Kitabı oxu: «The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist»
The Girl Behind the Lens
TANYA FARRELLY
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Killer Reads
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Tanya Farrelly 2016
Tanya Farrelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008215101
Version: 2018-07-24
For Tom, whose kindness and generosity are boundless …
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Tanya Farrelly
About the Publisher
ONE
Oliver Molloy woke abruptly and felt the urgent need to get out of the house. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he tried to rid himself of the remnants of a particularly disturbing dream, but it refused to be obliterated, even after he’d turned on the dim overhead light.
It had been almost a month since he had seen her, but every time he closed his eyes she was there. He had begun to dread the night, the time when he was most susceptible to these visitations. Mercedes had become like a cataract, something he couldn’t see past, and it was only daylight that could dispel her presence and allow him to breathe normally again.
Oliver pulled on his heavy winter coat and wound a scarf round his neck. The scarf caught on his unshaven jaw, but it was unlikely that he would encounter anyone out walking in the hours before dawn. He eased the front door open. The street was quiet. A lone cat crossed the neighbours’ garden and leapt onto the wall between them. It looked at him, eyes luminous in the semi-darkness, and then opened its mouth and let out a silent cry. When he didn’t respond, it moved on.
Finally, a thaw had begun. For three weeks the city had been held captive by an unprecedented freeze. A layer of ice still covered the canal, but already it had thinned at the edges to reveal the murky water beneath. It trickled slowly from among the reeds as the willows wept at the water’s edge and stained the ice grey. The cold crept through his leather shoes and he hurried his step to improve his circulation. Coming towards him, dressed in a grey tracksuit, breath streaming in the icy air, was a jogger. The man nodded an acknowledgement as he passed. Oliver dug his hands deeper in his coat pockets and marched on.
By the time he reached the last lock before the main road, the point at which he normally turned back for home, the sky had begun to lighten. He stepped onto the lock, crossed halfway and looked back along the canal in the direction of home. In the time that they had been together, he had never dreamt of Mercedes. Now, she wouldn’t leave him alone, and every dream was an attack, a vicious recrimination. The dream from which he’d woken that morning had been the most disturbing yet. With one hand on her hip, she’d stood there, body jutting slightly forward as she told him that he was nothing without her. She’d called him a fake, said that it wouldn’t take long for people to see right through him. Then she’d pointed to him and laughed, and when he looked down his body was transparent. There was nothing but a watery outline that showed where it used to be. Inside was hollow, bereft of organs; he was nothing – just like she said he was.
He shuddered and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. He walked down the opposite side of the lock and gazed into the water. There were no swans near the bridge where they usually gathered, waiting for the students from the nearby college to throw them crusts from leftover sandwiches. He supposed they’d return now that the thaw had come.
As he stood staring into the water, he became aware of something caught beyond the reeds. It looked like an old coat; something that may have been discarded before the freeze came. He stared harder, eyes straining in the half-light, and then he saw something glint among the bulrushes. Gingerly, he stepped down the bank. The mud was frozen beneath his feet and he edged closer to the water, crouching as near as he dared to peer between the rushes. Where the ice had melted a man’s hand rested above the water, fingers blue-white. On the second finger a gold wedding band caught the first light.
Hastily, Oliver retreated from the water’s edge. He could go home, try to forget that he had ever seen the body beneath the ice. He didn’t want to phone the guards; it was the kind of attention that he would rather avoid, but then there was the jogger. If he didn’t report the body, somebody else would. Could he risk the man coming forward, saying that he’d seen him by the canal? Even as the thought went through his mind, he found himself dialling the number for emergency services. He couldn’t ignore his civic duty, and so he waited with the dead man for help to arrive.
They took their time in coming. He guessed there was no hurry for a man whose life had already ended. He moved down the bank again and stared into the water. The body was face down, arms raised above the head as though making a plea for help. The fingers had stiffened into position and looked as though they might snap, like dead wood, if he were to touch them. Had the man fallen into the icy water and been unable to get out – or had it been an intentional act? Oliver couldn’t fathom why anyone would do such a thing; there were easier ways to end it. Of course there was a third option, one that made him uneasy just waiting in the place where it may have happened. The man could have been murdered and his body dumped in the water. It wouldn’t have been the first gangland killing in the area and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. It made him glad he’d opted to practise family rather than criminal law. The former had its share of malevolence, but as a rule it didn’t involve bloodshed.
Finally, the garda car turned over the bridge. It travelled slowly, lights off. Oliver walked to the edge of the road and raised a hand for their attention, guessing that his black coat would not stand out against the grey morning light. The car pulled up and two men stepped out. The first was an overweight man in his fifties who walked with a surprisingly swift step. The other, a young officer who looked like he was fresh out of Templemore training school, walked closely behind.
