‘I just – I don’t know how to make you understand. I wish I could be more helpful.’
‘Then answer the question.’
He thinks for a moment. ‘Okay, yes. Very much. From what I remember he was a good, practical man. He liked routine. I know he seemed boring to some, but it was just his way of getting things done.’
‘Well, that is like you.’
‘Yup. It’s in the genes.’ He laughs weakly.
‘Would you say he was capable of keeping secrets?’
William seems to think about it. ‘I would have said no. Honesty was his bedrock, really. But then I think about how he was with Alex and that bloody sheep’s skull – “Don’t tell your mum or she’ll kill us” – and I wonder. He was obviously able to keep secrets, so maybe he did have that side to him, although it doesn’t sound right. Why do you ask?’
‘Just thinking. About you. About deceit.’
‘Well, you know what they say. The sins of the father and all that. I like to think he was a good man, an honest one. That he wouldn’t have let you down the way I have.’
Silence. All around us, the dark heart of the night.
‘Are you going to leave me, Frances?’
He swallows convulsively and I am sure he is about to cry. I can’t look at him. I can’t answer his question either, because I don’t know. I once had a patient who had been experiencing a strange pattern in their behaviour. When their anxiety peaked, as it so often did on public transport, they found themselves buttoning and unbuttoning their coat, almost obsessively. They were barely aware of it, until they looked down at themselves and noticed the movement of their hands. It’s a displacement activity, usually seen in animals, a way for the brain to deflect stress or uncertainty. My mind is circling, again and again, back to Edie Hudson, as it has done since I picked up the photo in the shoebox, the one I wasn’t supposed to see. My brain picks over the scant details as a way of deflecting from the way my marriage is collapsing, the way the nursery will remain empty, the money we’ve lost. It’s displacement. I welcome it, for now. ‘Right now I’d really like to just be on my own, William.’
He gets up silently, walking back towards the house with his hands in his pockets and his head down. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Me, I’m thinking about Alex telling me not to mention the photo to William, but then doing so himself. Mostly I’m thinking that a man who drives his car off a bridge and into the river would at least try to remove his seat belt. But Edward Thorn let himself sink to the bottom and didn’t make any attempt at escape. A man with no secrets doesn’t do that.
In the middle of the night I wake up in bed, mouth dry and furred. William is gently snoring next to me, one hand pinned to his chest. I ease myself out and down the dark hallway, my head cloudy with sleep. In the kitchen I drink straight from the tap, head bent under the faucet. A dark bib of water appears on the neck of my T-shirt. When I stand upright again there is a thin face reflected next to me in the dark window. Coldness rushes through me.
‘Is he seeing to those tomatoes again?’
I spin around. It’s Mimi. In her long nightdress studded with pink flowers and her bare feet she looks like a Victorian ghost. Her hair is a nebula about her drawn face, her cheeks sunk, deep pools of shadow.
‘He’ll get cold out there. Get him in, dear.’
She’s looking past me, towards the greenhouse. I put a hand on her shoulder. I’m shaking all over, my knees weak and watery.
‘Come on, Mimi, back to bed. It’s late.’
‘He’ll catch his death.’
‘I’ll go and get him in a minute, okay? Through here, that’s right. Back into bed.’
‘He told me his secret once,’ she says, as I pull back the covers. I stare at her in the darkness, blood ringing in my ears. My heart thuds against my ribs. I have a very clear image then of Edward Thorn in his shed at the bottom of the garden with a bag of old bones, grinding them into powder, boiling them in huge pots, bent over the stove. Tell me, Mimi. Tell me where they came from. Did you know about Edie Hudson? I look over at her, so pale she is almost transparent. Her eyes are filmy.
I say, very quietly, ‘What was the secret, Mimi? Can you remember?’
‘He said—’ She tilts her head as though listening to a distant voice. ‘He said the secret was to feed the soil, not the plant.’
Tamped down by disappointment, I tuck her in, pulling the covers up to her neck. What had I been expecting? This is madness, I tell myself sternly. You’re chasing the ghost of an old man through his widow. Look at yourself. Edie Hudson is long gone but your marriage is falling apart right here and now. That’s what you need to be looking at.
I sit awhile as she falls easily back to sleep, her breathing sliding into a deep and regular rhythm. Her small hand lies in mine, limp and cold. Just before I leave I plant a kiss on her temple, the woman who, at our wedding, took me to one side and told me I’d made her so very, very proud.
I sleep fitfully for the next two hours and then give up, brewing strong tea and heading back out into the garden. The sky is lightening to lilac, clouds drifting like unravelling wool. The air is punctuated by the bright voices of the birds. I stand at the fork in the path that splits off towards the wood on the left and the greenhouse and allotment on the right. There is
