Chapter 29
‘It says the minibar is free,’ says Amy, as she lies back on the huge bed in her room at The Hunter’s Rest, by some distance the New Forest’s most expensive hotel. ‘But it can’t be, can it?’
‘If it says it’s free, then it’s free,’ says Adam. ‘Some hotels do that. Very classy ones.’
‘This one feels classy,’ says Amy. ‘The slippers aren’t even wrapped in plastic.’
She’s glad she rang Adam, they haven’t spoken for a few days, and now she has stuff to tell him.
Will he be interested? Amy isn’t sure. He always says he is, but all her life people have said all sorts of things and ended up breaking her heart regardless.
Why should her husband, in the long run, be any different?
‘Rosie was on Graham Norton,’ says Amy. ‘We got to go backstage, and I met Denzel Washington.’
Adam gives a low whistle. ‘What was Graham Norton like?’
‘He was nice,’ says Amy. ‘He got a selfie with your dad.’
‘Do you mean my dad got a selfie with him?’ Adam asks.
‘I suppose so,’ says Amy. ‘He was very nice about it either way.’
‘What was Denzel Washington like?’
‘He went straight home,’ says Amy.
‘Probably had a long flight,’ says Adam.
‘Rosie mentioned We Solve Murders,’ says Amy. ‘That’s how we got this case.’
It is their anniversary on the 20th. Seven years. Amy was going to fly out and surprise him.
‘The murdered bodyguard, right?’ says Adam.
‘Two murdered bodyguards now,’ says Amy.
‘That’s a lot of murdered bodyguards,’ says Adam. ‘Are you safe?’
‘Safe enough,’ says Amy.
Will Adam end up breaking her heart? On a good day Amy is sure he won’t. On a normal day, like today, she could toss a coin.
Amy likes to avoid emotion when she can, but perhaps she needs to be more like Rosie?
Smoking spliffs with foreign secretaries and physically manhandling Denzel Washington?
Seeing your husband every now and again?
The problem with emotions though is that the good ones are all jumbled up with the bad ones.
You can’t just pick the ones you want. If you choose to feel things, you get the whole job lot.
‘I’m glad you rang,’ says Adam. ‘It’s boring here. Why don’t you solve the murders and come out?’
‘To Saudi Arabia?’
It’s the love that’s the problem. Amy had a foster placement when she was nine.
Paula and Grant, two kids of their own already, their house not big, but big enough.
Amy had her own room, but eventually chose to share with their younger daughter.
They would stay up for hours, the two of them.
Amy wishes she could remember what they’d talk about.
‘I miss you,’ says Adam. ‘There’s a nice gym at the hotel. And I think they even let you drive these days.’
She’d been with Paula and Grant for six months, and had started to let her guard down, started to feel part of the family. Started to feel loved. The sort of thing she and the other misshapes always dreamt about but never talked about.
‘How’s Rosie?’ Adam asks.
‘I left her in the pub with your dad,’ says Amy. ‘Last thing I saw, she was standing on the bar singing “American Pie”. I went to her book launch the other day.’
‘What was that like?’ Adam asks.
Amy remembers they were planning a holiday, the whole family. To Lanzarote. Paula showed her pictures of the hotel in a brochure. The sun was shining in every photo. It had three pools. Amy couldn’t stop thinking about it. Which pool they’d go to on which day, she had it all figured out.
‘Apparently Ian McEwan is surprisingly buff?’
‘Who’s Ian McEwan?’ says Adam. Good. This is why she married him.
‘I thought you might know,’ says Amy. ‘Everyone there seemed to know. How’s Saudi Arabia?’
‘Lucrative,’ says Adam. ‘Thank goodness.’
‘What time is it there?’
‘One in the morning,’ says Adam. ‘I’ve been waiting up for you to call, eating the world’s most expensive bag of cashew nuts and watching The Big Bang Theory in Arabic.’
Amy woke in Paula and Grant’s house one night, this was perhaps a month before they were due to go on holiday. She heard voices raised in anger. That was the static that accompanied every day of her early life. The thing she thought she had left behind. Now it was Paula’s and Grant’s voices.
‘It’s lovely to hear your voice,’ says Amy.
Some children like to block out the noise; Amy had always walked towards it, wanting information.
She crept out of the bedroom and sat on the third step down from the landing.
The carpet was a dirty beige with small blue flowers.
She heard Grant shouting at Paula. Shouting about money.
Paula quietened him down, and Amy shuffled down a few more steps.
‘Are you buying something or selling something?’ Amy asks.
‘We’re consulting on integrating AI capabilities into energy-generation technologies,’ says Adam. ‘So, you can imagine, there’s a real party atmosphere here.’
Grant was telling Paula she was getting too attached to Amy.
Taking her on holiday for goodness’ sake?
Lanzarote? What will the girl think? Paula said something that Amy couldn’t catch, and Grant barked a laugh and said if she thought they could afford three teenaged girls in the same house, then she had a screw loose.
‘Is AI going to kill us all by the way?’ Amy asks.
‘Probably not,’ says Adam. ‘But maybe. That seems to be the consensus.’
‘Is there anything I can do about it?’ asks Amy.
‘Not really,’ says Adam. ‘It’s like the tide now, it’ll go where it wants. Just stay away from the cliffs.’
Amy packed a small bag the next day and disappeared on her school lunch break.
The police caught up with her soon enough, and it was decided – who knows who by – to return her to the children’s home.
She didn’t go to Lanzarote, has never been, didn’t even go on a plane until she was eighteen. She never saw Paula and Grant again.
‘But maybe AI will cure cancer?’ says Amy.
‘Yep,’ says Adam. ‘It might do that.’
‘Swings and roundabouts, then,’ says Amy.
‘Swings and roundabouts,’ agrees Adam.
The other thing Amy decided to do was never to dream again. Why take that risk? Once you’re in the clouds, it’s a long way down.
‘They’ve got nice robes here,’ says Adam. ‘Supposed to be his and hers, but they’re the same size.’
Amy wishes, just for one day, that she could be normal.
And listen, sure, she’s read enough Instagram posts to know that no one is ‘normal’.
Except they are, aren’t they? Plenty of people are. Plenty of people find their way through life. They love, they’re loved, they face the world with eyes wide open. There are normal people. People riding bikes through parks and sitting in the sun with a pint and a paper.
But not Amy.
Amy will always be that nine-year-old girl sitting on the third step down, tracing tiny blue flowers with her finger while her world falls apart.
‘I miss you,’ says Adam. ‘I’m so pleased you rang.’
‘Thank you for putting up with me.’
They should be together for their anniversary. That would be the normal thing to do.
‘Nothing to put up with,’ says Adam. ‘Enjoy your slippers.’
They blow each other kisses until, as always, Adam lets Amy end the call.