The Wife Before Me(91)

Moira Ward is a chameleon who blends into her surroundings. An inconspicuous woman of uncertain age and grey hair dyed a mousy beige. Nicholas recognised Neary’s, where old-fashioned lamps and wooden panels add an authentic charm to the old pub. How intense Elena looked as Mark explained how he would destroy the man who had destroyed her.

Other photographs puzzled him. An untamed landscape overlooking the ocean. Rocks slanting towards the sun. Stained-glass designs that were familiar to him. A child, dark skin glistening with water, green eyes staring trustfully into the camera and, by her side, a slim figure, white-blonde tangles hiding her features as she raised a hand to block off the invasive lens.



* * *



Mark does not hear the footsteps gaining on him, nor feel the air stir with menace. Ducks are sleeping in a row, the ones at the end keeping one wary eye out for perilous encounters. He crosses a humpback bridge and stops on the crest to admire a lone swan, gliding on the water like a ghostly ballerina. He phones Graham and apologises for his lateness. He’ll be home in thirty minutes.

‘Hurry,’ Graham says and the longing in that one word sums up the tenderness of their marriage. It is the last word Mark will hear before he is struck down by a one-punch blow to his head.

That night when Elena was helpless in a basement and fighting for her life, my fury struck a spark in this nameless heartland. It shattered glass, wrenched steel. Tonight, I feel it again. The swan rises on the crest of my rage. Wings outstretched, a clumsy take-off that turns to grace when she is airborne. She flies so low that Nicholas is startled by her appearance and the blow he delivers is weakened.

Why am I forced to witness these visions? I am helpless, invisible chains and walls separating me from those I love. Pinned like a butterfly in a shadowbox, my wings stilled as Mark collapses, his face smacking against the pavement, his brain stunned. A couple, attracted by the swan, appear from behind the Pepper Canister church and approach, cautiously. The swan flies in a circle above the spot where Mark lies. Nicholas slips away, his footsteps making no sound on the pavement as he blends into the darkness, and the swan returns to her nest among the reeds.





Fifty-Four





‘No change,’ Graham tells Elena when she arrives at the hospital. He holds on tightly to her hands, his cheeks knuckled with shock, and asks her how anyone could do this to Mark.

Photographs of the couple who found him unconscious on the pavement and called an ambulance have appeared on the front pages of the newspapers. They have been interviewed on the morning news bulletins. Last night, walking in the opposite direction to Mark, they noticed a swan rising from the canal and doing what they described as ‘acrobatics’ in the air. They returned to watch her glide back to the water and discovered Mark. No one else was on the scene.

Mark remains in intensive care and on life support to help his breathing. She sits with Graham in the hospital corridor and tries to console him. They strain forward each time they glimpse a nurse or doctor in scrubs hurrying past but the medics keep their eyes averted. They are used to the desperation of loved ones waiting to hear the latest update.

Graham has seen the tabloid headlines. Gay-bashing. Where did they get that information? The term has an ugly resonance that belongs to the past. He refuses to believe it was the reason for the attack. Mark has no enemies, he knows; and there are no secrets between them… He screws up his forehead at the latter thought. And yet, and yet…

‘He was working late so often lately,’ he tells Elena. ‘We both have to do that occasionally. It’s never been an issue before now but this time there was more to it than late hours.

He brought it home with him, not the work itself but the energy of it. He wasn’t sleeping well. I’d awaken some nights and he’d be downstairs on his laptop. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing and that’s unusual. We talk about everything, including our work.’ He continues searching for reasons. Maybe the tabloids have it right. Maybe his attacker mistook him for someone else. Maybe some crazy coke-head turned vicious and Mark was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The conversation goes round in circles. Elena lets him talk. There is only one possibility. Nicholas knows. Somehow, he has gained knowledge of the fact that his computer was being hacked and identified Mark as the hacker.



* * *



She arrives at the community centre early. As usual, Sophie meets Yvonne at the entrance and brings the children into the room to meet their mother. For the next hour they will play on the slides and bricks, and Elena will read to them, Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman, as she does on every visit.

Ghosts don’t exist. She knows this now. She never experienced Amelia’s cool breath on her skin or moved to the bidding of her unseen presence. There was a logical reason for the shattered office window, the rattling shutter. Sooner or later she would understand it. Imagination, overstretched and stressed, had played tricks on her. What did exist, she discovered on her second visit to Mag’s Head, was enduring friendship and selfless love.

In the hidden chamber, she read the letters Amelia had written. She saw her bruises in the photographs scattered before her and, in the muddled and sometimes indecipherable writing, her words had revealed an awful truth. Desperate to protect her unborn child, she had jettisoned her own identity to emerge from the chrysalis of violence. How must that feel? To live in a dead woman’s shoes? Elena understands this overwhelming protectiveness. If she could snatch Grace and Joel and bring them to a place of safety, she would do so without hesitation.