Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Jeff doesn’t even hesitate when I knock on his door at half nine in the morning and ask if I can borrow his car.
He reaches behind him to the hook on the wall and hands me the keys before I’ve finished explaining why I need them.
Just like that. No questions, no conditions, no fuss.
He tells me it’s the green Land Rover in the yard, that the clutch sticks in third, the heating only works if I thump the dashboard, and that the petrol station on the way into town does a decent pasty if I’m hungry.
‘Take your time,’ he says. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
The collie watches me from the step, its head tilted.
I cross the yard. Jeff raises a hand from the doorway as I reverse out of the gate, and I feel a stab of something warm and painful because I can’t remember the last time someone trusted me this easily.
No suspicion. No checking. Just keys on a hook and a tip about the clutch.
The car smells of dog, hay, and engine oil – and the seat is pushed so far back my feet barely reach the pedals.
I adjust the mirror, find the biting point, and pull out on to the lane.
The cottage disappears behind me within thirty seconds, swallowed by the hedgerows and the curve of the hill, and for the first time in nearly a week I’m going somewhere.
The drive takes twenty-five minutes. The lanes are narrow and wet, and I have to reverse twice for oncoming tractors.
The Land Rover handles like a wardrobe on wheels, but I don’t care.
I’m moving. The world is getting bigger with every mile – more houses, a postbox, a farm shop with a blackboard sign, a bus stop that means people actually live out here and catch buses and go to work and do normal things.
By the time I reach the town, I feel as if I’ve surfaced from underwater.
The town is small. One high street, a Co-op, a chemist, a charity shop, a café with steamed-up windows, a war memorial, a car park behind the church.
Nothing remarkable. Nothing I’d look twice at in Keynsham.
But right now it looks like civilisation itself.
I find a spot in the car park and sit with the engine off, just looking at people.
A woman with a pushchair. Two men in hi-vis jackets outside the pub.
A teenager on a bike, no helmet, swerving around a bin.
People. Unremarkable, beautiful people doing normal things within sight of each other.
I pull my phone from my coat pocket.
This is what I came for. This is the real reason I knocked on Jeff’s door, borrowed his car, and drove twenty-five minutes through lanes I don’t know – not the food, not the fresh air, not the change of scenery. The phone. The signal. The need to know.
Three bars. Strong and steady, the little icon sitting in the corner of the screen like a gift.
I unlock it, my hands trembling. I’m bracing for the grey bubbles, the unknown number, the filth and the threats, and Olivia’s name in a stranger’s mouth. I’m ready for it. The readiness has become its own kind of exhaustion – a permanent flinch, a held breath that never gets released.
I look at the screen.
Nothing.
No new messages from the unknown number. No photo. No threats. Nothing from Ross, nothing from any number I don’t recognise. Just two texts from my mobile provider about my data allowance and a promotional email from a stationery company I ordered from once three years ago.
I breathe. It comes out shaky and too loud in the quiet of the car. I press my hand to my chest and sit there, just breathing, my pulse slowing from a gallop to a canter to something approaching normal. No messages. He hasn’t sent anything.
Maybe it’s over. Maybe he’s stopped. Maybe he’s bored, or frightened, or whatever it is that makes men like that move on to their next obsession. Maybe the silence isn’t a tactic, isn’t a trap, and is just – silence. The unremarkable absence of a person who’s decided to leave me alone.
I don’t quite believe it. But I let myself sit with the possibility for a minute.
Then I call Alex.
He picks up on the third ring.
‘Kim.’
Not hello, not how are you, just Kim, said in that quiet, careful voice he uses when he’s not sure what’s coming next. I close my eyes, press the phone against my ear, and listen to him breathe, and the sound of it makes my throat close so tightly I have to swallow twice before I can speak.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I borrowed a car. I’m in a town – I don’t even know what it’s called. There’s a Co-op and a church and actual phone signal.’
A pause. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m all right. I’m – I’m okay. How’s Olivia?’
‘She’s fine. She’s good, actually. Mum’s taken her shopping in Leicester today. New trainers, apparently. She’s been angling for the expensive ones, and I think Mum’s going to cave.’
I laugh. ‘Of course she is. Your mum’s never said no to that girl in her life.’
‘I know, and it’ll be my problem. As usual.’
There’s a smile in his voice. I can hear it – faint, cautious, but there. He’s not performing or pretending for my sake. Something in the past few days has softened things between us, just enough that we can talk to each other without every sentence carrying the weight of what I did.
‘Has she asked about me?’ I say.
‘Every day. I told her you’re doing some work for a client in Wales and the signal’s terrible. She said that sounded boring and asked if she could have a hamster when you get back.’
‘A hamster?’
‘A hamster. Apparently, Grace Kellaway’s got one and it can run through a maze. I said we’d discuss it.’
‘Which means no.’
‘Which means no, but I’m letting you deliver that verdict.’
I lean my head on the car window, close my eyes, and let the conversation surround me.
This is what I’ve been missing. Not the big declarations, not the I’m sorry and the I forgive you and the painful unpicking of who did what and why.
