The Body Lies Read online

  * * *

  —

  “Hey…” Breathless, swinging my leg over the top bar of the gate. Agony and confusion and pleasure to see him.

  “Hey.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Yeah, change of plan.” Mark was getting out of the driver’s seat; he squinted up at me, ready to be irritated. “What are you up to?”

  I slid down from the top bar of the gate, brushed my hands together, ignoring the question. “I thought you said you’d be back on Wednesday.”

  He turned to open the back door. “That was the plan.”

  But the look of him, shattered, harried. The habits of love are so hard to break. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  He hoisted Sam out and passed him to me. Sam was dopy from the drive; he slumped into my neck. The weight of him back in my arms was a relief.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mum. Mum’s going on.”

  “What happened?”

  “She wasn’t exactly chuffed.”

  “Oh…?”

  “About any of it.” Mark ducked back in to unshackle Sammy’s car seat. He set it down on the tarmac, dumped Sammy’s bag inside it. “In fact it’s fair to say that she went ballistic.”

  Mark’s mum was a receptionist at a medical centre down in Shrewsbury. She was indulgent, comfortable and warm. She liked food and liked to feed people and she liked a glass of wine; she was an easy kind of mum to have; she was certainly an easy kind of mother-in-law. I couldn’t imagine her ballistic.

  “What did she say?”

  “Quite a lot, actually. She had some very strong opinions. She wanted me to know what she thought about compromise, and about relationships requiring work, and not just being all sunshine and flowers, and about some things being completely off the table once you have children. She wanted to remind me that you are lovely and have had a very hard time these past few years. And that I, perhaps, should start behaving like a grown-up rather than a child.”

  I held my sleeping boy tight. “What did you say?”

  “That she should realise I’d been through all of that myself already.”

  My eyes were suddenly full.

  “She’s right. She’s just—right. I couldn’t argue with her. But I couldn’t stick around for the disapproval either.”

  She had fought my corner, and I was grateful. I kept my eyes fixed on Mark, kept them steady and wide. If I looked away for just a moment they’d spill over, and there’d be no coming back from that.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  He shrugged. “We are where we are.”

  “But, I mean, do we have to be? If you’ve changed your mind, at all. We could go somewhere else, like I said. Try something else.”

  I trailed off, my cheeks burning. Remembering Patrick, remembering this morning, my cheek on his chest, the warmth of him.

  “I didn’t mean geographically,” Mark said.

  “I’m just saying. We could try. If you wanted to.”

  “That’s not practical now. Look,” he said, “this’ll all become normal soon enough. We’ll all get used to it. Even Mum. Can you call me, maybe next week, so’s we can sort out access. Maintenance. All that stuff. Start proceedings.”

  I blanched. “Is that it?”

  “Okay then. Take care of yourself, yeah?”

  “Is that all you have to say to me?”

  He got back in the car, started it up, then wound the window down.

  “Can we be civilized about this, please?” he asked. “I understand that it isn’t easy, but for Sammy’s sake can we at least be nice?”

  He shifted the car into gear and I stepped back, still holding Sammy, onto the path to get out of the way. He did an ugly three-pointer in the road, bumping up onto the verges, crushing the grass, then pulled away.

  Dick, I thought. Nice.

  I went indoors and laid Sammy down on the sofa; he rolled round onto his side and mumbled. I’d cancelled nursery till Wednesday. I had to work. Alongside everything else I was due in for that meeting with Scaife tomorrow morning. I could hardly bring my toddler son in to that. I sank down beside him, and bit the skin around my fingernails, and, as Mr. Metcalfe had once suggested, I thought on.

  I thought on Blue Anorak Man. On what his life had been like, that had brought him to that moment, that he could pass a stranger in the street and decide that he hated her enough to go back and hurt her.

  I thought on Mark. How he had been lonely all these years. Lonely in our marriages, he’d said. Lonelier married to me than he would have been alone.

  I thought on Patrick. How kind he had been. How I knew that if I asked him, he would help. But I hadn’t, in the course of things, actually thought to get his phone number. And even if I had his number, I didn’t have a signal unless I went outside, and stood there in the field gate by the barn to make a call.

  I thought on Nicholas. How his style and subject matter gave the impression of a complete breakdown; how he was, nonetheless, composing extended passages, and then capably emailing them off to me. And if he was doing that, he can’t have been hanging round the barn twenty-four-seven: he’d need to charge his laptop and jump onto someone’s Wi-Fi. He was probably going home to sleep and eat. Certainly his parents didn’t consider him to be completely AWOL. They thought he was going in to class. He was clearly behaving normally enough for them. I considered it all, and the conclusion I arrived at was that he was not as disturbed as he made out. That he didn’t necessarily believe that what he was writing was the truth. And that therefore talking to him would make no difference. He was set on his path intentionally, not because he was deluded. It was a deliberate fiction.

  I stroked my boy’s arm. I touched his pink cheek. He slept on.

  I thought on calling the police. That it would mean detailing the events of that night in Michaelmas. It would mean people at work finding out. Scaife would have to be told.

