Chapter 29
29
TWO DAYS BEFORE HE LEFT ME
Just as before, James had accused me of making a sick joke. He fought everything I’d said, until: ‘She said she wished you’d never been born.’
I’d wanted to tell him the truth, that we’re getting married, the consuming love we feel for each other, that I know he’s already in love with me, all of it, but I’m don’t tell him that today. Today I decide to keep to the facts as best as I can. I won’t tell him about us; I’ll make this easy for him.
Now, we’re climbing out of the car and facing the building where Rebecca works. It’s tall, white-faced amongst a row of similar offices: accountants, estate agents, a bank. I’ve convinced him that it would be best if he tries to find out the truth rather than me. After all, if she’s having an affair with Kit, I’m the last person she is likely to be honest with. ‘You know there is no guarantee she’ll speak to me, right?’ he says. James had hinted that they had history but wouldn’t tell me any more, saying it was a long time ago.
‘I know, but it’s worth a shot. I just need to know why they met up yesterday. I’ll wait here.’ He nods, fiddles with the neck of his sweater and pulls on the cuffs of his jacket. That’s the same jacket he’ll be wearing next week as we stand in the rain watching the lifeboats bumping across the waves.
‘Right then.’ He eyes the pavement then turns on his heel and walks into the building. I hover outside, not knowing what to do with myself, other than lean against a lamp post like a spy. Do spies hang around lamp posts? I have no idea. James is at the reception desk. I watch the body language from behind the counter, all smiles and hair flicks. It’s funny to see how women respond to James when I’m not around. James isn’t stop-you-in-your-tracks good-looking – broken nose, scar at his lip – but Jesus is he sexy. And then, when he smiles, his whole face changes, and there is this light – like the goodness inside him comes pouring out. I didn’t see the attraction in 2016, when he was all scowls and abrupt replies. I was so wrong.
He walks over to sit on the sofa, glancing in my direction. Then he stands, says something to the receptionist and hurries out of the doors. He looks left and right, crosses the road, hand through his hair.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
‘Nothing. Waiting.’
‘You can’t wait here. She’ll see you and she’s not going to open up about Kit if she can see his girlfriend hovering there like a private detective.’
‘Ha! I was just wondering that: do spies hang around lamp posts?’
‘What?’ His eyebrows quirk and he glances back to the building. ‘Just… find somewhere else to wait. Somewhere less conspicuous. She’s coming down in five minutes.’
‘Righto, boss.’
He frowns again. This must be so strange for him, for me to be so friendly, so familiar. James begins to turn .
‘By the way…’ I interrupt his movements. ‘That receptionist is into you, just in case you’re wondering.’
‘I… I wasn’t.’ But I can see the flush around his neck. Oh he knows all right. I bite back a smile.
‘I’m just saying.’
‘I need to get back.’
The right side of his collar is flicked up. I reach over to straighten it and he pulls away.
‘Sorry.’ Old habits . His eyebrows corrugate, confused.
‘I need to go back,’ he replies.
He turns and strides across the road, straightening his collar as he goes.
I step along the street and sit at a bistro table outside a wooden coffee bar, just far enough to be out of sight but allowing me to still be able to see the reception area.
James stands as she approaches, hand raking through his hair. Her arms are folded across her chest. She sits down with her back to me as they begin speaking. James is leaning forwards, his hands accompanying his words. I see her shaking her head, glancing back to the receptionist. She gets up to walk away. James stands, hands in his back pockets. She stops, then gives him a small smile. It looks like she’s saying a parting word of advice, before she closes the door behind her. James stands and exits the building, crosses the road glancing up and down until he spots me. He walks quickly, eyes down, until he pulls out a chair and sits across from me. He looks agitated.
‘Well?’ I ask.
‘Kit did meet her yesterday.’
‘I know. I told you. I saw them.’
‘But… it’s not what you think. He’s not seeing her, at least not romantically.’
‘So why did they meet? ’
‘She’s investing in his company.’
‘What? That’s not what Kit said; he said she was setting up her own company and needed him to do a website.’
‘Well, he’s lying.’
‘How can you be sure she’s not lying?’
‘I can’t… and I know you don’t much care for my opinions.’ I open my mouth to interrupt to tell him I do, but in 2016, I used to think he was always too cautious, always finding reasons not to go anywhere with us. I close my mouth. ‘For what it’s worth, I believe her.’
‘How much money is she investing?’
‘She wouldn’t say, only that he got in touch, suggested they meet and then asked her, but I get the impression it was a big ask.’
‘And did she give it to him?’
He reaches for a packet of sugar, fiddling with it before replacing it and picking up a napkin, folding the corners into a boat sail. ‘James?’
‘Yes.’
I let this information sink in. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense.’
‘You say that there was nothing out of the ordinary with his finances? But maybe there is before he disappears?’
