distract you,” Angela said.
After we hung up, I laughed at her suggestion that the book would distract me, but it sounded like a horrible noise.
I felt vulnerable. It would only be a matter of time before the press came here. I would have to keep away from windows in the front and back of the house. I moved around, pulling blinds and curtains and closing shutters where I could find them.
From a front window, I saw Kate Delaney and her children at the end of our drive. They were dressed for a walk. An elderly chocolate Labrador walked determinedly alongside them on stiff limbs. Kate looked toward the house. I stepped back from the window so she couldn’t see me. It was hard to take my eyes off her. Her children were clustered around her, but she wasn’t paying them any attention. It was as if she was trying to decide whether to come and see me or not. The police must have visited her, and told her about Dan.
Her older boy carried a large stick. I saw the little boy ask for it. His brother gave it to him but as soon as he did, the little one swung it at his siblings, hitting the shins of both of them. His sister retaliated angrily, pushing him over, and he landed on his backside and began to cry. “Serves him right,” Eliza snapped. But Kate didn’t think so. She swung around and scooped up her youngest child, cuddling him close. The stick dangled from his hand. His expression was triumphant. Kate chastised the other children, oblivious to or disbelieving of their obvious outrage at the unfairness of it.
I considered going out there, to explain what had actually happened, it felt imperative that she know the truth, but just as I was about to, Ben appeared. He glanced down my drive, too, so I stayed in the shadows. It was only late afternoon so it was surprising to see him, and I realized it must be the school holidays and he must have time off. A great distance seemed to have opened up between me and real life, and it frightened me that I couldn’t really remember the last time that hadn’t been the case.
I watched as Ben Delaney was immediately drawn into the drama by his older children. They reached for him but he held his hands up out of their reach and smiled as if to say, Come on, now, don’t be petty, and with a gentle hand on each of their backs he urged them on. The old dog wagged at his side. Ben Delaney took the little boy from Kate and hoisted him onto his shoulders. The child looked delighted. Delaney took Kate’s free hand and the family walked on, out of sight, toward the woods at the end of the lane.
It hurt me to watch this scene. I shuddered.
The house seemed colder than usual, the sort of chill that seeps into your bones and makes you tremble from the inside out. I felt the radiators. They were frigid.
The boiler was in a dark corner of the basement, where the smell of damp was strong and the gaps in the stonework spilled crumbling plaster and dense cobwebs. The quarry-tiled floor was in bad shape and the boiler itself was a box-shaped behemoth, the pipes feeding it a primitive set of arteries covered in a thick layer of dust.
I found a complex control panel and peered at it, but nothing suggested itself as a sensible thing to do.
I called Dan. Straight to voicemail again. I hung up.
I started to fret about the press. How long would it take them to find me? I wondered if they would creep down our private lane or try to approach through the woods. I knew they would go as far as it took to make my story as salable as possible. My memory of them hounding us after Teddy disappeared was one of my most traumatic. How they watched us. What they wrote about us. My parents hadn’t been able to shield me from everything. My classmates made sure I heard the worst of what they called me.
The doorbell startled me. It rang insistently, followed by robust knocking on the door.
I went and looked through the spyhole. It was Sasha. I took a deep, steadying breath before opening up.
“I just heard that Dan is missing!” she said. “The police came round!”
She clamped me in a hug that I didn’t want. My skin prickled with animosity. She released me and studied my face intently. It seemed like she had more questions than DS Bright. When had I last seen Dan? Where? How had he seemed? Was I all right? Had he called at all?
I didn’t want to tell her anything.
“The boiler is broken,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say and I wanted to divert her attention, give her something to play Good Samaritan over.
“What? Oh, no. That’s the last thing you need. I know a very good man. Would you like me to call him? I can get him out ASAP.”
She was so eager to help. I didn’t like it, but what could I do? “Yes, please,” I said, and invited her in, out of the cold. She got on the phone and oozed charm into the ear of her plumber.
