“Are you coming up?” Nathan asks that night, wrapping his arms around me as I iron Olivia’s school uniform.
I can’t help but stiffen at his touch and try to convince myself that I’m still reeling from David Phillips overstepping the mark. It’s easier that way, as it hurts too much to acknowledge that it’s actually Nathan I’m recoiling from.
“No, you go on,” I say, “I’ll be up in a bit.” I reach over the ironing board for my wine glass on the table.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” he asks, and I immediately feel my hackles rise.
“No,” I state firmly.
“Don’t make this about you and me,” he says, wearily.
“What are you talking about?”
“That,” he exclaims, pointing to the wine glass and the bottle standing beside it. “You’re drinking more than I’ve ever known you to.”
I don’t want to admit that it’s a problem—that it’s become a crutch I need to lean on.
“You’ve got to keep things in perspective,” says Nathan, “and drinking isn’t going to help. Don’t confuse whatever’s going on with it being about us—because we’re good.”
“Are we?” I ask, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“Yes!” he exclaims, as he comes toward me, pulling me in. “You’ve got a lot going on at the moment and you need to tackle everything one step at a time, otherwise it’ll feel too overwhelming.”
I wish I had his ability to compartmentalize everything, instead of having to live in the constant roar of noise as my brain battles to sort the wheat from the chaff.
“Come on,” he says, knowing me too well. “What’s causing the most grief inside that head of yours?”
I’m still struggling to prioritize it myself, and even if I could, I’m not sure I’d be able to express it.
“Are you thinking about Japan?” he asks.
I don’t want to say that it’s the least of my problems, so I nod instead.
“Okay, well you know my views on it. I can only say it as I see it and I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we’d be crazy to miss. But, it’s ultimately your decision and I’ll stand by you whatever you decide.”
“Will you?” I ask, looking directly at him.
“Yes, of course,” he says. “Look, I can see why you’ve jumped to conclusions, but if I was having an affair, do you honestly think I would be so careless as to leave hotel bills and jewelry lying around?”
He attempts to laugh and I manage half a smile. He’s right. He’s an intelligent man who would have the art of subterfuge nailed if he wanted to. He wouldn’t allow an errant bouquet to turn up at the home of his wife instead of his mistress. Any indiscretions would be micro-managed, to within an inch of their lives.
“I called the hotel in Tokyo and they confirmed that they’d given me the wrong bill. I only paid three hundred and twenty-something pounds. You can check it against the company credit card if you like.”
I shake my head, but know I probably will.
“And I have no idea where the earring came from. I can only assume it’s one of Sophia’s friends’, so no doubt we’ll get to the bottom of that in time. And the bouquet, well, I guess it just got sent to the wrong address.”
“I called them,” I say, watching him. “They confirmed that it’d been sent to the correct place and that the sender was Nathan Davies.”
“What?! Are you serious? That’s what they said?”
I nod. “They confirmed that you sent them, and that Rachel was indeed the lucky recipient, supposedly.”
“They actually said ‘Nathan Davies’?”
Did they? Or had I given them his name? I can’t remember.
“This is crazy,” he says, rubbing a hand through his hair. “If I had something to hide, believe me, I’d hide it.”
And he would. That’s the shred of hope I hang on to.
“I guess all this is the reason that you’re nervous about the Japan deal?”
“Well, it doesn’t exactly help,” I say. “You’re asking me to take out a huge debt, for a project that I’m not even convinced you’ll be around to see the end of.”
“I would never, ever, cheat on you,” he says, taking hold of my hands.
I so want to believe him. His eyes look like they’re telling the truth. I could believe him if I could just allow myself to.
“Why don’t you leave that?” he says, his fingers trailing lightly down my back. “Come upstairs.”
“I’ll come up when I’ve finished,” I say, pulling away from him.
“Okay, but don’t make me wait too long,” he says, nuzzling my neck with feather-light kisses that threaten to make my knees buckle.
I could go up. I want to go up, but I’m afraid of making a fool of myself. If I give in, then I’m saying that I believe what he’s telling me. And what if I’m wrong? Will he wallow in his ingenuity? Lose respect for his wife? Laugh about it with his mistress? The incessant rattling in my brain grows louder and I pour myself another glass of wine in a bid to quieten it down.
My laptop is open on the dining room table and I wake up the screen with a swipe of my finger. Pixels of color instantly burst into life as a photo of us all at Disneyland two years ago comes to the fore. From the outside, we look happy, like a normal family, enjoying everything that life has to offer. But if you look really closely and give it more than a cursory glance, you can see a pain in mine and Sophia’s eyes. It’s as though there’s a glaze; a transparent barrier that holds the world back at arm’s length. Too fearful of letting anything get too close, knowing that it can be snatched away the moment you let your guard down.
