Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part Two
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Part Four
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Epilogue
Read on for an extract from Then She Was Gone
Acknowledgements
Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN 9781446429228
Version 1.0
Published by Century 2014
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Lisa Jewell 2014
Extract from Then She Was Gone © Lisa Jewell 2017
Lisa Jewell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Century
Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA
www.penguin.co.uk
Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846059254 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781780892467 (Trade Paperback)
This book is dedicated to all my friends on the Board
They might have been fireworks, the splashes, bursts, storms of colour that exploded in front of her eyes. They might have been the Northern Lights, her own personal aurora borealis. But they weren’t, they were just neon lights and street lights rendered blurred and prismatic by vodka. Maya blinked, trying to dislodge the colours from her field of vision. But they were stuck, as though someone had been scribbling on her eyeballs. She closed her eyes for a moment but, without vision, her balance went and she could feel herself begin to sway. She grabbed something. She did not realise until the sharp bark and shrug that accompanied her action that it was a human being.
‘Shit,’ Maya said, ‘I’m really sorry.’
The person tutted and backed away from her. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Maya took exaggerated offence to the person’s lack of kindness.
‘Jesus,’ she said to the outline of the person whose gender she had failed to ascertain. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘Er,’ said the person, looking Maya up and down. ‘I think you’ll find you’re the one with the problem.’ Then the person, a woman, yes, in red shoes, tutted again and walked away, her heels issuing a mocking clack-clack against the pavement as she went.
Maya watched her blurred figure recede. She found a lamp post and leaned against it, looking into the oncoming traffic. The headlights turned into more fireworks. Or one of those toys she’d had as a child: tube, full of coloured beads, you shook it, looked through the hole, lovely patterns – what was it called? She couldn’t remember. Whatever. She didn’t know any more. She didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t know where she was. Adrian had called. She’d spoken to him. Tried to sound sober. He’d asked her if she needed him to come and get her. She couldn’t remember what she’d said. Or how long ago that had been. Lovely Adrian. So lovely. She couldn’t go home. Go home and do what she needed to do. He was too nice. She remembered the pub. She’d talked to that woman. Promised her she was going home. That was hours ago. Where had she been since then? Walking. Sitting somewhere, on a bench, with a bottle of vodka, talking to strangers. Hahaha! That bit had been fun. Those people had been fun. They’d said she could come back with them, to their flat, have a party. She’d been tempted, but she was glad now, glad she’d said no.
She closed her eyes, gripped the lamp post tighter as she felt her balance slip away from her. She smiled to herself. This was nice. This was nice. All this colour and darkness and noise and all these fascinating people. She should do this more often, she really should. Get out of it. Live a little. Go a bit nuts. A group of women were walking towards her. She stared at them greedily. She could see each woman in triplicate. They were all so young, so pretty. She closed her eyes again as they passed by, her senses unable to contain their image any longer. Once they’d passed she opened her eyes.
She saw a bus bearing down, bouncy and keen. She squinted into the white light on the front, looking for a number. It slowed as it neared her and she turned and saw that there was a bus stop to her left, with people standing at it.
Dear Bitch. Why can’t you just disappear?
The words passed through her mind, clear and concise in their meaning, like a sober person leading her home. And then those other words, the words from earlier.
I hate her too.
She took a step forward.
‘According to the bus driver, Mrs Wolfe lurched into the path of the bus.’
‘Lurched?’ echoed Adrian Wolfe.
‘Well, yes. That was the word he used. He said that she did not appear to step or jump or run or fall or slip. He said she lurched.’
‘So it was an accident?’
‘Well, yes, it does sound possible. But obviously we will need a full coroner’s report, a possible inquest. What we can tell you with certainty is that her blood alcohol reading was very high.’ DI Hollis referred to a piece of paper on the desk in front of him. ‘Nought point two. That’s extraordinarily high. Especially for a small woman like Mrs Wolfe. Was she a regular drinker?’
The question sounded loaded. Adrian flinched. ‘Er, yes, I suppose, but no more so than your average stressed-out thirty-three-year-old school teacher. You know, a glass a night, sometimes two. More at the weekends.’
‘But this level of drinking, Mr Wolfe? Was this normal?’
Adrian let his face fall into his hands and rubbed roughly at his skin. He had been awake since 3.30 a.m., since his phone had rung, interrupting a fractured dream in which he was running about central London with a baby in his arms trying to call Maya’s name but not able to make a sound.
‘No,’ he said, ‘no. That wasn’t normal. She isn’t … wasn’t that kind of drinker.’
‘So, what was she – out at a party? Doing something out of the ordinary?’
‘No. No.’ Adrian sighed, feeling the inadequacy of his understanding of the night’s events. ‘No. She was looking after my children. At my house in Islington …’
‘Your children?’
