The Last Time I Saw You (26 page)

Madeline gets to the front of the queue before us.

“Three tickets please,” she says, passing the man in the booth a handful of tokens.

“That for your mom and dad?” he asks. “Can’t come in on your own.”

“That’s my daddy, but she’s not my mommy,” says Madeline, pointing to us. “She’s Olivia. My mummy’s dead.”

The man in the booth is lost for words. William steps forward, taking the tickets.

“Thank you,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

“But she is,” says Madeline, her bottom lip starting to go. William’s getting that look again, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Public displays of anything are not his strong suit.

“Yes she is,” I agree, trying to convey to her in my look that I can really hear what it is she’s trying to say. “And it’s really, really sad.”

Perhaps the ghost train is exactly what she needs. Even though the phosphorous skeletons are completely phony-looking, she screams and howls, and holds on to William like she never wants to let him go. After that we give up on the rides, treating ourselves to some huge puffs of cotton candy, eating them as we walk down the pebbly beach, dappled by the setting sun. William shows Madeline his stone-skimming trick, holding her hand so delicately that she really believes that the multiple bounces are entirely down to her. She jumps up and down, cheering, her face a picture of delight, and I marvel at her ability to hold so
many extremes of emotion within herself, moving between them as though she’s surfing a wave.

“Do you want to know something very exciting?” says William once she’s calmed down.

“What?” she says.

“When we have you christened, guess who’s going to be your godmother?”

My palms feel cold and sweaty, stage fright completely overwhelming. I’m going to feel completely humiliated if she rejects me out of hand.

“Princess Kate?”

“No, guess again,” says William, tapping her on the nose. “Besides, she’s a duchess.”

This is painful. Madeline turns round slowly and considers me.

“You?” she says, one word imbued with so much meaning; in this moment she is so like Sally that it winds me.

“Yes,” I say, cautiously. “If you’ll let me?”

She looks at me for a few seconds, and then tears away down the beach, dark hair flying behind her like a familiar. I watch, helpless, as William sets off in pursuit—it feels utterly symbolic, like the universe is sending a thunderbolt crashing down from the heavens, warning me off. The idea of my own child, my flesh and blood, is one thing, but the idea that this broken, angry little person would ever let me come anywhere close is utterly unimaginable. I’d be a shadow, a wraith, a human reminder of what’s been lost.

They’re talking now, William kneeling in front of her. I hope to God he’s not telling her off. Eventually they walk back toward me, holding hands. Madeline’s gaze is direct as she addresses me.

“Godmother is not the same as mother.”

It’s like she can read my thoughts, my flights of fancy utterly transparent—I feel too exposed to risk so much as a glance in William’s direction. When Sally died she made damn sure she’d left a gatekeeper in place.

“No, it isn’t,” I tell her. “But it means you’ll always be special to me.”

“I will let you then,” she says, solemn.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice cracking. Now I look to William, but it doesn’t reassure me, his smile more like facial scenery than an expression of his thoughts. Perhaps he thought it too, in those seconds he went running down the beach, perhaps he knew right then and there that there would never be space for us. For someone else maybe, a clean skin, but I come with too much written through me for my presence to ever stop sending out an echo from a painful past.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It’s dark by the time we get back to the apartment, a mansion block positioned right on the corner of Battersea Park. Madeline is half asleep, but is still groggily insisting she’s not tired as William gently lifts her out of her car seat and hauls her inside, her dark head lolling over his broad shoulders. I trail behind them, wondering if I should politely make my excuses and slip off home. William turns to me, whispering.

“Let me just pop her into bed. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned I had to give the au pair the night off. I thought I could call out for takeaway.”

“Oh,” I say, trying not to look stricken. It’s not that I wanted to be wined and dined, it’s what it says to me. I take a deep breath, determined to let him lead. “Great. Shall I do some Googling?”

“Please don’t worry about it,” he says, and I feel myself shrink and contract. It’s like I’ve woken up in a parallel universe where I don’t know how to be me, where every step I take is as likely to be wrong as it is to be right. “The kitchen’s just through there.”

“Bye-bye, Olivia,” says Madeline, giving me a contented little wave from the cozy nook she’s found in William’s shoulder. “I think it’s your bedtime too.”

The kitchen is large and gleaming, fully equipped with top-of-the-line appliances, but it feels more like an operating theater than a piece of a home. It makes me realize how important my kitchen is to me, how much I’ve always found my center by cooking. It’s so many things; a way to silently convey to a person that you love them, a necessity in order to survive, and a way that I get out of my stupid, thought-ridden head and lose myself in something creative and physical (to hell with stupid old Zumba). I take a sneaky peek in the fridge. It’s full of ready meals from Waitrose, all arranged in neat stacks, a surprising amount of wine and beer, and the kind of pre-prepared basics I’d never think to buy. What kind of sloth needs a supermarket to grate their cheese for them?

“Are you pouring yourself a glass of wine?” says William, and I jump out of my skin.

“That was quick.”

“Cursory brushing of teeth and then straight under the covers. She was exhausted. Besides,” he says, swiftly crossing the room, “I wanted to get back to you.”

