But the very first day I went back, he was there waiting for me, and despite not wanting to admit it, knowing it weakened every barrier I’d put up around myself, I’d really missed him.
I didn’t let him off the hook easily though; he had to work hard to convince me that whatever he had with the other woman was definitely over. But once I was sure I could trust him, we were inseparable—living in each other’s pockets, until he’d stopped me in the street outside my apartment, and with the snow falling down around us, had taken hold of my hands and put them on his chest.
“I have something to tell you,” he’d said.
I’d looked at him, unable to believe that I could ever love someone so much, when he said, “I have to go back to England.”
I’d pulled my hands away as if they’d been scalded with a hot poker.
“They won’t renew my visa,” he said, his eyes burrowing into mine.
“But I thought your company was sorting that,” I’d managed, as conflicting thoughts and snippets of conversations buffeted around my head.
“They tried, but…”
I remember being blinded by the sudden realization that of course it was never going to last. Nothing ever did if I was stupid enough to love it.
“Go then,” I said, pushing him away in an immature fit of pique. “If that’s what you want.”
“I want you to come with me,” he’d said, as I reached my front door.
“I can’t,” was my instinctive reaction.
Yet I was thinking, Why not? even before he said it himself.
I had nothing to keep me in New York; I was waiting tables while trying to get my psychology degree, I had no family aside from Aunt Meryl, and I spent my days avoiding the sights and smells that took me back to a time before my life changed forever.
What did I have to lose by going to England?
Everything, it seems.
* * *
“We’ll be needing to speak to your husband at some point,” says Robson now when we reach the storage room, where Leon’s monitor sits on the desk.
“About his computer?” I say, my mouth dry.
“About your whereabouts on the nights of the twenty-first and twenty-third of June,” she says dourly.
“I told you where I was on the twenty-third,” I say.
“No, Mrs. Chandler, we told you where you were that evening. Remember?”
I clench my fists at my side in frustration.
“What is it your husband does?” she asks.
“He works here on the estate,” I say. I don’t want to give them anything more than they need.
“So he works from home?” she says, taking in the architects’ plans for the old stables that are pinned up on the walls.
“In a sense,” I say.
“So I imagine you’re able to keep quite close tabs on each other?”
I have no idea where she’s going with this or what she’s trying to allude to, but it’s making my skin itch. “We both have demanding jobs and lead fairly independent lives,” I say, looking straight at her.
“Where would he have been on the night of the twenty-first of June?”
I shrug my shoulders far too quickly. “I have no idea.”
She rubs at her forehead as if she’s trying to massage a migraine away.
“It was only a few nights ago,” she says.
I picture Leon and me in the same hotel bar, only minutes apart, both of us within feet of a man who went missing that night.
“As you’ll appreciate, Mrs. Chandler, I’m having real trouble here.”
“Because you think I’m lying?” I ask, boldly.
“Well, you can’t blame me, can you?” she says. “You have a habit of holding out on me.”
“I’ve told you why I wasn’t honest about going around to Jacob’s—I mean Michael’s—flat.”
She nods.
“And what about when you met Mr. Talbot at the Royal Garden hotel in Canterbury?”
A heat starts in my toes and creeps up my legs. All the while my ears are trying to rid themselves of the rush of blood that makes me feel as if I’m drowning. My lips feel like they’re forming the words I want to say, but no sound is coming out.
“I…” I start, my tongue suddenly feeling too big for my mouth. I have no idea what to say that can get me out of the very big mess I’m in. How can she possibly know about the hotel?
She leans in toward me, as if she’s hard of hearing and I’m whispering.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I manage.
“We have a report from a member of the public who believes they saw Mr. Talbot at the hotel on the night he disappeared.”
I shrug my shoulders nonchalantly.
“I don’t know what that’s got to do with me,” I say.
“Apparently, he was with a woman who matches your description,” she says, raising her eyebrows questioningly.
I snort. “What—of average height with long brown hair? That just about covers half of the female population.”
Robson narrows her eyes. “Perhaps, but I’m hoping that what she was wearing might narrow it down.”
The heat returns to envelop me as I force myself to remember what I had on. An involuntary twitch pulses in my cheek as Robson looks to her notebook.
“Apparently, the witness remembers Mr. Talbot being in the bar with a woman who had on a rather distinctive blouse,” she says. “It was red in color, possibly depicting a fruit of some kind, though the witness can’t be sure.”
It’s taking all my effort to keep my expression nonplussed, even though I know the exact garment she’s talking about.
“Does that sound familiar to you at all?” she asks, looking at me.
I shake my head, believing I’m safer on mute, but I’m screaming on the inside, the cacophony threatening to drown out all reason and show me for who I really am.
“Well, we’ll soon see,” she says smugly.
“Ma’am, you might want to take a look at this,” an officer calls out.
My heart stops as Robson raises her eyebrows, as if offering me the chance to tell her what they might have found before she gets there.
I pull my mouth into a tight line, giving nothing away, but the words reverberate around and around in my head. Tell the truth. Continue lying. Tell the truth. Continue lying. The roar of the conundrum of how best to get myself out of this is deafening. The constant questions, should have dones, meant to haves, circle furiously, getting louder with every revolution.
I watch numbly as an officer hands her what looks like a mobile phone in a bag marked “Evidence.”
“Is this yours?” she asks, showing me a black Nokia through the clear plastic. Its big buttons glare back at me and I force myself to think where it might have come from. If it was found in the “man drawer” in the kitchen, where everything from dead batteries, takeaway menus from restaurants that have closed down, and keys that we no longer own the locks to lives, then it could be a model harking back to our pre-iPhone days. But I can’t help but notice that it looks relatively modern and new.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Where was it found?”
Robson looks at her officer.
“In the bathroom cupboard under the sink, ma’am,” he says, as if I’m not here. “Concealed on a hidden shelf.”
“Concealed?” I blurt out, half laughing. “Are you kidding me?”
As ever, Robson’s expression is taut with seriousness, looking at me as if I have no idea of the shit I’m in. A concealed phone? Oh, I know the shit I’m in. I’m knee-deep in an intricately woven web of lies and deceit. Somebody is very definitely out to get me, and I need to find out who, before I’m spun up so tightly that I’ll never be able to get out.
“I’ve never seen it before,” I say.
“So you have no idea how it came to be in your bathroom cabinet?”
I shake my head. “Though I thought someone was in the house last night,” I offer.
I want to tell her that I know someone was in the house last night, but until I’m sure it wasn’t my own husband playing some kind of fucked-up mind game with me, I’ll play my cards close to my chest. This said, my record thus far of not being honest with the police has not been working out so well.
Robson looks at me, her interest piqued, though I’m sure I can detect a whiff of skepticism. “Did you report it?” she asks, knowing full well I didn’t.
“Well, like I say, I couldn’t be sure. I was sure of it at the time, but you know how things can spook you.”