Watching You (3 page)

As Marnie reaches the revolving door, she’s already beginning to panic about what Quinn will say. The black Audi is parked illegally in a narrow alley behind the hotel, nearer to Covent Garden. Quinn is leaning on the bonnet, smoking a cigarette. The streetlight behind his head creates a silhouette and throws a shadow on the cobblestones like a dark path leading to his polished shoes.

Marnie keeps the car between them, holding her coat closed as though wishing it could protect her.

“Did he pay extra?” Quinn asks.

“There was a problem. He was going to commit suicide.”

“And you fell for that?”

“It’s true.”

Quinn moves toward her, his reflection sliding across the bonnet of the Audi. She tries not to back down, but her throat is thickening and she wants to hide somewhere. He flicks the cigarette aside and pushes Marnie hard against the car.

“Where’s the fucking money?”

“I didn’t take it.”

“So you fucked him for free?”

“We didn’t do it.”

He laughs again, more sarcastically this time, forcing his knee between her legs. One hand is holding her throat while the other feels between her legs, looking for proof. The roughness of his fingers makes her wince. Humiliated. Angry.

“Satisfied?”

Her tone ignites him. One punch, delivered low down in the swell of her stomach, doubles her over. She wants to fall, but he’s holding her there, pushing her up against the vehicle. A second punch lands. Her lungs have no more air to give. He won’t hit her face. Bruises are a liability when you’re selling a woman’s body. He pulls his fist back and swings it into her stomach again. Her limbs jerk. The world flushes up and down in her eyes.

There is a brutal poetry to his movements, each blow delivered with a minimum of effort for the maximum of damage. Quinn takes a thick handful of her hair and puts his mouth to her ear.

“Are you frightened?” he whispers, seeming to savor the moment. He looks along the street. A black cab has rounded the corner, the headlights rising and falling over a speed bump. The cab pulls up. The driver’s window slides down.

“Is everything all right?” he asks.

“Fine and dandy,” says Quinn, supporting Marnie with his arm around her waist. “She had a little too much champagne.”

The driver looks at Marnie. “Are you OK, miss?”

She nods.

The cab moves away. Quinn opens the door of the Audi and pushes Marnie onto the back seat. She drops her bag, scattering the contents into the footwell. She gathers them up.

“The boss isn’t going to be happy,” says Quinn. “You understand that, don’t you?”

T
he pain wakes Marnie before the sun does. Peering through cracked lids, not daring to move, she wonders if her ribs could be broken. Maybe Quinn went too far. Opening her eyes wider, she tries to focus on a framed photograph on her bedside table. In the picture she’s sitting on Daniel’s lap, wearing her wedding dress, laughing as he tips her backwards. His hand is cupped behind her head, her lips open, a kiss coming.

Most of her wedding photographs were too stiff and formal with people shepherded into place; the men desperate for a drink or to loosen their top buttons; and the women growing tired of sucking in their stomachs. This one was spontaneous and full of passion and emotion. Happiness trapped by the blink of a shutter.

When Marnie thinks of Daniel it’s the small almost incidental memories that catch in her throat. Watching him shave; smelling his hair after a shower; curling up in the crook of his arm on the sofa; seeing him dressed in a frilly apron as he made pancakes on Sunday mornings…

Now he’s gone. Absent. Missing. For more than a year she has heard nothing. No phone calls, no emails, no sightings, no text messages, no bank withdrawals. His passport hasn’t been used, his credit cards, his gym membership, his mobile phone…

For most of that time she’s clung to the belief that he’s still alive. She has jumped at every phone call and checked her messages constantly and called the police every few days. She has said her prayers and studied passing cars and opened her post box with anticipation. But now she can’t afford to hang on. She needs money and the only way to unlock Daniel’s remaining assets is for him to walk through the door or for his body to be found. There is nothing in between, no compromises or half-measures.

Up until now, her rational voice has been drowned out by her longing. She has read those stories of people who never give up hope, who never stop believing their loved ones are alive under the rubble or clinging to wreckage or being raised by someone else. Marnie has tried to be one of them, but reality keeps intervening. Nobody simply disappears, not without trace, not when we have mobile phones, electronic banking, passports, and Facebook accounts. The police spent months looking for Daniel. They searched for an electronic footprint. They sent his photograph around the world through Interpol and Europol and missing person agencies, but there have been no sightings.

For thirteen months Marnie has made excuses. Daniel must be lying in a coma or being held hostage. Perhaps he lost his memory or is part of a witness protection program waiting to give evidence. The one thing she hasn’t been able to countenance is the obvious—he’s not coming home because he can’t. She swallows hard and opens her mouth, trying to say the sentence:
my…husband…is…dead.