“He can come later tonight, or first thing tomorrow morning at the latest,” she said once she’d hung up. I was sitting on the stairs. She rubbed her hands together. “It’s absolutely freezing in here.” Sasha wore a coat, so it seemed she’d felt the cold quickly. “You can’t stay here tonight. Come to ours. I hate the thought of you being in the cold with everything that’s happening.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I was about to make an excuse when Eliza said, “If you go, and get to know her better, you might have a sense of whether she and Dan are involved with one another. You’ve got to ask yourself why she has so many questions about him and why she seems so stressed.”
It was a thought, and a surprisingly tempting one. It would be good to have confirmation of what I suspected. “That would be nice,” I said. “Thank you.”
“How about you give me a set of keys for the plumber? I’ve got a safe box he knows the code to so he could grab them from there and come and go without bothering you. He’s very trustworthy.”
I wanted to say no. I didn’t like the thought of other people being able to get in and out without me.
“Of course, you don’t have to,” Sasha said, and I felt she was judging me for my reticence.
“Sure,” I said. I found her a set.
It was hard to hand them over and watch her slip them into her pocket. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d done something reckless.
XII.
The missing child alert is issued at 7 a.m.
The description reads as follows: Edward Bewley (known as Teddy) disappeared from Stoke Woods near Bristol. He is three years old and has dark-blond hair, long bangs, and brown eyes. Teddy was wearing a pair of cotton pajama bottoms with a Thomas the Tank Engine logo on the right thigh, a green T-shirt, and a pair of red sneakers. Teddy has a distinctive birthmark on his left upper arm. He may have a pale blue, fleecy, satin-edged blanket with him, approximately 60 x 80 cm in size.
DI Cartwright has already established two important things that suggest to him that part of Lucy’s story is true, at least. He believes that someone Teddy knew took him from the house. Carol Bewley has confirmed that he could not put on his shoes himself. Someone had to have helped him. This suggests that Teddy was awake when he left the property, was expected to have to walk, and was accompanied. It doesn’t rule out a grab and bundle into a waiting vehicle, but it makes this far less likely in Cartwright’s view. Carol and Martin Bewley both confirm that Teddy was overly attached to the blanket that has disappeared with him and would have been likely to cry loudly if he had had to leave the house without it. Taking it would have been an insurance policy for someone who knew the child and wanted to sneak him out.
As a result, DI Cartwright has the feeling that the first part of Lucy’s story is true. It’s the exact nature of what happened after the children left their home together that’s beginning to gnaw at him.
25.
Sasha showed me to one of her guest rooms. It was already made up and was as luxurious as any hotel I’d ever stayed in, more luxurious than most. I felt like an imposter.
“I’ll leave you to settle in,” she said, and she yawned in an economical way, like a cat. It made me think about how her jaw was hinged, the mechanics of it beneath her skin. I bet Dan never thought of her like that. He was a man who enjoyed surfaces, texture, who ran his hand over tooled furniture, a fine glaze, soft skin. He would like the curtains in here, so thickly lined that the hem filled my fist.
I threw my tote onto the bed. I’d packed in a hurry while Sasha waited downstairs. My things fell out. Strewn across the crisp bed linen were my tired plaid pajamas; my toothbrush, whose bristles resembled a well-used boot cleaner; a squeezed-flat tube of toothpaste; and the folder of documents about the bunker.
I was daunted by the thought of going downstairs and talking to Sasha and James. I washed my face and tugged at my clothing, smoothing it out and tucking it in where I could, but I still looked a mess. I took my time on the stairs and stood for a moment in the hall wondering where they were, too shy to call out.
I heard their voices coming from the living room. I was right behind the door, about to push it open, when James spoke loud enough for me to hear.
“Don’t get involved,” he said. “Why would you? Let her stay the night tonight, then send her home tomorrow. Help her make other arrangements if that makes you feel better, but she can’t stay here indefinitely. This could go on for weeks before anyone knows what’s happened.”
