Rob’s blue eyes flash open. They stare at each other, his face a picture of pure shock. It’s not Rob. She gets up and starts to back away, one hand to her mouth, telling herself it’s all in her mind, that Rob’s had French lessons, that it was his voice tonight, that she’s suffering from Capgras syndrome. But it’s no good. He was to her right, she can’t deny it. She doesn’t have Capgras. When she’s out of the door, she runs to the bathroom and throws up just as she reaches the loo. Tears stream down her face as she retches and retches again. Every sense in her body told her it was Rob who came tonight. Every sense except her sight, her trusted eyes, and she did her best to stop them from ruining things.
She so wanted to believe it was him, to prove to herself that she hasn’t been going mad. Now, though, it seems she’s wrong. The man in the bedroom is a stranger. The smoke has returned, swirling and choking. Should she go back into the bedroom and challenge him again? Ask him straight out if he’s his doppelgänger, Gil from Thailand, here to take over Rob’s life, this apartment, her?
‘Kate, are you alright?’
Rob’s voice, behind her. She clutches at the loo bowl for strength. Or is it to stop her hands shaking?
‘I’m OK,’ she says, her back still towards him. Please don’t come any closer. ‘Must have been something I ate,’ she adds.
‘Kate, I’m sorry, I hope it wasn’t the crayfish. It’s usually so good.’
‘I don’t think it was that,’ she says. ‘Maybe I just drank too much wine tonight.’
‘Can I get you anything?’ he asks.
Is he coming nearer? Please God, keep him away. She can’t cope with this any more.
‘I’m OK, just need to stay in here for a bit. On my own. You go back to bed.’
‘You sure?’
Rob’s voice, Rob’s sympathy… What’s wrong with her? She should turn around to look at him again, but she can’t.
‘I might sleep in the other bedroom, so I don’t disturb you,’ she manages to say.
‘Let me know if you need anything,’ he says kindly.
She closes her eyes as she hears him walk back to the bedroom.
77
Jake
‘Do you trust him?’ Jake asks as they drive on towards London.
‘Who, Rob?’ Bex asks, moving to overtake a solitary lorry on the motorway.
Jake nods, shifting in his seat. It might be his imagination, but it’s feeling a little warmer in the car than it was.
‘He’s been great for Kate,’ Bex says. ‘The Rob I know. The real Rob.’
‘But do you trust him?’ Jake repeats.
‘Yes, I trust him.’ Bex casts him another glance, as if wondering where he’s going with this. ‘So does Kate.’
Jake turns away and stares out of the window, watching a group of workmen in high-vis jackets behind a line of flickering traffic cones on the motorway’s hard shoulder. He used to write from dusk until dawn in his last days with Kate, but it wasn’t because he was a natural night owl. It was because she was asleep in their bed and he couldn’t bear to feel lonely lying beside her.
‘She trusted you too,’ Bex continues.
He squirms in his seat. It was inevitable that at some stage they’d talk about what happened between him and Kate. And now seems as good a time as any. According to the satnav, it’s another hour before they reach Rob’s house in Shoreditch.
‘That’s what made it so hard for her,’ Bex says. ‘We all know she can be a bit skittish, likes to flirt with everyone, but she would never have been unfaithful to you. Not in a million years.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I messed up.’ He thinks about opening a window. Maybe it’s hot in the car because he’s burning with shame.
‘Who was she, by the way?’ Bex asks, failing to sound casual. ‘Kate never said.’
Jake tries not to think about that day if he can help it. It was not his finest hour. One of the worst in his life, in fact.
‘Kate never asked,’ he says. ‘And I never told her.’ He pauses. ‘I didn’t even get her name, her real one.’
‘No way.’ Bex throws him a mischievous smile.
‘I’d been drinking in Swindon,’ he says. ‘Dark days. Things were pretty bad between me and Kate. For some reason I decided to download a dating app. I’d never done anything like that before – no need – but I’d just read an article about the online dating scene and thought I might include it in the next book. At least, that’s what I told myself.’
‘All in the name of research.’
‘Exactly. So I downloaded the app and headed for the busiest area I could think of, the Brunel Shopping Centre.’
‘Romantic.’
Jake and Kate used to prefer the Designer Outlet at the old Great Western Railway works. When Jake got bored with shopping, he’d slink away to look at the steam trains.
‘And all these people wanting no-strings sex come up,’ he says. ‘A hidden layer of promiscuity just beneath the surface. Who knew?’
‘Welcome to my world.’
Bex has never made any secret of her use of dating apps. He should have asked her how they work – it would have saved him a whole lot of trouble. His relationship too.
‘And one of them looks nice enough, says she’s up for anything, so we meet and the next thing she’s kissing me,’ he continues. ‘I can’t say it wasn’t exciting – it was the first time I’d been kissed by anyone other than Kate in twelve years.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Bex says.
‘We went back to her bedsit, but I couldn’t go through with it. I left in a hurry. That didn’t matter, of course. The damage was done. I never saw her again, but Kate did – our meeting had been filmed.’
He will regret for the rest of his life the manner in which Kate found out. It must have been such a shock. The chances of her seeing the CCTV footage that caught the moment they kissed in the shopping centre were slim, to say the least, but it happened. He has to live with that.
‘Maybe it brought things to a head,’ Bex says.
‘I still wish it hadn’t.’
One crazy, midlife moment had ruined everything. It’s all behind him now, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped caring for Kate, worrying about her.
‘Is it roasting in here or just me?’ Bex asks.
‘It’s hot,’ Jake says, pleased that it’s not only him.
He opens his window and searches the touchscreen for the climate-control settings. ‘The heating’s on full,’ he says, turning it off.
‘I didn’t touch it,’ Bex says.
A second later, loud music starts to play through the speakers. Heavy death metal.
‘Turn that off.’ Bex glances across at Jake, who’s still fiddling with the touchscreen.
‘That wasn’t me. I promise,’ he says.
He manages to shut down the music, but it comes on again, even louder this time: growling vocals and fast, incessant drumming.
‘I’m going to pull over while you sort it.’ Bex slows the car down on the hard shoulder. ‘I can’t drive with that bloody racket on.’