Elijah is still asleep, wrapped in the duvet, a mound of boy smells and snuffles. She promised him waffles for breakfast. Then she’ll walk him to his nursery and make her appointment with Professor O’Loughlin at eleven.

Ever since Daniel went missing, Marnie has been seeing the professor twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. The NHS is picking up the bill. Perhaps they have a special fund for women whose husbands disappear. She couldn’t afford a clinical psychologist otherwise.

Her anxiety attacks are less frequent, but she still has blackouts and missing periods of time, some lasting a matter of minutes and others for hours, where she wakes as if from a dream with no memory of what’s happened. Professor O’Loughlin doesn’t use words like “cure.” Instead he talks about “coping” as though that’s the best she can hope for. Cure would be good. Coping is OK.

She has been through this before, counseling and therapy sessions. As a child she saw a psychiatrist who became like a second father to her, but she hasn’t told the professor this and she doesn’t know precisely why. Embarrassment. Irrelevance. She doesn’t want him to think she’s a hopeless case.

Joe O’Loughlin is a good listener. Most people don’t know how to listen. Usually they’re just waiting for the other person to shut up so they can start talking again, but the professor hangs on every word like she’s preaching from a holy book. When she gets to the bad parts and can’t find the language, he doesn’t push her. He waits.

Marnie looks at the photograph again. Daniel’s hair is teased with gel and his gold wedding band catches the light. Laughter creases his eyes and she can almost feel his kiss. She raises her fingers to her lips and tries to recreate the moment. It was such a carefree, careless time. No fear, no worries, no petty squabbles. She was pregnant with Elijah but wouldn’t know it for another few weeks when she peed on a stick. She had never been so happy or inspired or in love. Together they could conquer the world.

Swinging her legs out of bed, she winces and shuffles gingerly to the bathroom, staring at her naked reflection. The bruises have already begun to show, discoloring her pale skin with variegated yellow and blue blotches. It triggers a flashback and she remembers the beating, how her joints seemed to unglue and loosen, how the pain traveled through her in waves.

Quinn said something to her as she was doubled over.

“Your husband was a coward,” he whispered.

What did he mean?

She couldn’t ask. She couldn’t breathe. She’s going to demand to know next time, but there won’t be another one. She can’t go back. Last night she threw away the dress and lingerie, burying them deep in the communal rubbish bins. This was evidence of her intent, proof of her determination. Touching her stomach, she runs her fingers over the discoloration, noticing her broken nail. She lost it last night, along with her dignity and her last remaining shred of self-respect.

Turning on the tap, she splashes cold water on her face until her eyes sting. Then she pulls on her dressing gown and goes to the kitchen. Zoe is eating toast over the pages of her biology folder.

“You’re up early.”

“Exam.”

“What have you done to your hair?”

“Nothing.”

“It has a blue streak.”

“So?”

“It looks awful.”

“Thanks, Mum, you look like shit too.”

Marnie sighs. “Can we start again?”

Zoe holds up her hands, accepting the truce.

“Good morning, daughter of mine, love of my life, you look like you have spilled Blue Loo on your head, but it’s
your
head and
your
hair and you have the right to ruin it any way you wish.”

“Thank you, mother of mine, can I have some money?”

“Why?”

“Ancient history—the British Museum trip, the permission slip is due in today.”

“How much?”

“Ten quid.”

“Do I sign a something?”

“I forged your signature.”

Zoe scoffs the last mouthful of toast and picks up her schoolbag.

“Later, Mother.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

Marnie points to her cheek. “Even to the post office.”

Zoe rolls her eyes and plants the kiss. “Even to the post office.”

Marnie puts on her blue summer dress and a cardigan. It’s the prettiest thing she has and it makes her feel better. The dress has small white flowers stitched around the neck and reminds her of her honeymoon in Florence when she bought a similar dress at the open-air market in San Lorenzo.

Elijah is dressed and most of his gluten-free waffles consumed. They leave on time for once. Halfway down the stairs Marnie’s legs almost buckle and she grabs the banister, sitting for a moment.

“Are you all right, Mummy?”

“I’m fine.”

“Why is you sitting?”

“I’m resting.”

It’s a sunny morning in late September. The trees looking tired. Wilting. Elijah skips along the pavement, jumping over the cracks. His SpongeBob SquarePants satchel contains a volcanic egg from Mount Vesuvius (
he pronounces it Venus
), which he’s taking to school for show-and-tell for the twentieth time. Marnie can imagine an audience of pre-schoolers rolling their eyes and muttering, “Please, God, not again.”

