The Disappearance of Emily Marr (20 page)

In which case, he was a monster and I was a fool.

Sensing that his job of placating me was not yet done, he answered me only after obvious thought. ‘I did think about it, yes, which is why I ignored all temptations in the two years before I met you. But I also knew that that final warning of hers was less to do with her wanting me to be faithful for moral reasons as to do with appearances, public image.’

‘You mean the socialising you have to do for work?’ I imagined him moving in exalted circles, dining with Charles and Camilla or the Saudi prince he told me he’d treated years ago. I imagined black-tie charity fundraisers and lavish parties at their home, taxis and chauffeur-driven cars queuing up the Grove to deliver their distinguished cargo.

‘No, we don’t do that much social stuff any more, only the occasional thing we really can’t refuse. Or I’ll go to events alone.’

‘Why?’

‘Sylvie wanted to cut back on it.’

‘I don’t understand.’ It seemed to me that Sylvie would benefit from consolidating this role. Wouldn’t a wife under threat seek more ways to become indispensable?

‘Emily, there’s no reason why you should understand. The fact that you’re not jaded and broken like we are is the reason I love you.’ As usual, I never tired of hearing him say this, or of feeling the sudden listing sensation of submission that it elicited. ‘You just have to take my word for it that when you’ve been married to someone for twenty years, you become very pragmatic. You can’t stay idealistic about someone for that length of time. It’s a natural adjustment.’

But pragmatism, or the fading of idealism, did not quite explain the desolation in Sylvie’s eyes at Sarah’s table, or the first impression I’d had in the café that time, which had left me with the idea that she had survived a traumatic ordeal and dreaded its return. It was deeper than an aversion to humiliation or loss of public face: she
did
want him to want her still, I was sure of it. I did not think Arthur was lying to me, however. I assumed that his marriage, rather like my relationship with Matt, had not included enough frank communication, which meant that his interpretation of their respective positions was different from hers. What he imagined to be a blind eye might in fact be a sobbing one.

‘Look, I can hardly deny I’ve been a terrible husband,’ he continued. ‘You know that. There’ve been plenty of times when I’ve hated myself for what I’ve done, for the excuses I’ve made to her
and
to myself. But I’m not sorry I met you. Do you want me to be sorry, is that it?’

‘No,’ I whispered, ‘I want you to be glad.’

‘Good. I
am
glad. Because I feel like I’m starting again with you, trying to do right all the things I did wrong before. I know there’s a short overlapping and I wish it weren’t this way, but that’s all it is, a short overlapping.’ He slid down the pillows a little, pulling me with him. ‘Alex does his A-levels this term; I can’t think about causing any drama until they’re over, but once they are…’

Even without prior experience, I knew this was the classic married man’s deferral; there would always be another reason to postpone. If we waited for the younger son to finish
his
A-levels it would be another year, and by then Arthur might have decided he couldn’t jeopardise their first terms at university, their finals, the early months in their chosen careers… How easy it would be to fall into the brooding silences and secret ultimatums of the long-term mistress. What made
me
different from all the women before me who’d hoped and believed and come to wish they had not?

I didn’t say any of this aloud, however. I’d already taken up half our time together today with my fears and insecurities and I didn’t want to turn our liaisons into anything other than ones to be anticipated with relish. Not when desire was what linked us in the first place.

But Arthur had an intelligence that enabled him to track my emotions. He held me closer, saying, ‘It will happen, I promise,
very
soon. I can’t leave her right this minute, but until I can I want to support you in other ways.’

‘I don’t want your money,’ I said, meaning it. Sylvie was not the only one with pride to protect.

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘What then? How can you “support” me?’

‘However you need me, you tell me. Let me come with you to visit your father. I know you feel lousy afterwards, whatever you pretend. Well, let me be there for you, as proof.’

‘Proof of what?’

‘Proof that I love you. More than any other woman, ever.’

