Chapter One

Heather is behind me in the car. I can see her as I drive. Sometimes she’s gazing out of the window, and at other times she’s humming or talking quietly to herself, expressions flitting over her face like bright little shadows. I wonder what’s going on in that head of hers. She’s always been full of whimsy and imagination. She’s been quieter and more serious lately, but that’s hardly surprising.

She never asks me where we are going.

Occasionally I catch a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror – just the glint of peroxide-white hair, or the frame of my sunglasses – and I wonder who on earth I’m looking at. I feel a jolt of fear, a rush of panic that makes my palms prickle and the ends of my fingers tingle, and have to fight the urge to press down on the accelerator and escape. Then I remember that this stranger is me.

Peroxide-white hair. What was I thinking?

I’m supposed to be anonymous. And here I am, with a platinum bob and a smear of scarlet lipstick on my mouth, looking like something from a science-fiction movie or a spy thriller. I’m even wearing a black trench coat, and my boots have a heel of almost an inch. My theory is reverse psychology: surely everyone will expect me to fade into the background, not draw attention to myself. They might suspect I’ll change my appearance, but not to this.

Rory once gave me a hat – a big brown fedora sort of thing, the kind with a countryside look about it. I used to wear it out shopping because, I discovered, it concealed me. People I knew would walk by me in the street. The hat was all they noticed, and their innate desire not to be seen to stare prevented them from dropping their gaze to my face.

That was in my mind when I bought the box of peroxide. By looking extreme, I hope, I will automatically deflect the looks I most want to avoid: the searching gaze at my eyes, the frown as they realise I look familiar. Instead they will look at the bright white hair and that will draw them away from the things that mark me out as me. The things I cannot change.

I had planned to disguise Heather too. I bought gingery-red hair dye for her, and I was going to face-paint freckles on her nose and cheeks. Then I found I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I decided I would cut her hair; the feathery blonde tresses would have to go. I’d give her something totally different, a tomboy cut, perhaps even dress her as a boy. But I couldn’t. I picked up the scissors and I couldn’t alter her. So she looks now just as she always has: large china-blue eyes, thick, straight lashes, the chin that has a little round bump with a dimple in it – inherited from her father. And the fair hair rippling over her shoulders.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Heather asks from the back.

She has taken everything in her stride. All the huge changes in her young life. Everything that has happened between Rory and me. The departure from her home. The strange days we’ve spent together since then, before I discovered our new place. Our hideout.

I say cheerfully, ‘Not long now, sweetheart. Maybe an hour or so. Not too much longer.’

Heather goes back to staring out of the window. Where did she learn this patience of hers? She’s always been so self-sufficient, so able to retreat into herself and find everything she needs there.

‘Do you want a story?’ I ask. ‘I can put a CD on for you.’

‘Winnie the Pooh?’ she says eagerly. We had it earlier, but I don’t mind if she wants it again. I can shut out the narrator’s voice and think. An entire CD can play and I won’t hear a word of it.

‘Yes,’ I say, and push the button to start up the story. The music begins and Heather smiles. I watch the road, mile after mile disappearing under my wheels, hoping that where we’re going is far enough.

I’m in a hire car. I didn’t use my own because I know that every car on the motorway is recorded on camera and that there’s an automatic number plate recognition system that means anyone using a major road can easily be tracked. I don’t have a satellite navigation system for fear that I can be traced by it, so the journey takes an age because I follow the minor roads through countryside and small towns and villages. Not only that, but I’ve taken a strange, circular route, miles out of my way, in order to confuse anyone who might be on my trail. Every now and then I have to stop in a lay-by and learn the next bit of the route. I can’t hold the whole thing in my mind in one go. That’s something else that’s happened recently: my short-term memory is kaput and things fall out of it swiftly and completely. As we near our destination after a long day driving, the route becomes more complicated and I have to stop more frequently. Heather has dozed off in the back of the car, her head lolling against the side of her safety seat. I’m glad. The journey has been tedious, the breaks at service stations limited to refilling petrol and quick loo visits, and the starts and stops only make it worse. I’m muttering to myself – road names, the order of right and left turns, the exits of roundabouts. We’re in a part of the country I do not know well at all, and I feel almost as if we have gone abroad.

Perhaps that’s what they will think. That’s where they’ll be looking.