‘Yes.’ Adrian sighed again. ‘I have three children with my former wife. My former wife had to go to work today. Sorry. Yesterday. Unexpectedly. She didn’t have time to organise childcare so she asked if Maya would look after the children. They’re on their Easter holidays. And, obviously, Maya being a teacher, so is she. So Maya spent the day there and I was expecting her home at about six thirty and she wasn’t there when I got home and she wasn’t answering her phone. I called her roughly every two minutes.’
‘Yes, we saw all the missed calls.’
‘She finally picked up at about ten p.m. and I could tell she was drunk. She said she was in town. Wouldn’t tell me who with. She said she was on her way home. So I sat and waited for her. Called again from roughly midnight to about one o’clock. Then I finally fell asleep. Until my phone rang at three thirty.’
‘How did she sound? When you spoke to her at ten p.m.?’
‘She sounded …’ Adrian sighed and waited for a wave of tears to pass. ‘She sounded really jolly. Happy drunk. She was calling from a pub. I could hear the noise in the background. She said she was on her way home. She was just finishing her drink.’
‘Often the way, isn’t it?’ the policeman said. ‘When you’ve reached a certain point of inebriation. Much easier to be persuaded into staying on for that one more drink. The hours pass as fast as minutes.’
‘Do you have any idea who she was with, in that pub?’
‘Well, no. For now, we’re not treating Mrs Wolfe’s death as suspicious. If it becomes apparent that there was foul play involved and we need to investigate Mrs Wolfe’s last movements, then yes, we’ll talk to local publicans. Talk to Mrs Wolfe’s friends. Build up a fuller picture.’
Adrian nodded. He was tired. He was traumatised. He was confused.
‘Do you have any theories of your own, Mr Wolfe? Was everything OK at home?’
‘Yes, God, yes! I mean, we’d only been married two years. Everything was great.’
‘No problems with family number one?’
Adrian looked at DI Hollis questioningly.
‘Well, second wives – there can be, you know, pressures there?’
‘Actually, she’s … she was … my third wife.’
DI Hollis’s eyebrows jumped.
‘I’ve been married twice before.’
DI Hollis looked at Adrian as though he had just performed an audacious sleight-of-hand trick.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, for my next trick I will confound all your preconceptions about me in one fell swoop.
Adrian was used to that look. It said: How did an old fart like you manage to persuade one woman to marry you, let alone three?
‘I like being married,’ said Adrian, aware even as he said it how inadequate it sounded.
‘And that was all fine, was it? Mrs Wolfe wasn’t finding it difficult being in the middle of such a … complicated situation?’
Adrian sighed, pulled his dark hair off his face and then let it flop back over his forehead. ‘It wasn’t complicated,’ he said. ‘It isn’t complicated. We’re one big happy family. We go on holiday together every year.’
‘All of you?’
‘Yes. All of us. Three wives. Five children. Every year.’
‘All in the same house?’
‘Yes. In the same house. Divorce doesn’t have to be toxic if everyone involved is prepared to act like grown-ups.’
DI Hollis nodded slowly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s nice to hear.’
‘When can I see her?’
‘I’m not sure.’ DI Hollis’s demeanour softened. ‘I’ll talk to the coroner’s office for you now, see how they’re getting on. Should be soon.’ He smiled warmly and replaced the lid of his biro. ‘Maybe time to get home, have a shower, have a coffee?’
‘Yes,’ said Adrian. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
The key sounded terrible in the lock of Adrian’s front door; it ground and grated like an instrument of torture. He realised it was because he was turning the key extra slowly. He realised he was trying to put off the moment that he walked into his flat, their flat. He realised that he did not want to be here without her.
Her cat greeted him in the hallway, desperate and hungry. Adrian glanced at the cat blankly. Maya’s cat. Brought here three years ago in a brown plastic box as part of an endearingly small haul of possessions. He wasn’t a cat person but he’d accepted her cat into his world in the same way that he’d accepted her bright floral duvet cover, her wipe-clean tablecloth and her crap CD player.
‘Billie,’ he said, closing the door behind him, leaning heavily against it. ‘She’s gone. Your mummy. She’s gone.’ He slid slowly to his haunches, his back still pressed against the front door, the heels of his hands forced into his eye sockets, and he wept.
The cat approached him curiously. She rubbed herself against his knees and she issued a vibrato warble. He pulled the cat towards him and he wept some more. ‘She’s dead, puss. Beautiful, beautiful Mummy. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’
The cat had no answers to offer. The cat was hungry.
Slowly, Adrian pulled himself to standing and let the cat lead him to the kitchen. There he searched through cupboards and shelves for something to feed the cat with. He never fed the cat. He had no idea what the cat normally ate. He gave up in the end and gave the cat tuna meant for humans.
The sun was out, flooding this Spartan, unpretty, east-facing room with unaccustomed sunlight. It picked out the grubby honey tones in the floorboards and the dust in the air. It picked out the whorls of black fur left wherever the cat had settled for a sleep and the circular sticky patches on the coffee table where Maya had rested her morning smoothie. It picked out the damp bubbling behind the wallpaper and the cracks in the plasterwork.
