The Cruellest Game (5 page)

‘I’m sure I won’t be,’ I said, with a confidence I didn’t entirely feel.

Why hadn’t Robert called? I couldn’t understand it.

I’d left my mobile, a BlackBerry, in the bedroom. I hurried to find it to double-check that I hadn’t missed him. I hadn’t. So I sent him another email.

‘I just want to talk to you, to hear your voice,’ I wrote.

But surely he would know that already, wouldn’t he?

Bella, who had not followed me into the bedroom, tapped on the door and sort of half leaned into the room.

‘Look, why don’t you have a bit of a lie-down on the bed,’ she said. ‘Close those eyes and maybe you’ll have another sleep. You never know. You think you
couldn’t possibly but the body looks after itself at times like this. I’m sure Robert will phone you soon, and the ringing will wake you. Meanwhile I’ll put some food together and
give you a call when it’s ready.’

Again I did as I was told. And again to my surprise I drifted off into a this time uneasy, rather unpleasant sleep, disturbed by nightmare visions of bodies with distorted faces and twisted or
even missing limbs.

Eventually Bella woke me and led me downstairs. She’d heated a pizza in the oven and made a tomato salad, warmed a loaf of bread and put some cheese on the table.

I couldn’t touch the pizza. I’d bought it for Robbie. Just looking at it made me want to cry again. But this time I managed to hold the tears back. Perhaps there were no more tears
to come. Not yet anyway.

I put some salad, some bread, and some cheese on my plate and began to eat mechanically. I ate quite a lot. There was a big empty hole inside me. It was almost as if I were trying to fill it.
But it was, of course, impossible to fill.

I kept checking my mobile. Like a teenage girl waiting for a call from her boyfriend, or a woman waiting for one from a married lover, more than once I picked up the house phone just to make
sure there was a dialling tone. Still no call from Robert. I was both bewildered and desperate to hear from him.

Bella had opened a bottle of red wine which I presumed she had selected from the rack in the kitchen, where we kept some of our stock, so that we didn’t have to scramble continually
through the funny little door under the stairs which led to the cellar Robert was so proud of. Even at that moment I noticed that it was one of his best clarets. The bottles he would never share
with visitors, not that we had many visitors. Our home was for us, not for showing off to other people, he said.

Bella’s hand shook as she began to pour for me and she knocked over my glass, the stem of which snapped as it fell sideways onto the tabletop. Bella, too, was suffering from the stress of
that dreadful day, I supposed. She muttered apologies as she mopped up the precious liquid and replaced the glass. I barely noticed. Of course, if Robert had been with us, under normal
circumstances he would have been furious. But these were certainly not normal circumstances.

I downed the first glass of wine in almost one swallow, hardly tasting it, and found myself also reflecting automatically on what Robert’s reaction to that would have been. The expensive
mellow red liquid hardly touched the sides.

We were still sitting at the kitchen table when the grandfather clock in the hall struck once. It was one in the morning. Bella had a little earlier muttered something about it being time for
bed, but I was afraid of going up, afraid of being alone, afraid of attempting to sleep in the room which was directly below the place where I had found my son hanging. And I was afraid that if I
did sleep the nightmare images would return.

Also, I was still waiting for the phone to ring.

I suggested to Bella that we open another bottle of wine. As she moved to do so I heard the handle of the kitchen door behind me begin to turn. Florrie was lying under the table by my feet. She
did not bark. Instead she jumped up and ran towards the door, her feathered tail wagging frantically.

I swung round in my chair just as Robert stepped inside. He always made his way round to the back door if he arrived home late, as he liked me to bolt the one at the front at night, even though,
or maybe because, we were so far from anywhere. He was unshaven, ashen-faced and dishevelled-looking. His thick black hair, which he wore long, needed washing. Greasy curls flopped over the collar
of a filthy denim shirt. He had not been expecting to be coming home and, in order to have reached Highrise by now, wouldn’t have had time to change or to shave. Even if he’d given such
matters a fleeting thought after the news I had given him. His appearance still shocked me, though, even at that moment. Was this how he really lived out on those rigs, I wondered obscurely?

