Watching You (10 page)

Joe hesitates.

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” she adds.

“Wouldn’t you rather see it in private?”

“No.”

Without her having to explain, Joe seems to sense the reason. Despite her previous certainty, Marnie is frightened the DVD could hold Daniel’s farewell message.

“So you’ll come.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

She feels a weight lifting from her chest. Someone has set out a roadmap. She can only see a little way ahead, but that’s all right. Even the longest and darkest of journeys can be made in the glow of the headlights.

Standing outside the mansion block, she raises her eyes to the top floor, where every window is lit up.

“Charlie seems nice.”

“She is.”

“Are you going to get back together with your wife?” Her head is cocked to one side, studying him like a portrait painter.

“That ship might have sailed.”

Unexpectedly, Marnie puts her arms around him, tilting her head up to peck him on the lips, but letting her lips stay there, parting slightly. Then she hugs him tightly to her chest.

He pulls away. She laughs. “You’re not a hugger?”

“Out of practice.”

“Maybe you think it’s inappropriate.”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”

E
lijah has been vomiting since midnight. Marnie changes his pajamas and sheets, but he keeps throwing up on the half-hour until she’s run out of clean clothes and he falls asleep. At nine o’clock she phones her GP, but can’t get an appointment until Monday. Instead she dresses Elijah in one of Zoe’s old T-shirts and takes him to West Hammersmith Hospital.

The A&E department is already busy, full of the stabbed, burned, broken, and scraped. The overworked registrar takes Elijah’s details and tells Marnie that she’ll have to wait until the pediatrician finishes his rounds.

“When will that be?”

“I can’t tell you.”

There is a TV in the waiting room playing cartoons and showing advertisements for nappies and toys. All the TV babies are giggling and happy and the mothers are pretty and wholesome. Marnie doesn’t envy them. She hates them.

Dr. Vallery arrives just after midday, breezing through the swinging doors, sharing a joke with one of the prettier nurses. “I’d better get back to work,” he says.

Arsehole!

The nurse calls Elijah’s name. Marnie feels his body stiffen on her lap. There have been too many hospitals, too many tests; too many conversations that begin with “This is the very last time…”

The pediatrician is tall and pale with a floppy fringe. A tiny scale of glitter blinks on his cheek, the remnant of a daughter’s goodbye hug. He studies Elijah, mentally noting his clothes, as though deciding what kind of mother Marnie presents. Meanwhile, she’s trying to explain.

“He was diagnosed with celiac disease. He had a biopsy on his small intestine.”

“Who diagnosed him?”

“A specialist…he has an Irish name…I can’t remember.” She tries again. “He has an office in Harley Street.”

Why does this man make her feel so useless?

“He’s been on a gluten-free diet,” says Marnie.

“For how long?”

“Five months.”

“Was he tested for cystic fibrosis?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Vallery sits Elijah on an examination table and goes through the usual tests: eyes, ears, throat, “Say ahhhh,” “Step on the scales.”

“He was born six weeks early,” says Marnie, trying to be helpful.

“What was his birth weight?”

“Almost five pounds.”

Dr. Vallery drapes a stethoscope over his neck and takes a seat, leaning back in his chair, studying Marnie.

“This is your ninth visit to the hospital with Elijah.”

“I haven’t been counting.”

“Each time you’ve managed to have more tests ordered.”

Marnie doesn’t grasp his point.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks.

“Pardon?”

“You’re here—what would like to me to do?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you want me to admit Elijah? Arrange an operation?”

Marnie stares at him, not comprehending. Then it hits her—he thinks she
wants
Elijah to be sick; that she’s some sort of Mommy Dearest, Munchausen-by-proxy nutcase who is seeking attention by making her son unwell and dragging him between specialists so he can be pricked and prodded.

Never in her life has Marnie wanted to throw herself across a table and hurt a medical professional. Chewing her rage, she tries to control the vibration in her voice.

“I don’t want my boy to be admitted. I don’t want him operated upon. I want him to be healthy.”

Dr. Vallery doesn’t reply, but has grown less confident. He avoids Marnie’s glare and makes another note. He explains that Elijah is being referred to a specialist at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. Marnie feels a grip of panic. Another appointment. More tests. She has grown to hate hospitals. It’s a setback, she tells herself. He’ll bounce back. Everything will be fine. What else can she say?

