The Lost Swimmer (33 page)

In desperation, I caught a taxi back to the first arrondissement to the original Bibliothèque Nationale. Inside, I paced around the circular, colonnaded edge of its stately room. And suddenly, there she was: Priscilla, wearing a chic, sleeveless pale-lemon dress, sitting in the centre at one of the long tables, a stack of ancient manuscripts piled high in front of her.

Standing against the rows of bookshelves a distance away, I waited. The normality of what she was doing disgusted me. Soft light glowed a pearly blue through the stained-glass dome as Priscilla tapped notes into her tablet. Every so often she would photograph a page with her phone. I noticed every detail. Had Stephen wound his arms around her this morning? She looked light and summery. Bile rose and I forced myself to stand still and not run and rip her limb from limb. She and Stephen were here, living a life together.

Finally she stood. I held my breath. She boxed up the papers and carried them to a nearby returns shelf, then retrieved her handbag, stowed her tablet into it and sauntered out of the building. I was quick to follow, a safe distance behind, my heart pounding. Soon I would be with Stephen.

Priscilla moved quickly on the street, and descended into the Metro. On the hot, howling platform I waited until she was on board and then leaped into the back of the carriage, from where I had a good view. At Gare Saint-Lazare she hopped off the train and I followed like a bloodhound.

She went into the country ticket office and bought a fare. I hovered in the queue, trying to ascertain which train she'd booked, but she was too far away for me to hear. She and Stephen must be staying out of Paris. I found this odd – but, then, Stephen was behaving so strangely it was fitting.

As soon as she left I pushed my way to the front. Speaking French, I asked the man who'd sold Priscilla her ticket where she was heading. I finished with an embarrassed shrug. To my eternal gratitude he obliged. ‘Vernon,' he grinned, clearly thinking we were lovers who had just had a fight.

I jumped onto the train as it was pulling out. The landscape swept past and half an hour later I alighted in a tiny, picturesque village in Normandy. In the distance Priscilla walked purposefully towards a bus that heralded Giverny as its destination. My breath caught in my lungs. Monet's garden in Giverny was a favourite haunt of Stephen's whenever we were in France. She was going to meet him.

Another bus rolled up behind the first, also headed to Giverny. Tourists thronged and I mingled with them, taking the second bus.

I tried to think what to say to Stephen, but my mind went blank. In what felt like seconds we pulled in beside a field of scarlet poppies bobbing and shimmering in the breeze. I let Priscilla get ahead along the tiny cobbled streets of the town, where roses and hollyhocks soared against mellow walls. At the ancient stone building that housed the ticket office, the queue was long to enter the artist's garden. I waited a distance behind Priscilla, my legs jittering, refusing to keep still. I wanted to see Stephen, to demand an explanation. But most of all I wanted him in my arms to feel his warmth and strength, to go back to what we'd had; wipe the slate clean. Start again. A second chance.

Once inside, I lost sight of Priscilla. I walked past the dusty pink walls and green shutters of Monet's house, shrouded in roses, red geraniums in front, a scene that framed Stephen's smiling face on my study bookshelf at home.
Home.
The house that we may not have for much longer, the house that he'd gambled away. Quickening my pace, I raced past the arches of the Grande Allee, with its nasturtiums in gaudy splashes of red and orange overflowing onto the path.

A riot of scarlet roses scrambled up a fence as I strode down into an underpass that swept beneath the road. On the other side, the fecund lily pond, the scene of Monet's famous paintings, came into view. Stephen would be here, on the bench we always shared, gazing at the tiny wooden boat moored beneath a weeping willow. As a gardener, Stephen had felt it a spiritual journey to walk the gravel paths, immersed in the shimmering plants that morphed into an impressionist painting wherever the eye was drawn.

I looked for him among the spellbound throngs of visitors hustling quietly about. People of all nationalities lingered on the Japanese bridge gazing at the pale water lilies below, posing for photographs, but neither Stephen nor Priscilla was among them. I headed around the pond, past tourists ambling by cascades of pink roses that dipped into the water.

Every step took me closer to the wooden bench – Stephen's bench. But when I reached it, I stopped abruptly. The bench was empty.

