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It must have rained—the yellow hue of the streetlight across the road is reflected in pools of water on the asphalt. Her shiny silver Lexus is parked across the road. It lights up and beeps awake. Luis opens the door on the driver’s side, they talk for a minute then he turns around and glances back at the house. When he turns back, she takes his face in her gloved hands—white, fur-lined at the edges to match the coat—and kisses him, eyes closed. It’s a long, languid kiss, her mouth pressed hard on his, before the kiss turns strong, passionate and familiar, like they’ve done it before so many times they know each other’s mouths by heart. I feel a sob crack in my chest. He takes hold of her wrists and brings her hands down. Then Isabelle lifts her face up to me and she looks right at me, like she knows I’m there, watching in the shadows.
And she smiles.
I jerk back quickly and the drape flutters down. She can’t have seen me, it’s dark and I was only looking through a sliver of glass, but she knows I’m here. She must have known I would be watching, because that kiss, it was for me.
I went to bed and pretended to fall asleep immediately so I wouldn’t have to look at his treacherous face. He joins me not long after and within minutes he’s snoring. I prop myself on my elbow and watch him. I picture myself throwing things, breaking things, throwing his stuff out into the rain and kicking him out along with it. How dare she—it’s her fault, I’m just going to say that right now and never revisit that claim—do this to our family?
“Do you remember?” I whisper softly into his neck. He is lying with his back to me and I spoon him close, hold him tight. I breathe in the scent of him, sweaty and sweet. “Do you remember that time, we spent that entire week in your apartment? How we ended up living on brown rice because there was nothing else and we didn’t want to leave? Old packets with long-gone sell-by dates that we found at the back of the kitchen cupboard. You joked the previous tenant must have left them there, you remember? But we didn’t care. In the end we only came out into the light because we ran out of brown rice. You didn’t want to let me go. ‘I love you to the moon and back,’ you’d say. Do you remember, Luis? You remember how obsessed with each other we were? That was your word: obsessed. ‘You’re obsessed with me,’ you’d say, and I’d laugh. Am I? ‘Yes. You are,’ you’d say. ‘You’re obsessed with me. Tell me that you are.’
“‘I am,’ I’d whisper. ‘I’m obsessed with you.’ And you’d say, ‘I would do anything to keep you forever.’ And I’d laugh, because it was a strange idea—to have and to keep. But I liked it. So will you keep me forever, Luis? We could run away, all four of us. We could move to Martha’s Vineyard and live in a gingerbread cottage. You could fall in love with me again. You could keep me again, forever. Just like you always wanted.”
He doesn’t reply. I want to bite the back of his neck. I want to break the skin and taste him. I’m so drunk I think I might just do it.
Twenty-Four
I spend the weekend working on my presentation so I don’t have to talk to Luis other than a few grunts here and here. He thinks I’m stressed because of the lecture and he makes sure the children stay out of my way.
The following Monday I arrive at work tired and moody. I’ve barely sat down when Geoff appears at my door.
“Do you have a moment, Anna?”
There’s something about his demeanor I don’t like. He appears overly relaxed and he’s grinning, in a way that’s just not good. “In my office? Now?”
I follow him because I don’t think I have a choice, then immediately wonder if it’s a trick just so he can get me alone in his office for a repeat performance of the other day. I grab my cell on the way out and when he invites me to sit down opposite him, I show him my phone.
“Mind if I record this?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Knock yourself out.”
I expected him to sneer, to laugh at me. To say that I’m just a tease, that nothing good happens to women like me, but I suppose my recording the conversation is putting a stop to that. He taps the edge of a stack of pages on his desk and I begin to think we are going to be here all day, when he says, “I’ve just heard from Janette in HR. We’ve had a complaint. A formal complaint of sexual harassment.”
I look up. He shoots me a pained look. Oh. My. God. So I am not the only one? Of course I’m not. How could I not think of that? He has assaulted other women—who? Mila? I don’t think so, somehow, unless she reallyishaving an affair with him. I think back to what I said to Ryan at the party all these weeks ago.He’s having sex with one of the math lecturers, so he gave her a full professorship.I would laugh if the whole thing wasn’t so horribly wrong.
I am so relieved I let out one long exhalation. I smile to myself because I know why I’m here now. He wants to know if I’ll keep our dirty little secret.
“Who is it? Who put in the complaint?”
“It’s confidential, I’m afraid.”
“Is it bad?”
He glances at the top sheet in front of him. “It’s pretty bad. Non-consensual sexual touching, forcing the complainant to comply under duress, that sort of thing.”
This is going to be bad for the university, and at a time when we were just getting back on our feet.
“So, what do you want from me?” I ask.
He looks at me sideways. “I want you to listen and make your case, eventually.”
“Make my case? Against you?”
He turns bright red then, moves his mouth like he’s chewing on something before snatching my phone from the desk.
“Hey!” I lunge for it but it’s too late. He has deleted the file.
“Don’t ever say that again, are we clear?” He hisses. He throws my phone back at me. It lands on my lap. “The complaint is againstyou, Anna.”
My mind goes blank. I wait, but he doesn’t say anything else. “Me?”