Against my better judgment, I open up Facebook and start trawling through the exaggerated lives of my “suggested friends.” Gina Fellowes, a friend of a friend I once knew, is currently at Manchester airport and looking forward to a “sick, no-holds barred” hen weekend in Ibiza. Michelle Truman, the wife of my second cousin’s son, is “feeling blessed” at her best friend’s granddaughter’s christening. I already feel worse than I did a few minutes ago.
I become fascinated by the power of algorithms as name after loosely connected name is offered up as a potential “friend.” I vaguely remember Jack Stokes from my first job in London and Lindsay Brindley as one of the mothers from Sophia’s Year One class. The tenuous connections make me feel uneasy, as if someone is trawling through my head, ravaging the cobwebbed corners that store information that is no longer needed. When I see the face I want to see, more than anyone else in the world, I almost gloss over it as being too familiar to concern myself with. But as I continue to scroll down, the image starts burning itself into my brain.
Tom Evans, my Tom, is on Facebook.
I race back up the screen, not knowing whether I want to be seeing things or not. In my haste I miss him and force myself to slow down as I go through the images again.
My heart feels as if it’s stopped when I see his face peering out at me; like a hand is in my chest and squeezing the life out of it. His eyes bore into mine, from the same photo that Sophia keeps in a frame on her bedside. My fingers trace the outline of his lips, and if I try really hard I can almost feel them pulsing.
How have I not seen this before? Why hasn’t he been flagged up to me, his wife, as a contact? I didn’t even know he was on Facebook. Surely his account would have been closed down by now. I feel sick as I click on his photo, frightened to see the friends he made and the conversations he had before he died.
There’s a photo of him on his news feed, the last one I took, on the day he left for Switzerland. He’s wearing the navy shirt I bought him for his birthday. His eyes, so much like Sophia’s, glisten in anticipation of his trip, excited for what lay ahead.
I look around the dining table, to the chair he had been sitting in the morning he went. He and Sophia had been side by side, smiling at me as I came down from the shower with a towel still wrapped around my head.
“What are you two up to?” I’d asked, their faces full of mischief.
Sophia giggled. “Can I show her, Daddy? Can I show her?”
“Show me what?” I’d said suspiciously.
“You’re so rubbish at keeping secrets, Sophia,” he laughed, nudging her with his elbow. They’d looked at each other conspiratorially, as they so often did, the pair of them as thick as thieves.
“We’ve got something for you,” she said.
“O-kay,” I said, looking between them, panicking that I’d not marked our temporary separation with anything in return.
Sophia reached down onto the floor. “Ta-dah,” she said, bringing up a homemade card and placing it in my hand. Jewels and gems had been stuck haphazardly onto the front, the white glue still visible and tacky—the glitter sprinkles not yet having had a chance to stick. I tried to hide the fact that there was more falling on the carpet than there was on the card.
“Ooh, what’s this then?” I asked.
“Open it, open it,” she’d said, bouncing up and down on her chair. I glanced across at Tom, his eyes ablaze with love, for her, for me. He’d give us the world if we asked for it.
Inside was a photo of us at our wedding, looking at each other at the altar. The words underneath read:
It hurts to be apart, but believe me when I say
I’ll love you all the more, until my dying day.
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I said, reaching across the table to kiss him. “Is this your guilty conscience kicking in?”
“Oh, that’s charming,” he’d laughed. “We’ve gone to all this trouble and you think it’s some kind of conspiracy.”
“So, there aren’t three other wives and mothers down the road getting the very same treatment this morning then?” I said, knowing that Chris, Ryan, and Leo would no doubt be offering the same sentiment to smooth the way toward their departure, on what had become something of an annual jolly.
“Absolutely not,” he’d said in mock protest. “Jules’s card has got green jewels on it. Yours has got blue.”
“Go on, get out of here,” I had said.
He’d kissed me. “I’ll see you in five days. You sure you’re okay to hold down the fort until then?”
I thought of the meetings lined up for the week and felt the usual rush of excitement. I couldn’t remember ever being as happy or fulfilled.
“I suppose I’ll have to be,” I’d said teasingly as his lips grazed mine. “I’m the talent after all. Remind me why the company needs you again?”
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” he’d laughed. And then, all of a sudden, he was.
When Jules’s husband Leo had called me the following night, to say that Tom was missing, I thought he was joking.
“He’s probably still in the bar at the top of the mountain where you left him,” I’d said, unconcerned.
“No, I’m serious Al,” he’d replied. “Tom went out on his own after lunch and he’s not come back.”
A chill had run through me, though I still wasn’t unduly worried. He was a good skier and it wasn’t unusual for him to go off and explore. I looked at my watch and at the darkening skies outside the living room window, choosing not to acknowledge that Switzerland was an hour ahead.
“Okay, so it’s gone six there?” I’d asked, my logical brain trying to overrule the feeling of panic that was building within me. “He’s very likely to be sitting in the warm somewhere, trying to remember the time you were supposed to be meeting tonight.”
