“Vanessa told me that’s how you and he communicated, with secret phones.”
My ears go hot, muffling everything he says. I can see his lips moving, but it doesn’t correlate with what he’s saying. All I can think about is how he and Vanessa seem to know more about the phone found in my bathroom than I do. And suddenly, it all becomes clear.
“Oh my god,” I gasp.
He looks at me with a perplexed expression.
“It’s … it’s you and her, isn’t it?”
“What?” he says, but I know he knows I’m on to him. I can see it in his eyes.
“You and Michael’s wife, that’s what this is all about.” I hit my forehead with the base of my palm. “How can I have been so fucking stupid?”
He watches me carefully as my brain pulls it all together. “You and her are in this together,” I say, my voice high-pitched. “You wanted to get rid of Michael and frame me for it.”
“This is getting more absurd by the minute,” he says.
I pace up and down as all the pieces fall into place. “That’s it!” I exclaim, thinking aloud. “You did it because you wanted to be together. You wanted us both out of the picture and this is how you thought you’d make that happen.”
Leon laughs. “Oh, I’ve heard it all now.”
I go toward him, desperate to lash out, but as soon as I’m an inch away, I stop myself, ashamed that I came so close. “What have you done with him, you bastard?” I scream. “Tell me what you’ve done with him.”
He looks at me wide-eyed, as if he can’t believe that our relationship has sunk to such depths. Him and me both.
“This is crazy,” he yells. “You’re crazy!”
He storms out, making the house shake as the door slams and rebounds against the frame.
One of us had to leave, before something was said that we’d never recover from. Though right now, it doesn’t feel like we’ll ever be able to get back to the normal we used to think was boring. It was only a week ago that life had seemed so mundane, but I’d go back there in an instant. How have our lives been turned upside down in such a short space of time? How has the implicit trust I had in my husband, and him in me, been eroded so deeply?
I’m still pulling myself together when, a few minutes later, a voice calls out down the hall. “Hello?”
With the concert starting in a couple of hours’ time, I knew that we’d most likely have visitors; friends excitedly passing by on their way to the ground, with picnic hampers and clinking bottles of wine. But of all the days to have an open house …
I quickly wipe under my eyes and pull at my blouse. “In here,” I say, popping my head around the kitchen door.
“Hey, sorry to just show up,” comes an American drawl.
Of all the people it could be, Anna is my most preferred. Not least because it means she’s OK after last night.
“I just wanted to say sorry about yesterday,” she says, proffering a bottle of wine and a small bouquet of flowers.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“It’s just a little thank-you,” she says, as the corners of her mouth turn up.
As I take them from her, I realize that I’ve never seen her smile before.
“For what?”
“You have no idea how much you’ve helped me these past couple of months,” she says. “And after yesterday, I finally think I’ve turned a corner.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“So I went back home after seeing you and told Nick, very calmly, that we couldn’t go on the way we were and that I was going to leave him unless we sorted things out.” Her eyes light up. “We had a really good talk and he admits that he lets his anger and frustrations get the better of him, and that none of it is my fault. He doesn’t want me to leave and says he will do everything he can to make it up to me.”
“That’s great,” I say, tempering my misgivings. I’ve heard this a thousand times before.
“So I’m going to give him a chance,” she says. “But I wanted to say thank you because without you, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it.”
“Does this mean you’re ending your sessions?”
She nods. “You’ve been so incredible and given me so much, but I’ve got everything from them that I needed.”
I smile, yet can’t help but wonder if she’ll be knocking on my door again in a month’s time.
“Are you going to the concert?” she asks.
I want to say no. I want to tell her that while her life has seemingly got infinitely better, mine is imploding around me. But instead I smile and nod.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I say.
26
I lock the door behind her and take my phone and my heavy heart up to “Mom’s room.” It’s the only place where I feel I have someone on my side.
As I lie on the bed, I can hear the opening chords of Bach’s Adagio drifting through the open window, as the violin section of the twenty-five-piece orchestra Leon booked flexes its strings for a soundcheck. I wonder if it even occurs to him as he’s putting the final touches to the afternoon’s festivities that it’s the solo from our wedding, sung in the church as we signed the register.
The haunting concerto stops abruptly, much like our marriage, it seems, and the irony almost makes me cry. A few seconds later it starts up again, joined by the low pitch of the cellos.
Why am I being punished? I ask, hoping my mother can hear me. I only ever wanted to do the right thing. Why would anyone see it any other way?
I’m startled by the interruption of my phone ringing and sit bolt upright when I see Ness flashing on the screen.
“Hello?” I say, breathlessly.
There’s a muffled scream at the other end of the line.
“Oh my god, Vanessa, is that you?” I shout.
“If you think you’re going to get away with this … I’ll … if it’s the last thing I do,” comes the sporadic buffeting of a man’s voice, which sounds a lot like Jacob’s.
There’s a sinister silence. “Vanessa!” I bellow. “Can you hear me?”
There’s heavy breathing and a rustling sound, but as I press the phone tightly to my ear, there’s something else. I close the window, shutting out the sporadic melodies of the string section on the other side of the copse. But I can still hear it, coming down the line.
“Fuck,” I say aloud, almost dropping the phone. I open the window, listen to the dulcet tones and slam it shut again. The music is playing, as if in stereo; because whoever’s at the other end of the line is listening to the same thing as me.
Vanessa Talbot’s phone is here, on the estate. But with two thousand people expected for the concert, it’s going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially when I don’t even know who I’m looking for.
My legs don’t feel like my own as I sprint across the meadow and through the copse of trees toward the concert ground. The tuning of instruments and the holler of “Testing … testing,” all adds to the cacophony resounding in my head.
My lungs are burning by the time the woodland opens out to the manicured lawns that roll down toward the stage. I’m buoyed to see just a couple of hundred people at most, milling about within the confines of the fences surrounding the site, so I’m confident that even if I’m not able to identify Vanessa, I’ll certainly know Jacob.
I need to be quick though, as the drive leading down from the main house is already teeming with people making their way to what they hope is going to be a pleasurable evening in the sun. Until a few days ago, I thought I was going to be one of them, looking forward to my own Lady of the Manor moment with excitement as I proudly watched my husband arrange the biggest event Whitstable has ever seen.
Yet now, I doubt I’ll even be able to get into the grounds, as a man wearing an all-black ensemble, with a lanyard hanging around his neck, puts a hand out to stop me passing through the gate.
“I’m…” I start, barely able to catch my breath. “I’m … I’m the organizer’s wife.”
I may as well have said I’d just been dug up. “Have you got your pass?” he says, looking me up and down with bemusement.