They were up in the bedroom in the main house before Becky had even left. Had their cleaner known all along? Adam wondered. Did this explain the sheepish, pitying looks she had been giving him for the last few months when he’d been at home?
Adam followed them. He couldn’t help himself. At first, he wanted to make sure that this lingering, passionate kiss wasn’t something else; that he was indeed witnessing, first hand, that corniest of clichés, an affair with the help. But then, as the door closed behind them, and Rod was out of his lumberjack shirt before you could say Bhujangasana, he realised he was. Rod hadn’t even made it to his funeral and now he was fucking his widow.
It was hard to watch, but strangely fascinating too. Adam didn’t want to stay, he really didn’t, to see his wife’s face contorted into those expressions he’d not witnessed himself for a while. Rod was quite the lover. He took his time. He toyed with her. Then came on strong when she wanted it. And boy did she seem to want it. The funeral had made her needy.
Watching them, her specifically, Adam was swept back to the early 2000s, when Julie had been like this with him. He had almost forgotten recently why he had thought it a good idea to leave Serena and the children. Now he remembered.
It had been an exciting and dreadful time. Julie in her shared flat in Notting Hill, twenty-something PA to an important client, deferential, flirtatious, fun for God’s sake! Serena and the children back at the family house in Tufnell Park. Twelve and fourteen was not a good age to put your kids through a marriage break up, was it? Older Leo, bless him, had been remarkably stoic, though he’d had his flare-ups. Younger Matilda had not behaved so well. Sometimes, in his guiltiest moments, Adam wondered whether she had ever recovered from the effects of his selfish abandon.
Was he aroused, watching his wife in this mode? No. There was nothing to arouse. He felt strangely detached, like someone with vertigo looking out of an aeroplane window and feeling no fear about the ground far below. Yet his jealousy was intact. There was a part of him that wanted to fly in and pull Rod off, throw him to the floor, punch him hard in the face. But what with? There was nothing he could do.
Or was there? Surely a decent ghoul would have chucked a shoe onto the bed or picked up Rod’s lumberjack shirt and floated it spookily out of the window. But Adam hadn’t even the beginning of an idea how he could do that. He had no hands, no feet, no voice, no purchase. On anything.
How long had this been going on? Now that he thought about it, Julie had been much less tense than usual in recent weeks. How had he not spotted it? He knew the answer. He’d been so worried about Julie finding out about Eva that he hadn’t seen what was going on right under his nose. Now he laughed, bitterly. The trouble he had gone to, to keep his dark secret: the dedicated Outlook account, the second phone, ‘the burner’ as Eva laughingly called it, like something out of a TV box set thriller.
He had even felt bad about how well they had been getting on recently, he and Julie. Was this what I needed to improve things, he’d thought guiltily, as he drove home on Fridays after another discreet week with his young lover, an affair? And all along that new glow on his wife’s face had not just come from her yoga.
No, he couldn’t watch them a moment longer. He took himself out into the garden, down the long sloping green lawn to the natural pool. He settled for a while on the island in the middle, another of his ideas. As a boy, he had always liked islands, particularly little ones in the middle of rivers and streams that you could make your own.
This one was full of promise at this time of year, with the mix of rushes and lilies he had planted and encouraged, dotted among them the weeping sedge. Nor was there any need for the tiny rowing boat, The Coracle, as he and Julie called it, that normally brought him here. He just floated over – and there he was, in among the reeds, looking out over the tight green buds of the Nymphaea, the burgeoning white waterlilies that gave a Monet-style vibe to this part of his creation.
What he should do, he thought, was to wait until Julie and Rod had exhausted their mutual energies and then go back and eavesdrop on them, find out exactly what was going on. From being temporarily out of the frame, Julie had shot straight back to number one suspect. With ex-military, go-getting Rod as her assistant, doing away with Adam would have been easy. Now the motive was there, writ large: the house, the lion’s share of his money and his equity in Albury & Atkinson. Why, the negotiations had already started, with him barely cold in the ground. How long would they have to wait before Julie announced her new romance; before Rod’s canal boat outside Tempelsham became just a fun place to visit on a warm summer’s day, and horny Rod had the full run of Fallowfields?