After it’s over they take the tube from White City to Oxford Circus before changing onto the Bakerloo Line. Hot and crowded, the carriage is polluted by discarded copies of
Metro
and the aural fuzz of leaking headphones. People ignore each other, disparate and self-interested, grumpy yet normally civil. Elijah points out things he recognizes, reassured by the familiar.

“Dog,” he says. “Bus. Petrol station.”

As they walk along Elgin Avenue, Marnie notices a car parked opposite the flat. Detective Inspector Gennia is sitting inside with the door propped open, one leg on the footpath as though it needed stretching.

“Are you waiting for me?” she asks.

“I was hoping we could talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about.”

Elijah has run on ahead. Marnie calls to him to wait. She turns back to the detective, whose face looks scrubbed awake. Freshly shaved. He’s wearing jeans today instead of a suit, but has the same needlepoint boots. Maybe it’s his day off. For some reason Marnie feels sorry for him. He looks lonely. Like a new kid at school hoping to meet a friend.

“I promised Elijah I’d push him on the swing,” she says, without making it sound like an invitation.

“I’ll walk with you.”

Gennia talks about the weather. His voice has something familiar about it, an accent that she recognizes or a tone, but she doesn’t like the way he studies her, taking note of every detail right down to her bare shins and sandals. When they reach Paddington Rec, Elijah runs to the climbing frame. A handful of mothers are picnicking on the grass, spooning mush into the mouths of babies.

Gennia has slung his jacket over his shoulder. When he talks his eyes keep darting over Marnie with a fascinated intensity, as though he’s putting her together piece by piece like a jigsaw puzzle.

“You have lovely fingernails,” he says, looking at her hands. “You’ve broken one of them. What happened?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Shame.”

Reaching into his pocket, he produces a small Ziploc bag and holds it up to the light. Marnie can see it contains a fragment of fingernail; polished, peach-colored, trapped within the clear plastic.

“It’s amazing what they can tell from something this small,” he says. “I’m not just talking about DNA—that’s a given—but nowadays they can identify if someone is a smoker or if they’re in good health.”

Elijah is swinging on a bar, feeling for the ground with his outstretched toes. He’s taken off his shoes and socks.

“We found this in Niall Quinn’s car,” says Gennia, turning the bag in his fingers. “Care to explain?”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“No, you’ve lied to me.”

Marnie doesn’t answer. She’s jittering from one foot to the other, feeling slightly dazed and disbelieving.

“We also traced the signal from Quinn’s mobile phone. He was in the West End that night. A CCTV camera picked up his car at the Strand. He dropped a woman at a hotel.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“You were in his car.”

“I was meeting someone else. Quinn drove me.”

“Who were you meeting?”

“The one I told you about—he wanted to commit suicide.” Marnie doesn’t look at Gennia’s face. “He was a client.”

“What do you mean, ‘a client’?”

“Do I have to spell it out?”

The information registers.

“Quinn was your pimp.”

“We don’t really call them pimps.”

“What do you call them?”

She recognizes the sarcasm in his question and refuses to answer.

“How long had you worked for him?” asks Gennia.

“I didn’t work for him. I was employed by an agency. I only did it for three nights.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Marnie wants to quantify and mitigate; to make it sound less sordid. Up until she married Daniel, she had slept with exactly four men, including her first husband. That’s seven in total, which shouldn’t make her a slut or a nymphomaniac, yet one payment made her a whore.

She contemplates telling Gennia about Patrick Hennessy and Daniel’s gambling debts, but she has vowed not to apologize for her husband and she remembers the Ulsterman’s threats. Instead she recounts half the story, explaining how she arrived at the hotel and met with Owen.

“You had sex with him.”

“No. He just wanted company.”

The detective looks at her skeptically.

“But you were paid?”

“No, I felt sorry for him. I didn’t take his money.”

“How did Quinn feel about that?”

Marnie gazes around the playground. Undoing the lowest two buttons of her blouse, she lifts the fabric above her midriff. The bruise is now marbled with purple and yellow.

“He did that?”

Marnie nods.

“So you cut his throat?”

“No!”

Gennia leans towards her. His hairline seems to slide backwards when he raises his eyebrows. “In my experience, people turn themselves into suspects because they try to be too clever.”

“I’m not being clever.”

Elijah has left the climbing frame and run to the slippery dip.

Gennia is still talking. “We haven’t found the murder weapon. According to the pathologist, we’re looking for a five-inch blade, single-sided, sharp, fairly standard in most kitchens.”

