The house feels different immediately. It feels lighter and softer, and it feels, at long last, normal again. Alix stands for a moment in the hallway and absorbs the change in the energy. The cat sashays down the hall towards her and throws itself around Alix’s legs celebratorily, as if she too knows that her territory is returned to her. Alix gathers her into her arms, carries her into the kitchen and puts her up on the work surface near her food bowl.
‘Gone?’ says Nathan, peering up at her over his reading glasses.
‘Gone.’
‘Are you sure? Have you checked?’
‘No, I haven’t checked. But I know she has.’
‘Will she be OK?’ asks Leon.
Alix smiles at him. ‘She’ll be fine. Her mum will get her the care she needs.’
But the words sound hollow somehow, meaningless. Not because she doesn’t think Josie’s mum would help her, but because she’s not entirely sure that that is where Josie is going. It’s an unsettling feeling, but she puts it to one side, because today is the day she’s been looking forward to all week and she has things to do, not least to sort out the spare bedroom for Maxine and the boys and the study for Zoe and Petal.
Her tread feels light up the stairs knowing that there is nobody up there on the top floor, knowing that her part in Josie’s drama is over. But a small shadow remains.
Josie has not stripped her bed, but has left it neatly made, the pillows plumped and fat, the surface of the duvet slick. Alix unmakes it and strips it.
Josie has left the shower room sparkling clean, her towels hung straight and symmetrical from the heated rail. Alix yanks them down and adds them to the laundry pile.
She pushes open the window and closes the curtains against the burning sun, which will be shining directly into this room by lunchtime.
She surveys the room, and it feels almost as if Josie was never here, as if none of it really happened. She drops to her hands and knees and looks under the bed. Some dust bunnies, but that’s all. And then she straightens up and runs her fingertips underneath the mattress.
The key is still there. The one with the number 6 on the tag. For a moment she considers jumping to her feet, running to the front door, seeing if she can catch up with Josie to hand it back to her. But immediately she knows she mustn’t. She knows that this key means something. That maybe it has been left for a reason. She pulls it out gingerly by the metal hoop and stares at it for moment, before putting it in her pocket.
She redresses the bed, replaces the towels and closes the door behind her.
Zoe arrives first. She is the older of Alix’s sisters. The smallest. The quietest. Petal is the youngest of the cousins, Zoe’s long-awaited only child, conceived and born when she was forty-one via donor insemination. Maxine arrives half an hour after Zoe. She is the younger of Alix’s sisters and has two boys, Billy and Jonny, one the same age as Leon and Petal, the other the same age as Eliza. Maxine is the tallest and the loudest and her boys are horribly behaved but theirs is not the sort of family to care, and frankly, after weeks of listening to Josie describing the behaviours of her two children, they now seem like angels in comparison.
Alix has set up two paddling pools in the garden and has a huge bucket of ice in the shade for chilling the wine and the children’s drinks. All three sisters are wearing billowy cotton dresses and the air smells of the sun cream that they have rubbed into each other’s necks and shoulder blades. Nathan gets back from a trip to the local garden supplies centre at about six with a new water sprinkler after discovering that the old one is dead. He sets it up and the children run through it screaming with delight. He sits with the sisters for a while and drinks a beer, slowly, almost unnaturally so, pacing himself, Alix assumes, for the real drinking which will commence when he’s with his friends later. She swallows back the feeling of discomfort that hits her when she thinks about Nathan’s plans for the night and remembers his promise to her. She is 99 per cent certain that he will not let her down. He loves her sisters and has always been eager to have their approval and he knows that if he lets Alix down tonight, they will both judge him very harshly. Not only that, but she has promised him sex if he’s home before midnight. She reaches out her hand at one point and squeezes his wrist with it, both affectionately and warningly. He smiles down at her and she can see it there, his resolve, to do better and be better. She squeezes his wrist again and turns her attention back to her sisters.
At seven o’clock they order their pizzas and start making the margaritas. Maxine is responsible for this undertaking as she spent three years working in a cocktail bar in her twenties. At seven thirty Nathan leaves. Alix follows him to the front door and puts her lips to his neck and brushes her leg against his groin. ‘Be good,’ she says. ‘Please.’