‘Mr Molloy? Garda Sweeney and Garda Regan. You reported a body in the water?’
Oliver nodded and gestured towards the canal. ‘It’s just beyond the rushes, trapped under the ice. You can see a hand above the surface.’
Oliver stepped back and the two guards moved closer to the canal. The older man nodded like he’d seen it all before. ‘We’ll just take a statement from you if that’s all right,’ he said.
The young garda asked Oliver questions as Sweeney stood looking into the distance beyond the bridge. A few minutes later, the sound of a motor drowned out Garda Regan’s voice. Both he and Oliver turned to watch as a dinghy appeared from beneath the bridge cutting a swathe through the thin ice. The crew of three men cut the motor and let the dinghy drift close to where the body was. Oliver watched, half concentrating on giving Regan his personal details, as the men broke the remaining ice and pulled the body from the water. They did it in such a way that Oliver didn’t see the man’s face and the corpse, murky water flowing from his sodden coat, disappeared onto the surface of the boat.
‘There’s a wallet,’ one of the crew shouted across to Sweeney. ‘Credit cards say Vincent Arnold. We’ll run a check from the station, see if it matches any missing persons report.’
‘Good enough,’ Sweeney nodded.
‘It’. Oliver wondered whether it referred to the body or the name on the card. Did such exposure render you indifferent to death? He’d once heard an undertaker use such a term and had been appalled by the callousness of the word. Death was a business, something that had to be dealt with cleared away.
An image of Mercedes appeared in his mind; her body limp as he’d held her for the last time. He’d been surprised at how long she’d stayed warm – so that it had taken him hours to accept that she was really dead. He’d tried to close her parted lips, but they refused to meet. At any moment, he thought, they might have started to move, to form words between tongue and teeth.
The dinghy was moving off now. Sweeney’s narrowed blue eyes appraised him as he tried to rid himself of thoughts of his wife. He shifted and gestured towards the canal. ‘I suppose you see this kind of thing all the time,’ he said.
Sweeney shrugged and squinted at the morning light. ‘Tell me, do you usually go out walking this early in the morning, Mr Molloy?’ he asked.
Oliver returned his gaze. ‘Only when I can’t sleep,’ he said.
Sweeney nodded and heaved his bulk into the passenger seat of the car where Regan was already waiting. Oliver turned in the direction of home. The garda car passed him and he raised a hand, but neither of the guards acknowledged him. He dug his hands deeper in his coat pockets, quickened his step against the cold, and found himself hoping that he wouldn’t have reason to encounter either Sweeney or his colleague again.
TWO
Joanna sat on the floor surrounded by photographs and eyed each one critically. The college exhibition was to take place in a month’s time, but she had been working on the collection all semester and felt that she’d taken enough shots to put together an impressive composition. The collection consisted of a series of black-and-white shots depicting brides in various guises. Joanna had picked up a wedding dress second-hand. She’d liked the slightly worn look of it, the way the lace trimming had frayed at the edges. She had wondered as she fingered the silk who had owned it, and why she’d decided to give the dress to a charity shop.
The brides stared up at her as she arranged and discarded the pictures. She picked up her favourite, an angular shot of a young woman in a bridal dress sitting on the window ledge of an empty room. The girl’s reflection had been caught in the glass, her wistful expression captured perfectly in the lens. Beneath the window, a battered suitcase anticipated the girl’s departure.
Joanna stood back and directed the head of the halogen lamp over the pictures scattered on the living room floor. There was a bride running down the street, her hair falling loose and her bouquet to the fore of the picture lying in a puddle on the ground. Another showed a bride walking in a narrow street with the battered suitcase. Her back was to the camera and she held her dress up with one hand to reveal a pair of Doc Martens on her feet as she walked the street slick with rain.
Joanna smiled. The girl in the photo was a good friend, and they’d had some fun during the shoot. The girl hadn’t modelled before, but her pale skin and slight frame had been exactly what Joanna had been looking for in a subject and she had finally persuaded her to do it. Joanna was just placing this photo next to the first when there was a knock at the door. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, which confirmed her suspicions. It was after eleven o’clock, too late for any caller. She turned out the halogen light, which she hoped had not been visible through the thick curtains, and made her way stealthily towards the window. Through a chink in the curtains, she peered out. The security light had clicked on. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual, next-door’s cat often set it off, but she couldn’t see anyone and, just as she’d begun to wonder if she’d imagined the sound, a pounding on the knocker confirmed the presence of the late-night visitor.