Such a rushed decision, this flat. Maya’s flatmate had found a replacement who wanted to move in that weekend, and as civilised as Caroline had been about him still living in the family home three weeks after telling her he was leaving her for another woman, he’d known it was time to move on. They’d looked at three flats in one morning and chosen the worst one in the nicest street.
It hadn’t mattered then. It hadn’t mattered to either of them. Because they were in love. And ugly flats look pretty when you’re in love.
He watched the cat pecking at her tuna fish. The cat would have to go. He could not have Maya’s cat without Maya.
Then he pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and he stared at it for a while. He had phone calls to make. Terrible phone calls. Phone calls to Maya’s dry, unsmiling parents; phone calls to Susie in Hove, to Caroline in Islington, to his young children and his grown children.
And what would he say to them when they asked him why Maya was walking drunk and alone around the neon-lit streets of the west end on a Wednesday night? He really did not know. All he knew for sure was that his life had just come off its rails and that for the first time in his adult life, he was alone.
The woman in the pale grey coat stood on the other side of the post office, looking through a carousel display of greeting cards. She spun the carousel slowly around and around, but her gaze was not upon the cards, but on the gaps between the cards. It was on him. Over there. Adrian Wolfe.
He was wearing a big tweedy overcoat, black jeans, walking boots and a burgundy scarf. Tall and slim, from behind he looked about twenty, from the front he looked middle-aged. But he was distinguished, almost handsome, with his mop of dark hair and spaniel eyes. His looks had grown on the woman over the weeks, as she’d followed him from place to place.
She watched him pull something from his pocket. A small rectangle of white card. He said something to a member of staff who nodded and pointed at a blank area on the community noticeboard. Adrian Wolfe pulled a thumb tack from the board and then punctured his card with it. He stood back for a moment and regarded it. Then he put his hands into the pockets of his big tweedy overcoat and left.
The woman scooted from behind the carousel and walked to the noticeboard, where she read Adrian Wolfe’s card:
Good Home Wanted for Mature Cat
Billie is roughly eight years old. She is a black and white moggy with a sweet temperament and very few annoying habits.
I am going through some personal changes and am no longer able to care for her as well as she deserves.
If you’d like to come and meet Billie and see if you hit it off, please call me on the number below.
She looked from left to right, and then from right to left, before pulling the card from the noticeboard and stuffing it into her handbag.
‘She sheds a bit.’
Adrian glanced in the general direction of the cat who was looking at the strange woman as though she knew that she was here to offer her the chance of a better life.
The strange woman, who was called Jane, smiled and ran her hand firmly down the cat’s back and said, ‘That’s fine. I have an Animal.’
Adrian narrowed his eyes at her. In his mind’s eye he saw her sitting on a sofa with a tiger at her side, or possibly a horse. ‘An animal … you mean another pet?’
She laughed. ‘No, sorry, I mean one of those hoovers, you know, for people who have pets. That suck up hair.’
‘Aaah.’ He nodded knowingly. But he did not know.
‘So. Why are you getting rid of her?’ She picked some fur off the palm of her hand and let it drop to the floor.
Adrian smiled sadly and let the next words fall as lightly as possible from his tongue. He was practised by now in the art of making the unpalatable bearable for other people.
‘Ah, well, Billie was my wife’s cat. And my wife passed away. Eleven months ago. And every time I look at Billie I expect my wife to walk into the room. And she doesn’t. So …’ He shrugged. ‘There you go. Time to say goodbye to Billie.’ He looked fondly at the cat although he felt no fondness at all towards her. But he didn’t want this strange woman to see this side of him, the dead-inside part that could feel so antipathetic towards a mere cat.
The woman looked up at him, her eyes filled with pain. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.’ Her blond fringe flipped across her eyes and she moved it back with delicate fingers. All her movements were perfectly executed, like a trained dancer or an Alexander technique student. Adrian noticed this at the same time as noticing her waist, small and neat inside a highly pressed blue shirt dress pulled in with a belt, and her earrings, tiny bulbs of blue glass hanging from silver hooks, the shade a perfect match for her dress. She was wearing tan leather ankle boots with a scattering of silver studs across the toe and a small heel. She was immaculate. Almost unnervingly so.
They both turned to look at Billie once more.
‘So,’ said Adrian, ‘what do you think?’
‘I think she’s lovely,’ she said. Then she paused and looked at Adrian. He noticed with a start that her eyes were mismatched: one grey-blue, the other grey-blue with a chunk of amber. He caught his breath. There it was, he thought, the imperfection. Every woman he had ever loved had had one. A scar across the eyebrow (Caroline). A gap between her teeth (Susie). Bright red hair and a violent patterning of ginger freckles (Maya).
‘But’, she continued, ‘I’m not sure you’re ready to let her go.’
He gazed at her curiously, interested to hear the theory behind her opinion.
‘How long have you lived with Billie?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Maya brought her with her. When she moved in with me. So, I guess, nearly four years.’
