The Thief (7 page)

‘Alex, it wasn’t like that. I took his bag at Heathrow. On the way back. And I had to get it back to him . . .’

Her voice failed and grew hoarse. Of course he wouldn’t believe her. No one would believe her. She would have to tell him the whole thing, from the start of it when she was eight.

‘My aunt hit me in the garden, so I stole her book and cut up the pages and . . .’

‘Spare me this, Polly,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where your aunt comes into this or your stealing that man’s bag. It’s all lies, isn’t it? I know you tell lies. I’ve always known it but I thought you’d begun to change. I was wrong, that’s all.’

‘Alex, don’t. Don’t talk like this. That man is nothing to me. I barely know him. It’s true I went to New York with him and came back with him. I’ve been to his house too but it’s not the way you think . . .’

‘Was that his T-shirt I ironed?’

‘Yes, it was but I can explain . . .’

He didn’t wait to hear what she had to say. She heard him talking to someone on the phone in the next room but not what he was saying. Then he went upstairs. Somehow she had to make him see. If she were to phone Lant, tell him about her and Alex, how she loved Alex, tell him they were going to be married, surely then . . . But that wouldn’t work. Lant had come here on purpose to make Alex think he and Polly were having an affair. That was
his
revenge. He had seen, and now she could see, that everything she had done after stealing his case, made it look as if they were lovers. Her trips to his house, the lies she told, his clothes that she still had, the truth she had to tell, that he and she had gone to New York together and come back on the same flight. Could he somehow have followed her when she put the money through his door and had seen Alex waiting for her on the step?

Upstairs, Alex was in their bedroom, putting things into a case. She thought of how many times she had seen this scene in a film. The person who was leaving packing a case. The one who was left watching him do it. She felt cold in the warm room and as sick as she had when she first opened Lant’s case.

‘I’m going to my sister’s,’ Alex said. ‘I just phoned her.’

‘Alex, are you saying you’re leaving me?’

‘You’ve left me, haven’t you?’

‘Of course I haven’t. I told you, this is all a stupid mistake.’

‘You haven’t had money from this man? You haven’t got some of his clothes? You don’t know where he lives?’

‘Yes to all that, but I can explain . . .’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘that what you’re going to say will be a lie. So don’t say it. At least don’t make a fool of yourself now. Not when we’re parting.’ He closed the case.

Polly took hold of him by the arm. She held on to him with both hands as if she could keep him with her by force. ‘Don’t say that, please don’t. I can explain if you’ll let me.’

‘Let me go, Polly. We’re better apart. We’ve been happy in this house but I don’t want to live here any more. You’ll be with him wherever it is he lives. I shall probably sell this place, but it’s too early to say . . .’

She was crying. She hung on to him and tried to stop him going. Gently, he pulled himself away, prised her hands off him. She fell on the bed and sobbed. Alex went down the stairs and she heard the front door close.

H
OW COULD HE DO
this to me? she asked herself as she lay there. How could he? I explained. I explained as much as he’d let me. He wouldn’t listen. At any rate, Trevor Lant had a reason for doing what he did. He wanted revenge on me because I took his money. Giving it back wasn’t enough for him. He wanted revenge and I can understand that. I know all about revenge. But Alex . . .

He had been totally unreasonable. She had told him she could explain and she had tried to but he wouldn’t listen. He had believed Lant but not her. Just because she sometimes told lies. Everyone told lies – except him. She hadn’t asked him to have such high standards for her. Who was he to judge her? Who was he to break up her whole world in ten minutes?

That morning he had been going to ask her to marry him. He would have bought the ring. She got up from the bed and looked out of the window. He had taken the car. It was his car, but how did he think she was to get around? It was cruel what he had done and she hated him for it.

An idea came to her and she moved across to ‘his’ chest of drawers. Well, all the furniture was his, but this was the chest he kept his own things in. She opened one drawer after another. His clothes were in them, socks, ties, sweaters, all but the bottom drawer which he had emptied when he packed. She tried the bedside cabinet on his side. A book, an old wallet, a watch he never wore. He hadn’t taken any of his suits and only one jacket. She went through the pockets of his raincoat, his leather jacket. All the pockets were empty except for one in his overcoat. There was a jeweller’s box in there, a little square box of red velvet.

She lifted its lid. The ring was inside. It was made of gold with a single large square-cut diamond. He knew her size so it would fit. It did and she slipped it on. The light caught the diamond and made a rainbow on the wall. She would never have the right to wear it now. He would come back for the rest of his clothes when he knew she’d be at work, take the ring away and give it to some other woman. Wherever he went to live he would need his furniture, so he would take that too. All the love she had had for him turned to hate.

She would have liked to have a big van come round. The men in it would take out all his tables and chairs and glass and china and put it in the van. They would take it somewhere, it didn’t matter where, and she would smash it all up. There was no van and no men. She was on her own but she could still do it.

She went downstairs and into the living room. With one movement of her arm, she swept all the ornaments off a shelf. Glass broke and china and the leg came off a wooden horse. He had broken up her world and she would break up his. It would be the biggest destruction she had ever done. She picked up the CD player and hurled it against the wall, pulled the CDs out of their sleeves and bent them in two. The TV screen was tough but it broke the second time she kicked it. The glass in the pictures cracked when she stamped on them. She pulled his books from the shelves and tore off their covers.

At first it seemed there wasn’t much she could do to his furniture, but she fetched a sharp carving knife from the kitchen and slashed at the chair covers, scored grooves in the wood, stabbed at cushions and let their stuffing out. The curtains hung in ribbons when she had used the kitchen scissors on them. After that she ran about the house, the knife in her hand, slashing at everything she came upon. She pulled open the drawer of the drinks cabinet, poured vodka down her throat, smashed the necks of red wine bottles against the fridge and the oven, poured the wine over the pale carpet.

She drank from the broken bottles too, cutting her mouth. The drink got to her at last, making her wild at first, then stupid, dizzy, flat on the floor among the mess. She lay there, unconscious, her arms stretched out and the diamond on her finger winking in the dying light.