I laid as many clues as I could to give the idea that we were leaving Britain. I emailed for information on accommodation in France, Italy and Spain. I bought tickets for planes, trains and ferries, creating a trail that led away in many different directions, hoping it would all cause enough confusion to buy me some time. But it probably won’t fool anyone. There won’t be a record of us going anywhere. Our car won’t actually roll onto the Channel ferry, or our luggage be put in the hold of an aeroplane while we take our seats in the cabin. There won’t be any CCTV footage of us, a white-haired woman in sunglasses holding hands with a small girl, as we walk through a terminal or pass through security. Our passports, scanned and checked, would surely be logged somehow to show that we’d crossed the border. Isn’t that what happens? Don’t they keep tabs on us all?

The problem is that I don’t really know. But I’ve absorbed, somehow, the impression that we cannot hide, not these days. The speed of communication, the networks that surround us, the cameras filming us, the satellites tracking our movements, our electronic footprints – it all means that we can’t go unnoticed for long. And when there is a child involved, there is no doubt that all those glassy, electric eyes will swivel after us, the virtual hounds on our trail, sniffing for our scent, waiting for us to flag our presence with one inadvertent touch of a button.

Which is why I needed an accomplice.

‘You have to help me,’ I said urgently, commandingly. I’d never spoken to Caz like that before and she gazed at me, afraid, cowed by me. There must have been something in my expression that told her that things were different now. I’d been ministering to her for years, while she got over what happened with Philip. I was always there, ready to talk, sympathetic, focusing on her troubles. But that was over. Now she would do what I wanted.

‘But . . . how? What can I do?’ She looked confused. It’s strange, how people press their help on you, offer to do whatever it takes – right up until you say, ‘All right then. You can help,’ when suddenly it’s not so possible after all. But I wasn’t going to let Caz wiggle out of anything.

‘I’ll need money. I can’t use the cashpoints. And I need some new ID details, so I want to use your address because it’s not linked to me.’

‘Use my address?’

‘Pretend I live there. Don’t worry, you won’t even get any post because I’ll put a redirection on it. It’s just for their systems. It won’t make any difference to you, I promise.’

Caz blinked at me, suddenly weak and helpless in the face of my strength and determination. ‘You shouldn’t do this, Kate,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s the wrong thing, I promise you. You’re going to regret it.’

‘You don’t know what I’m doing,’ I said briefly.

‘You’re leaving. You’re going away. I know you won’t tell me where. It’s not right, Kate. I’m telling you, you shouldn’t do it.’

‘You don’t understand. It’s all I can do,’ I said. ‘I don’t have a choice.’

And I was right. It was only this that was giving me the strength to carry on. I was drawing my life force from the need to escape. The urgency of planning, the lists of what had to be done, all of this prevented me from falling into the black abyss that yawned – that yawns every day – below me. That, and Heather.

So Caz said yes, as I knew she had to. She helped me, letting me use her address and keeping quiet about what she suspected. Even so, I made sure that she knew as little as possible. I created a new email account and only accessed it from the public computers in the library, securing it with passwords unlike anything I’d used before. I applied for a credit card in my fake name and it duly arrived, redirected from Caz’s house. Do these people ever check anything? Once I began to immerse myself in the plans, I even began to relish the game. What strategies could I think of to get around the people who might or might not be watching me? How could I trick them? I felt as though I was tapping into some primal desire to outwit the enemy, or like I was the leader of some small band of rebels working out how to escape a greater, more powerful foe. Robin Hood against the Sheriff. Boudicca against the Roman Empire.

And all the time I had to keep Rory from guessing what I intended to do. When we spoke on the telephone, which I tried to avoid, he’d always ask me, ‘You’re not planning on doing anything stupid, are you?’

‘Of course not.’ As if I would tell you . . .

‘You sound . . . different,’ he said just a few days before I planned to go. He’d called in the evening and I’d scooped up the phone and answered it automatically, before realising it was just the time he’d ring me.

‘Really?’ I tried at once to sound normal.

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Quivery . . . I don’t know. Pent-up. Are you okay?’

I said nothing for a moment. I honestly had no idea how to answer that question. As I thought about it, hot rage flooded through me, twisting through my stomach and pounding at my brain. What the hell do you expect? Okay? Okay? Nothing will ever be okay again!

The line between us was heavy with silence. I could hear only the faint whisper of Rory’s breathing. I knew it was hopeless waiting for him to fill it. Rory was the master of silence. He could tolerate pauses so long I had to bite my tongue not to scream at him to say something, bloody anything, just something to fill the emptiness. It would not have been so bad if I hadn’t known that his head was full of talk, he just refused to bring it out into the open. He’d only speak once he’d processed everything to his satisfaction, while I used talking as a way of understanding my own thoughts, something he could find incredibly tedious. So we each made the other suffer in our own way.

