Chapter Five

France

12th August: One day before the arrest

Siobhan

OK, here’s the truth. I’ve known about my husband’s latest affair for four months, two weeks and three days. I’ve known that whenever we make love, he might be thinking of her, and I’ve known that every time his phone goes off, it’s her who’s texting him. Caroline. I even know her name. I’m pretty sure that’s who he was with in Norfolk last month, when he told me he was with a client. Yeah, right. He even hid his suitcase somewhere in a feeble attempt to cover his tracks; it wasn’t in the downstairs cupboard where it normally lives. Didn’t want me to see any evidence of his dirty weekend away. He wheeled it out from somewhere on the day we left for France, thinking I hadn’t even noticed its absence. He must think I’m stupid, and lately I’ve been thinking that maybe I am.

Here’s what I don’t know. I don’t know exactly how long the affair has been going on, and I don’t know exactly when they met, although I’m guessing it will be something to do with his work. It usually is – the first few liaisons were, anyway. He likes to impress people, does Callum, I’m a TV executive, yes, that’s right. Cue smile, another drink. It works on the people of Suffolk; it might not wash in London, but here our lives are smaller somehow, there is less competition. It allows him to shine. It worked on me.

I’ve turned a blind eye to his multiple affairs, on and off for the past six years. Why? For the sake of our family. For Emma. For our house, for our life. The first time, all those years ago, I was heartbroken, of course I was. But over time, I’ve grown less so. Call it pathetic, subservient, whatever you’d like, but I watched my mother lose everything in our parents’ divorce and every time I visit her, alone and almost penniless in that nursing home in Norfolk, I feel validated in my decision. I decided to be strong, decided that I could cope. And then I thought they’d stopped, that he’d grown out of it all. After Natasha the intern, there was a break of about two years, two years where I couldn’t find any evidence, couldn’t see any difference in his behaviour. His phone held no secrets, and I allowed myself to relax a bit, congratulated myself on sticking it out. It was over – he was mine, and I no longer had to compete. I’d won.

But then along came Caroline, and I realised it hadn’t stopped at all. And somehow, that felt worse because I’d let myself believe it was over. Fool that I am. Yes, the affair with Caroline has hit me much harder than the others because she’s proof that he gave us a go, Emma and I, that he tried life without any extras and found it wanting. He went back to his usual ways.

What I really didn’t know was that my sister might know too.

She’s staring at me now, and the look on her face is one of such pity that I feel the heat begin to sweep up my cheeks, coating me in shame.

I turn away from her, a spark of anger beginning to fizz inside me. Maria has no idea what it’s like to be married, none at all – she thinks it’s cumbersome, a burden, not to be envied. I’m reminded of what our mother always used to say, in her crueller moments: that Maria was alone because she wanted to be, because she didn’t know how to be loved. It was a nasty thing to say, really, but then our mother did have a sharp tongue when she wanted to.

‘Siobhan?’

Maybe it’s the use of my full name, but I make myself turn back to look directly at her.

‘How did you find out?’ I ask her, and she sighs. It’s a long, deep sigh and for a moment I feel my anger begin to wane, to fizzle out and be replaced by sadness. And embarrassment. Because it is embarrassing, to be caught out like this, to realise that another person knows how we are living a lie. I’ve always kept his infidelities a secret, a shameful little thing to be locked up tight.

‘Find out?’ she says, looking confused, and it’s then that I start to realise I may have got it wrong. Quickly, I backtrack.

‘Find out that we’re – having problems,’ I say, but my voice is faltering, and my sister, sharp as a tack, is narrowing her eyes.

‘I mean,’ I say, ‘nothing major, just – you know, Emma makes everything very tense; it’s meant we’re not as close as we were, as we used to be…but Callum…’

My heart is thudding. I am desperate that nobody finds out about Caroline Harvey. It is my secret, held close to my chest until I know what to do with it. Until I know how to proceed.

‘Siobhan,’ she says, ‘you’re my sister. I can always tell. You’re not yourself, neither of you are. There’s so much tension—’ she lifts a hand, slices through the air with her fingers, ‘you could cut it with a knife.’

‘You’re exaggerating,’ I say, ‘you’re blowing it all out of proportion. Callum and I will be fine.’

She stares at me, her gaze so penetrating that eventually I look away. I’m not fooling her; I’m not fooling anyone. The only other option is to get her on side.

‘Please,’ I say, and I let my voice break a little on the next word, ‘please. Don’t make this harder than it already is. Let me deal with it in my own way, Maria.’

She doesn’t say anything, just nods at me slowly, then gets up from her sun lounger and takes a couple of steps towards the edge of the swimming pool. The water glistens invitingly and as she dives in, I imagine what it would feel like for the blueness to close over my head, shutting out the world, once and for all. I watch Maria’s lithe body, a body that would make most 46-year-olds jealous, as it cuts through the water, and wonder what she meant by our conversation – whether she knows something I don’t.

