The Forgetting(73)

She thought about all the stories Dominic had told her about his childhood: the silent mealtimes and lonely bedtimes. Shifting the prism, she looked at the scenes from a different angle and saw the possibility of a woman terrified of the consequences of defying her husband’s tyranny.

Livvy’s phone pinged and she pulled it from her bag, saw a diary notification reminding her to get some cash to tip the removers, remembered with a panic all she had to do before Saturday. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to go.’

Imogen took her hand from Livvy’s knee. ‘Really? So soon?’

Livvy checked the time on her phone. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve just got so much to do before the move—’ The words were out before she had a chance to haul them back.

‘What move?’

Livvy scrabbled for a feasible explanation but found none willing to rescue her. ‘We’re moving to London.’ It didn’t matter, she reassured herself: London was a big city. It wasn’t as if Imogen would be able to find them if they didn’t want to be found.

‘When?’

A sense of strange defiance overcame Livvy. She refused to be cowed by this woman she’d met for the first time only ten weeks ago. ‘On Saturday.’

Imogen’s face dropped. ‘This Saturday? But what about Leo?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You have to let me see him before you go. It’s cruel not to.’

There was something maniacal in Imogen’s tone, and Livvy was aware of unease creeping across her skin, just as it had during their earlier meetings. ‘I haven’t got to do anything, Imogen. Leo’s my son and I’m not putting him in the middle of all this.’ She stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder, prepared to leave.

‘But he’s my grandson. I have to see him. You must understand that, surely?’

Livvy fished her car keys from her bag. ‘I don’t mean to be unkind and I’m sorry if I gave you false hope, arranging to see you today. But there’s too much that needs resolving between you and Dominic before there’s any chance of you having a relationship with Leo.’

Imogen opened her mouth to speak, but Livvy cut across her, issued a firm goodbye and walked briskly away.

Heading towards the edge of the park where she’d left her car, Livvy took the Beatrix Potter–wrapped gift and tossed it in a bin. Dominic had been right, and Livvy wished she’d listened to him in the first place: there was something deeply unsettling in Imogen’s behaviour, like a rogue missile veering off course, and Livvy knew now for certain that she didn’t want her mother-in-law in any of their lives.





ANNA


LONDON

I tear open the lids of one box after another, searching, hunting, digging for clues, anything that might tell me more. Beads of perspiration pool in the small of my back, a matrix of paper cuts lining my fingers.

Glancing down at my watch, I realise that I have been in the loft for almost three hours. I no longer know whether I am foraging for proof that my fears are correct or evidence that I have got it all wrong.

Lines from the letters I’ve read burn behind my eyes.

I wish you could know how much I look forward to the weekends, when you’ll be home, and we’re together again.

The bed will be so empty without you.

I hope you know how much I’ll miss you.

I love you.

Nausea fills my throat and I swallow hard against it.

Part of me wishes there had been no dates on them, that I could delude myself they are from a time long before our marriage. But those dates, I know, can mean only one thing, even if I am not yet ready to accept it.

I don’t have to go away for work very often . . . It’s really unfortunate timing.

I think about Stephen’s annoyance when he received the message from his boss, how cross he was about having to leave me so soon after my accident. I wonder if it was nothing more than a charade, whether he has been absent every weekend for months, has used the convenience of my amnesia to pretend this is a new phenomenon. My heart thumps with my own gullibility, so trusting that I never even questioned a second consecutive weekend away.

I think about all the furtive phone calls taken in our bedroom with the door closed. All the snapped lids of laptops when I have walked into a room. All the evenings he has been late home. The two mobile phones.

It’s my work phone.

Humiliation burns in my cheeks.

I rip open another cardboard box, find board games, playing cards, a two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. At the bottom of the box is a lone novel, an Agatha Christie thriller, its jacket tattered, spine creased, pages curled at the edges. I lift it out, open the front cover, feel the air being sucked from my lungs.

On the title page, in the top-right-hand corner, is a name written in midnight-blue ink, the handwriting identical to the script on the letters.

Livvy Nicholson.

I drop the book back into the box as though it might char the tips of my fingers. My eyes follow it, lying there brazenly, as though it has nothing to be ashamed of. I try to make sense of its presence in our loft, am aware of something on the periphery of my mind. I close my eyes, focus all my attention on it. And then I understand.

The affair between Stephen and this woman must have been going on for at least as long as we have lived in this house. Over a year, possibly longer. It is the only explanation for the book being here.