Dark Mirrors (18 page)

He knew? She could feel it, could feel his mortification. Had she crossed the line? Too late to turn back now so she clenched her cheeks and continued. “The kids and I – we – we moved out last week.”

She paused, offering him a chance to respond.

“Jesus, Esmée, I’m sorry, really I am.”

“Don’t be. It’s been coming a while, you know that.”

He didn’t deny it. She kept going.

“
Look, I know he was upset by it all, but to do this? I don’t think so. He didn’t love me enough to do this.” She surprised even herself
with her pragmatism, but it wasn’t his sympathy she was after.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Esmée –”

“Thanks, Jack, I appreciate your words, but genuinely, he didn’t. But if you could just ask around, see if there was anything . . . anything else . . .” Esmée let the sentence finish itself. She had meant to say “anyone” but couldn’t bring the word to her lips.

“As I said, Esmée, I don’t think so, but of course I’ll check. Let me ask.”

“Thanks, Jack, I appreciate it.” She let the silence connect them for a short while longer then, reluctantly, said, “I’d better go. Someone might be trying to get through.”

“I’ll give you a call in the next few days . . . after I’ve asked around . . .” he promised.

“Thanks, Jack.”

“You might have news by then. He’ll turn up. You’ll see. Mind yourself, Esmée.”

She called John Andrews next, Roger Burke after. Mick, Simone and Gerry. They were all the same. All friends who, it transpired, hadn’t heard from Philip in months if not years. It fast turned into a futile exercise filled with empty promises to keep in touch.

Time tricked her. The mere moments she had thought wasted staring vacantly into space had actually been close to an hour. An hour of trying to put some kind of logic into this bizarre affair. What had he done? What was he running from? Was it her? Again, pointless thoughts.

The enormity of her situation was fermenting fast. How could he do this? How bloody selfish! What about the kids, his children? How was she
supposed to explain this to Matthew and Amy – would they even understand? What if he never turned up? No body to mourn, no ceremony at which to grieve, no hope for life after death, no finale – nothing. At that moment she had nothing more ahead of her than an existence of doubt and futile hope, not to mention an abundance of unanswered questions.

Whether or not she believed he was dead, she felt certain that Philip had no intention of coming back.

By the end of the day there was no news from the search, and no news was, as they kept reminding her, good news. She had no alternative but to sit it out and wait for the police to contact her. It would, they told her, continue for one more day, maybe two, and after that . . . well, they’d just have to wait and see. But she couldn’t just sit there. Waiting.

She needed distraction as much from her mental activity as from the anticipation of something, anything, happening. Like rows of spinning plates whirling furiously overhead her thoughts haunted her, each balanced precariously on needlepoint rods of reason. Mentally she raced from one to the other, constantly massaging, keeping them spinning in the air, spinning, spinning, avoiding any lull, any lapsed moment for her to falter and lose control. Missing one would be a break in the sequence that would have them come crashing down around her. And what then? Chaos! She wished for a pause button, a freeze frame where she could, just for a while, take herself away from the pressure of needing to think all the time and find the answer to why?

* * *

The Sunday papers gave his story no more than a few inches. Discreet and simple. Philip would have hated that. “
A tragedy for the young family
,” they called it while the search, they said, “
continues
”.

And for the first time ever, Sunday dinner at her mother’s was torture. She and the children were met at the door with open arms, the instinctive contact teeming with a fusion of pity, despair, affection and tears.

“Mum,” she whispered before her mother could speak, “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Not in front of the kids.” She nodded towards the two trailing behind her.

And like a pro, composing herself, Sylvia bent down to their level as if nothing had happened.

“Well, just look at you two! And what exactly have you been up to?” she cooed adoringly at her grandchildren. The enthusiasm was a little overdone to the adult ear but, to the children, it was just the encouragement they needed and heeding the prompt they sat on each side of her to fill her in on the day’s adventures.

