Chapter Twenty-four

There were some things, however, that I couldn’t put off, no matter how much I wanted to. ‘I’m dreading it,’ I said to Gwen on the phone, just before I left. ‘Why am I dreading it quite so much? It’s almost like a phobia.’

‘Then don’t go. Say you’re ill.’

‘I might as well get it over with.’

I’d seen Greg’s mother and father at the funeral, and spoken to them briefly twice since then, I’d erased several of their messages from my answering-machine, along with some from his brothers and his sister Kate. I had tried not to think about them because I knew that, whatever I was going through, it was probably worse for them. No parent should ever bury a child. Greg was their first-born. However they had treated him when he was alive – his father had patronized him, bullied him and lost his temper with him, while his mother had compared him unfavourably to his more conservative and prosperous siblings – they had loved him in their fashion. And presumably it made it still more painful to have lost him before they had had a chance to become reconciled. Their last words (Paul had accused Greg of being part of the selfish generation who hadn’t even given his parents grandchildren yet) had been bitter and heated.

They were waiting for me at Bristol Temple Meads station, and I climbed into the back of the car before leaning forward to kiss their cheeks and hand over the flowers I’d bought.

‘You’re a bit late,’ said Paul, starting the car and fiddling with his rear-view mirror, so that for an instant I found myself gazing straight into his slightly bloodshot eyes.

‘The train was delayed.’

‘You’d have done better to drive.’

‘I don’t have a car,’ I said. The fact hung in the air between us. I didn’t have a car because Greg had died in it. With someone else.

‘You’re looking well,’ said Kitty, unenthusiastically, as the car drew away from the kerb and joined the queue nosing out on to the main road.

‘Thanks.’ I knew I wasn’t. ‘You too, Kitty. How have you been?’

She turned in her seat and gave me her plaintive smile. ‘I’ve got a bit of a sniffle this morning. I think I’m coming down with a cold.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. But I meant since Greg’s death.’

‘Oh,’ she said, flummoxed. Paul coughed. Clearly Greg’s death was a taboo subject.

‘It’s been hard,’ said Kitty. ‘Very hard. Especially with –’ She stopped dead. Her eyes filled with tears and she started fiddling nervously with her hair.

‘With him dying with another woman?’ I suggested.

Paul coughed again, then said, ‘Here we are. Our humble abode.’

The house was scrupulously tidy and filled with objects Paul and Kitty had collected over the years: the teddy bears on the sofa, the thimbles in the glass cabinet, the snow domes ranged along the mantel, the glass cats on top of the piano that nobody had played since Greg had left home at eighteen. There were photos on the window-sill, and while Kitty went off to get lunch for us, I examined them. ‘Where have all the photos of Greg gone?’ I asked Paul.

He gave his short cough. ‘We thought you might like them. I’ve put them in a bag for you to take, with things like his school reports.’

‘But don’t you want them? I mean, now more than ever, I would have thought –’

‘This has been painful for his mother,’ he interrupted me. ‘The photographs upset her.’

Kitty called from the kitchen, announcing lunch. As we sat down to eat, I made myself say what I had come to say. It came out sounding too much like a prepared speech. ‘One of the reasons I’m here is that I wanted to give you some things of Greg’s as keepsakes, Ian, Simon and Kate as well as you two. Just books, mostly ones I thought you might like. There are photos too. But if you don’t want them…’

‘Well,’ said Paul. He blinked at me. ‘We can have a look at least.’

‘I brought you his one and only tie.’

‘Paul’s very particular about his ties,’ said Kitty. ‘Nothing fancy.’

‘I just thought it would be a memento.’

We were sitting on three sides of the small table, with a curried egg salad in the middle, and the fourth – where Greg should have been, his complicit smile meant just for me – empty. Kitty divided the salad neatly into three and put my portion on the plate in front of me. I could feel her eyes on me. She and Paul had never taken to me: my job was too odd, not a proper job at all, really; my clothes were strange; they didn’t approve of my opinions, which was strange because I’d never thought of myself as someone who had them. Yet now here I was, the publicly wronged and tragically widowed daughter-in-law.

