Believing the Lie

Fairclough. She was heading back towards the house now, her phone call finished.

For a time, that appeared to be the highlight of Zed’s day. Wonderful, he thought. Another nought to add to the noughts of his accomplishments in Cumbria. He spent another two hours pretending to fish before he began to pack it in and consider what to do next.

Things changed, however, as he was trudging back in the direction of the Promenade and his car, which he’d left in Arnside village. He’d just reached the end of the seawall that defined the boundary of Arnside House when a car approached and made the turn into the driveway.

It was driven by a woman. She looked as if she knew where she was going. She pulled up to the front of the house and got out, and Zed crept — as well as a man six feet eight inches tall can actually creep — back the way he’d come.

Like him, she was a redhead. She was casually dressed in jeans, boots, and a thick wool sweater the colour of moss. He expected her to walk directly to the front door, some friend of Alatea’s come to call, he reckoned. But she did not do so. Instead, she began to prowl round the house like a third-rate burglar. Moreover, she took out a digital camera from her shoulder bag and started taking pictures.

Ultimately, she approached the front door and rang the bell. She waited, looking round her as if to see if anyone — like Zed himself — might be lurking in the shrubbery. While she waited, she took out her mobile and seemed to check it for text messages or something. Then the front door opened and without an exchange of more than ten words, Alatea Fairclough let her into the house.

But she sure as bloody hell did not look happy about having to do so, Zed realised. He also realised with a surge of pure joy that his wait had paid off. He had the scoop he needed. He had the sex in the story. He had the identity of the detective sent up from London from New Scotland Yard.

ARNSIDE CUMBRIA

When Alatea answered the door, Deborah instantly read the alarm in her expression. It was out of all proportion to the appearance on her doorstep of anyone other than a surprise visitor intent upon harming her, so for a moment Deborah was taken aback. She scrambled for words and came up with, “I have a feeling Mr. Fairclough isn’t at home, but it’s not Mr. Fairclough I need anyway.”

This promptly made things worse. “What do you want?” Alatea said abruptly. She looked beyond Deborah’s shoulder as if expecting someone else to come charging round the corner of the building. “Nicky’s at work.” She glanced at her watch, an enormous gold and rhinestone affair that suited her well but would have looked ridiculous on a woman less dramatic in appearance. “He’ll be on his way to the pele project by now.”

“Not a problem,” Deborah said cheerfully. “I was taking some shots of the exterior, to give the producer an idea of setting and where he can conduct his interviews. The lawn’ll work wonderfully, especially if the tide’s in when they’re here. But there’s always a chance it’ll be pouring buckets, isn’t there? So I’m hoping to get some shots of the interior of the house as well. Would that be all right? I don’t want to trouble you. It shouldn’t take long. It’ll be very informal.”

Alatea’s throat worked with a swallow. She didn’t move from the doorway.

“A quarter of an hour, I expect.” Deborah tried to sound jolly: nothing to fear from me. “It’s the drawing room I’m interested in, actually. There’s good ambient light and some background interest as well.”

Reluctant didn’t do justice to the manner in which Alatea admitted Deborah into the house. Deborah could feel tension virtually oozing from the woman, and she was forced to wonder if Alatea had a man other than her husband inside somewhere, playing at Polonius behind a convenient arras.

They went towards the yellow drawing room, passing the main hall, whose sliding doors were closed. These revealed more impressive panelling along with windows combining translucent glass and stained glass fashioned in the shape of red tulips and green leaves. Someone, Deborah decided, could indeed have been lurking in that room, but she couldn’t imagine who it might be.

She made light chat. The house was remarkable, she told Alatea. Had it been featured in any magazines? The Arts and Crafts movement was so clean and sympathetic, wasn’t it? Was Alatea interested at all in a documentary about the restoration of this building? Had she been approached by any of the myriad television programmes that featured period homes? To all of this, Alatea’s answers were monosyllabic. Bonding with the woman was not going to be a simple matter, Deborah concluded.

In the drawing room, she switched to another topic. How did Alatea like living in England? It had to be very different from what she was used to in Argentina, Deborah expected.

Here, Alatea looked startled. “How do you know I’m from Argentina?”

“Your husband told me.” Deborah wanted to add, Why? Is there a problem with your being from Argentina? but she did not. Instead, she examined the room. The object was to get Alatea over to the bay window where the magazines were, so Deborah took a few shots of prospective areas in which interviews could occur, easing over in that direction.

When she got there, though, the first thing she saw was that Conception was gone from the fan of journals. This was going to make things tricky but not impossible. Deborah took a photo of the two chairs and the low table in front of the bay window, adjusting for the light outside so as to show both interior and exterior equally. She said as she did so, “You and I have something in common, Mrs. Fairclough.” She looked up from her camera and offered a smile.

Alatea was standing by the door as if ready to bolt. She gave a polite smile and looked supremely doubtful. If they had something in common, it was clear she hadn’t a clue what it was, aside from being women who were, at the moment, standing in the same room of her house.

Deborah said, “We’re both trying for a baby. Your husband told me. He saw I’d seen the magazine. Conception?” She added a helpful lie, “I’ve been reading it for ages. Well, for five years now. That’s how long Simon and I — that’s my husband — have been trying.”

Alatea said nothing to this, but Deborah saw her swallow as her eyes moved to the table where the magazine had lain. Deborah wondered if she’d removed it herself or if Nicholas had done so. She wondered, too, if Nicholas worried about his wife’s state of mind and state of body as Simon worried about her own.

She said, as she took another photo, “We started out au naturel, Simon and I, hoping that nature would take its course. We went from there to monitoring. Everything from my monthly cycles to my daily temperature to the phases of the moon.” She forced a chuckle. It wasn’t pleasant to reveal this sort of thing to anyone, but Deborah saw the importance of doing so and, even, the potential for comfort that such a revelation could bring. “Then, there were the tests,” she said, “which Simon less than adored, I can tell you. After that were the endless discussions about alternatives, visits to specialists, and talks about the other possibilities for parenthood.” She paused in her photographing to say to Alatea with a shrug, “Turns out I’ll never carry a baby to term. Something’s wrong with the way I was manufactured. We’re onto adoption now, or something else. I’d like surrogacy but Simon’s not on board.”

The Argentine woman had come into the room, closer now but still at a distance. Her colour had altered, Deborah saw, and she was clasping and unclasping her elegant hands. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Deborah knew what she was looking at. She’d felt the same for years. She said quickly, “I’m terribly sorry. As I said, I saw the magazine when I was here earlier. Your husband said you and he were trying. He said you’d been married two years, and… Mrs. Fairclough, I’m very sorry. I hadn’t meant to upset you. Please. Here. Sit down.”

Alatea did sit, although not where Deborah would have wished it. She chose the inglenook of the fireplace, a padded seat just beneath a stained glass window that sent light streaming onto her crinkly hair. Deborah approached her but remained a safe distance, saying, “It’s difficult. I know. I actually lost six before I found out the truth about my body. They might be able to do something about it someday, all things about science considered. But by then I’ll probably be too old.”

A tear streaked down Alatea’s cheek. She adjusted her position, as if this would keep her from shedding more tears in front of a relative stranger.