He leaves reluctantly, the Swaine Adeney bag waiting on the stone table while we have one last breakfast.
It won’t be for long, he says. And I’ll come back for a night or two when I can.
He takes a final look around the house, at the pale open spaces. I’ll be thinking of you, he says. He points at me. Wearing that. Living like this. The way the house was meant to be lived in.
I’m wearing one of his white Commes des Garçons shirts and a pair of his black boxer shorts as I eat my toast. Though I say it myself, it works. Minimal house, minimal clothes.
I’m becoming a little bit obsessed with you, Emma, he adds.
Only a little?
Perhaps the break will do us good.
Why? Don’t you want to be obsessed by me?
His eyes go to my neck, to my new shorter haircut, almost too short for his hands to get a grip in when he fucks me.
My obsessions are never healthy, he says quietly.
After he’s gone, I open my computer.
Time to find out more about the mysterious Mr. Monkford.
The fact is, the way he reacted last night when he saw my haircut has given me an idea. An idea so crazy I can hardly believe it myself.
Mr. Ellis? I call. Tom Ellis?
At the sound of my voice a man turns toward me. He’s wearing a suit, a yellow hard hat, and a frown of disapproval.
This is a construction site, he says. You can’t come in here.
My name’s Emma Matthews. Your office said you’d be here. I just want a quick word, that’s all.
What about? Barry, I’ll catch you later, he says to the man he was talking to. The man nods and heads back into one of the half-finished buildings.
Edward Monkford.
He stiffens. What about him?
I’m trying to find out what happened to his wife, I say. You see, I think it could happen to me as well.
That gets his attention all right. He takes me to a café near the site, an old-fashioned greasy spoon where construction workers in hi-viz jackets tuck into plates of fried eggs and beans.
Tracking down the fourth member of the original Monkford Partnership hadn’t been easy. Eventually I’d found an old cutting online from Architects’ Journal announcing the Partnership’s formation. Four fresh-faced graduates stared out confidently from a fuzzy black-and-white photograph. Even back then, it was clear Edward was their natural leader. Arms folded, face impassive, he was flanked by Elizabeth on one side and a ponytailed, much slimmer David Thiel on the other. Tom Ellis was to the right of the picture, a little separate from the others, the only one smiling for the camera.
He brings us mugs of tea from the counter and spoons two sugars into his. Although I know the Architects’ Journal photo was taken less than a decade ago, he looks quite different now. Heavier, fatter, his hair thinning.
I don’t normally talk about Edward Monkford, he says. Or the rest of the Partnership, for that matter.
I know, I say, I could hardly find anything online. That’s why I phoned your office. Though I must admit, I hadn’t expected to find you working for somewhere like Town and Vale Construction.
Tom Ellis’s employer is a massive company that builds estates of near-identical houses for commuters.
Edward’s trained you well, I see, he says drily.
What do you mean?
Town and Vale build affordable homes for people who want to bring up families. They site them near transport links, schools, doctors’ offices, and pubs. The houses have gardens for children to play in and insulation to keep fuel bills down. They might not win architectural prizes but people are happy in them. What’s wrong with that?
So you had a difference of opinion with Edward, I say. Was that why you left the Partnership?
After a moment Tom Ellis shakes his head. He forced me out, he says.
How?
In a thousand different ways. Challenging everything I suggested. Ridiculing my ideas. It was bad enough before Elizabeth died, but after he came back from his sabbatical and she wasn’t there to rein him in anymore, he turned into a monster.
He was heartbroken, I say.
Heartbroken, he repeats. Of course. That’s the great myth Edward Monkford’s spun around himself, isn’t it? The tormented genius who lost the love of his life and became an arch-minimalist as a result.
You don’t think that’s right?
I know it isn’t.
Tom Ellis studies me as if debating whether or not to go on. Edward would have designed his barren little cells right from the start, if we’d let him, he says at last. It was Elizabeth who held him back—with her and me backing each other up, he was effectively outnumbered. There was David Thiel, of course, he only cared about the engineering side. Elizabeth and I, though—we were close. We saw things the same way. The Partnership’s early designs reflected that.
How do you mean, close?
Close enough. That is, I suppose I was in love with her.
Tom Ellis glances at me.
You look a bit like her, actually. But I suppose you already know that.
I nod.
I never told Elizabeth how I felt, he says. At least, not until it was too late. I thought it might be difficult if she didn’t feel the same way, given we were working together so closely. That didn’t stop Edward, of course.
If Edward wanted her, he’d have told her so, I say.