He saw her rapidly working out the dates, behind those mismatched eyes. A wife who’d moved in and then died all within the space of three years. Tough stats to absorb. Unlikely and tragic, like a bad movie. But it wasn’t a bad movie. Oh no, indeed. It was his Real Life.
She shook her head and smiled. ‘She is lovely,’ she said again. ‘But …’
Adrian watched her forming her next words.
‘I’m not quite feeling it.’
‘You’re not quite feeling …?’
He stared at the cat, looking at her objectively for the first time. He’d never been a cat person and he assumed that they were all much of a muchness. Four legs. Whiskers. Triangles for ears. Roughly the size of a briefcase. None of the endless, glorious variations of the dog form: ears that mopped the floor, ears that reached for the moon, flat snouts, pointy snouts, size of a squirrel, size of a small pony.
‘The connection.’
He rubbed the point of his chin between his fingers and thumb and tried to look as though he could see her concern. ‘Right.’
‘Can I think about it?’ she said, hoisting the strap of her neat little oyster-grey handbag up on to her shoulder.
‘Of course! Of course! Yes, you’re the only person who replied to the ad so the ball is firmly in your court.’
She smiled at him. ‘Great. Can I come back? Maybe tomorrow? Meet her again?’
Adrian laughed. What a strange girl. ‘Er, yes. I should think so. Although I’ll be out and about a lot. Have you got my number? So you can call?’
‘Sure.’ She gave him her hand to shake. ‘I’ll call you mid-morning. See what we can arrange.’
‘Good.’ Adrian followed her towards his front door, opened it up for her.
‘Wow,’ she said, looking at his whiteboard, nailed to the wall above his desk. ‘This looks pretty boggling.’
‘Yes. Boggling is the word. A little like my life. This’ – he gestured at the chart – ‘is all that stands between me and total existential chaos.’
She paused, a smile playing on her lips, and ran her finger across the words Pearl 10th Birthday. Strada Upper St 6.30 p.m. ‘Have you got her present?’
He started at the question. So intrusive, yet so reasonable.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Actually I have.’
‘Well done!’ she said. ‘Very organised. Right. Well, I’ll call you tomorrow. And thank you. Thank you for giving me time to think about it. Very important decision. Not one to be rushed.’
‘No, no, absolutely not.’
He closed the door behind her and felt compelled to lean heavily against it, almost as though she’d taken his centre of gravity with her when she left.
The whiteboard had been Maya’s idea. Maya was one of those people who saw straight through to the core of the issue and sorted it. And the issue was that even though all he wanted was for everyone to be happy, he kept doing things that made people unhappy. And he wished he didn’t care. He wished he could just shrug and say, Well, you know, that’s life, nobody’s perfect. But every time he forgot a child’s birthday or an arrangement to watch a theatrical performance or to attend an awards ceremony, he was filled with seething self-hatred. His sprawling, unconventional family was a product entirely of the decisions he had made and therefore it was up to him to make sure that nobody felt the aftershocks. But still they came. Bang: a crying daughter. Crash: a disappointed son. Boom: an irked ex-wife.
‘Poor Adrian,’ Maya had said one day after he’d had a terrible phone call with Caroline about a parent–teacher meeting he’d forgotten to attend.
Adrian had sighed and laid his head upon Maya’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m a disaster zone. A human wrecking ball. I just wish I could show the children that even though I’m a disorganised fuckwit, actually I’m thinking about them every minute of every day.’
And she’d unveiled this thing. They’d called it the Board of Harmony. The whole year mapped out and colour-coded: children’s birthdays, ex-wives’ birthdays, ex-mothers-in-law’s birthdays, who was spending Christmas where, who was starting big school or leaving university, the half-terms and holidays of three school-age children and the travel arrangements and job interviews of two adult children. If he spoke to a child and they told him something about their life, no matter how inconsequential, he would write it here: Cat looking at flats this weekend. That way, the next time he spoke to Cat he would be sure to remember to ask her about it. It was all there. All the tiny minutiae of the lives of the families he’d created and vacated.
Adrian had never intended for his life to get this convoluted. Two ex-wives. One late wife. Three sons. Two daughters. Three houses. And a cat. But more than that, not just those direct connections, but all the other countless people who’d been drawn into his world through these temporary families: the boyfriends and girlfriends of his children, the mothers and fathers of their best friends, the favoured teachers, the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers-in-law, these people who were his beloved children’s aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins. People who had once played a huge part in his life and continued to play a huge part in the lives of his children. People he couldn’t just stop thinking about and knowing about and caring about purely because he was no longer in love with their daughter/sister/aunt.
And there it was. The sharp needle of tragedy, in the softest part of his belly, as he thought about Maya. Who’d left nothing. Not really. Parents whom he’d barely got to know, a brother he’d never met apart from briefly at their wedding, a brittle best friend who appeared to hold him responsible for her death. And this cat. This cat who had just failed to make a connection with a beautiful young woman called Jane and who, consequently, was still here, curled up like a sleek apostrophe in a shaft of sunlight.
