Under the Harrow: (17 page)

“
C
AN YOU COME TO
Oxford now?” I ask at the first pause in his condolences.

“I’m at work,” says Liam.

“I’m sure you can explain. The train’s only an hour, you can be back in London tonight.”

We arrange to meet at the covered market on the high street. There is a bistro on the second floor. It serves good, rustic French food, though I’m not hungry.

Moretti might be trying to find a motive for me. He may have ordered the knickers from the shop in Rome, not found a matching pair in Rachel’s dresser. I think I told him the brand name.

While I wait for Liam, I sort through all the times I saw them together. A few times the two of them went off on their own. But they were always on ordinary, reasonable two-person jobs. They once did the grocery shopping when we stayed in Marlow, or he drove her to collect her car from the repair garage.

It hurts too much to believe that these expeditions were planned, and eagerly awaited. When they returned, they never seemed tense or guilty.

Moretti never showed me any proof that Liam was in Oxford and not Manchester. He didn’t say how he knew that Rachel stayed at the hotel.

Liam arrives. I haven’t seen him in six months. He wears a soft black jumper and he smells the same, a cologne with cedar and musk that I realized was quite popular after we broke up. Who do you wear it for now? I think before I can stop myself.

“How are you?” he asks.

I shake my head, and then notice the magazine folded in his briefcase. He was able to read on the trip here, and I hate him for it. The server comes and I order a second Campari and soda. Liam orders a beer. He looks so well.

“Did you sleep with my sister?”

Everything around us goes quiet.

“Yes.”

I swipe his bottle and it shatters against the wall. The liquid foams and spills along the floor. The two servers, both young women, stop at the far end of the room and stare. I doubt they heard our conversation, but they can imagine it. Both of their faces are creased with sympathy. I push back my chair and hurry down the stairs. Behind me I can hear Liam apologizing, a zip on his case opening as he searches for notes to leave on the table.

He catches me up in the alley beside the covered market. “It wasn’t planned. We ran into each other on the street and decided to eat together later. I don’t even remember it,” he says. “Neither of us did. It was a mistake.”

“How much did you drink?”

“Two bottles of wine.”

“Each?” I ask, scrupulous, desperate. If it happened after four bottles of wine, I might be able to forgive them.

“No, together.”

We hear footsteps at the far end of the alley and stop speaking. A young woman comes down the cobbles, teetering between us. She has a net bag with vegetables and a bouquet of tulips, and I almost grab her arm and say, Listen to this, listen to what he’s done. She lowers her head demurely as she passes us. Lovers’ quarrel. I wish we were having a row, I wish we were in an alley in London, that there was no reason for us to be in Oxford.

“But you planned it. You told me you were going to Manchester.”

“No. I said I was going to a conference. We didn’t talk about where until afterward. When I came back, I said I’d been in Manchester.”

“Did she ask you to say that?”

“No.”

I’m having trouble breathing. I was so sure he would deny it. No, I would tell the detective. You’re wrong. It never happened.

And if he denied it I would never have to think about Rachel kissing him, about Rachel undressing for him, about the two of them falling asleep together, or about the first time that I saw her afterward and she didn’t tell me. I told her we broke up and she said, “Do you want to come up here for a few days?”

“Did you fancy her the whole time?” I ask.

“No.”

“Was she angry with me?”

“No,” he says. “No, of course not. She hated herself for it.”

I am crying freely now, stoppering my nose with the back of my hand. He looks down at the cobblestones. We don’t speak, and then I say, “Are you seeing someone?”

He rubs his hand over his mouth.

“What’s her name?”

“Charlotte.”

I can picture her. Cheerful and good-natured, shining light brown hair. Going to work and meeting her friends, meeting Liam, afterward. If she were here, if she came toward us now, I would hit her. I would want to claw her to pieces.

She’s waiting for him in London. Tonight or tomorrow night he’ll go to see her. It will be a relief, after this, to be near someone serene and warm. She’ll say, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Liam still hasn’t realized my position. He hasn’t considered the danger he’s put me in.

“I found her.”

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

“They think I killed her because of this.”

His throat is flushed red, and it spreads down his chest. “No, that’s not possible. I’ll tell them you didn’t know.”

I step forward and his arms close around me. His chest lifts and sinks against mine. I remember the room at the top of the Oxo Tower. Elderflower gin and tonics. I’d thought, I didn’t know things could be like this.