‘Aren’t you hungry, Ellie?’ said Kitty.

‘This is lovely.’ I took a determined bite of my egg and swallowed it with an effort. ‘I just wanted to say that it seems strange to me that we’ve never talked about what happened.’

Paul looked grim and embarrassed and didn’t speak.

‘I didn’t like to ask Greg about things,’ said Kitty, placidly. ‘If he had come to me and said he wasn’t happy I would have listened. I’m his mother after all. I suppose he must have had his reasons for doing what he did.’

‘Our marriage was very happy,’ I said, pushing the plate away.

The two of them exchanged a glance.

‘It must be hard for you to bear,’ said Kitty.

‘I don’t need to bear it,’ I said. ‘That’s another reason why I’m here today. I wanted to tell you that Greg was a good man. He was the most loving husband.’ I looked at the clock on the wall: I had only been there for twenty-five minutes. When could I decently leave? ‘I trusted him.’ Then I corrected myself: ‘I trust him.’

‘It was awful,’ I said to Joe, who had insisted on taking time off work to pick me up from the station and drive me home, even though it would have been much quicker to catch the Underground, and even though I didn’t want to go home. It was warm and luxurious inside the BMW and I sank gratefully back into the seat.

He grinned and put a hand on my knee. I pretended it wasn’t there and eventually he moved it to change gear.

‘I’ll bet it was,’ he said. ‘I’ve met them, remember? How Greg came from a family like that I’ll never know. At least you’ve done your duty.’

‘I took them books they didn’t want, photos they gave back, and memories they were trying to erase. We all hated every minute of it.’

‘What are you doing later?’

‘This and that.’

‘Are you working?’

‘A little,’ I said evasively.

‘Good. You need to get back to things, Ellie.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘You look a bit tired. Have you been okay?’

‘Some days are better than others.’

‘If you ever want someone to talk to…’

‘I’ve talked enough. I just go over and over the same things. There’s nothing left to say that I haven’t said already.’

‘Are you all right for money?’

‘What?’

‘Money,’ he repeated. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine, I think. As far as I know. I haven’t gone through everything. I’ve let things slide. Greg and I weren’t big savers, but we didn’t spend much either.’

‘I can give you some. Lend,’ he corrected himself hastily. ‘If there’s a cash-flow problem.’

‘That’s good of you. But I’ll be all right.’

The car pulled up outside my house. I went to kiss his cheek but he turned his face and, before I had a chance to pull away, kissed me on the lips. I pushed him away. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m kissing you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re my friend. And you were Greg’s friend. And you’re married to Alison. Who knows what you get up to behind her back? But not with me.’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he said, with a groan that was also a half-laugh. ‘I don’t know what came over me. You’re a lovely woman.’

‘Do you pounce on every lovely woman?’

He held up his hands in mock-surrender, trying to make it into a joke. ‘Just the ones I can’t resist.’

‘Poor Alison,’ I said, and saw a flash of anger cross his face.

‘Alison’s fine. We have a good marriage.’

‘I’m going to forget it happened,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

‘I won’t. Sorry, sweetheart.’

I looked at him as if he were a strange, exotic specimen I’d observed. ‘Is it easy?’

‘What?’

‘To have an affair and then go home at night.’

‘You make it sound as if I do it all the time.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course not! You know me.’

‘What about at the moment? Is there anyone?’

‘No!’ But something in his voice, in his expression, told me he was lying.

‘Come on, Joe – who?’

‘No one.’

‘I know there is. Is she married?’

‘You’ve got a one-track mind. Ever since Greg died, you’ve been on the look-out for adultery and deception.’

‘Someone from work? Someone I know? It is, isn’t it?’

‘Ellie.’ He was half laughing, as if this was a great joke.

‘Oh, God, I know who it is.’

‘This is ridiculous. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘It’s Tania, isn’t it?’

‘No!’

‘Joe?’

‘It’s nothing, I promise. But she’s so young and eager.’

‘Oh God, Joe,’ I said. I felt anger well inside me as I gazed at his handsome, rugged face, his smiling mouth. ‘She’s half your age.’