We rubbed our faces together. Now when his fingers unbuttoned my top, unclasped my bra, I had no power to stop them. Now when he kissed me, I responded hungrily. ‘I’ve never wanted anyone like this,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve never loved anyone like this… It’s… it’s beyond my ability to describe…’

‘I feel the same.’ And out of vanity, or for pleasure, I made him wait, made him repeat his vows. ‘Did you tell any of the others you loved them more than any other woman?’

‘Oh, Emily, you make it sound as if there’ve been whole chorus lines of them. And no, I didn’t.’

‘Only me?’

‘Only you.’

He was true to his word and came with me to visit my father the following Sunday. Someone or something had been cancelled to facilitate this, but I did not allow myself to think about that.

Arriving at the ward, I thought how cautious I would have been of making this introduction had Dad’s disease been less advanced. Back when he had been himself I would not have allowed them to meet at all, and a part of me was grateful for the convenience of his lack of comprehension. The only father in the world not likely to disapprove of his daughter’s married lover! How ashamed I was of that perverse gratitude – hadn’t I spent years praying for a miracle? I could have wept for him, for everything he’d once known and now did not.

He’d been given a sedative to help him sleep and could not lift his head from the pillow. Arthur, seated beside me, did instinctively what Phil and I had had to be educated to do: use body language to convey warmth. He knew not to bother with words. When Dad drifted into sleep, his hand remained clutched around mine and we stayed a while. Arthur took my other hand and I felt the flooding gladness of total trust in someone, a friend to whom I could reveal the full enormity of my sorrow. He wouldn’t make light of it or avoid discussion of it as Matt had. He wouldn’t listen in open horror as Charlotte did, exclaiming constantly that she didn’t know how she would cope if it were
her
beloved father and not mine.

In a low voice, I told him about the diagram of a pyramid Phil and I had been given by the specialist when the disease was first diagnosed.

‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,’ he said at once. ‘At the bottom the physiological needs, the basic ones, at the top the transcendent ones.’

‘Yes. It’s supposed to help us identify which bits are no longer within reach.’ The upper parts of the pyramid had been shaded out long ago and we were, at best, in the middle, on the tier labelled
Belongingness and Love
. ‘So long as he still knows I love him then it means he’s still at that level. Do you think he knows?’

‘Yes,’ Arthur said, ‘I do. Definitely.’

Because it was Sunday, there were no consultants on duty. I had hoped to see Dad’s key worker from the care home, who had continued to keep an eye on him after the transfer and made occasional overtures regarding his return to that more comfortable facility, but she was not there either. It was strange to think of the medical staff detaching themselves from him and the other patients for their weekends off, when I could hardly pass an hour without being reminded of him. Arthur did his best to gain information from the staff that I might not be able to extract myself, but it was clear to all of us there was little new to say, just new ways of saying it. He was sweet to try, though, and to tell me that if I had any questions he would ring one of the senior staff the next day for me.

In his car on the way home, we were silent at first, grateful for the congested lanes that slowed our re-entry into the city and towards the river. Normally, at some point in my solitary trek home I would phone Phil, let him know that things were much the same, give or take, hear in his voice the same horrible longing for cataclysmic change I knew must be in my own, the same claustrophobic terror that there should be any alteration at all. How consoling Arthur’s silence was, just as it had been at the hospital bedside.

Presently, I turned to speak. ‘You know when you see people in the street who look totally desperate?’

He glanced through his window to the street life beyond. ‘Homeless, you mean?’

‘Yes, or just people who are lost and distraught about something, at the end of the line. Well, I’d love to be able to say, just to one person, one time, “Come with me, stay with me until you’ve got yourself back on your feet.” Give someone a break, totally against their expectations.’

‘That’s a very charitable attitude,’ Arthur said, ‘but it might be a bit risky to take someone in without knowing a thing about them. If they’re roaming the streets and obviously desperate, they may have mental-health issues.’

‘I don’t mean I’m actually going to do it,’ I laughed. ‘Not in London. I might be murdered in my bed if I let in a complete stranger. I just meant I’d
like
to do that, one day, something that makes a proper difference to someone down on their luck.’

