In Too Deep (17 page)

Sunday-morning breakfast is served slightly later than usual, but I’m awake at 5 a.m., hardly daring to move my head on the pillow. Lines of crushing pain run in bands around my skull, while my vision is blurry and my stomach is awash with acid and the remains of last night’s food.

Hannah snores gently in the next bed, dreaming her way to morning. She makes little noises as she works through whatever’s playing out in her brain, but once or twice the sweet contented snuffles transform into deep, painful moans punctuated by words that I can’t make out. Words that sound utterly sad.

I get up slowly and take two paracetamol from my bag. I’ve done this most mornings since Rick went, but nothing numbs the various pains I have, whether self-inflicted or otherwise. I used to consider myself pretty healthy for my age, with few trips to the GP, but now it’s as if my body is fast-forwarding to old age. My joints ache, my skin has turned papery and dry, and my hair is
falling out. I have stomach pains most of the time, and palpitations that stop me in my tracks, while the shake in my hand is only stopped by fitful bouts of sleep or, more often than not, wine.

I splash water on my face and stretch into the clothes I dropped on the bathroom floor last night. I pull on a fleece zip-up top from my bag, signalling to Cooper once I’ve laced up my trainers. He makes a contented, throaty grumble, thumping his tail several times before heaving himself up. His black coat shines as he walks through a chink of sunlight creeping between the curtains. We leave the room, and it’s only when I’ve shut the door that I realise I’ve left my key card inside.

The hotel is quiet as I walk along the creaky-floored corridor, down the big oak staircase and into the reception area. I stop, pausing to look around. The still air smells sweet and sickly from the lilies on the central table. Orange pollen has fallen on to the polished wood, and a single fruit fly hovering around the white flower cones is the only movement in the room.

‘Rick chose this place,’ I whisper pensively, giving Cooper’s lead a jangle and wondering if there was a particular reason.

It’s just me searching for answers, I realise, but I can’t help it. Everything Rick did was careful, considered and filled with forethought. Surely the choice of this hotel was, too? It wouldn’t be like him to randomly pick any old place off the internet, even if special offers were involved.

‘Come on then, boy,’ I say. ‘Let’s get some fresh air.’ I
head for the front door, wondering if I’m the only person awake in the entire Cotswolds. Outside, the air smells like wet peat and herbs, mashed up with sweet rain and the chill of the night. Even though the sun has risen, the grounds are still shaded by the tall canopy of trees running the perimeter, as well as the span of the building itself. It looks even more imposing at this time of day, as if it’s been awake all night, keeping watch.

A chill runs up my spine, and it only dissipates when Cooper uncharacteristically tugs on the lead. He trots at a brisk pace towards the lawn with me following.

Once he’s finished, I allow him to amble over to the thicket of trees, discovering it’s actually a small spinney with more depth than I realised. I look around. I doubt Cooper will charge down to the fields at the bottom, where the woolly bodies of a dozen or so sheep are standing in the misty, ancient and ridged field. He’s too old and lazy to chase them, so I unhook his lead.

‘Off you go, boy,’ I say, watching as he barely moves any faster. I worry about him. His hips are slowly getting worse, making his movements more lumbering as every week goes by. I can’t bear the thought of losing him. He’s my connection to Rick. The two of them were inseparable.

I wander on, tracking the edge of the spinney, eventually deciding to climb over the metal estate fence. Despite his barrel-shaped body, Cooper pushes through the bars, following me down into the dark trees. Indignant birds squawk and flap as I invade their habitat, though two
lazy pheasants watch me from up ahead, finally running and flapping into the air as Cooper approaches.

A hundred yards or so further on, I come across the stump of a fallen tree. One side is flat and smooth, so I sit down and watch as Cooper trots around me, pushing his nose into the deep compost of twigs and leaves that’s covering the ground, excited by all the new smells. It’s a far cry from the quick and guilty walk around the local park before work that he usually gets. It feels good to be out in the fresh air, despite my grogginess from the wine. There’s something magical about the early hour, as if it belongs to me alone.

‘Exercise can really help your mood,’ Paula said during one of my sessions. ‘Though I realise it may be the last thing you feel like doing under the circumstances.’

