The Third Wife (26 page)

Luke found himself in a street of terraced houses, empty apart from a woman pushing a pram, and two teenage girls heading in the opposite direction. He stood at the junction, looking all around him. It was the summer holidays. There were children as far as the eye could see. But none of them was Otis.

He kept to the High Street. He didn’t think Otis would take a side turning; this wasn’t his immediate locale, not an area he would be familiar with. He would be more likely to stick to the main roads.

Luke turned right figuring that Otis would be unlikely to cross a busy junction in a hurry. He called Cat to tell her that he couldn’t find him, to tell her to phone him on his mobile, but Cat said Otis had left his phone in the restaurant, that she had it with her. Then he told her to log on to Facebook and put a message on Otis’s wall asking his friends to look out for him. And then to send a text to everyone in his address book. ‘Shall I call Caroline?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Luke said, ‘let’s wait a while. He’s bound to head for a friend, or for home. Let’s see what happens when the messages go out. Let’s not freak her out just yet.’

Luke walked for over two miles during the course of the next forty-five minutes. He walked until the soles of his feet had started to chafe against the insoles of his deck shoes because he was wearing no socks. He walked until he was lost and had to call Cat again to find out how to get back to Caroline’s. When he finally got there he was sweating so much that he had dark ovals under the arms of his shirt.

‘Well?’ he said as Cat opened the door to him. ‘Anything?’

Cat shook her head and started to cry.

‘Come on,’ said Luke, guiding her into the front room by her elbow and lowering her into the sofa, ‘come on. Don’t cry. It’s OK. He’s twelve years old; he’s not a baby. He’ll be fine.’

‘Yes, but he was really upset. What if he makes a bad decision? Or what if he does something stupid?’

‘He won’t do anything stupid. He’s a bright boy. He’s just keeping his head down until the storm blows over.’

‘I think we should call Caroline now,’ she said. ‘It’s been an hour. Oh God, I feel sick.’ She made the call and then switched off her phone.

They both turned at the sound of Beau and Pearl running down the stairs together. ‘We’ve been trying to hack into his Facebook page but we can’t,’ said Pearl.

‘We’ve tried about a hundred different passwords,’ breathed Beau.

‘Loads of people have replied to your post on his wall though,’ said Pearl, ‘everyone’s really worried about him.’

‘But nobody knows where he is.’

‘Although a girl in his class called Hannah said she reckons she saw him in Swanage about an hour ago.’

‘Which is completely stupid, because he was in Nando’s with us an hour ago.’

‘And I looked up Swanage,’ said Pearl, ‘and it’s about three hours on the train.’

‘Good work,’ said Cat, squeezing the back of Beau’s leg. ‘Keep at it. Let me know the minute someone says something helpful.’

They both nodded and ran back up the stairs to the study.

‘Dad!’ said Cat. ‘I haven’t told Dad.’

‘I’ll call him,’ said Luke.

Cat nodded.

‘Dad,’ said Luke, when his father answered his phone. ‘It’s me. Listen, Cat and I took the kids out for tea. We got into a bit of a row with Otis and he stormed off. I tried to follow but I lost him. He’s been gone for over an hour. And he didn’t take his phone with him.’

There was a dead silence on the line.

‘Dad?’

‘Sorry. I mean. Shit. Does Caroline know?’

‘Yes, she’s on her way home right now.’

‘Jesus. What were you arguing about?’

‘Well, it wasn’t an argument exactly.’

‘Well, what was it then, exactly?’

Luke paused. ‘Where are you? Can you come over?’

Now Adrian paused. ‘I was just leaving the office.’ He sounded strangely reticent.

‘Then get over here.’

‘Yes,’ a beat too slow, ‘yes. Sure. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.’

‘Yeah,’ said Luke sourly, ‘if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘It’s not that, Luke. It’s … it’s that Jane woman. I’ve found her. I’m supposed to be meeting her in an hour. She’s going to tell me what she knows about Maya.’

‘Ah,’ said Luke. ‘Can you reschedule?’

‘No. I haven’t got her number. She hasn’t got mine.’

‘Ah,’ said Luke again. ‘Well, I’m here. Cat’s here. Caroline’s on her way. But make sure you’ve got a good signal. OK? If I call you and you don’t answer I’ll break both your arms. Seriously.’

‘Of course,’ said Adrian urgently, ‘bloody hell,
of course
. If there’s no signal I’ll make sure we go somewhere where there is a signal. OK? Call me constantly.’

