By nine thirty on Monday I’ve dropped Adam off at Day Play and I’m waiting to catch a train to Blackheath. I should be exhausted – I’ve barely slept since Saturday – but my brain is filled with questions and fire ants of doubt. If Adele lied about having the second door then that changes everything. What else has she lied about?
Two questions burn brightest in my mind as I take a seat by the window, my back stiff with tension, my fingers picking at the skin around my nails. If Adele has the second door and can leave her body, how far can she go and what does she know? It sounds like a poem, and it goes around and around in my head in time with the steady rhythm of the engine lurching me across London Bridge.
Of course the bigger question is what does she know about me and David? Does she know about me and David? If she does, well, then … I feel sick contemplating that. I can’t take in that everything I’ve believed so readily might be wrong. How stupid I might have been. What I’ve done. The letter. All the detail I put into it about Rob and David and Adele – all guilt pointing at him. God, it’s so potentially awful. I think of Sophie sitting on my balcony. What was it she said? Fragile? Or crazy? Maybe she does have a screw loose? Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Rather than searching for a list of cafes in Blackheath, most of which probably don’t have websites anyway, I’ve looked for psychiatrists instead, and there are only three, which was a tiny wave of relief amidst my tsunami of panic. Even if there had been fifty though, I’m determined to find Marianne and talk to her. I need to know what happened between her and David and her and Adele. The notes in David’s file were so vague. Marianne not pressing charges – pressing charges against whom? Him or her? And for what?
It’s taken all my resolve not to buy a packet of Marlboro Lights at the station. Why should they drive me back to smoking? I’m not giving them that. Them. I can’t trust either of them right now. The tangles around me feel like barbed wire. Maybe my new panic is all for nothing. Maybe David is the bad guy here, just as Adele has made out. Maybe Adele doesn’t have the second door, and even if she does, maybe she still doesn’t know anything. Maybe, like me, she can’t go very far. She could still be telling the truth.
The thought feels hollow. I remember her cold hand and the gasp of her wakening in the chair in David’s study. If she can’t go very far, then why would she bother with the second door at all? I can’t imagine spending hours watching Laura and not being able to get past the end of our block’s walkway. It would be weird. And it would be dull, especially when the first door on its own allows you to dream anything you want.
She was through the second door that day when I found her in David’s study. I’m sure of it. But where was she? What was she watching? And why lie to me about it? My foot taps on the floor until we finally reach Blackheath and I rush from the train, as if trying to run from myself.
I walk quickly through the streets of the affluent suburb, mumbling the occasional apology as I barge through prams and strolling pedestrians, but not slowing my pace. There are a lot of cafes and restaurants here, but I focus on those closest to the clinics. If I’d been able to log into work then I probably could have checked which clinic David had come from, but he’s shut that avenue down, and if anyone ever told me, my brain has forgotten.
In one dead end, I order a bacon roll I don’t want, and when I find out there’s no Marianne there, I leave and dump it in the bin outside. Two take-away coffees follow and still no Marianne. I want to weep with frustration even though I’ve been here barely an hour. I have no patience left.
Finally, I find it. A small, chintzy, but on the right side of sweet rather than tasteless, cafe and tea shop down a quiet cobbled mews that you’d miss unless you knew it was there. I can see why David would come here. It’s homely looking. Welcoming. I know it’s the right place before I’ve even stepped inside. I can feel it. Just like I know when I see the earthy woman behind that counter that the answer to, ‘Are you Marianne?’ is going to be yes.
And it is. She’s older than me, maybe close to forty, and she has the tanned, toughened skin of someone who holidays in the sun maybe three or four times a year and relishes hours by the pool. She’s attractive, but not beautiful, and she has no wedding ring. Her eyes are kind though. I see that straight away.