“Go back to the house, Claire. Now. I’ll join you soon.”
So I did, with tears pouring down my cheeks. I rushed up the garden path, shot through the door of the conservatory, and propelled my legs up the stairs. I ran into the bedroom and dug out the birthday present I’d prepared for Mark, stashed at the bottom of my wardrobe. I grabbed the carefully wrapped parcel and ran down the stairs, back in the direction of his study.
We met on the garden path. His eyes were as tortured as before.
“Mark,” I said, sobbing. “I wanted to give this to you for your birthday. But you can have it now. Before it’s too late.”
“But…”
I thrust the parcel into his hands.
“Open it. Please.”
“Oh, God…”
“I don’t know how else to thank you. I really don’t.”
“Why do you always try so hard, Claire?”
“Just open it. Now.”
Mark frowned as he tugged the ribbon off. His mouth fell wide open when the wrapper slid away to reveal what I’d bought for him: a signed first edition of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
“What…” His eyes were incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding, Claire.”
“Do you not like the book?”
“Hell—”
“But…but…I thought you’ve always wanted a signed first edition of Mrs. Dalloway.”
“Oh, God. The irony.”
“Mark?”
“Cath. Sophia. Virginia Woolf. You.”
My mind reels back to the horrible, clueless present moment. Yesterday’s exchanges with Mark make no sense at all. We must surely have been talking about something that happened two days ago. Something terrible. If only I were a Duo like my husband. If only I could remember things like he does. So this is why Duos have an edge over Monos. So this is why they think they are superior. Because I now understand the difference an extra day of memory can make.
I need to confront Mark at once. I’m going to hammer on the door of his study. But this time, I am not fetching him for a chat with the police.
I’m going to interrogate him myself.
I step out into the fresh air. The sun has slipped below the horizon; the first shadows of twilight are creeping over the garden. A coal-black raven hunches on a nearby sycamore; it eyeballs me with suspicion, angling its wedge-shaped tail between the boughs. The wind has died down after howling most of the day. The bushes along the garden path and the leaves on the trees are motionless. Even the birds in the distance have fallen silent. Deathly quiet, even.
It feels like the calm before the storm.
I reach the end of the path and pound on the door of Mark’s study.
“Go away, Claire,” he says. “I’m writing.”
I heard that excuse this morning. Fact: The phrase “I’m writing” is Mark’s favorite stalling device, the one he dredges up whenever he wishes to avoid conversing with me. At any rate, I’m certain that writing is the last thing he is doing in his study at present.
My husband must be lying again.
“Open the door.”
“Stop it, Claire.”
“I want to know how they are linked. Cath and Sophia. You mentioned them in the same breath. I want to understand why Richardson is closing in on us. If this has anything to do with Sophia.”
I can hear Mark sighing behind the door.
“Forget it.” A deep weariness shades his muffled voice. “Just forget what I said. I got a bit frustrated earlier. That’s all.”
“Oh, come on, Mark—”
“You said you were going to spend the night at Emily’s. Just get going. You’ll be happier there.”
“Open the door. I know where the spare key to your study is kept anyway. I used it earlier today to get in.”
My words are greeted with a long silence. But the door creaks open. Mark looks even more agitated than he did this morning. He’s clenching and unclenching his right fist. His hair is tousled, even standing up in places. Fact: Mark only runs his fingers through his hair when he knows he’s in a terrible pickle.
“Claire…” he mumbles as I step into the room, brushing past his body. Whiskey fumes plague his breath.
I scan the study. Nothing much has changed since I visited it earlier in the day, apart from the bottle of cheap whiskey on his writing desk. The bottle is almost demolished; an empty shot glass stands next to it. Fact: I last saw Mark drinking whiskey nineteen years ago, during those long, dark months after Cath’s death. If he’s on hard booze again tonight instead of his usual fancy Bordeaux, something must have gone dreadfully wrong.
I shift my gaze to his laptop; the aurora borealis screen saver is repeating itself. So my husband hasn’t been writing at all. Instead he’s been swigging down large amounts of whiskey. He was lying when he said he was writing. Granted, he was merely telling me a small white lie. But if a man’s a liar, he’s always a liar. The same goes for adultery. I’m tempted to stride forward and slap him for fibbing again, but I grit my teeth and hold my hand in check.
Because there are more important things I need to know.
“I want answers.”
“You’re better off not knowing.”
“You said you were sick of protecting me from the truth. I want the truth. Now.”
“Forget what I said earlier. It was a facetious statement. You may know for a fact that I specialize in coming up with self-indulgent twaddle.”
“Cut the crap and give me the truth. Why did you say those things when I woke you up in here yesterday? Why did you look so troubled when you opened your birthday present?”
Mark is silent.
“For heaven’s sake, Mark. Why did you link Sophia with Cath?”
He stumbles over to his desk. He fills the shot glass to the brim before downing the whiskey in one gulp.
“They’re both dead,” he says.
“I already know that.”
He takes in a deep breath. Under the glare of the overhead lights in his study, I realize that he looks exhausted. His face is haggard and drawn. His forehead is a mass of troubled creases. He must have aged about fifteen years since I put a bandage around his finger this morning.
“It was you who did it,” he says.
Truth is often the hardest thing to discover about yourself.
—Diary of Sophia Ayling
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mark
Claire recoils backwards, as though she has been physically struck by my words. Her irises are stripped of color. Her face is a pallid shade of ash. Her mouth opens only to close again. She extends a trembling hand, as though she’s seeking a means of support. But there’s nothing in the vicinity that will prop her up.
The corners of her lips are beginning to quiver.
“I…what…” she says.
A tiny fraction of me is both delirious and smug. It’s time for my wife to face up to the truth of what she’s done instead of hiding behind the blissful cloak of forgetfulness. It’s time for her to enter the realm of reality, having been protected for so long.
I have three options (their number is, unfortunately, decreasing as the day progresses):
(A) start with the truth about Catherine;
(B) reveal what happened to Sophia;
(C) none of the above.