‘The police looked into it, when he first went missing. There were no big deposits, no big withdrawals. So if what Rebecca is saying is true, what happens to the money?’
‘Maybe he needed it to… to start a new life?’
‘But Kit doesn’t know he’s going to leave. I believe him.’
‘This is messed up. Kit loves you; he would do anything for you, Liv. I honestly don’t think he would leave you intentionally. Which means…’
‘Maybe he didn’t mean to leave for good? Or maybe he intended taking me with him?’
‘Maybe.’ The sugar packet is back in his hand; he rotates it against the top of the table like a square wheel.
He’s silent, but I know the clashes and clambering thoughts that will be going on inside, that noise of the what ifs and the whys that only ever quietened when we were together, only starting to ebb with the passing of time and the slow acceptance of his death.
On the table behind him, a baby starts crying.
James and I talked about having children. We are going to start trying next year. I wonder how he would feel if I told him that right now?
We bumped into an old friend of his a few weeks back, before all of this happened. She used to come to the gym and had recently had a baby. We all chatted on the pavement, ended up sitting down for a coffee. I’d gone to the counter and when I’d looked back, the baby was in James’s arms, his mother rifling through a changing bag. I’d stifled a snigger at the way he was holding it like a trophy, arms outstretched. He glanced up, a look of alarm on his face. By the time I’d returned with the drinks though, James had the baby against him, asleep on his shoulder. Something had passed between us, a softening of a conversation that had seemed so hard to approach, suddenly becoming easy.
‘Did we…’ James begins. ‘During our time together looking for him…’ The together is soft, a trace of a concept, not real, not to him. ‘Did we ever suspect anything was, you know, amiss?’
‘Honestly? No. There is nothing that made me… made us think that. He was fine, James, is fine. At least on the surface.’
Of all the herculean events that I’d thought of – the drowning, the falling, the starving in the dark – this was never one of them.
‘And you said the police checked his finances?’
I nod .
‘So there was no reason we would suspect that he was in trouble?’
‘No. None. It was an accident, a horrific, terrifying accident. We didn’t suspect anything. There really was no reason to.’
My stomach rumbles; James glances at it. I fold my arms across my torso.
He lifts a finger at the woman clearing the table next to him. The action is confident and yet unobtrusive. The girl joins us, a notepad in her hand, blowing her red hair away from her eyes and smiling.
‘Can we have two coffees and—’ He looks to the folded board outside the door of the hut. ‘Two BLTs?’ He raises his eyebrow at me. I nod.
‘Sure,’ she says and scribbles it down, heading inside.
‘Thank you,’ I say. He doesn’t say anything, but he smiles.
There you are, James.
James finishes the other half of my sandwich and we make our way back to the car. It all feels so normal as we walk through town. It’s funny, isn’t it? How most towns look the same but all hold different lives: the woman talking quickly into the phone, sidestepping a man bending down to tie his shoelace; a window cleaner swiping across a café window; a postman smiling as he passes; a father bending down and wiping away the tears of his son; a group of three women, all wearing similar smiles, the same curve of the chin that gets passed down generation by generation. So many lives, so many stories, the same but different all over the world. This feels the same as my real life: walking along, James next to me, the aftertaste of coffee, of lunch .
‘Where does Kit go tomorrow?’ he asks as we continue walking.
I shake my head, trying to push away the thoughts throbbing behind my eyes.
‘A team-building thing. He went last year. The company that invited him is Broomfield Photographic Associates, BPA. He had worked for them last year and they did the same kind of thing. The previous year it was in the Cotswolds. Kit was in charge of their computer security system and they had paid him a retainer for the rest of the year. It’s one of those all-expenses-paid team-building places.’
‘Where?’
‘In Monmouthshire or something like that.’
‘Was there anything unusual about him when he came back?’
‘That’s what’s so hard to understand, James. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing at all.’ I sidestep a mother who is trying to console her toddler. ‘He came home around eight in the evening, happy – exhausted but happy. We ate dinner; he told me he’d had a good day. Made some good connections, new clients. They’d played mini golf. There was nothing about anything he told me that sounded different. He’s been to these things countless times before. I didn’t pay it much attention after he went missing. Why would I? He was fine.’
‘But he’s not, is he?’ James asks as we reach Bertha. ‘Something is going on.’
I nod, tears in my eyes.
We’re both quiet as he begins driving us back. ‘You said you and Becca’ – Becks – ‘had history. Were you two involved?’
He pauses, his shoulders dropping.
‘No. Yes. It’s complicated. Ancient history.’ The engine ticks over as we wait at a set of traffic lights.
‘But today doesn’t happen, James. We don’t have this conversation. So it doesn’t matter. You might as well tell me what happened between you two.’
