The Cruellest Game (11 page)

I remembered, then, something I had read in a magazine interview with a famous actress who had spoken with rare common sense, I’d thought at the time, for a member of her profession. If
ever you contemplate suicide, she’d said, you should wait until the next day before doing anything about it.

I knew she was right. I didn’t feel that my life would ever be worth living again, but the man I had married in good faith and had loved so much was still there, downstairs in the kitchen
of our fine home, proclaiming his everlasting love for me. I felt unbearably betrayed. Yet perhaps I would feel differently in the morning. Or perhaps I was clutching at straws. I didn’t
know.

In any case I’d also read somewhere that it takes considerably more than the contents of an average-size bottle of paracetamol to kill a human being, and that death comes neither quickly
nor in sleep, but is ultimately caused in most cases by acute liver failure, agonizingly, and only after several days.

I replaced the cap on the paracetamol bottle and left it in Robbie’s bathroom.

Then I crawled back into his bed and pulled his duvet over my head.

I began to cry. I couldn’t stop. Eventually, aided no doubt by my mild drug overdose, I cried myself to sleep. When I woke, rather to my surprise, dawn was already breaking. I checked my
watch. It was 7 a.m. I realized I must have slept for almost ten hours. My gran would have said it was my body looking after itself. Giving me the rest I desperately needed to find the strength to
cope with all that had happened.

I felt hot and sweaty. My forehead clammy to the touch. I badly needed to urinate. Indeed, without the pressure of my bladder I suspected I may have slept even longer.

I climbed out of bed and made my way into Robbie’s bathroom again. His electric razor, a birthday present from his father, stood on the shelf above the washbasin. He’d taken to using
it most mornings, I believed, even though he hadn’t really needed to.

As I relieved myself the tears pricked at the back of my eyes again. I made myself take some deep breaths and splashed my hot flushed face with cold water.

Back in the bedroom I threw open the windows to the cool air of another wintery Dartmoor morning and did some more deep breathing.

What was I going to do? If I left Robert, where would I go? I had no money of my own. I supposed I could go back to teaching full-time, but in order to acquire a proper staff appointment I would
almost certainly have to retrain.

In any case, was that what I wanted? Did I want to leave Robert? Or did I still love him and want to be with him, flaws and all? I really wasn’t sure. And just how bad were those
flaws?

Maybe what he had done was not so very dreadful. Certainly his motives seemed to be good. But if a man were capable of such a massive deception over such a long period, what else, I asked myself
not for the first time, might he have been keeping from me? What other secrets could he be holding?

I didn’t know, of course, and I had to accept I might never know. But, just as I’d half suspected, I did feel slightly different about the whole thing in the cold light of morning. I
knew I had to think very carefully before destroying whatever might still remain of the life I had once so enjoyed. But on the other hand, I was aware that I might just be kidding myself to even
consider the possibility that any significant part of that life could really be salvaged.

I pulled on my dressing gown and made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I needed a cup of tea. I also realized, rather to my surprise, that I was hungry. In spite of having barely eaten anything
the day before, I’d rather thought I’d never be able to face food again.

Robert was sitting in the big old leather armchair by the Aga. He was asleep when I opened the door but immediately awakened. He was unshaven and ravaged-looking again. It was pretty obvious he
hadn’t been to bed.

The kitchen was very warm. He must have fetched in more wood, stoked and relit the range. Indeed, the box which stood beside it was overflowing with logs. Florrie lay at Robert’s feet,
curled up on the mat. She rose and ambled sleepily over to me, wrapping her body around my legs and stretching her neck so that she could lick my hand.

Robert didn’t speak. He just gazed at me. His eyes were imploring. Under any other circumstances I would have been overwhelmed with compassion for him. As things were, I really
didn’t know what I felt for him any more.

That morning I was empty of emotion.

The kettle simmered on the Aga’s slow plate, as usual when Robert was home. I stood it for a minute or two on the fast hob and then took two mugs and a couple of tea bags, poured in
boiling water and added a splash of milk to each.

I handed one of the mugs to Robert. He mumbled a ‘thank you’ as he took it from me. The first word either of us had spoken.

