The Disappearance of Emily Marr (43 page)

‘But she didn’t
have
to take the boys with her. They were adults, old enough to stay on their own.’

‘Which shows how little
you
know about parenting teenage boys,’ Nina sneered.

Tabby was puzzled. ‘One was already eighteen, wasn’t he? Couldn’t he have been left in charge? And even if the younger one was seventeen, I remember going on holiday with friends on our own when I was that age.’ It had been a highlight, as she recalled, providing as it did a week’s respite from Steve.

But Nina neither knew nor cared about Tabby’s adolescent troubles. She glared at her, a full-beam bearing-down that made her previous surveillance seem benign, and it was all Tabby could do not to crumple under the savage heat of it. ‘I’m not sure it’s relevant what your parents chose to do with you – it’s certainly of no interest – but I imagine Sylvie wanted her family all in one place. She may not have been as clear-thinking as she should have been, but her instinct on that point must have been very strong. She didn’t want to separate from them at the very time she was fighting to hold them together. And leaving them behind still wouldn’t have saved
her
life, would it?
She
would still have gone off the road. Or do you not consider her life as significant in any way? Just some middle-aged woman with her best years behind her? So long as the kids lived, who cares? Well, I’ve got news for you, “Emmie’s” friend:
none of them lived
.’

Frightened now, Tabby battled to conceal her powerlessness. ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m sure all their lives were equally precious. I’m just saying Emmie can’t be held responsible for the loss of them. In the end, it
was
an accident.’

Nina chuckled with a cold pity for her dim-witted visitor. ‘She’s obviously worked her charms on you, hasn’t she? How did you meet her? I’m interested to know.’

‘Just by chance. Our paths crossed.’

‘That’s what happened to poor Sylvie. Are
you
married?’ Her tone was brittle, utterly unforgiving. Tabby knew she could achieve nothing here and yet she felt magnetised by Nina, unable to remove her gaze, much less her whole self.

‘No, I’m single.’ What this woman would say if she knew Tabby had casually acquired a married man for a holiday fling didn’t bear thinking about. Who was Noémie’s Nina? Might she too have a plan for her friend’s betrayer? Were her own problems actually just beginning?

‘Probably just as well, I’d say. Where’s she working now?’

Regretful of her previous outpouring of personal information about Emmie, Tabby checked herself. ‘For obvious reasons, she doesn’t want anyone to know that.’

Nina pushed her seat back from the table and Tabby took a few gulps of her own full mug in the hope of gaining an extension. It worked: Nina poured herself a second mugful from the teapot and returned. ‘Look, I’m not sure I really understand the purpose of this visit. I’ve met Emily’s supporters before, you know, and they always try to convince me she’s wonderful. This is slightly barmier than usual, but it’s nothing new.’

Tabby thought hard. It was clear now that if she wanted to make her request she would need to make it soon. ‘I just wanted… I just thought it was time someone stood up for her. Everything you wrote, and all the other reporters, as well, it wasn’t balanced. It didn’t take into account her side of the story. It incited unnecessary bad feeling.’

‘“Incited unnecessary bad feeling”? What is this, a one-woman press inquiry? I’m sorry we didn’t meet your exacting editorial standards, but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to live with the injustice. There’s always the Press Complaints Commission if you’re really offended – I can give you their email address?’ Nina sniggered unpleasantly. ‘It’s months ago now, anyway. That’s a very long time in news, I can tell you, and practically a century in internet terms.’

‘Not for her, for her it’s still current! The thing is, it ruined her life. She feels as if she can never come back.’

‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Nina said, and, indeed, was no longer doing so. ‘She got off lightly compared to Sylvie and the boys. And why would she want to “come back”? You mean to the Grove? She’d be insane to show her face around here, even now.’ There was a sudden catch in Nina’s voice. ‘Listen, as I say, this story has gone cold. The only people who still care are Sylvie’s family and friends, and we can do without some goody-two-shoes going around running a PR campaign for Emily Marr. I can save you a lot of bother by telling you it’s going to fall on deaf ears and you might as well cut your losses and give up.’