‘Oh, Marion, Marion,’ he said. Then again. ‘Marion.’

Just my name. Over and over. But there was such pain in his voice and in his eyes, which filled with tears as I rose from my chair and rushed towards him.

‘I c-can’t believe it,’ he stumbled. ‘Is it really true?’

I nodded, once more searching for words that wouldn’t come.

‘But why, why would he do such a thing?’

I had no words with which to answer that, either. I wrapped my arms around him and just clung to him. I could feel his weight. He seemed to be leaning on me.

Then I saw his glance shift. He had seen Bella standing behind me, a bottle of his wine in her hand.

His face seemed to turn even more ashen. His eyes widened. I could not detect quite what I saw in them. My first thought was that it might be anger. It was probably just a mixture of grief and
distress, and the horror I know he would have of being forced to share any of this painfully private time with an outsider.

‘What the hell is she doing here?’ he asked quite quietly.

‘Somebody had to be with me,’ I burbled. ‘The police insisted on it. This is Bella. You know, Bella whom I told you about. I met her on the beach with the dogs . . .’

I stopped. He couldn’t be about to go into one of his tirades about unwanted visitors, surely. Not now. I wasn’t going to let him.

‘Robert, what does it matter?’ I asked. ‘You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’

I looked up at him pleadingly, although I had absolutely no idea really what I expected of him. I was clinging to him, but he made no move to touch or hold me. His arms hung limply at his sides.
His face was so grey and so still. Frozen almost. I supposed it was the shock. I had never seen him look anything like it before. This almost wasn’t my Robert. Even his accent, usually very
light, was far more Scottish than usual. Through stress, I assumed.

‘You’re here,’ I said again. ‘Thank God. But how did you get off the rig? You seemed so sure you couldn’t until morning.’

‘The boss pulled out all the stops,’ Robert replied in a distant kind of way. ‘He managed to borrow a ride from BP. He and the pilot decided the regs didn’t apply in an
emergency. They choppered me straight to Glasgow airport. EasyJet do a 9.45 p.m. flight to Bristol. I didn’t even know that—’

‘Why didn’t you phone?’ I interrupted.

‘It all happened so suddenly. I only usually bother to recharge my mobile just before I’m about to go on leave and I didn’t realize the battery was flat until I reached the
mainland. Then when I got to Bristol I just hired a car. I couldn’t wait to . . .’

His voice tailed off. What did it matter, I thought, how he’d got home so quickly? Why was I even bothering to ask? He was here. That was all that counted.

He still seemed to be looking at Bella over my shoulder. I knew him so well, knew just how much he would not want her or anyone else there with us.

‘I’ll be off then,’ said Bella, as if reading both our minds. She put the bottle of claret down with a bump on the table.

‘Now you’re home, Mr Anderson, there’s no need for me to stay,’ she continued. ‘You’d rather be alone, the pair of you, I’m sure. I’ll just clear
this lot away and put the plates in the dishwasher—’

‘No, I’ll do it,’ Robert interrupted, rather curtly I thought. But surely neither of us could be expected to remember our manners. I managed to find a semblance of them.

‘I just can’t thank you enough, Bella,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know how I would have got through this evening without you—’

‘Bella,’ said Robert, interrupting. ‘Bella,’ he repeated. His eyes were still looking in her direction but I could see he was off in some other world inside his head. So
was I. A shattered world which had once been made whole by a truly beautiful boy.

Bella backed away out of the kitchen towards the front door. Robert and I stood together silently as she left the house, and stayed like that until we heard the engine of her car start.

The expression on Robert’s face remained one of total despair. And he seemed rooted to the spot. I reached up to kiss his face. It was damp. I saw then that tears were rolling down his
cheeks, but he wasn’t sobbing. It was as if he had no idea that the tears were falling.

He was still staring straight ahead.

As I kissed him he switched his gaze, with what seemed to be a considerable effort, and looked down at me, his troubled eyes meeting mine for the first time. He kissed me on the forehead. Just
as he so often did. Only this time it was different. I supposed it would always be different in future. Now that we shared this terrible loss.

