Dark Place to Hide (7 page)

‘Can I get you another drink?’ I offer, to show willing.

‘No, thanks – I’ve just started this one.’ She waves her glass of fizzy liquid at me jangling the ice, as if this fact should be obvious.

‘Can I see it?’ I ask. ‘The text?’

She says nothing, presses a few buttons on her phone and holds up the screen about a foot away from me as though she’s afraid I might run off with it. I try to set aside the fact that you decided to contact your sister instead of me. I can see in the possessive way Alexa hangs on to her phone that, to her, it is a significant factor worthy of smugness.

‘When did you last see her?’ I ask.

‘This message was yesterday, I told you.’ When she’s with me, Alexa’s face is never far from a scowl. It’s that way now; tight and closed.

‘But when did you last
see
her – in person?’

‘The day of the miscarriage – Friday. In the hospital.’

‘Okay – before that. The last time it was just the two of you.’

‘The previous Friday. For coffee after work. You were working late.’

‘What was she like? How was she?’

‘Fine. A bit tired. She’d had an argument with Mum as you probably know.’

No, I didn’t.

‘What about? She didn’t tell me.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t tell you everything.’ Ah, the sting, that neat left hook.

She’s right of course. You don’t and clearly haven’t told me everything. I had the phone call from the hospital to prove it – just before I left to meet your sister. It confirmed my worst fears; the miscarried foetus did not carry my DNA. I am not the father.

It was like being hit by a truck and I’m still in that surreal state where my brain knows something devastating has happened, but my body hasn’t yet reacted to the impact. I need to stay that way until I can deal with the aftershock. I’m not in a position – out here in a public place with someone I don’t trust – to let myself take it in. Nevertheless, questions bombard me at every turn.
Was it a full-blown affair or just the once? Do I know him? When did it start? Do you love him?
I can’t face them–not yet.

Alexa is checking her watch, looking like I’m wasting her time. I have to remember that her hostility comes from a desire to protect you, her younger sister. She’s been like a hissing
snake from the moment I came into your life. When we left London, she waited six months and, lo and behold, she found a ‘nice little flat’ in Portsmouth and ended up sixteen miles away.

‘The argument,’ I say, attempting to re-engage her. ‘Do you know what it was about?’

‘Dad. Mum’s treating him like a helpless child.’

‘Is that all?’

She shrugs. ‘Yes.’

‘Has Diane been in touch with you since yesterday?’

‘Not personally – look here,’ she taps the screen, ‘she says she’s
taking time out
,’ she enunciates each syllable as if I’m mentally impaired. ‘She wants space – from everything, by the looks of it. She’ll get back to us when she’s ready.’

I’m taking in what she’s just said. ‘You said –
not personally
.’

‘She’s posted a few bits on Facebook and Twitter – all very bland – she doesn’t say where she is.’

‘Really? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I pat my pockets. It hasn’t occurred to me that you might get in touch in such an impersonal way. ‘I didn’t check. What did she put? What did she say?’ I’m holding my phone, but don’t know how to find what you’ve posted. I don’t use social media.

‘Like I say, just generic stuff. About the dog you’re looking after. A film. Nothing important.’

Getting information from her is like trying to open a can of soup with my fingernails. ‘Has she said anything else to you, recently?’

‘About the pregnancy?’

‘Or about – anything else?’

‘I didn’t know she’d conceived – for a start.
She
didn’t know.’

‘What about other things – has she mentioned…anything bothering her?’ I really want to know if they’ve discussed some other man, but I daren’t venture into that territory just yet. I’m still reeling after the phone call. I don’t know how I’ll react if Alexa admits you’ve been seeing someone for months. Nevertheless, my question could lead there and I can’t imagine Alexa has any desire to protect me.

‘No – she hasn’t said anything.’ I’m still hovering over her as she remains seated at the small round table, sipping her drink. I didn’t get around to buying one for myself and now it feels too late. An onlooker would assume I’m hassling her and she wants me to leave.

‘Tell me the instant you hear from her.’

‘The same goes for you,’ she says, making it sound like I’ve insulted her.