Despite, or perhaps because of his anger, Adam suddenly felt a powerful longing for Eva. Obviously he couldn’t hold her, or touch her, or even make himself known to her, but just to see her would be a relief, a salve to his jealous spirit. Yesterday, at the funeral, and in the noisy crush of the wake, he had only glimpsed her, and always in company. He had longed to talk to her, to find out what she made of this suicide nonsense, but there had been no chance of that. On the two or three occasions when he’d got close to her, the conversation he had found himself listening in to had been inconsequential. Even though Eva was not one to show her true feelings in public, hiding them always behind her carefully cultivated ironic mask, she had looked troubled. ‘Even if you’re not making an issue of it, you don’t believe it, do you, my darling?’ he had wanted to ask. ‘That I would do that. Top myself. Especially now that I have you.’
Where would she be now? he wondered. Twelve thirty. At the office, unless she was out with a client or nipping down to Pret to get an early lunch. How good it would be just to see her! At her desk, eating as she worked. Sneaky bites of sushi or her favourite ‘soggy BLT’ accompanied by sips of her traditional skinny soy latte. From his glass cube of an office, Adam had often watched her; long before they had got together, too.
It had all been innocent enough at first. She was, God help him, over twenty years younger than him. Not that it had ever occurred to him, as he had helped her through her year’s practical training, the functional filling in the sandwich that was RIBA Parts One and Two, that they might be anything other than boss and student. Of course, as he had taken her under his wing and out to the site visits and planning meetings that would look good in her logbook, he had noted her particular charm and beauty. But never in the context of any intimacy with him. She was ‘the mixed-race girl’, later ‘the woman of Thai-Mauritian heritage’, whom Jeff was thrilled to have on board because it upped their diversity quotient, and Adam because she was keen, and good, and thoughtful, and provocative and a delight. With the extra bonus that she generally saw things his way. That London, for all its dirt and ugliness, was still a treasure trove of fine and historic buildings, and it was more than just a shame to tear them down and put up yet another identikit glass and steel tower. They could do that in America, where their idea of a historic building was a colonial timber-framed house from the 18th century, something that probably wouldn’t even be listed in the UK.
On Adam’s advice, Eva had done her Part Two at the AA, where he could keep an avuncular eye on her; before welcoming her back to Albury & Atkinson for her Part Three, her professional practice year. Even then, anything other than a business relationship and warm friendship had never crossed his mind, though he had often sat so close to her they might as well have been in bed. He knew that soft sigh of hers when she was frustrated, the way she bit her lower lip when she was concentrating, all that stuff.
It was Butcher’s Yard that had brought them together. Her passion to hold on to the essence of that picturesque and, to use the word properly for a change, unique bit of old Clerkenwell had chimed with his. Together with her team leader Reuben they had come up with a scheme whereby the existing buildings would be incorporated into something new, yes, but not overwhelmingly so. The historic yard would remain intact, complete with the existing facades. Behind that, the ramshackle old houses, where the offices of two legal firms and an august Royal Society were jammed together higgledy-piggledy, would be completely stripped out and redesigned, to create the big airy sunlit spaces that were Adam’s trademark. It would be a fusion, as Adam liked to say, of the best of the old with the best of the new.
They had been on the same side as the tenants, against the designs of the client, who had always known how much more they could make out of the site with a brand-new £100 million pound tower, not a mere £4–5-million-pound regeneration scheme. Jeff had brought the job in and Adam, with his conservation expertise, had initially carried it forwards. But then decent Stewart, the senior planning officer on the case, had fallen foul of council restructuring and been replaced by Dodgy Dave, and suddenly the story had changed and Jeff was gung-ho with the ‘iconic tower’ idea. Had this been his plan all along? Had backstage influence and brown envelopes been involved? Adam could never prove it, though he distrusted the clients, (Steve) Sugar and (Tim) Savidge, a dubious pair if ever there were one. It was galling that he was suddenly fighting his own business partner on this project, that Stan was no longer there to back him up, that Jeff now had more heft because he had an extra twenty per cent of the equity from Stan, that Adam was losing control, not just of what was happening to Butcher’s Yard, but of Albury & Atkinson itself.
One night in the dark little garden area behind his favourite local, The Prosperous Parson, fired up and furious after a passionate defence of his scheme, staying for an extra tipple after Reuben had left, he and Eva had kissed. Just like that. After all those long years. He was ashamed to admit that at that moment Julie hadn’t even come into the equation. Whatever remnants of love they had wasn’t enough for him to resist Eva’s entwining fingers.