As they reach Warrington Crescent she gets a familiar feeling, the weight of eyes upon her. She can’t explain the jittery, crawling sensation across the back of her neck as if she were being spied upon or quietly laughed at.

Sometimes she looks over her shoulder or steps into a doorway, looking for somebody, but the street is always empty. No eyes. No footsteps. No shadows.

Elijah’s nursery is an old rectory attached to the church. Smelling of crayons and poster paint, the playroom is furnished with miniature plastic tables and chairs. Marnie hangs Elijah’s satchel on a hook and signs her name into the book. Elijah hugs her twice but doesn’t cry. Those days are long gone.

Mrs. Shearer wants a word. “It’s the end-of-year concert,” she says. “We’re doing a song about fathers but I thought of Elijah.”

“What about him?”

“Given the circumstances, I thought it might make him sad.”

“Sad?”

“By bringing up painful memories.”

“He has only good memories.”

Mrs. Shearer smiles stiffly. “Of course, yes, very good.”

Marnie should be more forgiving, but she can’t bear the expressions of sympathy from people or ignore the conversations that she knows are going on behind her back. Gossip. Asides. She couldn’t keep her husband. He ran off. Abandoned her. Now she’s a single mother. The worst comments are those about “moving on.” What does that even mean? She’s moving. The earth is turning. The sun rises and sets.

Her mobile is vibrating. She touches the screen but doesn’t recognize the number.

“Is that Marnella?”

She recognizes the voice.

“Hello, Owen, how was the funeral?”

“Awful.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at Paddington station.”

“Why?”

“I thought I might take a day trip up north. Would you like to come?”

“I’m pretty busy just now, but it’s a nice day for a train trip.”

“Yes it is. I’m going to keep my promise, Marnella, but perhaps you’d do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Nice girl like you shouldn’t be having sex with strangers.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to lecture me, Owen.”

“Maybe not, but I wonder what your mother would say.”

“My mother is dead,” says Marnie, trying not to sound annoyed.

A platform announcement is being made in the background.

“I guess I’d better go,” says Owen. “It was nice meeting you, Marnella.”

“You too, Owen, but since we’re on the subject of favors, I want you to keep crossing those bridges.”

He chuckles. “You too.”

J
oe O’Loughlin takes his regular table at the café, ordering his usual breakfast from a waitress who famously never smiles. Every morning he tries to coax some semblance of good cheer from her, using his best lines and trying to engage her in conversation. Each time she curls her top lip and says, “Will that be all, sir?”

He prefers an outside table, where he can read the morning papers and watch commuters walking purposefully toward the train station—women with wet hair and matching skirts and jackets, men in suits carrying briefcases or satchels. Where are they going, all these people, he wonders? To work in boxes, stacking boxes, ticking boxes.

He missed London when he moved to the West Country and now he misses the West Country, most notably Julianne and his daughters, Charlie and Emma. Sometimes he tries to convince himself that he’s only living in London during the week and commuting back to Wellow on weekends, but that’s been happening less and less. Home is a hard place to define when you’re separated. His marriage lasted nearly twenty years; the separation has stretched to five. It doesn’t feel like a divorce, not yet, and sometimes it can still seem like they’re together, particularly on those mornings when he wakes and imagines that he can hear Julianne downstairs, making breakfast and answering Emma’s questions. Emma is only seven and she will be a lawyer or a scientist. A lawyer because she argues and a scientist because she explores every answer, demanding to see the evidence. His other daughter, Charlie, wakes early and leaves for school before Julianne gets up. She will have skipped breakfast, but put a cereal bowl in the sink to make her mother think otherwise.

Joe’s coffee has arrived—a double espresso, muddy and strong. Breakfast comes soon afterwards: poached eggs on sourdough toast. He’s nothing if not a creature of habit. Unfurling the morning paper, he glances at the headlines of the day. So much of what passes as newsworthy makes him feel defeated because the stories never change, only the names and the places. Particular newspapers will favor the left or the right of the political spectrum, reflecting the wishes of their proprietors and pandering to prejudices of their readers rather than moderating them. Meanwhile the columnists will insult those who disagree with their opinions, conflating gossip with real news and amplifying their anger until they sound increasingly like angry wasps buzzing in a jar.

Joe doesn’t have his first patient until eleven o’clock. Marnie Logan. This café is where they first met, which is a coincidence that should not be mistaken for irony. Marnie had been working as a waitress—one who knew how to smile—and she saw Joe drawing circles around “To Let” advertisements.

