I said goodbye to Gil and stood in the reception of the West London counselling centre, nursing a cup of water as I listened to a car door slam and Gil’s car drive away.
As I started sipping the cool drink, I realized my earlier anxiety had been replaced by something more determined. A desire to get this situation fixed, because now I knew I had the key.
Clare appeared on the stairs. She must have seen Gil leave from her office window.
‘How was it?’ she asked when we came face to face.
‘Extreme.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘I feel drunk.’
‘Drunk?’ she said with alarm.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any mints in your bag?’
‘Maybe we should go for a walk. Get some fresh air,’ she said, bemused.
I nodded, turned towards the exit.
‘What happened?’ she asked after another moment.
‘He blew the bloody doors off,’ I said throwing my cup into the bin.
Clare shook her head, not able to understand why I was quoting The Italian Job.
‘Look, I need to speak to Martin,’ I said, my eyes scanning the room and settling on the reception desk. ‘Do you mind if I use the centre’s phone?’
‘Of course not. Fran, what’s going on? Did Gil help? Have you been drinking?’
I was already sitting in the receptionist’s empty chair, using the main switchboard to dial the number of Martin’s disposal phone, which I had written on a piece of card.
I grabbed a red biro from the pen pot and started doodling as my heart raced, anxious for him to pick up the phone.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s me.’
‘Is everything OK?
‘Oh yes,’ I replied, starting to laugh. ‘Things are definitely beginning to look up.’
‘We should meet.’
‘Meet me now,’ I said, my voice an urgent whisper. ‘Don’t say anything to anyone, but let’s meet as soon as you can. Somewhere we can talk privately. Just you and me and no one else.’
Part of me was beginning to feel like a spy. My instinct to use the centre’s phone rather than my own mobile, my suggestion to meet on Hampstead Heath, it all had a touch of the George Smiley about it. I considered, for a moment, that it might be worth an application to the secret services if my legal career went down the drain. Then again, I felt sure that MI5 would be just as discerning as the Bar.
Clare dropped me off at the car park near Kenwood Park. I felt giddy as I walked across the meadows, excited to see Martin again, excited about the news I had to tell him about my session with Gil.
I didn’t know the heath particularly well. I was sure you could come every day for years and not discover all its nooks and crannies.
There was a short spell a couple of years ago when I had decided to leave behind the treadmill at the gym and escape into the great outdoors. I had a vague notion that I was going to enter a ten-kilometre race. My career seemed to have stalled and I was on the hunt for a new challenge. So every Sunday I would catch the bus through Holloway, Archway and up the hill towards the Heath, and then I’d run and run.
It was during that time I got to know about Wood Pond. The clue was in its name – a stretch of water surrounded on the south by meadow and woodland. It was less famous than the celebrated swimming ponds, and although it got busy in the summer, I doubted there would be many people there on a grey and gloomy Saturday.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ said Clare as I got out of the car.
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said, buttoning up the coat that she had lent me the day before.
‘I can wait for you here,’ she pressed.
For a moment I wondered why she was mollycoddling me, and then I realized that she didn’t want me alone with Martin in a remote and lonely place. Despite the memory that Gil had dislodged, the memory that I had told Clare about on the journey to Hampstead, I knew that my friend didn’t trust him.
I pushed my hands in my pockets and walked down the hill away from Kenwood House, over the glades, towards the trees. I found a bench by the pond and sat and waited until I saw a figure coming towards me, no more than a dark silhouette at first, until I could make out his face.
He was wearing jeans, a baseball hat and a navy overcoat I didn’t recognize. He looked ordinary somehow, like a local taking his dog out for a walk. I guessed that was the plan.
Grinning, I resisted the urge to run towards him, arms open.
‘You beat me,’ he said, as he sat down next to me on the mossy bench. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Clare gave me a lift.’
‘I’m going to have to get you a car,’ he said casually. I supposed in Martin’s world, that was the sort of thing men did. They bought women cars.
‘The only thing a man ever got me from a garage is a bunch of half-dead flowers.’
Martin looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
‘Do men really do that?’
‘Someone buys those carnations.’ I shrugged. ‘And the Ferrero Rocher.’
‘That’s never been my style,’ he said, gazing out over the pond.
Two women with Nordic walking poles in each hand stopped close by to admire the view, leaning on their sticks and blowing out their cheeks as if they had just ascended Everest.