‘Maybe that’s the point, Ellie,’ he said. ‘And maybe you should stop judging everyone.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do, and I understand why.’

‘I don’t mean to. I just can’t bear to think of Alison getting hurt.’

‘She won’t, I promise. And that – just now –’ he gestured round the car as if the kiss was still floating in the air ‘– that was wrong of me. Greg’s death has left me feeling at a loss. Forgive me.’

After he had driven away I entered my house, but only to dump the shopping bag of Greg’s effects I’d brought back from his parents. Then I walked to the Underground station, eyes watering in the easterly wind. In spite of everything I made up my mind to go back to Party Animals, and I couldn’t bear to wait, even though I wasn’t sure what I would do there, except more snooping.

The first train was thirteen minutes away, and I wanted to weep with impatience. I paced up and down the platform. I had three new pieces to add to Life’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle: Milena had been having an affair with Frances’s husband; Johnny had been with Milena on the one night when I had evidence to show that she was with Greg; the menu card with Milena’s note written to Greg and finally discovered by Fergus tucked inside a book was therefore…

I stopped, my brain hurting with the effort of holding together all the information that wanted to fly in different directions. Therefore what? Therefore a typo, a tease, a slip of the pen, a red herring, a mistake, a contradiction, a fraud, a mystery – something manufactured to drive me mad.

I rang the bell, and when Frances didn’t answer the door, let myself in with the key I still had. I called from the top of the stairs. The basement light was on. I knew Beth was away on holiday, so I thought that Frances was probably about, but there was no answer. I went down, wriggling out of my coat as I did so, pulling off my scarf, tossing them both over the easy chair as I came into the room.

Frances had obviously been there earlier and was expecting to return. The radiator was warm, the Anglepoise lamp over her desk was turned on, although the rest of the room was in shadow, and there was a mug beside her computer, as well as her glasses and several glossy holiday brochures with exotic destinations.

I prowled restlessly round the office, pulling random books off the shelves. I opened the drawers of Frances’s desk and peered inside: a drawer for receipts, one for stationery, another for an assortment of old menus, leaflets and empty bottles. I felt more than usually uneasy now that I knew David had had an affair with Milena, and Frances had had an affair with – with who? The ghastly suspicions I had were eating away at me, although I knew I was probably being ridiculous. Frances, with a husband who cheated on her under her nose with her business partner, and a woman she thought of as a friend who had snuck in under false pretences, gained her confidence, and now spent her time digging out her most intimate secrets.

Eventually I sat down at Milena’s large desk, switched on the side lamp, and turned on her computer, drumming my fingers on the keyboard as I waited for it to boot up. It was very quiet. I could hear the radiators hum and the wind blow against the glass. Every so often, a car passed or a door slammed, far off. It was quite dark outside now, and the room was dim apart from the two pools of light cast by the lamps. I had a sudden overwhelming urge to be back in my down-at-heel little house – not on my own, though; not in the lonely here and now. I wanted to be there with Greg, blinds drawn, the kettle boiling, him singing loudly and tunelessly and asking what we should eat for supper, reading out crossword clues that neither of us ever got, putting his arms round me from behind and resting his chin on the top of my head. My world of safety, no matter how scary it was outside.

I shivered and concentrated on the screen, typing in Milena’s password, accessing once more her hectic private life. I heard footsteps on the pavement drawing nearer, then receding. A dog barked. I clicked once more on the messages from David and stared at them, as if some secret was hidden between the lines.

‘Oh, God, Greg,’ I said out loud, and leaned forward, rolling the chair a bit closer to the desk and resting my head on my arms. My foot touched something solid. I sat up and pushed the chair back again. I bent down, just a little, to see what was there.

A boot, lying lengthways, but a boot wasn’t heavy, was it? Two boots, black with elegant pointed toes and small, sharp heels. The room shifted around me; the walls seemed to close in. There was a sour taste in my mouth. I bent down further. I heard a gasp, and it had come from me but it didn’t sound like me. I stood up, the floor tipping beneath me, sweat prickling on my forehead, and held on to the desk to steady myself. Then I saw. Her body lay bundled under the desk, but her head stuck out, and her eyes were looking up at me. I staggered back, my hand over my mouth. I closed my eyes, but when I opened them again, she was still there: how could I have missed seeing her until now?

