The Soulmate(55)

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I wish I understood the inner workings of a suicidal woman, but I –’

‘That’s the thing,’ he says. ‘Amanda wasn’t suicidal when I last saw her. In fact, in our twenty-five years of marriage, she never seemed suicidal. So, it’s hard for me to accept that, even after discovering this video, she’d suddenly choose to jump off a cliff behind the home of one of my former employees. Surely you can understand why I’m perplexed by this.’

I take a few seconds to consider this. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I guess the video must have affected her more than you think. And The Drop is a well-known suicide place.’

‘That’s true,’ Max says. ‘But I’ve since discovered that Gabe didn’t tell the police he knew Amanda. If this truly was a coincidence, why would he conceal that?’

He fixes me in his gaze. I understand his intention is to intimidate me. It works breathtakingly well.

‘I just want to know what happened to my wife, Pippa.’ There’s the tiniest quaver in his voice here. I notice, suddenly, that he looks thinner and paler than the last time I saw him.

‘Mummy,’ Asha says, ‘do I still have to get my superheroes?’

‘Yes, baby,’ I say, taking her hand. To Max, I say, ‘I’m sorry, I need to go. We have vaccinations. I wish I could help . . .’

‘You can,’ he says. ‘I’d like you to ask Gabe to call me.’

His hands are tucked into the pockets of his chinos, but he draws one out, holding a business card between his fingers. It reminds me of the last time he did this, all those years ago. ‘Give him my card.’

I take it. Nod. What else can I do?

‘I’m staying down here for a few days,’ he calls over his shoulder as he walks away. ‘Maybe longer. Depends how long it takes to get to the bottom of things. Tell Gabe I look forward to hearing from him.’

I remain where I am until he disappears around the corner. Amanda wasn’t suicidal. Max is wrong about that; Amanda must have been suicidal. Because if she wasn’t . . . what had my husband done?



‘Pip!’ Seconds after Max disappears down the street, Gabe and the receptionist join me. ‘I was wondering where you two had got to.’ To Asha he says, ‘Come on, poppet, the nurse is waiting. The sooner it’s done, the sooner you can have ice cream.’

The receptionist takes Asha by the hand and leads her back to the health centre, distracting her with a discussion on the relative merits of vanilla and chocolate.

‘I saw Max,’ I say to Gabe.

‘What?’ He stares at me. ‘Just now?’

I nod. ‘He said Amanda wasn’t suicidal.’

I watch Gabe’s forehead crease as he takes that in. ‘Well,’ he says after a beat, ‘we have evidence to the contrary.’

I hand him Max’s card. ‘He wants you to call him.’

‘I bet he does.’

‘He knows you didn’t tell the police that you knew Amanda. So, he has that over us.’

Gabe swears under his breath.

‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.

He’s staring down at Max’s card, lost in thought. After what feels like a lifetime, he says, ‘I guess I’m going to call Max.’





56


PIPPA

THEN



Gabe’s moods continued to ebb and flow. I was getting used to it, as much as one could get used to living with constant uncertainty. He was better, I found, when he had something meaningful to consume his attention. More often than not, that meant work. I was okay with this. If he was going to direct his hyperfocus somewhere, work was as good a place as any.

His latest project was a challenge. His company wanted to get into streaming, and for that they needed money – lots and lots of it, and as the head of investor relations it was up to Gabe to find it. He worked day and night. I never asked too many questions about his work. The truth was, I had only the most rudimentary understanding of what Gabe did, and when he talked about it I understood less rather than more.

What I did understand was that with every project, Gabe worried that he wouldn’t get the finance together in time. It was practically a prerequisite for any acquisition; an investor would drop out at the last minute, or there’d be a price increase, or some other crisis that would send Gabe into a tailspin. I’d come to realise that the drama of this was part of the fun, so I didn’t worry too much when, days before the streaming deal was due to take place, he started the usual talk about how he might not be able to get the money together.

‘This is different, Pip,’ he said when I reminded him that this happened every time. (He also said this every time.) ‘It’s really different.’

Indeed, he was working incredibly hard. On top of the late nights there seemed to be a lot of hushed phone calls and clandestine meetings. There was even a meeting one Saturday night. I remember it, because it was raining and Gabe had gone out in his waterproof boots. I’d joked that this was not what I’d expected an executive job to entail.

He didn’t arrive home until four or five in the morning. When I got up the next day, I saw his boots outside on the rack, upside down and freshly cleaned. I remember being impressed that he’d thought to clean them at that late hour. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought to wipe his muddy boot prints from the laundry floor. As I dropped to my knees to do it myself, I noticed that the dirt and mud was tinged with something else. It looked a lot like blood.