A quiet, if tense affair, the afternoon was filled with the apprehension of unasked and unanswered questions. There would be plenty of time for them, but just now wasn’t that time and, cutting the visit short, she took herself and the children home.

That bedtime she lay beside her son. They discussed the day’s events and the meaning of life according to a curious six-year-old.

“Mummy, when is Daddy coming home?”

And there it was: quite out of nowhere, the question she had been dreading for days.

“Soon,” she lied, not knowing what else to say. “You miss him, don’t you?” she asked softly, his answer no more than a sleepy comfortable nod, his eyes weighed down as he snuggled closer to his mum. She stroked his head, thinking desperately of something positive to say without lying to him.

“Daddy won’t be back for a while yet, Matthew, but I’m sure he’s missing you too.”

“Can we ring him? I want to tell him about . . . the dragon scales we found . . . in the woods today . . .”

His voice was beginning to slow and slur and his eyes were almost fully closed. She knew that she didn’t have to answer because soon he’d be fast asleep. She stayed with him, lying beside him, stroking his soft hair and rubbing his smooth, round and rosy cheeks, her whole being bursting with love and the instinctive need to shelter and protect him and his sister. And once she was sure they were sound asleep she dragged herself up and secured their duvets in turn.

From the picture frame on the bedside locker, Philip’s face stared up at her. If he were there, in front of her, she would have punched him hard.

“You idiot!” she whispered to it in the silence of the bedroom, her voice laced with contempt. How could he leave them behind? What kind of a man was he? And resisting the temptation to remove the picture from the room altogether, she settled instead on deliberately placing the image face down before turning out the light and tiptoeing out of the room. They deserved better and more.

Chapter 14

It was on days like this that she wished she still smoked. Even after nine years, every now and then she still got the nicotine urge and today was one of them. She sat in the car, looking out at the yellow double-panelled door that loomed ominously before her. Bathed in a feeling of anxious anticipation, like a student taking a test for which she hadn’t studied, she opened the car door and got out.

It had been over a week since Philip’s disappearance but she hadn’t had the courage or the desire to come here. Till now. Even then it was prompted by Maloney who said he just wanted to look around. “Routine procedure,” he’d called it when they had spoken that morning. He would meet her there.

The grass on the small front lawn was in desperate need of a cut while a few opportunistic weeds had begun to peep through the dark soil around the season’s last remaining and tired-looking daffodils. She knew how they felt. Without waiting for Maloney, she put her key in the lock, reaching the moment she had been dreading: back at the house to which she swore she would never return. Turning the key slowly, she took a deep breath as she entered. Its familiar smell immediately seeped into her nostrils and, feeling like an intruder, she stood statue-still, not knowing where to start, or for that matter what exactly it was she was supposed to be starting. A small pile of post was gathered at the base of the door.

For show, if for nothing else, she called out in the silence, “Hello? Philip?”

As if this might, by magic, make him reveal himself from his really, really, good hiding place. There was no surprise when he didn’t. The atmosphere felt empty and cold with the doors to the adjoining rooms closed tight, making the space feel slightly claustrophobic. She stood for a while, waiting, before picking up the post and going through to the kitchen. She didn’t really know what to expect but one thing was for certain: it wasn’t this. The place was spotless, immaculate even, just as she left it, except cleaner, if that were possible. There were no dishes in the sink, no bin overflowing underneath. The chairs were placed perfectly around the table and the curtains neatly tied up in deep swooshes – just the way she liked them. It was like she had never left, except it was tidier. Upstairs was just the same. The laundry basket was empty, not even a lone sock could be found in the bowels of the wicker container. Stepping cautiously, afraid of what she might find, she made her way into the room she had shared with him. She half expected to see the suitcase from his trip full and ransacked at the bottom of the bed where he would normally leave it for her to sort out. But no. It had been unpacked and placed squarely on the top of the wardrobe from where she had removed it almost two weeks ago. The clothes she had packed, the chinos, the shirts, all freshly laundered and hanging perfectly in the wardrobe along with all his other clothes. Nothing was out of place; everything was as it should be – on a normal day, that is. But today wasn’t a normal day. Today she should be coming into a house that showed signs of life. She should see things missing, stuff out of place. She should have been able to imagine what Philip had done before he’d left, live his supposed last steps maybe. What he’d had for breakfast from the dishes in the sink, what he’d worn the night before by the laundry in the basket. What he’d put on that morning. Did she really care or was she just curious? She scanned the pristine rows and layers of monotone apparel laid bare in his closet.

