With no answers there, I flip my thinking to David. The pills, the phone calls, the money. Is it all containment? Trying to keep the world safe from her? Or is he protecting himself as much as her? I still don’t know what happened to Rob. He made a mistake in his past. No, I correct myself. That’s not what she said. She said he’d done something wrong thinking he was protecting the woman he loved. Something wrong is bigger than a mistake.
I get my phone out of my bag and find the clinic’s number in my contacts, and my finger hovers over the dial button. What if he did kill Rob and then I tell him about the letter I’ve sent to the police, then what? What will he do? Should I trust him and tell him everything? My heart races at the thought. Fuck it, I think. Trust your heart. For once in all this, trust David. Deal with Adele afterwards.
I hit the dial button and press the phone to my ear. Sue answers and I make an attempt to disguise my voice. I tell her my name is Marianne and I must speak to Dr David Martin as a matter of urgency. She tells me she’ll see if he’s free and to hold.
He’ll agree to meet me. He has to.
50
THEN
‘Fuck, I’ll be glad when this visit is over,’ Rob says, reluctantly peeling the potatoes and putting them in a pan of cold water. ‘Polish this, clean that, throw that away, hide this.’ He looks over to where she’s pouring boiling water into the stuffing mix. ‘He’s just a bloke, not the fucking pope.’ Adele sticks her tongue out at him, and he throws some wet potato skin at her.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll pick it up!’ he says, gently mocking her once more.
‘I want things to be nice,’ she says. ‘For all of us.’ She’s so excited about David coming that she could barely sleep at all last night even though they’d got pretty stoned. Rob, however, has got moodier and moodier about the visit, even though he’s promised to be nice. She’s pretty sure it’s nerves. People aren’t his thing, and no matter how much she tells him he’ll like David she can see that he’s not at all convinced.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he says, his dark hair flopping over his face as he returns to his task. ‘Well, if you don’t poison us all with that chicken, anyway. And make sure you rub plenty of butter into the skin.’
The past twenty-four hours have kept them busy. They’ve cleaned up all the debris of their feral lives – no evidence of junk food and joint roaches and spilled tobacco anywhere – and the rooms smell of polish and air freshener. A proper grown-up house. Rob’s even promised not to mention drugs or get high or anything over the weekend. Adele doesn’t believe for a second that he won’t have a joint when he’s on his own in his room, but Rob’s sharp enough to open a window, and the house is certainly big enough that the smell won’t carry.
When the chicken is finally stuffed and in the oven, she checks her watch – David’s watch that’s now hers, a constant link to him – for the thousandth time that day.
‘He’ll be here soon,’ she says, grinning. She’s glowing, and she can’t help it. David, David, David. Her head is filled with him. ‘Ten minutes or so, I think.’
‘Whoop de do,’ Rob says. ‘Can we have a drink now?’
She pours them both a glass of wine, feeling very grown up with her roast dinner on and drinking from her parents’ best crystal glasses. They should probably wait for David, but a drink will relax Rob. They lean against the kitchen table together, and she links her arm into his.
‘David can be a bit quiet and reserved at first,’ she says. ‘But don’t read anything into it. That’s just his way. He’s a bit shy. But he’s very funny when he relaxes.’
‘Funny like me?’ Rob looks sideways at her, and she nudges his ribs.
‘Different funny. Anyway, I have every confidence that you’ll like him. If you can get past the awful fact that he worries about me. I mean, how terrible of him, after everything.’
‘Okay, okay, point taken. And you stop worrying, I’ve told you, I’ll be nice.’
They both smile then, and she feels some of the tension ease out of his wiry arm.
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s go and wait for him.’
They take their wine and go and loiter on the wide stone steps, and while Adele impatiently peers up the drive, Rob leans against one of the pillars by the heavy oak doors and drinks. He looks entirely relaxed, which reinforces Adele’s suspicion that he’s actually a bundle of nerves.
Finally, the purr of an engine cuts through the stillness, and Adele lets out a yelp and runs down onto the gravel, jumping up and down.
‘He’s here! He’s here!’ She’s so excited. It’s like her little family will be complete. No missing Rob when she’s with David, and no missing David when she’s with Rob.