‘I’m fine,’ I said at last. The familiar bad taste was in my mouth again. Bitterness.

‘Can I come and see you?’

‘No,’ I said instantly.

‘Okay. That’s absolutely fine.’ The tone of mollification in his voice made me bristle. After a pause, he said, ‘Have you seen the counsellor?’

‘It’s pointless,’ I said briefly.

‘It might help,’ he said gently. ‘I wish you’d give it a go.’

‘Maybe. Maybe soon.’ The idea that an hour of chat with a stranger might go any way to beginning to solve our mess seemed ludicrous. Like tackling a mountain of dirt with a spoon. There’s too much, it’s all too gargantuan. ‘But not yet.’

‘When? Next week?’

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that by next week, I’d be far away, out of his reach. I’d have escaped. I knew his plan was to take Heather away from me, even though he pretended it wasn’t. I couldn’t risk that happening, not now she is all I have.

‘Yes, maybe next week,’ I said, happy to throw him a bone. I’d managed to escape him, though he didn’t yet know it.

‘Shall I book the session for you? I’ll pay for it,’ he said, a hopeful eagerness in his voice. ‘What time would suit you? Wednesday? I know there’s a slot on Wednesday.’

‘Yes. All right then. Wednesday. Text me the time. I’ll be there.’

‘That’s great,’ he said, his relief audible. ‘It’s the first step, Kate. The first step.’

‘Yeah.’ I shrugged. ‘You’re right. The first step.’

‘You could . . . could talk about Ady, perhaps.’

That was too much. ‘No!’ I shouted. The shaking took hold of me instantly. I could feel my head trembling on my neck as though I was a badly handled marionette; my fingers were thrumming, my knees horribly light with the juddering nerves inside. ‘Don’t even say it, Rory!’

‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Calm down. No one will make you talk about anything you don’t want to.’

You’re right, buster. No one will. ‘You know how I feel,’ I managed to say. The trembling had reached my voice, my mouth and lips. I could barely get a word out. My shoulders jerked with the force of my shaking. ‘I c-c-c-can’t.’

‘I’m sorry, Kate. Really. I shouldn’t have said anything. Look, I have to go. But I’ll book the session. We’ll go from there.’

‘Fine. Goodbye.’

I clicked the phone off, put it down and closed my eyes. I knew exactly what he was trying to do. The counselling would be the first step in his relentless attempt to take Heather away from me. And there was just no way that was going to happen. I had to make a choice, and I knew exactly what I would choose.

‘Kate?’

I jumped. It was two days before I planned to go and I was fuelled by adrenaline and nerves.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ It was Sandy, my boss, gazing at me with a worried expression as I sat there at my desk.

‘I’m . . . I really wanted to catch up on some things,’ I said. Even though she couldn’t see my screen, I swiftly changed to the homepage while drawing her gaze by patting the pile of papers next to me. I’d got them out just in case. The truth was that I was surfing the internet, having logged on as my old assistant, whose details were still live on the system. I’d notified IT ages ago that she’d left but they had not got round to deactivating her profile. It was lying there, unused, a safe little passageway onto the web. I’d stopped feeling comfortable at the library. As I huddled at my screen, I kept imagining people looking curiously over my shoulder, or the staff beginning to notice me and my visits to the computer terminals. Of course, there was no reason why I shouldn’t be like all the other regulars. I’d begun to recognise them: the little crew of users. Job seekers, probably, mostly young people who plugged in headphones and bobbed in time to tinny music as they tapped away at the keyboard or moved the mouse, staring at the screen with complete absorption. I wondered if I stood out among them, and had lain awake at night thinking about it, wondering how I could get round the problem of not wanting to use the library. I needed the net. It was only once I’d thought about how I might operate without it that I realised how deeply it was now woven into the thread of my life. It provided the information and communication I needed, particularly if I wanted to move at speed. I suppose some people are still content to write a letter by hand, post it and wait for the reply that might or might not come, but I was no longer one of them. I wanted answers today. This afternoon. Within the next hour. Now. Now. Now. There was no time to lose. And that’s when I had the idea of coming into work. Immediately, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this solution before. I’d fallen asleep, newly relaxed, almost at once.

Now, as Sandy stood in front of me, concern all over her face, and a certain wariness in her gaze, I realised why this was not going to be as simple as I’d hoped.

Why is nothing easy? Why can’t I just do what I want?

She said slowly, ‘That’s really admirable, Kate. But honestly, you don’t need to. We are perfectly able to cope without you while you take the time you need. Lindsey is doing a great job at covering for you.’

