Polina kept her eyes open throughout the lovemaking. Kept her gaze locked on Kenneth’s face. Every gasp and every groan was meant for him. Kenneth felt he dare not look away or even close his own eyes as the tempo increased. She had ordered him not to, and he always did what she told him because she was his wife and he didn’t want to risk losing her; he loved her, even though he sometimes hated her. She raised her arms and grasped the bedrail behind her, spread her legs even wider, told Kenneth how this was soooo good, asked him if he liked it too. Bedsprings squealed in time to the jiggling of her pallid flesh, her repetitive oohs and aahs forming a strangely hypnotic chorus. And then she was telling him yes, yes, yes, and she arched her back and stopped breathing, her mouth wide, her eyes wide, still staring directly at him, still looking into his mind as her whole body spasmed.
They collapsed in a heap then, body on body, still conjoined, and she asked Kenneth how he felt, what he was thinking, and he could say nothing, he could find no words, he could only look back at her. Because the truth was that he didn’t know what he was feeling or even how he was meant to feel right now. Satisfied? Aroused? Enraged? What was the point of all this?
‘I think you should go,’ she said.
He obeyed at once. Michael, that is. The man who had just been fucking Kenneth’s wife right there in front of him, while Kenneth sat on an old wingchair and observed from a distance like the sole 125audience member at an amateur dramatics performance, which was kind of what this was.
He watched as Michael withdrew and climbed off the bed, unashamed to exhibit his nakedness, mocking Kenneth with a display of virility he was unable to match. Michael pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and went to the door, pausing only to wink at Kenneth before making his way back to his own bedroom.
‘Come here, Kenneth,’ Polina said, beckoning.
He stood and stepped across the carpeted floor to stand over her. She lay on her back, her breasts uncovered except for a sheen of perspiration. He was wearing pyjamas and a thick dressing gown and slippers, and the contrast felt odd to him.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked.
It seemed to Kenneth that this ought to be a ridiculous question. He suspected that things would never get this far in any other household. There would be violence, perhaps even death, before a situation like this would be allowed to develop. Any husband worthy of the status would not sit idly by while his wife cheated on him so blatantly.
But perhaps that was the point. He wasn’t worthy. He couldn’t give Polina what she deserved from a husband. Simon had seen to that.
Simon says watch what I’m doing now. WATCH!
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind. If it keeps you happy.’
‘I’m still a young woman,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I need a man. You understand that, yes?’
‘Yes,’ he said, grasping her implication that he wasn’t a real man. He was lacking. A failure.
‘And …’ She reached out a hand, untied the belt of his dressing gown, slipped her fingers beneath the folds of material. ‘I thought maybe it would help you, too. I thought you might like to watch.’
He was aware of her touch on him and wished she would stop, 126because it was having no physical effect, and that just made him feel even more of an abject failure, and he was also aware that what she’d said wasn’t true – she didn’t do any of this for his benefit, but for her own, because she got a kick out of being watched while she shagged a man who had no damn business being in their bedroom.
‘Come to bed,’ she said. ‘We can try things. Maybe we will have success now.’
He considered the invitation. Considered the prospect of ever-increasing embarrassment and humiliation and frustration as she manhandled him, pulling and prodding and rubbing while his mind burst with images and sounds from his childhood – Simon says stop crying, this is fun, for Christ’s sake!
He stepped out of arm’s reach, retied his belt. ‘I’m going down for some cocoa,’ he said.
He left the room and plodded down the staircase. He put a lamp on in the kitchen, and Barclay gave a whimper of surprise and looked up at him. Kenneth switched the kettle on, then sat at the table and stared into space while he waited for it to boil.
It was at times like this, alone at night, that he worried most about himself, about what he was doing with his life, about his state of mind. He feared that he was heading for a breakdown. The idea that getting married would rescue him from his pit of despair had proven to be a disastrous miscalculation. He was worse off than ever. Trapped.
And now things had become more complicated, the way ahead more fraught. Polina’s antics in the bedroom tonight were already being swept into the dark recesses of his brain.
That was no coincidence yesterday.
Izzy Lambert had run into him deliberately outside Raynor’s. At the time it had seemed extraordinarily clumsy, avoidable even, but he had been willing to put that to one side. But then came the conversation, and for a while that too had seemed natural enough. 127Until the questioning about Rosie. That sudden flash of memory about something her workmate at the bookshop had just happened to mention to her.
Bullshit.
She had known from the start. Probably seen the news report. She was just itching to drop that grenade casually into their little chat, see what devastation it caused.
And then – and then – to bring the Cunliffe girl into it as well! Did she think he was stupid or something, that he wouldn’t see what she was trying to do?
But why? What was her role in all this? Why had she decided to help the police, and why were they willing to make use of her in that way?
Because that was what was happening. He knew that for a fact. When he walked out of the café yesterday, he didn’t simply traipse down the road to his car, oh no. What he did was circle the block, wait until he saw Izzy leave, and then go back in there. He put on a pretty good act with that waitress, saying that he was hoping to catch Izzy still there because she’d given him the name of that policeman she knew and he’d already forgotten it and he was hoping to get some confidential advice from him, and did she have any idea what his name might be?
The waitress did know, and she told him, and he thanked her with a smile on his face, even though what he really wanted to do was scream the place down and overturn a few tables.
Josh Frendy.
The same cop who’d come to his workshop at the school. The same cop who’d put it to him that doubts had been cast on his version of events.
They were on to him.
How? How had that happened? Not just in connection with Rosie, but Heather too. 128
And another thing – how did Izzy just happen to be outside Raynor’s as he was coming out? Nobody knew he was going there; he didn’t even know himself until last night. She must have just seen him go in there, watched through the window as he bought the bracket, and then decided to turn it into an opportunity to quiz him.
But that was one hell of a coincidence, and he didn’t like coincidences.
Too many questions. Too much to worry about. Polina hadn’t stood a chance in that bedroom, not with all this shit constantly circling in his brain.
He had fond memories of Izzy Lambert. Images of her sitting on the ground in the sunshine, lost in her books. And their conversations! How her passion for reading, her love of stories, had come across so clearly. A strange and lonely girl, but with a good heart.
If she carried on like this, she would end up dead.
And that would be such a shame.