The Missing Marriage (19 page)

Confronted by the cataclysmic, a vague sense of horror had settled over Greg, immobilising him at a moment when he most felt like running – number two Marine Drive had lost its appeal.

‘You remember Greg, don't you Martha?' Laura persisted brightly.

‘I saw dad – I saw him,' Martha yelled, her face suddenly red, the muscles on her neck defined, her eyes wide, and scared. ‘He was standing under a tree outside school. He was just standing there. He had blond hair and there was a dog with him, but I knew immediately – it was him.' The next minute Martha burst into tears. ‘Say something!'

Laura's smile had gone.

‘Martha!' she called out as Martha, running and still crying, left the house.

She turned back to Greg, clutching the fridge door in one hand and the bottle of wine in the other, but couldn't think of anything to say.

On the other side of the fences lining the back gardens of Marine Drive, cars on the coastal road swerved to avoid the girl in school uniform running, oblivious, through the traffic. A van driver supplying custom-made blinds yelled something incoherent at her retreating back as, blue shirt billowing around her now in the wind from the incoming tide, she fled down past the play park and onto the dunes.

But nobody stopped.

As the speedometers flickered back up to forty and beyond, the girl became nothing more than a speck of blue and red on the line of dunes in the wing mirrors and rear-view mirrors of traffic heading north.

Martha sat down in a hollow above the beach.

She wasn't crying any more, but her eyes were wet and stinging from the wind that had blown the last of the tears away, and she was sweating heavily. She drew her knees up and sat hugging them as she listened to the sea's incoming roar.

After a while she phoned Anna.

Anna parked the Capri on the headland by the Kings Arms – a three-storey stone building painted white, overlooking the natural harbour at Seaton Sluice, which local history claimed was the birthplace of the industrial revolution.

She could see Martha, in her school uniform – sitting in the bus stop by the old customs house where she'd told her to wait.

Martha had seen Anna – was standing up, waving, and making her way towards her, running the last few hundred yards and slamming into her as she'd done on the drive outside her house the night Bryan disappeared.

‘Let's go onto the beach,' Anna said after a while.

Holding hands, they slid down the steep grass bank onto the harbour-side, following it round – past a red fishing boat swinging sharply from side to side – onto the beach. They walked slowly, in silence, following the line of debris from the last high tide – the sea had almost reached it now. The wind was strong down on the beach, but warm – and they had to shout to make themselves heard.

‘What did he look like?'

Martha stopped. ‘He looked like dad.'

‘I mean – had he changed his appearance in any way?'

‘He had this weird blond hair, and there was a white dog with him – a big white dog. I don't know what the breed was,' Martha said, worried, ‘but all I saw was dad. To me he looked just like dad.' When Anna didn't comment on this, she added, ‘And he looked sad – I never saw him look so sad.'

Ahead of them there was a group of school children hurling bits of driftwood at each other. Without saying anything, they turned and started heading back towards the harbour.

‘He's alive, Anna,' Martha said, suddenly excited as the wind blew the last of the shock away, and young enough not to see any difficulties or obstacles in this potential fact. ‘He wants me to know he's still alive.' She broke into a run, running hard along the beach until – out of breath – she was forced to stop and wait for Anna, who was walking towards her thinking of the drawing that was posted through her door the day of Erwin's funeral. That was over two months ago – she hadn't seen, heard or received anything else since.

Part of her wasn't convinced Martha had seen Bryan.

Part of her was still open to the possibility that it was Martha who'd sent her the drawing – using the spectre of Bryan to remain connected to her.

But all the other parts of her wanted more than anything to believe that the man Martha saw standing under the chestnut tree outside school, and the person who sent her the drawing the day of Erwin's funeral – was Bryan Deane.

‘What did your mum say?'

‘Fuck her.' Martha drew her foot through the sand in a long arc then looked out to sea for a moment, distracted by the memory of Greg in the kitchen. She'd almost forgotten about Greg.

‘D'you think we should tell the Inspector?'

Anna thought about this. ‘I don't know.'

‘Why?' Martha demanded, immediately distrustful – as if Anna's comment was indicative of doubt on her part.

Anna knew what Martha was thinking. ‘Because,' she explained, ‘so far, you're the only one who knows, and I've got a feeling that your dad wants as few people as possible to know he's alive.'

Martha, who'd been listening carefully, smiled suddenly. ‘Okay,' she said, ‘we'll keep him for ourselves.'

There was a simplicity to what she said that was dangerous in itself. But Anna nodded, smiling at the complicity of it, and the next minute, feeling a lightness she hadn't felt in years, caught hold of Martha's elbow and said, ‘Race you to the harbour!'