Joanna crossed the room, eased the door open and stepped into the hall. She listened for any sound upstairs, but heard none. The knocking had not woken her mother. Joanna pressed her eye to the spyhole, and saw a woman standing in the porch. She wasn’t anyone that Joanna had seen before, and she wondered, as the woman raised the knocker for a third time, if she had the wrong house. Exercising caution, she decided to find out.
‘Who is it?’ she called, mouth close to the door.
She watched as the woman at the other side paused, looking directly at the spyhole as though she too could see through to the glass, and finally spoke.
‘Angela?’ she said.
On hearing her mother’s name, Joanna decided that the woman was no threat. She removed the chain and opened the door so that they were standing opposite one another. Joanna gauged that the woman was about her mother’s age. She was quite tall and held herself in an almost regal manner.
‘I’m looking for Angela. This is Angela Lacey’s house?’
‘Yes, but I’m afraid my mother’s not here. Can I help you?’
The woman hesitated; clutching her handbag in one hand while the other remained in the pocket of her camel-coloured coat.
‘Do you know when she will return? I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. I must speak to her … I know it’s late but …’
‘I’m sorry, but are you a friend of my mother?’
The woman smiled a strange smile. ‘A friend, no … I wouldn’t say that. Your mother knows … well, knew … my husband.’ She trailed off, eyes glistening.
‘Look, would you like to come in? She … she is here. It’s just that she’s in bed, but seeing as it’s important I can wake her.’
Joanna stepped back and the woman entered the warmth of the hall. Joanna showed her into the living room where her photographs were scattered on the floor. She saw the woman’s eyes dart around the room, taking everything in. They rested on the photos.
‘What’s your name?’ Joanna asked.
‘Rachel. Rachel Arnold. You can tell your mother it’s about Vince.’ She was busy plucking off one leather glove as she spoke. Joanna nodded and told her to sit down.
As she climbed the stairs Joanna wondered who Vince was, and how he was connected to her mother. When she’d reached the top of the stairs she turned on the light in the landing and eased open the door to her mother’s room. It was in darkness and she could hear her breathing heavily in sleep.
‘Mum.’ Gently, she touched her shoulder. Her mother stirred slightly and Joanna whispered to her again, louder this time.
‘What? What is it?’ Angela said, partially sitting up. Her voice was thick with sleep.
‘There’s a woman downstairs. She says she needs to talk to you about somebody called Vince?’
Joanna’s mother sat up suddenly and pushed the duvet from her. ‘Vince?’
‘Yes, her name’s Rachel something. She’s waiting in the living room. Do you know her?’
Angela ran a hand through her hair. ‘What time is it?’ she said.
‘After eleven … I didn’t know whether to answer or not … it’s so late and … do you know someone called Vince?’
Her mother stood in the middle of the room and cast about her. She picked up a blouse from the back of the bedroom chair and then put it down again. Joanna took her dressing gown from a hook on the bedroom door.
‘Here – put this on,’ she said.
Her mother slipped into the dressing gown and tightened the belt. She sat on the edge of the bed and stuck her feet in her slippers. ‘She’s in the living room?’
‘Yes. I had to invite her in. She looked kind of upset … and I couldn’t leave her on the doorstep … not like that.’
Her mother nodded, took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair again to flatten it. Joanna followed her from the room. Her mother paused at the top of the stairs and she almost walked into her.
‘Look, maybe you should stay here,’ her mother said.
Joanna hesitated. ‘Will you be all right? I mean … who is that woman? Why would she call so late?’
‘Just someone from the past … please, wait in your room, Joanna. I’ll explain everything later.’
Joanna nodded, but her mother didn’t look at her. With one hand on the banister and the other lifting the end of her robe she hurried down the stairs.
‘Rachel, you’ve rung me twice already. I’ve told you, I haven’t heard from him.’
‘I know. I’ve come to tell you … Vince, he’s … he’s dead.’ The woman’s voice wavered.
‘What … what do you mean? How could he?’
The living room door closed, and Joanna crept down the stairs in an effort to hear what followed.
‘They found him. This morning the guards came. They’d found his body in the canal, trapped beneath the ice. Some man out walking saw him.’
Joanna moved further down the stairs until she was almost in the hallway.
‘What happened? Did he fall in? Jesus, I … Did you see the body?’
‘No … Patrick went to identify him … he said it was better if I didn’t … the body had been in the water for at least a week, they said. It’s not how I want to remember him.’