He walked across the room and sat beside the cat. He observed it for a moment. Maya had babied this cat, talked about it all the time, bought it expensive treats and toys it never played with. He’d watched her, bemused. And then one day, a few weeks before their wedding, and although she’d never asked, he’d told her he could afford one more baby. ‘Just a small one,’ he’d said, holding his hands a few inches apart. ‘One we could keep in a box maybe. Or a pocket.’
‘What if it grew?’ she’d said.
‘Well, we’d squash it down a bit,’ he’d said, miming patting down the sides of a small baby.
‘So it would need to be quite a spongy baby?’
‘Yes,’ he’d said. ‘Ideally.’
He put one hand on to the cat’s back and it jumped at his touch. As well it might. He rarely touched her. But then it softened and revealed its belly to him, a cushion of thick black fur, two tufted rows of pink nipples. He placed his hand against it and left it there, feeling the comforting sense of warm flesh and blood beneath his palm. The cat pawed at his hand playfully, and for a moment Adrian felt something human towards the animal, the ‘connection’ that the girl called Jane had mentioned. Maybe she was right, he pondered. Maybe he did still need this living, breathing piece of Maya in his life. Then, as the thought passed through his grieving mind, he squeezed the cat’s front leg gently and recoiled with a pained cry as the cat pierced the pale, thin skin of his inner wrist with one tiny hooked claw.
‘Ow. Shit.’ He brought his wrist to his mouth and sucked it. ‘What did you do that for?’
The cat sprang to its feet and leaped from the sofa at the sound of his raised voice. He stared at his wrist, at the tiny pinprick in his skin, darkly black-red, but not bleeding. He continued to stare at it, willing it to bleed, willing it to yield something human and hot and bright. But it didn’t.
It was Saturday night. Again. The forty-seventh Saturday night since Maya had died.
They didn’t get any easier.
Adrian wondered idly what his family was doing. He pictured them lined up in front of the television watching whatever show was currently the big Saturday night thing. What was it the kids had made him watch last weekend when they were here? Something with Ant and Dec in it. He could barely remember. He was just grateful it wasn’t one of those gruesome talent shows with people crying all over the place.
As the shadows grew long upon the pavement outside and a light shower of rain started to patter against the windowpanes, Adrian poured himself a glass of wine and pulled the laptop towards himself.
He had not realised until Maya had died and left him on his own for the first time since he was nineteen years old that he had no friends. He’d had friends in the past, but they’d come as part of the package of his two former marriages. The friends he’d had in Sussex with Susie had stayed in Sussex with Susie. The friends he’d had with Caroline had taken her side entirely in the aftermath of his affair with Maya. Or rather, the sides of their wives. And he and Maya hadn’t made any friends because they’d been too busy keeping everybody happy.
Some odd-bods had popped up after Maya died, people he’d never expected to hear from again: the slightly sinister deputy head of the girls’ school that Maya had taught at with whom he’d once had a long and very strained conversation at a fundraising evening; the ex-husband of a friend of Caroline’s whose nasal voice he and Caroline had taken great joy in impersonating behind his back; the rather bellicose father of Pearl’s friend whom Adrian had only ever met in ninety-second bursts on their respective doorsteps when delivering and collecting children. They’d forced him into pubs and even on occasion into nightclubs. They’d poured alcohol into him until he looked as though he was having a good time and then they’d tried to get unsuitable women to talk to him. ‘This is my friend, Adrian. He’s just lost his wife.’
There’d also been a swarm of women in the wake of Maya’s death. Mainly mothers of school friends, the very same women who’d looked at him in such disgust when they heard that he’d left Caroline, now circling him with wide, caring eyes, bringing him things to eat in Tupperware boxes, which he’d then have to wash up and return with words of gratitude.
He hadn’t wanted them then. He’d wanted to stay inside and cry and ask himself why why why.
Now, eleven months later, he still didn’t know why but he’d given up asking.
The girl called Jane came again the next day. This time her honey hair was down, blow-dried into loops that flipped off her collarbone, her fringe parted in the centre and hanging either side of her face, as though she was peering through stage curtains. In the moments before her arrival Adrian had done things that he did not wish to consider too deeply. He had taken Maya’s hand-mirror from a dark corner of his flat to a bright corner of his flat and he had examined his face in great and unedifying detail in the light from a west-facing window. Maya had been thirty when he met her and he’d been forty-four. He’d seen himself as a young forty-four. A full head of dark brown hair, bright hazel eyes, upturned smile lines, still the face in the mirror that he expected to see there.
Time and grief were cruel at any age, but particularly at this middle point of physical flux, when the face became like a flickering image in a pretentious video art installation, in and out of focus, young-old, young-old, young again. At some point in the moments after Maya’s death, the image had stopped flickering and there it was. Static. The face of someone older than he’d ever thought he’d be. He had not looked in mirrors very much these last few months, but now he wanted to know what he looked like. He wanted to see what Jane would see.