They started to run, the wind behind them now, the boats in the harbour restless, rocking, tired of their anchors.

In the heavy silence following first Martha then Greg's departure, Laura stood motionless in the hallway until the quality of light started to change, casting longer slow-moving shadows over the beige walls.

Eventually she came to, startled by the sound of the doorbell ringing in the empty house and looking about her with something close to anguish. She hadn't yet switched on any lights inside the house.

Falling into the doorframe as she made her way to the front door – badly bruising her left shoulder – she stared at her wind-torn daughter.

‘Where the hell have you been?' she shouted, louder than she meant to and catching Mrs McClaren – who'd just returned from swimming lessons and who was in the process of emptying her car of children – staring at them.

Mrs McClaren hesitated then waved.

Laura didn't wave back; instead she grabbed hold of Martha's thin arm and hauled her indoors.

‘Where the hell have you been?' she said again, whispering now even though there was no point because they were indoors.

Martha stared at her the same way Mrs McClaren had done just seconds earlier – as if they had components inside them that were superior to those inside Laura herself.

‘Are we going to talk about this?' Laura demanded.

Martha walked past her, in silence, up the stairs.

Laura followed; the door to Martha's room slammed in her face – she pushed it open so forcefully that CDs started to fall out the rack on the wall.

‘You don't believe me,' Martha said at last, ‘so what's the point?'

Laura picked up the CDs from where they'd fallen onto the floor, putting them back in the rack – some of the cases had come apart.

After a while, watching her, Martha said, ‘I saw him outside school – he was standing under a tree on the opposite side of the road. He had a dog with him,' she concluded, flatly.

‘What sort of dog?' Laura asked. ‘Big . . . white.'

‘Have you told anybody else?'

‘I don't want to talk about this any more,' Martha said sullenly. She swung away from Laura, but she could feel her mother's eyes on her still. ‘What was Greg doing here?'

‘Greg?' Laura, distracted, sounded surprised at the mention of his name. ‘Oh. I'm thinking of putting the house on the market. It's something we discussed – dad and I – before –'

Martha was shaking her head, and Laura knew what was coming next. She stood up.

‘No,' Martha said, her voice loud with disbelief. ‘No!'

Laura started to leave the room. ‘You're right,' she called back through the open door, from the top of the stairs. ‘I don't believe you.' She paused. ‘A big white dog?' She started to laugh.

Later that night – after telling Martha she was going to a Pilates class – Laura drove back along the coastal road towards the Royal Quays Marina at North Shields on a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé.

She parked the car in the usual bay and, looking up at the waterside flats, saw that the Polish woman was no longer reading on her balcony and that the balcony door to their flat was open, which meant that Tom must be there.

The purchase of the marina flat – an investment neither of them had the stomach or imagination for; not really – had, within a very few months, come to signal their downfall financially as the property plunged into negative equity and they were left unable to either sell it or rent it.

The edge of life together as they knew it emerged suddenly on the horizon, beyond which lay an abysmal darkness.

The darkness had always been there, but now they could see the edge the threshold between them and it had gone. For months Laura found herself holding her breath while Bryan moved slowly, silently about the house – without expression, hovering somewhere between occupied and preoccupied. He'd respond to her with polite intonations that left her wondering, most of the time, whether he was about to make them tea or saw his own head off with the bread knife.

Their marriage was no longer the blood sport it had always been.

They'd had their last fight.

Bryan's disappearance had been Laura's idea – it was the only thing she could come up with to prevent him from actually disappearing. She knew it was a risk, him living in the marina flat after they got back from Uruguay, but she wanted to keep him close while he experienced the freedom of death.

She hurried now across the car park and into the Ropemakers Building, taking the lift up to level three where their flat was, and letting herself in.

Tom was outside, smoking on the balcony, his arms hanging over the steel railings as he stared down at the marina and River Tyne. There was a stillness to him that was different to the stasis she'd known before, in the months leading up to his disappearance – it was a stillness full of the promise of movement.

The dining table was covered with sketches that were weighed down, but the edges kept curling up and crackling in the breeze that passed through the flat, lifting the curtains hanging at the balcony door into the air. The Husky – the big, white dog Martha had seen outside school that afternoon – lay along the sofa in a block of evening sunshine.

They'd decorated the marina flat themselves like it was their first place together. All memory of the four-bedroom detached house on Marine Drive and the life they'd lived there was painted over – in cornflower blue, it was eventually decided.

‘Blue's my favourite colour,' Bryan had said, awkwardly.

Laura, quietly stunned, ‘It is?'

She felt like crying when he said the word ‘blue' – it was something he should have said twenty years ago; that she should have encouraged him to say, but never did.