Joanna listened, but she heard no comforting words from her mother. Instead there was silence, broken finally by the other woman. ‘That’s … that’s her isn’t it. That’s …’
‘Joanna, yes. My daughter.’ Ice in her mother’s voice. Then: ‘Why have you come here, Rachel?’
‘Because I thought you should know … because of her … it seems like the right thing, doesn’t it? I mean now that …’
‘Now that he’s gone, you mean? No, I don’t think it does. She need never have known, but you’ve decided to see to that, haven’t you? I think that’s why you’ve come here … to cause trouble … some kind of revenge, now that you don’t have Vince to stop you. My God … have you been saving it up all these years?’
Joanna descended the last few steps of the stairs. She had never heard her mother so angry. She wanted to intervene, to know who the woman was, and why the death of this man should concern her. She stood in the hallway and stared at the living room door, reluctant, yet willing herself to open it.
‘How could this possibly be revenge?’ Rachel Arnold said. ‘He’s dead, Angela. Don’t you get it? If you must know, then yes, there is a reason why I’ve come. It’s because of this … it was among his things and there’s only one place he could have got it.’
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
The woman said something else, but Joanna didn’t hear. There was silence then for a few minutes. Joanna wondered what they were doing, her mother and the woman. Were they carefully avoiding each other’s eyes? Was the woman wishing she’d never come?
‘What’s this?’ she heard the woman ask.
‘They’re Joanna’s. She studies photography. She’s putting a collection together for an exhibition.’
‘They’re good, very good. Did you encourage her?’
‘No. Must be in the blood, mustn’t it?’
‘Will you tell her?’ the woman said.
‘I don’t have much choice now, do I? If I know Joanna, she’s probably already heard half the conversation.’
Joanna moved back from the door and furtively made her way up the stairs. She was trying to understand what she’d heard. She had a feeling that she knew who Vince was, but she needed to hear her mother say it. She sat on the top step of the stairs and waited to hear the living room door open. She wanted to listen to the rest of the conversation, but she didn’t dare. It was unlikely that the two women had much more to discuss now that the woman had said what she’d come to say.
When the door eventually did open, Joanna withdrew into the shadows of the landing. Her mother spoke in a low voice as the woman stepped into the cold night.
‘I’m sure you wish I hadn’t come,’ the woman said.
‘Too late for that now, isn’t it?’
‘He’s being released tomorrow. The funeral’s on Tuesday if you want to tell her … I don’t expect you to come.’
‘No, I’m sure you’d rather I didn’t.’
The woman said nothing to deny it, and the next sound Joanna heard was the woman’s shoes on the tarmac before her mother closed the front door. Joanna waited for her to call her, to say something, to explain, but there was silence from downstairs and when she looked down through the banisters, the hall was empty.
Slowly, she descended the stairs. Her mother was sitting in her armchair in the living room with her head in her hands.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Joanna said.
Her mother shook her head and looked at her hands clasped in front of her.
‘How did you know this Vince then?’
She waited for an answer. Her mother cupped her hands to her mouth and exhaled a breath that she must have been holding. It hissed through her fingers and a sound like a sob broke from her throat.
‘He was your father,’ she said.
THREE
Oliver picked up one of his wife’s blouses and folded it carefully before tossing it in a bin liner. He had taken all of Mercedes’s clothes from the wardrobe and they were strewn in a pile across the bed and in the black bags that lay scattered at his feet. He picked up a sweater and held it to his face. It smelled of Mercedes’s perfume – a rich, woody fragrance that had seemed always to linger in the room long after she’d left it. It was that scent as much as the sight of Mercedes’s clothes that evoked, unbidden, the memories that tormented him. He threw the sweater in an almost full bin liner, and knotted it tightly, trapping the scent of his wife inside.
That morning, when he had opened the wardrobe to take out a clean shirt, he was accosted, as he had been every morning for the past three weeks, by the sight of Mercedes’s clothes. He had decided at that moment that the only way for him to move on was to rid the house of any sign of her. Immediately after breakfast, he’d begun the clear-out. Apart from her clothes, which he would donate to a charity shop, Mercedes had owned few possessions. There was a music box that had belonged to her grandmother and a collection of porcelain dolls that she’d had since she was a child. Both had been of sentimental value to her and, because of this, he didn’t have the heart to pack them away with the rest, so he left them on a shelf in the living room where they had always been.
When the phone rang, Oliver clambered across the bin liners to reach it, but then seeing the international number on the display screen, he let it ring out until the answering machine clicked in. His heart beat wildly as he heard the voice at the other end, that husky Spanish accent that had fascinated him so much in the beginning and, if he were completely honest with himself, still did.