He gathers me up in his arms, his surety utterly intoxicating. For a few, delicious minutes it banishes all my doubts and insecurities, the world telescoping down to the two of us, wrapped around one another, his body a shield
against any wolves that are howling at the door. Eventually he pulls away, looking down at me.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all day. I kept watching you, thinking how beautiful you looked.”

Did you? Is it that I can’t read you, or that you’re trying to tell me what I want to hear?

“Thank you,” I say, reaching up to stroke his face, too frightened to stay in this moment. “Now what are we going to do about supper?”

It turns out I misjudged him. The reason he didn’t want me to Google Pizza Pronto was because he was one step ahead, having somehow found a service that delivers from any restaurant in a five-mile radius. As we wait for our delicious-sounding Italian to arrive, I ask him for a tour of the apartment. It turns out the kitchen is a microcosm, each room large and well appointed, but utterly lacking in personality.

“This is the sitting room,” he says, and I look at the immaculate cream sofa, which I can’t help thinking would be improved by a few scuff marks. The dreary Impressionist reproductions on the beige walls are the only punctuation the room has, other than that picture of Madeline and Sally in New York, which sits in state on the mantelpiece. The room overlooks the park, and he gestures out to it.

“We certainly can’t complain about the location.”

For some reason it feels more sinister than scenic to me.

“How did you find it?”

“The embassy arranged it all. They found a nanny for us too.” I might be wrong, but it feels like every element of his life is controlled by outside forces. Even though he’s
escaped from New York, the authoritarian tentacles of his job have stretched across the pond, slyly trapping him in another gilded cage.

“Is she live-in?”

“No, she comes as and when she’s needed. Let me show you the rest.”

There’s a small spare room, endless bathrooms, and Madeline’s room, which has her name emblazoned across the door in wooden, purple letters. “And this is my room,” he says, nudging the door. I can’t resist a quick look inside. It’s perfectly ordered, the watch and cufflinks on the chest of drawers the only sign of life, entirely devoid of that soft, feminine clutter willfully escaping from drawers and wardrobes that I’m sure characterized his marital bedroom. It makes me feel cold. “That’s quite enough of that,” says William, sliding the door closed, and I wonder what he means. Is it that he feels exposed, or that he’s giving me another red light?

He looks at me expectantly, with a trace of that earnest little boy I saw looking out of the school picture.

“It’s nice,” I say. It seems too cruel to flag up its failings, when they’re no more than tiny mirrored fragments of a bigger explosion. I want to wreak havoc—go through it with a paintbrush, shower it with brightly colored cushions and splotchy paintings of Madeline’s and elusive grains of rice that have snuck behind the stove when a hot, delicious curry has been cooked with the radio turned up loud—but it’s not within my gift. We sit there for a couple of awkward minutes, entombed by the sterile kitchen, before the doorbell rings, heralding the arrival of a smartly dressed delivery man with a stack of boxes. William’s about to dish it all out when I stop him.

“Let me warm the plates,” I say. It feels important somehow.

“As you wish,” he says. “I’ll open some wine. Red, I presume?”

He does notice things, I think, more gratified than I should be—there is a world beyond the mental hamster wheel he’s stuck on, those terrible questions driving him around and around.

“That’d be lovely,” I say, hoping my eyes don’t communicate too much. Sometimes I feel like he’s a rescue animal that I can only approach with the softest of steps for fear he takes flight.

He seems particularly fragile to me today.

“I was thinking, about Madeline. About how angry she is. Maybe it would help if she could talk to someone. A professional, I mean.”

“I appreciate your trying to help, but I tend to think such things do more harm than good.”

I think of the way his face twisted when he talked about Sally’s therapy sessions—it was a stupid thing to suggest. Probably in his family it’s roughly akin to having a crack habit. I pause a minute then try again.

“Tell me to shut up if you don’t want to talk about it, but how was the rest of the packing?”

Part of me hopes that he found something else, that there is a trail of breadcrumbs leading to her secrets. I could be wrong, but I’m sure there’s a whole wealth of them to find.

“Ghastly,” he says. “There’s no other word for it.”

“You poor thing.”

He looks away, troubled.

“What?”

“She had so many clothes, but there are certain favorite pieces that she wore so much that I’d recognize them. It was a source of irritation, I’m afraid to say, that she’d endlessly shop and then simply recycle the ones she loved.” I think of what Lola said about those heaped up outfits. The words rise up in my throat, but then I swallow them down. Why would she sell her worn out favorites: the real money would come from all the priceless frocks that were left hanging, tags often still attached. “And then the jewelry—there are the pieces that are gone, but also a couple of things that look, even to my untrained eye, like they would have cost a small fortune. And I’ve never seen them in my life.”

“Oh William,” I say, unconsciously pulling back. I’m starting to feel like a Peeping Tom, watching the marriage unravel before my eyes. I remember Shaun, his entire grant check gone, because Sally had somehow persuaded him that she needed a diamond-studded cuff that she’d scoped out in Harvey Nichols. There’s no way Sally would buy expensive jewelry for herself—it was too good an opportunity to make some hapless man prove how much he loved her.