‘Let’s walk,’ I said, taking his hand and leading him away from the pond. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation of our fingers entwining.
‘I remembered something,’ I said when we were in the trees. It was cooler here, the light dimmer, more intimate. ‘I remembered you leaving Donna’s house. And I saw Donna up at the window, watching you leave.’
Martin stopped in his tracks and took me by the arms, his dark green eyes wide.
‘You’re kidding. I thought you said you couldn’t remember a thing?’
‘I went to see a therapist this morning.’ I could feel a smile filling my face. ‘He had some techniques that helped me remember.’
He looked at me as if I was the only thing that existed in the world, then pulled me into a tight hug. Then he stepped back and looked at me again, the delight on his face plain.
‘You’re my alibi,’ he said, gripping my fingers.
I wanted to join in with his excitement but knew I needed to inject some reality.
‘I’m not exactly a reliable witness, remember? I was drunk.’
‘That’s for the experts to decide.’
We carried on walking, deeper and deeper into the woods. I just missed stepping on a used condom, a reminder how the heath was used by others for secret assignations. The wind brushed through the leaves and I could hear a raven caw in the branches above.
‘Thank you for not doubting me,’ he said.
‘I did,’ I said honestly. ‘I considered it anyway. Because you lied.’
‘I haven’t lied about anything,’ he said, frowning.
‘You said you fell off your bike. That’s how you got the cut on your hand. Doyle doesn’t believe you because the tyres looked clean.’
‘I didn’t fall off my bike,’ he said, fixing his gaze on a line through the trees.
‘Then why did you say you did?’
He glanced towards me.
‘Because I can’t remember how I cut myself. But it sounded so lame, I just thought of something plausible to say. I thought that would be better than just admitting that I didn’t know.’
‘You didn’t have to lie to me about it.’
‘I know and I’m sorry. I think I just convinced myself it was true. But the cut had nothing to do with Donna. I know that much.’
He gripped my hand. The day was cold but his hands were warm. He laced his fingers through mine and led me deeper into the woods.
‘Alex called me after I saw you yesterday,’ I said, as the trees became thicker and the air seemed to cool. ‘Sophie had obviously told him I’d been to the police, so I met up with him.’
‘What did he have to say?’
I shrugged.
‘Stuff,’ I said. ‘Nothing that important. I don’t trust him.’
Martin shook his head.
‘I don’t trust him either.’
I turned to face him. ‘Have you had a look around the Coles’ house?’
‘What am I supposed to look for? An ice-pick?’ He’d attempted a joke but there was no humour in his voice.
‘Did you check if he went to that conference on the Tuesday and Wednesday?’
‘He was there both days and met clients for dinner in the evening. A couple of people at the tech conference said he was acting a bit strangely on the Tuesday. One of them asked him if everything was OK, but he dismissed it. Said he was just hung-over.’
I wasn’t sure if the information was significant, but I could tell that Martin was trying to sift through the pieces in his own head too.
‘Anyway, regarding the trust issue, you should know I had my partnership agreement couriered over to me from the company lawyer,’ said Martin, his expression grave. ‘I knew there was a morality clause in there, but I didn’t remember how stringent it was.’
‘This is an agreement between you and Alex?’
Martin nodded.
‘If either partner brings the company into disrepute, it’s grounds to terminate the agreement and the partner in breach has to offer up his shares to the other person.’
‘Disrepute? It’s a woolly word.’
‘Thanks for the legal tip.’
‘What do you think it means in practical terms?’
‘It means that if I continue to be implicated in Donna’s disappearance, I could be ousted from the Gassler Partnership.’
‘What, even if you’re not charged with anything Alex gets to keep your shares?’
‘He can buy them, but there’s all sorts of ways to manipulate that price down, not least if Alex encourages some investors to remove their cash.’
‘He can be dangerous. He knows stuff about you.’
Martin frowned.
‘We all have our dark corners and Alex probably knows yours better than anyone,’ I said without stopping. ‘If he’s got incentive to discredit you, he might well use that information.’
‘What dark corners?’
‘Some guy named Richard Chernin?’ I said after hesitating. ‘Apparently Alex thinks you had him “fixed” to get a deal.’
I looked at him, hoping he would deny everything, but Martin put his hands into his pockets and stared straight ahead.