‘I swear,’ he says. ‘I swear.’
He kisses her softly on the lips and then on her neck and it is so unusual for them to behave like this these days, to be playful, to be sexual, that Alix feels a flush go all the way through her. She watches him from the window in the hallway, in his navy shorts, his floral-print shirt, his red hair pushed back from his face by black sunglasses, and she thinks that she has missed him. That she wants him. That she is already looking forward to him coming home. And then she turns back to the chaos of her sisters and their children and the calls of ‘Who wants a salty rim?’ and the hot, hot sun beating down through the roof of her kitchen and on to the tiled floor.
Nathan has his phone to his ear as he heads through the back streets towards Kilburn tube station. He’s talking loudly in that way that some people do, as if he thinks everyone in the world wants to hear his business. His voice grates through Josie’s head, even from a distance. There’s been a change of plan, according to the one side of the conversation that Josie can hear. They’re not meeting at the place they’d arranged to meet; they’re meeting at the Lamb & Flag. ‘Yeah, and I’m not getting shit-faced, remember. I told Alix I’d be home before midnight. I’m on a promise. Yeah!’ He laughs. ‘Exactly!’
He hangs up and Josie stares at the back of his head in disgust. How could Alix even contemplate it? she wonders. How could she think she needed to promise him anything, simply for him to behave like a civilised human being? She is out of this man’s league in every way. Josie feels her respect for Alix wane, records another tiny degradation in her feelings for her, but then remembers what she is doing and why and feels restored again.
She follows Nathan into the tube station. She’s wearing a new dress that she bought from Sainsbury’s this morning. It’s not as nice as the things she bought when she was with Alix, but it’s good for the heat and it’s also unfamiliar to Nathan. Her hair is tucked inside a straw hat, also from Sainsbury’s, and she’s wearing red lipstick for the first time in her life, which makes her look even less like herself.
She has googled the pub where Nathan is meeting his friends, just in case she loses him on the tube. It’s in a side street off Oxford Street, near the back end of Selfridges; the nearest tube station is Bond Street, six stops away.
Kilburn is an overground tube station, and she is glad not to be underground in this heat. A breeze comes from nowhere and ruffles the hem of her skirt and cools the sweat on her neck. Nathan, at the other end of the platform, is fiddling with his phone. He’s wearing shorts and his legs are skinny and pale, like a child’s. Once again, she wonders what on earth Alix has ever seen in this man. At least, she thinks, at least Walter was good-looking when he was young. Strong. Tall. Handsome.
The tube arrives and twenty minutes later Josie is following Nathan across the chaos of Saturday-night Oxford Street, where the shops are all still open and the pavements are heavy with shoppers and early diners. What a strange people we are, she thinks of her countrymen: where other people take to the shade, to the aircon, stay indoors and close their curtains in the heat, the English hurl themselves at it, like pigs into a furnace.
At a table outside the pub are three men, who all get to their feet and make baying, animal noises when they see Nathan approaching. They bang him on the back and force a pint into his hand and then squeeze up along the bench so that he can sit down and they all look like him, or at least different versions of him. One is Asian, one is Black, one is white with dark hair, but they are all dressed the same, they sound the same, laugh the same. They are a pack, she thinks, a pack of men. Men who should be home with their families, not sitting here acting like a bunch of overgrown schoolboys.
There is an Italian restaurant next to the pub, with tables on the pavement. She sits down and orders a Coke and a pasta dish with fresh tomato and basil. Nathan and his friends break out into deafening laughter roughly every forty-five seconds. More pints are brought to the table and a round of shots. She hears Nathan telling his friends that he is celebrating because they have just got rid of the ‘houseguest from hell’.
‘Oh yeah. Who was that, then?’ says the Asian one.
‘Friend of my wife’s. Or maybe not quite a friend, but this woman she’s been doing a podcast about. She got in a fight with her husband and turned up on our front step last weekend with a bashed-up face. Alix let her in, of course . She’s so bloody soft, my wife. And this woman refused to go home, refused to go to the police, refused to go to her mum’s, just sat in our house all week wearing Alix’s clothes with a face like someone just farted. And today, she finally left! So, cheers! Cheers to having my house back!’
Josie turns and watches them sourly as they bang their beer glasses together and say cheers.
