I’m still trying to catch my breath when Novak comes back in, and as he takes his seat, he has just one question for me: What did you do to make HP hate you this much? But all I can think about are the years I’ve put aside for HP, all the times I’ve tried to show him how much I care. And still he doesn’t know me. In the end, all roads lead to Saskia Parker, however hard I try. Whether or not Novak finds her, she isn’t the great disappearance. She never was the most serious theft.
Novak, for his part, has been trying his best to follow the bread crumbs I’ve scattered along the way. At least he’s making an effort. Maybe he deserves the rest of the story now. It’s time to tell him what I did.
That Saturday night, my last at HP’s, he didn’t get in at nine like he said he would, and Saskia’s book club ran even later. HP got in after ten and he was drunk. When I heard the fridge door clank open, I crept from the spare room to the top of the stairs.
A bottle cap clattered onto the tiling floor and I heard him sit with a sigh at the table and the sound of his bottle clunking the wood in between sips. When he stumbled up again, screeching the chair on the tiling, I quickly padded back to my room. From the crack in the hinges of my door, I saw him tiptoe to Olive’s room. He swayed in the doorway, his shoulders and head craning forwards in the dusk. Then he bundled his way up the hall to his own room, nudging a framed picture with his shoulder as he passed it. I waited, then followed, watching from the door.
He’d gone to sleep so fast, his chest lifting and falling as he drifted with dreams. This poor, poor man. I crossed the threshold, thinking I’d better check that he wasn’t so drunk that he’d vomit on himself. Maybe I should move him, so he wasn’t in danger on his back. I knelt on his side of the bed, let his breath wash my face; if I timed it right, I could inhale everything he breathed out. I could smell the alcohol, potent on the fullness of his lips.
He hadn’t changed so much over the years—a few laugh lines at the sides of his eyes and mouth. He’d thickened in the chest and shoulders, but his skin was as soft and olive-smooth. I ran my index finger down the side of his neck from his earlobe to his collarbone; he shifted his knees under the blanket.
I moved around the bed and by Saskia’s table, lit by the glow of her digital clock, lifted my T-shirt and stood naked apart from the pink silk panties. I stretched, yawning my arms up so that my breasts cupped beautifully, my shadow silhouetted against the far wall. When I crawled under the covers, the sheets smelled like apricots, the weave rich and luxurious against my legs and ribs. For a second I lay quite still, living a moment of what should have been mine all along. My husband, my child, my house.
I slipped my hand across and over the wall of him, reached down into the cleft of his chest muscle and stroked fingertips along the broad swath of his stomach. My entire torso pressed against his back. Slowly I threaded my top leg around his, intertwining us at the calf and the thigh. His breath changed rhythm: he was surfacing. Leaning on my elbow, I breathed into the back of his neck, my nipples dusting his shoulder blades.
My hand traveled down from his stomach and under the waistband of his shorts and he breathed out pleasure, his throat croaky and bubbled with sleep. He couldn’t turn without squashing me, so he reached his hand back and felt for the silk of the panties. His fingers played there for a while, toying with the fabric and me inside it; he was teasing, slow, enjoying the opiates of sleep and beer and sex, that drowsy indulgent line between wakefulness and sleep. I wriggled the silk panties down, pushing them with my feet towards the base of the bed.
“Baby,” he murmured. “You just get back?”
“Mm-hmmm,” I said softly, and I moved across so I could straddle him. And that was when he opened his eyes.
“What the . . . Jesus Christ!” With one arm he swiped me sideways, knocking me off him to Saskia’s side of the bed.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. You’re insane!”
I pulled the comforter up over my belly and stared at him blankly. “I’m actually the opposite. If you’d just think clearly for a minute.”
“Get out! Get fucking out!” he hissed as he ripped the blanket away from me.
Outside, a car pulled into the driveway, the music thudding as a passenger door swung open. From where I lay I could hear the tinkle of Saskia’s voice and footsteps crunching on the gravel beneath the window.
“Oh, dear,” I said. “Are you going to tell her or shall I?”
HP grabbed me by the wrist and flung me out of the bedroom, throwing my shirt at me before shutting the bedroom door. I could hear Saskia arriving, taking off her heels in the hallway. I rested against the spare room doorjamb, arms crossed against my naked rib cage. I let her pause at the sight of me, squinting into the shadowy hallway.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, covering myself with my T-shirt. “It’s a shame you had to find out this way.”
She took two steps towards me. “Find out what?”
Before I could answer, their bedroom door flew open and HP blundered out, bare-chested in his boxers. He had both hands on his head. “Saskia, it’s not what it looks like,” he slurred.
I watched as she took in more details. My near nakedness. HP’s disheveled hair.
She tottered, spindly and adrift down the hall, pushing past to inspect the bedroom. Then she turned to face HP, sinking down onto the edge of the bed.
“Saskia, it’s not what you think,” HP said. He rushed towards her. “She was in our bed. I thought it was you!” He sobbed the last word.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, pushing forwards from my doorjamb, striding into their room. “You’re not that drunk.” HP covered his mouth with the cupped palm of one hand. Saskia’s face went pale.
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for Saskia to spring up at me, all claws, kicks and spittle hissing. She pushed at my throat with her nasty little hands, her clenched fury knocking me off-balance, and I staggered sideways onto their carpet. “You want a fight, you fucking mole?” she whispered, her knees pressing me flat.
I wriggled but couldn’t shift her.
“I will bring you down. Get out of my house and stay away from my family!”
She let go, pushing fury into my neck as she stood.
“Leave and don’t come back,” HP said. He took a half step towards me, as if he might jog over and kick me for a field goal. “Get in your car and go. Your game is over.”
I went to the spare room, dressed, packed a few things into my suitcase and took off in my car for my mother’s place.
chapter
* * *
21
Novak has completely lost his poker face.
“So, Angela . . .” He rubs his hand over his weak jawline. “Is that when you decided to get her back?”