She pulled her chair closer to mine. All the time she spoke I was making calculations in my head. If I left by a quarter to three I would be able to get to the station before Adam arrived – and, of course, maybe he wouldn’t arrive at four, but if he did then I would be safely on the other platform and could find somewhere to conceal myself. Mrs Blanchard would mention that somebody who knew him had just been there but I couldn’t remember anything I had done to give away my real identity. As far as Adam was concerned I would just be one of those dozens, hundreds of girls in his past.
If I’d got it wrong? What would happen if Adam arrived while I was still there? I made dismal half-formed attempts to plan something I might say, but I dismissed everything as disastrous. I needed all my concentration just to stay upright, to remain capable of speech. I had known nothing of Tara Blanchard except that her body had been found in an East London canal. Now I saw her as a cherub-cheeked toddler in the sandpit at her nursery school. In pigtails and blazer. In swimsuits and party dresses. Adele was often there as well. She had looked dumpy and cross as a small child but then became long-legged and beautiful. Adam was consistent, I had to admit. But it was going too slowly. I looked at my watch repeatedly. At eighteen minutes to three we seemed to be about half- way through the book. Then Mrs Blanchard paused for a story I couldn’t make myself listen to. I pretended to be so interested that I had to turn the page to see what was coming up. A quarter to. We were still not at the end. Thirteen minutes.
‘There’s Adam,’ said Mrs Blanchard.
I forced myself to look. He was much the same as the Adam I knew. The hair was longer. He was unshaven. In a smiling group with Adele, Tara, Tom, a couple of others I didn’t know. I looked for a hint of complicity between him and Adele but saw none. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I must have mixed him up with someone else.’
It might even stop Mrs Blanchard from mentioning me to Adam. But I mustn’t make too much of it. Ten to. With a sudden desperate relief I saw Mrs Blanchard reach a blank page of the album. The book wasn’t full. I had to be firm. I took her hand. ‘Jean, that was…’ I stopped, as if the emotions were too great to be expressed. ‘And now I must go.’
‘Let me drive you,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, trying to stop my voice rising into a howl. ‘After this, all this, I would like to walk on my own.’
She stepped forward and took me in her arms. ‘Come again, Sylvie,’ she said.
I nodded and within seconds was walking down the path. But it had taken longer than I thought. It was six minutes to. I considered going in the other direction, but that seemed even worse. As soon as I had turned out of the driveway into the road I broke into a run. My body was not ready for this. After a hundred yards my breath was coming in gasps, there were sharp pains in my chest. I turned another corner and saw the station ahead, too far ahead. I made myself run but as I reached the car park, full of commuter vehicles, I saw a train pulling in. I couldn’t risk entering a station and running into Adam. I looked around desperately. There seemed to be no cover. All I saw was a phone-box. In desperation I ran inside and took the phone from the hook. With care I turned my back to the station but I was directly beside the entrance. I looked at my watch. One minute past. I heard the sound of the train pulling out. Mine would be here in another minute or two. I waited. What if Adam came out of the station and wanted to make a phone call?
I was probably making a fool of myself. I became sure that Adam hadn’t been on the train. The temptation to turn around became almost irresistible. I heard the footsteps of several people emerging from the station and then descending to the gravel of the park. One set of footsteps stopped behind me. I could see the fragmentary reflection in the glass in front of me of somebody standing outside the box waiting for me to finish. I couldn’t make it out properly. There was a rap at the door. I remembered myself and spoke a few random sentences into the phone. I turned very slightly. There he was, looking a little smarter than usual. He had put on a jacket. I couldn’t see if he was wearing a tie. He had passed the phone-box and was down in the car park. He stopped an old woman and said something to her. She looked around and pointed up the street. He set off.
I heard another train arrive. Mine. I remembered with horror that my train was on the other side. I would have to cross a bridge. Don’t look round, Adam, don’t look round. I replaced the receiver, ran out of the phone-box and actually collided with the woman. She gave a shout of annoyance. She started to say something but I was gone. Had Adam looked round? The automatic doors of the train were closing as I reached the platform. I pushed my arm between their snapping jaws. I assumed that some central electronic intelligence would take note of this and re-open them. Or would the train leave regardless? I had visions of being dragged under the wheels and found horribly mangled at the next station. That would give Adam something to puzzle about.
The doors opened. I felt it was more than I deserved. I sat at one end of the carriage, far from anybody else, and started to cry. Then I looked at my arm. The rubber of the door had left a neat black impression, like a memorial armband. It made me laugh. I couldn’t help it.
Twenty-nine
I was alone. I realized at last how alone I was now, and with that realization came fear.
Of course, Adam hadn’t been there when I returned from the Blanchards although I supposed he might return soon. I hurriedly pulled on an old T-shirt and crept into bed like a guilty thing. I lay in the dark. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and every so often my tummy rumbled, but I didn’t want to get up and go into the kitchen. I didn’t want Adam to come home and find me exploring the fridge or eating at the kitchen table or any ordinary domestic situation. What could I say to him? All I had were questions, but they were questions that I couldn’t ask him. With each fresh deception I had pinned myself into a corner and I couldn’t see how I could escape from it. But he had deceived me too. I shuddered when I remembered hiding in that phone-box while he walked by me. What a ghastly farce it all was. Our whole marriage was built on desire and deception.
When he came in, whistling softly, I lay quite still and pretended to be asleep. I heard him open the fridge door, take something out, close it again. I heard a beer can being opened, then drunk. Now he was taking off his clothes, dropping them on the floor at the foot of the bed. The duvet was pulled back as he slid in beside me, and I felt cold air. His warm hands slid round me from behind. I sighed as if in deepest sleep and moved away from him slightly. He moved after me and wrapped his body along the contours of mine. I kept my breathing deep and steady. It wasn’t long before Adam was asleep, his breath hot against my neck. Then I tried to think.
What did I know? I knew that Adam had had a secret affair with a woman to whom, it was now clear, something had happened. I knew that that woman had a sister who had collected newspaper cuttings about Adam and had been fished out of a canal a few weeks ago. I knew, of course, that another of his lovers, Francoise with the long black hair, had died up on the mountains, and that Adam had been unable to rescue her. I thought about these three women while he slept beside me. Five in the bed.
Adam was a person who, all his life, had been surrounded by violence and loss. But then, after all, he lived in a world where men and women knew that they might die before their time and where risk was part of the point. I wriggled carefully out of his grasp and turned in the bed to watch him. In the light that shone from the street lamps outside I could just make out his face, serene in sleep, full lips puffing gently with each breath. I felt a sharp pang of pity for him. No wonder he was sometimes gloomy and strange and his love came out as violence.
I woke again as it was getting light and slipped out of our bed. The boards creaked but Adam didn’t wake. One arm was flung out above his head. He looked so trusting, lying there naked and dreaming, but I found that I couldn’t lie there beside him any longer. I pulled out the first clothes that came to hand – black trousers, boots, a high-necked orange sweater that was wearing through at the elbows – and dressed in the bathroom. I didn’t bother to clean my teeth or wash. I could do all that later. I just had to get out of here, be alone with my thoughts, not be there when he awoke and wanted to pull me down to him. I let myself out of the flat, wincing at the bang of the door as I pulled it shut.
