For twenty-one years women had ignored me. Now that I apparently had worth, I wished it away. ‘Yes,’ I said, sensing the need for honesty. ‘It’s everything.’
Beth rocked from side to side, as though she were physically weighing her options. ‘I’ve got to say it looks convincing, from the outside, at a glance. Hard to say without getting her take on it all.’
Everything inside me went loose. ‘Please don’t say anything, I’m begging you.’
‘I don’t need to.’ Her words round, controlled, bulging with unshed tears. ‘If it’s as good as you say it is, I’m not going to wreck her life just because you can’t keep it in your pants. And if you’re the arsehole that I think you are, she’ll find out sooner or later.’
She kept her word; that is, the dreaded confrontation failed to materialise. I saw Beth twice that day, watching us across fields, through crowds, as though by examining us from a distance she could measure what we had. But how could she, from the outside? Even I hadn’t known what I had until I’d come so close to fucking it up.
Chapter 52
LAURA
21 March 2015
The light from the screen hurts my eyes as I check my phone with the wariness of someone coming round from a drunken stupor. That’s how last night feels: surreal, dreamlike, beyond my control. Kit hasn’t responded to my angry text and I think of him, fast asleep in his bunk, unaware of the storm he’s coming home to. I don’t know if I want to hit him or hold him.
At seven, my phone rings, Kit’s photo on the screen; he should be pulling into Newcastle round about now. I decline the call; this is a conversation we need to have face to face. Sixty seconds later the messages start.
Please pick up
Look I know it seems like the end of the world but we can get through this
Please talk to me baby
I wish you hadn’t found out that way but I promise I can explain, we can get over this
I’m so so so sorry
It is at least gratifying that he understands the severity of what he’s done and its potential consequences. But I text back, just to shut him up.
I really don’t want to do this over the phone. I’ll see you at home.
While Ling dashes around trying to gather her case notes, and find a matching pair of shoes, I go over the book that Piper was supposed to read last night, and carefully forge the appropriate page in her reading diary. Juno haggles with Ling for an extra three pounds for coffee on the way home. Mother and daughter are the original immovable object and irresistible force. I’ve got all this to look forward to; I wonder again whether I’m carrying boys, girls, or one of each.
I catch Juno on her way out and slip a fiver into her blazer pocket. She rewards my wink with a rare kiss before disappearing, leaving an unsubtle waft of celebrity perfume in her wake. After Ling heads for the station, exclaiming at the novelty of leaving for work on time, I walk Piper the fifty yards to her school, holding her hand to cross the road and taking the old comfort and pride that strangers might think she’s mine. This will be my twins’ school and I notice with concern that the infant school gates have been colonised by blondes in Breton tops; the ethnic diversity you see in the upper years slowly disappearing. I disapprove of the social cleansing of my neighbourhood, the influx of yummy mummies, even as I acknowledge that, to the outsider, I’m one of them.
I let myself back into Ling’s house. Wet towels carpet the bathroom floor and I find myself picking up after Juno like I did when she was a baby. I need a shower and clean clothes but home no longer stands for sanctuary. I fuss some more, straightening the pictures on Ling’s walls and unloading the dishwasher until it occurs to me, as I plié inelegantly to retrieve the plates, that I’ve got an idiot-proof way of checking Beth’s whereabouts: her landline and Antonia’s programmed into my mobile. I call Beth from Ling’s house phone, withholding the number. It rings out three times and then there’s a digital beep as she picks up. I cut Beth off before she’s got to the first groggy syllable of hello, free to go home. Even with a direct train or clear motorways, she can’t get to me before Kit.
Chapter 53
KIT
11 August 1999
The eclipse itself was respite from Beth. I had a conviction, very shortly to be brutally disproved of course, that during the shadow all extraneous human activity and motivation was put into a kind of suspended animation. Even though we were clouded out, the shifting violet light on the horizon surrounded us, and with the sky restricted I felt it with my other senses in a way I never had before. And Laura was by my side, which made all the difference.
After fourth contact, we climbed down and picked our way back through the desolate car park, where vital-looking components of fairground equipment littered the ground. Back on my guard, I was too busy looking over my shoulder to notice the purse on the floor. But Laura saw it, and could no more walk past it than most people could an abandoned kitten. I took the opportunity to scour the trees around me for a pair of watching eyes, but there was no one.
Laura was gone for longer than I’d thought, and I remember the first stirrings of frustration. When I called her name there was no reply, and frustration turned to dread, or is that just something I’ve decided with hindsight? I re-trod her path into the caravan park, past an old bumper car and a sinister carousel horse.
The man I would later come to know as Jamie Balcombe walked backwards into me, treading hard on my toe. I could feel even in our brief collision his strength relative to mine. At my shout of protest, he leapt as though he’d been electrocuted. Laura stood, ashen, in the dark corridor between two trailers. What had he done to her?
‘There’s a girl.’ Laura cut into my nascent horror with a trembling voice. ‘I think she’s been . . .’ She gulped down air. ‘I think she’s been attacked.’