In minute detail, he saw that his jawline had begun to collapse; he saw folds and crenellations in the skin of his neck that put him in mind of the wild, tide-creased beaches of north Norfolk. He saw yellowish pillows of flesh beneath his eyes; he saw that his skin was dry, his hazel eyes were faded and his hair had achromatised, from rich dark brown to something like the colour of a wet pavement.
Once this process was complete he’d got into the shower and done things to his face with the contents of tubes and bottles left there by Maya. He had washed his hair twice, until it squeaked clean beneath his fingertips. And then for possibly the first time in his life he put conditioner on it. He did not ask himself why. He just did it. Then he ironed himself a shirt. A green shirt that Maya had once said brought out the hazel of his eyes. And he used Maya’s hairdryer on his hair, running his fingers through it, teasing it into something sleek and fragrant.
He cursed himself silently as he watched the clock turn from 11.22 to 11.23, seven minutes before her appointed arrival. You fool, he muttered under his breath. You total and utter ballsack. He filled the kettle and he pushed things around the kitchen counter to make it look more welcoming. Forty-eight, he muttered to himself. You’re forty-eight. You’re a widower. You’re a tosser.
And then there she was, curiously ageless, at his front door, with her mismatched eyes and her disingenuous fringe, smelling of jasmine and clean clothes. Her neat little bag was clutched at stomach level with both hands and she was wearing a soft grey coat, fastened with one single oversized button.
‘Come in. Come in.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, striding confidently into the hallway. ‘I know you must think I’m mad.’
‘What? No!’
‘Of course you do. It’s like I’m dating your cat. You know, courting her. Next thing I’ll be asking if I can take her out to dinner.’
Adrian looked at Jane and then laughed. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘She has impeccable manners. And doesn’t eat much.’
Jane headed towards the cat, which was in its usual spot on the back of the sofa by the front window. The cat turned at her approach and offered itself to her with a smiling face. ‘Hello,’ said Jane, cupping the cat’s face inside her hand and appraising it affectionately. ‘You sweet girl.’
‘Can I get you a tea?’ asked Adrian. ‘A coffee? Water?’
‘I’d love a coffee,’ she said. ‘Bit of a night last night.’
Adrian nodded. She did not look as though she’d had a bit of a night last night. She did not, in fact, look like she’d ever had a bit of a night in her life. ‘Black?’
She smiled. ‘Black.’
When Adrian returned with the coffee he found Jane sitting on the sofa with the cat on her lap and a framed photograph of the little ones in her hand.
‘These children are stunning,’ she said, turning the photo to face him. ‘Are they all yours?’
He glanced at the photo. It was Otis, Pearl and Beau, in sou’westers and galoshes, knee deep in a creek somewhere in the West Country. Behind them the sky was gun-metal grey, below them the water was steel and their brightly coloured clothes burst through the dreary background almost as though the children had been cut out and glued on. Beau had his arm around Pearl’s waist and Pearl had her head in the crook of Otis’s shoulder. It was a happy photograph; all three children were smiling evenly and naturally with open eyes and relaxed mouths. Maya had taken it. The children had always smiled for Maya.
Adrian handed Jane her coffee and she put it on the tabletop. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They are all mine.’
‘What are their names?’
He glanced at her. He’d flossed his teeth for this woman – he could hardly be surprised if she wanted to ask him personal questions.
‘Well,’ he said, running his finger across the photograph. ‘That’s Otis, he’s twelve; that’s Pearl, she’s …’
‘Nearly ten.’
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. She looked back at him playfully.
‘Yes. She’s nearly ten. And this little munchkin is Beau. He just turned five.’
‘Adorable,’ she said, putting the photo carefully back on the table and picking up her coffee cup. ‘And they don’t live with you?’
‘You’re very inquisitive,’ he said, sitting himself down on the armchair opposite her.
‘I’m nosy,’ she said. ‘You can say it. I don’t mind.’
‘OK then. You’re nosy.’
She laughed. ‘Sorry, I just find other people’s lives fascinating. Always have done.’
He smiled. ‘That’s OK. I’m the same.’ He inhaled and ran his hand down his freshly shaved jaw. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They don’t live with me. They live with their mum. In a five-storey Georgian townhouse in Islington.’
‘Wow.’ Jane ran her eyes around the cramped living room, a silent acknowledgement of the fact that Adrian’s ex-wife had pulled the long straw.
‘It’s fine,’ he said quickly. He would hate for anyone to feel sorry for him, not for even a moment. ‘It’s good. There’s room for them all to squeeze in here every other weekend. Beau shares with me, Pearl and Otis in the spare room. It’s good.’
‘So, you and your late wife, you didn’t have any children?’
‘No.’ Adrian shook his head. ‘Sadly not. Although, Jesus, I’m not sure what I’d have done if we had had a baby. I mean … I’d have had to give up work. And the whole precarious edifice would have come crashing down.’
