The Disappearance of Emily Marr (13 page)

Emmie looked towards her but not quite at her before replying, ‘Nowhere. They’re both dead.’

Tabby was taken aback. ‘Oh, Emmie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea we have that in common. I mean my father, of course.’ She wanted to take Emmie’s arm or even give her a hug, but Emmie was not the tactile sort and she thought better of it. ‘Is that the trauma you mentioned before, your parents passing away? Did it happen recently?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Emmie said.

‘Of course. I understand.’

They waited in silence. As personal details went this was an important one for Emmie to have omitted to mention; it was also one on which Tabby was qualified to advise, were Emmie ever to decide she wanted to confide in her. Her father had died following a stroke three years earlier and she had cried herself to sleep for months afterwards, struggling for over a year with insomnia and anxiety. Gradually she had learned to detach herself from the sense of loss, to hold at bay the memory of hearing the news from her mother that Tuesday afternoon and being engulfed almost instantly by a darkness she grew so used to that she’d been astonished when it finally lifted, unveiling once more the sensory world she had forgotten was there.

She rarely thought now of the faces at the funeral, the ones that had once haunted her: her stepsisters Layla and Jessica, devastation so raw on their young faces she feared it might permanently disfigure their still-forming features; and Susie’s, too, a more mutinous grief, the type that was quick to transform into blame. At first, Tabby had felt relief that she had not seen her father in the days before his death and so could not be held responsible for the stroke in some way, but this was quickly replaced with a terrible regret that she had not been there. Either way, Susie didn’t want to share him in death any more than she had wanted to in life. Tabby felt the same. After the funeral she had made no attempt to see Susie or the girls again.

Her mother and Steve had been there, of course. She’d avoided his eye, though it had been difficult, her glance attracted to her former tormentor like a ghoul’s at the scene of a road accident. How grateful she’d been to be leaving with Paul, to be no longer under her mother’s jurisdiction or Steve’s sordid surveillance.

She was jolted by the memory of confiding all of this to Emmie in their very first conversation, of telling her, ‘He didn’t suffer. It wasn’t one of those situations where he hung on in agony for years, not being able to do anything for himself. Everyone said it was better the way it was, quite merciful, really.’ She had not heard the word ‘merciful’ much before in her life and it had never come up since, except, just possibly, that very night, the night Emmie took her in. ‘Any one of us could be struck down at any moment. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true.’

Of course, now, in light of Emmie’s own revelation, Tabby cursed herself for these loose-tongued remarks:
Any one of us could be struck down
– poor Emmie must have been thinking then of her own losses. And what if one or both of Emmie’s parents
had
‘hung on in agony’? How could Tabby have been so thoughtless? And yet, how much easier it would be to be sensitive and tactful if Emmie would only open up a little, reduce the potential for upset in every one of Tabby’s attempts at conversation.

All of this she considered as the bus arrived and they took their turns to board. Emmie chose a seat across the aisle from her and turned her face to the window, perhaps to spare herself any more of Tabby’s blundering small-talk. Tabby closed her eyes and relaxed. It took an age to reach the other end of the island, the warm air and constant stops and starts eventually sending her to sleep, so that Emmie had to poke her awake at their destination. The house was a ten-minute walk from the bus stop, on a remote road towards the beach, and the gates they passed concealed properties far larger than the fishermen’s cottages and seaside bungalows she had worked in to date. She realised they had ahead of them a hard afternoon’s labour, wished she could simply sneak off in the direction of the beach and snooze the afternoon away in the dunes.

Their client’s house was a broad, two-storey building, the grounds dotted with cypresses and fruit trees. There was a glamorous stone terrace and a narrow blue pool, a lawn that stretched towards the beach. It was a beautiful place, with sea views on two sides, no neighbours within earshot, a sense of being at the end of the world. The shutters were the same shade of blue as the sky.

