The Other Child (44 page)

‘I'm sorry,' she mumbled when she was done. She looked at the chalk-white face staring at her in the mirror with its messy hair, smeared make-up and trembling lips.

‘When did you last eat?' asked Dave.

She tried to remember. Everything from the last few days seemed so distant.

‘Breakfast with you,' she said. ‘At the harbour.'

‘One bite of a scone, if I remember rightly. Great.' He shook his head. ‘What's wrong, Leslie? Why are you sitting here in the middle of the night pouring whisky down your throat like there's no tomorrow? Where's your ex?'

‘Stephen moved out to a hotel. He left a letter.'

He looked at her observantly. ‘Did that throw you so much?'

‘Of course not!' She was aware that she had protested a little too much. Had she been upset about Stephen's silent departure? Had it brought to the surface the pain which had been gnawing away at her since he had cheated on her and cut the ground from under her feet? ‘I didn't even want him to come here, so how could his going throw me?'

The dizziness was abating. She walked unsteadily back to the kitchen and collapsed onto a chair, reaching for her tea. It smelt of vanilla and honey. Calming and familiar.

‘Why did your landlady throw you out?' she asked Dave, who had followed her back.

He sat opposite her again. ‘She thinks I've murdered two people. The fact that the police were waiting for me when I came home confirmed her suspicions. She didn't want to let me stay another minute under her roof. She didn't consider that if the police had anything against me they would hardly have let me go. I can sort of understand her.'

‘Why did they need you at the station?'

He waved the question away. ‘There were conflicting reports about where I was last Saturday night. I've cleared it up. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here now.'

He convinced her. Of course he was fine. The police did not let murderers just wander about – at least not if they had already taken them into custody.

He leant forward. He asked her again, ‘What's wrong, Leslie? What happened? You look exhausted. What's troubling you?'

He looked concerned, like someone she could confide in. A friend who was worried about her. For a moment Leslie was tempted to tell him everything – about the war, Brian Somerville, Fiona and Chad, and the fateful thing they had done. But then she decided against it. Her wish to protect Fiona was stronger than her need to tell someone.

So she only said, ‘I think I'm just caught up with my own life. I don't know what comes next. So much has happened.'

‘Do you want to keep the flat here? I suppose it belongs to you.'

‘I don't think I'll keep it. I've never felt comfortable here. This big cold house is always half empty … I think I'll sell it. And what I'll do with the money – no idea. Maybe I'll buy a little flat of my own in London. Make a little nest, just for myself. Perhaps then I'll have the feeling I have a home. A harbour to retreat to.'

‘You don't have one?'

‘Where would I? I'm almost forty. My marriage broke down. My last living relative is dead. I'm successful enough at work, but that's hardly keeping me warm and cosy.'

‘A little flat of your own,' he repeated. ‘That sounds … lonely. Nothing about a husband, children, a big dog – whatever, something warm and cosy.'

She laughed, but it sounded forced and – as she noticed with alarm – rather desperate. ‘No, it doesn't. But do you think I can just click my fingers and the man who suits me, who will marry me and with whom I'll have three wonderful children and go for walks at the weekend with our big dog out into the country will appear? You don't find men like that lying around. I don't, anyway. Actually … I'm in the same bloody situation as Gwen. Alone and desperate.'

‘But you aren't Gwen. You are successful and active, you have drive. Unlike Gwen you know how things work. There's only one thing you have in common with her: you both think about the past too much. And you don't realise how much that is holding you back.'

‘I don't think I—'

He interrupted her. ‘Look at Gwen. She sits there on her farm, clinging to a bygone era. An era when a woman did not train for a career, when she lived with her parents until she became old and grey, unless a man came along who would take her to his home. A man she would idolise and obey. Why do you think she's had no luck? Because no man wants a woman like that today. Because men want a partner, an independent woman, someone capable of leading her own life.'

‘She hooked you.'

He was silent for a moment.

‘You know how that happened,' he said finally.

‘It won't work, Dave.'

‘I know,' he said quietly.

She leant forward. I don't think about the past too much, Dave.'

‘You do, Leslie. Just differently to Gwen. You let the past rule your present. You brood about who your father was. Inside, you are still struggling with your mother, wanting to be fair to her. And you still have a quarrel with your grandmother. You are torn between the feeling that you should be grateful to her, and a rage you are more and more aware that you feel about your youth with her. You told your husband to go to hell after he cheated on you, but you are constantly thinking about him, analysing him, analysing yourself, asking yourself how it could have come to this. You aren't free, Leslie. Free for a new life.'

She could feel tears welling up again, and she fought hard to stop them.

‘So how should I be? I can't act as if I don't have the past I have!'

‘But you can just let it be. You can't change it, so accept it. Accept yourself and your feelings. You'll never know who your father is. You'll have to live with the fact that your mother flipped between being an angel and being neglectful. You can be grateful to your grandmother for her support and be mad with her for being such a hard old lady who did not make the effort to see into the soul of the girl who was suddenly in her care. And, for God's sake, just forget Stephen! He cheated on you. Do you need a man like him? And do you think that one fling would have made you throw him out if everything else really was hunky-dory between you? A strong relationship would survive something like that. But in other relationships a one-night stand is just the final straw. I expect that was the case for the two of you.'

She smiled, tiredly, her eyes blurry. ‘And you're an expert on relationships, are you? A life coach?'

He stayed serious. ‘I'm a total loser, in every way. In relationships as much as the rest of life. But someone who can't get their own life in order can still have a clear understanding of other people's lives. The two don't always go together.'

She drank her tea in little sips. The warmth did her good, and the honey calmed her stomach. She thought how good it was that Dave had appeared in the middle of the night. In the frame of mind she had been in, she might have drunk herself senseless. She was thankful not to have to be alone. It was the right moment, she thought, gradually feeling more aware, at peace and ready. She lifted her head and met his gaze.