‘The big house in Islington …’
‘Yes. And the cottage in Hove.’
She raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.
‘Ex-wife number one,’ he replied. ‘Susie. Mother of my two eldest children. Here …’ He got to his feet and picked up another framed photograph. He passed it to her. ‘Cat and Luke. My big ones.’
She stared at the photograph with wide eyes. ‘You make very special children,’ she said. ‘How old are these two?’
‘Cat will be twenty in May. Luke is twenty-three.’
‘Grown-ups now?’
‘Yes. Grown-ups now. Although sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.’
‘And do they live in Hove? With their mum?’
‘Luke does. Cat’s in London now. Living with Caroline.’
‘Caroline?’
‘Yes. Caroline. Wife number two.’
Jane looked towards the door into the hall. ‘I totally understand that thing now,’ she said. ‘The whiteboard.’
‘Yes. The Board of Harmony. Thank God for it. Thank God for Maya.’ He blew out his breath audibly, to hold back a sudden wave of tearfulness.
Jane looked at him compassionately. ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, how did Maya die?’
‘Well, technically, she died of a blow to the head and massive internal bleeding after being knocked down by a night bus on Charing Cross Road at three thirty in the morning. But, officially, we have no idea how she ended up being knocked down by a night bus on Charing Cross Road at three thirty in the morning.’ He shrugged.
‘So it wasn’t suicide?’
‘Well. The verdict was accidental death, but people like Maya, sensible, moderate people, don’t tend to accidentally get so drunk they can’t stand up and then fall in front of a bus on Charing Cross Road at three thirty in the morning. So …’
‘A big question mark.’
‘Yes. A very big question mark.’
‘God, I bet you wish you knew.’
Adrian exhaled. ‘I sure do. It’s hard to move on, without answers.’
‘Do you have a theory?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing. It was completely out of the blue. We’d just got back from Suffolk, from a family holiday. We’d had a lovely time. She’d spent the day with my children.’ He paused, pulling himself back from the dark place he always went to when considering the last inexplicable hours of Maya’s life. ‘We were happy. We were trying for a baby. Everything was perfect.’
‘Was it?’
He glanced at her curiously. It sounded like an accusation. ‘Yes,’ he said, almost harshly. ‘It really, really was.’
Jane let her hand fall slowly from her collarbone and on to her lap. ‘So young,’ she whispered.
‘So young,’ he echoed.
‘Tragic.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Awful.’
‘Yeah.’
And there it was, like a cold draught, right on cue. The Awkward Silence. Maya’s death was a conversational cul-de-sac. It didn’t matter whom he was talking to, eventually there would come the moment when there was Nothing Left to Say. But it was Unseemly to Change the Subject. It happened much sooner with strangers.
‘Right,’ she said brusquely, springing to her feet. ‘I’d better get on.’
‘Oh,’ he said, taken aback. ‘Right. And what about Billie? Are you feeling more of a connection today?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am, actually. But I’m not going to take her. I’m going to leave her. With you. I think you need her.’
He looked at her. And then at the cat. And he knew she was right. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Yes. You’re right. I do.’
She smiled knowingly at him. ‘Good,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking, really. I think I thought it was a positive thing. Moving on. You know.’
‘Ah,’ she said, picking up her handbag. ‘Moving on is something that happens to you, not something you do. That’s what people don’t realise. Moving on is not proactive. It’s organic.’ She got to her feet. ‘Be kind to yourself.’ She smoothed down the skirt of her knitted dress, shook her blond hair over her shoulders and collected her coat from the arm of the sofa.
Adrian stared at her. Moving on is not proactive. Why had no one ever said that to him before? Why did everyone keep telling him what he should do to make himself feel better? Get away for a while. Join a dating site. Have some therapy. Move house. Throw things away.
And he didn’t want to do any of those things. He did not want to move on. He wanted to stay exactly where he was. Subsumed and weighted down by the sheer hell of grief. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Yes. Thank you. I will.’
She glanced again at the Board of Harmony as he saw her off at the door. ‘What did you get her?’ she asked.
‘Er …?’
‘Pearl? For her birthday?’
‘Oh,’ he said, taken aback again by her familiarity. ‘I got her ice skates.’
Jane nodded. ‘That’s nice.’
‘I get her ice skates every year. She’s an ice skater. Been skating since she was tiny, five or something. She’s quite brilliant … she wins things … cups and trophies. Spends all her spare time up at Ally Pally, training.’
Jane’s eyes widened. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s impressive. At such a young age. To have a focus. Unusual, in this day and age.’
‘Yes. Indeed. I don’t know where she gets it from. When I was ten I just wanted to sit in trees throwing things at people.’
Jane smiled, but did not laugh. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘well, it’s been nice to meet you, Adrian. And your sweet cat. I hope it all works out between the two of you.’
‘Yes. I think it might now. Thanks to you.’