Luke was about to say goodbye and then he stopped and said, ‘Dad, do you have any idea where Otis might be? I mean, he’s your son. Does anything occur to you?’

He could hear the almost silent exhalation of disappointment on the other end of the line. ‘No,’ said Adrian, ‘no. I truly do not have a clue.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Luke, ‘I didn’t really think you would.’

Another holiday, another carefully chosen cottage in one of England’s picture-perfect corners. It felt more like summer than spring. The temperature had been in the mid-twenties for days; the tender spring grass was already frazzled and brown; Maya had a tan mark under her wedding band.

The drive up to Suffolk had been a tonic; the sight of London fading away through the windows of a hire car had brought about a sense of release. The thought of not being in that flat, of not going through the motions, of breaking the weird patterns of the past few weeks since the drunken pronouncement of her night out with Sara. She hadn’t thought too hard about the prospect of what lay ahead, about seeing Luke and being watched and being judged, about the as yet uncommitted faux pas that would be reported back to her in cruel, exacting detail upon her return to London. For now she was just glad to be getting away.

She sat now, reading, upon the grass outside the French windows of her and Adrian’s ground-floor bedroom. She was wearing a black halter-neck bikini top and black shorts. In the distance she could hear the smaller children dashing around with the dogs, and behind her she could hear the sound of people arriving, the crunch of gravel, the banging of car doors. She put her book down by her side, folded open against its spine, and sat up. She recognised the sound of Luke’s voice. She hadn’t heard his voice for a long time. It filled her with something mad and stupefying. She heard Susie’s voice, too, loud and enthused. Then she heard another voice. A shrill voice. A silly, carefree voice. She recognised it and immediately stood up, slid her feet into warm flip-flops, pulled on a T-shirt and headed around the walls of the rambling house to the front door. Adrian and Susie greeted each other warmly and then turned to smile at Luke and his companion:
Mum and Dad
. It always surprised Maya how right her husband looked when he stood side by side with one of his ex-wives, how each woman complemented him in some unique and distinctive way. With Susie it was the scruffiness, the slightly shabby clothes, the outgrown hair and large feet and hands. With Caroline it was the height, the substance, the imposing presence. And with her? Well, they both had two arms and two legs. But that was about as far as it went.

‘Hello!’ She swallowed her discomfort and walked towards Luke. Then she turned to his companion, to the unannounced and unexpected guest. ‘Hello, Charlotte,’ she said, leaning in to kiss each shiny, puppy-fatted cheek. ‘We weren’t expecting you! How lovely!’

She tried not to look at Luke but couldn’t help a brief sideways glance, just enough to theorise that maybe Charlotte being here wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind himself. According to the family grapevine Luke and Charlotte had split up last month.
Again
. Sources reported that Charlotte had taken it very badly. Sources also reported that this was it, over for good. No more off and on. Luke was adamant and his mind was set.

‘No!’ said Charlotte, echoing Maya’s forced jollity. ‘It was all a bit last minute! I literally walked into the pub last night and there was Luke, completely out of the blue, and literally a few hours later he’d invited me up to Suffolk! I mean, literally!’

Susie, Adrian and Maya all nodded at Charlotte and made noises of muted wonder.

‘Well,’ said Adrian, ‘that’s great. Really lovely to have you here, Charlotte. Really.’

‘I promise I’ll pull my weight. I’ll wash up and cook and all that business. I’m not just here for a free holiday!’

‘No!’ said Adrian. ‘No. Of course you’re not. And even if you were, nobody would particularly care. We’re pretty easy-going.’

‘Yes, I suppose you need to be to have these kinds of holidays. Especially in your circumstances. I mean’ – her face fell – ‘you know, this big extended family. Hard enough to make it work when you’re all apart, let alone when you’re all squeezed into a house together.’ Her face fell again. ‘I think I’ll stop talking now,’ she said.

Adrian and Susie laughed and said, ‘Nonono, don’t be silly, of course, you’re right.’ Maya managed a smile. Charlotte was just adorable. Look at her, in her little pleated shorts with rosebud sprigs, her tight white Aertex polo shirt, shiny white Converse, vanilla-cream hair pinned back on each side with kirby grips. Just adorable. But what was she doing here? Where was she going to sleep? Luke was supposed to be sharing a room with Otis and Beau. The only spare bed in the house was in an anteroom, just off her own bedroom. A camp bed. Charlotte couldn’t sleep in there. It was too weird. And what about Luke? Was he expecting to share a bed with her? Were they having sex again? Why hadn’t he phoned ahead to say he was bringing her?
What was she doing here?

