Woman Last Seen(71)

Having a favorite child is frowned upon. Poor parenting. The goal is to love them equally, even if it is differently.

I love Seb because when I am around him, I can soften, I can be still, peaceful, complete. He makes me laugh out loud. I’m always throwing my hand over my mouth and erupting into the sort of laughter that ultimately makes my ribs ache. He’s funny, irreverent, fast.

I love Oli because he is a challenge. He doesn’t care whether he makes me laugh or not, but I care whether I can draw a smile from his handsome full lips, whether I can ease out a grunt of approval. If I can lessen his seemingly endless mistrust of the world, his pain.

I love both my boys equally. No favorites. Any right-thinking parent would rather die than admit to having a favorite.

And my men? My husbands? It is the same with them.

Thoughts whirl in and out of my head as my eyes rest on the chaos and rubble at my feet.

I wanted to be loved exclusively. Daan loves me more than he loves anyone else. Daan loves me so much, but what did I offer him? Not the same singularity, not exclusivity. Of course, it is Daan who brought me to this, Daan is not a man who would accept sharing.

Nor is he a man who will forgive.

At least my boys are safe. If Daan is the madman, not Mark.

My instinct is to yell for help, but I doubt I’ll be heard on the street even through an open window, not from this height. I’m more likely to be heard by Daan, who is presumably close by. I pick up a piece of plasterboard and throw it toward the window. My aim is off, it hits the wall. I bend, pick up another piece and try again, this time it falls short. However, the third piece of debris sails out of the window. The relief is enormous. It isn’t a big piece, but I imagine it falling to the ground, maybe even landing on or near a passerby. They’ll look up and wonder where it has come from. Excited, I reach for another piece of plasterboard. I throw that, it flies. The next doesn’t and I’m bitten by a sense of panic. I know I have to stay calm and focus. Systematically I hurl the pieces of debris out of the window. Eight, nine, ten scraps hit the mark and find freedom. I continue to break pieces of plaster from the wall and hurl them out the window. I imagine the debris collecting in a pile on the pavement below. Surely someone will notice that. Alfonso the concierge won’t like a mess around the building, he’ll want to investigate. The hole in the wall is now sizeable—I’ve snapped off every part I can reach. I’m getting tired and more of the debris is missing the target of the window and just coming to rest somewhere in the other room. My hands are cut, scratched, bleeding.

I need water.

I slump down against the radiator again and wait.

As the day leaks away, the cold night air comes through the window and hole in the wall and chills me. I try to wrap my arms around myself to keep warm, but it’s uncomfortable because of the chain and the injuries. I carefully tuck both hands between my thighs instead. My fingers are freezing but trying to warm them leaves them smelling of my shit. I sit in silence. And wait.

But waiting is not enough. I have to do more. My progress with the wall has given me some hope. I have to keep trying. I slam my chain against the radiator. It makes a clanking sound in the room. Maybe the sound will somehow reverberate through the pipes of the building. The sort of neighbors I have will not like being disturbed—they will investigate. I slam the chain again. Crash. And again. Clatter. And again. Clang.

I will do this all night if I have to.

I will crash and clatter and clang. I will not be silenced.



32


Daan


Sunday 22nd March

Daan pulls apart from the body tangled in the sheets next to him and rolls onto his back. He stares at the ceiling. Her breathing is a touch under a snore, but heavier than he is used to. It is distracting. He could never live with it. Not that he’s thinking of living with it. Obviously. He never intended to even allow her to stay over. It isn’t like him to deviate from a plan, but he isn’t thinking clearly. When she turned up at his door it was just easier to let her in than send her away. On some level it was good to see her, she is so separate from everything else he is going through. She has no idea he is married to a woman who is married to another man. That mess, that humiliation and the subsequent consequences are light years apart from this—an uncomplicated shag, a bit of companionship.

He can smell her now, warm and alive. Here. It is some comfort. It is something. She starts to stir, rolls over to face him, her hair spilling like waves across the silk pillowcases. Kai insisted on them having silk bedding; she read somewhere that the pillowcases helped preserve a blow dry. He too liked the silk sheets and everything they did between them. They had a good sex life, excellent. He always thought it was kept hot because she was away for half the week, not quite accessible, not quite available. Unlike other women who were always throwing themselves prone at his feet. When he first met her, she was a career woman with a job she loved—that was hot. When she suggested giving up work to nurse her mother, he’d been a bit disappointed, care homes were not erotic, but he did admire her sense of duty and commitment. She still offered him space.

Of course, since he’s discovered what Kai had really been up to when she was away from him, it isn’t at all sexy. It is demeaning. Unforgivable. He is not beyond reproach when it comes to fidelity, but the other women he took were just ways to pass time. Not dissimilar to drinking a decent glass of wine or going on a challenging run. Fun diversions. Not important. She was married when he met her. There was no way to look at that fact without thinking it is important. Vital. Everything. She was never his. He was the diversion. He was not important. It was unbelievable. Insulting. How could this have happened to him? Fury burns in his stomach, like a fire. Jealousy, a desire for revenge and answers billow through his mind like smoke.