Each time they met, Karl had expected her to draw back in shocked recognition. It never happened. She had imprinted her first impression of Ben Carroll on the retina of her eye, and saw only an eccentric street artist with chalk dust on his hands. A busker she would have passed without a second glance if motherhood had not softened her vision.
After he had signed the contract with Plink Inc., he drove up Bayview Heights and stood outside her house with its gilded gates and electronic security system. Other houses similar to Shearwater – perched like eyries above the sea – were steeped in the secluded privacy that great wealth allows. She had tried but failed to persuade him to appear on Mandy Meets. Viewers loved a rags-to-riches story, she said, and Ben Carroll ticked all the boxes. A pavement artist who had struck gold. She looked him straight in the eye when she said that. Shrewd eyes, staring at the main chance. Her single-mindedness; he had to admire that about her. The climb upwards from a cottage on Raleigh Way to that pile on the summit of Bayview Heights.
A car had ascended the steep road leading to the entrance. He moved out of sight when her silver Saab came into view. The boy in the back seat was visible for an instant before the double gates automatically separated and she drove into the grounds. The gates closed behind her with a clang that catapulted rooks from the trees, noisily scolding and mapping the evening sky with their agitated wings. Their clamour filled his head as he walked away.
Her son was now four years old. On the day the boy celebrated his Plink-themed birthday party, Karl had returned to his rented apartment and showered. The water was hot, almost unbearable, but he had endured it. To find his face again. The cast of his body. To recognise the timbre of his natural voice. It wouldn’t be easy. Like trying on a neglected overcoat that no longer fitted his once-familiar frame.
He had rung Sasha. The yearning to see his daughter had never eased but, while he was trapped in alcohol, then trapped in another skin, she had been sliding away from him. Her accent had changed. She sounded more like Nicole where, once, she’d sounded like him. Their relationship was shifting. He was becoming her friend, someone she could confide in, offload her anxieties and grumbles about her mother and Seth, her stepfather.
When the call ended, he had shaved off his hair. He swept up the ratty black clumps from the floor and moved his hands over the smooth contours of his scalp. His face felt vulnerable, his eyes exposed without the shield of tinted glass.
Over the following weeks, he had experimented with make-up concealers, testing one product after another on his scarred face. He searched for one that would blend the redness of the wound into his natural complexion but his scarred face was impossible to disguise under the patina of make-up. Gabby Morgan came to his aid and provided him with prosthetic patches of the kind used by actors and, Karl suspected, by the criminal fraternity. It would carry him past the most sharp-eyed security official, Gabby assured him.
His hair had grown again and his mouth, the twisted groove that a nameless youth had carved into his lip, was hidden under a beard when he flew from Dublin Airport. He had taken nothing to the rented apartment when he moved into it and he took nothing away with him when he closed the door for the last time. All traces of his presence had been scoured from the cell-like rooms, the laptop on which he had created his books destroyed.
On the flight to Arizona, he maintained his composure as he was photographed at security and when his passport was scrutinised. He was aware of the scar, could imagine it pulsing angrily beneath the patch. As the plane approached Phoenix, he examined his reflection in the cramped toilet, terrified he would fall at the last fence. His pallor had a sickly sheen; but his disguise was holding. He barely contained his terror as he passed through the gauntlets of heavy-hipped, armed security officers, who demanded that Karl Lawson list his reasons for visiting Arizona.
Selina… Selina… He repeated her name, the sound of the syllables beating time with his heart.
Outside the terminal, the heat smacked his face. He had forgotten the ferocity of the sun, its bleached splendour. In the bedroom of an anonymous hotel, he removed the prosthetic patch and tilted a Panama hat over his damaged cheek.
A red sundress, flat red sandals; he picked her out immediately from the crowd in the foyer.
‘Karl.’ She kissed his cheek, her sedate greeting setting the tone for their reunion.
‘It’s good to see you again, Selina.’ He took his cue from her and made polite conversation about his flight when they left the hotel and walked towards her car. The air conditioning blew coolly around them as she drove on to the highway.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m good,’ she replied. ‘Very good.’
She didn’t fool him. He understood the hollowness that followed the ending of a marriage. The struggle to begin again. Her apartment was close to the theatres and art galleries. Closer to danger than the gated community where she had lived with Jago. At her insistence, Cheryl Storm had been written out of Finchley Creek, and she was concentrating on theatre. Small parts that she hoped would obliterate the character she had created.
‘Hard to live down the bitch reputation.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I could wear a burka and the audience would still see only Cheryl Storm.’
‘It’s difficult to move beyond a name,’ he agreed. ‘Theatre suits you. You look wonderful.’
Only when they veered off at the junction to Winding Falls did he become aware of her nervousness.
‘Is this your first time returning to the cabin?’ he asked.
Her fingers fluttered to her mouth, then became still. ‘I never thought I’d stand inside it again,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted to tear up your letter when I received it but you are right. It’s time to confront the past.’
‘You can still change your mind.’
‘No. I have to do this. I tried once with Jago. I couldn’t bring myself to walk through the door. I’m ready now.’
The cabin had been repainted, some repairs done to the roof, the garden tamed. A jojoba bush had replaced the palo verde tree and a small gazebo offered shade from the sun. Selina found the key under a terracotta plant holder and unlocked the front door. Karl held her hand and drew her over the threshold.
The sofa where they had made love so many times was missing from the main room, but everything else was as they remembered. He wheeled his case into one of the bedrooms. The bed was neatly made, no frilly cushions or pillow shams to suggest a feminine touch. It was obvious from the layout of the room that he would be sleeping on his own.