The Third Wife (9 page)

‘But the little ones – I haven’t got the space …’

‘I’ve spoken to Caroline about it. She’s said you can move into Islington on your weekends with the kids. She’ll …’ She looked at him warily. ‘She’ll go and stay with that boy, what was his name?’

Adrian felt his chest tighten. Things had been manipulated behind the scenes, pulleys and levers subtly rearranging the stage set of his life. This visit wasn’t such a last-minute, sunny-morning affair after all.

‘What do you think I can do for him that you haven’t managed to do?’

‘A change of scenery, for start. And maybe a job?’

‘A job?’

‘Yes. At the firm. Just something basic.’

‘Oh God.’ Adrian ran the palms of his hands down his face. He thought of the way his son had looked at him in Caroline’s garden last time he’d seen him. The emptiness behind his eyes. And then he thought of toothless Jean sucking up her porridge in Mr Sandwich, saying,
We’re more like strangers than mum and daughter
. He suddenly felt very tired. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sure. Of course. But how are we going to do this?’

‘Email him,’ she said. ‘It’s the only sure way of knowing you’ll get through to him. I’ll help. We can do it now, if you like, here, together?’

Adrian smiled and saw again the nineteen-year-old Susie he’d once been enthralled by. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’m not in a hurry. Let’s do it now.’

Finding himself on the coast, his day already shot to pieces, Adrian borrowed Susie’s car (it was still technically his car and he was still insured to drive it) and set off to Southampton. He’d done some research earlier in the week, meaning to make some calls, but he’d been too busy at work. There was, it transpired, only one children’s care home in Southampton and it was called White Towers Castle. He put the postcode into his smartphone and set off with a roast-beef sandwich and a bottle of organic lemonade on the passenger seat, courtesy of Susie.

His expectations were low. In a world where the safeguarding of children overshadowed everything else, he assumed that nobody would be allowed to give him any information worth having. But still. It was Saturday. The sun was shining. He had nothing better to do, miserable, lonely bastard that he was.

The care home was a folly, an actual castle with crenellations and towers, all painted over with thick, custardy paint. The wooden doors were painted heavy brown gloss and CCTV cameras stood on brackets at various angles, watching Adrian suspiciously. A woman who introduced herself as Sian opened the door to him when he explained his situation. He followed her into a small room off the hallway with the word ‘OFFICE’ on the door and took a seat as directed in front of a small desk. Sian sat herself on the other side of the desk and said, ‘So. Tiffy.’

‘You remember her?’

‘Yes. I do remember her. I’ve been here since I was twenty-one. For my sins.’

‘Well, like I said, I don’t know Tiffy. But I have ended up with her phone. And I have met her mother.’

Sian raised her eyebrows. ‘Really,’ she said flatly. ‘That’s more than any of us here ever did.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrian. ‘She said. And, well, I have no idea what you are or aren’t allowed to do, but I was wondering if there was any way you could get in touch with Tiffy. Assuming you still have contact details for her. Let her know that I have her phone. See what she’d like to do about it.’

Sian was already pushing buttons on her computer before Adrian had even finished the sentence. ‘Any excuse to talk to one of my old ones,’ she said, smiling for the first time. ‘Let’s see, right, yes, we do have fairly new details for her. She got married,’ she said, mainly to herself, smiling again. ‘That’s nice. Right. OK. Let’s try this number and see how we get on.’

A moment later she looked at Adrian and nodded. ‘Oh hi, Tiffy. This is Sian. From White Towers. How are you, love? Yes, I’m good. I’m fine. We’re all fine. And I hear you got married? Wow, that’s great. That’s so great. Congratulations! Listen, strange one. I’ve got a guy here, called Adrian, he says he has your phone? That he met a woman and she left it at his flat. Any of this ringing any bells?’

The voice on the other end asked a question. Sian looked up at Adrian. ‘She wants to know how you know it’s hers?’ she asked of Adrian.

‘Her mum rang me. Well, texted. Her. Tiffy I mean. And I met her. Her mum.’

‘He says your mum called on it. Yes. Which Mum?’ she asked Adrian. ‘She has a birth mother and a foster mother.’

‘Jean,’ said Adrian. ‘No teeth.’

‘Jean,’ repeated Sian, ‘no teeth. Right. OK. Well, what would you like me to do, love? I can give you Adrian’s number? Let you sort it out with him? Or I can post the phone to you? Or maybe you’d like to come back and say hello to everyone, collect it yourself?’ She smiled, and then the smile fell. ‘No, of course. OK. Sure. Hold on. She wants to talk to you.’ Sian held the phone out to Adrian.