So what could he do now? Glide out of the garden, down the lane, onto the main B4021 into Tempelsham. How long would that take him? Could he somehow hitch a ride on a car to speed things up? What would happen at the station? Would he sail down onto the platform, slide in through the doors and find an empty seat on the train? Is that what ghosts did, when they wanted to transport themselves?
Even as he was worrying about this, he realised that the garden was fading out. The chirruping birdsong had been replaced by the hum of traffic and the distant whine of sirens. The quiet tappety-tap of laptops. Adam was in the Sheridan Street offices of Albury & Atkinson, Architects.
Now he was floating, amazingly, right through the long glass wall that he himself had installed when they had first taken over these premises, almost thirty years before; when for all the burgeoning swank of the colonnaded shopping arcade, Covent Garden still had its run-down corners, and it was possible for a thrusting young firm to buy, freehold, a couple of semi-derelict warehouses on the tattier edge of the area.
Adam was in the conference room. The weekly management meeting was just coming to an end. Eva and the others were on their feet. The Weasel, at the end of the long glass table, was still seated.
‘Eva,’ he was saying. ‘Could we just have a quick word?’
‘Jeff.’
‘Shove the door to, could you. Have a seat. Great ideas today on the Peabody project.’
‘Thanks.’
‘On another matter, if I may, how did you get on yesterday?’
‘At Adam’s funeral?’
‘I hardly saw you.’
‘It was super-busy, wasn’t it?’
‘How did you think it went?’
‘The funeral of a suicide, Jeff. It was never going to be a jolly occasion, was it?’
‘No. Having said that, I found the service intensely moving.’ Jeff paused, then repeated the last two words, as if to convince himself of his own sincerity.
‘What did you make of the friend who tried to justify it?’ Eva asked.
‘That long-faced professor guy?’
‘Him, yes.’
‘It’s a point of view, I suppose.’
‘Did you agree with him, Jeff?’
‘Certainly not. Why would I? No. Suicide’s a terrible thing. Weird to try and justify it, actually.’
‘Agreed. D’you think it’s cowardly? Selfish?’
Jeff sighed. He hated to be put on the spot about anything that challenged his comfort zone of right-on, generally acceptable ideas. He looked down for a moment, as if his crotch might offer him some answers. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘deep down, I do think it’s a bit cowardly. At one level. But also brave.’
‘One or the other, Jeff.’
‘I get that. But it must take quite something to try and gas yourself in a car.’
‘And succeed.’
‘To sit there, waiting, inhaling the noxious fumes…’
‘How long does it take before you lose consciousness?’ Eva asked. ‘Do you have any idea?’
‘No.’
So that was it. Jesus. He had gassed himself in a car. In a garage? In his garage? Had he done the full trope? Exhaust, hosepipe, windows closed. How did you even fix a domestic hosepipe to something as wide as a car exhaust? Did you have to tape up the window the hosepipe went through? These operational questions confirmed to Adam what he already knew. That he hadn’t somehow managed to blank out the whole thing in some kind of post-traumatic amnesia. He had never done it. Okay, so he’d had some quasi-suicidal moments in his life, on vertiginous sheer cliffs or on bridges above raging rivers, where a powerful desire for extinction had momentarily overtaken him. There had, more to the point, been dark days of despair, when the idea of living and working had seemed both pointless and absurd. But forget about raindrops on roses or tartiflette and génépi, the idea of ending it all just wasn’t in his mindset.
Like Celine Dion, he had wanted to go on and on; looking, engaging, creating, living, till the bitter end. He had even joked that if things ever got that bad with his existing life he’d get on a plane and find another one; and not in the Maldives or Seychelles, where life might seem even emptier over a cocktail by a glinting blue pool, but somewhere gritty, uncomfortable, even dangerous: the Gaza Strip, the Yemen, the Congo, Ukraine. Somewhere to make him wake up to his own remarkable fortune in being alive at all, let alone the privileged white stale old male, yadda yadda, that he was. He remembered an argument he’d once had about this with Julie.
‘Do you really think,’ she had countered scornfully, ‘that if you were seriously suicidal, you’d have the energy to relocate to a war zone? It doesn’t work like that.’
‘It would with me,’ Adam had replied stubbornly. Bottom line, even if a volcanic depression had swept in and overcome him, so that he couldn’t wrench himself from some benighted solipsistic hell, a hosepipe in a car was never the method he would have chosen.
‘Three hours,’ Eva told Jeff. ‘With carbon monoxide.’
‘Christ on a bike!’ his business partner replied.
