There were faint brownish rings round some of the cups still, tidemarks from long-ago drinks. There was a packing case piled high with paired Wellington boots. Some of them were small. They must have belonged to Adam when he was a boy. The largest black trunk had the gilt initials V. T. on its lid. What had his mother’s name been? I couldn’t remember if he’d ever told me. I opened it furtively. I told myself I was doing nothing wrong, just poking around, but I didn’t think Adam would see it like that. The trunk was full of clothes, smelling strongly of musty age and pungent mothballs. I fingered a spotted navy-blue frock, a crocheted shawl, a lavender-coloured cardigan with pearl buttons. Graceful but sensible clothes. I shut the lid, and opened a battered white suitcase beside it. It was full of baby clothes: Adam’s. Jerseys with boats and balloons knitted into the pattern, striped dungarees, woollen hats, an all-in-one suit with a pixie hood, tiny leggings. I almost cooed. There was a christening gown in there too, yellowing with age, now. The chest of drawers to one side, which was missing several knobs and was badly scratched down one side, was full of little booklets which, on closer inspection, turned out to be things like school magazines and school reports. The two girls’ and Adam’s, from Eton. I opened one at random from 1976. He would have been twelve. It was the year his mother died. Maths: ‘If Adam applied his considerable ability to learning rather than disrupting,’ ran the neat italic script in blue ink, ‘then he would do well. As it is…’ I shut up the booklet. This wasn’t just snooping; it felt more like spying.
I wandered over to the other corner of the room. I wanted to find photographs. Instead, in a small case with a strap wrapped round it twice to keep it shut, I found letters. At first I thought they were letters from Adam’s mother, I don’t know why. Maybe because I was looking for traces of her, and something about the handwriting made me sure they were from a woman. But when I picked up the top bundle and leafed through it, I realized at once that they were from lots of different people, and were written in lots of different kinds of handwriting. I glanced at the top one, scrawled in blue biro, and gasped.
‘Darling darling Adam,’ it began. It was from Lily. Some vestigial scruple stopped me reading it. I put down the bundle, but then picked it up again. I didn’t read through the letters, although I couldn’t help noticing certain memorable phrases, which I knew I would be unable to forget. I just looked to see who they were from. It was, I told myself, as if I were an archaeologist, digging through the layers of Adam’s history, through all his familiar periods.
First there were letters – short and scrappy – from Lily. Then, in black ink and with the familiar looped and cursive elegance of French script, letters from Francoise. These were usually long. They weren’t passionate, like Lily’s, but their raw intimacy made me wince. Her English was exceptionally vivid, charming even in its occasional slips. Under Francoise were a couple of miscellaneous letters. One from a rapturous Bobby and the other from a woman who signed herself ‘T’, and then a succession of postcards from Lisa. Lisa liked exclamation marks and underscorings.
And then, below Lisa – or before Lisa – came a series of letters from a woman I had never heard of. I squinted at the signature: Adele. I sat back on my heels and listened. Everything was quite quiet. All that I could hear was the rattle of wind in the loose slates above me. Adam must still be sorting through his stuff. I counted through Adele’s letters; there were thirteen, mostly rather short. Under her letters were six from Penny. I had found the woman between Lisa and Penny, Penny and Lisa. Adele. Starting with the bottom one, presumably the first that she wrote to him, I began to read them.
The first seven or eight letters were short and to the point: she was making arrangements where to meet Adam, naming a place, a time, urging caution. Adele was married: so that was why Adam had remained silent. He was keeping their secret even now. The next letters were longer and more tormented. Adele clearly felt guilty about her husband, whom she called her ‘trusting Tom’, and a host of others, parents, sister, friends. She kept begging Adam to make things easy for her. The final letter was her goodbye. She wrote that she could no longer continue to betray Tom. She told Adam that she loved him and he would never know how much he had meant to her. She said that he was the most wonderful lover she had ever had. But she couldn’t leave Tom. He needed her, and Adam clearly didn’t. Had she been asking him for something?