‘Hi,’ said a bright voice, ‘Adrian! Wow! This is strange. I mean, my phone. I don’t think it was actually my phone. I’m pretty sure it was a work phone. When I was working for an estate agency. I had to give it back to them after I left. And now I think about it, that was the number I gave my mum, so that she wouldn’t have a permanent way of contacting me. I knew I’d be leaving. Tell me though, what exactly did the woman look like, who left it in your flat?’

‘Tall, blonde, stylish, odd-coloured eyes.’

‘Right, no. I just thought maybe she was the woman who replaced me at the agency. But that woman was Asian.’

‘Maybe she replaced the Asian woman? It would explain there being no numbers at all on the phone, if she was new?’

‘Yes, but if it was still the agency phone, you’d have been getting lots of calls. It sounds like the phone was out of commission. Sounds like this Jane character must have nicked it.’

‘Or found it?’

‘Yeah. Maybe. Who knows? But listen, I wouldn’t mind getting it back, if it’s OK with you. Just in case my mum tried calling again. I guess.’ There was a short silence across the line. ‘How was she?’

‘She was—’

‘No, don’t answer that. I don’t really want to know. Enough to know that she’s alive. Anyway. Could you leave the phone? With Sian? She can post it back to me.’

‘Sure. Of course. But where do you live?’

‘Oh, yeah, south London, but honestly, let Sian post it. I’m crazy busy. It’ll be easier.’

‘Sure,’ said Adrian. ‘Yeah. And I’ll leave Sian my number. In case there are any problems. But listen, sorry, just before you go, what was the name of the agency you were working for? When you passed your phone over?’

‘Oh God,’ said Tiffy. ‘It was in Acton. It was something and Cross.
Baxter
and Cross. That’s right. On the High Street. But why do you want to know?’

‘I’m not sure. This woman, with your phone. It seemed like she was stalking me for a little while, me and my family. I’d like to find out who she is. Or at least have a starting point, you know.’

He felt curiously melancholy passing the phone across the desk to Sian a moment later. His last connection with Jane was now effectively snapped in half.

That was that. It was over. Whatever on earth ‘it’ had actually been. That sense of hope, that feeling that his journey wasn’t over, that there was another fork in the road. Now the wall was back, the road blocked. He was stuck once again in the moment of Maya’s death, reliving and reliving and reliving until the thoughts rubbed his psyche raw.

Luke moved in three weeks after Adrian’s trip to see Susie in Hove. It was June, the first really hot day of the year, and Luke stepped out of Susie’s car wearing tiny belted shorts, a fitted top and reflective sunglasses.

‘You look very, er, cool.’

‘I think
gay as fuck
is the expression you’re looking for,’ he said, pulling a holdall from the footwell.

‘No, no, I was thinking more of those chappies in the nineteen twenties, the ones with pipes and tennis shoes.’

‘It’s just fashion, Dad. Men these days are allowed to look cute.’

‘Well, then, mission accomplished. You look very cute.’

Luke threw him a facetious smile and opened up the boot. Susie strode towards Adrian in a billowing purple linen dress and embraced him. ‘Hello, darling. And thank you. Seriously. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.’

‘No problem,’ he muttered into her nest of hair.

Luke looked vaguely appalled as he always did when he stepped inside Adrian’s modest flat. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘every time I come here it reminds me that you’re not as big a dickhead as I think you are.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Luke dropped his holdall at his feet and sank down into Adrian’s sofa. He picked a cat hair off his shorts and let it drop to the floor. ‘Well, if it was me, I’d have kicked Caroline out of that bloody
mansion
and bought myself somewhere decent to live. So you can’t be all that bad.’

Susie sat in the armchair and Adrian looked from her to their son, slightly unsettled by their presence here on this humid June morning. He shook his head wonderingly at Luke’s comment and then clapped his hands together and said, ‘Tea, coffee, water, beer?’

A moment later Luke took a cold beer from Adrian’s outstretched hand and said, ‘So, how is this going to work out, exactly?’

Adrian sat on the arm of the sofa and said, ‘Well, we’ll start off with a nice quiet weekend. Dinner with Cat tonight. Going to watch Pearl in a competition in Derby tomorrow …’

‘Derby?’ Luke sneered.