‘Mercedes, soy yo. Te sigo llamando y llamando …’
He got the gist of Carmen’s words. She wanted Mercedes to call, they could sort things out, she said. There was a pause as she considered what to say next, and clearly deciding that there was nothing else she could say that would make any difference to her sister, Carmen hung up, leaving Oliver staring at the phone. He’d lost count of the number of messages she had left. Sometimes she phoned and hung up before the machine had kicked in. He wondered how much longer he could avoid her. He expected her to call his office any day. She had already tried his mobile, but he hadn’t answered. He suspected that she wanted to speak to Mercedes before she spoke to him. It must have been killing her not knowing the result of the bomb she had dropped on her sister.
Well, he would not alleviate her anxiety. He suspected that eventually she would turn up looking for answers. Carmen was not the type to shy away from any situation. She would pay no heed to the fact that she had been the instigator – that she had been responsible for everything. He didn’t trust himself to meet her. What she had done was stupid, unforgivable, and he didn’t know what he might do if they met. If it hadn’t been for Carmen, that horrible night would never have happened. He and Mercedes may have grown slowly apart as so many couples did, but it would not have ended like it had. He would never forgive Carmen for that.
He pressed the button on the machine and erased Carmen’s message. Then he looked at the bags at his feet and decided that it would be better to leave some of her things hanging in the wardrobe. Should Carmen arrive unannounced, he would have some explaining to do if everything that belonged to her sister had vanished. It was unlikely that Mercedes would have taken everything with her so fast had she simply moved out.
Oliver untied one of the bin liners and pulled out a silk skirt. As he did so he imagined the cool swish of it against Mercedes’s tanned and shapely legs. She had worn that skirt to a wedding they’d attended in Barcelona just months after they’d met. He remembered slipping his hands beneath it later that night on a beach lit only by the lights of the fishermen lined up along the shore. Her legs were bare and he had run his hands along her silky thighs and pulled her to him as the fishermen, oblivious to the lovers, stared out at the black sea and waited for the fish to bite.
Oliver’s hands were shaking as he hung the skirt in the wardrobe. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of his wife like that for a long time. He had resented their lack of physical contact – a sex life that seemed to have petered out before it had run its natural course. Things had been strained between them long before Carmen had said anything. He tried to justify his actions by blaming Mercedes. If she hadn’t become so cold, so indifferent, would any of it have happened?
He spent the next hour sorting through his wife’s things – re-hanging some of them in their shared wardrobe and packing the others away. By lunchtime, he had finished. He took the bags and loaded them into the boot of the car. He wondered if any of the neighbours were watching – prying eyes peering from behind lace curtains. He was thankful that neither he nor Mercedes had struck up any friendships with their neighbours. They were private, passed themselves off with a ‘hello’ or a ‘nice day’, but that was as far as their contact had gone. Generally, he liked to avoid people who asked too many questions about his private life, and Mercedes had shared that feeling.
It was freezing despite the thaw. Oliver felt rather low as he drove into the city to unburden himself of Mercedes’s clothes, but he knew that it was the only way forward. Mercedes was gone, and his problem was far from over. There was Carmen to deal with. Not to mention the rest of Mercedes’s family. Soon, people would begin to ask questions and he’d better have his answers ready.
The shop was small and had a sign over it that read Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop. He’d never been there before, but he figured that rather than going in with the stuff it’d be better to leave it outside. No point in drawing attention to himself. He pulled up close to the door and took a couple of bags out of the boot. Just as he put them down, the shop door opened and an elderly woman appeared.
‘Are they for us?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I have a few more to go.’
The woman, surprisingly agile for her age, grabbed a bag and made towards the door. ‘Bring them on in,’ she said, leaving him no choice but to follow her.
When he returned with two more bags, the woman was examining Mercedes’s clothes. She held a blouse up to the light and viewed it appraisingly. ‘This is nice stuff. Are you sure she wants to get rid of it?’ she asked.
Oliver panicked. ‘My wife died,’ he said quickly, thinking that would put an end to further questions.
The woman put down the blouse. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ Her eyes narrowed in sympathy. There were deep lines etched at the sides of her mouth. She moved her hand as if to reach out to him and then didn’t.
Oliver nodded and tried to block out Mercedes’s voice in his head. Because of you. ‘I’ll just get the rest of the stuff from the car,’ he said.
The woman smiled sadly, and he left her sorting through Mercedes’s things, fingering the cloth, searching for any imperfections. He felt a strange sort of emptiness as he watched her examining the things that Mercedes had worn. That she would never wear again. He hadn’t expected to feel that way, as though there were a void somewhere inside him.