‘Walking is OK,’ I told her honestly. ‘I can manage that. But only because it’s what Rick liked to do.’ She encouraged me to get out daily, using Cooper as an excuse, but as the days without Rick turned into weeks, what with running the house single-handedly and doing my job, free time for long walks diminished. The best I manage now is a quick trot to the park, or at worst I shove him into the garden.

‘Please don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Paula said another time, when I confessed to not having followed her recommendations.

I remember the pained expression I pulled – the same one I wear most days now. I apologised, hanging my head,
and Paula chastised me gently, reminding me that I was a good woman, that I had nothing to be sorry about.

My lips parted, wanting to say,
Oh, but I do
, though something silenced me, convincing me that telling the story leading up to Rick and me arguing in the car wasn’t important, that what he’d seen between Adrian and me had been entirely innocent and he’d simply read it the wrong way.

But it was far from innocent, and guilt had me believing it was the cause of his disappearance, while Paula’s job was to assure me that it wasn’t.

‘It’s natural for you to dissect everything,’ she said intuitively. ‘Analysing every word you and Rick said in the preceding days, thinking about every look you exchanged, every kiss you shared, just to see if there was a subtle
something
that you missed. A clue that would lead you straight to him.’

She was right, although it was mainly the words exchanged between Adrian and me that I was overthinking, wondering if Rick had spied on us more than that one time, overheard something. As it stood, I knew that hugging Adrian in that way was wrong, but there was a huge gap of logic to explain Rick’s reaction if he’d taken off because of it. What else did he know?

In the aftermath of Rick’s disappearance, I’d skirted around the issue with Adrian once or twice over the phone when I’d had to call the office, trying to find out what the hell he might have said to Rick, or, worse, what he might have done. But I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction
of seeing how he was affecting me by making a special visit into work while I was still on compassionate leave. Instead, I kept all it inside.

‘I’ve analysed everything until I can’t remember it any more,’ I confessed to Paula. ‘I’m working backwards through it now.’

I considered telling her the truth about Adrian many times, but it never quite came out. All things considered, it was safer that way.

I’d been working at Watkins & Lowe for eleven years, and had reckoned the offer of a partnership was in the bag. Rod Watkins was retiring and several new posts were opening as the business expanded under the guidance of Mick Lowe. This included the role – the one that should have been mine – that ended up being given to Adrian, an outsider who we all knew from his stints at other agencies. Paths cross in this business, and I knew he was less than scrupulous, operating just under the ethical radar in many of his deals. The collective heart of the agency had sunk when he’d joined the team.

And as if having his larger-than-life presence in the office hadn’t been enough – with the hideous gloating made known through subtle signs that were apparent only to me – Adrian had soon begun a thing with Steph, making it blatantly obvious that he’d not only taken the job I’d wanted and needed, but that he was slowly and surely prising my best friend from me too. I had no idea why.

‘I think about it all the time,’ I said to Paula, referring
to the stuff she knew, as well as the stuff she didn’t. ‘I’m obsessing and I want to stop. I can’t carry on like this. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me.’

‘That’s how it feels, and I really understand that,’ Paula said. ‘It must be so hard, but look how far you’ve come already. You survived those terrible early days. The human mind and body have an amazing partnership,’ she continued. ‘Concocting all sorts of clever ways to adapt. You’re getting used to a new way of living, Gina, and it feels odd. It feels horrendous. But you are coping. You are doing it so well.’

I frowned. I didn’t think I believed her; wasn’t sure I entirely trusted her, though God, I wanted to.

‘What if Rick never returns and I’m left in limbo for the rest of my life?’

‘Then that too is some kind of an outcome,’ she said calmly. ‘An outcome that needs accepting and processing, just as if he walked into this office right now would also need dealing with. Already you’ve moved on from who and what you were last November. You’re not the same woman that Rick left behind.’

I nodded. She was right and I hadn’t realised. If Rick came into the room right then, I’d be filled with anger, disbelief and . . . love, or so I thought. But my love for him had shifted ever so slightly. It wasn’t quite the same.