‘Yes, Derby. Welcome to my world.’

Luke said, ‘Well, I don’t have to join your world to that extent, so I’ll pass, thank you.’

‘No,’ said Adrian firmly. ‘I’ve told Pearl you’re coming. So you’re coming.’

Luke shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

‘Then on Monday morning we’re off to work. I’ve organised for you to work in the archives. Just for a month. Then we’ll see.’

‘Mmmm,’ said Luke, ‘great. Old paper. Amazing.’

Adrian stared at his son blankly. His chattiest child, the one who’d never stopped moving, talking, doing, thinking. They’d had him monitored for ADD and the therapist had said, ‘No, he’s just happy.’ For more than three years Luke had been Adrian’s only child. The sunshiny, miraculous centre of his universe. Now he was a slightly fey, bitter-tongued young man who couldn’t make eye contact with his own father.

Susie left after an hour or so and Adrian decided that with a long, plan-free afternoon ahead of the pair of them, there was only one thing for it. So they went to the pub.

Adrian had often imagined visiting pubs with his sons once they’d grown into adults. Luke had been a burly, ruggerish little boy, and Adrian had pictured the pair of them ambling in together, two pints on the table, maybe a football match to pass comment on, a new job or girlfriend to chat about, a relaxed young man with his relaxed old dad, side by side, chips off the old block et cetera.

Instead it was like coming to the pub with a young Kenneth Williams. The interior of the pub that Adrian had chosen for their afternoon’s drinking was clearly not to Luke’s taste and he looked as though he thought he was in imminent danger of either physical attack or flea bites.

‘So, son …’ he said it on purpose and registered Luke’s involuntary shudder with a wry smile. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s not going to work like that,’ said Luke. ‘You’re not just going to sit there and say: “What’s up,” and suddenly I’m going to say: “Oh Daddy! I’m so glad you asked! Finally I can open up and lay my soul bare!”’

‘Fine. Well. Then how is it going to work?’

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘You tell me. This was your idea, after all.’

‘Well, actually it was your mum’s idea.’

‘Whatever. The two of you. But not me. I was perfectly happy as I was.’

‘That’s not the impression I was getting. From your mother.’

He shrugged and picked up his gin and tonic.

‘And for what it’s worth,’ Adrian continued, ‘I was perfectly happy as I was, too.’

‘Yeah. Right. You’ve been in a state of unbridled existential
bliss
since Maya died. We couldn’t help noticing.’

‘Nasty, Luke.’

‘Yeah, well, let’s not make out that I’m the only one with an attitude problem round here.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You. You used to be the best dad in the world. Before Maya died.’

Adrian felt something like a mule-kick to his solar plexus. The words were both soft, like words a toddler might have chosen, and hard as steel. Every bit of him ached as they sank in.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘God.’

‘Yeah,’ said Luke. ‘I know. And it’s not your fault. Obviously it’s not your fault. You didn’t kill her. But, I don’t know. It’s like the old you died with her.’

‘In what way? I mean. I thought …’

‘I know. You thought you were doing OK. I know you’ve got your, your
Board of Harmony
. That you never forget anything. But remembering things is not the same as
caring
about them.’

‘Jesus Christ.
Of course
I care! How can you suggest that I don’t? All I bloody do is care!’

Luke sighed and his cheeks twitched and hollowed as he considered his next point. ‘No. You don’t. If you cared you’d notice that Cat is stress-eating because she’s so unhappy. You’d notice that Pearl has no life and no friends and everyone thinks she’s weird. You’d notice that Otis is miserable and retreating into himself. You’d notice that I …’ He stopped. ‘Nothing.’ His jaw set hard and his cheeks twitched again.

‘How the hell am I supposed to know those things if nobody bloody well tells me?’ said Adrian. ‘I take Cat out for lunch every single week. And yes, she does eat a lot but she seems happy enough to me. I have Otis and Pearl to stay every week and they seem fine. I mean, yes, Pearl’s probably over-focused on sports, and Otis is a bit monosyllabic. I had
noticed
these things. But I hadn’t
worried
about them. Kids are kids. They go through phases. Moods. It’s normal.’

‘There is nothing normal about our family, Dad. I mean, what were you thinking? How did you think it was going to be OK just to keep building families and then leaving them? You know something – and you’re going to totally hate me for saying this – but I’m glad you and Maya didn’t get the chance to have a baby. Because seriously, Dad, that would have just been a joke.’