‘I missed you both,’ he says, his voice muffled in my collarbone. ‘I wanted to call, but I thought you’d be having such a good time …’
I feel a twinge of guilt as he says the words, as I realise that I barely thought about calling him. I texted, to say we’d arrived safely. That was it. Thank God he didn’t ring – I try to imagine my phone going – when? During that long, painful dinner? During the fight with Luc? On that first night as we all gathered, full of fear about what we were about to hear?
It’s impossible.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t phone too,’ I say at last, disengaging myself and turning off the oven. ‘I meant to – it’s just, you know what it’s like with Freya. She’s so whiny in the evenings, especially in a strange place.’
‘So … what was the occasion?’ Owen asks. He begins to get salad out of the drawer, sniffing the limp lettuce and picking off the floppy outer leaves. ‘I mean, it’s a funny time to get together – midweek I mean. I can see it doesn’t make any difference to you and Kate. But doesn’t Fatima work?’
‘Yes. There was a dinner – an alumnae dinner at Salten House. They held it on a Tuesday, I don’t know why. I suppose because the school’s empty then.’
‘You didn’t tell me about that.’ He starts to chop tomatoes, slice by slice, the pale juice bleeding across the plates. I shrug.
‘I didn’t know. Kate bought the tickets. It was a surprise.’
‘Well … I’ve got to say, I’m surprised too,’ Owen says at length.
‘Why?’
‘You always said you’d never go back. To that school, I mean. Why now?’
Why now. Why now. Fuck. Why now?
It’s a perfectly reasonable question. And I can’t think of an answer.
‘I don’t know,’ I say at last, testily. I push his plate towards him. ‘OK? I don’t know. It was Kate’s idea and I went along with it. Can we stop with the third degree? I’m tired, and I didn’t sleep very well last night.’
‘Hey.’ Owen’s eyes open wide, he holds up his hands. He’s trying not to show it, but there is hurt in his face, and I want to bite my own tongue. ‘Sure, blimey, sorry. I was just trying to make conversation.’
And he picks up his plate and goes out into the living room without another word.
I feel something twist inside me, a pain in my gut like a real, physical pain. And for a second I want to run after him and blurt it all out, what has happened, what we did, the weight that is hanging around my neck, threatening to drag me down …
But I can’t. Because it’s not only my secret – it’s theirs too. And I have no right to betray them.
I swallow it down, the confession that is rising inside me. I swallow it down, and I follow Owen into the living room to eat our supper side by side, in silence.
What I learn, in the days that follow, is that time can grind down anything into a kind of new normality. It’s a lesson I should have remembered from last time, as I struggled to come to terms with what had happened, with what we’d done.
Back then, I was too busy to feel constantly afraid – and the whole business began to feel like a kind of vague nightmare, something that had happened to someone else, in another time. My mind was taken up by other things – by the effort of establishing myself at a new school, and by my mother, who was getting progressively sicker. I did not have time to check the papers, and the idea of combing the Internet for information never occurred to me back then.
Now, though, I have time on my hands. When Owen leaves for work, the door closing behind him, I am free to obsess. I don’t dare search Google for the terms I want – Body Salten Reach Identified – even a private window on a browser doesn’t mask your Internet searches completely, I know that.
Instead I search around the edges, terms carefully designed to be explicable, non-incriminating. ‘News Salten Reach.’ ‘Kate Atagon Salten.’ Headlines I hope will bring up what I want, but without a digital trail of bloodstained fingerprints.
Even then I erase my history. Once, I consider going to the Internet cafe at the bottom of our road, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Freya and I would stick out like a sore thumb among the earnest young men in their white robes. No. No matter what, I must not draw attention to myself.
The news is released about a week after I return, and in the event, I don’t need to search for it. It’s there on the Salten Observer website as soon as I log on. It makes the Guardian and the BBC news too, albeit a small paragraph under ‘local interest’.
The body of local artist Ambrose Atagon, celebrated for his studies of coastal landscapes and wildlife, has been discovered, more than fifteen years after his unexplained disappearance, on the banks of Salten Reach, a beauty spot close to his home on the south coast. His daughter, Kate Atagon, did not return calls, but family friend and local resident Mary Wren said that closure would be welcome after so many years looking for answers.
It’s a shock – as I stand there, reading the paragraph again and again, I feel my skin prickle with it, and I have to steady myself against the table. It has happened. The thing I’ve spent so long fearing. It’s finally happened. And yet, it’s not as bad as it could have been. There’s nothing about it being treated as a suspicious death, no mention of coroners or inquests. And as the days wear on, and my phone doesn’t ring, and there are no knocks at the door, I tell myself I can relax … just a little.
And yet, I am still tense and jumpy, too distracted to read or concentrate on TV in the evenings with Owen. When he asks me a question over dinner my head jerks up, torn from my own thoughts and unsure what he said. I find myself apologising more and more.
God, how I wish I could smoke. My fingers itch for a cigarette.
Only once do I crack and have one, and I hate myself afterwards. I buy a packet in a rush of shame as we pass the offy at the corner of the road, telling myself that I am going in for milk, and then – almost as a pretend afterthought – asking for ten Marlboro Lights as I go up to pay, my voice high and falsely casual. I smoke one in the back garden, and then I flush the butt and shower, scrubbing my skin until it is pink and raw, ignoring Freya’s increasingly cross screeches from the bouncy chair just inside the bathroom door.
There is no way I am feeding my child stinking of smoke.
When Owen comes home I feel riven with guilt, jumpy and on edge, and at last, when I drop a wine glass and burst into tears he says, ‘Isa, what’s the matter? You’ve been weird ever since you came back from Salten. Is something going on?’
At first I can only shake my head, hiccuping, but then at last I say, ‘I’m sorry – I’m so sorry. I – I had a cigarette.’
‘What?’ It’s not what he was expecting, I can tell that from his expression. ‘Blimey … how, when did that happen?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I’m calmer now, but still gulping. ‘I – I had a few drags at Kate’s and then today, I don’t know, I just couldn’t resist.’