‘A random act of kindness? I think it’s natural, that sort of impulse. You feel helpless back there…’ – he meant the hospital – ‘you worry you can’t do anything to help your father. But you have to realise you
are
helping. What you said about love and belonging, honestly, he couldn’t wish for a better daughter. By visiting him so much, you’re helping, both you and your brother. Plenty of families cut back on the visits long before this stage. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the patients in there don’t get a visitor from one week to the next.’

‘That’s true.’ It had certainly been the case in the care home, where I knew at least one resident who had no visitors at all. ‘But how do you explain the fact that I’ve had these feelings even before Dad got ill?’

‘I don’t know; perhaps you should have trained in medicine or teaching or something. A more formal way of helping people you don’t have a personal connection with?’ He glanced at me, placed his hand briefly on mine. ‘Either that or it’s plain old maternal instinct at work. Have you considered that? The lives we influence the most are those of our children – I can tell you that for a fact.’

We lapsed into silence. I didn’t know if he was thinking of his sons or of any children we might have together in the future, but I had no wish to alter the atmosphere by repeating my overwrought doubts of last time, by demanding promises of fulfilment and the fulfilment of those promises. I never would again, I vowed. I would not even allow myself to consider the nearest of futures, half an hour from now, when Arthur would drop me somewhere on the outskirts of our neighbourhood because it was far too risky to take me to my door.

I’d think only of the here and now.

‘When did you last go on holiday?’ he said.

I had to think hard to place the answer. ‘Last year – no, the one before. A whole group of us went to Spain on this cheap deal.’

‘Well, as soon as this is over, I’ll take you away.’

I didn’t know if he meant when my father died or when he left Sylvie, but my response to the two eventualities, one so dreaded, one so desired, held an element in common: a longing for the uncertainty to end. A sense that to wait any longer might break me.

‘Where will you take me?’ I asked him, turning my head so my cheek brushed the headrest.

‘I have the perfect place in mind. It’s a little island off the west coast of France. It’s very relaxed, very low-key, and the weather is great. We’ll go for two weeks, hole up in a place on the beach.’

This couldn’t happen this summer, I knew, for he was due to go to Sussex for ten days in August; work commitments would not permit a further two days, much less weeks. And I would never allow myself to leave Dad unvisited for so long. But at that moment, as the car moved through the City towards the river, I wanted to believe it was true.

‘What’s it called, this island of yours?’ I asked.

‘Ré. I’ve been there a few times, when the boys were younger.’

I felt my eyes close as he continued to describe his island hideaway. It didn’t matter whether we would actually go there or not because this was a bedtime story, a fantasy, pleasurable and lulling and bespoke. The sand dunes and salt pans, the old stone cottages and terracotta roofs, the hollyhocks that grew taller than your head: they were all just for me.

Chapter 11

Tabby

Even before she’d led Grégoire up the stairs of the house on rue du Rempart, which she was looking after so reliably that Moira had confirmed the job was hers for the rest of the summer if she wanted it, Tabby knew this would become a regular arrangement too – if
he
wanted it. Worse than that, she knew it would become the highlight of her week, as if in spite of all higher ambition nothing but human intimacy was in the end worth looking forward to. (What would Steve say to that?)

Even as they were kissing, undressing, groaning, giggling, she was rendering obsolete her own justifications, creating new ones in their place. This is a link to living, she was telling herself. Without it I might disintegrate and die, and who would notice, who would care? Doing this, at least
I
care.

And Grégoire cared too, didn’t he? While he was inside her, he cared; maybe for a few minutes afterwards, too.

The logistics of the thing had taxed her somewhat. She was, after all, supposed to be working and it was not the kind of work you could take home with you and catch up on later. She’d calculated that if she brought from the stocks at home a bedsheet of her own, she could still strip the beds and get the used linen in the machine at the start of her shift in the usual way; if she attacked the kitchen and bathrooms at top speed, completing them before he arrived, she could earn herself a longer-than-usual break; if she left for afterwards only the mopping of the tiles and the remaking of the beds; if she limited her time with him to an hour or so… then she could fit it in.