She’s gone. It’s a fucking mess. The whole lot. He wants to leave it all behind him. The pain, the humiliation. He wants to get out of this country while he can. Put it all behind him.
It is an unknown number and he never answers those. It’s always just some scammer trying to tell him he’s been in an accident and is due compensation or some idiot asking about his most recent dining experience. His entire life is a car crash, now that he’s been taken in by the world’s biggest cheat. He can barely recall a time when it mattered to him what he ate, let alone who served it and what the ambience was like. That life has gone. She destroyed it. Twice over. Once when she invented herself as the perfect woman and tricked him into falling in love with her. And now this. Humiliation, anger, disappointment burn through his body. He has no choice. He has to run away.
The unknown number could belong to the DC or Mark Fletcher? He concludes that whoever it is, it will be trouble. He doesn’t want any more trouble. He doesn’t want to have to talk to the DC while he’s on British soil. He’ll feel better once he’s back at his family pile in Holland. Protected. He supposes it might be his boss, who will have got his email by now, the one saying he wants to resign. Not that he did want to. He had no choice. She took away his choices. He could have asked for relocation maybe. But at some point, he would have to have faced everyone. Explain that his wife was a bigamist. It is too humiliating. Better he just disappears.
49
Kylie
Despite my limbs being unused to exercise recently and therefore being at once heavy and frail, my knees almost crumbling beneath me, it feels incredibly good to walk outside. We set off up the incline, intending to follow the path that takes up along the cliff edge. It’s utterly invigorating, to enjoy a freedom that I have never quite understood or appreciated until it was taken away from me. I think about Oli and Seb, calling them, calling the police. I have to do both things tomorrow, but right now I just need to clear my head. The wind lifts my hair. I don’t even mind the rain on my face.
Fiona and I have done this walk together a number of times before and we automatically headed this way without discussion. We’ve never attempted it at night, though. The narrow, winding path is harder to navigate in the dark and the ground is wet underfoot. The wine probably isn’t helping. Fiona insisted on bringing another bottle along. I reached for a can of Diet Coke, but she overruled me. I should probably slow down but am at that point of drunk when what I want and need is greater than what I am thinking or reasoning. I take sips from the bottle neck, occasionally remembering to offer it to Fiona. But she just smiles. “It’s all yours. After everything, no one can blame you for wanting to let your hair down.” The wine is slackening my shoulders, which are scrambled up around my ears, it is also loosening my tongue.
“He never asked me if I was married and I didn’t know how to tell him. I didn’t dare, in case he ended it. Because ending it would have been the worst thing. Or so I thought.” I sigh. I’m not sure she hears the sigh. It’s probably drowned by the sound of the crashing waves somewhere below us. My feet slip and slide under me. I am wearing a pair of Fiona’s scruffy old trainers. As we left the house, I found them under a bench at the door and pushed my feet into them, not taking the time to lace them properly.
“Whoops. You need to be careful,” she says, catching hold of my arm. Her clasp is tight. She will keep me steady. Safe.
“I never imagined it would last any length of time. Every time I was with him, I thought it was the last. Told myself it had to be. But I just couldn’t say no.”
“Bullshit,” interrupts Fiona. “Absolute fucking bullshit.” I blink, surprised at her eruption. We do have a relationship where we call out one another on things from time to time. I’ve often been in the awkward position where I’ve had to point out that Fiona’s latest fling is a nonstarter, for instance, but I’m surprised by the ferocity of her curse at this moment, during this intimate confession. “There must have been a thousand times where you could have said no to him. Before you walked into the restaurant to meet him for the first time, before you sat down at his table, before you accepted the second glass of wine, stepped into the cab, walked into the lift, slipped between his sheets. Before you walked down the aisle, for fuck’s sake.”
“Well, yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.” I shouldn’t be surprised by Fiona’s anger. It’s going to come from every quarter. My sons, my brothers, my mother. I shall need to brace myself for it. Bear it. I think of the moment I slipped between his sheets. And afterward, the views of the Tower of London, London Bridge and HMS Belfast that I enjoyed from our apartment window. These were places I had taken the boys. Trailed with them in ever-decreasing circles of interest. Crows, murders, battles—unable to enthuse them the way a YouTube video can.
“Were you drunk?” Fiona demands. The rain is clinging to us both now, not heavy but persistent, undeniable. Causing a film, like cellophane, that somehow separates us. My wet hair is getting in my eyes. I am carrying the wine in my one working free hand so I can’t push it away. Fiona persists, “Were you drunk when you first slept with him? When you started all of this?”
I glance at the bottle in my hand and realize I feel very drunk now. Blurred. Uncertain. I let the bottle gently slip out of my grasp onto the soft ground. In the dark, Fiona doesn’t notice. I reach for the truth. “No, I wasn’t drunk. I can’t use that as an excuse. I wish I could in a way. People would understand it more. Find it more forgivable, but I wasn’t drunk—or if I was, it was not on alcohol, it was something more. Maybe possibility. Maybe inevitability.”
“You were greedy.” Fiona raises her voice, to ensure I can hear her above the noise of the sea and the wind.
“Yes, I was,” I admit. Because that is it. In a nutshell. I was greedy.
“I don’t get it. You had a permanent sing-along, dance-along, lifelong-adventure buddy in Mark but that wasn’t enough for you. You had to hoover up another guy.”
“Well, I don’t see it that way. I—”
“You don’t get to live two lives. You are just one person. One body. You have to pick a life. Why wasn’t one enough for you? You stupid bitch. You already had it all.” Fiona’s insult is pushed out with a smile, but I can’t pretend to myself that she isn’t having a go. She clearly is more than confused. She’s not shouting to be heard above the sea, she’s shouting because she thinks I need telling. I stop and face her, it’s the least I can do. I’ve seen Fiona lose her temper before, many times. She is the epitome of the fiery redhead. Yet I’m shocked that her face is almost unrecognizable, twisted and split with what I now see is fury. “Do you have any idea what a freedom it is to be able to send a text, just a simple bloody text about what is on your mind, without having to second, third, fourth guess how he might take it?”
“What?” I ask.
“Once you are married, there is no such thing as coming on too strong, is there? You can’t be the crazy intense woman. That’s such a bloody luxury. Do you know how lucky you are that you got to be totally, 100 percent yourself because that’s what it means to be married?”