The Last Time I Saw You (13 page)

“His wife was my best friend at university.”

“And beyond?”

I smile, say nothing.

“Terrible business. I gather there’s some outstanding questions around the circumstances?”

I nod, trying to mask how little I actually know, hoping my face won’t give me away.

“Frankly I’m surprised he’s been able to stay, considering how it seems to be unfolding.”

I bite my tongue, determined not to gossip. I won’t talk about you like this, I think, digging my fingernails into my palm to try to stop the tears springing to my eyes. If only William would come back.

When he does sit down, shortly after, I find myself almost asking him with my eyes. He either doesn’t see, or chooses not to see, looking instead to the gray-haired man who’s rising to his feet, his army uniform weighed down by a battery of medals.

“Who is he?” I whisper.

“Sir Richard Fothergay.” I look totally blank. “He’s the ex-head of the British Army. Retired last year.”

Watching QVC and playing Scrabble clearly doesn’t give him enough to do, as he gives a speech about the importance of transatlantic interdependence that lasts approximately
two hundred years. My concentration waxes and wanes, so much else circling around my mind.

“Finally,” says Sir Richard, and I start to sense escape, “I know that you will all join me in expressing our deepest condolences to William Harrington who recently lost his wife in the most tragic of circumstances. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family at this difficult time.”

All eyes turn in our direction, the room silent. William looks at his plate, surveys the petits fours like they’re lost treasure, and then forces his gaze outward. “Thank you,” he says, then returns his gaze to the plate.

Then we’re finally released from the table, and pushed back through to the ballroom. Horror of horrors, they’ve turned it into a disco, complete with a cheesy deejay standing poised behind a pair of decks. I look at William, embarrassed: the celebratory mood seems like an anathema. He manages a weak smile, then leads us through the chattering throng of people, but before we can make our escape, we’re waylaid by Trixie and Rory.

“Marvelous speech,” says Rory.

“Without question,” agrees William while I’m stuck with Trixie, groping for something to say. She swivels toward William, turning her back to me.

“You must come for dinner before you flee back to the US of A. You just pop up the A40 and you hit Henley in no time.”

“Thank you. Very kind.”

“Be warned I’ll be holding you to it.”

“She will,” agrees Rory.

She will, I can tell. Jules is right, the fix-ups will start in no time. Even if it’s too soon, the Trixies of this world will be making sure their single girlfriends are sowing
the seeds for when the clouds of grief have cleared and they can respectably make their move. I look at his profile, wondering if he realizes what the agenda is here. It makes me sad, the thought of it, even though logically I know that his life has to go on: time is so merciless, the way it scatters earth over the past and builds the new over its bones. And yet—I can’t see Sally letting go that easily. Whatever the second Mrs. Harrington chooses to believe, I know she’ll never be able to escape the shadow cast by the first.

“If you’ll excuse us, Rory’s promised me a boogie,” says Trixie. Now this I’ve got to see, oddly comforted by the realization that I’m still me, in the midst of all of this. Again that absence, that sense of Sally, the outrageous nickname she’d have damned Trixie with by now. William’s stopped, is staring at the dance floor, watching the couples who are starting to flood their way over. We’re marooned on the periphery—a couple of people, most definitely not a couple.

“Do you . . .” asks William, his expression strained. I swatted him away.

“Oh no, I . . .”

“Trust me, you’ve been spared,” he says. “Dictionary definition of two left feet.”

Jasper crosses toward us, distracting me from the sight of Trixie doing little high kicks and finger clicks to “You Sexy Thing”: Rory is most definitely the least sexy thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Would it be inappropriate to steal you for a song?” he asks.

“Please do,” says William, and I feel an illogical shard of rejection.

Jasper turns out to be a surprisingly good mover, although I don’t much like the way his hands are taking the scenic route. I look back toward William, an isolated figure at the corner of the dance floor. I might be imagining it, but it seems as though his eyes are trained on us.

“He’s brilliant, you know,” says Jasper. “One of the finest minds of his generation.”

“Is he?”

“He can spin anything. Turn it into gold.”