I don’t know how long I stood there, almost gagging, staring into the sightless eyes. But gradually thought returned. First, I had to make sure she was dead. I knew she was – you don’t have to be familiar with death to recognize it – but I had to check. I crouched and dragged the body clear of the desk. It was heavy and awkward. I put my ear against her mouth and felt no breathing; I put my thumb where the pulse should have been and felt nothing. There were bruises on her throat and her lips were faintly blue. The sight struck fresh horror into me, even though I had known from the moment I’d seen the body bundled under the desk that this was no accidental death. I gave a few feeble presses on her chest, all the time certain that it was useless. And yet she was warm. Not so many minutes ago she must have been alive. I held her head in my hands and gazed at her thin, intelligent face, her blind, open eyes. Frances stared up at me. Her beautiful linen skirt had risen up above her knees. I saw that her legs were the legs of an ageing woman, and her face had lines and creases I hadn’t noticed before. There were tiny strands of grey in her highlighted hair. Her wrists were thin. A thought spiked through me: perhaps the killer was still there. Fear turned me cold and shivery; my legs shook and when I stood up they would barely hold me. I listened. I heard the radiators still humming, the far-off noise of the main road.

As quietly and calmly as I could, I put on my coat and scarf. I walked across the room, eased the front door open, closed it softly behind me and went out into the street without looking back. I wasn’t sure if there were other people around. I wasn’t aware of them but there was nothing about me that would make them remember.

My first impulse was to escape, to return home, to pretend I hadn’t been there. But I thought of Frances. Had I made sure she was really dead? It felt as if it had happened years before and to someone who wasn’t quite me. I had felt her pulse. She had looked dead. Could I be sure? Weren’t there people who had been revived long after they were apparently dead? As I turned out of Tulser Road on to the bustling main street I saw a phone box that hadn’t been vandalized. I could dial 999 without having to put money in. Some strange bit at the back of my mind remembered that 999 calls were recorded, so I tried to make my voice different from normal, a bit muffled. I asked for an ambulance and said that someone was badly hurt, maybe dead, then I gave the address. When the woman asked for my name I said I couldn’t hear, it was a bad line and hung up. Before I reached the Underground station, I heard the siren of an ambulance, though I didn’t see it. I didn’t know if it was the one I had summoned. In London, you hear so many.

When I reached the station, my hand was suddenly trembling so much that I couldn’t extract the Oyster card from my purse, and when I managed it I dropped it and bent down to fumble for it. A young man stopped to help me and looked at me worriedly. When he asked me if I was all right, I couldn’t speak properly. He must have thought I was on some strong medication. It took a supreme effort to do the simple things, to catch the train in the right direction, to get off at my stop. All the time a thought was repeating in my head, like a tic, like a dripping tap, like a rattling window: Frances is dead, Frances is dead.

When I arrived home I went straight upstairs and pulled off my clothes, just letting them fall, and got into a bath. I lay there for more than an hour, letting water out as it cooled and refilling it with hot, only my face protruding. If I had had the choice, I would have lain there for the rest of my life, warm and wet and safe. I scrubbed my face. I washed my hair and then I cut my toe- and fingernails as if I was purifying myself. Finally, reluctantly, I got out and put on what had become my normal domestic outfit of old jeans, baggy sweatshirt and slippers.

Then I started to clean the house. From cupboards and shelves I retrieved every bottle of bleach and disinfectant and polish in the house. With cloths and brushes and sprays, I scoured and scraped every surface. I filled two large bin-bags with rubbish and things that weren’t quite rubbish and things that weren’t really rubbish at all but that I thought I’d be better off without or that I could do without. I thought of one of my grandmothers – my father’s mother – who had seemingly spent her entire adult life cleaning. Even the thought of her conjured up a smell of pine-scented air-freshener. For her, cleanliness was a form of display, a recurrent demonstration that she had the cleanest lavatory of all of her friends. For me it was about purifying, cutting away, eliminating.