“Don’t you think she’s reacting oddly?” Sasha said, and her voice dropped so low that I had to lean right against the door to hear. “I mean, not to mention before now that he’d disappeared, not even to come around and ask if we’d seen him?”
James didn’t respond. I heard only silence, as if it wasn’t just me holding my breath, but them, too. I imagined their eyes turned toward the door. I took a couple of paces back as quietly as possible and hurried upstairs again, where I shut myself loudly into the bathroom at the top of the stairs. I sat on the loo for a few minutes, then flushed it and washed my hands, in case they were listening.
When I came out, Sasha was in the hall, one hand on the banister, looking up.
“Hey, you,” she said. “Come and join us by the fire.”
Sasha was a good actress. She’d put on an expression that was a picture of sympathy. Her figure was silhouetted beneath a sheer black shirt that had the drape of expensive silk. I knew that if I wore the same outfit, the shirt’s gauzy panels would not waft but sag and catch on the ledges formed by my collapsed flesh, which had a tendency to hang over my waistband like melted candle wax. I felt a small but insistent tug of jealousy.
James stood up when I entered the room. It was all very formal. I found myself nodding at him because I wasn’t sure what else to do.
“How are you holding up?” he said. He, too, was doing a good job of feigning compassion.
I sat opposite him, at one end of a sofa, by the fire. I wedged myself against the armrest. On the coffee table between us was a stack of glossy art, design, and travel books; beside them a paperback copy of my most recently published Eliza novel, well-thumbed, looking like a dowdy gate-crasher at a glam party. It was Dan’s favorite of my books.
“I’m okay,” I said, “because I’m sure Dan will be home soon.”
They exchanged a glance. Sasha got up. “Yes, quite,” James said, though it seemed as if he had to fumble for that simple answer. “Of course.” Then, “That’s right.”
On the fire, a log settled, and sparks rose before dying back down. I heard the clink of expensive glassware as Sasha placed a tumbler of something amber-colored on the table in front of me. She handed another drink to James, then got herself one before curling like a cat on a chair between us and cradling a glass between her palms. I noted her manicure was badly chipped, which gave me some pleasure. Schadenfreude, even small-scale, even at inappropriate moments, can be satisfying.
“Medicinal,” she said, raising her glass somberly. I didn’t mention that I don’t drink spirits, that I consider it mannish. I sipped the whiskey and had to suppress a cough. I thought about Dan falling in love with Sasha and wondered if James knew or suspected anything. I glanced at him, but he was staring into the fire.
“What’s that?” Sasha asked, breaking the silence, indicating the folder I’d tucked between my thigh and the arm of the sofa. I’d brought it down with me, hoping I might read it and avoid conversation. “Research for a book?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Your next?”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to say what it actually was.
“Is it another Eliza book?” she asked.
Why would she ask that question and in that way? The way it was phrased was what I’d expect from someone who worked inside publishing, or was very close to it. Had Dan told her something? Was she using his words? Had he confided in her about me? It was such a humiliating thought.
“Of course,” I said. I watched her carefully and she seemed to be doing the same in return.
“Are you all right? You’re very pale,” she asked.
“I feel a little nauseous.” It was true, I did. It was a thick feeling at the back of my throat. My saliva tasted bitter. The heat from the fire was suddenly stifling.
I wondered how it was that Sasha had noticed I was unwell before I did. It was something Dan did to me, often, and it made me feel unbalanced, suggestible, and had been one of the things that had played into my paranoia that he was gaslighting me. But there had also been occasions, especially at times when I’d been working so hard that the rest of life had gone out of focus, when I’d liked it, and felt grateful that he was paying attention to me, that he cared.
“Actually,” I said, “if you don’t mind, I’ll probably just go to bed.”
“Don’t you want something to eat?”
“No, thank you,” I said, even though it was a lie.
