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‘Darling?’ Robert’s voice is gentle, yet still it makes her jump. She looks up at him from her nest of torn newspaper, her hands black from it. It is nine o’clock and she has already been up for four hours. She sees concern on his face. She looks a wreck. At forty-nine, you can’t get away with not sleeping and think it won’t show. Of course he notices her pale, dark-ringed face.

‘I wanted to make a start before Nicholas comes. To make it easier for him,’ she lies, and looks around at the chaos.

‘It can wait. There’s no rush. Let him do it.’ He puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Scrambled eggs?’

She nods. She is starving. She always is now she doesn’t sleep. She follows him downstairs and slumps into a chair at the kitchen table, a dead weight in the room.

‘Shall I do lunch?’ he suggests. Nicholas is coming for Sunday roast and she has bought a chicken.

‘No, no, I’d like to,’ she says. She knows it will make her feel better if she can play her proper role and disguise herself in the smell of roasting meat juices.

She can see the book at the far end of the kitchen table. She had hoped that removing it from their bedroom would give her some peace. Robert is watching her, nursing questions in his head. Is she depressed? Is it the move? He is about to speak, but Catherine gets in first. She has been nursing her own question, preoccupied, playing with it, and so doesn’t notice Robert’s intake of breath, his preparation for speech. If she had, she might not have plucked up the courage to ask:

‘Is that your book?’

She makes sure her mouth is full so she appears casual as she nods to the end of the table. Robert glances over and reaches for the book, sliding it towards him. He takes a while to answer. When it comes, his answer is dismissive: a shake of the head.

‘Any good?’ He picks it up, turning it over, reading the blurb on the back.

She swallows. ‘Not really. Bit slow.’ She watches him turn it over again and look at the cover.

‘The Perfect Stranger,’
he reads. ‘What’s it about?’

She shrugs. ‘Oh, it’s nonsense. Weak plot. Implausible.’

And he tosses it aside. Carelessly. No thought. Treating it in a way she wishes she could.

‘Why?’

‘I thought it might be yours,’ she ventures.

‘Thanks,’ he says, but she misses the smile in his voice.

‘I don’t remember buying it, that’s all. I wondered where it came from …’ Her voice trails off as she stands and takes her plate to the dishwasher. Robert shrugs at the book, wondering why she’s so interested in it, thinking it’s merely a diversion from the thing that is really worrying her. He is convinced that she is trying to make conversation and this concerns him. They’re not that kind of couple. They don’t need to ‘make conversation’. They are close – closer now than they’ve been in years. He recognizes the signs: Catherine at home with too much time on her hands; too much time looking inwards; thinking about herself.

‘Cath. You’ve done a great job on the house – it already feels like home. But I know you too well. You’re itching to get back to work, aren’t you?’

She looks at him. He honestly believes that.

‘I love that you’re not a domestic goddess. You should be off making another film, not stuck here, unpacking boxes and dressing the house.’

Her eyes fill with tears, confirmation to Robert that he is right. He is her rock. She lets him believe it. ‘You’re right, I know I’ve been distracted—’

He cuts in. ‘So go back – there was no need to take two weeks off. Most of it’s done anyway and the rest we can do together in the evenings, weekends. There are only a few boxes left. Why not?’

‘Yes, why not.’ She manages a smile. And then her brain sparks to life. She remembers. She remembers how the book came to be in their home. It’s seeing it sitting on the table. An image she remembers. It was soon after they moved. The table had been littered with stuff. A box full of glasses half unpacked, screwed-up scraps of newspaper tickling the book’s cover as it sat there patiently, waiting for her to pick it up. A pile of unopened post and a jiffy bag, its grey fluff exposed where she’d ripped it open. And from which she had taken the book. The envelope had been forwarded on to them. She remembers the thick red ink which had crossed out their old address and written on the new. She can feel Robert’s eyes on her as she clears away the rest of the breakfast things; her renewed energy confirms to him that he was right. He knows her so well.