With this revelation, she conceded – the flat became Bryan's flat – and they painted it blue, to music they used to dance to, played on LPs that – along with Bryan's old record player – had been retrieved from the attic on Marine Drive and driven over to North Shields like childhood contraband.

They painted drunk and stoned and everything they touched – including each other – was charged with the eroticism of potential. The rows and disputes they had in the flat led to reconciliation rather than retribution, and although the reconciliation sometimes took place in the bed that Laura had bought new bed linen for from Bainbridges in Newcastle, it also took place on rugs in the living room, the kitchen floor, up against the fridge door – where she discovered the newfound pleasure of climaxing with her back up against stainless steel – the bath, the dining table, the sofa and somewhere close enough to the front door for her nipples to freeze in the draught coming under it.

They'd got to this point – love again – Laura thought, as she turned the key in the door, aware that if she opened it to find Laviolette standing there, she wouldn't care as much as she should, because she'd had this: they'd become magnificent again, in each other's eyes.

The terrifying banality of things that used to plunge them into life-threatening rows at number two Marine Drive – running out of milk, a blocked sink, a mysterious scratch on the fridge door – Laura embraced in the flat as proof of a romantic negligence.

Two weeks before Easter Saturday she'd brought over some bin liners full of clothes she told Mrs McClaren she was taking to charity shops. These clothes that Bryan had worn at number two Marine Drive, looked different on Tom Bowen when worn against the cornflower blue walls of the marina flat. Likewise, Tom not only noticed what she was wearing – he noticed what she wasn't wearing. It had got to the point at number two Marine Drive when Bryan was able to conduct a conversation with her walking naked round the bedroom – about getting the gutters cleaned after autumn's fall.

Tom turned round instinctively then, his eyes thin as he exhaled the last of his cigarette before throwing the stub over the edge of the balcony.

‘The door,' Laura said.

He shut the door, catching one of the curtains in it so that it carried on flapping on the other side of the glass.

Laura stared at him, waiting for him to speak.

But he didn't say anything.

Distracted, he walked over to the table and thumbed through a couple of his sketches.

‘What were you thinking?' she hissed at last, dropping her handbag onto the sofa by the Husky and crossing over to him, pulling hard on his left arm – anger giving way to relief now that he was here in front of her again. ‘This afternoon – what were you thinking?' she demanded.

He sat down, staring absently at the dog stretched out on the sofa still.

‘I needed to see her. I miss her,' he said, letting out a soft sob that turned into a cough – he was coughing a lot since starting smoking again.

The sob shocked Laura.

He was upset, disintegrating in front of her, and she couldn't think of anything to say apart from, ‘It's going to be fine.'

‘God – Martha. What were we thinking? What
were
we thinking?'

‘It's going to be fine,' she said again, barely aware of what she was saying.

‘How's it going to be fine?' He stood up, and went over to the balcony doors and his posture as he stood there staring out to sea made the flat feel suddenly tiny.

‘We've got this far,' she said bravely.

‘And it feels too far.'

‘We're nearly there, Bryan.'

He smiled briefly and turned to look at her, unconvinced, ‘But it's still not far enough, is it? Not yet.'

‘They've got to pronounce you dead sooner or later – this can't go on indefinitely. The hardest part's behind us. You disappeared.'

‘I know I did, and I miss me, Laura. I miss me.'

‘No you don't,' she said sharply, keeping her eyes fixed on his. ‘And neither do I.'

The only thing that had kept their marriage up and running at Marine Drive was their ability to lie to themselves and each other. Now the only chance they had of seeing this through was in telling the truth.

She stood up and joined him by the balcony doors. ‘I can't stop thinking about you. I haven't felt like this since I was eighteen, Bryan, and eighteen's a long time ago. We're going to make this work. We're going to do all the things we talked about. This is our second chance and we have to look after it.'

He stood limply beside her, his arms hanging down, and for one awful moment she thought he was going to burst into tears like he'd done when she picked him up that Easter Saturday and driven him to Newcastle's Haymarket Bus Station, as planned. Only things hadn't gone quite as planned – almost didn't happen at all – because of the fog that day.

‘It's not too late.' She finished the sentence with more of an inflexion than she'd meant to so that it was left hanging between them, an unanswered question. ‘Everything we need is here in this flat.'

He smiled sadly at her and passed his hand down the side of her face. ‘Apart from Martha.'

She put her hands over his, pressing it against her cheek.

He was holding her now, absently kissing the top of her hair as she watched the sun lower itself fatly onto the horizon.

The tension had gone, and Laura felt as if the moment contained her entire life and that her entire life had somehow managed to fit itself into this sun filled room.

‘I was so scared this afternoon,' she said, after a while. ‘The flat was empty and I didn't know where you were, and I thought, what if you just decided to go? What if this time you really had disappeared?'