Duty, rebound, always wanted what Kit had.
The lights turn green. ‘We, Becky and me,’ James continues, shifts the gears and indicates. ‘We were kind of together. In sixth form. Before she met Kit. It was casual, nothing serious, at least from her point of view. Then she met Kit when she called for me and I wasn’t in. And that was that. I didn’t take it too well at the time.’ A small smile as he turns the steering wheel. ‘I was young, hot-headed. Called them both a few choice words when I got home and saw them sucking faces on the sofa. It’s not something I’m proud of.’
As he talks I remember this anecdote about James’s old girlfriend. It was all laughs and ribbing each other but hearing James now, I realise it cut deeper than he’s ever let on.
‘Has that happened before? You’ve been with someone and Kit…’
He looks to the right, scar at the back of his head just a stretch away from my hands.
‘Like I said, it’s ancient history.’
‘Did Kit know? That you two were…’
‘No. I mean, I don’t think so. It was probably me just reading the signs wrong. We’d only gone out a couple of times; I hadn’t even made a move. Kit didn’t waste any time though.’
I let this sink in.
James always wanted what Kit had. What if it’s the other way around? What if Kit always wanted what James had?
He parks outside our flat, Bertha purring.
‘Do you want to come in?’ I ask as though this is the end of a first date.
‘No thanks, I’ve already made an excuse not to go to Mum and Dad’s for dinner. If Kit sees me, he’ll know I’ve ducked out. ’
‘Dinner? Oh crap.’ I’d forgotten that we go to their parents’ for dinner tonight.
James holds a small smile as I say the words. ‘Not as big a fan of Madame Palmer as you make out, huh?’
I chew the inside of my mouth. ‘No, you could say that. She doesn’t take it well when I meet someone new. She thinks I’ve betrayed Kit’s memory… or words to that effect.’
‘Figures.’
He taps the steering wheel, but I hesitate for a few seconds. I don’t want to get out of the car; I don’t want to lose him all over again. ‘Could you come over later?’ I blurt out the words.
His eyes widen a touch, and he pulls at his earlobe. ‘Sure, I mean, if you think it’ll help?’
‘I think it would. We can have a debrief. I could always get rid of him, um, send him to the shops or something?’ The words come out flippantly, as though lying to Kit is something I do on a daily basis. Great, now I sound like a woman who is used to lying to James’s brother and I’m just one step away from fluttering my eyelids and telling him we’ll have the place all to ourselves.
He bites his bottom lip then nods.
‘Or maybe you should come to dinner? See if you can spot something going on?’
As soon as I give him another option, he seems to grab on to it. ‘That might be a better idea, actually.’ I can see him resisting being alone with me again.
I want to reach out and kiss him. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me we’ll find out the truth. I want him to tell me I’ll be coming home soon.
What if I’m not? What if I’m stuck here? What if I have to go through the pain of losing Kit all over again? I shiver, despite the warm air in the car, the feeling of being trapped, of not being able to get out rises from my feet to the top of my head in a rush, the fear of a swirling void outside the car door: one misstep and I’ll be consumed by it.
‘What if I’m stuck here?’ I say. ‘What if I never get back?’ I turn to James, his image blurred as I blink.
‘Isn’t that what you want? To save him? To stop him doing whatever stupid shit he’s about to do?’
Is that what’s going on? Maybe I do stop him, maybe I do stay here with Kit. I don’t want to, I realise. I don’t want to stay here with Kit. I want to get back to James. James is my future; James is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.
The thought is warm, like melted butter, like honey. I love James. I learnt to live without Kit, but as I sit here now, the idea of not having James, of not spending the rest of my life with him is like ice burning my skin.
‘I’ll see you in a bit, then?’ he adds, prompting me.
‘Yeah, see you later.’
Kit’s home. I can hear the kettle boiling in the kitchen as I step through the door.
‘Hey!’ he shouts. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ Kit comes out of the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong?’ he says taking in my appearance. I get to the top of the stairs and he pulls me close. I clutch to him tightly, trying to pull apart the strings that tie me to him. Because it’s not Kit’s arms I want around me; I know that now.
‘You OK?’
I nod into his chest, this man who I always, deep down, felt that I should be with, who has been hiding in the background of mine and James’s entire relationship.
I take some deep breaths. ‘I’m fine; had a few cross words with Ava, that’s all.’
Another lie – how easily they come.
‘You sure? We don’t have to go to my parents’ if you don’t want. I can cancel? ’
‘God no, and face the wrath of your mum?’
‘It would be cutting it fine. You know how she gets but I can call her, tell her you’re ill?’
I exhale loudly.
I have a job to do.
I’m here to find answers. I only have one more day until he leaves. I have to help him before he makes the biggest mistake of his life. I just hope that by doing that, by saving Kit, it’s enough to send me home.