‘Where did she go?’ asks the dark-haired guy.
‘No fucking idea and I do not care. I have never felt less comfortable in my own home, that’s all I know. The woman was a freak.’
Someone makes another of the animal noises, and they bang their glasses together again.
Josie pushes her half-eaten pasta away from her. The things that Nathan is saying are not nice, but she’s not surprised. She knows that Nathan didn’t like her being there. But that’s fine. It all just strengthens her resolve.
She picks up her phone and finds the message thread she started earlier. She types another message.
He’s at a table outside the Lamb and Flag. The one in the flowery shirt and red hair with three other men. Can you be here in ten minutes?
The reply comes immediately.
I’m just getting off the tube. I’ll be there soon.
Josie sends a thumbs-up emoji and puts down her phone, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
Josie watches Nathan’s face register a small shock of pleasant surprise when the young woman stands over him and says, ‘Can I sit here while I wait for my friend?’
‘Oh, yeah. Sure. Of course.’ Nathan squashes along the bench closer to his friend and the woman squeezes herself on the end, so that her arm presses against his. She places a drink on the table in front of her and rummages through her tiny handbag, pulls out a packet of tobacco and some Rizlas and makes herself a roll-up. Josie watches her turn to Nathan and say, ‘Want one?’
‘Oh,’ says Nathan. ‘No. No, thank you. I never have …’
‘Do you mind if I do?’
‘Not at all. Go ahead. Not a problem.’
Josie can see colour rising through Nathan’s face. The woman is wearing a floaty black halter-neck top and tight white jeans and her curly blonde hair is tied back from her exquisite face, which is make-up free in the way that requires a lot of very expertly applied make-up.
Nathan manages to find his way back into his conversation with the three friends, but Josie can see that he is struggling now, that he is hyper aware of the stunningly beautiful young woman sitting right next to him, her bare arm brushing against his bare arm every few seconds. The woman plays with her phone for a few minutes and then she swears under her breath and bangs her phone down on the table. Nathan turns to her and says, ‘Are you OK?’
The woman sighs. ‘Just been blown out,’ she says. ‘By my friend. She’s always doing this. Every single time. Seriously. This is the third time in a row. God.’
‘That sucks,’ says Nathan. ‘I hate it when people do that to me.’
‘Yeah. It’s just disrespectful, isn’t it?’
They don’t say anything for a moment. The woman takes a drag of her roll-up and blows it out of the side of her mouth. Nathan picks up his pint glass and takes a sip. ‘I don’t suppose I could stay with you guys for a bit?’ the woman says. ‘Just while I finish my drink? Seems a shame to waste it.’
‘God. Yeah. Of course. Please.’
‘Oh, thank you so much. You’re a saviour. I’m Katelyn, by the way.’
She offers him her hand to shake, and he takes it. ‘Nathan,’ he says. ‘Nice to meet you, Katelyn.’
Then he introduces her to the rest of the group, she shakes their hands, they smile, she smiles, they are all delighted that a beautiful young woman has joined their group, they are holding in their soft stomachs and bringing their best games to the table. Josie watches in satisfaction and then sends Katelyn another text message.
Bloody brilliant. Let me know when you’ve done it. I’ll be waiting for you.
Then she pays for her uneaten pasta and her flat Coca-Cola and heads away from the pub and into the maelstrom of the hot summer night.
Alix sends Nathan a text message.
Hi! We’re being very bad. You having fun?
She watches the ticks on the message for a while, but they stay grey. She swallows down the sense of discomfort and puts her phone away. She’d been secretly hoping that he might have been home by now. The later he’s out, the higher the chance of him losing himself to the night.