Elijah is standing at the base of the slippery dip, staring up at the ladder. Marnie yells out to him. “Remember last time.”

Ignoring her, Elijah begins climbing; hand over hand, not looking down.

“He doesn’t like heights,” she explains, already moving.

Gennia follows her. “Your husband is missing.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you’re working as an escort?”

“My business—not yours.”

“If you’re in some sort of trouble, you should talk to me.”

Elijah has stopped at the top of the slide. Children are queuing behind him, yelling at him to move, but he’s frozen, his hands gripping the sides. Knuckles white. Eyes round.

One of the bigger boys climbs past the others. He screams at Elijah, whose small pale body is shaking. Marnie is running. She can see the boy prying Elijah’s fingers loose. Elijah won’t say anything.

He’s falling. Not sliding. Sideways. Gennia reaches him first, catching Elijah before his body crumples onto the artificial turf. Elijah reaches for Marnie, clinging to her. Then he points to the swing.

“You promised, Mummy.”

M
arnie sits on the floor next to the open box, staring at the contents as though looking at the pieces of a puzzle that she had once been able to complete but has since forgotten where to start. Showered, wearing fresh clothes, she can feel painkillers dissolving in her stomach.

Zoe is at the library and Elijah is playing with his trains in the wardrobe. Marnie can hear him talking to himself, having one-sided conversations. Marnie once asked Professor O’Loughlin if it was healthy for a four-year-old to have a make-believe friend and he told her that Elijah would grow out of it eventually.

Joe is with her now, leaning forward from the sofa. It’s strange seeing him here. Normally they’re in Joe’s consulting room, sitting opposite each other in big matching armchairs. At their first session Marnie had felt like an eleven-year-old about to get the facts-of-life speech from her father. In reality her father didn’t give her such a speech. Instead he knocked on her bedroom door one day and said, “Marnie, do I have to tell you about the birds and the bees?”

“Please don’t.”

“So you’re up to speed?”

“Totally.”

Marnie takes the Big Red Book from the box and traces her fingers over the gold letters of the title. Daniel was always one for grand gestures. On their first wedding anniversary he covered the bedroom walls with hundreds of sticky notes, each with a reason that he loved her. Another time he wrote a series of cryptic clues, which took her cycling around Regent’s Park and finished at a picnic spot where he and Zoe were waiting.

Marnie opens the album. The first few pages are photographs of her as a baby. Most of them are captioned. She recognizes her father’s handwriting:

Her mother had four miscarriages and tried for ten years before Marnie was born. She never gave up hope and she refused to let science intervene. It would happen naturally or not at all, she said. Later she changed her mind and tried for a second child using IVF—a brother or sister for Marnie—but a car accident intervened and Marnie remained an only child.

“You were a miracle,” her mother said, “a gift from God.” And she baptized Marnie within hours, convinced that God might take his gift away.

Turning the next page, there is a new series of photographs: Marnie as a toddler, her face smeared with chocolate; Marnie feeding the ducks; Marnie riding a bike. Her baby fat had dropped away, her wispy hair had grown thick, and her dimples were deep enough to hold raindrops. One picture shows her sitting between a man and a woman on a porch swing. The man has long hair and a beard, while the woman is dressed in a patchwork skirt and cheesecloth top with a macramé headband round her forehead.

“Your parents?” asks Joe.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ve never talked about your mother.”

“I can barely remember her. She died when I was four.”

“What happened?”

“It was a car accident. She was driving. I was strapped in the back seat. Nobody knows how I got out.” Marnie points to another photograph. “Dad remarried about two years after Mum died. That’s my stepmother.”

The woman looks like a young Margaret Thatcher, wearing an apron and brandishing a ladle, waving it at the camera because she doesn’t want to be photographed. There are other children at the kitchen table.

“I thought you were an only child,” says Joe.

“We used to take in foster kids. Dad called them strays. Usually they stayed for a few days or weeks. We had plenty of room.”

The memories come back to Marnie, including some of their names; the bed-wetters, biters, screamers, cutters, scratchers, and mutes. Some wanted to be left alone, while others clung to her as if she was a piece of wreckage that might carry them to safety. She hated the foster kids, wishing they would go back to their own families.

“My stepmother ran our house like a boarding school with rules and timetables. Roast on Sunday. Leftovers Monday. Fish on Friday…Dad was different, full of funny voices as though he’d been swallowing helium from a party balloon. He could have us all in stitches—except for my stepmom, who would tell him to ‘stop acting the goat.’