I took a deep breath. Time for some more obfuscation. ‘Well, I know, but actually, I’m feeling a lot better and I just need to . . . I just need to . . . do something.’ I smiled at her, my expression, I hoped, winsome, and perhaps a touch pleading. ‘I’m going crazy at the house with nothing to do. I just felt the urge to come in and tidy up some loose ends. I thought about emailing Lindsey, and then I thought what the hell, I’ll just come in and do it myself . . . and I did.’

Sandy smiled back at me. It was all there in her eyes. I could read what they’d been saying about me, what they were thinking – lots of sympathy, lots of interest, lots of ‘there but for the grace of God’ stuff. They’re good people, but they’re people all the same. We all, in the end, look at others and wonder if they really feel or think or understand things the way we do. Or we mull on someone’s circumstances for a while, then go back to the confines of our own existence with all its multifarious problems and pleasures.

At the moment, no one wants to be where I am, and the reality doesn’t bear too much thinking about. They close it out and go back to worrying about all the little things that take up so much space until one day the big thing comes that makes everything else look like so much pointless trivia and you long for the time when a shit day was one where the boiler broke down, or the car got dented, or you overstayed in the supermarket car park and they gave you a fine. All the meaningless irritants that can’t really touch you.

I had come into the office as early as possible to avoid the stares and glances, and the swooping of concerned colleagues. When I had arrived, the night security guard was still on duty at the reception desk. He watched blank-eyed as I flashed my badge at him, and said nothing, clearly not recognising me, and the fourth floor was empty and silent but for the low hum of the photocopiers and hard drives. I forgot that Sandy likes to get in to the office extra early on the days when her nanny leaves at four. She must have seen me when she came out to get some coffee from the kitchenette.

‘Kate,’ she said softly, ‘there’s really no need. Everything is taken care of. I don’t mean your job has vanished. It hasn’t. We’ll wait until you’re in the right place and then we’ll be delighted to have you back. But I don’t think you should rush it. It hasn’t been very long . . .’

‘All right, all right,’ I said, and my eyes flicked to the screen. I would log out now. It was obvious I had to leave. ‘I know. I really do. But . . .’ I smiled again. ‘It’s weird the way things can play on your mind. I feel better now I’ve sorted it out.’

I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything. But it didn’t really matter. Lindsey would have done it, she’s so efficient.

‘I’m glad you feel better. But I don’t think this is the right place for you at the moment.’

I bristled at her words, though I hid it. She might mean to be sympathetic, kind and constructive but for an instant I heard her telling me that I was bringing something awful with me into the workplace. I was tainting it. They didn’t want me bringing in my turmoil. I was someone leprous now, unclean. Should I be ringing a little bell to warn of my approach so that the whole and healthy could get out of my way before I infected them and their happy, comfortable little worlds? I couldn’t speak as these thoughts raced wildly through my mind. Sandy put out a hand towards me, her expression sorrowful.

‘Kate. We’re all so sorry.’

‘Yes. Thank you. I got the flowers.’ I managed a smile.

‘If it would ever help to talk, I’m here for you.’

‘Thank you.’ I shut down my computer and got to my feet. ‘That’s kind of you. Really.’

‘Let’s be in touch about when you’ll be ready to return. We’d like you back. When you’re up to it.’

‘Yes, yes . . .’ I grabbed my coat from the back of my chair. ‘That’s great. I’ll be sure to let you know. Bye, Sandy. And thanks again.’

I headed out before she could say more. I didn’t want pity and sympathy, I just wanted to be able to get on with things. There was so much to do. I was in a rush. I had to get away. There wasn’t time to think about everything.

Rory called me that evening. I knew it was him. One glance at the clock and it was obvious. It was eight o’clock and I was busy clearing up after putting Heather to bed. Her supper things were still on the table, her bowl too full of abandoned macaroni cheese for my liking. She’d never been a hearty eater, usually eating so slowly that she managed to kill her appetite before she’d really had enough to constitute a meal, but some dishes, the ones she loved, disappeared extra fast. Lately she’d been eating less and less, and although I was cooking up her favourites as often as possible, I couldn’t seem to get enough into her. I was scraping most of what I cooked into the compost bin.

