He reaches for me and I brush him aside. I can barely speak without my voice shaking. Anger, burning my throat like acid.
‘Frances, I don’t know what to say.’
‘What you should say is what you should have said six years ago. “I don’t want kids.” It would have saved all of this! Why lie to me?’
‘Because I had nothing else to offer you! I wasn’t exciting. I didn’t take risks. I hated the parties you went to and the people you hung out with. I hated the drugs you took – cocaine made you nasty, ketamine made you boring. All I had in my favour was my security. That, I could give you.’
‘But it’s not enough. And you knew that. And you did it anyway. You’re a fucking monster.’
I pick up my drink, knocking him aside with my shoulder as I push past him. I hear Alex open the door to the dining room and ask William what the hell is going on in here, Mum’s trying to sleep, but already I’m pushing open the back door and heading into the inky soft night, the grass damp under my hot, bare feet, stars glittering in the vast sky above. Tears blur my vision and my breathing, ragged, uneven, makes a rasping sound in my throat. I find the place where the hammock has been strung between two old apple trees, the ropes of it greyed with age, and sit there, head down, letting the sobs come, letting them slowly erode my defences as the moon rises between the branches of the trees.
William finds me an hour or so later. By this time I am lying on my back, one leg hanging over the side of the hammock, nudging it from side to side. I don’t respond to his presence, or his questions, and I pretend not to notice the concern on his face as he squats down beside me.
‘I know about Kim, William. I went to see her.’
‘Who?’
‘Rattlesnake80,’ I tell him. ‘She said that’s the name you use.’
Oh boy, the look on his face. It’s like watching a meteor impact, like a cave-in. I can almost forget my own pain.
‘How long have you known?’
‘Since before we came down here.’
A pause. The rasp of his breathing lifts into the air.
‘It’s just money, Frances. It’s a transaction. We’ve only talked once or twice. I don’t even know her real name.’
‘It’s Kim.’
‘Is it? Huh. She doesn’t look like a Kim. She was using one of those corny cam-girl names like Dallas or Cherry or something.’
‘What did you know about her?’
‘Not much. She said she’s a student. She wouldn’t tell me which university.’
I feel oddly calm. Knowledge is power, after all. William, on the other hand, looks swept away, grey-pallored, almost queasy. Good; he deserves it.
‘What’s it for, William? If it’s not sex, what is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You gave away nearly three thousand pounds.’
‘I know that, Frances.’
‘Why?’
I let him be silent long enough, his eyes downcast.
Finally he says, ‘She gave me something you didn’t.’
‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’
‘Distance. You were always so intense. Like you were on the verge of a – I don’t know, a – a breakdown. Your career, your moods, even the way you had sex – it was always so intense. I just needed to get away from that.’
‘Huh.’ My temper is a wildfire, fast-spreading and hard to control, always changing direction. But when it burns out, as it inevitably does, I feel washed out. Numb. Fire is cleansing. It purifies. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hurt him back. To sting him like the words will come back and sting me, the sharp pain of them in the middle of the night, at home alone.
I turn my head upward, looking towards the sky. It’s high and vaulted, a cathedral ceiling finely painted with silvery clouds and pockets of stars, a perfect crescent moon. I almost expect a seraphim to appear.
‘I saw your dad’s grave today.’
William immediately bristles. His posture changes, becomes stiffer. His arms fold across his chest. It’s that subconscious behaviour again, animating him from within. How well I know it. How well I know him.
‘Would you say you two were much alike?’
‘Frances, whatever you think you know about my dad—’
‘That’s the problem, isn’t it, William? You’ve never told me anything.’
‘I just – I don’t know how to make you understand. I wish I could be more helpful.’
‘Then answer the question.’
He thinks for a moment. ‘Okay, yes. Very much. From what I remember he was a good, practical man. He liked routine. I know he seemed boring to some, but it was just his way of getting things done.’
‘Well, that is like you.’
‘Yup. It’s in the genes.’ He laughs weakly.
‘Would you say he was capable of keeping secrets?’
William seems to think about it. ‘I would have said no. Honesty was his bedrock, really. But then I think about how he was with Alex and that bloody sheep’s skull – “Don’t tell your mum or she’ll kill us” – and I wonder. He was obviously able to keep secrets, so maybe he did have that side to him, although it doesn’t sound right. Why do you ask?’
‘Just thinking. About you. About deceit.’
‘Well, you know what they say. The sins of the father and all that. I like to think he was a good man, an honest one. That he wouldn’t have let you down the way I have.’
Silence. All around us, the dark heart of the night.
‘Are you going to leave me, Frances?’
He swallows convulsively and I am sure he is about to cry. I can’t look at him. I can’t answer his question either, because I don’t know. I once had a patient who had been experiencing a strange pattern in their behaviour. When their anxiety peaked, as it so often did on public transport, they found themselves buttoning and unbuttoning their coat, almost obsessively. They were barely aware of it, until they looked down at themselves and noticed the movement of their hands. It’s a displacement activity, usually seen in animals, a way for the brain to deflect stress or uncertainty. My mind is circling, again and again, back to Edie Hudson, as it has done since I picked up the photo in the shoebox, the one I wasn’t supposed to see. My brain picks over the scant details as a way of deflecting from the way my marriage is collapsing, the way the nursery will remain empty, the money we’ve lost. It’s displacement. I welcome it, for now. ‘Right now I’d really like to just be on my own, William.’
He gets up silently, walking back towards the house with his hands in his pockets and his head down. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Me, I’m thinking about Alex telling me not to mention the photo to William, but then doing so himself. Mostly I’m thinking that a man who drives his car off a bridge and into the river would at least try to remove his seat belt. But Edward Thorn let himself sink to the bottom and didn’t make any attempt at escape. A man with no secrets doesn’t do that.
In the middle of the night I wake up in bed, mouth dry and furred. William is gently snoring next to me, one hand pinned to his chest. I ease myself out and down the dark hallway, my head cloudy with sleep. In the kitchen I drink straight from the tap, head bent under the faucet. A dark bib of water appears on the neck of my T-shirt. When I stand upright again there is a thin face reflected next to me in the dark window. Coldness rushes through me.