‘Making money can be a dirty business, Fran,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you have to negotiate hard. Have I done things I regret? I’m afraid so.’ His voice trailed off.
‘Like what? What do you regret?’
I needed to know everything he was capable of.
Martin shook his head and looked away from me.
‘I want to know,’ I pressed.
‘What do you want to know, Fran?’ he snapped, his face colouring. ‘That I’ve screwed prostitutes because I didn’t want to offend a client? That I’ve paid for information so I can short a trade, colluded with other bankers, done business deals with African despots and tyrants on their private jets? Deals I know were paid for in blood money? Yes, I’ve done it. No, I’m not proud of it. But it happens. Greed is what makes the world spin.’
‘So now I know,’ I said. ‘I know your dark corners too.’
I waited for my moral compass to forbid me to be in love with this flawed man, but all I felt was the same fierce longing I had always felt when I was with him.
‘So what do you think we should do?’ he said after a pause. ‘If you tell the police you saw me leave Donna’s house at one o’clock in the morning, they’re going to ask why you were there. I don’t want to drag you into this, Fran. I don’t want them treating you like they’ve been treating me. Like a criminal.’
‘I’m sure they’ve already got their doubts about me,’ I said, and I told him about the e-fit and about my meeting with Sergeant Collins and the lies I told him. Martin swore under his breath and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Christ, I bet you wish you’d never met me,’ he muttered.
‘Not for one moment,’ I replied, reaching for his hand. He fell quiet as if he was thinking.
‘Since we can’t tell the police about what you saw, we need to do this another way,’ he said, with more resolution in his voice. ‘We need to find Donna and we need to make sure the police are considering other people as suspects. Because I had nothing to do it.’
‘Neither did I,’ I whispered.
‘I never thought you did,’ he said, turning to face me. My back was against the broad trunk of a sycamore tree. I leant back against its wrinkled bark and felt his soft lips on mine, his thumb and forefinger stroking my earlobe tenderly.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘I want you.’ I replied softly, feeling the soft swell of arousal.
He wrapped his coat around me and as soon as I was hidden between its woollen folds, I unzipped his jeans. When he sprang free I took him in my hand, moving him up and down as he moaned in desire. I fumbled around with my own clothes, hitching up my skirt, guiding him inside me. I stretched my neck so I could see a tangle of branches and a glimpse of grey sky overhead and I didn’t care about anything, not Alex or Donna or the police. The only thing that mattered was him and our togetherness.
We collapsed on the moss and leaves when we had finished. He put his arm across my shoulder and for a time that seemed like forever, we sat there quite still.
Afterwards, we walked around the entire circumference of the heath, hand in hand like two young lovers, past the swimming ponds and the bandstand at its most southerly tip, then west, towards the pretty pergola, up towards the Spaniards Inn, where we sat outside by the road, with two pints of craft beer, revelling in the stories on the back of the menu; the pub’s mention in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, and its links to highwayman Dick Turpin. If we both appreciated the folly of being seen out together in a public place, we didn’t mention it. Not that anyone seemed to give us a second glance, let alone point out that the man in the baseball cap had been all over the newspapers in connection with his missing estranged wife.
It was almost seven o’clock by the time we got back to Kenwood House. I followed Martin to a sleek black Audi in the car park.
‘Is this yours?’ I asked, as he pip-pipped the alarm.
‘It’s Sophie’s. The police have taken mine. I suppose they’re hoping to find a boot full of blood.’
‘That’s not funny.’
He shrugged and we climbed in.
‘Where should I drop you?’ he asked.
I realized I didn’t have anywhere to go. No work, no home, didn’t much relish the thought of Clare’s disapproving looks.
‘Do you think Sophie will mind if we go for a drive?’ I asked him.
‘Where did you have in mind?’
‘Chelsea?’ I said. It seemed fitting for such a vehicle, with cream leather seats and a smooth walnut dash. In the corner of the windscreen was a parking sticker for one of London’s most exclusive gyms. I wanted one of these cars too, I wanted that sort of gym membership. For so many years I had derided bankers’ wives and the choices they made: giving up their lives and not using their brains, allowing themselves to be nothing more than someone’s chattel. And yet, for all my hard work and professional success, I worked out at the crappy local gym and I travelled by bus. I wanted Sophie’s life. I wanted Donna’s life. I wanted the Coles’ gorgeous house with its calm tones and made-to-measure drapes, I wanted Donna’s wardrobe and bags and effortless, gliding beauty. I wanted to be Martin’s wife.