‘Where are you going to sleep?’ she asked, more forcefully than she’d intended.

‘Oh, I’ll sleep anywhere! A sofa. The bath. Anywhere that I don’t get in the way.’

‘I’m sure we can rejig things,’ said Susie. ‘Don’t you worry. It’s just lovely having you here.’

Susie looked at Adrian and Maya as though checking that they shared her sentiment. They both smiled back tightly and nodded.

It was another two hours before Maya was able to corner Luke by himself. She found him moving a mattress from one room to another on the first floor. Charlotte was in the garden playing croquet with Pearl. She took the other end of the mattress and said, ‘Where is this going?’

‘The girls’ room,’ he said, pointing his head in the direction of a door on the other side of the landing. ‘Beau’s going to sleep with Caroline, so we have a spare mattress.’

‘Didn’t he mind?’ Beau usually loved sharing a room with both his big brothers.

‘You know Beau. World’s most obliging child.’

‘So you and Charlotte, you’re not …?’

A twitch of Luke’s left shoulder told her all she needed to know.

‘Oh, Luke.’ She sounded like his mother and she didn’t care.

‘Don’t,’ he said, pushing the bedroom door open with his back.

They positioned the mattress on the floor next to Cat’s bed and let it drop. Then they regarded each other across the bed-sized space between them. ‘I was already drunk when she got to the pub. She was being all sweet and lovely. I wasn’t thinking straight. Seriously, I was so drunk. She had to take me home. Back to hers. It’s all kind of a blur from there …’

‘Fine,’ said Maya, feeling that she was in no position to cast judgements on other people’s poor decision-making skills, ‘but why the hell did you have to invite her?’

‘I
didn’t
,’ he hissed. ‘She invited herself. This morning. She asked me what I was doing today and I was too messed up to think of a lie. Well, actually, I didn’t think I’d need one, I thought me going away
with my family
might be enough of a deterrent for her.’

‘She’s quite something,’ said Maya drily.

‘Hm.’ Luke puffed up the pillow and tidied the bedclothes.

He straightened up and put his hands into his pockets. His hair had grown longer since she’d last seen him, and flopped over his left eye. He was wearing his non-prescription glasses, a grey T-shirt and pale blue seersucker shorts. There he was, so young and half formed. She looked for the memory of their kiss in his eyes and found it there. She flushed and looked away.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you had your hair cut?’

She put her hand to it as she did instinctively every time someone mentioned it.

‘I really like it.’

Maya laughed gruffly. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘You don’t think it makes me look like the ugly one in a boy band?’

He laughed as though she’d cracked a joke. ‘Absolutely not! It makes you look really feminine. And delicate.’

She smiled at him gratefully. She believed him. Which meant that someone else had seen the photo of her hair and someone else had made the spiteful observation. ‘I’m growing it, anyway,’ she said. ‘It was a mad moment. Not sure what I was thinking.’

‘You have to do those things sometimes. You have to give in to them. Surrender to whim. Otherwise how would you know what suited you?’

He was talking about fashion. He was talking about hair. But he could just as easily be talking about her life. She stared at him for a moment, taking in the angles and the lines of him, taking in the unsettling eyes, the just-so hair, the thin legs and arms, the exquisite loveliness of him. Would he be just another bad haircut? Because that’s exactly what Adrian had been. She could see that now. She remembered the moments of prevarication in the early days of their romance. The mental pros and cons lists she’d run through in the dark of night. All the stuff she’d finally convinced herself wouldn’t be a problem because she was
surrendering to whim
.

He has too much baggage.

He’s too old for me.

His family will never really forgive me.

Other women have already had the best of him; I will get the dregs.

He doesn’t really seem to see me when he looks at me.

I’m not sure I really love him
.

She’d looked at all these things and decided that they didn’t matter. What mattered was this: she’d been single for two years. She wanted to change her life. She’d just left teacher training college and had to find a first job and she wanted some security while she did that. Adrian was lovely. Adrian was kind. Adrian made her feel safe and protected. She knew he was lying when he said the children would be fine. She knew he was lying when he said everyone would understand. But she’d been prepared to take that risk. She’d had a master plan. She would be not only the sweetest, least-threatening person she possibly could be, she would actually make things better for everyone. She would find the weaknesses in Adrian’s family life and fix them. Adrian’s family would be grateful to her! They would wonder how they had ever managed without her!