Zoe is making herself a mint tea. She has a natural cut-off point for drinking; she’s always the first to stop. Maxine and Alix are drinking the warm dregs of a bottle of Prosecco they opened earlier that had been found bobbing around darkly in the ice bucket in the garden. Petal is in bed as Zoe is very firm about bedtimes. The other children are playing a computer game in the living room incredibly loudly and Alix is about to go in and tell them to be quiet as there is a bedroom on the other side of the living-room wall where the house next door is converted into flats, and she doesn’t want to disturb the neighbours, but for now, she is enjoying the soft edges of the night, the night air cooling down the intense heat of the day but still warm enough for bare arms. She’s enjoying the conversation; they’re discussing their upcoming summer holiday, a big villa in Croatia, all three of them, their children, the husbands, their mother, a pool, ten days of happiness. It was booked back in January and felt at first close enough to touch and then, as the winter passed slowly into spring, impossibly distant, and now it is only twenty-two days away and Zoe shows them the new bikini she just ordered from John Lewis on her phone and they discuss their boobs and their bellies and their hormones and their moods and then, suddenly, it is nearly half eleven and Zoe is yawning and making moves towards bed.
Alix checks her phone to see if Nathan has sent her any suggestion that he might be on his way home. But there is nothing. She smiles tightly at something that her sister has just said. She doesn’t want to have to answer questions about it. Her sisters are aware that Nathan has started binge-drinking again, but Alix hasn’t told them quite how bad it’s been and what hangs in the balance here, the slender fulcrum that her marriage is currently resting upon.
By the time all the children have been corralled into their beds and the sisters are getting ready to get into theirs, it is midnight. Alix sits straight-backed and tense on the edge of the bed. She will wait until five past midnight and then she will call him. For now, she walks towards the bathroom, discarding her clothes in the walkthrough wardrobe as she goes. And as she kicks off her sandals and leans down to put them away, she notices something in her shoe rack. A small clear plastic bag. A scrap of napkin with a number scrawled on it illegibly, and the name ‘Daisy’. A cardboard holder for a hotel key card. The name of the hotel is the Railings. She knows it, it’s near Nathan’s office in Farringdon: a hip boutique place with all the window-frames and brickwork painted chalky-black. The guys at Nathan’s office often use it for after-work drinks and client entertaining. Nathan has taken Alix there on a few occasions too, where they’ve had drinks but certainly never taken a room. She holds the small plastic bag to the light and sees a residue of white powder clinging to its insides.
She feels a dark cloud of nausea pass through her from the bottom of her gut to the back of her throat. She looks at the items again. There are no dates on any of them. They could have come from anywhere at any time. But she knows they didn’t. She knows they are from one of the number of nights that he has recently spent away from his home, away from his bed, in a black hole he claims not to remember.
She brushes her teeth furiously in the bathroom, staring at the warped face of a wronged wife that looks back at her from the mirror. She has never been a wronged wife before. She has never, not in all their years together, suspected that her husband might have been the type of husband to pick up women in pubs and take them to hotels then come home twenty-four hours later and pretend not to remember anything. She has never had to confront this feeling before, and it is sickening.
She thinks of her sisters, who are already cross with Nathan for not being home by midnight, imagines what they would think if they saw the things she’d just found on the base of her shoe drawer, imagines the things they would tell her she should do, the punishments she should mete out, the actions she should take, and she thinks no, she wants to deal with this her way. Calmly. Rationally. Alix is not a dramatic or a reactive person. She is a person who likes to step away from situations that make her feel bad, to look at them objectively as if they were happening to somebody else, and then make a decision based on how best to keep the peace and maintain the status quo, because Alix, as much as it pains her to admit it to herself, needs to maintain the status quo – for the sake of the children, for the sake of her lifestyle, for the sake of all of them. She has too much to lose by acting in rage, far too much. She needs to give Nathan a chance to prove that her fears are unfounded, and then they can carry on.
At seven minutes past midnight, she returns to sitting on the edge of the bed and she taps in his number.
The call rings out.
It is after midnight, and Josie pictures Alix in her bedroom, wondering why her stupid husband hasn’t come home yet. She pictures her leaning down in the dressing area and finding the pieces of evidence she’d left in her shoe rack this morning before she left, the key-card holder, the little bag, the illegible phone number with a girl’s name she’d added to it. Daisy . She’d been pleased with that. The sort of ultra-feminine, young-sounding name that would set alarm bells ringing.
She pictures Alix calling her stupid husband and the call ringing out.
She pictures Alix’s stupid husband in a loud bar in Soho doing shots and lines with lovely Katelyn.
Her phone buzzes and she picks it up. It’s Katelyn.
We’re goin in. When u comin?
Right now, she replies. I’m leaving right now.