The Wife Before Me(74)
The silence of the cottage bears down on her when she unlocks the hall door. Kayla’s doll lies on the floor, dropped and forgotten when she put on her schoolbag. It’s too early in the morning to hear back from Greg Ahearn, Charmeuse’s marketing executive in New York. She’s confident he’ll be pleased with the information she sent to him. She checks her emails. A potential new client in Canada is interested in hearing from her. She reads a report from a satisfied manufacturer in Portugal and a plea for help from a regular client.
Her mind feels dull, apathetic, occupied with thoughts of Elena Langdon. Did she make that last bus? Is she, right at this moment, participating in another group therapy session where she will try, once again, to analyse why she tried to kill her partner? The Ice Pick Stabber. Her photograph had been on the front pages and on television. Not as thin then as she is now, she was laughing, with her children in her arms, Nicholas Madison, proud father, standing beside her.
Even with her hair cut close to her scalp, and her weight loss, Elena had been instantly recognisable. Those woebegone eyes, smoky-blue; they would once have been her most arresting feature, until brutality dimmed their luminance. The knuckled cheekbones, her mouth clenched in disappointment when she finally accepted that she had come to Mag’s Head on a wild goose chase.
Her mobile rings. ‘Ross Creative Designs,’ she says. ‘Annie Ross speaking.’
‘Hi Annie, Oscar Sayer here.’ The caller is male, his accent clipped, English, probably London posh. ‘I’m interested in your suggestion. I just need to clarify the numbers.’
‘Let me bring up the details and I’ll go through them with you.’ She turns her attention to her laptop. When the call ends she begins to work again on the Canadian proposal but, unable to focus, she stands up and goes to her living room in the centre of the cottage. The fire is set with logs that will not be lit until Kayla comes home from school. She stops at the side of an open hearth. It’s raised on bricks above the floor and built within a granite fireplace. Logs and kindling are stacked beside it. She removes the logs one by one and lays them on the hearth until only a few remain in the stack. The switch on the wall that she reveals is barely visible; a slight protrusion that allows a panel to slide silently across when she presses it. A light turns on automatically when she steps inside a dark recess. This small room fills the space that once existed between the two cottages. It is rarely used and the cardboard box she opens is covered in dust. The letters inside it are arranged according to their dates, the most recent one on top. A chronology of violence at her fingertips. Help me, Leanne. What am I to do? He’ll kill me if I leave him. Each beating, arm-twist, kick, broken ribs and bloodletting listed. She trembles as she reads them. Time has not diminished their ferocity. The desperation she had seen on Elena Langdon’s face was a reflection of that terror. She sees it also in the photographs that accompanied these letters. She finishes reading the last one and closes the box. It’s time to collect Kayla from school but, first, she must shower the residue of dust and memory from her skin. She works late into the night to make up for lost time. The wind blows hard around the cottage. If there is an electrical outage it will affect her schedule. She has been lucky so far, with only short outages, but Lily has told her she once had to cope for four days before her electricity was restored. No wonder families fled this wild terrain with its orchestral gales and drumming waves. Kayla, born to these sounds, sleeps soundly in the next room and the light in the cottage window is the only glimmer in the enveloping darkness of Mag’s Head.
Forty-One
Finally, there has been a court ruling. Elena can see her children for an hour twice a week in the Kingsdale Community Centre, but always under the supervision of a social worker.
They meet in a room with bright yellow walls and toys to distract Grace and Joel should the reunion with their mother become difficult. The social worker’s name is Sophie. She looks far too young to be writing a report on this reunion and summing up emotions she will only experience if she is unlucky in love. But she sits at a discreet distance and Elena is grateful for that.
Grace runs into her arms but Joel cries when she takes him on her knees. He is sturdy and long-legged, almost unrecognisable as the baby she held to her breast while his father lay bleeding on the floor of the ice house. He wriggles too quickly from her arms, intent on playing with the toys.
Grace wants to know when she is going home with Elena. She pushes out her bottom lip in a once-familiar pout when she hears she must stay with her grandparents for a little while longer. Elena is conscious of Sophie’s eyes on her as she plays with her children. Her voice is pitched too high, the tone fake with forced jollity. Then they are gone, Grace in tears and Joel, who has finally relaxed into her embrace, clinging to her neck when she hands him over to Sophie.
She watches from the window as Yvonne and the social worker speak together in the car park. Yvonne, who appears to be arguing with Sophie, is probably insisting that this first visit is having a traumatic effect on her grandchildren. Elena is consumed by a savage desire to run out and silence her. Is this how Nicholas feels before he attacks? The uncontrollable anger that can only be appeased by brutality?
When Yvonne has driven off, Sophie pauses on her way back into the community centre to stare at the car Elena came in. Difficult to miss Rosemary’s flamboyant, orange-coloured Citro?n. Last week, she replaced it with an Audi SQ5 and handed Elena the keys to this one.