  I got as far as the front door. I even had the phone in my hand. Sammy slept on, curled on the sofa. I looked through the stained-glass panel, through the patches of purple and tobacco and green glass. Out there, everything was seething, whispering, just waiting for me step through the door, and into Nicholas’s world.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I went back to the sitting room and sat down again beside my sleeping boy. I glanced at my watch. I was missing a third-year undergraduate class. They’d be wondering where I was. But we were tucked up tight, and that was all I could do for now. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. I’d pull myself together. I didn’t see I had a choice now. I had to go to the police.

  * * *

  —

  Sammy woke, flushed and disoriented, around four that afternoon. We made our tea together. I put on bread to toast and I put soup in a pan to heat. Outside the weather worsened, tumbling up into a spring storm, all squalls and blusters. Sammy rode on my hip and we made a game of it as I walked round the house checking the window fixings and drawing the curtains, even though it wasn’t yet properly dark.

  “Cos it’s a horrid old night, isn’t it? Got to keep that nasty weather out.”

  We huddled in the sitting room in front of the fire with the curtains drawn. We played with his Duplo. We fed the fire. I chewed at my thumbnail, glanced round at every noise.

  “It’s like we’re camping out indoors,” I told him.

  He went along with it, but kept looking at me, checking on me, uncertain. They are canny little creatures, toddlers; they’ll suss you out quicker than any grown-up. He decided—I could see him making that decision—that he’d play along for now.

  I listened hard. To the wind in trees and the creak of branches and the rattling loose slate on the roof and the drip-drip-drips from the eaves and the water pounding down the guttering, and the soft huff and suck of Sammy�
��s breath. He was watching me listen.

  “The wind makes all those funny noises,” I said as I picked through the books on the little shelf by the telly. “What story would you like?”

  He chose books and I read them. The words came out of my mouth and I turned the pages and all the time I was running a separate system scan—ticking off the sounds of the night and of the house and the weather.

  The story finished, I set the book aside and asked him what next.

  He got up and trotted over and pulled out another. There’s a Dragon at My School. We settled down to read.

  And it went on like that, books and more books, while Sammy’s head grew heavy and he blinked slow blinks. He wasn’t even in his pyjamas yet, and his teeth were still unbrushed. He leaned into me. His breathing slowed and softened. He fell asleep.

  I set Mog the Forgetful Cat aside. The door creaked in the wind. A slate rattled. Water dripped. I carried my little boy upstairs, and laid him down on my own bed. I turned the key in my bedroom door and locked us in. I lay beside him, drew the duvet over both of us, and flicked off the light. I listened to the trees thrashing in the wind. A ter-wit, ter-wit from an owl. After a while, I got up and went to the window and lifted the edge of the curtain. I watched the wet, tangled, tossing darkness. I could make out the outline of the barn, against the muddled sky. No light from its window. No one watching from the gate. But then he’d always been a step ahead of me: he’d only ever written what he wanted me to know.

  It was maybe after three a.m. when I dozed off, and I woke again just before six, curled round Sammy like a comma. He was still sleeping, his eyelashes long and dark on his cheeks. The wind had stopped and the day was calm; the sheep were calling to each other across the fields. I got up carefully. I stretched myself out and eased the crick in my neck. The first bus was at seven fifteen. We’d leave at the last minute. Run for it.

  * * *

  —

  Patrick’s house; we were in the kitchen, and it was still weirdly early to be anywhere but home. Patrick had received us with a kind of bemused calm, brought us in for second breakfast. Sammy was now ambling up and down the stone steps from the room above. Whenever he got to the foot of the steps, he’d peer through the doorway into the kitchen, and then he’d turn and start climbing the steps again.

  “Some of your third-years turned up, looking lost. Lisa fobbed them off. She said you’d called in sick, promised to reschedule. So you’ll have to remember to thank her.”

  “I will. She’s a star.”

  “So what exactly happened?”

  “Mark dumped Sam and ran; I had to drop everything.”

  “What an ass.”

  “I wanted to let you know, but there wasn’t time; I don’t have your number so I couldn’t call. I’d already cancelled his nursery too. I’ll have to see if they can squeeze him back in. He’s really dropped me in it, Mark has.”

  All of this was true, and it felt like enough, for now.

  Sammy peeked around the corner at us. He smiled, and then ducked away again and began again to climb.

  “The little guy doesn’t know? He hasn’t worked it out yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ll tell him though?”

  “I guess I’ll have to.”

  He topped up my coffee cup. “Are you teaching today?”

  “And I was due to have a meeting with Professor Scaife.”

  “Okay,” Patrick said. “Well, Here’s a thought. You phone Lisa, tell her you would have called yesterday. You explain how you have no signal at home and you were too sick to go outside. Say you’re sorry about the third-years but you were in an awful state, you were throwing up all day. But you’ll pop in and see her this afternoon.”

  “Okay…”

  “She’ll tell you to stay home. After you have a sickness bug, you have to stay away from work for a further twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh.”