I talked to Paula about the police search, how it had affected me. No body had been found, and God knows they’d looked – from scouring railway embankments and local wasteland with highly trained dogs, to dredging the
canals and diving the river with special equipment. There were no forensic clues to suggest that Rick had been hurt or murdered or even a single sign of a struggle in the locality. There were no witness reports of trouble or a fight – just the possibility that someone saw a man like Rick walking along the pavement around the time he vanished.

Those early days had been a time when I’d read everything into nothing, searched for clues wherever I could, taking any minuscule occurrence as a sign, a reason, or an excuse for what had happened. I’d been desperate for proof that Rick hadn’t left me, that there was a rational explanation. And underlying all of this had been Adrian’s big hands wrapped around me.

I couldn’t bear it that Rick had seen us.

‘Adrian was harassing me at work,’ I told Paula the next time I saw her. She was wearing a slim corduroy skirt with dark tights and knee-length boots. Her chunky-knit cardigan fell open at the front, showing her figure beneath the grey wool. ‘Sexually.’

‘Go on,’ she said in that kind manner of hers that I’d become so used to; so trusting of. The gentle nod she gave, the way her intense eyes focused solely on me were like a thread attached to my thoughts, drawing them out of me.

‘Actually, that gives the wrong impression,’ I said, suddenly fearful, wanting to retract. ‘It probably wasn’t harassment. He wanted to make me feel special. I don’t know how it happened exactly, but it was . . . well, I’m
not proud. I suppose it was kind of flattering at first. He’s a good-looking man.’

I looked out of the window to my left. It was raining and I could see the pavements were slick and glittering in the late-afternoon street light. It had been dark for an hour already, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Rick was doing right at that moment. Was he soaking or dry? Hungry or cold? Dead or alive?

‘It started when he joined our office. To begin with, he was aloof, but after a while I sensed something extra from him, a vibe he didn’t give to the others. It was mainly looks, and the way he acted around me. Once or twice we chatted about our private lives. He told me he was divorced, that his ex-wife was a psycho-bitch, that he had a couple of kids he saw every other weekend.

‘Most of us keep our personal issues out of work – apart from Steph, of course, who virtually broadcasts all the disasters in her life on an hourly basis.’ I smiled briefly, unable to help it. Steph’s middle name is calamity, though I didn’t bother explaining how Adrian had made a play for her first.

‘So what changed?’ Paula maintained her warmth towards me, even though I reckoned she was probably feeling the opposite inside.

‘I don’t know for certain,’ I said, trying to pinpoint a moment. ‘A few months ago, there was an impromptu work gathering. We’d had a particularly good quarter sales-wise, so the bosses put on a celebration supper at a local place for the staff and their partners. Rick came,
though Adrian was there alone. I wondered if he was jealous. He kept staring at me and Rick.’

Paula urged me on with a nod.

‘After a few drinks, Adrian latched on to Rick and they talked for a while. Rick looked a bit uncomfortable, if I’m honest, and at one point I tried to rescue him. Adrian can be very overbearing.’ I scanned back over what I could recall, seeing the boredom on Rick’s face, the way he kept looking over at me then looking quickly away. I noticed he was sweating.

‘When I asked Rick about it later, he denied anything was wrong, that he and Adrian had been chatting about the rugby. He was quiet afterwards, though. Withdrawn.’ I shrugged. ‘But I’m probably reading too much into it. Overthinking things again.’

‘I’m sure Rick would have been sensible enough to discuss things with you if he was worried about Adrian’s behaviour. Or indeed if he thought you were having an affair.’

My mouth went dry and my heart kicked up when Paula mentioned the word ‘affair’. That’s not what it was. Was it? Had my lies to myself become cemented in my reality?

‘Adrian has a way about him,’ I tried to explain, though it was impossible to convey his charm and allure without meeting him. ‘It was like he had some kind of power over me from the start.’ I looked away, hoping Paula would sense how much shame I carried. ‘If I’m honest, it scared me. I felt threatened, like I wasn’t the real me when he
was around. He’d get up close and say things to me, causing this . . .
tension
between us. It simmered away, making me feel . . . dirty if I didn’t do what he wanted. You know . . .’