I checked the time. It was just after seven. When I had got rid of ten items of clothing, I could have a drink. It was easy. I instantly disposed of clothes I’d kept out of sentiment, because I’d worn them as a teenager or at college, or I’d been given them by a boyfriend or bought them in a particular place, that time in Queensland or Seville. As I crammed them into another bin-bag, I saw that I had put in far more than ten. Twenty at least. I deserved an extra large drink as a reward for that. And if I drank a whole bottle of wine, I could throw away the bottle.

There were eight in the little rack in the kitchen. I found the oldest wine I had. We’d bought it in France a couple of years earlier for what had seemed a lot of money at the time, ten or twenty euros. It had been for a special occasion that had never come. I opened it and poured myself a glass. I sipped. It tasted bitter. Was it corked? I’d never quite known what that meant. It would do, though. Perhaps it needed to be drunk with food. I didn’t have anything that seemed suitable so I toasted some bread and spread butter on it. I munched the toast and finished the glass of wine. Then I looked in the cupboard and found a tin of olives I’d forgotten. I opened the tin and cut my finger on the lid. I wrapped a tissue round it and poured myself another glass of wine. I ate an olive. Everything I ate, everything I drank, was emptying the house just a little more.

When the doorbell rang, I hadn’t quite finished the second glass of wine, but I still felt lightheaded. I opened the door. It was Johnny.

‘You’d better come in,’ I said wearily.

He walked inside, and although he’d been there before he was looking around him as if he was seeing it for the first time. I picked up my glass. ‘I’m drinking,’ I said. ‘You want some?’

‘All right.’

I poured him some wine and handed it to him. He took a gulp and pulled an approving face. He picked up the bottle and studied it. Then he raised his eyes and looked me squarely in the face. ‘Have you heard about Frances?’ he said.

‘What? Tell me.’

‘She’s dead. She was murdered.’ There was a pause. ‘You don’t look shocked.’

‘I knew.’

‘How?’

‘I found the body,’ I said. ‘I called the ambulance.’

Johnny was visibly startled. He stepped back as if I’d struck him. ‘You did? Then why weren’t you there when they arrived? Why didn’t you talk to the police?’

‘I came straight home.’

‘Why?’

‘I wasn’t ready to talk about it.’

‘I don’t think it works like that,’ he said. ‘When you find a body, you’re meant to stick around, you know, talk to the police, that sort of thing.’

‘There’s too much to explain.’

‘Is there now?’ He raised his eyebrows and a shiver of apprehension ran through me. ‘David rang me. One of the things he said was that the police want to talk to everybody involved. Apparently they’re having trouble tracking you down. For someone who’s been working in the office for several weeks, you haven’t left much trace.’

‘I wasn’t on the books,’ I said.

‘No address. No phone number.’

‘You’ve got my address,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’

I had a sudden sense of alarm. Had I miscalculated? Did anybody know that Johnny knew me? Did David?

‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’

Johnny frowned at me. ‘I don’t understand this and neither do I like it. Not one bit. You found the body. What’s the problem with talking to the police about it? Don’t you want to help them? And why are you so difficult to track down? Is there anything you want to tell me?’

It may have been the memory of Frances’s body in my arms or the wine or the sheer tiredness, but I couldn’t spin any more lies, not just then. But I took a deep breath before I spoke, because I felt I was stepping out into a different sort of world and I was scared. My skin was cold with fear.

‘I’m not Gwen,’ I said.

‘I don’t understand. What does that mean, you’re not Gwen?’

‘It means that my name isn’t Gwen. There is a Gwen Abbott. She’s a friend of mind. I borrowed her name. Stole it.’

‘I…’ He stopped, his mouth hanging open as he stared at me.

‘My real name is Eleanor. Eleanor Falkner.’

‘You mean you were lying?’ he said. ‘All the time?’

‘Yes.’

‘So when we were in bed together and I called you Gwen and you just… I don’t know what to say.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It got out of hand.’