Emmie took care of entering the required security codes and, once inside, deactivating the alarm. ‘Look at this place, it’s already clean!’ She pivoted in the spacious hallway, assessing the scale of the job. ‘It’ll be spotless by the time we finish,’ she added with indecent cheer, ending any hopes Tabby may have had that they might slacken their usual standards. Tabby surveyed the expanse of antique terracotta tiling with new weariness, a sudden vision in her mind of the thousands of other floors on the island gathering dust and waiting for her to arrive to mop them. Temperatures would soon rise, and not all of the houses – if any – would have air-conditioning. If she couldn’t face her job today, how on earth was she going to endure it in high season?

Because you have no choice, she told herself sternly. Remember, you could have been in a homeless shelter by now. Or worse.

‘Right, better get on with it,’ Emmie said, and, after locating the storage cupboard, instructed Tabby to take the kitchen and entrance hall while she handled the vast open-plan sitting room at the rear. ‘We’ll need to sweep the terrace as well. If they’ve got a high-pressure jet wash, we’ll use that.’

She began sweeping her allotted zone with focused intensity. This, according to protocol, would be followed by vacuuming and mopping, though in recent days Tabby had begun to omit the vacuuming stage when on her own. And it had never occurred to her to clean stone terraces or tidy courtyards, not unless the tasks were on Moira’s list.

She set to work too. It was a testament to how well she had settled into her new life that she had virtually forgotten its inception and therefore only recognised where she was when, after an hour in the kitchen, she paused for a glass of water and looked at the family photographs on the dresser while she drank it.

Then she fetched a second glass for Emmie, who had finished downstairs and was starting on the first of three bathrooms on the upper floor.

‘I’ve been here before,’ she told her.

‘Have you? That explains why it’s in such good nick.’ Emmie was scrubbing at the skirting boards with demonic energy, as if she’d found them thickly coated in syrup. ‘The owners probably haven’t set foot in the place since then. Had the oven been used? Moira says some people don’t ever cook, even when they’re here for weeks. They must pay her a retainer, I guess, get the place cleaned even when no one’s been here. It’s all right for some.’

‘No, not on a job for Moira,’ Tabby said, ignoring the last comments, though not before noting that Emmie was only ever talkative on impersonal, inconsequential matters. ‘I don’t mean that.’

‘When, then?’ Emmie asked the question with an air of sufferance rather than interest.

‘When I first came here… I haven’t told you about what happened before I turned up at your house.’

Emmie looked for a moment quite startled, but her face cleared as soon as Tabby added, ‘I was with a man, the owner of this place. That’s how I came to be on the island.’ She hardly needed add that it had been an illicit extramarital liaison, for the evidence of family life was all around them, the portraits that had caused the penny to drop in the first place, the bikes and surfboards and tennis racquets, the rows of teenagers’ sports shoes.

‘You had an affair with him?’ Emmie said, dispiritedly, and Tabby could not tell if it saddened her to hear the confession or simply to be having to hear anything more of Tabby’s history at all.

‘Not an affair, just one night. He picked me up in a bar in Paris. Or I picked him up, I don’t remember. Do you hate me?’

‘Why would I hate you?’

‘Well… some people might disapprove. Most people would. He’s married. He’s got, oh, I don’t know how many kids.’

‘Two. I saw the pictures. Both boys.’

‘
I
disapprove of me,’ Tabby told her.

But Emmie shook her head. ‘Why did you leave the city with a complete stranger? Let him bring you somewhere so remote? He could have murdered you.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s been a murder here for centuries,’ Tabby said mildly.

‘Yes, but it could have been the murder capital of France for all you knew.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about murder,’ Tabby said, frustrated by this line of enquiry. Emmie
never
gave the predictable response, or the desired one. One moment she’d correctly detect a faint implication you hardly knew you’d made, the next she’d take you at your word when you couldn’t possibly have meant it. ‘I’d had a few drinks. And I had that good vibe about him, you know, like I already knew him well and could trust him?’

Emmie didn’t reply, but Tabby thought she could see in her face that she did know.

‘Anyway, he threw me out the next day. He had a meeting with a builder, and his family were arriving in the afternoon.’

‘So what were you expecting?’ That ambivalent sorrow reappeared in Emmie’s eyes.

‘Nothing, I suppose. I just remember it felt a bit sordid afterwards. Like I’d done it for money.’

‘He paid you?’