‘Would you like some breakfast?’ I asked.

He nodded. An expression almost of puzzlement flitting across his face.

I reached for the big old iron frying pan that hung from a hook above the stove, took some bacon and eggs from the fridge and began to cook.

‘Make some toast, will you,’ I instructed Robert. ‘There’s sliced bread in the freezer.’

I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I don’t think Robert did either. Whatever he had expected from me that morning, I doubt it was this kind of normality. It wasn’t what
I would have expected from myself either.

But it was, of course, just how people did behave when someone died. Even when that someone was their son. They just carried on. Only this was different. I still did not know if I would be able
to carry on with a man who had deceived me so, nor if I really wanted to. I had decisions to make, that was for sure, but maybe the sensible thing to do was to defer deciding anything irrevocable
until I’d had time to come to terms with all that had happened.

It was always said, was it not, that big decisions should never be made right after bereavement. Particularly an unexpected one. And I had an additional shocking dilemma to deal with.

I carried two plates of bacon and eggs to the table and set them down. In our usual places. In front of our usual chairs. I tried not even to glance at that other usual place. At Robbie’s
place.

Robert piled toast into a basket and put that on the table between us.

We began to eat. I was surprised at how good the food tasted. Strange. I hadn’t expected to be able to taste anything. I’d thought I was totally numb.

We ate in silence. Robert, I think, was afraid to speak. I hadn’t yet worked out exactly what I was going to say to him. Nor even if I wanted to say anything yet. But I did still have
questions.

By the time I’d finished eating, and drained the last of my tea, I at least felt ready to ask some of those questions.

‘You still haven’t told me where you were yesterday,’ I said.

‘I did tell you. I needed to be on my own. I went walking. I’m so sorry I left you alone. Really I am. I wanted to be with you, but somehow I just needed time—’

‘You told me you were taking the hire car back,’ I interrupted. ‘It’s still here, parked at the front.’

‘I’m sorry, Marion,’ he said. ‘I can’t explain yesterday. I’ll never be able to explain yesterday. I don’t even know what I did for most of it, to tell
the truth. I just walked . . .’

His voice tailed off. I glanced across the kitchen. His shoes lay where he’d presumably discarded them the previous night, alongside the leather armchair. There was no mud on them and they
did not even look as if they had recently got wet, even though the previous day’s weather had been so awful.

‘I know I should have been with you,’ Robert continued after a bit. ‘I wanted to be with you. I’m just so sorry. All I can say is nothing like it will ever happen again.
We are both grief stricken. I promise you I will be here for you one hundred per cent from now on.’

I looked at him, sitting in his familiar place at the table. My Robert. Except that this was a Robert I barely recognized. Unshaven. Eyes wild and swollen. Above all a man who was not what he
had seemed to be for all those years. I’d caught him out in an enormous lie. A lie which rocked the very basis of our life together. Even his name was a falsehood. Yet he was all I had. That
and our home, though suddenly even Highrise, wonderful Highrise, didn’t mean much any more.

‘How can I trust you?’ I enquired in an almost conversational sort of way. ‘I thought I knew you through and through, knew everything about you. It seems that I didn’t.
How will I ever be able to trust you again?’

‘You can, Marion,’ he said, his eyes and his whole body language imploring me now. ‘I promise, promise you. You just have to believe me, you really do.’

‘Do I?’ The question was rhetorical. But he answered it anyway.

‘You must,’ he said. ‘You cannot throw away all that we’ve had together. We’ve lost Robbie. We cannot lose each other, surely?’

I was afraid we already had. But he looked and sounded so anguished that, angry as he’d made me, I did not have the heart to say so. I remained silent. After all, whatever he may have
done, this was my son’s father.

‘I’ll put it right,’ he continued eventually. ‘I will, Marion. I’ll find my first wife somehow. I’ll get that divorce. We’ll get married again, you and
me, somewhere exotic, just the two of us. Mauritius, the Maldives. Somewhere like that. We’ll have a ceremony on the beach as the sun goes down . . .’

His voice trailed away as if even he realized the nonsense of what he was saying.