It seems rude to leave so soon, but it was a mistake to meet here; a place where one would normally sit back, relax and catch up with friends. I never do any of those things when Alexa is around.

On the way back to the cottage, near impossible though it is, I force myself to keep the call from the hospital at arm’s length. I believed you when you said you hadn’t been with anyone else. I wanted my specialist to be wrong and for my infertility not to be absolute. I thought that
must
have been what happened. If I allow the words ‘negative test results’ to sink in, they will blast apart my will to live. Instead, I must stay strong to work out where you’ve gone. I need to think about those few words you’ve left on Alexa’s phone. They’re all we have of you and the only shred of substance I can hang on to:

Sorry – a bit stressed. Taking time out XX
.

Something about the wording doesn’t ring true for me – I’ve never heard you use the phrase
take time out
, for starters. I can’t hear your voice in my head saying it. I try to rationalise my doubt. We’re different people depending on who we’re with; perhaps you use those kinds of words with Alexa. Nevertheless, it feels all wrong, but maybe I’m simply aggrieved that you chose to let Alexa know instead of me.

Before I get home, I stop at the village shop and ask Marvin if I can look at his CCTV footage from the camera outside his shop. He lets me watch from 7pm onwards on Wednesday evening. A handful of locals I recognise and several faces I don’t, cross in and out of the lens. I remember you were wearing grey jogging pants and a pink T-shirt and had your long dark hair clipped at the side like you usually do. I’d know immediately if you walked by. I watch all the footage until the digital clock at the bottom reads 20.05, when Marvin locked up and pulled down the shutters. The film is black and white and blurry, but I know that none of the individuals captured on it that evening are you.

It means you didn’t arrive. Did you ever intend to go? Did you have another plan already worked out? Are you with someone else? The father of the child? Have you turned to him instead of me?

Back at the cottage, I go straight to the kitchen and pour a glass of whisky. More bricks have fallen down the chimney in my absence and there’s a plateau of fresh dust on the hearth mat. There’s a damp tea towel squashed beside a cushion on the comfy chair. I notice newspapers, empty mugs, unopened post and unironed clothes littering the surfaces. The coffee table, sofa, mantelpiece and book shelves are disappearing under a surge of swelling detritus. When did it get so untidy? My mess has a life of its own, self-generating, breeding around me. I can’t bear it. It is going to take up all the space and squeeze me out.

I find your cardigan slung over the stool by the fireplace and press it to my face. It’s only two days since you left, but it feels far longer. I breathe in the dizzy smell of you. I love that perfume that is you, Dee; a heady cocktail of vanilla, fizzy sherbet and sex.

I can’t hold on any longer.

At this moment the truth hits me like a searchlight breaking open the dead of night in a prison camp. It pins me down and forces me to turn and confront it. I can’t escape it – I have to face the fact that the baby, our baby, wasn’t mine. I do the only thing I know how and retreat to my bolt-hole in the garden.

It’s hot and smells of disinfectant in here. The chickens left with the previous owners and only the remains of sawdust, grain caught in the cracks in the wood and the odd ginger feather indicate they were once here. My breathing sounds hollow and far away. It takes me back to that time when my father was still with us.

I was about seven and he was trying to teach me how to control a football. I was hopeless; unco-ordinated with more steps off balance than upright. Dad kept a rusty old welding mask in the shed, that used to belong to his father. He forced me into it, pulling the straps tight. He told me to keep my head up so I couldn’t look at my feet.
Feel the ball,
he shouted,
don’t look down
. The mask was unwieldy, making me top-heavy and I could hardly breathe. It sent me off balance even more and I tripped over the ball. I can still hear his sneering laughter as he watched me try to get up. He didn’t put out his hand to help me to my feet. He was full of scorn and left me there like a beetle on its back. My father was good at walking away.

