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57
July 2018
Michael was not in the UK. Rachel had established this by metaphorically holding her nose and calling Ella.
‘He’s in Antibes,’ Ella said.
‘Where is he staying?’
‘Well, in his house, I suppose.’
‘How long is he going to be there?’
‘The whole summer. He’s writing a book, you know.’
‘He’s—?’
‘A novel. Loosely based on his life.’
Rachel had swallowed the urge to laugh out loud. ‘Really,’ she’d said. ‘How bizarre.’
A few days later Rachel got on a plane and flew once again to Nice, from where she took a taxi to Antibes, and on a hot July morning she pulled her rucksack over her shoulders, put on her sunglasses and started to walk.
She didn’t know where Michael’s house was, precisely. She knew that it wasa stone’s throw from the sea. She knew that it wasthe colour of dead roses. She knew that it wasa two-minute walk from the best seafood restaurant in Antibes, and that it was tucked down an alleyway with its own private driveway and off-street parking,a godsend in Antibes.
The best seafood restaurant in Antibes did not seem to be a singular thing. There were numerous best seafood restaurants in Antibes. Rachel decided to visit them all using a Tripadvisor list, starting with their number one. By the time she had got to number five on the list it was afternoon and she had done nearly twenty thousand steps. But as she neared the sixth best seafood restaurant she turned and saw behind her a sparkle of ocean and a suggestion of steps built into the sea wall, and ahead of her were small lanes and cobbled alleyways leading off the main road, and she drained the last of the water from her plastic bottle, dropped it in a bin and headed down the first lane, her instincts fully engaged with a sense of rightness, and there, around a small bend at the top of the lane, was a turning into a driveway in front of a beautiful house the colour of dead roses.
There was a sports car parked on the driveway. Not a cheap, runaround sports car, but what looked like a performance car, a Maserati in fact, the sort of car that costs tens of thousands of pounds. Rachel felt bile rise and fall in her gullet. Her fistscompressed themselves into hard lumps. She passed the ugly car and headed for the front door.
A middle-aged Asian woman answered the door. ‘Hello?’
‘Oh, hello. I’m Rachel. I’m Michael’s wife, could I come in?’
The woman’s face blossomed. ‘Oh! Rachel! Michael’s wife! Yes. Please. Come in! Please.’
‘Is he here?’ Rachel asked, casting her eyes around the house, this mythical place that had been such a huge part of Michael’s allure when she first met him and yet he had never once brought her here. It was a beautiful house with the same cosy charm as Michael’s London apartment: arches led from the hallway into an airy open-plan living room and kitchen, with tall black-framed doors leading on to a lush-looking garden filled with banana trees and palms.
‘Yes. He is here. I think he has a siesta. I can check?’
‘No. No, that’s fine. Don’t wake him. I’ll just wait here for him, if that’s OK?’
‘Of course it’s OK. I keep asking him where you are, where is your wife, why you aren’t here. He keeps saying that you are very busy working in London. Making jewellery. Too busy to come. But now you are here and he will be so happy to see you! I’m Joy. Please sit down. Let me get you some water and snacks.’
‘Could I use the bathroom? Where would it be?’
‘Just here, Mrs Rimmer.’
‘Oh, please don’t call me that. Call me Rachel. Please.’
Rachel locked the door of the bathroom and sat down on the closed toilet. Her heart was racing, and she was hyperventilating slightly. She stood up again and ran her hands under the tap, turned them over and let the cold water run over her pulse points untilher wrists felt numb. She splashed water on her face, and she talked herself down from pure panic, muttering under her breath,Be cool be cool be cool.
She used her wet hands to smooth down her heat-frazzled hair and she tucked some loose strands behind her ears. She wanted to walk out of the front door. She wanted to run. But then she remembered that gross sports car, the car that her father had paid for, and then she remembered that she was not scared, that she was angry, that she was filled with a dark burning hate and that there was nothing this man could do to her that would hurt her more than what he was doing to her father.
She left the bathroom and peered down the length of the hallway. There were two more doors off it, one of which led into a small study overlooking the driveway with a clear view of the Maserati. She tiptoed in and quickly leafed through the paperwork on the desk. She opened the camera in her phone and took photos of as many things as possible, her hands shaking slightly, her heart still racing. She opened drawers and ran her hands under the desk. She opened a folder and took more photos of statements and letters. She didn’t know what anything was. She had no idea if any of it had any meaning, but Jonno had said to get as much evidence of his business activities as possible, so she was going for quantity over quality.
She tugged at a drawer in the bottom of the desk that finally came loose at her third attempt. She recoiled at what she saw inside, her hands clutching her chest.
‘Oh my God,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Oh my God.’