One more time I went around the lily pond, pushing through the tortuously slow crowd of sweaty bodies, their rank perfume hanging sourly in the air. Rounding a bend I saw Priscilla standing at the path's edge gazing at a patch of water lilies. Her expression was glazed, her mind far away. She was alone.

I bit my lip so hard droplets of blood beaded as I strode towards her.

‘Rebecca!' She reeled back as she focused on me, a look of disbelief changing to acknowledgement that I was actually here. My disguise hadn't fooled her.

I walked up close. ‘Where's Stephen?' I asked forcefully.

She blinked, confused. ‘I'm so sorry, Rebecca, to hear what happened. I didn't realise you were in France. Are you here to see Melinda?'

Now it was my turn to be confused. ‘I've come for Stephen.'

‘You don't think he's with me, surely?' she said, her voice shaking.

‘The game's up, Priscilla.'

She took my hands and I flung her off. ‘Whatever he's done isn't enough to drive me away,' I said. ‘I know you picked him up on the Amalfi coast and brought him here. I've come to take him home.'

Tears welled in Priscilla's eyes, unnerving me.

‘I'm in Paris doing research for my book. The only person from work I've seen is Melinda,' she said gently as if I were a wounded animal that needed calming. ‘I called to her but she slipped away. On purpose, I'd say. I'm sure she saw me.'

‘Melinda's in America,' I snapped. ‘I need to see Stephen now. The kids are desperate. Let us know he's all right. Please.'

Priscilla's expression was full of alarm and pity but she did not speak.

‘Oh God, he
is
here, isn't he?' My body began to tremble uncontrollably.

‘Rebecca.' Priscilla moved to a bench and sat down heavily, indicating for me to join her. ‘Rebecca,' she sighed, ‘you must know that Stephen loved you more than anyone in the world.' She fixed me with startled cornflower-blue eyes. I sat at the other end of the bench, as far away as possible.

‘Stephen and I did have an affair. It ended just before he went overseas with you. He was the one who chose to finish it.' Her voice was now no louder than a whisper. So, I'd been right all along, but the moment fell flat, hollow. There was no victory in having guessed the truth. I was so shocked I couldn't yet even feel anger – only cold, grey numbness and a rising nausea.

‘You were sleeping with my husband while you were monstering me?' was all I could say.

Priscilla leaned forward and I reeled back as if from an adder. ‘I miss him dreadfully,' she said. ‘Did he really lose all that money? If I'd only known I would have helped.'

Fury rose in me as she played her game.

‘Don't try to fool me, Priscilla. Take me to him.'

‘My darling, it must be a terrible shock.'

‘Where are you staying?'

She blinked. ‘In Paris.'

‘Take me there.'

Priscilla slumped back. ‘He's not with me.' Her blue eyes misted over again. ‘But perhaps you should come and see for yourself.'

‘You'll just ring ahead and tell him to disappear. I have a better idea.' I pulled a scrap of paper from my bag and scrawled down Ludovico's address. ‘Bring Stephen to me. Tell him I have to see him – to talk about the children at least. Seven o'clock. Be there or you'll regret it. You've been harbouring Stephen while the police think he's dead. You've wasted everyone's time and I'll contact them if you're not there sharp at seven.' I knew she wouldn't agree; I would wait for her at the station and follow her back.

Priscilla took the paper and reached out towards me but I yanked my arm away. ‘Seven o'clock,' I called as I strode away. ‘Or I'll phone the police.'

A bus was waiting in the car park, and I caught it back to Vernon. Priscilla's confession roared through my head, and I cursed myself for not asking how long their affair had gone on. Was it weeks, months or years? I tried to work out when it might have started, but I had no idea. A bitter liquid flooded my mouth. Priscilla had seemed alarmingly to be telling the truth about Stephen not being in Paris with her, but she couldn't be; it wasn't possible.

As I stood in the searing heat waiting for the train, another thought rushed into my mind: would Priscilla instead turn me into the police? If she had bribed Napolitano, I was now in a truly vulnerable position. Suddenly I realised I was stupid to have given her Ludovico's address. I glanced around: every man and woman looked like undercover police. I paced up and down the platform, unable to keep still.