Thoughts fizz through her head: the book was sent to their old address, so whoever sent it doesn’t know where she is now. They did not come into her home, into her bedroom. She will telephone the family who moved into their old house. She will ask them not to forward on anything else. It’s too much trouble, she’ll say. She’s happy to come and collect anything. Perhaps she will go further. Perhaps she will say that they’ve had a couple of nuisance letters, nothing too serious but they’d rather not have anything else forwarded on. And if anyone asks for their address, please would they say that they don’t have it? Or their phone number, no they mustn’t give out the phone number. She decides all this while kissing Robert on the forehead and going upstairs to have a shower. She will do all this tomorrow though, not today. Today she will concentrate on Nicholas, on her family. On having a proper Sunday together.

8

Two years earlier

I hoped that working on a book about eighteenth-century monoliths would keep my head clear – that it would divert my mind from dwelling on Nancy’s betrayal. That’s how I thought of it then. I thought of her secret as a betrayal. I tried not to. I tried very hard to concentrate on writing about the Martello tower. I had propped a photograph of one on the dresser shelf above the collection of postcards Jonathan sent from his travels. It squatted there, lumpen and grey, so I took it down again. How could I concentrate? There was a sliver of metal rattling around in my head. A tiny shaft of silver taunting me from my desktop. Attached to the spare keys to Jonathan’s flat which I had found in Nancy’s bag was another smaller key. Too small for a front door but a key to something else, a key to something that was in his home, not mine. It caught the light and winked at me every time I tried to focus on my work. Who did I think I was? A man with ten-foot walls to protect him from the past? I wasn’t built like a Martello tower. I was a man with thin, crêpey skin who needed to find out what else his wife might have hidden. I was human, at least. That slip of a key had burned a hole in my head and I knew I wouldn’t be able to write anything until I had unlocked its secret.

Jonathan’s flat is at the top of a mansion block, pre-war, built in the thirties. There is no lift but someone has thought about those of us who might struggle to reach the top and they have put a chair on each landing. I sat in every one. Onwards and upwards. I dragged myself up the last flight and then looked down, through the beautiful wrought-iron balustrade which curved and fell to the cold stone floor. A softly curving funnel through which a human might swallow-dive, not touching the sides, slipping through until they ended in a bloody mess at the bottom. I had a feeling that I shouldn’t have come, that I had no right to intrude. This was Jonathan’s place.

The plant outside his front door was dead. It hadn’t been watered for some time. I put the key in the lock. There was probably a knack to it, but I didn’t have it and it seemed to take for ever to get in, and all the time I was expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and ask what I was doing there.

Once inside I was struck by the most terrible smell. Putrefying. Something rotten, something dying or dead. I went straight into the kitchen, assuming it must have been in the bin, but that was empty. On the kitchen table was a vase of flowers. Dead, dried, crisp, just a green line around the vase where the water had once been. I hesitated, not sure it was my place to throw them out. I went into the sitting room and sat on Jonathan’s sofa and looked around. I could see the unmistakable signs of femininity. More flowers on the small table by the window. Lifeless, ugly, their parched stems desiccated sticks crying to be put out of their misery. A woman’s touch. I left them where they were. I hadn’t put them there. They were nothing to do with me.

When I walked into Jonathan’s bedroom I gagged from the smell. His bed was unmade, the duvet mussed and falling off. The cover was dark blue, the bottom sheet maroon. It reminded me of school uniform: good dark colours that didn’t show the dirt. The smell came from the corner near Nancy’s desk. I approached it, hand clamped over my nose and mouth, and there it was. A body. Rotting. Neck broken, mouth open, teeth bared, giving off that inside-out stench of putrefaction. I should have known. Death. Always leaving its predatory stench like a lusty tom-cat, long after it has left the scene. I found a plastic bag in the kitchen and, wearing it like a glove, picked up the whole thing, trap and mouse, and disposed of it in the kitchen bin.

I returned to the bedroom and sat at Nancy’s desk. It’s smaller than mine and the tops of my legs rubbed against its underside. It would have been even more of a squeeze for Jonathan, and I imagined his six-foot frame and his strong legs squished into what had been his mother’s space. I was pleased to see it had been taken care of. No rotting flowers there. No water rings from cups, or glasses of water, just an undisturbed film of dust. There were pieces of paper neatly stacked on it and a photograph of Nancy and me. Mum and Dad. Husband and wife. Two people in love. Two people who were loved.