I can hear him laughing at me now as I stomp around in the chicken coop. I don’t know where to put myself. I take a swipe at the wall with my fist. I punch and punch, carrying on until I make my knuckles bleed. If only I could suffocate his voice; there are barbs attached to each
word, biting into my skin with pronouncements that you’ve slept with another man, you were carrying another man’s child, you
cheated
on me. I don’t know how to face this. I certainly can’t accept it. It’s unbelievable. But, after the miscarriage, the tests said my DNA wasn’t there. It wasn’t our child. End of story.

I forget my father’s voice and focus on you, Dee. More anger, more humiliation. I kick the crate I was sitting on and hurl it into a corner where I crunch it to a pulp with my feet. I feel as though I’m being thrown around on an invisible hurricane ride at the fairground, tossed first in one direction, then the other. You wouldn’t have done this –
yet you did
. We were solid and complete –
yet you found love elsewhere.
Nevertheless, no matter how many times I scan my memories, I can’t find a single thing that backs up what has happened. It doesn’t tally with your behaviour in any way whatsoever.

I sit down on the dusty floor for ten more minutes, maybe twenty, I’m not sure, and wait as the arguments and counter arguments fight their own battle inside my head. It is only Frank barking, then howling outside the door that coaxes me out. I open the door and thumb his jowls, promising him I’ll take him out later.

I head back into the house and run my knuckles under the cold tap. I feel played out and run dry. I cast aside the box from yesterday’s pizza and open the laptop. I enter your name followed by ‘Twitter’ into the search engine and track down your recent posts. There are two tweets, the first sent yesterday at 6pm:
Anyone seen
The Grand Budapest Hotel?
Any good?
And the second from today at 10am, a quote:
‘Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.’ Mark Twain.

They are meaningless to me – I’ve never heard you mention Mark Twain – are they meant to be some kind of clue to your whereabouts? On your Facebook feed, coupled with a
photograph of Frank are two words
Love Life
. The photo was posted today at 2.15pm and I recognise the wooden signpost in the background. It was taken in the fields near our cottage. I remember you showing it to me last week. I’m stunned. You’re still tweeting and using Facebook, but not contacting me! What’s going on?

My training is never to take evidence at face value. I hammer home this message to my students –
don’t assume, don’t jump to conclusions, don’t make new information fit what you think you know
.

I stop and think. What strikes me first is how inappropriate these posts are given your – our –circumstances. You’re grieving and in shock and these posts are detached and emotionally barren. Which takes me to my next point – they’re devoid of any detail that says they come from you. There is nothing of you in them whatsoever. Anyone could have written them. Except they’d need your phone and your passwords. Which would mean someone is with you.

On a roll, I check our online phone bill to see which calls you’ve made from home. I cross-check the numbers against our phonebook and there are two I can’t find. I ring the first and get an answerphone – it is a hairdresser. I try the second. It is our local GP’s surgery and I reach an out-of-hours line. I say ‘Sorry wrong number’ and replace the receiver. Of course, there’s your mobile – but that’s gone; I don’t know who you’ve called from that and only the police can trace it.

I shut the laptop, grab Frank’s lead and take him out. I’m glad he’s there, he’s undemanding company and never judges me. I check the landline answerphone on my return – more messages from friends and neighbours asking after you. I can’t return them; I have nothing to tell them, so I take a shower. I phone two of your work colleagues, Greg and Marie and ask if they noticed anything different about you before school broke up, a week and a half ago. Greg
says he thought you seemed ‘a bit tired, maybe’. Marie says you seemed ‘just the same’. I think back to any changes in your routine. You only had two days without school before the miscarriage. Did you do anything out of the ordinary in your time off? Did you go anywhere? Who did you see? I go to the wall calendar in the kitchen; I never did find your diary – it’s probably in your handbag, which I saw you take with you. My dental appointment last Monday is marked up in pencil, there’s a note in your handwriting to call your mum on Friday and a reminder to put the recycling bin out on Tuesday morning. Nothing useful.

It’s late, but I’m not tired in the least. I check your social media sites again to see if anything new has been posted, leave a text for Alexa to check if she’s heard from you, then go to the second bedroom, which we’re using as a study. I decide to start here and treat every room in the house like a crime scene. I take the Dictaphone from my briefcase and start walking and talking, making notes about what I see and don’t see.