“Are you looking for a house or a flat?” she asked.

“A flat.”

“How many bedrooms?”

“Two.”

“I know a place.” She jotted down the address. “It’s about half a mile from here, just off Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale. My landlords are looking for someone.”

Two weeks later he moved into his flat. He went back to the café to thank Marnie, but she wasn’t there. He dropped by again and the café owner told him that she’d quit because her husband had gone missing.

Joe left a note for Marnie thanking her and adding a message:
If ever you need to talk to someone here is my phone number.

He didn’t expect to hear from her again. He
hoped
that she didn’t need him. Now he sees her twice a week, talking through issues of grief and abandonment.

“I’m planning to kill myself,” Marnie told him when she came to her first session.

“How will you do it?” he asked.

“I want to choose a way that isn’t messy.”

“There’s no neat way of dying.”

“You know what I mean.”

She described her physical symptoms—the heart palpitations and tremors, the clamminess and gulping of air. She was suffering from an existential anxiety that was so profound it went right to her core. Some people suffer from phobic anxieties, fearing things like spiders or heights or confined spaces. These are easier to treat because they have a specific focus. Existential anxiety is more difficult because the reasons aren’t obvious and the magnitude confounds everything in their lives.

Marnie’s problem went beyond a missing husband, Joe realized. Something else haunted her—a sense of dread that filled her like a dark liquid. Hours would disappear. Fugues. Lapses. Mind slips. Joe had spent months trying to discover the reason, but areas of Marnie’s mind were closed to him.

Finishing his breakfast, he folds the newspaper beneath his arm and gets to his feet, arching his back to prevent his stooped walk. Then he looks at his shoes, wiggling his toes and issuing instructions. One of the side effects of Parkinson’s is a tendency to trip over when he starts walking, or to move in the wrong direction. His brain can send the message but it doesn’t always arrive. He has learned over the years how to hot-wire his system and overcome the false starts.

Walking confidently now, he checks to make sure both his arms are swinging and his shoulders are back. Just another pedestrian, he thinks. Not a cripple. Not an invalid. Just a man on his way to work.

Joe’s secretary buzzes him through the door, because he sometimes struggles with keys and locks. She takes his jacket.

“What a lovely morning? Did you walk?”

“Yes I did.”

“This needs dry-cleaning. I’ll take it today.”

“You really don’t have to bother.”

“It’s only downstairs.”

Carmen is in her late forties, divorced with grown-up children and the singsong voice of a kindergarten teacher (her previous career). She has great legs, a fact she celebrates by wearing shortish dresses and skirts.

“If you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em,” she once told him, when she caught him looking. Joe apologized. Carmen said she was flattered. Joe told himself this wasn’t going to work out.

“Mrs. Duncan has cancelled her twelve o’clock, but Mr. Egan called, wanting an appointment. I took the liberty…”

“Thank you.”

The intercom buzzes. Marnie pushes through the door and walks straight into Joe’s office. She takes a seat and grimaces slightly, clearly in pain. Joe doesn’t ask about it immediately. He’ll give her time. She sits in a closed way, anchored to the chair as though scared the world might shift suddenly beneath her. Marnie steels herself for these sessions. Survival first. Revelation second.

Joe takes his seat and spends a moment studying Marnie.

“How have you been?”

“Good.”

“Any anxiety attacks?”

“No.”

Marnie interrupts before he speaks again. She has a story for him. She starts twice and goes back, looking for the right words. When they come it’s in a rush of breathless descriptions and recounted conversations.

“So I stopped someone committing suicide,” she says proudly, folding her arms in satisfaction.

Joe nods, not showing any emotion. “You can see the irony, of course.”

“What irony?”

“You told a man to look at the positives.”

“I don’t see why a person can’t contemplate suicide yet talk someone else out of it. They’re not mutually exclusive emotions.”

“That sounds like self-justification.”

“It’s better than self-pity.”

“Do as I say, don’t do as I do.”

“Exactly.”

Marnie laughs. It doesn’t happen often. Normally she’s always holding something in reserve. Once or twice Joe has pondered whether she’s been through this process before—therapy or psychoanalysis. She seems to predict many of his questions before he asks them.

Lying is almost expected in clinical psychology. People lie to avoid embarrassment, conflict, and shame, to protect their image, and to gain reward.

They lie to friends and family, but mostly to themselves. It has always been so, from the cradle to the grave. But with Marnie it is different. Behind her gray-green eyes and pale skin he senses something coiled and caged. Not caged in a way that it wants to come out. Caged in a way that it’s too dangerous to be released.