He’s seeing someone. It can’t compare to our first months. Golden brown, lays me down. Even the hotel with Rachel can’t compare.

Warmth spreads through his body into mine. He’s kissing the top of my head and if I turn my face he will kiss my mouth. He tightens his arms around me. I rest my head between his shoulder and his warm throat and try to ignore the disquiet. It will never be how it was before. This will harm you more, in the end.

“I have to go,” I say and my voice sounds calm, like I’ve just remembered an appointment.

“Will you be all right?” he asks, and I realize that he expects me to say yes.

My voice stays composed as I say good-bye. At the end of the alley, I turn into the crowds on the high street. The loneliness has me by the throat, and I hear Rachel tell me, You’re fine, all you have to do now is get home, all you have to do is get home.

“
B
EFORE LEAVING LONDON,
you went to a pub on Christchurch Terrace in Chelsea,” says Moretti. As soon as I left Liam, he called me back to the station. I told him again that I hadn’t known about them, but I can’t offer any proof. “How much did you have to drink?”

“One glass of wine.” I can see the table in front of me, as if I could go back. The salmon in pastry, the white wine, the cutlery.

“What about the night of Rachel’s attack in Snaith? How much did you have to drink then?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Half a liter of vodka?” he asks. I tilt my head. “We spoke to Alice. She said the three of you drank quite a lot that night. Does that sound accurate?”

“Yes.”

“Were you angry with Rachel?”

“No.”

“You threw a bottle at her face,” he says. Keith must have told him. I wonder if he also told them about Liam, if Rachel confessed to him. “Who was Will Cooke?”

Fuck, I think, fuck. “A friend of ours. He went to school with us.”

“Was he your friend or Rachel’s?”

“Both.”

“Was he your boyfriend?”

“For a few months.”

“Was he ever Rachel’s boyfriend?”

“No.”

“That isn’t what Alice told us.”

“They had sex a few times.”

“Was your fight at the party about Will Cooke?”

“No, that wasn’t a problem. Did Alice tell you she also slept with Will? We were teenagers, it meant nothing.”

When we met, I liked Moretti because I like Italy. How stupid, but it disarmed me. A Scottish accent and Italian appearance. I had an image of him. Drinking an espresso and reading the paper. He has heavy eyelids and I thought that meant he was tortured by his cases and the things he learned in his work. He told me his grandparents owned a bergamot grove in Calabria.

I didn’t try to resist. I was so happy that he and Lewis were nothing like the detectives in Snaith. I don’t know why he became a policeman. I don’t know what he has done in his career, and I don’t know if he believes me.

“When did you stop taking Wellbutrin?”

“October.”

“Have you had any withdrawal symptoms?”

“No.”

“Has it been difficult to resume daily life without the medication?”

“No.”

“How many weeks passed between when you stopped the medication and Rachel’s death?”

“Five. I don’t understand why that’s relevant. It’s not an antipsychotic.”

“What would it mean if it were an antipsychotic?”

“Then going off it might make me violent or unstable.”

“And that would mean?”

“That I should be a suspect.”

He smiles again. Then he stands and opens the door for me to go. He’s not arresting me. I wonder which pieces are still missing, or if it’s only the knife.

I stop in the doorway, close to him. “Rachel had defensive wounds. If I did it, I would have had scratches or bruises.”

“Did you?” he asks.

I laugh. “You saw me. You know I didn’t.”

He shrugs, and the hair stands on the back of my neck.

I
DRIVE TO
Prince Street. A reconstruction. I can see where they ate dinner. I can ride in one of the lifts, where they probably kissed for the first time, and walk down one of the corridors. Maybe they didn’t make it to the room. Both of them liked sex in public, I know.

The George Hotel has a gold roof cantilevered above the pavement from metal poles. The carpeted space underneath the roof is bathed in light, and the people under it look vivid and somehow frenetic. The women balancing on spiked heels, the men gesturing with lit phones. Rachel came here in early May, I know now. I imagine her ducking under the canopy, the gold light blazing on her dark head and bare shoulders.

I push open the revolving doors and cross a lobby with the restaurant and bar at its far end. I imagine Liam climbing down from his stool and opening his arms.

I stop, swaying on my feet.

