He makes a couple of astonished noises, then says, ‘You’re kidding!’
It truly hadn’t occurred to me that he might not know.
I tell him about the short message exchange, about my chat with his secretary. ‘It’s been nine days. Nine days and I am none the wiser.’
‘I don’t know what to say. Alice . . . My God.’ Then, after a hesitation, he says, ‘You believe me, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him, after quick thought.
‘I knew you’d both be back by now, but I haven’t had a chance to ring him, what with everything that’s been going on.’
‘I would really like you to tell me what you were both talking about when you stood outside in the rain at our wedding.’ I’m trembling. Hearing the words come out of my mouth somehow doesn’t make the situation any more real.
‘Alice, I . . .’
‘Please don’t tell me it’s nothing, Rick. I know you were talking about something. I’d really appreciate you being honest with me.’ I have the sense that perhaps Dawn has walked into the room. Of something being whispered. ‘Has he met someone else?’ I ask. ‘Is that it? Has there been some sort of affair?’
He lets out a huge sigh. ‘God, Alice! Look . . . No. It’s not like that. And I don’t know why he took off and left you. You’re going to have to ask him . . .’
‘But I can’t ask him because he’s not talking to me and he’s not here.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry.’
‘But?’ I sense one coming.
A whisper in the background. It’s a second or two before he replies.
‘But I do have some idea what it’s about. I’m just not comfortable being the one to tell you.’
‘Is he there?’ It just dawns on me. ‘Is he with you?’
‘What?’ he says, more in exclamation. ‘No. Of course not. I’m just . . .’
Conferring with my wife? Because she also knows something you don’t.
‘Look, it’s not my place. It’s got to come from him,’ he says. Then, surprisingly, after a moment or two, he adds, ‘You know what he’s like . . .’
And I think, Do I?
‘When things get on top of him, he tends to retreat. To think. It’s just his way. Perhaps that’s all he’s doing now.’
I remember Justin telling me about how, when he heard his dad had died, he ran away. He was only missing a few hours – he’d been hiding in a barn – but his mother had rung the police.
‘Is he ill?’ I ask.
‘Ill? My God. No, Alice. He’s definitely not ill.’
‘The men in his family all have health problems.’
‘He’s not ill, Alice. Okay? I’m sorry.’
I feel this conversation is about to burst into flames. I don’t mean to hang up on him; it just happens. It occurs to me to ring back and say, Please tell Dawn I hope her mother will be well. But the moment passes.
SEVENTEEN
‘The girls in this painting are more glamorous than the girls in the others.’ Martin is pointing to Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey: two sophisticated ladies sitting opposite one another at a small table in a restaurant. Something about the artist’s intent focus on the silence between them reminds me of tea with Evelyn, when she began to tell me her story, and, weirdly, of Justin and Rick talking in the rain.
Evelyn isn’t here today. Michael said she hasn’t been well. I remember how she seemed so changed that day, after she had finished describing her week together with Eddy. In a way, it has changed my thought process – made me ask myself some questions. Now I have been comparing Eddy’s love for Evelyn to Justin’s love for me, and finding it lacking. ‘He loved me so much that he could think of nothing except being with me,’ Evelyn had said. ‘He wanted to leave his marriage. He wanted me to leave mine. He loved me to the point where he had lost all reason.’ Her face had clouded. I’d thought she had been about to cry. I had felt so incredibly bleak, a quiet voice asking, Why didn’t Justin love me like that?
‘What happened?’ I asked her.
She pulled out her pretty handkerchief again. ‘I told him it was impossible. He had a family, and I had a husband who was my family . . .’ A half-finished piece of carrot cake sat on her plate, and she stared at it.
‘And that’s where it ended?’ I wanted to know so much more. She had managed to buy herself one week. But is that all it ever was?
Her hesitation held me riveted. ‘No. But that’s all I think I can manage to tell you today,’ she eventually said.
She looked desperately tired and wrung out suddenly. When I peeked at my watch, I saw that we’d been sitting there for two hours. No wonder she had seemed to fade into the pattern on the chair. Listening to her story had been like watching an engrossing film where you can barely bring yourself to press pause to take a toilet break.
‘I hope Evelyn is all right?’ I say to Michael now. ‘Perhaps you can give me her phone number so I can check on her later?’ What happened after that week? Had she returned home? I’m concluding she must have. I am fascinated by how much I want to know.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I am sure she’d love that.’
We stand in companionable silence, and eavesdrop on a conversation that Martin and Ronnie are having about the hats worn by the two women in the painting. Martin is telling Ronnie they are called cloche hats, which is amazing and absolutely right.
‘Where are Martin’s teeth?’ I ask Michael, just noticing they are missing.
‘Good question.’ He shrugs in that languid way of his. ‘Teeth can be a bit of a shared commodity at Sunrise . . . Whenever a set goes missing, they have a way of showing up in someone else’s mouth. In Martin’s case, whichever nurse identifies them first gets the prize of not having to bathe him for a week. He hates the tub.’