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‘I … As I’ve said, I was young. I behaved badly – I’m not saying I didn’t. But it was a relationship, Sam. Misguided, yes, but I didn’t pressurise her in any way. For God’s sake, I didn’t rape her.’ He exhales heavily. ‘Her parents found out and I was discreetly dismissed, and that was the end of it. My father died soon after.’
‘So you were never prosecuted?’
He shakes his head. ‘Neither the school nor her parents wanted a scandal. It would’ve been too hard on Lottie. I was dismissed on compassionate grounds on account of my father’s ill health and I moved on. That’s it. Whatever mental-health problems Lottie went on to suffer, they were not my fault. If she has since obsessed over me, that’s not my fault either.’ He drains his glass, rubs his eyes. ‘I need a shower.’ He gets up, leaves the room.
The fire crackles, aschlumpfas a log falls against the chimney breast. Samantha drinks her wine, at first in sips, then pours the rest down her throat. Emily snuffles against her neck. Above her, Peter’s footsteps creak back and forth on the landing. A moment later, the rainy sound of the water in the pipes. What did he just say? No one wanted a scandal becauseit would’ve been too hard on Lottie. Did he actually say that? What a joke. Avoidance of scandal favours the abuser, leaves the victim with no closure, no validation, no justice. Man moves on, gets new career, invents new way of telling truth. Bullies women, two-times, damages, controls and humiliates them. Knocks up girlfriend, sticks her in the big house, goes to conferences who the hell knows where with who the hell knows whom.
Samantha is exhausted. Her bones feel like tombstones, her head a bowling ball. She is dizzy from her thoughts swinging first one way then the other. But she gets up. She takes Emily up to her cot and tucks her in. Peter is still under the shower, trying to wash off his filthy lies, no doubt. Samantha returns downstairs. Grabs the car keys from the bowl on the phone table. Props open the front door with one of her boots.
No central locking, she thinks, walking around to the passenger side door.Makes me appear more chivalrous than I am.
Look at me, I’m a wreck.
Marry me immediately.
I would never objectify you.
You got a ride in the Studmobile.
He’s the opposite of a predator, the absolute opposite.
We have a child together … he’s changed.
She opens the car door. Inside, a thick smell, floral but stale. She bends to the passenger seat and sniffs. Perfume, she’s pretty sure. Not her own. She opens the glove compartment. In it is a silk scarf the colour of the palest blue sky. It is a woman’s scarf, unmistakably. She pulls it out, pushes it to her nose. The same floral smell as the car: stale perfume transformed over hours, made specific by the oily odours of someone else’s skin. She screws it up in her hand, is about to put it back when she sees the familiar clear plastic bag, the flash of coloured pills.
‘Jesus Christ.’ She stuffs the scarf into the glove compartment and slams it shut.
Peter is coming down the stairs just as she closes the front door behind her.
‘Sam?’ He steps heavily onto the last stair, lands in the hallway. ‘What are you doing? I’ve brought everything in from the car.’
‘You said there was a lot of traffic coming back,’ she says, studying his inscrutable face. ‘Was there?’
‘Yes, why? What is this? Look, Sam, I’ve told you the truth. It was bloody difficult for me, but I told you the whole story because I respect you too much to hide things from you. If you’re going to bring something I did years ago into every last thing going forward, that’s not going to work, is it? We need to put this behind us. Otherwise she’s won, hasn’t she? Bloody crazy Lottie who should have moved on a long time ago. And by the way, we’re not pressing charges, and you say nothing about this to the police, all right? I’ve trusted you with it, do you hear me? I don’t want any more of our life ruined by that madwoman.’
Madwoman. Madwomen.Samantha dismissed Aisha and Jenny as madwomen, only a few hours ago. Madwomen in the attic. That attic must be getting bloody crowded. What was it Christine said?Unhappiness does terrible things to people.Yes, Samantha thinks, it does. In the months that followed the revelation of her father’s affair, her mother bought a silver miniskirt, had her hair cut and coloured, acquired a brash new friend, Clare, who talked about getting a bit of action, who brought bottles of spirits to the house and kept her mother out all night. There were conversations about minor plastic surgery – tummy tucks, lip fillers, Botox – procedures she could not even begin to afford. Unhappiness does terrible things all right. It can drive a person mad.
‘All right,’ she replies eventually. They are in agreement about Lottie, though not for the same reasons.
‘And I’ve changed the password on the home computer and on both our emails,’ he says. ‘It’s Samantha1996 on all of them for now, but you can change yours again to whatever. Your name and year of birth, easy to remember.’
Peter is still standing in the hallway, drying his ears with a hand towel. He is attempting to be casual, but the tendons in his throat are thick cables. His hair is wet. His feet are bare. He has washed her off, she thinks, the wearer of the pale blue silk scarf. He has changed into his pyjamas and robe, his cheeks hang a little and he looks about ten years older than he did this morning. If you didn’t know him better, you’d say he was just some middle-aged man. You’d say he was a vain old fool who had realised that he was no longer at the height of his powers.
‘Let’s get to bed.’ In one stride, he is in front of her, up close. He smells of citrus; she recognises his Dior shower gel. He pushes her hair behind her ear and kisses her on the temple. ‘We could both use a little comfort, don’t you think? Relieve some of this stress? And everything will look very different in the morning, I promise.’
‘I need a shower too.’ She leaves him to lock the doors and rake the fire. By the time he comes upstairs, she is already in bed: exhausted, wide awake.
‘Gave Sally a lift home, by the way,’ he says, spooning her from behind, kissing the back of her neck, sliding his arms around her waist. ‘Professor Bailey, you know? Not sure if I mentioned she was coming to the conference. Did you know she’s married to Olivia Ford?’ He runs his hand up her belly, takes hold of her breast. ‘Didn’t she teach your Chaucer module?’
So he knows she’s seen the scarf. He is offering up his alibi before she challenges him so that his innocence is beyond doubt. Clever, she thinks. Very clever.
But she is no slouch on the brains front either.
She turns over, kisses him on his lying mouth.
Twenty-Seven
Samantha wakes up naturally for the first time since Emily was born. She was dreaming about Marcia. They were in the late-night Spanish bar off the Tottenham Court Road. They’d had too much to drink and were dancing flamenco. It’s the dream of a memory, and for a moment she keeps her eyes closed to prolong it. Before that came nightmares: Emily’s lifeless body grey in a ditch; Emily crying and alone in a dark, dripping warehouse; a coffin smaller than any coffin should be. Each time Samantha woke with a shout, covered in sweat, parched, panting. Peter was asleep, the wide bow of his shoulders all she could see in the shadowy room. She left him sleeping, went to lay her hand on Emily’s warm body, waiting for the rise and fall. At around four, she must have drifted off, her subconscious finding this last, happier memory to polish and hold up to dream’s hazy light.
