Nonsense. She’d probably just gone into one of the buildings. With no one to chase, Archie reclaimed his car and navigated the streets to my flat. He sat parked on the street, staring up at my window. No sign of life. It could be I had gone to work. Work! In the midst of all this mess. What a luxury it would be, to pretend to business as usual. Perhaps he should go straight to his office. Perhaps if he behaved as though everything were normal, it would become so. Agatha would return – breeze right in without knocking, as she had last week, fashionable and cheery and trying too hard. This time she’d find him alone. He’d gather her in his arms and give her a proper kiss. Of course I’d love to have luncheon with my beautiful wife.
How had he missed it, what she’d been on the brink of? Or was it that he’d seen it but simply hadn’t cared? Once upon a time, he’d been so protective of Agatha, so jealous, he couldn’t bear seeing even a waiter talk to her. He’d told her he never wanted to have a son, because he never wanted to see her doting on another man. Her doting belonged to him and him alone.
He got out of the car. Hands in his pockets. Staring up at my window as though waiting for a sign. If he saw any movement, he’d run up and knock. And if I opened the door, he knew – despite all his very real feelings, and the desire to find his wife and change the course he’d so rashly set her upon – he would gather me up in his arms and lose all this terrible commotion for a while. He deserved that. No matter what, a man deserved that, to forget his troubles. Until Agatha came home nothing could change what he’d done, and if he’d known that night at the Owens’ was the last time he’d make love to me, well, then, surely he’d have savoured it a bit more. The way he had with Agatha.
A pretty young woman bustled by in a worn winter coat. She scowled at Archie as if she’d read every one of his thoughts. He looked away from her, up towards my window, watching for any passing shadow.
Nothing. Did he know I didn’t love him? No. Archie wasn’t the sort of man to know such a thing.
He turned and walked to his car, brim of his hat pointed towards the pavement. The thought of Agatha, dead somewhere, or injured and alone, was too much to bear. How lucky he’d felt, in the old days, when she turned her light on him. How long it had been since he’d felt lucky, rather than simply believing the world should belong to him, without ever requiring so much as a thank-you.
That night, home at Styles, Archie did something he had never done in all the seven years since she’d arrived. He put Teddy to bed.
‘What’s wrong, Father?’ It was more disruption than treat to have him sitting on her bed, wearing his shirtsleeves, eyes glassy with whisky and remorse. Peter nestled in beside her; the dog was always a comfort. She closed her hand into his wiry fur.
‘Nothing’s wrong, darling,’ Archie said, stroking her forehead with the particular fervour of a distant parent who may have lost everything but his child. ‘I just want to say goodnight to my little girl. Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘No.’ Teddy had her covers pulled just under her chin, blinking through the darkness, wishing he would go away and take the strangeness with him. A child does not like to feel responsible for an adult’s emotional state. If he hadn’t been so bleary, an uncomfortable volatility brewing, she might have asked him to read more Winnie the Pooh. Honoria had already finished it once but she wanted to start over and reading herself was a painstaking business.
‘Is Mother coming back?’
‘Of course she is,’ he said, too sharp. ‘Mother always comes back, doesn’t she?’
‘I meant tonight.’
‘Sorry. No. No, I don’t think tonight.’ There were no machinations to keep Teddy from knowing, the fuss kicked up around her was a search for her missing mother. Only straight denials of the truth. Not a ruse that could be maintained for long, when all of England was searching.
‘Well, then.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Sleep well, Teddy.’
She closed her eyes tightly, pretending the kiss had put her straight to sleep.
For me the same day began far away from all that clamour. The previous night I had arrived at the Bellefort Hotel and Spa, low key and cosy, the perfect place for anyone who needed to lie low for a bit. The woman at the front desk – West Indian, from the look and sound of her – greeted me warmly.
‘I am Mrs Leech,’ she said, with her lovely Caribbean lilt. ‘You just be sure to let me know if there’s anything you need. Anything at all.’
She handed me a fountain pen to sign the registry. I paused for a moment. I’d made the reservation under the name Mrs O’Dea. It wouldn’t have been proper for a young unmarried woman to stay on her own at a hotel. Now I found myself adding another name. ‘Mrs Genevieve O’Dea,’ I wrote, a painful scrape forming in my throat. Genevieve was the name I’d given my lost child. Perhaps I ought to have written Genevieve Mahoney, if only to have seen it written one time.
‘Thank you, Mrs Leech,’ I said. ‘Would it be possible to take dinner in my room?’
‘Of course it would,’ she said. ‘I’ll send up a lovely tray for you.’
A woman who’d been approaching the stairs wearing a hotel dressing gown – likely just returning from a spa treatment – bustled over to the front desk. ‘Dinner in room!’ she said to Mrs Leech. ‘Why, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? We’ll do the same, if you please.’
‘Yes, Mrs Marston.’
The woman, Mrs Marston, turned to me. She was about Agatha’s age – perhaps a year or two older – with a round, jolly face. Roses in her cheeks. ‘We’re on our honeymoon, Mr Marston and I,’ she told me, looking right into my face without – I suspected – really registering me. ‘Have to keep our energy up, you know!’
Mrs Leech and I exchanged a quick glance to share our aversion to thinking further on that matter.
Morning came quickly and I knew I couldn’t stay in my room forever, so I headed down to breakfast. The Bellefort was a comfortable establishment but not a particularly posh one. It wouldn’t have done for a setting in one of Agatha’s novels. But E. M. Forster would have liked it – the chairs comfortable to sink into but worn about the arms. I made my way to the dining room, took a seat and asked the grandmotherly waitress for extra cream.
‘Mind if I join you?’ an American girl asked.
I looked up. She was my age or thereabouts, with bobbed blonde hair and an intent, intelligent face. There were other seats available at empty tables but instead of pointing this out I nodded. She sat across from me and smiled.
‘My name’s Lizzie Clarke,’ she said, louder than was necessary, typical American. ‘I’m here with my husband. He’s still asleep, the slugabed. The hot waters are knocking it right out of him.’ She laughed, again too loudly.
I glanced around the room to see if the other diners seemed bothered. Lizzie took this as a request to fill me in on our fellow guests. She pointed out a fantastically pretty woman, young enough to have been a child during the war, with hair so blonde it was nearly white.
‘Her name’s Mrs Race,’ Lizzie said.
Mrs Race sat alone, staring out the window forlornly.
‘How pretty she is,’ I said, warmly enough for Lizzie herself to take it as a compliment. ‘She can’t be here on her own. Can she?’
‘Oh no. She’s got a husband with her. They’re on honeymoon.’
‘I met another woman here on honeymoon.’
‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve met that one too. Much more pleased about it than the one over there.’