The Heat of Betrayal (12 page)

‘
Entendu
,' I said.
Understood
.

Actually, nothing was now understood, comprehensible. I felt myself getting shaky again. I glanced at my watch. It was now 2.18 p.m. Paul would be wondering where I was and might come back to the room looking for me. Or maybe he'd simply decide that I had drifted off elsewhere, as I sometimes did. I was hoping that time was on my side. I would get back, pack my bags, leave him the corroborating evidence, a short note, head off for a long walk on the beach. And then . . .

Part of me wanted to simply jump a cab from the hotel to the bus depot, change my ticket and hop the next coach to Casablanca. But this expedient part of me was being held back by the need to confront Paul with everything, to demand some sort of explanation, to let him see just how decimated I was, how he had destroyed so much.

Where would that bring us? Me recriminating, screaming. Him playing the little boy and begging me to give him another chance.

Why is it that we always want some sort of payback, reprisal, a long tearful aria of apology, even when we know it won't change anything? The damage is so comprehensive that there's no way the two of you will ever recover from this. Why even confront the guy? Just leave.

I got back to the room ten minutes later, handing 10 dirhams to an elderly woman out front who wore the full burqa, and had the most haunted pair of eyes beaming out from the narrow black slit.

‘
Je vous en supplie . . . je vous en supplie
,' she hissed at me.
I beg you, I beg you.
I thrust the money in her hand.

‘
Bonne chance!
' she whispered. And even though she was wishing me luck, the way she sibilated it made it sound like a curse.

At the hotel I ran into the cleaning girl in the corridor.

‘
Tout va bien, madame
?' she asked me, eyeing me carefully, fearful that I might explode again.

‘
Ça va mieux
,' I lied.
All is better.

‘
La chambre est prête, madame
.'
The room is ready.

I went upstairs. I walked into the room and stared long and hard at the bed in which we had made love every day; passionate, deranged love, always with the hope that . . .

I had been wavering for the past ten minutes about what tack I should take. The sight of the bed made me adopt a different strategy. After packing all my bags, I laid out on the newly made bed all the documents I had just printed, beginning with the invoice, continuing with his credit card statement showing the excess amount he paid for the procedure, then his doctor's mission statement about the non-scalpel deferentectomy. I wanted Paul to understand that he'd been well and truly found out. Leaving him alone with the evidence of his betrayal would sufficiently unnerve him to make him . . .

Make him what? What do you think he'll do? Fall on his knees and beg forgiveness? Even if that does happen, then what?

Let him cry himself to sleep. Alone. Let him reflect on what life without me will mean for him.

I reached for a notepad. I scribbled:

You have killed everything and I hate you. You don't deserve to live
.

Then I scrawled my name and placed the note at the end of the documents I had left fanned across the bed. Grabbing my sun hat and my bag, I headed out. I rushed past the reception desk. Ahmed must have sensed my disquiet, as he said:

‘Is there a problem,
madame
?'

‘Ask my husband,' I shouted.

I stormed my way to the beach. Keeping my head down. Walking ferociously down the sand, sidestepping the camel drivers and the elderly men selling roasted corn, keeping on the move until I reached that point where all signs of the external world disappeared. I sat down. I stared out at the ocean over which I would travel tomorrow, fleeing the worst sort of heartbreak and knowing full well that, even after I'd run back home, the anguish would cling to me like a metastasising cancer. I could only begin to imagine the emotional blowback ahead. For the second time, I was about to deal with the debris of a collapsed marriage. Only this time the sense of failure and betrayal would be beyond agonising. Because I had bought into a lie.

I let go, crying wildly for around ten minutes. There was no one around to watch in disconcerted unease; here my grief was drowned out by the surf. When I had subsided I found myself thinking:
Now what? I go home. I go back to work. I try to pick up the proverbial pieces. I face into the most crippling sort of loneliness.
As much as I now hated Paul, another part of me was convulsed at the thought of losing him. How can you feel that way about someone who has violated your trust? Why was I needy of Paul at the very moment that I wanted to leave him for ever? How could I be so torn?