The only reason he made a play for Elizabeth was to take her away from me, Tom Ellis says flatly. It was all about power and control. Just as it always is with Edward. By making her fall in love with him, he gained an ally and I lost one.
I frown. You think it was about the buildings? You think he married her just to make sure the Partnership built the kind of houses he wanted?
I know it sounds crazy, Tom Ellis says. But Edward Monkford is crazy, in a way.
No one’s that ruthless.
He laughs hollowly. You don’t know the half of it.
But the first house the Partnership built—One Folgate Street—was originally going to be quite different, I object.
Yes. But only because Elizabeth got pregnant. That hadn’t been part of Edward’s plan at all. Suddenly she wanted a family home with two bedrooms and a garden. Doors to shut off rooms for privacy instead of flowing open-plan spaces. They argued about it—God, how they argued! To meet her, you’d think Elizabeth was a sweet, gentle soul, but she was just as stubborn as him in her own way. An extraordinary woman.
He hesitates.
One night, not long before Max was born, I found her in the office, crying. She told me she couldn’t bear to go home to him, that they were so unhappy together. He was incapable of the smallest compromise, she said.
Tom Ellis’s eyes drift away from me, unseeing. I put my arms around her, he says. I kissed her. She stopped me—she was completely honorable, she’d never have done anything behind Edward’s back. But she told me she had a decision to make.
Whether to leave him, you mean?
He shrugs. The next day, she said I should forget what had happened, that it was just the hormones making her upset. That Edward might be difficult but she was committed to making their marriage work. She must have managed to get him to compromise to some extent, because the final designs were actually quite good. No, more than good. The house was brilliant. It made perfect use of the available space. It wouldn’t have won any awards. It probably wouldn’t even have put the Partnership on the international map. Comfortable, well-thought-out architecture never does. But the three of them would have been happy there.
He pauses. Edward had other ideas, though.
In what way?
Do you know how she died? he asks quietly.
I shake my head.
Elizabeth and Max were killed when a parked digger rolled into a stack of concrete blocks near where they were standing. At the inquest, it was suggested the blocks hadn’t been stacked correctly and the pile was unstable. Plus the digger might have been parked on a slope with its hand brake off. I spoke to the site foreman. He told me the stack was sound and the digger parked correctly when he left the site on Friday afternoon. The accident happened the next day.
Where was Edward?
On the other side of the site, checking progress. Or so he said at the inquest.
And the foreman? Did he speak out?
He watered his evidence down. Said there’d been squatters sleeping on the site who might have broken into the digger. Edward was still employing him, after all.
Can you remember the man’s name?
John Watts, of Watts and Sons. It’s a family firm.
So let me be clear about this, I say. You believe Edward killed his family just because they were getting in the way of the kind of house he wanted to build.
I say it as if I think Tom Ellis is crazy, as if the idea is so preposterous I can’t believe it. But actually I can. That is, I know Edward’s capable of anything that he decides to do.
You say just, Ellis says flatly. There is no just with Edward Monkford. Nothing’s more important to him than getting his own way. Oh, I don’t doubt he loved Elizabeth, after his own fashion. But I don’t think he cared for her, if you see what I mean. Did you know there’s a species of shark so vicious, their embryos eat one another in the womb? As soon as they develop their first teeth, they turn on one another until only the biggest one’s left, and that’s the one that gets born. Edward’s like that. He can’t help himself. To challenge him is to be destroyed by him.
Did you tell the police any of this?
Tom Ellis’s eyes look haunted. No, he admits.
Why not?
After the inquest, Edward went away. Later we heard he was living in Japan. He wasn’t even working as an architect, just supporting himself with odd jobs. David and I thought we’d seen the last of him.
But he came back, I say.
Eventually, yes. One day he walked into the office as if nothing had happened and announced that from now on the Partnership would be going in a new direction. He cleverly pitched it to David as a fusion of visual simplicity and new technology, and persuaded him that I was standing in the way. It was his revenge on me for taking Elizabeth’s side against him.
So while he was away, I say, you didn’t want any scandal because you thought the Partnership was all yours. That’s why you kept quiet.
Tom Ellis shrugs. That’s one interpretation.
It sounds to me as if you were trying to piggyback off Edward’s talent.
Think what you like. But I agreed to talk to you because you said you were scared.
I didn’t say I was scared. I’m curious about him, that’s all.
Christ. You’re in love with him too, aren’t you? Tom Ellis says sourly, staring at me. I don’t know how he does it—how he mesmerizes women like you. Even when I tell you he killed his own wife and child, you aren’t disgusted. It’s almost like it excites you—makes you think he really is some kind of genius. When all he really is, is a baby shark in the womb.