‘Now, let’s wave goodbye to Leo – he’ll be absolutely fine with your parents.’
As if on autopilot, Livvy raised a hand and waved to her son. Inside the car, she could see her mum trying to distract Leo, shaking his favourite toy elephant, clapping her hands, her lips moving in song.
With one final glance over his shoulder, her dad pulled the car away from the kerb, and Livvy watched as her son was driven out of sight.
ANNA
LONDON
‘I want to know who she is.’
Zahira looks at me through narrowed eyes, and I wonder if she felt the same three years ago as I do now: a burning desire both to know and not to know at the same time.
‘What did you say her full name was, that you found in the book?’
I force myself to say it aloud. ‘Livvy Nicholson.’ Five short, such seemingly innocuous syllables, and yet enough to destroy a marriage.
Zahira gets up from the table, heads out of the kitchen and returns a few seconds later with a MacBook under her arm. ‘Let’s do a bit of internet digging, shall we?’
My stomach somersaults, thoughts flashing through my mind like a Super 8 film spooling loose from its projector: what she will look like, how old she will be, whether I will understand, immediately, why Stephen is attracted to her.
I catch sight of myself in the vintage mirror on the kitchen wall: my face free of make-up, my hair unbrushed, dark crescents hanging beneath my eyes. I wonder whether, before the accident, I made more of an effort with my appearance. Whether it was grief, two years ago, that stopped me caring about what I looked like. Whether it was that which prompted Stephen to seek fulfilment elsewhere.
‘God, there’s dozens of Livvy Nicholsons on Google. What shall we do – start with Facebook or Instagram?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think?’
Zahira pauses. ‘Let’s be realistic. If Stephen is your typical adulterer, then this woman is probably going to be younger than you.’ She looks up from the laptop screen, blanches. ‘Sorry, that was insensitive. Let’s start with Instagram.’
Zahira taps and scrolls, while my heart canters in my chest, uncertain whether I want her search to be successful or not.
‘God, half these Instagram accounts are private.’
I think about the fact that Zahira tried and failed to find me on social media, wonder whether Stephen’s mistress is more gregarious than I am. There is a stab of pre-emptive rivalry with her, quickly followed by a flare of anger that Stephen has done this to me, that he is making me compete with a woman I’ve never even met. A woman I wouldn’t recognise if I saw her in the street. A woman who may be as much a victim of Stephen’s deceptions as I am.
‘Right, I’m giving up on Instagram. Facebook it is.’ The keys of Zahira’s laptop click with repetitive urgency.
‘What on earth . . . ?’ Zahira’s voice is sharp, staccato, and she stares at the screen, her expression hovering between confusion and alarm.
‘What is it?’ My heart drums against my ribs, my mouth sucked dry of moisture. A voice in my head tells me that we shouldn’t have begun this, that I don’t want to know. Once I have seen this woman’s face, I know I will never be able to unsee it. But I realise it’s too late, I have already leapt off that cliff.
Zahira glances at me and then back at the screen, unable to disguise her distress.
And then she turns the laptop screen towards me, and my eyes are drawn to it like moths to a flame.
I look at the screen, at Livvy Nicholson’s name emblazoned across the middle of the page, and then at the photograph gazing back at me. I sense the blood drain from my cheeks, my eyes disbelieving what I am seeing, as my world tips violently onto a different axis.
LIVVY
BRISTOL
Dominic’s hand was warm on her thigh, his long, elegant fingers lined up in a neat row on the denim of her jeans. From the car’s air conditioning, a cool stream blew onto Livvy’s arms, stippling her skin, but she knew Dominic liked the temperature fresh on long journeys, said it helped keep him alert.
From out of the window, cars came into view and disappeared again. Dominic overtook one vehicle and then another, cursing drivers who failed to pull over when he approached. Early on in their relationship – soon after she’d found out she was pregnant – Livvy had asked him to take it easier on the roads, confessed that sometimes she found his driving unnerving. Dominic had promised to slow down, and for a while his driving had improved: Livvy had been able to relax in the passenger seat without constantly pressing her foot down on a phantom brake. But recently, Dominic’s driving had become erratic again, and for the past two hours Livvy had felt as though she were on a theme park ride that she wished would come to an end.
Glancing at the satnav, she saw they were only forty minutes from their final destination, realised they must now be skirting the edge of London.
From the radio came the trill of a violin, the heavy bass of a piano, the deep resonance of a cello. The digital guide on the car’s dashboard told her it was a piece by Schubert, the Trout Quintet. Turning around, she looked into the back of the car, at the empty space where the baby seat should have been and felt a compression in her chest.
‘Stop worrying. He’ll be fine.’
‘I might just give Mum a quick ring, check he’s okay.’
Dominic exhaled sharply. ‘Will you please just relax? Come on – we’re alone for the first time in months. Can’t you just try to enjoy it?’ He lifted his hand from her thigh, placed it on the steering wheel, hands at twenty-to-four rather than ten-to-two.
‘I know. But it’s the first time we’ve left him—’
‘And it’s the first time we’ve moved to a new city together. It would be nice if you could feign just a little bit of excitement.’
His lips pursed into a thin, tight line and Livvy turned away, looked out of the passenger window.
From inside the handbag at her feet came the ringing of her mobile phone. Her mind raced immediately to thoughts of her mum, to the possibility that something had happened to Leo. She grabbed at her phone, but as her eyes grazed the screen, where the caller’s identity was displayed, her heart leapt into her throat.
A single letter lit up the screen. The letter ‘I’。 The letter under which Livvy had stored Imogen’s number as a means of screening any calls. Except she had never imagined that her mother-in-law might phone while Dominic was sitting two feet away from her in a moving car.
With clumsy fingers, she tried to hit the reject button. But instead she somehow pressed the answer button, and before she could stop it, a voice was filling the car through the Bluetooth system.
‘Livvy, it’s Imogen, I just wanted—’
Her thumb found the cancel icon and she pressed down on it hard, cutting off Imogen’s voice, and switched off her phone.
Stealing a glance at Dominic, she saw immediately the icy expression.
‘Why is my mother phoning you?’ His voice was flat, arctic, the tension in the car thick and viscous.
‘I don’t know.’
There was a breath of silence. ‘How does she even have your number?’
Livvy stared straight ahead. ‘I honestly have no idea.’
‘Don’t take me for a bloody idiot. What’s she phoning for?’