“I think she imagined her life would be like an episode of
The Waltons
where we all said goodnight to each other. ‘Good night, John Boy. Good night, Mary Ellen. Good night, Jim Bob…’”

“They didn’t think of adopting?” asks Joe.

“My dad wanted her to get pregnant.”

“Where is she now?

“They divorced ten years ago. I see her every few years. She lives in Spain.”

At the bottom of the page, Daniel has written a note to Marnie:
Start the DVD
.

Joe slides the disk into his laptop. The software boots and he turns up the volume. Letters appear, bouncing off the edges of the screen before forming into words:

Daniel appears, his face close to the camera as he presses the record button. He walks backwards to a sofa. Sitting. Leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. Marnie reacts as though stung. He looks so real, so reachable, so alive. A song is playing in the background. James Morrison. “Love is Hard.”

Daniel flicks back his fringe.

“I can’t believe you’re thirty-six and we’ve been together six years. You’re still that same brilliant, hot, funny girl I fell in love with—the one who can dress like a film star one night and enjoy a beer and pizza the next. I know we’ve had some ups and downs lately. The ‘downs’ have been mine. But I couldn’t do this without you. Your love makes me want to be a better man. You truly are the cleverest, funniest, most wonderful person I know.

“Remember how I always struggle to find something to get you for your birthday? You’re a nightmare to buy for because you’re so unselfish. You give so much to everyone else and take so little. Well, today that changes. Today we begin again.

“Marnie Logan, I love you. Everybody loves you. And I’m going to prove it to you. In the pages of the Big Red Book you will see interviews and comments from loads of friends who come
blasting from your past. So let’s start at the beginning. I’m going to take you back to your childhood and your first house…”

A photograph of a large terraced house flashes onto the screen. Another voice takes up the commentary.

“This is where you spent your first three years, Marnie. Your bedroom was on the top floor, second window on the right.”

“That’s my father,” says Marnie.

An elderly man appears on screen with a tangle of gray hair. He looks nervously at the camera.

“Happy Birthday, Marnella, I’m supposed to take you down memory lane. You were beautiful as a baby and terrible as a toddler. I remember when you hid from your mother in Safeways because she wouldn’t buy you a sparkly tiara. She had them seal off the doors because she thought you’d been kidnapped. And then there was the time you covered your bedroom floor with two containers of talcum powder and mixed it with water before planting jelly beans and telling us you were trying to grow a baby because you knew we wanted another one.”

Marnie laughs.

“You were always making us laugh. Remember the foster kid you tried to sell? You dragged him through the village on his skateboard with a sign around his neck saying ‘half price.’ And what about that time your mother took you to the video store and you went up to the handsome young man who was serving and put your hand up his shorts? The man jumped away. ‘Did your mummy teach you that?’ he asked. ‘Uh-huh,’ you said.

“Your mum almost died of embarrassment.”

Marnie looks at Joe. “In my defense, I was only three.”

A home movie appears on screen showing Marnie running around a sprinkler in the garden dressed only in her bikini bottoms. The footage fades and is replaced by Marnie in a school uniform, ready for her first day at primary school. Her uniform is too big for her and she’s standing pigeon-toed in front of a door, smiling widely, her dimples on display.

“We moved to the farm in West Yorkshire when you were three. It wasn’t much of a farm and I wasn’t much of a farmer, but your mum loved that place. She was in her element, running around like a sixties flower child, always barefoot and hugging trees. We were going to grow our own food and make our own cider from apples in the orchard. You probably don’t remember because you were so young, but she would have been so proud of you if she had seen how you turned out…”

Joe feels Marnie shift beside him, turning her face from the screen. “I’m sorry, I can’t watch it—not if he’s going to talk about her.”

“You said you barely remember her.”

“I know, but I can’t watch this.” She kneads the front of her shirt. “Can we fast-forward this bit?”

Joe does as she asks. “Do you want to stop for a while?”

“No, go on.”

An elderly woman appears on screen. She has a blue-rinsed perm and wrinkles around her eyes. Blinking at the camera, she seems to be looking at her own reflection in the lens.

“Hello, Marnella, do you remember me?”

“It’s Mrs. Gilmore. She taught me in years three and four,” explains Marnie.