Johnny gave a horrible laugh. ‘Got out of hand?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

He sat down heavily and some of his wine splashed on to the sofa. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to put salt on that.’

‘It’s a crappy old sofa.’

‘So, Eleanor.’ Johnny said my name as if it was one he’d never heard before, from a different language, hard to pronounce. ‘Why did you do this? Or should I just call the police?’

I thought for a moment and then I went and sat beside him on the sofa. I told him he could call the police if he wanted, but first… And then I told him everything I could, not like a proper story but in a mess of fragments, all out of order, with additions and little explanations. I told him about Greg. I even fetched the picture of the two of us together. Johnny had seen me naked, slept with me, but now I felt even more naked, even more exposed to him. I told him about my connection to Milena. At first he asked questions, but as I continued he became quieter, his expression darker. When I finished he was silent for a long time.

‘I don’t even know where to start,’ he said. ‘How could you do such a thing? How could you lie to so many people?’

‘I didn’t plan it,’ I said. ‘Really I just wanted to see where Milena worked. I got invited in and it developed a momentum of its own.’

‘Just to take one example, almost entirely at random, you used me to get the password so that you could read Milena’s secret mail, things she wanted nobody to see.’

‘I didn’t plan things. I didn’t plan us. But she died with my husband. I needed to know everything I could.’

‘So I was just a step on that road,’ said Johnny. ‘Something a bit like Milena’s password.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. I wasn’t using you. It was something that happened and I didn’t stop it happening – I still don’t know why.’

He looked at me with a sharper expression. ‘So it meant something to you?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t just to find out about Milena.’

‘No! But it was wrong all the same. I was so hurt and so confused and I should never have slept with you. It wasn’t fair.’

‘But you did. And now someone has been killed.’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps because you came and stirred things up.’

‘I’ve thought of that.’

Johnny put the glass down and then put his hands on my face, ran them down to my neck. I willed myself to stay entirely still, although my skin was crawling with dread. ‘So who do you think killed her?’ he said at last.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What if it was me?’

‘Was it?’ I asked.

He raised his right hand from my neck and slapped me across the face so hard that tears came to my eyes. I didn’t speak.

‘That’s for lying to me,’ he said. He got up.

‘Wait,’ I said, as he turned to go. ‘I need to show you something.’

‘What?’

I went over to the little chest, opened the drawer and drew out the menu card. Without saying anything I passed it to him and he stared at it.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said eventually. ‘Why the fuck have you got this?’

‘It was found among Greg’s possessions. It was what made me believe he was having an affair with Milena. It even has the date on it. But then you said something that made me realize you were with her on the twelfth of September.’

‘But this is mine.’

‘What do you mean, yours?’

‘She sent it to me.’

‘She can’t have done.’

‘You think I wouldn’t remember?’

‘But it’s to “Darling G”.’

He examined it for a few seconds. ‘No. That’s just a continuation of the J – you can even see the join if you look closely.’

‘How come it was in Greg’s stuff,’ I asked weakly, ‘if she sent it to you?’

‘I sent it back. I sent everything that had ever belonged to her back when she finished it – marched round to her house and dumped it in her lap.’

‘So it was in her possession, not yours.’

‘I thought she’d just burn it or something.’

I rubbed my face, trying to concentrate. ‘How did it get from her house to here?’

Johnny shrugged. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘Maybe it was Frances all the time,’ I said drearily.

‘What the fuck are you on about now?’

‘Frances was having an affair too,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe –’

‘I don’t want to hear what you thought about Frances,’ he said angrily. ‘She’s dead. Killed by some maniac. Let her alone, do you hear me? You’ve done enough. She was a good woman. Now leave her in peace.’

‘Are you going to call the police?’ I said.

‘I think that’s for you to do, don’t you?’ he said. ‘At the moment they’re curious. Soon they’ll be suspicious. Don’t leave it too long. Or I’ll make up your mind for you.’

As soon as he was gone, I rang Gwen. I didn’t even say hello. ‘Have the police been in touch with you?’ I asked.

‘Ellie? Yes, some policeman rang me. How on earth did you know?’

‘I need to talk to you.’