And finally we’re out, hit by a gust of bracing night air, blowing away the stultifying atmosphere of the past four hours. I gulp it down, aware how suffocated I’ve felt.

“Please don’t be polite,” says William. “I know what an endurance test that must have been.” He pauses, hesitant. “Thank you.”

“It was a bit, but nothing compared to how it must have been for you. I can’t believe . . .”

“They were trying to be kind.”

We stand there a moment, looking at each other, and I try and summon up the courage to articulate the questions that are plaguing me.

“Shall we find you a taxi?” he asks, before I get there.

“Yes, or . . .” I want to ask him if he wants to get a drink, but it’s hard to get the words out.

“In fact we could probably share one. The new digs are in Battersea.”

“Great,” I say, as he flags one down.

William perches awkwardly on the uncomfortable flip up seat, leaving me to luxuriate in the spaciousness of the back seat. If this was Sally, she’d just dive right in there and
not worry about the consequences. I’m so scared of hurting him, or alienating him, or getting an answer that makes everything somehow worse.

“So what does the rest of the week have in store?” he asks.

I don’t think I can stand any more small talk. As words start to tumble out of my mouth, I realize that I’m a little drunk. Maybe the lack of inhibition is what I need, or maybe it’s the absolute opposite.

“William, you might think this is none of my business, or that I’m being as inappropriate as all those chilly snobs in there, but can I ask you what’s happened the last few weeks? Something Jasper said . . .”

He looks at me, then turns away, his jaw set, his eyes fixed on the night skyline. I’m shaking, my nerves jangling. I should never have gone here. I wouldn’t have done, if I’d had any choice. I felt like I owed it to her in some stupid way.

“She died, Olivia. On June the eighteenth 2012 my wife died. At this precise moment in time I can’t see what else matters beyond that fact.”

“I thought maybe you wanted to talk about it. You said you wanted to . . .”

A coldness comes over him, quite different from the reserve that I’ve become accustomed to.

“And if I did, don’t you think that I would do so?”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Silence reigns for what feels like forever, before some kamikaze part of me blunders on. “It’s just I knew Sally, not just knew her like a mate. She was my person.”

The silence continues, but then, as I look at him, I notice a lone tear slither down his face. He doesn’t attempt to wipe it, just continues to stare straight ahead.

“Your person,” he repeats, a hollowness about the way he says it.

“Yeah, she was,” I say, almost defensive.

He looks at me for the first time in ages, a deep sadness in his eyes.

“Your person.” He waits a while. “Do you honestly believe that such a thing was possible?”

“Coming up on the left, mate?” says the cab driver, his voice cutting its way into the intensity of the moment.

“Look, I’m just down the road. Come back and have a glass of wine, or a cup of tea, or something.”

I don’t even know where that came from, but it felt so abrupt for us to part ways like this. I don’t think for a moment he’ll agree, but to my surprise he does, and a few minutes later we’re drawing up outside the apartment. He insists on paying, then follows me up the dingy stairs that you have to race up in order to avoid the stinge light, as James calls it, snapping off to save the visor-wearing landlady’s electricity bill. To my relief, the door is double locked. I definitely don’t think I need to be making any formal introductions right now.

“Home sweet home. What can I get you to drink?”

“Is there any remote chance you’ve got whisky?”

James does, and I sit him at the kitchen table and pour him a largish measure while I make myself a cup of peppermint tea. As I watch him swallow it back in a couple of gulps it occurs to me how frequently he seemed to need his wine glass topping up. I leave the whisky bottle on the side, but he goes and finds it, motioning to me to check it’s okay for him to pour more. I smile my assent, wishing for his sake that he wouldn’t.

“I didn’t lure you back here to grill you. We don’t have to talk about it . . . we can just have a drink.”

“You say that,” he says, voice thick with alcohol, “but all I’m seeing is a steaming mug of dull. Don’t abandon me now, Olivia.”

“I hate whisky.”

“Nonsense, you just need more practice.”

I reluctantly pour myself a tiny measure and take a sip. It’s like fire burning down my windpipe. I cough, wrinkling my nose. “Courage.” He clinks my glass and knocks back more of his. I watch him, wary. It feels too intimate somehow, him sitting in the chaos of my ramshackle kitchen, expensive coat flung over the back of his chair. He’s almost a stranger, and yet I feel like I know things about him that I have no way of knowing.