“I retired after forty years of teaching, but I miss all of my students. You were a cheeky little thing. I remember when you convinced Toby Clement that he was adopted and that his real father was Michael Jackson.”

Marnie laughs. “He wasn’t even black.”

Another woman appears on screen.

“That’s my drama teacher, Miss Bonnie.”

“I know it’s been a lot of years, Marnella, but somehow your wonderful husband tracked me down. You and Jessica Glenn were my two stars. You both wanted to be Snow White in the end-of-year concert. You were supposed to take it in turns but Jessica came down with food poisoning, remember? She missed both performances. I hope you’re still singing and dancing.”

Marnie’s father comes back on screen.

“When you were thirteen, we almost lost you. Remember Mr. Slipper? You were riding him through the village and a dog spooked him. I got the call at work and went straight to the hospital. You had internal injuries and bleeding on the brain. They had to operate to relieve the pressure. You were in a medically induced coma for five days. I’d never been so scared.”
He blinks wetly at the camera.
“You didn’t ride again after that. I think Mr. Slipper died of a broken heart.”

Marnie turns a page of the album and points to a photograph of the pony. Then she drops her head and parts her hair, showing Joe the scar. “You can only see it when my hair is wet.”

Daniel appears on screen again.
“You’re allowed to shed a few tears, but only nostalgic ones. There’s plenty more to come…”
He adjusts the camera and talks to someone else in the room.
“I can edit this later and take out all the mistakes.”

Penny appears. They’re filming in her sunroom.

“Happy Birthday, best friend, I can’t believe you’re as old as I am, but don’t tell anyone our age. You don’t want to hear me sing, so I thought I’d tell you a story.”
Penny does a pirouette.
“You see what I’m wearing? Once upon a time, many years ago, this was my favorite top. Then we went to Italy in the summer of 1995 and you couldn’t read the Italian label on the washing liquid and bought bleach instead. You ruined all our clothes. Remember? I kept this as a souvenir.”

Marnie nods her head, acknowledging the memory.

“You are such an important person in my life and I really hope you realize that. You never give yourself enough credit. You are so strong, intelligent and you amaze me every day. And you have a hot husband—so look after him. Ciao.”

The recording continues. Daniel has interviewed old teachers, lecturers, colleagues, and friends. The footage is unedited. Truncated. Blurred. A new face emerges. A man is sitting on a stool.

“Is it running?”
he asks.

“Yes,”
Daniel replies.

Marnie lets out a squeak of recognition. “Oh, my God, that’s Eugene Lansky!”

The man on screen is in his mid to late thirties with a receding hairline and ponytail. He’s wearing a paint-splattered shirt rolled up past his elbows.

“Marnie Logan, I hope you’re listening. You’re the bitch who ruined my life! You’re a vindictive, conniving, heartless piece of shit…!”

Daniel’s voice comes from off-camera.
“Hey! You can’t say that…What are you trying to do?”
He fumbles for the controls, knocking the tripod. The camera topples and he catches it again. Eugene Lansky is still talking.

“I used to wish you were dead. I wanted it. And I’m not the only one—”

The screen goes blank.

Marnie looks stunned. Mouth open. “Why would he say something like that?”

“Who is he?”

“Eugene was my first real boyfriend. He took my virginity in the back of a Mr. Whippy ice cream van. It’s where he used to work. I could never get the melted choc-ice stain out of my dress.” Marnie scans the photographs. “That’s him.”

In the picture she’s wearing a cocktail dress and Eugene has a suit, which looks a size too small.

“This was taken at our graduation ball—the biggest night of the year. All the girls bought new dresses. That’s also the night Eugene ran off with Debbie Tibbets. We called her
Debbie Bigtits
. It hurt, but I was more embarrassed than heartbroken.”

Marnie pushes back her fringe and stares at the blank screen. “It was eighteen years ago. Why would he say that I ruined his life?”

Joe doesn’t answer. Marnie has her head down as though distracted by something on the floor. She excuses herself and goes to the bathroom. Bracing her hands on either side of the sink, she looks at herself in the mirror. Baffled. Hurt. It’s a shock to realize that someone in the world hates you. What had she done to Eugene?
He
dumped
her
. Surely it’s a case of mistaken identity or a practical joke?

Marnie looks at her watch. It’s after eight. The library shut half an hour ago. Zoe should be home by now and Elijah in bed. She can hear him talking in the bedroom. He’s sitting in her wardrobe with his toys spread out on the floor between his knees.