‘Whereabouts in Chelsea?’ asked Martin, breaking my reverie, gunning the engine.
‘Donna’s,’ I said, looking across at him.
‘Fran, come on, that’s not helpful.’
‘Trust me,’ I said.
He looked at me for a moment, then nodded and turned the car south. Saturday-night traffic snarled the city, a constant drizzle turning the tarmac oily. It took over an hour to get to the King’s Road. Martin parked just down the road from the pub where I had sheltered the night of Donna’s disappearance. We had an indirect view of her house and I noticed that the forensic vans had gone.
He switched off the engine and we sat quietly.
‘We bought the house because of those gas lights,’ he said, pointing up at the distinctive streetlamps overhead.
‘They have those in Spitalfields too. You obviously have a type.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw him smile.
I focused on what I had come here to do.
‘So you think you left Donna’s at about midnight?’ I said. ‘Pete says I arrived back in Islington at two.’
‘Who’s Pete?’ he said crisply.
I couldn’t believe I’d been caught out so easily. I was beginning to forget what I had said to whom.
‘My neighbour. We met him at the bus stop on our first date,’ I said, trying to quickly move on. ‘I’d had so much to drink after I saw you walk into Donna’s house that night I couldn’t even find my house key. The taxi driver had to bang on the door and woke Pete up.’
‘Does Pete have a key to your house?’ he asked, his disapproval prickling across the space between us.
‘No. He let me sleep on his sofa.’
I was glad it was dark. I didn’t want anything, not the colour in my cheek, or the dryness of my lips, to give away that I was not telling him the whole truth. We’d had such a good afternoon together and shared so much. We hadn’t just talked about the dark side of his business dealings, the things he’d had to do to be successful, which he had offloaded with the embarrassed relief of one discussing his past with a priest. We’d talked about our pasts, our happy memories, our school days, when we were both smart, geeky kids craving attention.
‘You slept at Pete’s house that night?’ he repeated.
‘I didn’t have much choice. I was too pissed to find my keys and he couldn’t exactly leave me on the street.’
‘Could he not have helped you find your keys and let you into your own apartment?’
‘Well, he didn’t,’ I said firmly, wanting to cut the line of conservation dead. ‘Maybe that’s a bit creepy, but I was so out of it, I couldn’t object.’
That seemed to keep him quiet for the moment. I didn’t want to tell him anything else. I remembered what Alex had told me about Richard Chernin and I hated to think what Martin might do if he knew that Pete Carroll was blackmailing me. If he knew that we’d had sex in my bed, I thought that he might kill him.
‘I want to nip outside for a moment, see if I can jog loose any memories of where I went when the pub closed.’
I exhaled deeply as I stepped out into the cold air. I didn’t turn to look back at the car. I knew without looking that Martin was watching me.
It took me a moment to get my bearings. The pub was on the corner and Donna’s house was to the right.
Some of the houses on the opposite side of the street had pocket gardens at the front. Some had a low wall, others had a hedge, others still had thin black railings. I tried to remember my flashback in Gil’s office, working out my position so that I could replicate my view of Donna. I saw a house that looked empty with it dark, filmy windows. It had both a low hedge and some steps that led down to a basement flat.
I positioned myself at the entrance and crouched down on the cold stone looking up at Donna’s house. If she’d been standing at the window, I’d have had exactly the same view as the image I remembered. I must have come here to watch the house after I’d left the pub. I took a moment to see what else I could recall.
Nothing came immediately. I looked left, where I could see a flow of traffic at the end of the street and then right, where a metal bar across the road prevented vehicles from continuing to the adjoining street.
After a few minutes, I stood up, with nothing to show for my experience except numb buttocks.
I walked back to the car and got in.
‘Do you remember anything else?’ asked Martin with more enthusiasm.
‘No. But I found where I must have hidden to watch the house.’
We sat in silence, punctuated only by the sound of our own breathing and the faint rumble of traffic in the distance.
‘Tell me why you went back to Donna’s,’ I said after a moment.
‘Fran, please.’
‘When did you start fucking? Straight away, or was there a bit of seduction?’
Martin stayed quiet.
‘Did it turn you both on? Playing hard to get with your spouse.’
‘Don’t do this. Don’t torture yourself,’ he said, putting his hand across the gear stick.
