‘When?’
A sense of strange defiance overcame Livvy. She refused to be cowed by this woman she’d met for the first time only ten weeks ago. ‘On Saturday.’
Imogen’s face dropped. ‘This Saturday? But what about Leo?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have to let me see him before you go. It’s cruel not to.’
There was something maniacal in Imogen’s tone, and Livvy was aware of unease creeping across her skin, just as it had during their earlier meetings. ‘I haven’t got to do anything, Imogen. Leo’s my son and I’m not putting him in the middle of all this.’ She stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder, prepared to leave.
‘But he’s my grandson. I have to see him. You must understand that, surely?’
Livvy fished her car keys from her bag. ‘I don’t mean to be unkind and I’m sorry if I gave you false hope, arranging to see you today. But there’s too much that needs resolving between you and Dominic before there’s any chance of you having a relationship with Leo.’
Imogen opened her mouth to speak, but Livvy cut across her, issued a firm goodbye and walked briskly away.
Heading towards the edge of the park where she’d left her car, Livvy took the Beatrix Potter–wrapped gift and tossed it in a bin. Dominic had been right, and Livvy wished she’d listened to him in the first place: there was something deeply unsettling in Imogen’s behaviour, like a rogue missile veering off course, and Livvy knew now for certain that she didn’t want her mother-in-law in any of their lives.
ANNA
LONDON
I tear open the lids of one box after another, searching, hunting, digging for clues, anything that might tell me more. Beads of perspiration pool in the small of my back, a matrix of paper cuts lining my fingers.
Glancing down at my watch, I realise that I have been in the loft for almost three hours. I no longer know whether I am foraging for proof that my fears are correct or evidence that I have got it all wrong.
Lines from the letters I’ve read burn behind my eyes.
I wish you could know how much I look forward to the weekends, when you’ll be home, and we’re together again.
The bed will be so empty without you.
I hope you know how much I’ll miss you.
I love you.
Nausea fills my throat and I swallow hard against it.
Part of me wishes there had been no dates on them, that I could delude myself they are from a time long before our marriage. But those dates, I know, can mean only one thing, even if I am not yet ready to accept it.
I don’t have to go away for work very often . . . It’s really unfortunate timing.
I think about Stephen’s annoyance when he received the message from his boss, how cross he was about having to leave me so soon after my accident. I wonder if it was nothing more than a charade, whether he has been absent every weekend for months, has used the convenience of my amnesia to pretend this is a new phenomenon. My heart thumps with my own gullibility, so trusting that I never even questioned a second consecutive weekend away.
I think about all the furtive phone calls taken in our bedroom with the door closed. All the snapped lids of laptops when I have walked into a room. All the evenings he has been late home. The two mobile phones.
It’s my work phone.
Humiliation burns in my cheeks.
I rip open another cardboard box, find board games, playing cards, a two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. At the bottom of the box is a lone novel, an Agatha Christie thriller, its jacket tattered, spine creased, pages curled at the edges. I lift it out, open the front cover, feel the air being sucked from my lungs.
On the title page, in the top-right-hand corner, is a name written in midnight-blue ink, the handwriting identical to the script on the letters.
Livvy Nicholson.
I drop the book back into the box as though it might char the tips of my fingers. My eyes follow it, lying there brazenly, as though it has nothing to be ashamed of. I try to make sense of its presence in our loft, am aware of something on the periphery of my mind. I close my eyes, focus all my attention on it. And then I understand.
The affair between Stephen and this woman must have been going on for at least as long as we have lived in this house. Over a year, possibly longer. It is the only explanation for the book being here.
Stephen has been having an affair while we have been grieving the loss of our son.
The thought wraps itself around my neck, presses down on my windpipe. I double over, mouth open wide, encourage short breaths in and out of my lungs.
I think about the woman’s name written in the front of the book, wonder who she is, where he met her, what she looks like. Whether she knows about my existence or whether Stephen has weaved an elaborate web of lies for her too.
And then a new speculation inveigles its way into my thoughts, and I try to ignore it, but it is persistent, determined, demands to be noticed.
What if Stephen had planned to leave me and it is only the aftermath of my accident that is forcing him to stay? What if the only reason he is still here is because his conscience won’t allow him to go?
My head throbs, and I know I cannot stay here any longer, breathing this stale air.
Armed with two thick bundles of letters, I make my way down the ladder, realise how sturdy it is, wonder if there are more secrets up there that Stephen doesn’t want me to find.
Wrenching open the chest of drawers in our bedroom, I thrust my hand into the far right corner, fingers scrabbling until I have found what I am looking for. Pulling out the mobile phone Zahira gave me, I press a finger on the power button, wait to see if the battery is still charged. The screen lights into life, and I flick through the menu, find the address book and click on the only name in there, hoping and praying that she will answer.
LIVVY
BRISTOL
Livvy stood for a moment in the centre of the sitting room, savouring the silence. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been home alone: probably almost nine months ago, in the week before Leo was born.
Rousing herself into action, she ran through a mental list of the things she needed to do: pack up the bathroom, organise their moving-day necessities, double-check the cleaners were coming before the tenants moved in on Sunday. Her parents had said she could leave Leo with them for as long as she needed today, but given he’d be staying with them for the weekend while she and Dominic oversaw the move, she didn’t want to be separated from him for too long.
Packing her toiletries into a cardboard box, she wondered when she might confess to Dominic about yesterday’s meeting with Imogen. There had been a moment during their video call last night when she had almost told him, before realising it was a conversation that needed to happen in person. Once they were settled in London, she reasoned to herself, she would tell him then.
Heading down to the kitchen for a glass of water, she saw it straight away: the bag containing Leo’s lunch of pureed sweet potato, pureed mango, his bottle of expressed breast milk. Cursing under her breath, she looked at her watch, knew that Leo would need his lunch soon. Mentally calculating the time, she figured it would only be a twenty-minute round trip to her parents’ as long as she didn’t stay too long.
When her dad opened the front door, his face seemed to race through a flurry of emotions. ‘Livvy, what are you doing back here?’