under the loose skin.
‘So you’ve got yourself a wife, Adam,’ he said. ‘Are you staying to lunch?’
‘No,’ said Adam. ‘Alice and I are going to a hotel now.’ He helped me into the coat that I still had bundled under my arm. I smiled up at him.
Twenty-six
One evening, about fifteen people came round to the flat to play poker. They sat on the floor, on cushions, and drank large quantities of beer and whisky, and smoked until all the saucers were overflowing with fag ends. By two in the morning, I was about three pounds down, and Adam was twenty-eight pounds up.
‘How come you’re so good?’ I asked, after everyone had left except Stanley, who was crashed out on our bed, dreadlocks spread over the pillow and pockets quite emptied of cash.
‘Years of practice.’ He rinsed a glass and put it on the draining board.
‘Sometimes it seems so strange to think about all those years when we weren’t together,’ I said. I picked up a stray tumbler, and drained it. ‘That when I was with Jake, you were with Lily. And you were with Francoise, Lisa and…’ I stopped. ‘Who was before Lisa?’
He looked at me coolly, not fooled at all. ‘Penny.’
‘Oh.’ I tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Was there no one between Lisa and Penny?’
‘No one special.’ He did his shrug.
‘Talking of which, there’s a man in our bed.’ I stood up and yawned. ‘Sofa do you?’
‘Anywhere will do me if you’re there too.’
?
There’s a large difference between not revealing something, and positively concealing it. I rang her from work, between two wrangling meetings about the delay on the Drakloop. This, I promised myself, would be the last time, the very last time, that I would poke around in Adam’s past. Just this one thing, and then I would lay it all to rest.
I shut my door, swivelled round in my chair so that I was facing my window, with its view of a wall, and dialled the number at the head of the letter. The line was dead. I tried again, just in case. Nothing. I asked the exchange to test the line, and they told me it was no longer in use. So I asked if they could give me the number of Blanchard, A., in West Yorkshire. They had no Blanchards at all there. What about Funston, T.? Nothing under that name either. Sorry, caller, they said blandly. I almost howled in frustration.
What do you do when you want to track someone down? I read through the letter again, hunting for clues, which I already knew weren’t there. It was a good letter: straightforward and heartfelt. Tom, she wrote, was her husband and Adam’s friend. Their affair was never free of his presence. One day he was bound to discover, and she wasn’t prepared to hurt him that much. Nor could she live with the guilt that she was feeling at the moment. She told Adam that she adored him, but that she couldn’t see him again. She told him that she was going to stay with her sister for a few days, and he was not to try to change her mind, or to get in touch with her. She was resolute. The affair would remain their secret: he must tell no one, not even his closest friends; not even the women who came after her. She said that she would never forget him but that she hoped one day he would forgive her. She wished him luck.
It was a grown-up kind of letter. I laid it down on my desk and rubbed my eyes. Perhaps I should just let it go now. Adele had implored Adam never to tell anyone, not even future lovers. Adam was simply honouring her request. That fitted his character. He would keep a promise. There was something scarily literal about Adam.
I picked up the letter again and stared at it, letting the words blur. Why did I feel a faint tug of memory at her name? Blanchard. Where had I heard it before? Maybe from one of Adam’s climbing cronies. She and her husband were clearly climbers. I fretted for a few minutes longer, then went into my next meeting with the marketing department.
Adele wouldn’t go away. Once you start being jealous, anything feeds that state. You can prove suspicions, but you can never disprove them. I told myself that after I knew about Adele I would be free from the grip of my sexual curiosity. I rang up Joanna Noble and asked if I could use her professional expertise.
‘What now, Alice? More wifely paranoia?’ She sounded weary of me.
‘Nothing like that.’ I gave a brisk laugh. ‘This is quite unrelated. It’s just – I need to track someone down. And I think she was mentioned in the papers recently. I know that you have access to newspaper files.’
‘Yes,’ she said cautiously. ‘Unrelated, you say?’
‘Yes. Completely.’
There was a tapping sound at the end of the line, as if she were bouncing a pencil against her desk. ‘If you come first thing in the morning,’ she said at last, ‘nine, say, we can pull up any mentions of the name on the computer, and do a printout of anything relevant.’
‘I owe you one.’
‘Yes,’ she said. There was a pause. ‘All fine on the Adam front?’ It sounded as if she were talking about the Somme.
‘Yup,’ I said cheerily. ‘All quiet.’
‘See you tomorrow, then.’
I got there before nine, and Joanna hadn’t arrived. I waited in the reception area, and I saw her before she saw me. She looked tired and preoccupied, but when she noticed me sitting there she said, ‘Right, let’s go then. The library is in the basement. I’ve only got about ten minutes.’
The library consisted of rows and rows of sliding shelves filled with brown files, categorized according to subject, and then alphabetically. Diana, Diets, Disasters/natural, that kind of thing. Joanna led me past all of these, to a largish computer. She pulled over a second chair, gestured for me to fill it, and then sat down in front of the screen. ‘Tell me the name, then, Alice.’
‘Blanchard,’ I said. ‘Adele Blanchard. B-L-…’ But she had already typed it in.
The computer beeped into life; numbers filled the top right-hand corner and on the clock icon a hand ticked round. We waited in silence.
‘Adele, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘There is no Adele Blanchard coming up, Alice. Sorry.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It was just a long shot. I’m really grateful to you.’ I stood up.
‘Hang on, there’s another Blanchard coming up, though. I thought the name was familiar.’
I looked over Joanna’s shoulder. ‘Tara Blanchard.’
‘Yes, this is just a paragraph or two about a young woman who was fished out of a canal in East London a couple of weeks back.’
That was why the name sounded so familiar. I felt a stab of disappointment. Joanna pressed a key to call up any further items: there was only one, which was more or less identical.
‘Do you want a printout?’ she asked, with a touch of irony. ‘Adele might be her middle name.’
‘Sure.’
While the printer was stuttering out the single sheet about Tara Blanchard, I asked Joanna if she had heard anything from Michelle. ‘No, thank God. Here you are.’
She handed me the printout. I folded the paper in half, then half again. I should really just chuck it in the bin, I thought. I didn’t, though. I pushed it into my pocket, and caught a taxi to work.