Guilt began to inveigle its way into my psyche, even though I knew I had no cause to feel any; that it was me who had been wronged. It was me who had to grapple with the agony of an act of intimate treason. And it was me who was sitting here, alone on a North African beach, beginning to wonder if I'd been too extreme in the note scribbled in fury.

The problem with ongoing guilt – especially the sort that has been clogging up your psyche since childhood – is that you simply cannot rationalise your way out of its choke-hold.

The light above was beginning to fade. I checked my watch. It was edging toward five p.m. Had I been out here all this time? Was one of the reasons that I had stayed so long on the beach the vain hope that Paul – having discovered my packed bags along with the documentary evidence left for him – would have rushed here to find me, knowing that I walked these sands every afternoon.

But I must have hiked for over an hour to reach this empty spot. Maybe he only got back to the hotel from his lunch and working afternoon at Chez Fouad just a few minutes ago . . . perhaps he was heading this way?

And there you go again, wanting some sort of Hollywood moment:
‘I have made the mistake of my life. The vasectomy is reversible. I've made an appointment with the urologist. I will fly back tomorrow with you and be unfixed by the weekend.'

But the beach was empty. Paul usually returned home from Fouad's by three for a siesta. It was now almost five. Not a sign of anyone on the horizon. I was totally alone. His non-show on the beach was proof – if it was truly needed – that we were kaput.

The walk back to the hotel seemed to take an inordinately long time. When I reached the front desk Ahmed appeared unnerved by my arrival.

‘Is something wrong?' I asked him.

‘
Le patron, Monsieur Picard
. . . he needs to speak to you.'

Not
wants
to speak with you.
Needs to
.

‘What's happened? Where's my husband?'

‘You wait here, please.'

Ahmed ducked into the back office. I shut my eyes, wondering:
What fresh hell is this?

Monsieur Picard emerged a few moments later, looking as grim-faced and bleak as an oncologist about to articulate bad news.

‘We've been looking everywhere for you,
madame
. We were deeply worried.'

‘What's happened? Where's my husband?'

‘Your husband has . . . vanished.'

I blanched, but perhaps in a way that indicated I was not surprised, as Picard said:

‘You were expecting this?'

‘No, not at all.'

‘But you left him documents and a note—'

‘You've been in our room?' I shouted, suddenly angry. ‘Who gave you the right to—?'

‘What gave me the right was the fact that the cleaners heard your husband screaming in the room. Screams that followed loud thumps.'

Immediately I was dashing up the stairs, Picard calling after me, telling me I shouldn't go in there; that it was a potential crime scene, and the police were . . .

But I raced ahead, throwing open the door when I reached it. When I stepped inside what I saw was . . .

Chaos.

It did look like a crime scene – in which robbery and violence were part of the perpetration. Clothes strewn everywhere. Every drawer pulled out, contents dumped. Two of his sketchbooks torn apart, the ripped, decimated paper littering the room like deranged confetti. And on the stone wall in front of our bed, a cascade of blood in the process of drying.

Next to the documents and the note I had left for Paul was a piece of paper. On which was scrawled – in his characteristic cramped calligraphy – five words:

You're right. I should die
.

‘
DON'T TOUCH THE
documents,' Picard warned me when I reached for Paul's scrawled note.

‘But they belong to me,' I said.

‘The police might think otherwise.'

‘The police?'

‘Your husband was last heard screaming in this room. Then there was silence. Ahmed reported all this to me when I returned to the hotel just ten minutes ago. He said he didn't want to disturb Monsieur Paul, as there had been no further screaming since his initial outburst. I told him to go upstairs and check. What Ahmed discovered was that your husband had vanished, but blood was covering the walls. Of course we called the police, as I was initially concerned that it might be your blood. Until I saw the letter you left him. Where were you when all this was going on?'