I clicked the switch on the desk light, but the bulb had gone. And then I began my invasion. I pulled at the first drawer and looked inside: empty, apart from the odd pencil stub and leaky biro. I went through the others and found the same. The last drawer was the smallest. Tucked under the desktop, it ran between the two pedestals, a slender hidey-hole. It was locked. I put in the key, turned it then slid the chair aside and pulled open the drawer. And what an industrious place it was. Pens, pencil sharpener, pencils, a box of paper-clips, three notebooks. They were the type Nancy used: blue-lined reporter’s pads, nothing special. She’d always carried one with her when she was writing, filling it with thoughts or sights that struck her, overheard conversations – that sort of thing. I flicked through one, but didn’t give it much attention. It was the manuscript underneath the notebooks that interested me. I picked it up. ‘Untitled’. Someone else’s work, I presumed, because Nancy always came up with her titles first, and it was dated long after I knew she had stopped writing. Was it Jonathan’s? I turned the page. But no, this manuscript was dedicated to Jonathan. He hadn’t written it.
To my son, Jonathan
, I read, and then my wife’s name typed at the bottom of the page: my wife proclaiming her authorship. A book, written in secret and locked away from my prying eyes.

Sticks and stones, I told myself, yet I feared the words on those pages might actually break me. I wasn’t ready for them. There were other objects rattling around in that drawer, cuddling up to my wife’s manuscript: a Swiss army knife; a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a can of deodorant with a cheap, erotic name. I grabbed the deodorant and marched around the flat like a crazed pest controller, shooting
Wildcat!
into the air, covering up the stench of dead animal and everything else that offended my senses. When I was calmer, I put the can back and picked up Nancy’s untitled work, holding it against my chest as if it was a small, trembling creature. I shouldn’t have taken it, it wasn’t mine to take, it was Jonathan’s. But I did take it. I left the notebooks and took the manuscript. Jonathan would never know I’d been there, and I promised myself that I would return it as soon as I had read it.

9

Spring 2013

‘Mum, what do you want me to do with this stuff?’

Catherine finishes her glass of wine and closes her eyes in irritation. Drinking at lunchtime is never a good idea but Robert had opened two bottles of their best wine, and she had been determined to join him and Nicholas in drinking it.

‘Just take what you want and I’ll sort the rest,’ she shouts. Silence. She hears the thump of books and files being dumped on the floor of the spare room. She pushes her chair back, the impatient grind of its legs on the stone setting her teeth on edge.

‘Coffee?’ she hears Robert call to her retreating back.

Nicholas is sitting on the floor in the same position Catherine had been in at dawn.

‘I don’t know what to take.’ He looks bewildered.

‘Take whatever you don’t want thrown out. We haven’t got the space any more, Nick.’ He nods, as if understanding, but she can tell he doesn’t quite get it.

‘Don’t you want any of it?’ And she hears the hurt in his voice. She has done it again. She has hurt him with her impatience and her brisk efficiency.

‘Well,’ she says gently, sitting down next to him, ‘let’s see.’ She picks up a large manila envelope and peers inside. It’s full of Nicholas’s primary-school reports, bound together with an elastic band. Should she take one out and read it? Would he like that? Nicholas’s school reports had always left her with a sinking feeling. What does it matter now though? He is twenty-five. Maybe now they can laugh about it, and she overcomes her resistance and reads a comment from Miss Charles. How well she remembers the permed head and thin lips of Nicholas’s form teacher. It was his last year at primary school and Catherine chooses the comment carefully.

‘Nicholas is a popular member of the class, with both sexes,’ she smiles, leaving out the end of Miss Charles’s sentence: ‘… but he struggles to settle down to his tasks and his work suffers as a result.’ For years, always the same story. Disappointing; more effort needed; he struggles to stay focused. Still, at least in those days he had friends. There seem to have been fewer and fewer of them as the years have gone by.

‘I’ll keep these.’ She smiles, gathering up the envelope and hugging the reports to her chest as if she is fond of them. ‘How’s the flat?’

He shrugs. ‘All right.’

‘Flatmates OK?’