As far as she could tell Philip must have left the house wearing nothing but those damn socks because everything else was right there in front of her with no gaps.

The bed was made with the bedspread creased neatly under the two firm pillows. The co-ordinated cushions sat upright, propped perfectly in position. The towels carefully folded over the rail in the en suite. Nothing, not a single item in their collection of remaining possessions, was out of place.

The door to his study was unlocked and ajar which in itself was unusual. This room was always locked. Philip insisted on it. She entered like a prowler, waiting for a second at the threshold with bated breath, waiting to be snared.

The room smelt of him, wafts of musky Gautier aftershave still clinging valiantly to the air. The room even looked like him, if that were possible: deep timber tones in contrast to the cream of the barley-coloured walls, oozing testosterone from every nook and every cranny, with the luxurious pile of the chocolate-brown carpet wrapping it up nicely in a quiet hush. This room was gifted by the sun in the mornings but there were no curtains on the windows overlooking the landscaped green outside – just wide timber Venetian laths bound together with an off-white fabric tape. She pulled them up tight to the lintel and let the golden morning sunlight change the atmosphere from dark and subdued to fresh and sophisticated, its rays bouncing off walls and glistening on the polished timber surfaces of his den. This room was originally supposed to be the nursery but Philip wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t switch his things into the smaller room, citing a lack of light and poor Feng Shui as his excuse. At the time she didn’t really mind and let him be but now, as she continued her visual journey, touching each of his possessions, she felt nothing but bitterness. And curiosity. She was curious about what the hell he was thinking, about what he had done and why he had done it.

Philip could spend hours in this room, but what exactly he did in it she had no idea. Sometimes she would hear him batter away furiously for hours on the keyboard, other times there would be no sound at all. Sometimes she assumed he was sitting in his leather recliner reading the papers or perhaps listening to one of the hundreds of CDs in his cherished collection. He had an excellent cross-section of music, everything from rock to opera, and used to tease her in the early days about her own taste in music. Esmée tended to go for the melodic songs, ones you could sing to and get lost in the words, and so he labelled her taste as “mainstream” which, she supposed, was true. But it didn’t preclude her from liking some of what he called “intellectual” or “experimental” sounds. He used to boast of eclectic rhythms and mention bands that she had never heard of or whose CDs she was ever likely to purchase for herself. But after a while, as if bored by his own little humiliating game, he stopped sampling his collection with her, preferring instead to lock himself away to explore alone. He, she thought, was a stereotypical music snob, with the notion that it was impossible for a Take That fan to like Beck too. The longer they were together the less he cared to know about her taste but she always kept an inquisitive eye on his. Occasionally, secretly, she would use the spare key to go into the study and check out his latest purchase . . . and snoop around to see what else he might be up to in there. She never found anything suspicious – just confirmed that he was absolutely anal, with hundreds of CDs all stored neatly in upright holders, catalogued alphabetically according to category. Looking at it now, all neat and proper, she gave in to the juvenile urge and deviously took Oasis’ “Wonderwall” from his rock and pop category and placed it purposely after Verdi’s Aida in the classical section. Paul Weller trapezed over Cirque De Soleil, Bob Dylan found comfort next to Placido Domingo, Pink Floyd took pride of place atop Madame Butterfly, Michael Bublé courted Moby, while Shirley Bassey flirted with The Fratellis. It was guaranteed to drive him mental when he got back. A sobering thought: when he got back.