Chapter Thirty-Five

Dream World

 

 

EVEN WITH THE help of some of the area’s best doctors, the infection in the tissue of Ben Larvin’s remaining leg proved too virulent to bring under control. By the time it subsided, he had also lost his left below the knee. His therapy sessions were expected to last many months, but his state of mind was of greater concern. He had sustained serious head injuries, and would have to undergo months of cognitive testing. His wife remained at home with the blinds drawn, and stopped speaking to any of her neighbours.

Lea searched the web for any details about the accident. All she found was Colette’s own angry account on her blog.

Elsewhere, as August came to a close, the surface of life returned to normality. The swimming pool was repaired and refilled. A wooden construction fence went up around the remains of the Busabi house. New smart-ID cards were printed, but proved hopelessly faulty. Extra guards were placed at the entrances to the compound and the resort, and a strange late-summer lassitude descended upon the area.

The heat outside was beyond endurance. Lea was tired of spending her time scurrying between ice-blasted public buildings as if sheltering from meteor showers. The wives reduced their visits to one another’s houses, as if they could no longer be bothered to keep up the pretence of friendliness. Mrs Garfield took to holding court at the golf club on Friday lunchtimes with the other military wives. Only the children maintained their loyalties to one another, living separate lives.

Their worlds were disconnected now, and Lea wondered what it would take to repair the damage. As the final countdown to Dream World’s September opening began, Roy spent most of his waking hours at the resort. During the weekends he seemed distracted and barely capable of speech. If Lea interrupted him, he would look at her as if trying to place her name.

Their plans to visit other states or take trips into the desert evaporated. Even a trip to the movies seemed impossible to organise. She knew it wasn’t just her family who was affected; life for everyone in the compound was deeply and irrevocably altered. Standing at the window, she sometimes thought she could sense its pattern brushing at her fingertips, only to feel it dissolve.

Ramadan came to an end. The celebration of Iftar took place on the last evening of the month-long fast. After dark, meals would be laid out all across the city. Muslims were heading home to be with their families. There were just three weeks left before the resort’s grand opening. In the cool shadows of their courtyards the Arab women prepared their feasts. At the Dream World resort, workmen erected the steel bleachers for their honoured guests. A stadium stage had been constructed in front of the Persiana, but without its decorative lights turned on it looked more like an arena designed for public executions.

One afternoon the doorbell rang, making Lea start. Madeline Davenport stood on the step with a snuffling highland terrier on a plaid lead. She stared down at the dog as if waiting for it to improve its behaviour.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she began. ‘I was just passing. I wonder—can I come in for a minute? Outside it’s too—’ She looked around uncertainly.

‘Of course, please come in.’ Lea stepped back.

‘I haven’t spoken to many of the neighbours since Mr Larvin’s accident. I imagine Colette has her hands full and I wouldn’t want to interfere.’

‘Let’s go in the kitchen. I think Lastri has a coffee pot brewing.’ She led the way.

Madeline set down her dog and lowered her wide-beamed bulk onto a bench. She looked as if she was about to speak, but suddenly stopped herself.

Lea tried to help. ‘Roy and I have been to the hospital a few times. There hasn’t been much change in Ben’s condition. He’s on so much medication that he doesn’t know you’re in the room with him. He’s dosed up for pain control and depression.’

‘The poor man, one feels so helpless,’ said Madeline. She sipped her coffee, watching the dog. Lea was puzzled as to why she had stopped by. She waited for her to explain the purpose of her visit.

‘I’m staying for the opening, then going home for a good long holiday at the end of the month,’ she said finally. ‘I know Colette was planning a break too, but she won’t be able to take it now. I was wondering if we wives couldn’t do something to help that poor family.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ Lea asked.

‘Well, they’ll have to get the house refitted with wheelchair ramps and special handles in the bathroom, things like that. If DWG isn’t taking care of it quickly enough we can hire someone to carry out the work. You know, to save Colette from having to worry about it. I heard the company has been very generous with compensation, but money’s not the answer really, is it?

‘I’m glad that DWG recognised they were in some way culpable.’

‘Did you hear about the results of the enquiry?’

‘I didn’t know there had been one.’

‘James told me, so I don’t suppose it’s a secret. There was an electrical fire and it burned through the cables holding the pipe in place. He explained the whole thing to me in great detail but how it happened hardly matters, does it? It can’t change anything. I just wondered—’ Lea waited for her to continue, but Madeline was struggling with her words. ‘You see, there’s been a lot of talk. About the accidents, I mean. It’s just that—there’s a rumour that Leo Hardy was with Ben that night—and I thought you might have heard about it.’ Madeline Davenport had always championed the company. Lea wondered if something had happened to mitigate her opinion.