She needed him to say something; reassure her, but he just pulled gently away, distracted again now.

He opened the balcony doors, breathing in the night air, and for some reason, watching him, she felt affronted – it was as if he was trying to curtail any further intimacy.

‘You won't do it again, will you?' she persisted.

He stepped onto the balcony, resuming his earlier pose by the railings. ‘Won't do what?'

‘Disappear like that.'

He didn't answer at first, staring intently up at the sky as if trying to find something new up there. When he eventually turned to her, it was to say, ‘Did you go to Erwin Faust's funeral?'

And at the mention of the name, Faust, there was Anna – where she always was – standing there between them.

Martha was sitting on the sofa watching TV with the sound off while listening to one of Bryan's Led Zeppelin CDs. She'd drunk almost half a bottle of vodka and was feeling vaguely sick when the doorbell rang so she got up slowly, aware that her head was starting to hurt.

She saw – simultaneously – the man in the front porch and the white van parked on the street, and realised who it was.

They stood staring at each other, neither of them moving.

Jamie's face wore a large uncomfortable smile that gradually slid off in a way that made it look as though he was rapidly being emptied of himself. He continued to stare at her, his eyes wide and shot through with red, the two veins on either side of his forehead, pronounced.

‘Laura,' he said hoarsely, leaving his mouth hanging open in his unshaven face.

Martha, unsure, remained holding onto the door, watching the spider's web that was tattooed across the left hand side of his neck ripple as he stretched out his hand and ran it over her hair.

She somehow stood still until he lifted his hand from her head, running it instead over the silver number two in the brickwork to the side of the door – illuminated by a small uplighter – as if all this pleased him.

‘I'm Martha,' she whispered.

‘Martha,' he repeated as the street lights blinked on to orange. ‘The daughter.'

He caught his lower lip beneath his teeth then his face broke into a smile, and everything was suddenly brought back up to speed. ‘Fucking terrified me, you did,' he carried on in the same hoarse voice, ‘when you first opened that door and I saw you standing there.'

‘Sorry,' Martha apologised.

‘The hair . . . everything. I wasn't expecting that. It made me feel – I don't know – somehow wounded.' He shook his head at her then swung away, his eyes running over the other houses on the street. The spider's web was broken up now by the creases in his neck as he tilted his head back to exhale, and his hair was so short she could see the white skin of his scalp. This provoked a rising pity in her, and she was too young to realise that pity was a dangerous emotion, so stayed standing in the doorway – able to hear Led Zeppelin playing on the sitting room stereo still. ‘But not the eyes,' he said, swinging back towards her. ‘You've got kind eyes.'

He got a pack of Benson and Hedges from his pocket and sat down on the edge of the porch.

Martha watched him light up – flicking the ash into one of Laura's ornamental bays.

‘Is she here?'

Martha hesitated then shook her head.

‘Know when she'll be back?'

Martha shook her head again then carried on watching him, her head hurting now. She saw Mrs McClaren run past – resplendent in neon Lycra – raising her arm in a wave, but didn't wave back.

‘They never told you about me, did they?' he said, squinting up at her. ‘You had no idea I even existed.' He stood up and ran his hand over her hair again, which made her spine tingle and her stomach feel strange.

Without knowing why, she felt an overwhelming urge to step onto the porch, take hold of him and dance down the drive. She could picture them, clearly, dancing up Marine Drive, across the main road and over the dunes onto the beach.

‘You phoned – Easter Sunday. You phoned mum's mobile, but I picked up.'

‘Easter Sunday,' Jamie repeated, thinking about this. ‘That was you?'

Martha nodded, pleased. ‘You sounded so like dad, I thought –'

‘That was you?' Jamie said again, interrupting her. His eyes were as wide open as they'd been when she first opened the door, only more preoccupied. ‘Did you tell her I'd phoned?'

‘I told her.' Martha hesitated. ‘She said you'd been in prison – but that doesn't explain why she was so scared.'

‘Did she say why I was in prison?'

‘You killed a man.'

‘She told you that?'

‘No – a friend did.'

Jamie contemplated her blankly.

‘Well your friend was wrong. I never killed nobody.'

‘Then, why –'

‘I lost my alibi.' Before Martha had time to comment on this, Jamie said, ‘They knew I hadn't done it.'

‘Who?'

‘The police. They wanted me because I already had a string of convictions for GBH. They told me again and again what I'd done and how I'd done it until I started thinking maybe I did do it. I had to keep on telling myself, I couldn't of done it because the afternoon that man was killed . . . I spent that afternoon with Laura. We were together.' He looked suddenly agitated. ‘We were together that whole afternoon.'