I laid the thirteen letters on my lap. So Adele had left Adam for her marriage. Maybe he had never got over her, and that was why he didn’t talk about her. He may have felt humiliated by her. I pushed my hair back behind my ears with hands that were slightly sweaty with nerves, and listened again. Was that a door I heard shutting? I gathered up the letters and put them on top of the ones from Penny.
Just before placing the rest on top, covering up that layer of the past with more recent pasts, I noticed that Adele had written her final letter, unlike all the others, on formal family paper, with a letterhead, as if she were emphasizing her bonded state. Tom Funston and Adele Blanchard. I felt a stirring of memory, like a prickle down my spine. Blanchard: the name was dimly familiar.
‘Alice?’
I shut the case and pushed it, unstrapped, back into position.
‘Alice, where are you?’
I scrambled to my feet. There was dust all over the knees of my trousers, and my coat was filthy.
‘Alice.’
He was near by, calling me, getting closer. I walked as quietly as I could towards the shut door, smoothing my hair as I did so. It would be better if he didn’t find me here. There was a broken armchair piled high with yellow damask curtains in the corner of the room, to the left of the door. I pulled the chair out slightly and crouched down behind it, waiting for the footsteps to go past. This was ridiculous. If Adam found me in the middle of the room I could just say that I was looking around. If he found me hiding behind a chair, there was nothing at all I could say. It wouldn’t just be embarrassing; it would be violent. I knew my husband. I was about to stand up when the door was pushed open and I heard him step into the room.
‘Alice?’
I held my breath. Maybe he would be able to see me through the heap of curtains.
‘Alice, are you there?’
The door shut again. I counted to ten and stood up. I went back to the case of letters, opened it and retrieved Adele’s final letter, adding theft to my list of marital crimes. Then I shut the case and this time I strapped it up. I didn’t know where to put the letter. Obviously not in any of my pockets. I tried stuffing it into my bra but I was wearing a tight-fitting ribbed top, and the wodge of paper showed. What about my knickers? In the end I took off one shoe and hid it in there.
I took a deep breath and went to the door. It was locked. Adam must have locked it when he went out again, as a matter of course. I gave a hard push, but it was solid against me. I looked around in panic for some kind of implement. I took the old kite off the wall and slid the central arm out of the ripped material. I poked this through the lock, though I am not sure what I hoped to achieve. I heard the key clunk to the ground outside the door.
The lower pane in the window was broken. If I removed the jagged remains of the glass, I would be able to squeeze through. Perhaps. I started to pull shards from the pane.
Then I chucked my coat through the hole. I pulled a trunk under the window and, standing on it, swung one leg through. The window was too high: I couldn’t touch the ground on the other side. Painfully, I manoeuvred myself through the hole until my toes touched a firm surface. I felt a spike of glass I had failed to remove pierce my jeans and puncture my thigh. I hunched my body and pushed through, head emerging into bright daylight. If anyone caught me now, what would I say? Second leg out. There. I bent down and picked up my coat. My left hand was bleeding. There was dirt and cobwebs and dust all over me.
‘Alice?’
I heard his voice in the distance. I took a deep breath. ‘Adam.’ It sounded steady enough. ‘Where are you, Adam? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ I slapped dirt off me, licked my forefinger and rubbed it over bits of my face.
‘Wherever did you get to, Alice?’ He came round the corner, looking so eager and handsome.
‘Where did
‘You’ve cut your hand.’
‘It’s nothing serious. I ought to wash it, though.’
In the cloakroom – an old-fashioned affair, where the guns were kept, as well as the tweed caps and the green wellies – I rinsed my hands and splashed water all over my face.
His father was sitting in an armchair in the living room, as if he had been there all along and we had simply failed to notice it. He had a fresh glass of whisky by his side. I went over and shook his hand, feeling the thin bones