‘That’s what I am doing,’ I whispered without looking at him. ‘It’s what I did with Gil this morning. It helps you dislodge your memories.’
Martin looked at me intently and nodded.
‘We arranged to meet to discuss the FDR,’ he said finally. ‘We met for dinner. A place we both used to like. We had a bottle of nice wine. She was funny, flirty. It was a relief after all the sniping there’d been between us. So I went back to her place.’
‘You must have been enjoying yourself.’
‘Donna was always very good at making you feel special.’
‘Is that what you liked about her when you first met?’
‘The first time we met, I just thought she was beautiful. Sexy too. Vulnerable but knowing, as if she was pretending. She intrigued me. We were engaged after six weeks. Married within three months.’
‘Where did you meet?’
‘In a bar near the store where she worked. She asked me to buy her a drink. Then she told me to take her home.’
I wanted to ask him why men fell for that, but perhaps it was obvious. Men liked obvious.
‘Was she good in bed?’
He looked at me, questioning whether I really wanted to know.
‘Was she?’ I repeated.
‘She could fuck for England,’ he said quietly. ‘She had edges. She liked doing things that others didn’t. She liked risk. Games. She could talk dirty better than anyone. She made me feel like a king.’
I thought of the messages he’d sent me over the weeks. The ones that made me want to touch myself. I remembered my shy responses and realized, right then, what he had been goading me to do. He wanted me to talk dirty back. Martin wanted me to be Donna. And I’d failed him.
I could feel my breathing become more shallow as my heart raced.
‘Is that why you went back to Donna’s that night? Did I not satisfy you?’ I said, convinced that he found our sex life too vanilla.
‘No,’ he said passionately. ‘It was one night that spiralled out of control.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said coolly. ‘Tell me about that night. Did you decide over dinner that you were going to fuck her?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t meet her with that intention.’
‘What happened when you got back to her house?’
Martin exhaled softly as if he were trying to remember it step by step.
‘We had a drink. She went upstairs. When she didn’t come back down, I went to see where she was. She was on the bed in some sexy stuff.’
‘Like what?’
‘Underwear, heels,’ he said.
‘Then what happened?’
‘I joined her on the bed. We started kissing. It went from there.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘Fran, please, stop this.’
‘No. I want to know,’ I said, feeling the pressure build. I felt on fire with envy and rage and longing. I was on the edge, like a ten-pence piece in one of those amusement arcade machines I used to love as a child. The ones you fed with your coins until they spilled over, over, exploding with a satisfying rippling sound of money against money.
‘We did it every way, Fran. And then we did it again and enjoyed it even more than the first time.’
‘So why did you leave? If you were enjoying it so much, why didn’t you stay in her bed all night?’
‘It wasn’t a good idea.’
‘Did she ask you to go or did you leave first?’
‘It doesn’t matter …’
‘Tell me. Who suggested it?’
‘She did,’ he said finally, another slap across the face.
We didn’t speak for at least a minute. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them in that top room. I gripped the car door and there was a flash of memory, tantalizingly close, like a forgotten word on the tip of your tongue. But my mind wouldn’t take me there. When I opened my eyes Martin was staring straight ahead.
‘I read a quote once,’ he said finally. ‘A quote from a famous CEO describing his ideal woman. He said, “She’s someone who could get me out of a Third World prison.”’
I didn’t reply. His earlier words still stung.
‘I think he meant his ideal woman would have heart and grit and smarts. That’s what I thought the first time I ever saw you. That’s what I loved about you. Not just the fact that you are beautiful.’
He turned to look at me. ‘When this is over, do you want to move into the loft?’
He said it so hesitantly, I felt my resistance soften.
‘You don’t have to feel sorry for me just because I have a creepy neighbour,’ I said, putting my guard up.
‘A creep with a crush on you lives downstairs, so yes, I’d rather you didn’t go on living in that flat on your own a minute longer than you have to. But that’s not why I want you to move into the loft.’
He paused before he spoke again.
‘I want you to move in because I think it might be nice to try living with me and not be married to me. We can be not married for a little while and then see how things go from there.’
My heart started to beat fast. I wasn’t sure if he was making a practical suggestion because he didn’t like Pete Carroll and was lonely and afraid and needed someone on his side, by his side. Or whether he was actually proposing to me.
Mrs Martin Joy. It felt so right.