He leant into the car boot to take out the last bag. He’d forgotten to knot it and the contents were spilling out where it had toppled over. He was shoving the clothes back in when he heard someone calling his name.
‘Oliver. Oliver Molloy, is that you?’
He looked up. There was a woman hurrying across the street. He didn’t recognize her at first. He stood there, at the open boot, trying to figure out who she was.
‘It is you,’ she said, as she got closer. ‘My God, it’s been such a long time!’
Finally, he recognized her, but couldn’t think of her name. She was an old friend of Mercedes; someone she used to work with.
‘Hi,’ he said, as he slammed the boot closed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t remember …?’
‘Adrienne,’ she said. She smiled and extended her hand.
‘Adrienne. Of course, I’m sorry, like you said it’s been what … three … four years?’
The woman called Adrienne laughed. She hadn’t let go of his hand, and he was aware of her fingers squeezing his. ‘I know, it’s hard to believe … I mean … God, how are you? How’s Mercedes doing?’
Oliver cast a quick look at the door of the shop. ‘Yes, she’s fine. We’re both good …’ he said. ‘And you, how are you doing? Are you still at Abacus?’
Adrienne laughed, a tinkling kind of laugh that reminded him of the C note on a piano.
‘No, I left soon after Mercedes did. I don’t know if you remember I was studying acting at the time … well, I’ve been trying to make a go of it. It’s difficult, of course, no money in it, but I get a bit of work doing ads and stuff …’
‘Really … wow … an actress.’
Adrienne smiled and he smiled back. She had a very pretty mouth; there was a dimple at one corner and her lips were coated in a shiny pink lip-gloss. He had no doubt that this girl would get parts.
‘It’s so good to run into you like this. Mercedes and I should never have lost touch … we used to have such laughs. I must get your number, maybe we can arrange to meet up like we used to …’
Adrienne began searching in her bag and took out a mobile phone.
He gave her the house number and then Mercedes’s mobile number. ‘You won’t be able to get her at the moment. She’s away in Barcelona. Her father’s not so well,’ he said.
Just as he’d said it the shop door opened behind him and the old woman came out. Christ – that had been close. Adrienne was busy saving the numbers in her phone.
‘Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that. I’ll give it a few weeks then … hopefully, everything will be okay,’ she said.
‘Yeah, it’s hard you know.’ He glanced at the old woman who was standing feet away examining the display in her shop window. He thought fast of something to say to change the topic from Mercedes. ‘Hey, what ever happened to that guy you used to bring round for dinner … did you?’
Adrienne started laughing. ‘Norman? My God, I haven’t thought of him in a long time …’
Oliver laughed. ‘I could never see what you were doing with him.’
Adrienne looked away. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t know either in the end.’
‘And now, is there someone special?’
‘No. I’m just concentrating on my acting … trying to make it work, you know?’
Her coppery hair fell in her eyes. She flicked it back, and when she looked up there was a moment of awkwardness. He had always thought she was attractive. The old woman, to his relief, had gone back inside. Adrienne smiled at him.
‘I’m really glad I saw you. I’d better go, but please tell Mercedes I was asking about her and that I’ll call her soon.’
‘I will. It was great to see you.’
He leaned down and kissed her cheek. Her face turned a shade of pink to match her lips, and he wondered if he’d been right all those years ago when he’d suspected she’d had a thing for him, and if he should have taken advantage of it.
He watched her run across the road and get into a silver Renault Clio. She waved to him as she passed. He waved back and made as if he were searching for something in the glove compartment. When he was sure she was out of sight, he got out of the car, went round to the boot and brought the last black bag into the shop.
The woman was sitting at the counter now, reading a magazine. She nodded and got off the stool when he entered. ‘Just put it over here, love,’ she said, pointing to a pile of bags yet to be sorted. He was about to turn away when she spoke again. ‘It’s a difficult thing having to get rid of someone’s belongings. When my husband died, I couldn’t bring myself to clean out his wardrobe. I’d take out a shirt and I could smell him off it. It was like he was in the room with me. But it’s better that you do it, you have to move on. She wouldn’t want you mourning.’
Oliver nodded, solemnly. ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘She was full of life. That was the thing I loved most about her – her energy.’
He left the shop feeling strangely bereft. He got into the car and drove slowly away feeling as though he’d left something behind. He thought of Adrienne. Maybe he should’ve told her that Mercedes had left him. It would have aroused her sympathy and maybe they’d have acted on that spark from the past. He hated to go home to an empty house. It was lonely in the evenings and he needed a distraction; someone to keep the ghosts away.