‘Why don’t you join me?’ she calls to me, her dark head bobbing up above the blue. ‘The water’s lovely.’ She stretches out a hand, beckoning me towards her. I hesitate, then get up from the sun lounger and step forwards, my toes warm against the tiles. Maria claps her hands girlishly, the sound echoing through the countryside. Despite myself, I smile. I’m lucky to have a sister, I think.

‘I just want him to be good to you,’ she says. ‘All I’ve ever wanted is for you to get what you deserve.’

I reach for a croissant of my own, bite into the buttery pastry. It feels like a small act of defiance, somehow.

Callum and Emma return late, just as the sun is beginning to set. We have a lovely view of it over the horizon; it catches the French hills with an orange glow as the planes flit through the air towards Caen Airport. Maria has an app that can detect where they’re coming and going from; she holds it up into the sky and it picks up their radars. ‘Dubai,’ she will say randomly. ‘Athens.’ Emma loves it, she is still young enough to find gadgets fascinating.

Callum’s face is flushed slightly from the sun, and when Emma leans close to me, I think I can smell the faint tang of alcohol on her breath.

‘Did you have a good day? Navigate the roads all right?’ Maria asks, and, unusually, Emma begins telling us how beautiful Rouen was, how much she enjoyed it. I raise my eyebrows at my husband, and he shrugs his shoulders, as if to say no, me neither.

‘Your car was a bit stuttery on the bends,’ Callum says to Maria.

‘It was fine this morning,’ she says, ‘don’t blame your tools.’ She smiles at him, but he looks away. He doesn’t like people criticising his masculinity, does my husband.

Maria asks Emma if she’d like to help her prepare dinner, something she’d normally roll her eyes at, and to my surprise my daughter readily agrees. The pair of them vanish into the kitchen, Callum disappears for a shower (I tell him to put some aloe vera on his face) and I stay outside with a glass of wine, my body feeling strangely energetic after our swim in the pool earlier. Emma’s happy mood continues all night, as we eat out on the terrace, a feast of fish that they have brought back with them from Rouen.

It crosses my mind that my daughter is today the happiest, the most relaxed I have seen her in weeks, and that this coincides with the fact that she has just spent an entire day away from me. The thought begins to nag at me as I sup my wine: is my daughter really happier when I am not around? Do I put too much pressure on her? Or is it just that she prefers Callum’s company to my own, that he is able to reach her in a way I cannot? And then a quieter, crueller thought: what would Emma say if she knew the truth about her daddy?

As my family chatter away around me, I feel my own mood begin to sink, so much so that it’s only when Maria nudges me that I realise I have not spoken in almost ten minutes.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks me, and I know she’s thinking about our chat earlier; she’s thinking that this is all to do with my husband, but in fact it’s not, not this time. I’m thinking only about my daughter, and why it is that she is happier in the company of her adulterous father than she is in mine.

I watch her, my beautiful girl, across the table – Callum has his arm slung casually across the back of her chair, his fingers brushing the wrought-iron curves of it. Maria splashed out on the outdoor furniture – well, she splashed out on everything. All of her money goes on herself, our mother said once, she’s no one else to buy for. But that isn’t quite true, I think to myself, for Maria has bought us expensive gifts before – a gorgeous lamp for my bedside, designer perfumes for Emma. Nothing for Callum, of late. She has a good eye for detail, it comes with her job.

‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I think I’m going to go to bed. I’m really tired.’ I stand, feeling the wine hit me a little as I do so – I’ve drunk more than I thought. The energy I had earlier has disappeared as quickly as it came.

‘Are you sure?’ Callum asks, concern in his eyes, but my daughter barely looks up, gazing instead at her father, at his relaxed face, his open smile.

My husband is a world-class actor.

‘I’m sure,’ I say, waving Maria off as she attempts to come with me, ‘I’m just going to put my head down. Too much sun!’

I smile but I know it’s awkward, and the thought makes me feel unbearably sad. I was a part of this family, but when I glance back at the three of them, their silhouettes glowing under the wash of the vanishing sun, I feel left out, as though a pane of glass separates me from them all.

As I watch them, Emma does look up, just once, and her eyes meet mine across the stone flagged tiles.

‘Goodnight Mum,’ she calls to me, and I am reminded of how many times we have said those words to one another – me bending down to tuck her in when she was a small child, her begging for one more chapter of Harry Potter before bed, her little legs scurrying up the stairs ahead of me as she grew older. She used to like it when I read to her, I’d sit and stroke her hair, read her the poems of Edward Lear and the tales of Roald Dahl. She liked anything with magic in it.

‘Goodnight,’ I say back to her, ‘I’ll see you all in the morning. Sleep well.’

In the morning, of course, the police ring the doorbell at 09.03 a.m., and none of us ever truly sleep well again.