Woman Last Seen(65)
To think that had all been Leigh’s. It was mind-blowing.
Fiona pitched for the job although she doubted she would ever be able to completely satisfy the client. Fiona couldn’t gift Mrs. Federova the biggest pad, which is what she really hankered after. Fiona had noticed that about rich people, they were rarely content with their own wealth however much that was but often obsessed with the greater wealth of others. Why couldn’t people be more grateful? she wondered. If she had a fraction of what others had, she would be gratified, gladdened.
Fiona takes the tube to Daan Janssen’s apartment. It’s not an especially pleasant journey. People are becoming increasingly nervous about the media attention on the virus. She doesn’t know what to believe. Is there a real threat? It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. The reporting of the origin of the disease seems smeared with prejudice and designed to create fear. The Asian passengers on the tube are wearing face masks, other passengers stare at them with a mix of envy and resentment. Anyone who coughs is glared at. Fiona stands for the journey. She spreads her legs and bends her knees to find balance as the tube judders. She doesn’t want to touch a railing.
Fiona recalls the apartment she had pitched to transform. The floors were a decent-quality hardwood but pocked by small rugs that, while charming in a cottage, looked provincial and out of place in the spacious, urban dwelling. It never failed to surprise her how many people with a lot of money had no taste at all. She’d noted with some pleasure that the furniture was quality but dated, knowing she’d be able to make inroads and improvements easily. Quick wins tended to lure in clients.
Fiona remembered Mrs. Federova proudly showing her the communal areas. “To help set tone.” In fact, to show off. The swimming pool, covered with silver mosaic tiles, and the communal gym, with all the best equipment on hand to help bodies stay toned, were impressive. Desirable. Every detail was easy to recall. Exquisite opulence abounded. She couldn’t tell Mark that. Or, if she was going to tell him, she should have said something straightaway.
The other thing that she recalled about the development was the number of apartments that remained empty for sizeable periods of time, as they were bought up by people with multiple properties and choices about where to live. It wasn’t just Mrs. Federova who was looking to employ an interior designer, many of the properties were under construction. Floors ripped up, kitchens and bathrooms ripped out in a constant quest for the latest must-have top-social-status decor. Fiona wasn’t complaining; she earned a living through other people’s ambition, other people’s discontent.
The development was very private, quiet. The apartments were exclusive, practically deserted. There was something else that Fiona didn’t want to say to Mark. Fiona thought they were the perfect place to stash a captive.
Or a body.
29
Kylie
Friday 20th March
I keep drifting into a peaceless sleep and then waking again, shivering or sweaty. Hungry, unrested. Each time I wake there is a split second when I forget I am in this room and I think, am I with Mark? Am I with Daan? The usual question that I ask myself whenever I wake. Usually, whichever answer presents itself, unrolls into some level of organization, and I take control. But now when I wake up, it takes a moment to remember, I am alone. Time sloshes around me. I might drown in it. What can I do other than wait it out? I think it is Friday. If it is, then no matter who is responsible, the world must know I am missing by now.
The world must know I am a bigamist.
All I ever wanted to do was give the boys a happy home but now they will know their home was faulty, fractured.
In most marriages there is a problem with time. There often is not enough of it, sometimes there is too much of it. Naturally with two marriages I have this problem doubled, intensified. However much I plan, compartmentalize, organize, sometimes the two worlds blur, they collide. At Christmas, for example, I can’t be two people and I have to be in one place or another. I have to choose. Until this past Christmas I always chose to be with the boys, with Mark. How could I not? Christmas is for kids. Daan is not a kid. But he is my husband, so it hurt being away from him. I told him I needed to be with my mother on the actual day, that we could celebrate another day—what did it matter to us? And he agreed. So on the twenty-fourth we drive up to Mark’s parents’ home, sit on the motorway for long hours, nose to tail with all the other cars full of people trying to get to their families; compelled by love or duty, or a blurred blend of the two. Love and duty can be smudged together like two different colored packs of Play-Doh; once teased, mauled, handled they can never be completely separated. Both bright colors smirch into a duller shade.
Our Christmas Days pan out very much like everyone else’s we know, I suppose. An early start, the kids bouncing on our bed, bony knees and elbows landing indiscriminately, stockings already opened, a chocolate orange quickly consumed, the evidence of which is smeared on their faces. There are paper hats and too much food, too much drink, a polite pretense that new slippers are the ideal gift from my mother-in-law. I drown in a mass of plastic and tantrums, and sulks and laughter. Then it is all over by 4:00 p.m. By that time, Mark’s parents are usually dozing on the sofa, not replete, stuffed. The boys are huddled in the corner of the room playing with new toys, sometimes contentedly but most likely low-level bickering abounds. A full row might erupt or be avoided because the turkey sandwiches and trifle are served. Food none of us need or really want but we have to have it because, “Christmas isn’t Christmas without turkey sandwiches and trifle, is it, pet?”