I shook my head in exasperation.

‘You’re a fantasist, Robert,’ I said. ‘A romantic fantasist. Maybe that’s partly what I fell in love with in you. But now, now, with Robbie dead and all this
deception, this terrible deception coming to light, it’s just . . .’ I searched for the right word.

‘It’s obscene.’

Robert recoiled almost as if I had hit him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I will put things right.’

‘You can never put things right, Robert. You can certainly never bring Robbie back.’

He slumped in his chair.

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t do that.’

His eyes were focused on his empty plate. He obviously couldn’t meet mine.

‘M-Marion,’ he stumbled. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘Y-you, you don’t really think I had something to do with our son’s death, do you? I would never have harmed a hair on his head. Never.’

‘I know that,’ I replied a tad grudgingly. ‘I don’t think you actually harmed him, of course I don’t. In any case you weren’t even here. But, like I said
yesterday, perhaps he’d found out about you, and was traumatized by what he learned. That has to be possible.’

Robert turned ever paler. He looked up at me.

‘Does it? Traumatized enough to hang himself? You suggested that yesterday. It can’t be what happened, surely.’

He paused, and shook his head quite ferociously before continuing.

‘Oh, Marion, I have no idea if or how Robbie might have found out that I was not quite what I seemed. But I was still the father who loved the bones of him, for God’s sake. Surely he
wouldn’t want to take his own life because my name was really Rob Anderton and I’m a derrickman who got lucky on the lottery instead of a highly paid big-shot engineer. Would he care
that much?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘I just have to believe he didn’t,’ Robert continued, desperation in his voice. ‘I just have to believe that even if he had discovered the truth about me it would not
have driven him to take his own life. And I hope you will believe that too.’

I fixed my gaze on him.

‘But perhaps there’s more,’ I continued. ‘Perhaps there is more about you that I still do not know. Are you sure you’ve told me everything, Robert?’

‘Of course I have,’ he said. ‘What else could there be?’

‘I really don’t know, Robert,’ I said. ‘But then, I don’t know about anything any longer.’

He was silent for a moment or two.

‘In any case I thought you didn’t believe Robbie had killed himself,’ he went on eventually. ‘I thought you believed there was someone else involved, that he may have
even been murdered.’

‘I did think that. But that was when I could not imagine that there was anything in Robbie’s life that would make him want to end it. Now that I’ve learned about you, about
your deception, I’m not so sure. Robbie was at a vulnerable age. Teenagers are easily tipped over the edge, we all know that—’

‘Not by me,’ Robert interrupted almost fiercely. ‘I just cannot believe that. It’s too dreadful for me to accept. Look, you said you were going to look into his death
because the police are obviously not going to take it any further. Let me help. Let us try to find out the truth together.’

I laughed humourlessly. ‘Truth? You? Not really your specialist area, it seems, is it? In any case you just want to prove to yourself that you’re not to blame.’

‘I’ll admit that,’ he said. He looked so gaunt. Every so often I couldn’t help remembering how much I’d always loved him. And, even now, the one thing I
didn’t doubt about him was that he loved me.

‘Well, I suppose I can identify with that,’ I said. ‘I want to prove to myself that I’m not to blame too.’

He reached out a hand to touch mine.

‘Of course you’re not to blame,’ he said. ‘How could you be?’

I pulled my hand away. I had softened a little, in spite of myself, but I wasn’t ready for that sort of contact yet. Far from it.

‘The same way any parent of a child that kills himself is,’ I said. ‘How can you not blame yourself?’

He looked down at his shunned hand. Then up at me.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know what you are feeling.’

And he did, of course.

‘Marion,’ he went on. ‘You will stay with me, won’t you? We need each other now more than ever, surely. There’s nobody else in the world who could understand what
we’re going through, what we’ve lost. Only us.’

I nodded. That was the truth, of course. How could anyone else understand?

‘So you will stay?’ he asked again.

I wasn’t ready to make any promises. Not to this man who had thrust a dagger into the very core of my soul at a time when I hadn’t thought it possible to be more deeply hurt than I
already was.