Marnie shifts in her chair, wincing.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Your ribs are bruised.”

“How do you know that?”

“I did three years at medical school.”

“Could they be broken?”

“You should see a doctor.”

“But you could tell me.”

“I’m not allowed to do that.”

Marnie stands. “Just take a quick look. Tell me if I need an X-ray.”

Grabbing the hem of her dress, she pulls it over her hips, bunching it around her breasts. Joe can feel himself blushing. The dark bruises reach across her stomach and almost to the edge of her panties.

“What happened?”

“I ran into a fist.”

“Repeatedly?”

Joe knows about Marnie’s escort work. He tried to talk her out of it and then gave her chapter and verse about taking precautions. Vetting clients. Emergency numbers. Operating a call-back system.

“For a psychologist you seem to know a lot about sex work,” Marnie told him.

“I’ve known a lot of sex workers,” he replied, “but not in the biblical sense.”

“What does that mean—the biblical sense?”

“It means to know someone completely: physically
and
emotionally.”

“No one-night stands?”

Joe hesitates and summons a memory of a former prostitute called Eliza who almost cost him his marriage, but doomed it anyway, just as certainly as
he
cost Eliza her life.

Marnie is still talking, telling him that she’s not going back to the agency. She’ll find another way to repay Daniel’s debts. She’s holding her dress under her arms.

Joe presses his fingertips against the darkest of the bruises. “Are you having trouble breathing?”

“Only when I bend or move too quickly.”

“I don’t think anything is broken, but you should rest up for a few days. Did you go to the police?”

“I’d rather talk about something else.” Marnie pulls her dress over her hips and brushes the creases with her hands, more self-conscious now that she’s covered.

“What was the scar just above your navel?” he asks.

Marnie rolls her eyes, playfully. “You were supposed to be looking at my ribs.”

Joe doesn’t play along.

Marnie shrugs ambivalently. “I fell off a horse and ruptured my spleen.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Why have you never talked about it?”

“What’s there to talk about? The horse got spooked and threw me onto a fence. I stopped riding after that.”

Marnie has retaken her seat and crossed her arms as though closing the subject. Joe moves on and asks about Daniel. “Have you had any news?”

“He’s dead.”

“So the police have…?”

“I just know it’s true.”

Marnie leans forward and begins explaining her reasoning, talking as though she’s been rehearsing the speech in her head.

“I have to get on with my life. I need to sort out Daniel’s affairs…talk to the bank…a lawyer. Daniel had an insurance policy. The money can pay off our debts. We can start again.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know yet, but things are going to change. I’m sick of living like this.” She pauses, frowning. “Why are you grinning?”

“It’s good news.”

Shaking her head, she smiles shyly before another silence settles upon them. Marnie sits very still, waiting for the professor to speak.

“Tell me how you met Daniel?”

“You know that story.”

“I want to hear it again.”

Marnie sighs and begins explaining how it happened. She was twenty-nine years old and six years divorced after a brief and disastrous first marriage. Zoe must have been eight or nine. They went back to Manchester to visit her father and arrived to find a domestic crisis. A water pipe had burst in the street, flooding the basement of her father’s cottage. He was wearing wellingtons and a storm jacket, looking like a North Sea fisherman.

“Nothing but mud and misery down there,” he said, before winking at her. “But I have a couple of nice young lads from over the road who are lending me a hand. One of them is a journalist. He’s the one with the smile. You’re going to like him.”

Marnie took no notice of her father. Thomas Logan had a way of acting like a schoolboy, despite being sixty-two. She watched him disappear downstairs and resume dragging sodden boxes and rolls of carpet into the garden. After a while she took them mugs of tea and a packet of biscuits. That’s when she saw Daniel. He was covered in mud with a shirt plastered to his chest. Then he smiled.

“I know it sounds corny,” Marnie says, looking up at Joe, “but it was like one of those things you see on TV, where the room goes dark except for a single spotlight beaming right down on him. I didn’t hear angels singing, but everything seemed to slow down and his beautiful mouth opened.”

“Fancy a roll in the mud?” he’d said, in an Aussie accent that made her ovaries tingle.

“Where did you get that lovely accent?” she asked.

“Sydney.”

“Damn, I need to move to Australia.”

Thomas Logan came out of the basement and introduced them. Later, when she was cleaning up in the kitchen, Marnie said to him, “That’s the man I am going to marry, Daddy.”

And he said, “I knew you were going to love that smile.”