‘Christ on a bike indeed. It shows determination, doesn’t it?’
‘Certainly does.’
‘Did you see it coming, Jeff?’
The Weasel seemed taken aback. ‘No, I didn’t. Though Adam hasn’t exactly been at the top of his game recently.’
‘You were trying to get rid of him, though, weren’t you?’
Just as he’d done with Julie, Jeff feigned surprise. ‘What do you mean?’ he replied.
‘Come on! We all know what’s been going on.’
Jeff was leaning forward. ‘Sit down a minute, Eva.’
‘Why?’
‘Please. You obviously want to have this conversation. I think it might be healthier for us to level about things in an honest fashion.’
She sat, a little reluctantly, two or three chairs away from him. It was more of a perch than a full sit. I can run away from his bullshit at any time, her body was saying.
‘I do understand,’ Jeff went on, ‘that this has all been very hard for you.’ He gave her a meaningful look.
‘Why particularly “for me”?’ She made the quotes with her fingers, disdainfully.
‘Come off it, Eva. You say you all know that I was trying to force Adam out, which is absolutely not the case. But by the same token, I’m sorry, it’s hardly as if your little liaison has been a well-kept secret.’
The cast-iron shit. But he was hardly acting out of character.
‘Okay,’ Eva replied, slowly. She didn’t seem shocked that he knew; nor was she going to bother to deny it. ‘So what?’ she replied.
Jeff shrugged. ‘As I said, Adam’s tragic death must have been difficult for you. Especially as you’ve not wanted to talk about your private loss with anyone here.’
‘How the fuck do you know who I’ve talked to?’ Eva looked down at the table, then up again. ‘What did you want to say, anyway?’
‘Partly this, really. I totally get that you were, are, a great believer in Adam’s vision, in his way of doing things, but we have to accept that he’s gone now. We need to move forward.’
‘To your vision? The Clerkenwell Tower?’
‘Not specifically just to my vision. But I don’t want us to be hung up on a lot of things that Adam was, to put it mildly, a bit of a dog in the manger about.’
It was all coming out now. Adam’s vision, Jeff elaborated, was admirable. Obviously, buildings needed to be built, primarily, for the people who were going to live and work in them. Jeff too was a believer in ‘sensitive placemaking’. That went without saying. But it was also possible to go too far in that direction.
Was it? Eva asked, and they were suddenly deep into a tense theoretical discussion about the purpose of architecture. It was one that Adam was screaming to join, if only to remind Eva what a profit-seeking wretch Jeff was. How for all this fashionable talk about placemaking, he was forever trying to increase density, reduce public space and turn projects into the most expensive versions of themselves possible. Which was, frankly, why his more unscrupulous clients liked him so much.
‘Look, Eva,’ Jeff said eventually. ‘What I wanted to say is this. I really don’t want you to think that now that Adam’s gone, I’m gunning for you. I’m not. I like your style. You’ve got a great deal of talent and once the Peabody thing is up and running, and we’ve resolved Butcher’s Yard, I’d be keen to make you a team leader on a new project.’
‘Okay,’ she replied. She didn’t refuse his offer or tell him to sling his hook because she was going elsewhere. Was it that easy to win her round? ‘For what it’s worth, Jeff,’ she added, ‘I don’t think Adam killed himself.’
Jeff made his best taken-aback face. ‘No? So what did happen?’
‘I don’t know. But he had no reason to. He was enjoying life.’
‘With you?’
‘Partly with me, yes. He was frustrated by what was going on here, between you two, but that wouldn’t have defeated him, to the point of taking his own life, even if you had succeeded in driving him out.’
‘I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere here, Eva.’ Now Jeff’s bad cop was peeping through. The charm had gone, and his tone was more matter-of-fact. ‘Poor Adam was found in his wife’s garage, dead in his car, overcome by carbon monoxide fumes. There was a note, too, by all accounts. I do understand, Eva, why you might be tempted to deny what happened, but…’
A note! Good God! So someone had made a thorough job of this.
Eva was on her feet. ‘You’re not going to change what I think,’ she said.
Did she also know about the note? If not, why wasn’t she asking Jeff about it?
‘Okay,’ he replied, suddenly reasonable again. He held up his hands in fake surrender.
By the door Eva paused. ‘Thanks for your faith in me, by the way.’
Jeff grinned, Teflon tyrant that he was. ‘It’s what we do, Eva,’ he said, the master of smarm, as always.
But what on earth was she playing at?