I’ll feed her up tomorrow, I promised myself, and then wondered what I would eat. I didn’t much like macaroni cheese but my appetite for everything had diminished. I couldn’t seem to taste anything anymore. The bitterness in my mouth was too strong for food to overcome, and without the pleasure of taste, food became a boring necessity. More often than not, I put some bits of cheese on some crackers and ate that. Sometimes I remembered to pick up a pot of mackerel pâté, or something I could grill quickly and easily. I noticed in a vague way that I was losing weight, but it didn’t matter to me a bit. Once I would have gloried in the way I had to pull my belt to the very last hole, and then make a new hole, or revelled in the feeling of my clothes falling away from my skin, the bagginess at the back of my jeans. Now I couldn’t care less. My only concern was that I had to stay well, for Heather’s sake. She needed me.

When the phone rang, the irritation surged through me. Couldn’t he leave me alone? Why keep pestering me like this? It wasn’t going to make any difference.

‘What do you want, Rory?’

‘Just to talk to you for a bit. See how you are.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Can I come over?’

I glanced around at the mess still waiting to be dealt with: dirty saucepans, the colander, spoons, the sauce-spattered worktop, the yellow strands of grated cheese that had fallen about. ‘No. I’m busy.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Rory . . .’

‘What?’

‘It’s none of your business what I’m doing.’

‘I think it is. I care about you. You’re my wife.’

‘For now,’ I said briefly. I didn’t care what he made of that. I didn’t care about hurting him. After all, what could really hurt us now?

‘Kate.’ His voice was heavy with sadness. ‘This doesn’t have to happen to us. We can get through it.’

‘I don’t think so.’ I meant it. I really didn’t think it was possible. I could vaguely remember that we were happy once. He made me laugh so much. He cherished me and protected me, and we built a life together. Then he spoiled everything. He drove us apart. And no matter what he thought, I was sure it could never be put back together.

‘I wish you’d let me see you, so we can talk.’

‘What will we talk about?’ Immediately after I said it, I wished I hadn’t. I couldn’t open the way to that. ‘Listen, you can’t come round. I’m sorry. We’ll talk another time.’ I put the phone down and stared at it for a moment. I supposed Rory and I would divorce at some point, when I’d got the time to think about it and the strength to tackle the dreary admin it would involve. The business of the house. The division of money and belongings, such as we had left. What would happen to Heather. The other unspoken things.

He’s not taking her away from me. It’s what he wants. It’s what they all want.

Now here we are, in this grand but deserted old place. Just the two of us. Safe at last. I know they think I shouldn’t keep her. My mother thinks it. That’s why I won’t see her either, or my sister. They’re in cahoots with Rory, all of them scheming how to get her away from me. That’s why I have escaped them while I can, while I still have the opportunity.

I’m outside the bedroom, looking through the crack in the door. The lights inside are off. I can make out the dark shapes of the bed and the man sitting on the edge of it. I hear the small voice asking, ‘Daddy, are you going to die? Will Mummy die? Will Heather die?’

The answer is gentle. Firm, but absolute. ‘Yes. We’ll all die.’

‘When? Will we die soon?’

‘We might. No one knows.’

I can hear Rory’s resolute emphasis on honesty. We always said we won’t lie to the children. We’ll tell them the truth about everything. About how they were born (no gooseberry bushes or storks), about what they can expect from life, about how transient it is, with no promise of God or afterlife or anything like that. We won’t fudge, or patronise, or condescend. We’ll tell the truth.

The boy’s voice is anxious. ‘Tomorrow? Will you die tomorrow, Daddy?’

‘I might. We could all die at any time.’

‘Don’t go out tomorrow, Daddy!’ The fear vibrates through his voice. I can almost see him clutching hard at his father’s hand. ‘Stay at home where it’s safe.’

‘C’mon now, buddy. It’s not that likely. I’m sure it will all be fine. The chances are that I’ll make it through tomorrow.’

‘And the day after?’

‘Probably.’

‘But . . .’

‘One day we’ll all die. It’s horrible, but that’s the way it is. Now, shall we talk about something else?’

But the boy can’t talk about anything else. He only wants to talk about death until at last he is persuaded to sleep.

‘For God’s sake,’ I say later, when we’re in front of the fire, glasses of wine on the table before us, ‘just tell him you won’t die!’

‘But I can’t guarantee it.’ Rory sighs. I can tell he hates the thought of causing pain but that he’s made a decision and feels he should stick to it.

‘Can’t you see you’re scaring him? Is that really the best way?’

‘I won’t lie to him. Didn’t we always say we’d tell them the truth?’

I look over at Rory, his brown eyes so full of sincerity and so well meaning. I already know he’s lying to me, every day. He’s been lying for months. And I can’t help thinking we don’t know the truth. We don’t know anything.