She was right. Tabby’s dreams of persuading her to write a more positive story about Emily were too childish to voice. Which left her to her original mission: appealing to Arthur. And the likelihood of Nina being willing to disclose his new whereabouts was virtually nil.

‘So Arthur doesn’t live on the Grove any more, either?’

‘No. He sold up after the inquest. I don’t blame him.’ But there was no warmth in Nina’s tone, no compassion, and Tabby understood she meant life would have been a misery for him if he’d remained among Sylvie’s friends, Sylvie’s mourners. And yet he was both, too, wasn’t he, whatever Nina chose to think? His life was a misery wherever he lived it. Tabby recalled Emmie’s torment at not being able to comfort him.

‘It must be awful for him,’ she said. ‘Whatever he did, he still lost his wife and sons. That doesn’t happen to every man who has an affair. It’s a terrible, terrible punishment.’

Nina sighed in grudging accord. ‘I agree with you on that point, yes. But he’ll be all right, in time, take my word for it. As you must be well aware from your new pal, there’s always someone willing to console men like him.’

That meant he had a new girlfriend, Tabby realised; perhaps she was even implying he would have a new family, a second chance. She thought of poor Emmie in the house in France. She’d thought she was his second chance, but now her desolation was such that she couldn’t be in the same country as him.

‘Where is he now?’ she asked Nina. ‘Is he still in London?’

‘
You
tell me. Why would I have any idea what their address is?’ Nina looked as if she’d just been struck: pain suffused her face, her eyes became wet and shiny. ‘Their’, she’d said, and Tabby guessed she’d been thinking of the Woodhall family as it used to be, a set of plurals, a couple and their children. How long did it take for such instincts to adjust? Did they ever?

Next time she looked, Nina had recovered herself. ‘Why did you do it?’ Tabby blurted, sensing that the meeting might soon be terminated. ‘Why did you write those articles, make her into some sort of public enemy? You could have done it privately. You’d still have got rid of her.’

Nina regarded her with new interest. At last, here was a question that challenged her. ‘I see how this is,’ she said slowly. ‘You think I should be sorry for doing it. You want to punish
me
, get me to punish myself by printing some sort of apology.’

This had been Tabby’s hope exactly, but now the idea had been explicitly stated she saw how inadequate it would be, even in the miraculous event of Nina agreeing to it. What good were a few words buried somewhere in a newspaper where no one would notice them? She thought of Emmie and the sheaves of cuttings spread out around her, the vitriolic headlines about her. What she needed was retraction on the same scale, and that could never be achieved. The clock could not be turned back.

‘Do you really not see,’ Nina said, ‘that I’ve had my punishment? All of us who knew and loved Sylvie and the boys, we’ve been punished for every single one of our bad deeds, ten times over. We’ve lost far more than Emily has. No loved one of hers died in the crash.’

No, but Arthur might as well have, Tabby thought, because Emmie mourned him like a death.

Nina stood, signalling that Tabby’s audience with her was at an end. ‘Look, if you want to know where Arthur is, all you have to do is ask her.’

‘You mean Emmie? She’s the last person who’d know,’ Tabby said.

Nina made a sharp barking sound that Tabby realised was laughter – the sound of mocking amusement. ‘Oh, Tabitha, what on earth are you doing getting involved in this? You’re clearly out of your depth and don’t know Emily half as well as you seem to think. Now, I’m sorry, but I really must catch up with my family and then get on with some work. I have a deadline in the morning.’

Tabby stood and followed her to the front door. ‘Thank you for your help. I know you’re very busy.’

‘Glad to be of service,’ Nina said mechanically, and even before Tabby had cleared the first step, she could hear the journalist’s heels stalking back down the hallway, no split-second hesitation, no trace of self-doubt.

There was nothing left but to try Arthur’s private practice in Harley Street. His biography remained on the Marylebone Eye Clinic website, though the last entry in the Staff News section was months ago and it was possible his departure was among the updates yet to be made. Or perhaps he remained a business party without seeing any patients? She decided she would learn by Emmie’s mistakes and bypass the phone in favour of an investigation in person.