FOUR
Joanna stared down at her mother, who refused to meet her eye. ‘So all that stuff you said about not knowing who my father was – that was all lies. Why? Why couldn’t you have told me?’
Angela looked past her and through the open door to where, minutes before, the woman had stood. ‘I honestly thought it was for the best,’ she said.
Joanna looked at her hard. ‘How? I mean, all those years you said it was a one-night stand, that you didn’t know what happened to the guy. Did you not think that at some point I’d find out, that we might walk into him in the street or that he’d come looking for me?’
Her mother shook her head. She was still carefully avoiding her eye. Joanna stopped pacing and stood before her.
‘Mother, please – give me something to go on here. I mean, what was his name even? Vince what?’
Angela stood up and tightened the belt of her robe. ‘Joanna, can we just not do this now? It’s late. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell you everything, but not tonight. Surely, you can understand … it’s … it’s been a terrible shock.’
‘That woman, who is she?’ Joanna said, ignoring her mother’s plea.
Angela put a hand to her head as though it ached. ‘Rachel. Rachel Arnold, Vince’s wife.’
Arnold. At least she had a name – assuming that the wife had taken his. ‘And did he know – about me?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, what was the deal then? If he knew, why could you not tell me? Why did you have to pretend?’
Her mother looked at her now – eyes tired, face drawn. ‘I didn’t tell you because you’d have wanted to find him. You’d have wanted to know who he was – and I didn’t want that – he didn’t want that.’
‘Was he … was he married?’
‘Joanna, please.’
‘Just tell me – was he? Is that why he didn’t want to know?’
‘Yes. Look, keep your voice down. What difference does it make? He’s gone. You heard what she said: he’s dead, Joanna. Can’t you just leave it, please?’ Angela took a few steps towards the door.
‘Leave it? Are you serious, Mum? How would you feel if you’d just found out your whole life had been based on a lie? And the person responsible was your own mother!’
‘It wasn’t like that, Joanna. I did it for your sake … would you rather I’d told you, and he didn’t want anything to do with you? Would you rather that? It was bad enough he rejected me, I didn’t want to put you through it as well.’
‘Well, I think I’d have deserved the chance to find out, don’t you? So, what … he got you pregnant and then went back to his wife, is that it?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘How did she find out?’
Angela looked up. ‘I told her.’
‘You … what did she say?’
‘Not a lot. She listened to what I had to say and then she told me to leave. I have to admit I admired her composure. I didn’t tell her in order to hurt her – I wanted her to know what he’d done. I wanted her to know that I existed.’
‘And she stayed with him despite knowing?’
‘It’s what people did back then.’
‘And that was that? No contact, nothing all those years?’
Angela lifted the end of her dressing gown and crossed the room to where Joanna’s photographs lay scattered on the floor.
‘He wasn’t … he wasn’t a bad person, Joanna. He was young, arrogant, I suppose, yes, but his intent, it wasn’t malicious. He cared for me, I know that – but he couldn’t leave her, it would have meant losing too much.’
‘What do you mean? People do it – they do it all the time. They simply decide what’s most important to them – and clearly we weren’t.’
Angela shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that straightforward. Rachel’s father was the head of the newspaper. He was the one that gave Vince his chance.’ She paused, looked up from the pictures. ‘He was a journalist – covered all the sports events. He took pictures, too. So, you see, you have inherited something from him.’
‘But you must have hated him – he chose Rachel … she was his wife, yes, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t have been some part of our lives, of mine. Did he even send you money?’
‘Sometimes. Cheques arrived – no note – nothing to ask me how I was doing, how you were. It was one of the conditions, you see.’
‘What conditions?’
‘Rachel told Vince that he would cut all contact – that it would have to be as though he and I had never met – it was that or she’d tell her father – and Vince could say goodbye to his career.’
‘What – and he was okay with that?’
Angela shrugged. ‘It was the choice he made. And now you know – I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I really am. I just hope you can understand, even a little bit, why I didn’t tell you. Protecting you was all I ever had in mind.’
Angela had crossed the room. She put her hand on Joanna’s arm, but she pulled away.
‘I can’t believe you expect me to accept this,’ she said. ‘Twenty-six years, Mum! And what’s worse, if that woman hadn’t come here tonight, you’d never have said anything, would you?’
‘Joanna, keep your voice down. The neighbours—’
‘Who cares about the neighbours? Who cares? This can never be fixed – don’t you understand that? You’ve robbed me of any chance to know my father.’
