‘Upstairs with Honoria. Having a bath before bed.’
He nodded, inhaling the lavender. A man does like it when a woman tries, especially when she’s foreign to him, as his wife had become the moment he’d decided to tell her he was leaving. Agatha had instructed the cook to prepare his favourite meal, Beef Wellington, a good winter dinner. She lit candles. Just the two of them and a bottle of good French wine. Agatha poured herself a glass to be companionable but didn’t take so much as a sip. She sat, not all the way across the table, as Archie told me, but just beside him. He, left-handed, she, right-handed, their elbows bumped against each other with the intimacy of people who’d passed so many hours, living in the same home, sleeping in the same bed. Archie was only human, and worse than that, only a man. A kind of melancholy overtook him. It wasn’t true that he’d never loved her at all. In fact, his determination to marry me brought to mind the last time he’d felt such urgency, which was to marry Agatha, even though the war was raging, they had no money, and both their families – especially his mother – insisted they wait. Now in the candlelight she looked much as she had on their wedding night. Their anniversary, Christmas Eve, approached. It was impossible not to dwell on memories like that, this time of year.
He finished his meal and did not stop in the nursery to bid Teddy goodnight. It was late, after all, and she would already be sleeping.
I know it was Archie who removed his wife’s dress and left it crumpled on the floor. He liked a naked woman while he was fully clothed. And this was his last chance with this particular woman. Alone in their bedroom, his wife shivered with relief and joy as much as the cold. The maid had lit the fire in their bedroom. In the dim and flickering light, Agatha looked vulnerable with adoration.
Marriage. The way two lives intertwine. It’s a stubborn thing, difficult to let go. Archie was not an unfeeling man and on this last night with his wife, after so many months of damming his feelings towards her, he let the floodgates open one final time.
‘Agatha,’ he said to her, over and over again. I suspect he also said, I love you. So that she would have returned the words, tears running down her cheeks as though she’d won him back for good. Not realizing, as they stayed up late, the sheets increasingly tangled as they made love again and again – that for this one night she was the mistress, never again to be his wife.
The Disappearance
Last Day Seen
Friday, 3 December 1926
AGATHA OPENED HER eyes to find herself alone. Archie had risen before dawn, leaving their night behind him as only a man can. He bathed, washing away the scent of his wife, whatever emotions he had for her already abandoned in the bedroom. Whereas Agatha stirred, the irregular discovery of her nakedness beneath the sheets immediately reminding her of all that had happened. She smiled victoriously and stretched. Archie was hers again. She had won him back.
Humming to herself, she dressed in what she would have slept in, a long silk nightdress. Before she went downstairs she added a flannel dressing gown. A quick glance in the mirror showed all she needed was quick fingers through her fading red hair. Even she, critical of herself, could see that she looked lovely. Flushed with happiness. Happiness. The aspect Archie admired most. Today his first glimpse of her radiant self would fill him with love, visible love. She hurried downstairs to catch him before he left for the office.
Imagine her dismay as she reached the bottom of the stairs to find Archie, dressed, his weekend valise packed, his attitude hardened.
‘Surely you’re not still going on your weekend?’ Her face paled, the flush left. All the delight and joy vanished before Archie could see it.
‘Agatha.’ His voice was full of warning. A scold. As if she were a child who had misbehaved.
‘Agatha,’ she echoed. Her voice rose, high pitched, spiralling up the stairs. Perhaps it travelled through the door of the nursery where Teddy lay – asleep or awake; neither parent had gone in to check on her. ‘Agatha,’ she said again. ‘You sound as if I’m the one doing something wrong. As if I’m the one causing trouble. I say it’s you. It’s you. Archie. Archie. Archie.’
He sighed and glanced towards the kitchen, where the cook was preparing breakfast. Honoria would bring Teddy down any moment. He didn’t want anyone to overhear Agatha, whose hysteria would only grow once he’d said what there was no longer any way to avoid. He had a plan and nothing would derail it. My engagement ring sat in his valise, its hefty price tag paid in full.
‘Come here,’ he said, maintaining the tone of a father scolding an unruly child. ‘We can talk in my study.’ He stepped forward and grabbed her by the elbow.
Agatha didn’t have an office of her own. She wrote her books wherever she found herself, so long as she had a table and a typewriter. Really, she didn’t even think of herself as an author. Her primary occupation and identity was Married Lady. That’s who she was. Married. To Archie. Who would she be if that were no longer the case?
She took a seat on the silk sofa in Archie’s study. Peter trotted in and jumped up beside her. Archie didn’t like dogs on the furniture but he had more important matters to address so he held his tongue and pulled the door closed with a click.
Agatha once told me that upon her first heartbreak, thrown over by a boy she’d adored, she’d run to her mother with quivering lips. Clarissa Miller had handed her daughter a handkerchief with one hand and raised the other with forefinger pointed, moving it up and down to mark her syllables. ‘Don’t you dare cry. I forbid it.’ Obedient by nature and wanting nothing more than to please her mother, Agatha had shuddered once, swallowing the tears as they threatened to fall.
But there hadn’t only been heartbreaks. In her youth she had been gay and lively, turning down one marriage proposal after another. In fact, when Archie pressed his hand upon her she was already engaged to another young man, Tommy, who was diffident and kind, and never – she felt sure of it – would have brought her to this moment, struggling to follow her mother’s erstwhile advice.
Archie didn’t sit beside her on the sofa, but settled into a wingback chair close enough for her to be able to reach for him. It was a natural gesture after the night they’d spent together and she gave into it, holding out her arms.
‘Agatha,’ came the hard reply, and then the words she’d been dreading for months. ‘There’s no easy way to say this.’
‘Then don’t say it,’ she pleaded, dropping her pathetic, outstretched arms and pulling Peter into her lap, stroking the dog to calm herself. ‘Please just don’t say it at all.’