‘I believe he was, yes.’

‘Because Mr Hardy was with my husband as well, just a short while before the accident happened.’ Madeline twisted her hands together in her lap. ‘James saw the pair of them talking just before Ben Larvin went down to the pipeworks. He says Leo Hardy summoned Ben to the resort and sent him in.’

‘You think Hardy knows more about what happened than he’s letting on, is that it?’

‘Lord, I wouldn’t want to get anyone into trouble, I just keep going over the sequence of events in my head. But if you do know anything, perhaps we should tell someone.’

‘Roy never mentioned it.’

‘I’ve just been trying to understand. People think the workmen are deliberately sabotaging the project, but that doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, it’s their livelihood, isn’t it? Why would they want to destroy their own jobs? They have so many dependents. It’s Mr Hardy I don’t trust. What if he had a reason for wanting to get rid of poor Ben Larvin? Don’t tell me, I know I’m being stupid. We’ve all become so—suspicious. And now here I am, virtually accusing a man of murder. It was never like this before. I must get back.’ She rose to leave. Lea stood watching her, unsure as to whether she had just been accused.

Madeline paused on the doorstep and turned. ‘It never seems to upset the men, does it? They just get on with their work. I’ve hardly seen James since he got promoted.’

‘He was promoted as well?’

‘I think it incentivises them, being taken into the board’s confidence. It makes them feel powerful,’ said Madeleine. ‘They can do whatever they like. I sent Colette a note asking if she needed anything. That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it? After all, we’re only the wives.’

The wives, she thought. You’re all living in a dream world.

 

 

THE CURTAINS WERE drawn, making the house look like it had been closed up for the summer. Lea rang the bell and stepped back. She was about to give up when the door opened a few inches. Colette blinked out into the fierce light. She looked as if she had just been aroused from a troubled sleep.

‘I’m sorry, Colette, I wondered if I could have a word with you? It’s important.’

The door opened a fraction further. Slipping inside, Lea found the Larvin household dark and icy. The maid kept everything so tidy that it seemed as if no-one lived there.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what—’ Colette stopped and corrected herself. ‘I was going to say I don’t know what you must think of me, but to be honest I don’t care what anyone thinks. This is how things are now.’

‘How are Abbi and Norah doing?’

‘You know Norah. She spends most of her time with her own friends, why would she want to be here? And Abbi’s on the other side of the world.’ She looked around, pushing her hair back in place. ‘What was it you wanted?’

‘I know it sounds odd, but if I wondered if I could have a look at Rachel’s room. I think it would be easier to explain afterwards.’

The request clearly took Colette aback. ‘I tidied up her room after she died. It was a tip,’ she said, mystified. Her arms folded in suspicion. ‘Why do you want to see it?’

Can I trust her? thought Lea. ‘It’s nothing, just a silly thing really, but I need to put my mind at rest.’

‘I don’t know what you hope to find there, but go ahead, knock yourself out.’ Colette threw her a mean stare. ‘Oh, and my husband, thanks for asking, is never going to fully recover from his accident.’

‘I went to the hospital to see him just two days ago, Colette. I just missed you. And Roy has been to see him regularly.’

‘I know, everyone’s been very kind.’ She made it sound like a bad thing. ‘Then you know he’s not responding very well. There have been other complications. His immune system—’ Her face suddenly crumpled. ‘Fuck. Fuck, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening, Lea. I really don’t.’

‘It’s okay, Colette, nobody expects you to be superwoman…’

‘I can’t get any kind of a handle on it. The doctors say he’ll eventually walk with the aid of prosthetics, that he’ll be able to lead some semblance of a normal life if he wants to, but they can’t say what he’ll be like inside. And right now he doesn’t want to live. Who will he be? Not the man I knew and fell in love with. I know it sounds terrible, but I’m not strong enough for this. I think about it and feel sick.’

‘Perhaps you’ll feel different given time.’

‘No, I know I won’t. Rachel’s death affected him so badly, and now this has torn him apart. How could everything have changed so fast? He so wanted to see the resort open. He was so proud to have been taken into the confidence of the board of directors. They told me to attend the opening, to make a show, but I can’t be there without him.’ She started crying again.

Lea could not bear to see her so distraught. ‘The book you returned to me from Rachel,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t mine. I think you should have it back. I don’t know why she wanted me to have it.’

Colette drew herself up, trying to listen. ‘Rachel was kind of weird toward the end. She drank too much and believed all kinds of stuff.’

