It’s the visit from the police that’s got him rattled. The young officers, a man and a woman, arrived a couple of hours ago with my wallet and jewellery and other personal effects. They told Max my car would need to be collected, and they provided its location.
‘It’s on a small residential street, but the residents have been informed that it is there, so there’s no rush. And there are car collection services you can use, if you don’t want to do it yourself.’
They handed him my keys, a heavy bunch made heavier by the brass penguin-shaped keyring I’d added to make it easier to find them in my handbag. Max always laughed at my keys.
‘One day the ignition will fall out under the weight of those things,’ he said, even though it had been years since I’d driven a car that required me to insert keys.
As he took them from the police, he turned them over in his hand. It must have looked like he was examining them with sadness, but I knew better.
‘Where is the USB?’ he asked.
The keyring USB had been a present from Max. It was silver and engraved with my name and had enough capacity to store all of my photographs. USBs had always eluded me; they were impossible to find when you needed them and then lost a moment later. How many times had I strode around the house, asking Max where my USB was?
‘Now you’ll always know where to find it,’ he’d said when he gave it to me. ‘And everyone will know it’s yours.’
The ladies at tennis had laughed at the gift. That’s what you get for your birthday when you’re married to Max Cameron? I understood the joke. It was funny. But it was also perfect. I never took it off my keyring, unless it was plugged in to my computer.
‘This is all we were given,’ the young police officer said. ‘But I’ll make a note to ask about it.’
‘I’d appreciate that,’ Max said.
After they left, he’d gone to my study and opened my computer again. Apart from the photographs, which he’d already seen, there wasn’t much there that would interest him. Mostly I used my computer to edit photographs, google handbags and search for exercise workouts. He’d tired of it quickly and that’s when he went to the wardrobe. Eventually he tired of that too.
‘Why did you take the USB with you to jump off a cliff?’ he says out loud.
In the master bedroom, he sits on the bed and picks up the framed photograph on my bedside table. It had been taken the Christmas before last. We’d spent it in the Whitsundays on a yacht, just the two of us. In the picture, I am wearing a red kaftan and we are each holding a glass of champagne. He closes his eyes for a moment and rests the photograph against his chest.
He returns the photograph to the bedside table and then, as if on a whim, he opens my top drawer. It is there, next to some bobby pins and a bottle of multivitamins for perimenopause, that he sees the article about ‘the hero of The Drop’ with a picture of Gabe Gerard’s handsome face.
Max pulls the article out of the drawer. He recognises the picture, of course. He was the one who’d showed it to me a few weeks ago. He’d been pleased to see that Gabe was doing well, and so had I. But that didn’t explain why the article is now in my bedside drawer.
Max puts a hand to his temple as he tries to make sense of it.
‘Amanda,’ he whispers, ‘what did you do?’
30
AMANDA
BEFORE
Falling in love with Max was, at best, an inconvenience. At worst, it was a fucking disaster. People always talk about love like it’s a magical thing, a gift from the gods, a sunbeam of euphoria from above! But it’s horrible, being in love. The vulnerability it exposes. The person it makes you. It sent me nutty for a while. Made me lose my edge.
It started with little things. The faintly desperate pitch of my voice when I suggested Max make it home in time for dinner. The way I stuck to his side at dinner parties when I knew my role was to work the room. How I found myself thinking about him all the time.
I started making phone calls to his office, just to say hello. Max was unfailingly polite but his mind, I knew, was elsewhere. He had always worked a lot, but while he was growing the business I barely saw him. His TV and newspaper business was doing well, but online media was the goal. He was so hungry for it. The internet was still niche, and Max had decided it was the way of the future. He wasn’t wrong, of course; he rarely was. But that meant very little to me when I was alone at home night after night.
It was only natural that, after a while, I began to question if Max really was where he said he was. Growing up with a philandering father teaches you to stay vigilant. I adopted the expected rituals. I checked his phone while he was in the shower. I eavesdropped when he left the room to take a phone call. I scanned his emails when his computer was left open and unlocked. I never found any evidence of infidelity. But there was one thing I often wondered about.
It was midweek, and I’d woken in the dead of night to find Max hadn’t come to bed. On my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water, I found Max in his study, sitting in the glow of his laptop, fully dressed, even though it was three or four in the morning. There were two things about this that caught my attention. First, he was using a laptop I’d never seen before. And second, his face was crumpled, as if he was on the verge of tears.
He looked startled when he saw me in the doorway and immediately his expression changed to one of impatience. ‘Go back to bed, love. It’s just work.’
I did what he said. But I didn’t go back to sleep. When he eventually came into the bedroom, I watched in the darkness as he put the laptop into the safe in the walk-in wardrobe. From then on, I was obsessed with that laptop. I knew there’d be a time when he left it out or forgot to lock the safe. And I planned to be ready for that day.
I was desperately lonely. The kind of loneliness that claws at your insides. I found it hard to concentrate on photography. I still accepted invitations to take photos at events that interested me, but it became more of a hobby than a career. After all, we didn’t need the money, and two big careers were a lot to manage. That’s what I told myself, at least.
I drank a lot, alone at night. I slept a lot during the day. At functions, we looked like an adoring couple. Max always spoke about me with the utmost respect. He made playful comments about how good I was to put up with him. When he looked at me, even though I knew it was part of the act, it did something to my insides. I wanted the way he looked at me to be real. I wanted the things he said to be true. I yearned for a real marriage, one that was bigger than the exchange of loyalty for fidelity. But that wasn’t the deal I’d made.
And so I created a life for myself with Pilates, tennis, taking pictures of beautiful people and beautiful things. I made friends with women I found superficial, and I started to become superficial myself. I bought things I didn’t want. I renovated the kitchen and bathrooms and then renovated them again. I hired stylists, for me and for my house and for the garden. I learned to cook at expensive cooking schools that paired the meals with wine and featured celebrity chefs.
Once, after one such cooking course, I recreated a Spanish feast at home – sautéed chorizo, garlic prawns, seafood paella. Max had promised he’d be home on time. I lit candles, put on some music, wore a flamenco-style dress.