Just this. The small, pointless back and forth of two people who know each other well enough to share a joke about their daughter and the ongoing hamster negotiations.
The language of a marriage that still works, underneath everything.
‘How are you doing?’ I say, and I really want to know.
He takes a moment. I can picture him standing in the kitchen, or sitting at the table, running his hand over his face the way he does when he’s thinking about how to say something properly. Alex never answers a question without considering it first. It’s the solicitor in him. It’s also the husband.
‘Better,’ he says. ‘I was in a bad way when I left you there, Kim. I won’t pretend I wasn’t.
I drove back and sat in the house on my own, and I was – angry doesn’t cover it.
I was so angry I couldn’t sit still. I walked around the house for two hours.
I stood in the kitchen and looked at the spot where you said he—’ He stops.
Breathes. ‘Anyway. That was then. By Wednesday, I could think about it without wanting to put my fist through something, and by yesterday, I could think about it without thinking about him at all. I just thought about you. About us. About what I actually want, when I take all the noise away.’
‘And what do you want?’ My voice is barely there.
‘I want you to come home,’ he says. ‘I want things to be better. I’m not saying I’m over it – I’m not, and I don’t think I will be for a while, and there are conversations we still need to have that are going to be hard for both of us.
But I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to lose you over something that happened because we stopped paying attention to each other. ’
My eyes are stinging. I press the heel of my hand against them and breathe through it.
Outside the car window, the town carries on as if nothing is happening – the woman with the pushchair going into the chemist, the teenager on the bike doing another lap, a seagull fighting a crisp packet on the pavement.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I know I’ve said it and I know it’s not enough, but I’m sorry, Alex. For all of it. For not telling you. For letting it get as far as it did. For the kitchen, and the party, and the—’
‘I know.’
‘I should have come to you straight away. The first message, the first time he got in touch, I should have shown you and told you and trusted you to—’
‘Kim. I know. And we’ll talk about it. But not on the phone in a car park in Wales.’
I half laugh, half sob, and wipe my face with my sleeve. ‘Fair enough.’
‘I can come and get you,’ he says. ‘End of the week? Friday, maybe. Mum could come here and watch Olivia. We could have the weekend together – properly together, I mean, not the version I planned, but close enough.’
The cottage with the fireplace, the view of the hills, and the blue door. The weekend he’d booked to save us, before I’d given him a reason to wonder if we were worth saving.
‘I’d like that,’ I say.
‘Good.’ A pause. ‘And, Kim – the messages. Has anything else come through?’
‘Nothing. Not for five days. I checked just now, before I called you. Nothing.’
‘All right.’ I can hear him processing that – deciding what it means and what to do about it. ‘We’ll deal with it when you’re home. We’ll go to the police together. Do it properly.’
‘Together,’ I say.
‘Together.’
The word sits between us. Not a promise, exactly – we’ve both learned something about the weight of promises this week – but a plan.
A direction. The outline of a way forward that has both of us in it, and for the first time since I sat on the sofa and watched his face change while I told him everything, I feel something that isn’t guilt or fear.
It might be hope. I’m almost afraid to call it that.
‘I should go,’ Alex says. ‘Mum’s bringing Olivia back soon, and I said I’d have tea on.’
‘Give her a kiss from me. Tell her I love her. And tell her no to the hamster.’
‘I’ll tell her the first two. The hamster’s on you.’
I smile. My face is wet, and my nose is running. I’m sitting in a borrowed Land Rover that smells of dog, and I’m smiling.
‘Alex,’ I say. ‘I love you.’
The line is quiet for one beat, maybe two. Long enough for me to hear a bird singing somewhere outside, the engine of a car pulling into the space beside me, and the faint thump of my own heart, steady and sure.
‘I love you, too,’ he says. ‘Always have. Always will.’
He hangs up. The phone goes dark in my hand.
I sit in the car park for a long time after that, not doing anything, just holding the phone, looking at the blank screen and feeling the warmth of those last four words sluicing through me.
Always have. Always will. He said that to me once before – years ago, in the delivery room, when Olivia was twenty minutes old and I was exhausted and shaking.
He was holding my hand and crying, which he never does, and he leaned down, pressed his forehead to mine and said it, and I believed him then.
I believe him now. Not because I deserve to – I know what I’ve done, and I know what it’s cost him – but because Alex doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. It’s the most infuriating and the most wonderful thing about him.
I go into the Co-op and buy milk, bread, eggs, a tin of soup, a bar of chocolate, and a magazine I probably won’t read.
I carry the bags back to the Land Rover, put them on the passenger seat, and drive out of town the way I came.
The lanes narrow, the hedgerows rise, and the signal drops bar by bar until there’s nothing left.
The hills close around me, and I don’t mind.
He’s coming on Friday. Three more days.
I can do three more days.
I drive back to Jeff’s farmhouse and return the keys, and thank him. He asks if I got what I needed, and I say yes, I think I did. He nods and tells me the forecast says clear skies tomorrow if I fancy a long walk to the cairn.
I walk back over the hill to the cottage with the shopping bags bumping against my legs, the wind in my face, and the sky wider and brighter than it has looked all week.
Three more days, and then home.