‘Like what?’

‘Spirits, legends, conspiracy theories, I don’t know. She was difficult with the kids, filling their heads with crazy ideas. She wasn’t good with technology and had trouble loading apps on her phone, so she asked Ben to get her a paper map of the Dream World site.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I honestly have no idea. Look, Lea, I know you’re searching for something too, but it isn’t here.’

‘I’m just trying to make sense—’

Colette had not heard her. ‘In the early days Rachel and I used to go down to the site with Ben and he would point out where everything was going to be, and I just couldn’t imagine these great silver buildings rising up into the sky. But he could. He only had to look at the floor plans and he could see the finished resort.’

‘Maybe she was just trying to connect things too. I promise I’ll let you know if I do find anything.’

‘Her room is up there, first left. I don’t go in it.’

The blinds were drawn upstairs as well. Lea made her way along the shadowed passage and tried the door. Rachel’s room was sparse and neat. There was a hint of lavender and patchouli oil in the dead air. Her fountain pen lay on a table beneath the window, but there was no accompanying stationery of any kind. A bookcase was filled with volumes of philosophy, biography, various social sciences. There were a few trashy paperbacks—virtually the only physical reading material that could be purchased without a trip to the immense Kinokuniya bookstore. The wastepaper basket under the table had been emptied. In the drawer beneath the table she found a fold-out map of the coastline, and took it.

How long had Rachel sensed that something was wrong? Lea opened her desk diary and flipped through the pages, hoping to find something of interest, but only the most mundane notes appeared.

Buy conditioner

Post sweater

Birthday present—DW North

Dream World North. The four towers that were set to house the resort’s signature restaurants, arranged at the four points of the compass. She vaguely recalled a conversation about the North tower. Roy had mentioned it some time back, but in what context? Why would Rachel be taking a birthday present there? If there was an answer here, it didn’t easily show itself. She returned downstairs.

Colette looked as if she’d been crying. Rachel was tempted to put an arm around her, but as she stepped forward she saw Colette flinch. ‘Did Rachel buy a birthday present for someone the week before she died?’ she asked.

Colette dried her eyes with the back of her sleeve. ‘I don’t know. She was very independent. She did all her own shopping, never came to the mall with us. She never quite turned her back on her hippy years. She drove out to California in a VW van in the sixties and met her first husband there. Smoked too much pot and burned her bra. She thought she was liberated. I thought she was ridiculous.’

‘Well, thanks anyway,’ said Lea, turning to go. A thought struck her. ‘How much longer are they going to keep Ben in?’

‘I don’t know yet. Mostly he sleeps. If he doesn’t start his rehabilitation therapy soon the doctors are worried that his long-term prospects will be affected.’

‘When is his birthday?’

‘Not for another two months. Why do you want to know if Rachel was buying gifts?’

Lea shook her head. ‘Sorry, it’s just something she mentioned, a crazy idea. It’s really nothing.’

‘She sent a hideous sweater to her brother John in Ohio, and it was Norah’s birthday the week she before died,’ Colette volunteered. ‘Rachel doted on her, always spent way too much money.’

‘What did she get her?’

‘A new laptop. Norah maxed out the memory on her old one. Rachel took it to the beach house to surprise her.’

‘Why there?’

‘Your husband had his carpenters come in and set everything up. You must know more about it than me.’

‘No—I don’t.’

‘Norah shouted at me because I unplugged the cables in her bedroom to clean behind the desk. So I suggested she went to hang out with your daughter at the beach house in the evenings, while Roy and Ben were finishing up.’

‘I knew Roy said that Cara could take friends there. The sweater for her brother—she posted it?

‘No. She hated waiting in line at the post office and she was near the resort. I think she took it to Ben to post. You know, using the internal system.’

‘Thanks, Colette. I’ll catch you later.’

She stepped outside into the heat-bath, and darted back to the lighter chill of her own house. In the hallway she stopped and caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Colette thought her mother-in-law was crazy. But she hadn’t been crazy. She’d been frightened. She’d gone to the North Tower to give Ben the package containing the sweater. Then she had returned home and written an inscription to Lea in the book of fantastical nonsense. What had happened in between those two events?

Her skin prickled in the air-conditioned chill of the kitchen. Rachel couldn’t risk coming to talk to her. She feared she was going mad, or feared something else. Something within the resort’s maze of tailored lawns, flowerbeds and fountains. Something hidden in plain sight that she alone had spotted.

The evening light was fading. Lea picked up Rachel’s book, searched for her car keys and headed to the garage.