It was almost six o’clock, however, and the clinic line offered only recorded information about consulting hours and the suggestion she contact the hospital by email. She realised she would have to wait till morning, no bad thing given how she felt after the encounter with Nina: not so much demoralised as war-torn. It was a surprise, when she next looked at her reflection, not to see blood. Searching online for a local hotel, her eye was caught at once by a name she recognised: the Inn on the Hill near the train station. Walking there, it was hard not to think of Emmie in her glamorous earlier guise, the erotic wiggle in her step as she made her way to those longed-for assignations with Arthur, dressed in the vintage skirts and blouses he liked so much, the high heels and candy-pink lipstick. What was it Emmie described herself as? A confection, that was it: sweet, mouth-watering, edible.

It was a Tuesday, the place was near-empty, and so she was able to negotiate a cheap rate. Checking in, she wondered if it was the same member of staff who had checked Emmie and Arthur in and out, trained to treat their separate arrivals and exits as nothing untoward. On the wall was a framed feature from one of the glossy magazines: ‘Boltholes for Bad Girls’, a guide to the best hotels for dirty weekends. The Inn on the Hill had made it on to the map thanks to Emmie, of course: ‘No longer as clandestine a choice as it once was, having been revealed as the favoured hideaway of Emily Marr and her married lover Arthur Woodhall. Best room: a little bird tells us Marr and Woodhall favoured “Marrakech”, with its huge wrought-iron bed and copper
en suite
fittings.’ For once, a piece of reporting that was accurate, thought Tabby.

She was becoming aware of an underlying thrill in the retracing of her famous friend’s steps, in verifying the knowledge that the low-key, defensive woman who barely allowed herself to make eye contact with other people had so recently been a notorious
femme fatale
, albeit just for a few weeks. She was gaining a sense of what it might be like to be one of Emmie’s ‘fans’, the ones whose admiration she grew to fear as much as she did the loathing of her detractors. Perhaps it was less problematic to consider herself, instead, a pilgrim.

Either way, it was a relief to be handed the key not for Marrakech but for Stockholm, a compact, pale single at the back of the building.

She was in Harley Street for 9 a.m. It was a smaller clinic than she’d expected, with no open-door access to reception, but she benefited from the fact that a member of staff was just arriving and held the door for her. The receptionist was on the phone, evidently consoling a caller over some misunderstanding to do with eye drops, and Tabby kept a discreet distance from the desk. She took the opportunity to look about her. It was a beautiful property, its original architectural features stylishly restored, the floors polished and glossy. The few waiting patients Tabby could see sipped mineral water and read
Tatler
or
The Economist
. How different from the overcrowded scene at St Barnabas’ that Emmie had described. Tabby wondered what kind of a man it took to move between the two environments without being distracted by the injustice of it. (And then there was the West African charity: presumably, conditions there must make St Barnabas’ look like Harley Street.) Standing there, she had a sudden and acute sense of identification with Emmie; how could girls like the two of them have a chance at success in this world? Just because you had nothing, it didn’t mean you were worth nothing, deserved nothing. Perhaps the truth was that you deserved more?

The receptionist had finished her call and turned her attention to Tabby. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss…?’

‘Dewhurst.’ Tabby could see at once past the pleasant, capable exterior: this woman was used to handling VIP arrivals, she’d be vigilant to a fault, immune to persuasion – and was therefore best approached with honesty. ‘I don’t have an appointment, but I’ve just arrived from France and I’m trying to get hold of Arthur Woodhall. I thought he might still be at St Barnabas’, but apparently he left some time ago. I’m hoping he might still be working here?’

‘Are you a former patient of his?’

‘No. I’m a friend of a friend. I know that sounds a bit vague, but I do have a good reason to see him. I’m only in the UK for a few days and it’s quite important.’

The receptionist gave Tabby a look that said, ‘If your reason were good enough, you’d already know where to find him,’ but she continued to give every other impression of cooperation. ‘He is still working here, yes, but only a few days a month and today is not one of his days. He won’t be back down until next Monday now.’

‘Back down’: he’d left London, then. It was her first clue, scarcely useful in itself. ‘Are you his secretary?’

‘No, that’s Mrs Herne. Though she works mostly for Mr Ali now.’

‘Could I have a quick word with her?’