‘Sit down – I’ll get it,’ he says, opening the fridge. ‘We’ve only got champagne in.’
‘No, no… I couldn’t! Champagne’s for celebrating. It wouldn’t feel right… not with Marta missing.’
‘Come on, I think we both need it,’ he says, popping the cork.
‘Well, I’m not toasting to anything,’ she says, the algorithms in her body going haywire. This is all wrong; it feels wrong.
‘What if she has been abducted? What if she’s been murdered, raped or God knows what else? She could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere right now and we’re here drinking bloody champagne.’
He holds his glass up towards his lips. ‘She’s definitely not in a ditch.’
‘How do you know?’ she says. ‘You watch those programmes on TV. There could be a prowler around… It could’ve been me… He could’ve taken Lily!’ She takes a large swig of the champagne.
‘Calm down – you’re letting your imagination run riot. You know, I really think she’ll turn up again, if not here then somewhere… and if it makes you feel better we’ll install more security measures, get some more sensors, add a few more cameras.’
Cameras!
‘God! Evan! We have CCTV! Front and back! If someone came into the house then they’ll have been caught on camera, won’t they? Did the police take the footage?’ In her blind panic she has clean forgotten about the CCTV. They lived in a big house in a salubrious area; as targets for professional criminals they were CCTV’d up to the hilt.
Evan nods. ‘Yes, they took it… I gave it to that detective – the other one, Delaney.’
She feels a sense of relief wash over her, or perhaps it’s the alcohol hitting her empty stomach – only it’s soon replaced by dread again. The police will start digging. They will check her alibi and find out that she is lying. She has to tell him. She has no choice. She throws back the remainder of her glass.
‘Evan… there’s something I need to talk to you about.’
He’s turned to look out into the garden again, his back to her; he doesn’t respond.
She waits for a moment, breathes deeply, takes another large gulp of the champagne.
‘I’m sorry, Evan,’ she says gently, ‘but… I want a divorce.’
Four
Beth
June 2018
She says it quickly, like ripping a plaster off in a bid to lessen the pain. She’s had these words bottle-necked at the back of her throat for what feels like a lifetime and finally saying them aloud brings instant, palpable relief, like the moment a rotten tooth is extracted.
He doesn’t answer her, doesn’t turn around. She waits nervously for a response, thinks about pouring herself another glass of champagne but wonders if that would appear callous. ‘Evan, did you hear me? I said I—’
‘I heard what you said, Beth.’ His voice is a monotone, cold even, but then, Evan isn’t one for public displays of emotion – or any emotion for that matter.
‘Will you sit down, Evan?’ she asks after a moment’s silence. ‘Please.’
He ignores her again and she exhales some of the adrenalin that is coursing through her like rapids.
‘I… I want to explain… I want you to understand, or try to.’ She really wishes he’d just sit down; the way he is standing – statue sill – is making her edgy. ‘I haven’t been happy, Evan.’ She hears herself as a cliché, even though it is the truth. ‘We haven’t been happy; not for a long time – we both know that, don’t we?’ She’s rehearsed this moment over and over again in her mind for so long that she knows it verbatim, like an actor knows a script; only now her mind has gone whiteboard blank.
‘I mean, there’s this huge gulf between us; surely you’ve felt it yourself? We don’t communicate with each other… we don’t talk… we don’t… well, we don’t do anything together… do we?’ His silence is making her babble, desperate to fill the empty space. She’d always been the fixer in the relationship, the one who addressed any problems, but she no longer possesses the energy, or passion, to make things better. ‘Evan? Will you look at me?’ She’s pleading with him now. ‘I’ve tried to talk to you about this before… about this distance between us.’
She had attempted to express her feelings to him a year or so before she’d fallen pregnant. Looking back, it was nothing short of a miracle they’d ever managed to conceive their daughter. Sex between them had been practically non-existent, despite her attempts to spice things up a bit by wearing nice underwear and suggesting ‘date nights’, but mostly there was always a reason or an excuse for him to avoid any intimacy. She’d felt hurt by his physical and emotional rejection of her; it had knocked her self-esteem. She was young and attractive and took care of her body – why didn’t he want to make love to her?
‘We haven’t shared a bed since Lily was born,’ she says. ‘I know we don’t really argue – in fact, sometimes I’ve wanted to argue with you, Evan, just to see something from you, some passion, some emotion… anything…’ She looks over at him. He still has his back to her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re happy with the way things are because I know you’re not – neither of us is. We’ve been plodding along now for years, disconnected from each other – we’re like strangers who live together, little more than housemates. You don’t know what I think, or how I’m feeling; you never ask me about myself, or my opinion on anything, or what I want or what makes me happy. You don’t even ask me how my day has been, or about Lily much. When we do talk it’s about your job; we talk about construction, Evan! We don’t even watch TV together or listen to music or—’
He turns round to face her finally.
‘Have you finished, Beth?’ he says, his voice still a monotone.
She blinks at him, a little stunned. She’s always hated him speaking down to her, like she was a naughty child.
‘Well, yes, I… no, actually I haven’t… I’m not trying to make you out to be a bad person, Evan… I’m just… it’s just that it’s—’
‘Is this to do with Marta’s disappearance? Is that what’s set you off, her going missing?’
Set her off? This is nothing to do with Marta’s disappearance, and yet at the same time it somehow has everything to do with it. She has been putting this moment off again and again, and it had been Marta who’d encouraged her to pluck up the courage to tell the truth: ‘Carpe diem, Beth!’ That’s what she’d said. ‘Life’s not a dress rehearsal!’ The shock of her disappearing has somehow brought her emotions to the fore, and, if she is honest with herself, she is scared she’s going to be found out. She doesn’t want him to hear it from the police.
‘You certainly pick your moments, don’t you?’ he says dryly.
She drops her head. ‘There is no good moment, Evan.’ She feels like a bomb has detonated inside her, piercing her internal organs with sharp emotional debris.