“Fire away. Ask me anything,” he says, tipping more whisky into his glass, an edge to him.

This isn’t right. This isn’t how it should be. What was I expecting? That I’d be able to heal him with the golden balm of my sympathy?

“Are you sure you don’t want a cup of this instead? You’re going to feel like shit in the morning.”

He gives a mirthless laugh at my abject stupidity.

“Sorry.” He sits there, waiting, and I feel duty-bound to carry on. “I just wondered what had happened since you’d been back.” He watches me. “With the investigation and the whole . . .” Exhumation is the word in my head, but I can’t say it. It sounds like something from a horror film.

“The insurance company is mounting a case. They’ve got witnesses. A family who say they saw the car zigzagging between lanes.” He looks up from his glass, gives a sort of grimace. “Which they claim makes it less and less likely to be a momentary loss of concentration.”

There’s a taste of metal in my mouth, a coldness spreading through me. I grope for something to say, grope for that same level of control that he seems to be able to exert over himself.

“It’s not proof!” I say, my voice rising. “It might not even have been her car. They can’t prove anything!”

I hate these shadowy vulcans who are putting William through this ordeal, putting Sally’s final hours under the microscope. Suddenly truth feels like a bad thing, an unnecessary debt to run up that one can never hope to repay.

“I suspect it is. They’re searching for CCTV now, appealing for more witnesses.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He looks at me, those hooded eyes making his gaze seem very distant. We sit there in silence for a minute, the sense of something more hovering between us.

“Was there—is there anything else—”

He cuts across me.

“I don’t want you to think badly of her,” he says, emotion surging through his voice. That clenched control has gone, his face cleaved open, eyes pleading. “That was always what she feared, Olivia.”

I look at him sitting there, his body straining toward me—he’s hopelessly in love with her. There’s something painful about it, above and beyond the obvious tragedy of her death. I might be imagining it, but I sense that he’s as mired in quicksand as I always was.

“I won’t,” I say, knowing as I say it that it’s a promise I can’t sign up to.

“There’s debts, Olivia, credit cards I didn’t even know she had. There are thousands of dollars on them, all unpaid.”

“But surely—won’t they just write them off?”

“It seems not. There’s big cash withdrawals too, that I had no idea about. It could bankrupt me if I lose the case. It’s hard not to live in fear of what the next revelation might be.”

What a master of understatement. I smile at him, putting my hand very gently on his arm. I don’t think about it before I do it, it’s just an instinct, a need to reach through the bars of his prison. It lies there like a dead thing, his arm rigid to my touch. It seems like an age before he speaks.

“I don’t think I made her very happy,” he says, his voice no more than a gruff whisper.

“You can’t possibly think it’s your fault—”

“It’s simply an observation.”

“Oh William . . .” I pause, trying to choose my words carefully. “The Sally I knew—she was a thrill-seeker. She was always craving something just out of reach.”

That was her rocket fuel, what powered her forward. It propelled her out of her humble suburban beginnings, demanded that she found a sophistication and poise that was self-taught. I’m guessing it took her all the way to that upscale life in Manhattan—what did she crave once she’d finally arrived?

“I should go,” he says, rising heavily to his feet.

I’ve gone too far. Who am I to sit here, tarnishing her memory?

“Are you sure?” I say. He nods, heading for the door. I feel terrible, like I’ve ripped open the wound without anesthetic, then left it exposed. I follow him down the passage.

“Can’t I call you a cab at least?”

He turns, bats my offer away.

“I’ll be fine.”

He looks anything but fine.

“William . . . sometimes I’ve got such a big mouth. Please ignore anything I said.”

He suddenly puts his arms around me. I tense, waiting for what must surely be a kiss on the cheek, but instead he holds me. I can hear his heart beating through his dinner jacket, my head pressed against the warm expanse of his broad chest.

“You’re lovely, I want you to know that.”

I look up at him, nervous energy shooting through me. I should extract myself, and yet something stops me. He’s staring at me.