When the train pulled into the station in a burst of boiling air I looked everywhere for Priscilla. Hordes of tourists pushed into carriages, but Priscilla was not among them. Had she rushed back to Stephen in a taxi? Why had I left Giverny when perhaps Stephen was on his way to meet her by the water lilies? I wasn't thinking clearly at all. Thoughts jumbled one on top of each other.

I retreated to a drink vending machine near the ticket office and clunked in coins for a bottle of water. I drank slowly, looking everywhere for Priscilla, imagining her in bed with Stephen. Now I'd heard her confession, the truth was too hard to deal with, a giant lump of betrayal that trapped my mind in a lead veil. Suddenly claustrophobic, I went back out into the explosive heat.

I'd made such a mess of things. Was it my fault that Stephen had run into her arms? How could he have lied to me? While I was in mediation with Priscilla he was slipping between sheets with her. Why did I even want him back?

But what if I never had the opportunity to talk to him again, to make him explain why he'd lied, why he'd done such terrible things? I tried to hang on to Priscilla's admission that Stephen had ended the affair. He must have had a vestige of conscience before he went running back to her when his world collapsed. But perhaps Priscilla was just tricking me and he had never ended it.

With every thought I was more desperate to speak to him.

I chided myself to hold firm. He was in Paris in some bolthole with Priscilla, and I would make him come to me. I would make him explain.

And then suddenly Priscilla came clipping out of the ticket office and onto the platform. She stood waiting patiently, her face flushed, her expression distracted.

When the next train arrived I held back until she was seated and then I stepped aboard the carriage behind. As soon as we left the station I moved and stood swaying in the space between carriages, where I had a good view. She sat gazing out at the scenery, eyes bloodshot with tears. I hoped that meant she was planning to deliver Stephen, but I doubted it. Why was she crying, then? She didn't look like a lover going back to her man.

At Gare Saint-Lazare I hopped off the train seconds after Priscilla and followed her through busy streets, almost losing her in the crowds outside the department stores Les Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, picking her up again as she crossed Boulevard Haussmann towards Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house. I studied her body, the way she walked, the flow of her blonde hair, imagining myself as Stephen, seeing through his eyes. I tried to visualise what I looked like to him, how he had lost interest in me. Or had he? Did he need us both? The virgin and the whore.

Priscilla turned down a small street and made her way into a plush hotel. I hovered in the foyer, as if waiting for a friend, and heard her ask for the key to room 212. A large tour group was arriving and people were milling about, and among them Priscilla was swallowed into the lift.

I sank into a deep leather lounge and waited until the reception staff were so busy checking in their new guests that no one noticed me slip into the elevator, where I pressed the button for the second floor.

Room 212 was at the end of a long corridor of red carpet so deep I left footprints. Anticipation rose as I walked closer. At the door I stopped, ran my fingers through my hair, neatening it, drew in my breath and rapped confidently. Silence. Moments ticked by. I wondered what conversation they might be having. The walls were soundproof, I couldn't hear anything. My heart beat fast; I was about to see Stephen. Finally, Priscilla opened up. I pushed her backwards and barged in as she squawked in alarm.

She was alone. I moved around the room seeking evidence of Stephen. I flung open the wardrobe, expecting to find new clothes he'd bought in Paris – but there was only Priscilla's high fashion. I hurtled into the bathroom – a single toothbrush, make-up, perfume. Nothing male.

‘Where is he?' I demanded hotly as I re-entered the main room, which was decked out luxuriously in thick velvets.

Priscilla stood by the neatly made bed, tears flooding her cheeks. ‘Darling, he's not here.' She hugged me, so tightly I couldn't breathe. ‘I really haven't seen Stephen. You must believe me. Tell me everything that happened.'

She drew away to look at me and I slapped her face, hard. In my shock I felt like I had released a valve that had been stuck tight. She flung a hand to her reddened cheek, eyes wide in surprise and pain. As I went to slap her again she grabbed me, twisting my wrist into a grind of nerves.

‘Listen. To. Me. Stephen drowned, Rebecca, didn't he? You're going to have to come to terms with it. We both are, God knows how. Either that or you murdered him, as the police think.'