‘No! Well, he paid for the train and taxis. My expenses.’

‘Well, one night isn’t anything to fuss about, is it?’ Emmie made a dismissive face, as if the subject were closed, causing Tabby to jump in with an emotion that took her by surprise.

‘The thing is, Emmie, he was the first man since Paul. It felt like, are they
always
going to end with me being sent packing? It makes me feel, you know, like I get close to a man, he gets close to me, and then he takes it back again. He changes his mind about me.’ She heard the lurch of despair in her own voice, frightened herself by how quickly she could abandon optimism and descend into inarticulate self-pity. ‘Nobody wants me,’ she was about to add, but pulled herself together. ‘Oh, forget it, I’m just feeling sorry for myself.’

But all at once Emmie was on her feet, not only interested but gazing at her with true compassion, the intense, livid kind Tabby had not seen in her since the night they met. ‘No, I know exactly how you feel, Tabby. When he says there’s nothing to be gained any more. Nothing to be gained from
love
. I think it’s horrible to be denied, whether the other person is married or not.’

‘Denied’: it was a sweet, old-fashioned way of putting it, Tabby thought, but she hadn’t really been denied by Grégoire, only by Paul; she would have left this house of her own accord, if not that morning, then eventually. He’d been old enough to be her father. And she’d never said anything about
loving
him, had she? But she didn’t want to hurt Emmie’s feelings by pointing this out.

‘Emmie, can I ask you something?’

‘You can ask,’ Emmie said.

‘Were you “denied”, too? Dumped, like me? Is
that
why you came here? Are we in the same boat?’

Emmie looked at her, the familiar shade of self-protection drawing over her face. ‘No, our boats are not the same at all, Tabby. I wish they were.’

Tabby burned inside and out with the need to know more. And it was more than plain curiosity: she longed to be able to reciprocate the kindness she had received from Emmie. As she understood it (and whether or not Paul had credited her with the knowledge), support worked both ways. ‘But what
is
your situation? You’ve never told me. I might be able to help, you know. Even just talking about it might be useful?’ When Emmie did not reply, she continued recklessly, ‘Do you remember when you discovered me that day in the house?’

‘How could I forget.’

‘You said, “How did you find me?”’

Emmie’s face tightened. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No, you did, I’m sure you did. Why did you think I was looking for you, Emmie?’

‘I have no memory of that,’ Emmie said, ‘but presumably because it wouldn’t occur to me that you could be in my house for any other reason.’

It was a typical evasion and one that should have silenced Tabby, but, fired now to temperatures she could not control, she persisted. ‘Not like my situation: OK, so is it the opposite, then? You’re hiding from someone who
does
want you? You thought I might know him?’ She imagined now an obsessed lover, a hunter for Emmie’s heart, and registered momentary envy that the other woman should inspire extreme passion in a man while she had been discarded so casually. Shame followed. What if the man was violent and Emmie feared for her life? There was nothing to envy about that. He could be a Steve figure, an abuser, someone far more dangerous than anything
she
had had to contend with.

Emmie regarded her with resignation. ‘I wouldn’t call it hiding,’ she said at last, and there was pure desolation in her voice. ‘I would say it’s more like exile.’

‘Exile?’ It was a word with political connotations, one that conjured disgraced queens and fallen leaders. ‘Why would you be in exile? I don’t understand.’

‘That’s why I don’t want to talk about it.
You
won’t understand and
I
can’t explain.’

‘Yes, you can. You can tell me, I’ll be on your side.’ Tabby felt a twinge, remembering the phrase as one of her father’s when she was little. And he had been, even during the Susie years, or at least he’d start off on her side and Susie would grind him down. His instinct had been for her, though, and that was better than nothing, better than anything her mother could manage.

‘I doubt it,’ Emmie said in a shrunken voice, almost to herself. ‘No one else was, so why would you be?’

‘Because I’m different. I promise I will try to understand, whatever it is.’

Emmie breathed a long-suffering sigh. Neither of them had moved from her position on either side of the bathroom doorway, but now Emmie lowered herself on to the curved rim of the bathtub. ‘If you must know, I was accused of being something I wasn’t.’