‘I will never return to Ireland.’
Chilton must have noticed, I didn’t say I’d never go away with Finbarr. ‘Speaking of Ireland,’ he said, ‘I must tell you the strangest thing. I heard Mr and Mrs Race talking just now and it was as if they were two entirely different people. Not only kind to each other, but also sounding as though they’d just got off the boat from Dublin.’
My face went hot and my eyes flooded. I didn’t want him in my room. ‘You know, Mr Chilton, if you’ve opted not to reveal Mrs Christie’s whereabouts, shouldn’t you be going back home?’
‘I imagine my reasons for staying are similar to yours.’ He said it kindly. He said everything kindly. But that didn’t necessarily bode kindness, did it?
‘Won’t you be in terrible trouble,’ I said pointedly, ‘when they find out she was here all along?’
‘It’s not trouble if you’re never caught, is it?’
I remembered my hands around Sister Mary Clare’s throat. I imagined a gravestone behind the convent, marked like all the rest. Here Lies Sister Mary. But this one was just for her.
Down the hall a door opened. Young Miss Armstrong emerged, her black hair loose, her face bright and clean of any troubling past. If only I could have willed my soul out of my own body and into hers, and lived my whole life differently.
‘Oh, Mr Chilton,’ I said, and the floorboards rushed to meet my face.
Chilton hadn’t meant to upset me, at least not to this degree. It was part of his job to disarm people, make them vulnerable and get them talking. He did it almost by force of habit. What was less practised was disarming himself. Before I hit the floor he reached out his good arm – sufficient only in protecting my head from a more severe blow.
‘My goodness,’ said Miss Armstrong, bustling to my side. ‘Shall we get her into bed?’
‘No.’ I sat up and pulled at the collar of my dress. ‘I’m fine.’ I shrugged away from both pairs of hands. ‘I just need some air. Some room and some air.’
‘Let me at least walk you downstairs for luncheon,’ Miss Armstrong said. ‘The combination of cold air and hot water is said to be so healthful. But I’ve been feeling rather light-headed since we arrived. Perhaps that’s what killed the Marstons. Some kind of shock to their system. It must be all the worse, for old people.’ She glanced at Chilton as if in concerned warning.
Chilton remained focused on me. ‘You’re sure you’re all right?’
‘Perfectly fine. Just feeling a bit ridiculous.’
‘Is that nurse afoot?’ asked Miss Armstrong. ‘Mrs Race?’
‘I don’t believe she is,’ Chilton said. ‘Perhaps you can consult with her later.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said.
Accepting Miss Armstrong’s hand, I got to my feet. I would eat to oblige them. And then steal away to see Finbarr. I should have returned to London already. One more day, I kept telling myself. Just give me one more day.
Chilton watched as Miss Armstrong and I walked off, her arm wrapped around me with genuine concern. People can be so kind, he thought. Women especially. The way one woman naturally allows another to lean on her in times of trouble.
The Disappearance
Last Day Seen
Friday, 3 December 1926
WOULD IT SURPRISE you to know that most women, if they saw Finbarr and Archie side by side, would choose Archie as the handsomer? Especially after the war, once Finbarr had lost his joyful gleam.
Whereas the years had made me more attractive than I’d been as a girl. Something about the way I learned to conceal my shattered self. It made me fascinating to men.
‘Oh, Nan,’ Archie said, taking me into his arms that night at the Owens’, before we knew what tomorrow held. If you can see your way to never minding, that he’d taken his own wife in much the same way not twenty-four hours earlier, then try to understand: he loved me, he did.
Do you think, as Finbarr did, I should have hated Archie? Perhaps I did. When it all started I did, I’m sure of it. Looking back now, it’s hard to say. I married the man, after all. I bore him a child whom I love as dearly and deeply as the one I lost. Thousands of days and hundreds of thousands of hours have been spent alongside him, both waking and sleeping. From this particular hour the only answer I can give, as to whether I hated him, is sometimes. And in some ways. If that’s what you’d like to call hate.
The way a certain man can walk through the world. If in that day and country Archie had been allowed more than one wife, he might have had ten and loved us all, with waxing and waning preferences. Which is not to say he loved Agatha or me as possessions. He did see us in his way. On the golf course he would stand back, arms crossed, assessing my swing, my form, the arc of the ball I propelled. ‘Ripping,’ he would say, for all to hear. And when we were alone: ‘Ripping, gorgeous girl.’
I could have won at golf with Archie but I never let myself. He wanted me to be good but not better than him. He liked to watch me play tennis at the club, against other women. And it pleased me that this aspect of myself pleased him. My plan to land Archie was born of urgency but that didn’t mean I never found pleasure in it. Running again, swinging a racket, winning.
Funktionslust. It’s a German word for the joy of doing what one does best. Seducing Archie, stealing him away from his wife, had a very specific purpose. But as it turned out, I was good at it. Better than good. It might have been a tennis match. No other woman at the club, no other woman anywhere, could touch me.
‘Oh, Nan,’ Archie said. Smooth hands down my smoother side. He had good lips, Archie did, tasting like Scotch in the evening. By now I’d learned how to arch and whisper, how to climb and conquer. The night before Archie’s wife disappeared I could sense the night before, enough to understand the imperative of reclaiming him. Now that he’d decided to move forward there could be no more lapses or wavering. My claim on him as a shark, swim or die.
I clamped my hand over Archie’s mouth, hard enough for it to hurt him. ‘Hush,’ I commanded.
‘Nan,’ he answered, a tight gurgle. And then, when all had come to rest, ‘I love you.’
The covers had been thrown to the floor and my head rested on his slick chest, his breath still coming out hard and forced.
‘Dear Nan,’ Archie said. ‘How I love you.’
In nine days’ time it would finally occur to Archie to wonder in earnest. Where had I gone?
He would have an afternoon to escape the confines of Styles and the chaos of the fruitless search. He would travel to London.