She did not evade either what she saw in his gaze or Dave himself when he got up and came round the table. He took both her hands and slowly pulled her to her feet. She let him enfold her in his arms, which were tender and consoling. It was what she needed at that moment. She wanted to lean on him and be protected, just for the night. She wanted to feel another person's heartbeat. She wanted to forget Fiona and everything she had read about her.

His lips brushed her forehead. She raised her head and her mouth met his. She kissed him with a mixture of desperation and anger, and he responded gently and softly. She could not be doing this. It was out of order, definitely wrong, maybe fatal. He was engaged to another woman, and a suspect in a murder case. But she had not let herself fall for so long. And she liked him. He was so different to Stephen. He was a man whom her grandmother would never have accepted for her. He seemed opaque and strange to her on the one hand, perhaps unpredictable. He was so different to all the men she had ever known. But on the other hand, as contradictory as this felt to her, she could understand him perfectly. He was a gifted student, an idealist who wanted to change the world, someone who had wasted his life, whose entire worldly possessions fitted inside a single suitcase. Suddenly he seemed to her to be the exact opposite of Stephen. Stephen had finished his studies, become a doctor, earned good money and had a safe job; he was respected and looked like the perfect partner, and then he went and discharged all the years of repressed frustration with a ridiculous affair. Now she understood why it would never have worked with him. He was too unassuming for her. Too conservative. Too predictable even when he did the unimaginable and cheated on her. In that too he was a square, who lost his bottle after a single night and had to confess to it, because he could not live with his shocking deed, or at least not with the fact that he had not been caught.

He was just a phase in her life. Nothing more.

Dave's hands slid under her jumper and she closed her eyes as his fingers cupped her breasts.

‘We shouldn't do this,' she murmured, simultaneously asking herself if she really meant that, or whether she was trying to appease her conscience by at least showing a few moments' resistance.

‘Why not?' asked Dave.

It would be so easy, and she felt such a longing to give in to her desire for warmth, protection and security, to escape into the physical union with a man and forget everything which weighed on her mind.

To lean on someone. She needed that much more than sex. She needed to find a home, as she had for years, perhaps for her whole life.

It was hardly likely she would find that home by having sex on the kitchen floor or elsewhere, even if the man without a doubt exerted a strong sexual fascination on her. She was in a moment of physical weakness, plagued by hunger and feelings of sickness, and in an unstable mental state because she had found out things about Fiona which had shaken her to the core.

The feeling that her body was being taken over by lust changed. Reason regained the upper hand.

She tried to take a step back, but was immediately up against the wall. ‘I can't,' she said.

‘Why not?' he said again. His tongue touched her lips. She liked the way he kissed, she liked the sensation of his hands on her body. But she was afraid. Afraid that the emptiness afterwards would be greater than before.

She turned her face to the side.

‘I really don't want to, Dave,' she said with sudden vehemence.

He stepped back and raised both hands. ‘I'm sorry!'

‘It's all right. Fine.'

He was annoyed. ‘Leslie, I thought you …'

‘I what?'

‘That
we,'
he corrected himself, ‘wanted the same thing a minute ago.'

‘Yes. A minute ago: But now … I can't.'

He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘What's the problem, Leslie? Or – who is the problem? Gwen?'

‘Yes. Gwen too. But also the fact that I feel very fragile right now. I don't want to sleep with someone I barely know, because I'm very fragile.'

He looked at her intently, and she saw in his eyes that he understood. ‘Sometime you'll have to come out of your shell. You're so afraid that you'll be hurt that you don't dare to live. That's … after a certain point that's a downward spiral, Leslie. Get out before you no longer have the strength to.'

‘Don't worry. I've got my life under control.'

He did not reply, and that annoyed her. She did not think he had the right to analyse her and her life like that – not from where he was standing, suspected by the police, thrown out by his landlady, no doubt with nothing in his bank account, and a worthless engagement … How dare he tell her about her life?

‘When men don't get what they want,' she said aggressively, ‘then they often say a lot of things which would be better left unsaid. Maybe you should find another way to compensate for not getting any.'

He smiled, not scornfully, but with resignation. ‘Believe me, I can live with
not getting any
, as you call it. What I said was not to let off steam. I just wanted to explain how I see you and your situation. But you're right, maybe I overstepped the mark.'

‘That's how it felt to me,' she replied.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

They stood there, with a sudden distance between them. Everything had been said. Nothing had happened.

Leslie felt tired and lonely. ‘I'm going to bed,' she said. ‘You can sleep in the guest room. Stephen doesn't need it now.'

‘Thanks. And of course I'll look for somewhere else to stay tomorrow morning.'

‘Take your time.'

She watched him leave the kitchen.

She thought she should be feeling relief at having done the right thing. Instead she felt dejected and unsure. She sat down and, taking a packet of cigarettes, she lit one.

She had reacted wrongly again. She had raised a wall high around herself, shutting herself off even more. Why had she not just done what she felt like doing? Without worrying about what would come afterwards. Was she really scarcely capable of living?

She sat enveloped in her thoughts and the rings of smoke which spread out in the brightly lit kitchen and filled the room.

She would find it hard to sleep this night.

2

Although Valerie had gone to bed late, she got up early. No sooner was she up and out of the bathroom than her mobile rang. With a towel wrapped around her body, she ran over to her bedroom, where her mobile was plugged in to charge.

‘Yes?'

It was Sergeant Reek, who always seemed to start work before seven. ‘Am I calling too early?' he asked hesitantly.

‘I'm just having breakfast,' lied Valerie. ‘What's up?'