‘I’m sorry, Joanna. I know how this must seem to you now, but—’
‘It’s unlikely it’ll seem any other way, so don’t expect it to. I don’t care what kind of person Vince Arnold was – and he doesn’t sound like much of one – I should have had the opportunity to find that out for myself.’
They stood staring at each other.
‘I’m sorry,’ Angela said, again. ‘What else can I say?’
‘Nothing,’ Joanna told her. ‘Nothing you can say will put this right.’
FIVE
Oliver leaned forward at his desk and tried to focus on what the woman was saying. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t concentrate on the words that were coming out; instead, he was hearing fragmented bits of speech floating on the air thick between them. The woman sat back and crossed her black-stockinged legs. The action caused him to shift his gaze momentarily from her face. She was not beautiful, but she gave the impression of a woman convinced by her own attributes. Her small face, framed by a thatch of dark hair, was too pointed at the chin, and her narrowed blue eyes gave her the look of a small, but fierce animal. It was her full lips, startlingly red against her pale skin, that captured his attention. And there was something else, too, something that despite their physical dissimilarities reminded him of Mercedes. He couldn’t quite figure what it was, but it bothered him.
‘So, what are my entitlements? I’m still his wife, so that must mean I’m entitled to half of this new house despite the separation? I mean, I’m not the one that walked out on the marriage.’
If he hadn’t been feeling so ill, he may have commented on that. The fact that this woman had had an affair with her husband’s friend – a lover who, from what he had gathered, had long since departed the scene – seemed to escape her memory.
Oliver pulled at his tie. She was staring at him, waiting for an answer, but the air in the room seemed to have evaporated and a nauseous feeling was rising from the pit of his stomach. Something in the atmosphere, maybe the woman’s perfume, seemed to exacerbate it, and when he looked again at her expectant face he found that it was partially obscured by splotches of yellow light.
‘I’m sorry, but could you excuse me for a moment?’ he said.
He felt rather than saw her eyes follow him from the room.
In the men’s room the nauseous feeling overcame him and he leaned on the sink with both hands and retched acid-tasting bile. Perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he loosened the knot of his tie and tried to breathe, but he couldn’t calm the frantic beating of his heart. The woman who sat in his office was nothing like Mercedes. And yet in every woman that he’d met since that terrible night he had seen something to remind him of her. It would have to stop.
He examined his face in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent light his skin was opaque and the dark circles beneath his eyes screamed of his sleepless nights. He turned on the cold tap, cupped his hands and doused his face several times in icy water. Eventually his heart resumed its regular beat, but his legs felt weak and he couldn’t still the trembling in his hands. It was the panic that he felt in his dreams, but in daylight it was far more frightening.
To distract himself, he thought of the woman who sat in his office awaiting his return. It was a divorce case that he’d been working on for the past year. She was the sort of woman that he despised, intent on taking her husband for everything she could get, but he couldn’t afford not to represent her. Business had been slow, and it was an easy case to win.
He took a deep breath, grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and blotted his face dry. The woman was his last client of the day. He would simply have to get through it.
‘I’m sorry about that. Haven’t been feeling very well all day,’ he said. His legs were still shaking as he sat back down in his leather chair. The woman leaned forward at his desk.
‘So,’ she said, ‘what are my rights here?’
If it was sympathy he’d been after, he’d miscalculated. The woman, who seemed to have forgotten that it was her infidelity that had instigated her husband’s divorce proceedings, was interested only in money. It pained him that the law, albeit to his advantage, was on this woman’s side. He gave her a long, silent look in which he hoped his distaste was evident and then, putting his personal feelings aside, forced himself to enter legal mode.
When the woman had left, he closed and locked the door behind her. His partner, who worked in an adjoining office, had gone to the courts and wouldn’t return that evening. Oliver sat down but, not feeling like working, he picked up the newspaper from his desk. He’d read it briefly that morning. The body in the canal had made the front page. The man, named as Vince Arnold, had worked as a sports journalist for one of the national papers. Arnold. It wasn’t such a common name. He’d known an Arnold once – sat his bar exams with him at the King’s Inns. He wondered if there was any connection. Putting the paper down, he typed the man’s name into Google. The obituary came up. Oliver clicked on it, read: ‘Sadly missed by his wife, Rachel, brother, Patrick …’ Patrick Arnold, that was it. The name of the guy he’d studied with. He’d often wondered what had become of him. Rumour had it that he’d been struck off – found guilty of fraud, something to do with a land deal. He couldn’t remember the details. He looked again at the notice – the Removal Mass was to take place the following evening in a church not far from the office. Curious about the dead man, and wondering if it were the same Patrick Arnold he’d known, he decided that he would go along to find out.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