 • • • 

During our argument, I worked out that on the night Liam cheated on me I was at a party in Fulham. Before the party Martha and I went for tapas, peppers in oil and grilled bread and olives. The party was on the roof of a mansion block. There were friends from St. Andrews and I wore a white crocheted dress and felt lucky and contented. On the walk to the party, I sent Liam a message, and he wrote a similar one back. Before my sister arrived, maybe, or while she was in the toilets. He said he missed me.

I wonder if they longed for each other afterward, and if separately or together they tried to plan a way it could happen again. Liam said neither of them remembered it. I hope that’s true. If she didn’t remember it then she couldn’t have ever been thinking about it when we were together.

 • • • 

She made both of us foolish. We were better than this. We had other concerns. We had bigger fish to fry.

 • • • 

Prince Street ends at the river. I climb down the hill to the towpath and call Martha. “It was Rachel. He cheated on me with Rachel.”

“Oh, no,” she says, and her voice is gratifyingly horrified. I start to explain that his work trip was to Oxford, not Manchester, but she interrupts me. “My parents want to help. They know a defense barrister in Oxford.”

“That’s kind of them. If it comes to that—”

“You need advice now.”

“Maybe.” The story comes out in a rush, and I realize that since learning the news I have been aching to tell someone. I’ve been framing and reframing it in my mind, and recasting the events of the last six months based around it.

I start to tell Martha about meeting Liam at the covered market, but she stops me before I’ve finished and says, “Nora, don’t talk to anyone about this. I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“Why?”

“Because now if I’m ever sworn to oath, and someone asks if you were angry with Rachel I have to say yes.” She sighs. “You would have split up anyway. Please try not to think too much of it. You have other problems now.”

L
EWIS ONCE TOLD ME
he lives in Jericho, not far from here. He gives me the address, and a few minutes later I’m on the step of a brick terraced house and he is opening the door and saying, “Come in.”

I follow him up the stairs to his flat. The living room is clean and lit by lamps. He has a green couch, bookshelves, and a low table holding a record player. From across the room, I can see the record turning, wobbling a little. A racing bicycle leans against one wall, under a poster from a heist film, three people running, their legs akimbo, in exaggerated vanishing point perspective. Lewis disappears into the kitchen and returns with two bottles of beer.

“Do you think I did it?”

“No.”

My shoulders drop, and I can look at him properly now. He wears a red-checked flannel shirt. His expression is worried and intent.

“Moretti thinks I asked someone to assault her in Snaith.”

“I know.”

“I helped her look for him.”

“The idea is that once she had been punished, you enjoyed the role. There are benefits to being close to a victim. It’s like Munchausen by proxy.”

“I didn’t benefit from it. Am I officially a suspect?”

“Yes.” He starts to peel the label from his beer. “She slept with your boyfriend.”

“I don’t see how that’s my fault.”

“That’s not exactly the point.”

“What else? What else do they find strange about me?”

“They think Rachel had been using the oven. A fireman noticed that the pot on one of the burners was still warm. It’s unlikely an intruder would turn off a burner before leaving the scene, but you might, out of habit. Or so the house wouldn’t burn down, since she left it to you.”

“I can’t remember,” I say. “I don’t think I went into the kitchen. What about the knife? What would I have done with the knife?”

“One theory,” he says, “is that you didn’t dispose of the knife at the scene. You tucked it into your waistband. At the police station, we know you went into the toilets alone. You wrapped the knife in paper, threw it in the bin, and that night it was loaded with the rest of the rubbish and brought to the landfill.”

“That’s absurd. Wouldn’t Moretti have noticed?”

“It was a short blade.” He puts his head back and rubs his face.

“Do you think I’m going to be charged?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“We found a partial footprint. A men’s Lonsdale, with blood on it.”

The footprint doesn’t eliminate me, he says, since I may have had an accomplice. My body turns leaden. The new information washes over me and I’m too tired to speak. Lewis notices and moves into the kitchen, leaving me to sink in privacy. Sometime later, he returns and hands me a bowl of ramen. We eat while listening to the record.

“Can you forgive her?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “I think so.”

When we finish our ramen, he rinses the bowls. It starts to rain, and I consider asking him if I can stay.

He lends me an umbrella. At the bottom of the stairs, as I lean on the point of the umbrella, he pulls me toward him and kisses me.

Only for a second, and then I am outside, my heart racing, the struts of the umbrella snapping open above me.