10. Stoke-on-Trent, June #2
When Anna began massaging her temples, complaining of a headache, I seized my chance to get away.
“I’ve had it since this morning,” she whispered weakly. “Can’t shake it. This terrible tearing sound. From behind my eyes.”
I pointed toward her bedroom. “Have a rest. I’ll clear up.”
“Isn’t it too early for bed?” She looked at me with an expression of such childlike trusting, I had to look away.
“I’ll wake you before I leave,” I said, getting up from the counter. “Once I’ve done the kitchen.”
I guided Anna unsteadily toward her bed, drawing a blanket over her small body.
Framed on her bedroom walls were giant posters of her most famous designs: illustrated ducks and dancing soldiers, all entwined with her signature witticisms. They were hung up high, but meaningless now, like old flags in a baronial hall.
“You know,” Anna said, still tearful as she settled into the pillows. “If that had been me, me in that fucking Tube station, I never would have left. Ever .”
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked kindly into her face. “I know.”
“I’d have just grabbed hold of her. Like that—”
Limply, I let her seize my wrist as she made her point.
“And got her straight back home,” she gasped, finally letting me embrace her. “Where she was happy .”
“Of course you would,” I hushed, taking in her comforting smells: the moth repellent beneath her cashmere, the licorice sweetness of the wine we had been drinking.
“I wouldn’t have let Mary go, Gussie.”
“I know,” I whispered, feeling my own throat narrowing. I held Anna close toward me, just as my lips made the words “Neither would I.”
I waited for a while in the kitchen, just in case Anna reemerged.
Her words haunted me as I shifted anxiously around the room: You remind me of her.
They made me want more for myself. They made me want out of the whole situation.
But it was also true that, over the course of this evening, and even over the weeks before, my feelings toward Anna had shifted.
Perhaps it was the nearness to her suffering, or the fact I had started to share her conviction: She had done nothing wrong.
So I told myself the task was simple: Clean up and ignore the notebook.
Things were straightforward: Wash the glasses, feed Quill, then go.
It doesn’t exist . As my thoughts circled, I even cut myself a tragic little bargain: If I left the lawyer’s book alone, I would buy myself something.
Some new clay, the gorgeous, mineral-rich stuff that made my studio smell like a dairy.
Or perhaps a trip somewhere, far away from the tormenting situation I’d waded into.
The bribery was delusional. My will was too weak.
Just before I left, I persuaded myself that I needed a piece of paper to write Anna a quick note.
She’d be disturbed, I reasoned, if she woke up to see I’d gone, after I’d promised to wake her.
It was important to thank her for the wine and tell her when I’d be back again.
As I opened the cover to the first page, my gaze fell on Quill as he lay dreaming in his basket.
It felt absurd to envy him, but I did. I wanted a spotless conscience, too. But it was much too late for that.
Tucked inside the notebook was the briefing document that the male lawyer had referenced, the one about the artist. With my heart in my mouth, and pausing every so often to check Anna hadn’t woken up, I scanned it quickly, jaw locked stiff as I repressed the urge to scream with outrage.
Retrieving my phone from my bag, I squared the document in front of me so I could get a good angle.
Then there was an unexpected sound. I had just started to capture each page when it came again, the sound of the rain at the window, but also of a key tickling the lock of the front door.
I froze. The squeal of door hinges as it swung open, then a slamming as it shut.
“Anna?” a male voice called breathlessly. Footsteps darted up the stairs. Frantic, I shut the book and moved it to the side. “Anna?”
A man appeared: a tall, slim-hipped figure, dressed in loose-fitting chinos and a long navy coat. Bonamy Finbow. I grabbed a tea towel to wipe my trembling hands.
“Hullo there,” he said, entering the kitchen and shaking off his overcoat. He had thick, sandy-colored hair, far more than was usual for a man over sixty. It rose up from his chest, too, protruding through the undone buttons of his creased shirt.
“Anna’s in her bedroom,” I said uncertainly. “Asleep.”
“How is she?” he murmured, glancing behind him.
“Fine,” I said, settling my face into a mild expression. The tension in my chest was unbearable. “Headachy.”
“We’ve had a quarrel.” He went over to the fridge and took out a fresh bottle of wine. “And I had a fucking frightful drive. Anything to eat?”
It amazed me how readily Bonamy accepted a stranger’s presence in his house. I gathered it was a mark of his breeding, how accustomed he was to staff.
“There’s some fish pie,” I said, humming slightly as I assumed the role of housekeeper. “I could make you a plate?”
Bonamy thanked me graciously and sloshed wine into a glass, while I made myself busy, boiling peas to go with his food and loading the dishwasher.
I enjoyed showing Bonamy that I was acquainted with his home.
It seemed to relax him, too. As I bustled about, he drank even more eagerly than Anna.
One glass, then two: a man clambering to get under the thick quilt of its sedation.
“Take care. It’s hot,” I said eventually, setting down the plate I’d microwaved.
Bonamy sat at the counter and rounded his lips to let cold air into his mouth of mashed potato, just like a schoolboy. I washed dishes, my back to him while he ate.
“Was she okay this evening?” He hesitated. “It’s Gus, isn’t it?”
I turned to face him. “Gus, yes. And a little sad, yes.”
Bonamy’s Adam’s apple pulsed with emotion. “You’re across what happened, I take it?”