“Was I really so stern that she had to hide what she’d bought? If she really loved them, I wouldn’t have denied her.”

I love you for your innocence, I think, my eyes threatening to fill. I’m pretty sure where this trail is leading, even if he’s heading for a completely different part of the forest.

“I’m sure you weren’t stern. You’re not a stern person,” I say, putting my hand back in his. He gives me a look that’s infused with such sadness that I almost can’t meet his gaze. He squeezes my hand.

“I’m very sorry for how I spoke to you this morning, it was unacceptable.”

“No it wasn’t! You were stressed. Please don’t apologize.” It’s like he carries a pack on his back filled with his imagined crimes, the weight of guilt constantly pulling on him. “Have you spoken to Richie and Mara about whether things could have gone astray?”

“Mara promises me they sent everything. There’s an appointments diary too, that I thought would be in the contents of the desk. It’s one of the things the investigators have asked for.”

I hate thinking about them, those hawk-eyed suits poring over Sally’s behavior and trying to understand why she would have done what she did—someone should tell them how futile a task that has always been.

“Have you heard more from them?”

“There’s definitely going to be a hearing,” he says, that cold combativeness coming over him. “Most probably the beginning of December back in New York. That’s where they’ll decide about reopening the police investigation.”

“Oh!” I say, my hand flying to my mouth. “Will you have a lawyer?”

“Yes, behind the scenes, but I’ll handle the hearing myself. There’s no one better qualified to speak about my wife than me.”

He looks almost broken, sitting there, his shoulders slumped, his hand wrapped around his wine glass. I squeeze his other hand because there are no words.

“If there’s anything I can do, William, you know . . .”

“I do,” he says. “You’re doing a great deal right now. I only wish I could be more use to you.”

“Use? I don’t need you to be useful.”

“I think you do,” he says, considering me, his expression holding within it the intimacy of the time we spent in Dorset. “Would you like a top-up?”

He reaches for the bottle, pouring with a wobbly left hand so his right can stay connected to mine.

“That’s useful!”

He laughs, and clinks his glass against mine. If it was allowed, I’d be falling in love with you, I tell him in my head. In fact, I think I might have already fallen in love with you, stored the feeling away for a longed-for time when the terrain is less bleak and brutal, like a squirrel building up his winter store of nuts.

“She did have some money of her own last year, with this job she got, so I do wonder if she just thought she’d treat herself.”

“I didn’t know she’d gone back to work.”

“It was for a fashion PR firm. I thought . . . I was very pleased when she got it. I thought she might feel better about my traveling once she had a focus of her own. And she did get off to a flying start, but it seemed to crumble very quickly.”

For a highly intelligent man, he seems almost incapable of connecting the dots: that was surely the story of Sally’s life. In fact, horribly enough, it really was the story of her life. The thought makes me shudder: is that true for all of us, our small arcs representing our bigger ones, if only we could fly up overhead and see where we’re headed? I look at him, his gaze lost somewhere in the warp of the table, and try not to take the thought to its logical conclusion.

“Is the financial situation looking any better?”

He gives me a look that tells me the exact opposite.

“If the worst comes to the worst I’m sure my father will help. It’s just . . .”

“What?”

“I feel treacherous even saying this.”

“You can say it,” I tell him, as gently as I can.

“They never wanted me to marry her,” he says quietly. “They wouldn’t have dreamed of saying it directly to her, but she was too sharp to miss it. They threw down a gauntlet, in a way. What I said in my eulogy was perhaps a slight reimagining of events.”

There he goes again, sculpting truth into a convincing shape. Is that his arc, the road he blindly retreads again and again?

“How so?”

“She was in a desperate rush to marry. There were lots of tears every time we had to attend that endless merry-go-round of weddings. And meanwhile my parents were desperately keen that we didn’t.”

“Why?”

“They couldn’t see what she brought to the table,” he says, his face giving me the translation of their horrible, snobbish judgment. I’d hoped it was better than that, understandable parental concern about how Sally treated him, but I’d suspected as much. I can just imagine her donning her spurs and going into battle.

“And what did you want?”

“I loved her, but I knew it would never be easy.” He’s smiling at me, but his gaze feels like it’s fixed on a point far in the distance. “But I also knew it would never be boring.”

Recently I’ve started to wonder if boring is somewhat underrated. Maybe life’s meant to be a little bit boring sometimes, skeins of ordinary events that quietly accumulate until you’ve made a canopy of shared experience to take shelter under. The moments of ordinariness I’ve shared with William have felt as precious as diamonds—watching him read the dreary bits of the
Sunday Times
, his
gently balding head bowed over it, munching our boiled eggs on that windy beach—but maybe that’s down to context: ordinary feels pretty good when extraordinary looks like this. I hope he values them too. I hope they’re more than fuel for the tank, that he won’t go hurtling back into orbit in search of another shooting star once he’s filled up.

“I bet it wasn’t.”

“Certainly wasn’t,” he says. “And I think she did value it.” He pauses. “Let me qualify that. Mostly I think she valued it, in a Sally-ish way.”

Sally-ish. The fact that for him her name is still an adjective is why I should probably get my coat and make a dignified exit.