I kissed him on his stubbled cheek for that, and then—across the room—my phone rang. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stumbled over to pick it up. It was Melody Sykes, working on a weekend.
“Callie, I hope it’s a convenient moment . . . I want to tell you about our investigation. We’ve spoken to Charlotte Watts and to Luke Stone’s friends and family, and we’ve reached the conclusion that there’s no reason to investigate further. The postmortem confirms a drug overdose, and his personal history with drugs suggests that they were self-administered.”
I turned my back to the wall, leaning on it for support.
“But you’ve seen the emails that Charlotte and I sent each other? How can you not realize what they mean?”
“I acknowledge that you believed you were entangled in some sort of murder plot, Callie. But I have to look at hard evidence, not at the fantasies that you and Charlotte dreamed up.”
She hung up and I relayed her message to Wilf, who sat up in bed and let out a long, guttural sigh. “Well, that’s great news. Couldn’t be better. Now you can forget about bloody Scarlet and her poisonous mind-fucking, and I can get you back—the real you.”
“Really? You really think it’s all over?” I sounded sarcastic; but then I sighed too—wishing I could agree.
“I know her real name now,” I said. “Charlotte Watts.”
Wilf got out of bed and went into the bathroom to shave. He stood at the sink, running the tap, and I stood behind him, my arms around his waist, peeking out to study the two of us in the mirror, to see how we looked together, to see if we seemed a good match. And we did: his ginger hair was ruffled up, his eyes were receding and bloodshot from sex. And I looked like a jumbled mess too—messy hair, cheeks flushed with red, an old robe of Tilda’s pulled around me untidily. I noticed a cocktail of scents, a concoction of his smell and mine, of bodies, and I felt happy. I looked around, the bathroom was scattered with used towels, opened toothpaste, bits of makeup—mascara, lipsticks, Wilf’s dirty clothes on the floor. The flat’s minimalist days were over.
“Let’s get out of here and pick up some decent coffee at the Copernicus,” Wilf said.
“Okay.” I was drinking coffee now.
? ? ?
We sat at a table by the window, the one that I’d chosen at the beginning of the summer, when I’d been spying on Tilda. (I could admit it now—it was spying. I had been the little stalker.) Wilf tried to keep the conversation positive.
“Come with me to the Bishops Avenue garden . . . you’ll see the progress. There’s actual planting now—camellias and hydrangeas and fruit trees—and I’m getting paid on Monday. It’ll be enough to buy a new vehicle, with my name on the side! I’m going to call myself Wilf Baker Gardens—not very creative, I know. What do you think?”
“I love it. I love your name.” I leaned my head on my hand, gazing at him sadly, wanting to be the person he wanted me to be.
“What?”
“I’m thinking that you’re going to do brilliantly at this, at gardening and business and everything—and I am going to support you as much as I possibly can. . . .”
“But . . . ?”
“Wilf, I can’t give up my investigation into Scarlet, into Felix’s death . . . I’m really close now, I know it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Callie; I think you’re as far away as ever. And in any case, you’re so worried about Tilda, that she’s so unreachable and alone and mentally unstable . . . What do you think it would do to her to claim, on thin evidence, that Felix was murdered? It would be devastating.”
The way he spoke, firmly but not without kindness, made me slump in my chair, like someone who’d been thumped, and it forced me to question my own judgment. Was I so sure of myself that I was prepared to risk losing Wilf? We stared at each other, each silently assessing the strength of our convictions, each yearning to close the gap between us.
“Okay,” I said eventually. “I can’t promise anything . . . but I’ll try to take a step backwards for a while, just until I can see things more clearly.”
45
I’m trying, so hard, to be a good girlfriend. Every day I try to focus on the future and my relationship with Wilf, rather than obsessing about Tilda, Felix, Scarlet and Luke. I’ve even given in my notice at Saskatchewan Books, and I’m going to be the manager at Wilf Baker Gardens. It was time for me to move on anyway, and it will be exciting to try to make the business a success. Also, psychologically, it will be good for me to be doing rather than watching. “I don’t want to sound too new age,” I said to Wilf, “but I want to be connected to the earth.”
Yesterday Daphne gave me a leaving present, a lithograph by the illustrator Edward Ardizzone of people browsing contentedly in a bookshop. “I hope you were happy here,” she said.
“I was so happy here! I love the books, and the customers, and you.”
We had the longest, clumsiest hug, and promised to stay in touch.
“Every time I need a book, I’ll come back,” I said.
She raised one eyebrow, signaling that she was about to make an announcement, and then, in a girlish voice, “I’m giving your job to Douglas—he’s retiring from the pharmaceutical firm.”
I laughed. “That’s so couply!”
“It’ll be different, that’s for sure. I’m only going to have the shop open three days a week, then we’ll go down to his house in Somerset for the other four . . . I’ve always wanted that—a nice man with a house in the country. It’s very Jane Austen of me, I know.”
I’m so pleased for Daphne that it makes me feel uneasy. Her happy ending (and beginning) with Douglas is so neat and perfect, unlike my situation with Wilf. As I say, I’m trying hard to make our lives harmonious—but the truth is that I don’t always succeed. Sometimes I’m back online, researching.
? ? ?
At Curzon Street, Wilf and I are eating our supper in front of the TV. We’re supposed to be watching Antiques Roadshow, guessing the value of trinkets and paintings and old bits of furniture. But I’m not really concentrating on the contents of other people’s attics, my mind is elsewhere; and bracing myself for Wilf’s reaction, I say:
“I’m going to Manchester tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“I saw on the internet that a group of Luke Stone’s friends are meeting in a pub, to remember him, and raise a glass. It’s an open invitation.”
I put my plate down and lie with my head on Wilf’s lap, but he pushes me upright, grabbing my shoulders with his gnarly gardener’s hands, making a grrrrrr sound like the bear that he is.
“Really? Do you really want to stir things up? It’s better to allow him to rest in peace, surely . . .”
“I don’t think he is resting in peace—you know that.”
“But you’re supposed to be letting go . . . Getting some perspective.” Even as I hear the anger in his voice, I register my love for its honest tone, the absence of vindictiveness.
“I know . . . I know. But Wilf, just this one trip? It might help me get closure, for all we know.”
“Get closure!”