A heavy breath crept down the line. “We were supposed to be meeting two hours ago,” said Leo quietly.
“Have you called anyone?” I asked. “Have you checked his room, the hotel, the restaurant?” I’d tried so desperately to keep my voice steady. “Is there a gym or a sauna he might be in?”
“He hasn’t checked his skis back in,” Leo had said, and my whole world had begun to close in around me.
“Well, you need to find him,” I said, a slight hysterical lilt to my voice. “Leo, you have to find him.”
“We’ve been everywhere we can think of,” he’d said. “We’ll give it another hour and then we’ll report him missing.”
“No, you can’t wait another hour,” I wailed. “Anything could happen in that time. He might be lying somewhere, unable to get up. He could have fallen down a crevasse and if it snows … Leo, another hour could be the difference between life and death.”
“I’ll talk to reception now,” he’d said somberly. “But if he calls you in the meantime, tell him to stop pissing about.”
If Tom is trying to scare them, I’d thought, I’ll kill him myself.
I had sat by my phone, willing it to ring, for the next hour. Watching every sweep of the ticking second hand as it rotated through the minutes on the clock above the fireplace. “Come on, Tom,” I said out loud. “Where are you?”
When Jules’s number flashed up on the screen, I could only imagine it being bad news. She would have been delegated by the boys, in an attempt to break it to me gently.
“What’s going on, Jules?” I’d said, barely able to breathe.
There was an excruciating silence at the end of the line. “Jules?” I shouted.
“Still nothing,” she’d said gently. “The rescue team have been called in and they’re trying to ascertain where Tom was last seen and his likely route. Leo will call as soon as he hears anything more. Do you want me to come over?”
I’d wanted to say “yes” but felt that doing so would elevate what might still be a stupid prank into a full-on crisis. It was as if acknowledging the severity of Tom’s situation would somehow make it worse.
“No, I’m fine,” I’d said. “I’m sure we’ll all be laughing about it by the morning.”
I couldn’t even begin to think about going to bed, but sleep must have found me for a few snatched minutes as when I woke up there had been a text from Tom, simply saying, Send help.
“He’s text me, Leo,” I screamed down the phone moments later. “He needs help.”
“I know,” he’d said. “I got one too, but the weather’s closed in on us. It’s too dangerous to go up the mountain in the dark.”
“Please do something,” I’d cried. “What about the rescue team? Are they there?”
“Yes,” he said. “Everybody is doing everything they can.”
“Well it’s not enough!” I’d raged. “He’s called for help. Send a helicopter, we’ve got to get to him.”
“We don’t know when he actually sent the text,” he said. “There’s barely any signal up here, so between his phone and my phone, there could be a considerable time lapse.”
“I don’t care,” I’d cried, hugging my knees to my chest. “Just find him before it’s too late. Please.”
The days that followed had been a blur of visitors and flowers. The long-stemmed white lilies that I’d once loved became a beacon of lost hope. Their sweet aroma now the pungent odor of gut-wrenching grief and loneliness. People came to the door with sorrow and lasagne—I didn’t hear anything other than, “Just pop it in the oven.”
Every ring of the phone had the potential to bring the best or the worst news. Every knock at the door could have been Tom or the Grim Reaper, personally confirming his death. It was numbing and excruciating all at once.
I couldn’t sleep for fear that I’d miss him when he called and spent night after night staring at the phone, willing it to ring. Even when all hope was lost; when there wasn’t a chance he’d be found alive, I initially refused to hold a memorial for him. How can you commemorate someone’s life, if you can’t be sure that they’re dead? But it seemed that people needed an outlet, some form of closure so they could accept he wasn’t coming back.
The church was ablaze with color, with me refusing entry to anyone who wore black. It was to be a celebration of his life, not confirmation of his death. Yet while my soul still prayed that he’d walk through the door, my lucid self felt I’d let him down by accepting his fate.
Over the weeks that followed, Sophia had become a limpet on my already depleted resources. “Why isn’t Daddy coming back?” “Where is he now?” “If he isn’t dead, why isn’t he here?” “When will I see him again?”
Every other minute was spent answering her questions as best I could. The minutes in between were spent holding her close to me, the pair of us too frightened to let the other go in case they never came back.
A guttural sob takes me by surprise and my memories throw me back out with a jolt. I can’t stop crying as I read the only message on Tom’s Facebook noticeboard.
Had the best lunch in Verbier today. “Potence” (flame-grilled meat) and a cheese fondue. Going to make this part of my staple diet when I get back home!
There’s a photo of a medieval-looking device, alight with flaming chunks of meat hanging from it. Underneath, Tom had written the caption:
Life is good!
“Life was good,” I correct him.
How could he possibly have known that within a few hours his would be over? I brush away tears as I look at when it was posted. The night before he died would have been 25 February 2009.
My blood runs cold as I read the date. 22 June 2018.
Today.