“The sighting?” He nodded. “I never actually asked,” I said, aware of the shake in my voice. “How was she?”
“You mean Mary?” The muscles beneath Bonamy’s forehead shifted, like a wave retreating.
“Do you know, you’re the first person who has actually asked me that question?
” He laughed in a hollow way. My chest felt very tight.
“I can’t,” he began to say, then paused to clear his throat.
“I can’t tell you how good it was to see her.
I was on the escalator. Gliding down, my mind elsewhere, reading something on my phone.
And just like that, she floats into view. This husk of a human. My daughter.”
I gazed at him. “Did you talk to her?”
“I tried. She blanked me entirely. It’s so odd, what you do under pressure. I just kept talking. I said, ‘You should be careful, the air in these stations is very polluted. It’s filled with iron filings.’?” Bonamy chuckled, self-mockingly. I couldn’t bring myself to join in.
“She didn’t acknowledge you at all?” I pressed him, my chest prickling with sadness.
“No. Not as any normal person would. Her face was this blank window; she just stared at me with these wide, sightless eyes. She gave me absolutely nothing . Just clutched this handful of tatty leaflets. So, being me, I carried on like a loon, telling her all sorts of stuff about us and the business and dear Quill and various family friends.” He narrowed his eyes as he relived it.
“For a moment I thought she’d crumbled. Then she started heckling me, using this foul language, shouting at me to leave her alone.
I think the exact phrase she used was ‘Get the fuck away from me.’?”
I heard myself gasp. “I’m so sorry, Bonamy—”
He swallowed a mouthful of wine. “Now my wife is furious with me for not kidnapping her. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“But you couldn’t possibly have done that!”
“She’s a grown woman.”
“With her own mind.”
“Precisely.”
Bonamy looked at me kindly. I wondered if, for the first time this evening, he was noticing my age, perhaps even my proximity to Mary. Despite everything, I felt myself bloom.
Then a voice came from behind him. Anna had appeared noiselessly at the glass doors, like a ghost. The back of her dark ponytail was matted from where she’d been lying asleep, and her eyes looked bald and swollen from crying.
“When did you arrive?” she asked sharply. “You didn’t read my email?”
“No,” Bonamy began in a measured tone, opening his arms toward her. “I didn’t read anyone’s email. I was driving as fast as I could to get to you.”
She sidestepped him. “ Please don’t start making me feel guilty—”
“Please let’s not argue in front of Gus,” he warned.
I headed for the bathroom. Anna made an apologetic face and tried to keep me close by, lightly linking her arm in mine, but I excused myself firmly, nervous to be caught listening.
Locked inside, I gripped the edges of the basin and pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. One deep breath. Then two.
This job had to end. It was clear now that I had trespassed much too far into this family nightmare and gained nothing but a terrible proximity to their suffering.
My gaze fell on a photograph of Mary on the bathroom wall.
A big black-and-white portrait of a gap-toothed girl with her chin in her hands.
Again, that preoccupied stare. I wondered, How often were you in this position?
A piece of tumbleweed caught between your parents’ livid energies?
Outside, Anna’s and Bonamy’s voices were rising and falling so quickly in anger, it was hard to catch the precise words.
“You’re wasted,” I could just make out Bonamy saying, though his tone was now concerned. “Have you taken something? What have you had?”
“There it is again,” Anna protested. “ I’m the fuckup, am I? What I want to know is what the hell you were doing in Maida Vale in the middle of the day?”
My stomach turned as I remembered Bonamy’s description of Mary in the Tube station. Blank window, sightless eyes . I studied my own reflection in the mirror, looking closely into my face for the first time in months. A terrifying recognition dawned. He could have been describing me.
Outside, Anna began ramming plates into the dishwasher, signaling the end of their row.
I flushed the chain, but, before going back outside, I reached into my pocket and found the perfume I’d taken weeks ago from the Finbows’ dresser drawer.
Pasting it on my wrist, I inhaled deeply.
Briefly, I was transported by the old scent.
Just for a moment, the roaring guilt in my mind dulled.
The path ahead was clear now. I had to free myself.
I would leave my job this evening and never speak to the Finbows again.
When I rejoined Anna and Bonamy, they were leaning against each other, speaking in quieter voices.
“I’ll get out of your hair now,” I said, entering the kitchen breezily and bending down to say goodbye to Quill. My chest hurt to think it would be the last time.
“Why not stay for another drink?” Bonamy suggested, keen to ward off another row. “You’ve been taking such good care of that dog.” He smiled softly at Anna. “Of all my creatures.”
I hurried over to my bag, explaining that it was too late and I had to get the bus.
But, in my haste, I stepped on Quill’s paw.
He yelped, and for some reason, probably the alcohol, my ankle softened when I stepped sideways.
I grasped the side of the counter as I tripped, but my body lurched, and the little tin of perfume fell out of my pocket.
“Did something just fall?” Bonamy asked.
“Not sure,” I said, scanning the floorboards, my mouth dry with panic.
He got up to look. “I’m sure I heard something.” The silver tin rolled agonizingly over to his feet.
Anna craned her neck to check the ground. The walls of the room started to collapse inward.
Bonamy’s knees cracked as he squatted and picked it up, resting it carelessly on the worktop in full view of Anna. When she noticed the object, she turned and frowned. Blood drained rapidly into my legs.
“That’s Mary’s perfume! Where on earth did you find that?”