‘Oh, Marion, what has happened, what has happened to us, to our wonderful little family?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

I was fleetingly puzzled. That was a strange question. He knew what had happened well enough. Our family had been destroyed by an inexplicable tragedy.

‘What do you mean, what’s going on?’ I asked falteringly.

Something flickered in Robert’s eyes.

‘What? What? Did I ask that? I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m doing. I rushed here to comfort you and now I’m talking gibberish.’

Only then did he at last enfold me in his arms and hold me tightly. He began to kiss me all over my face. To my utter astonishment I felt my body react to him the way it always did. Even though
the stubble of what must have been several days of beard scraped my skin and he smelt of stale sweat and something else I didn’t quite recognize. The stench of the rigs perhaps, which he had
never brought home with him before. I didn’t care. I just wanted him close. As close as possible.

Robert and I had always had a wonderful sex life. He was, I thought, a truly fabulous lover, not that there’d been many men in my life for me to compare him with, but I just knew he was
special. My body had always known that.

‘I’m so very glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘So glad you got here so quickly. I don’t know how I would have got through the night without you. As long as
you’re with me, as long as you love me, I feel that maybe, just maybe, I can survive anything, even this.’

He kissed me hard on the mouth then, and I could feel the sheer power of his love, just the way I always did.

‘You will always love me, you will always be with me?’ I asked when he stopped kissing me, knowing as I did so that this was a question far more stupid than anything he’d
asked. Robert and me. Mr and Mrs Robert Anderson. We were cast in stone together. Had been from the day we met and would be until the day we died. Even the death of our beloved only son could not
change that. Surely it couldn’t.

‘Always, my darling,’ he said. ‘I will always love you and I will always be with you. Always, always.’

As he spoke he picked up the as yet unopened second bottle of wine, two glasses and a corkscrew. Then he led me upstairs to the bedroom and I could feel in him a determination greater and indeed
grimmer than I had ever felt before. I didn’t quite understand it.

But then, we had never lived through a day like this before.

Robert wanted to shower and shave. I was clinging to him again and wouldn’t let go. In the end he just discarded his clothes on the floor where I’d dropped mine
earlier, and we climbed into bed, me still in my dressing gown which I couldn’t bear to remove because I was shivering so much. I felt chilled to the marrow even though the day had been warm
and I had stepped out of the bath not long before.

Robert wrapped his arms around me inside the dressing gown and eventually his body and the bedclothes covering us warmed me at least to the point where the shivering stopped.

We did not make love. It might have brought us comfort, but I don’t think either of us were capable. Neither could we sleep. Instead we talked, going over what had happened again and
again, asking the same questions repeatedly. The same unanswerable questions.

After a bit Robert sat up in bed, opened the wine, without any of the care he usually applied to the task, and poured us both large glasses. We drank deeply then clung to each other again.

‘I want to know why, Robert,’ I said. ‘We both do, don’t we? Why would our beautiful boy have taken his own life?’

After all, hadn’t he had everything that he could possibly have wanted? A loving family, a wonderful home, the brightest of futures?

Yet I recalled how Robbie had once responded when Robert and I had been discussing a teenage suicide case reported in the press. I had wondered aloud how anyone so young could find life so
hopeless. Robbie had enquired what difference age made, if life no longer felt worth living.

‘Do you remember that, Robert?’ I asked. ‘We were quite taken aback. It was when he didn’t seem happy at school. We even thought he might be being bullied.’

‘Marion, that was nearly three years ago at his old school,’ said Robert. ‘Everything changed when we moved him.’

I nodded. ‘But he was always such a sensitive boy. Maybe even more so than we realized . . .’

Robert made no further reply. At first he seemed content to let me do most of the talking. We were both in shock, of course, him every bit as much as me in spite of it having been me who had
found our son’s body.

However, when he started to ask questions, in some detail, about exactly how I’d found Robbie, exactly what the police had said, exactly what conclusion they had come to, and so on, it was
as if the floodgates opened. He talked and talked. We both did.