  “Policy. This way you get a bit of breathing space. You’ll have to reschedule teaching but that was going to happen anyway after yesterday. You can call nursery from here. And, if you’d like to, we can hang out today. I’ll work through the weekend instead.”

  Sammy was coming back down the stairs.

  “You can both stay over tonight, in the spare bedroom, if you’d like.”

  “God,” I said. “That would be amazing.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  But it was a day’s grace, and that alone seemed wonderful. I pushed everything to arm’s length: tomorrow was soon enough.

  * * *

  —

  He drove us up to Gill House to collect our things, with Sam on my lap and my seat belt round both of us, and my arms wrapped round his little body. I called nursery from the car: they conceded, with considerable tooth-sucking and muttering, that they could fit Sammy back in tomorrow. I felt wrapped up and cocooned in the car, just letting us be driven, and it was only when we climbed the rise out of the farmyard, rounded the bend, and the barn loomed into view, its narrow eyes slitted at us, its dark mouth trailing worn mud and stones like vomit, that it dawned on me that by letting him bring us out here, I’d gone and dragged Patrick into Nicholas’s sights.

  I scrabbled overnight stuff together, but Sammy insisted on packing a bag too, because if you’re going anywhere, and you are three years old, then you will need to bring a backpack full of toys and books. Patrick was patient with him, chatting as they filled a bag and I ran around scooping up toothbrushes and pyjamas and underpants, glancing through the windows, and at my watch.

  I locked up, and we drove away.

  Sammy burbled in the back of the car, kept handing toys forward, between the seats, for Patrick to inspect. I intercepted them, held them awhile, handed them back, kept saying Not now, love, Patrick’s driving.

  We pulled up on the prom; the tide was out, leaving behind an expanse of rippled silver silt; beyond, the Lake District hills were layered blue and purple, still veined with snow. The air was brisk and made my eyes water; Patrick was already hoisting Sam out of the back seat of the car; he swung him round then set him down on his feet on the pavement. The wind made Sammy skittish: he did a little frolicky dance there, his parka rippling and ballooning; I caught Patrick’s eye, and we shared a smile.

  Patrick hustled us across the road, through an arched iron gateway, to a little park, where a brass band was parping out that particularly northern brand of nostalgia between borders planted with primulas and daffodils and hyacinths. Kids darted round on scooters, wobbled on small bikes. Dogs dragged old ladies after them.

  “Is the little guy allowed an ice cream?”

  “I should say so.”

  Patrick bought Sam a 99 with raspberry sauce, and coffee for us. Sam’s eyes went wide when the ice cream was handed down to him. We walked with paper cups and dripping cone, past crazy golf and damp children, swing-boats hitched like horses and a merry-go-round under a tarpaulin, a splash park closed out of season, and a miniature railway chugging round its miniature track. Sammy walked in wonder, and munched at his soggy cone.

  “This is a really lovely place,” I said.

  Further along was a timber-built adventure-playground. Sammy shoved the last of the cone into his face and belted off at high speed then clambered up and over and scrambled and slid down, until he was spent, and flumped in the damp sand and dug it with his hands, and shook his head at the invitation to do anything more at all. Patrick shook out the last drops of his coffee then handed the paper cup down to Sammy as a makeshift bucket. I hunkered with Sammy and we made elaborate sandcastles with the paper cups.

  Later, on the prom, we ate chips and watched the tide race in. Sammy huddled between us on the bench, zipped up to his chin in his parka, posting chips in through the porch of his hood with quiet concentration. The sun was setting, coral pink and g
olden, and the lights of little towns across the bay began to prickle out and trace the lower contours of the land. And I felt—I remember the quiet revelation of it—I felt happy. And I just wanted things to stay like this.

  “How can I have not done this before?”

  On the far side of Sam, over his hooded head, Patrick’s glasses were sheened with silver and pink.

  “Busy life,” Patrick said.

  I asked Sammy if he was done with his chips yet, and he shook his hooded head and rummaged in the paper wrapping, totally focussed; Patrick chuckled quietly. It was perfect, and it was a bubble. It was a moment suspended out of time. It couldn’t last, but I wasn’t going to burst it deliberately myself.

  “You’re enjoying those,” Patrick said.

  Sammy turned his hooded head to stare up at Patrick. He said, “They are nice,” with great seriousness.

  * * *

  —

  I put Sammy to bed in Patrick’s attic spare bedroom. The room had the kind of stark tidiness you only get in a childless household: storage boxes in the corner, a clothes rail with a couple of suits still cellophaned from the cleaners, a double futon that Patrick had made up for Sam and me in austere charcoal grey. We tipped Sammy’s bag out onto the floor and I realised he had been absolutely right to pack all these gaudy bits of junk, the spacemen and the racing cars and jingly Blue Hippo who he’d had since he was born. The room had been in need of them.

  “Did you have a good day?” I asked him.

  “Best day ever,” he replied, rosy cheeked and fighting sleep, not wanting it to end.

  I lay with him till he drifted off. My head on the pillow beside his, my brain flushed with love for him, watching his face as his brain processed memories of the best day ever.