She took his hand in hers and shook it. Her hand was cool and slick. Adrian felt a sudden swell of panic as she loosened her grip on him, something primal and base. He wanted to say: Don’t go! Have more tea! Ask me more questions! Don’t leave me here!
Instead he patted her shoulder, felt the downy softness of her immaculate woollen coat beneath his fingers, and said, ‘Lovely to meet you, Jane. Do take care.’
‘You too, Adrian. Good luck with everything.’
He closed the door behind her and went immediately to the window to watch her leave. He shared the back of the sofa with Billie, watching as Jane turned left and then stopped and, quite unexpectedly, pulled from her neat handbag a packet of cigarettes. He watched her take a plastic lighter from another section of the bag and light a cigarette with it, inhale, replace the lighter, shut the bag and walk away briskly towards the high street, a ghostly shadow of smoke trailing behind her.
In the context of Adrian’s many children Beau was very, very small, but striding out of his classroom door, towering over his classmates, he looked like the tallest boy in the world. Adrian scooped him up from his feet and squeezed him hard before depositing him back on to the tarmac.
Beau looked behind Adrian. ‘Is it just you?’ he asked, passing Adrian his school bag.
‘Yes. Just me.’
‘Are we getting Pearl, too?’
‘Yes, of course we’re getting Pearl, too. It’s her birthday!’
‘Where are we going?’
They squeezed themselves through the crowd of children and parents blocking up the infants’ playground. Adrian smiled at the occasional familiar face. He had Beau’s hand inside his, small and dry, like a good-luck charm. ‘It’s a surprise.’
‘For Pearl’s birthday?’
‘Yes. For Pearl’s birthday.’
‘Is Otis coming?’
‘No. He’s doing something at school. So it’s just you, me and Pearl.’
Beau nodded approvingly.
Pearl looked haughty and regal, as she always did, standing tall amongst her classmates, her hands in the pockets of her padded coat, peering disconsolately from under her big bear-shaped furry hat across the sea of heads, as though she couldn’t think what she was doing in this place. But as her gaze caught his, her face softened and she skipped like a small child across the playground towards his open arms.
‘Daddy!’ she breathed into his overcoat. ‘What are you doing here? Mum said Cat was getting me. She said you were busy, that you were coming for dinner later.’
‘We were both lying,’ he said. ‘So that I could surprise you.’
Pearl smiled.
‘Happy birthday, baby girl.’ He kissed the top of her head.
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, smiling embarrassedly at a passing friend.
He walked his two youngest children to the bus stop outside the school.
‘Where are we going?’ said Pearl.
‘We are going to the cinema. To see something called We Bought a Zoo. And then Mummy, Cat and Otis are going to come and meet us for dinner.’
Beau punched the air and Pearl smiled enigmatically.
‘Is that nice?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Pearl, brushing her arm against his affectionately. ‘It’s good.’
Adrian smiled with relief. In the language of Pearl, ‘good’ was equivalent to any number of superlative, multi-syllable adjectives and he basked momentarily in the warm glow of her approval. They sat on the top deck of a bus that crawled through the school-run traffic heading south down Upper Street. Adrian held Pearl’s bear hat in his lap and stroked its ears, Beau stood up at the rail watching the road below and Pearl sat upright, as she always did, as she had since she was a tiny child, staring imperiously at the shops, answering Adrian’s questions politely and kindly, but without enthusiasm.
Adrian stared at her profile, during a lull. She looked so like Caroline: all beauty without any pretty, all lines and angles and carpentry. She’d never been a chatty child, not like Luke and Otis, his big boys, who used to wake each morning with a dozen fully formed questions spilling from their just-opened mouths, who would talk through films and stories and car journeys and not stop until they fell asleep. Cat, his oldest girl, had been more mercurial; sometimes she’d be open and conversational and other times she’d be closed. Beau was just your regular five-year-old. He and Caroline used to say that he was the one they’d bought off the shelf after doing extensive research. The perfect textbook baby and now the sweet, uncomplicated child. But Pearl – she was not like the others. She was the ice queen. Maya used to call her the Empress. Even as a baby she had held herself back from the heat of intimacy and affection, as if it might burn her.
‘I can’t believe my baby girl is ten,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It feels like I was only born, like, six years ago.’
‘You’re all getting so big.’
‘I’m the biggest in my class,’ said Beau.
‘So am I,’ said Pearl.
‘No, I mean so old. So not babies any more.’
‘I don’t feel like I ever was a baby,’ said Pearl.
‘No,’ said Adrian, smiling. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’
The film was gentle and moving. It featured a dead mother. This brought a lot of commentary from Beau about the fact of Maya being dead, and how maybe they too should buy a zoo, even though Maya hadn’t been his real mummy. Pearl sat pensively through the sad bits and Adrian watched her for clues to her true feelings about Maya’s death less than a year ago, because Pearl had never really talked about it. But she was inscrutable, as ever, steely even, her attention never wavering from the screen.