‘I was out hiking along the beach.'

‘I see.'

The tone of that last comment unsettled me. It sounded studiously neutral – as if he was hinting that he didn't believe me.

‘I was back here briefly around two-thirty p.m. and then went out for my usual walk—'

Picard cut me off.

‘There's no need to explain this to me. It is the police who will be asking the questions.'

‘Questions about what? I should be out looking for my husband.'

‘They will be here shortly. I had them standing by, waiting for your return.'

The cops did arrive two minutes later. A corpulent officer sweating in his blue uniform, and a narrow-shouldered detective in a cheap suit, a white shirt yellowed from over-washing, and a thin paisley tie. He was around forty with a pencil moustache and slicked-back hair. They both saluted me, simultaneously eyeing me with professional interest. Ahmed showed up in the doorway as well. The detective and Monsieur Picard spoke to each other in fast Arabic, then the detective questioned Ahmed who half-gestured towards me several times. Meanwhile the uniformed officer was inspecting the bed, the documents and the two scrawled notes that we had left for each other, the disarray of the room, the bloodied stonework. He said something to the detective who came over to inspect the blood, pulling out a small handkerchief to daub in it, studying it intently. He asked a question of Ahmed who replied in a torrent of Arabic, again gesturing at me throughout. Then the detective introduced himself to me in French as Inspector Moufad.

‘When did you last see your husband?' he asked.

‘Around twelve-fifteen. We'd slept in late. My French teacher, Soraya, woke us up . . .'

‘What's her full name and address?'

Picard supplied these immediately, which the officer dutifully wrote down. Moufad continued:

‘So you slept late, your teacher arrived, and then . . .?'

‘I had my lesson. Soraya saw my husband leave our room. He was heading off to have lunch and work at Chez Fouad.'

‘Your husband was working at the café?' the inspector asked, finding this just a little strange.

‘He's an artist . . . and a professor at a university back in the States. He was working on a series of line drawings about life in the souk.'

‘Where are these drawings?'

I pointed to the cascade of torn paper everywhere, tears coming to my eyes as I took in the debris around me. His exquisite, extraordinary drawings. The best work he'd ever done; the new turning point in his creative career. And now . . . shredded beyond redemption.

‘Who tore up these drawings?' Moufad asked.

‘I presume it was Paul.'

‘Do you have your husband's passport?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Why do you think he tore up his artwork?'

‘You'd have to ask him that.'

‘But he's not here, is he,
madame
? Monsieur Picard reports that one of his cleaners heard a commotion in the room around four p.m. Monsieur Ahmed went upstairs to check – but found the room empty, turned upside down, this fresh blood everywhere.'

He brandished his handkerchief with the still-wet sample blotting into its cotton fibres.

‘Was someone here with him?' I asked.

‘Was that someone you,
madame
?' Moufad countered.

‘I was taking a walk on the beach – as I do almost every afternoon.'

‘Did anyone see you take that walk?'

‘No, I was on my own, as always.'

‘So you weren't with anybody then?'

‘I just told you I was on my own.'

‘How do I have proof of that?'

‘What you have proof of is an incident in our room when my husband was here and I was out walking the beach. Look at the state of this place. My husband's been robbed and clearly injured.'

‘But where is your husband now if he was so injured? If it was a robbery, why didn't they take either of your laptops?' he asked, pointing to the pair of laptops side by side on the desk. ‘And there is that very expensive Canon camera by the bed.'

The uniformed cop now picked up a mug from the desk, looked inside and said something to Moufad. When it was handed to him the inspector pulled out a small wad of dirhams.

‘A thief would definitely have taken all this cash that you unwisely left out.'

Picard seemed offended by this remark.

‘In the twenty-three years I have run Les Deux Chameaux,' he said, ‘we have never once had a robbery.'

‘There's always a first time,' I said. Picard and Moufad exchanged a knowing glance.