Page 16 of Don't Let Him In

The house is empty when Ash gets home that afternoon and she patrols it for a while, looking at all the places that Nick had been that weekend, looking for bits of him. She doesn’t know why. It’s as if, she suddenly realizes with a shot of dark dread, she’s obsessed with him.

She goes to her mother’s bedroom and opens the door, looks at the bed, loosely made in that way her mother always makes beds, like she doesn’t really believe in making beds but does it anyway. She goes to her mother’s en suite and stares at the shelves above the sink, the rows of lotions and serums and cotton buds, HRT patches in a little pink packet. She opens the cabinet and looks for her father’s razor, which is still there where he left it the day he went into town to help celebrate his friend’s restaurant opening and didn’t come back. Her mother said she would never move it, that it would stay there forever.

But now there is Nick Radcliffe, and how will Nick Radcliffe feel about this razor, still with flecks of Paddy Swann’s wildly multicolored stubble in it?

The toilet seat is up, she notices, then pulls the sleeve of her jumper over her hand to pull it down. How rude, she thinks, to leave the lid of your new girlfriend’s toilet open in the bathroom she once shared with her dead husband. How incredibly rude.

She goes to the head of her mother’s bed and looks at the pillows, hastily plumped into a haphazard pile. She sees a single white hair, so white, the color of fresh snow. She shudders, thinking of Nick Radcliffe’s head on the pillow, his body in these sheets. Why did he have to come here? Why couldn’t he have invited Ash’s mother to his place, in Tooting? Why, she wonders, would anyone want to have sex in the bed of a dead man?

And then her eye is caught by something on the floor by her father’s side of the bed. It’s buried in the thick shag pile of the lambskin rug that covers the wooden floorboards: a simple gold ring. Big. Too big to be one of hers or one of her mother’s.

She jumps at the sound of the front door banging open and closed and then her mother’s voice up the stairs: “Ash! Are you home?”

“Yes. I’m here. Coming down.”

She picks up the ring and stares at it for a moment, then tucks it in her pocket and heads downstairs to greet her mother.

FIFTEEN

Martha doesn’t notice it’s gone until the following day.

“Al,” she says, staring at his hand holding a cereal spoon at the kitchen table. “Where’s your ring?”

Nala is on Martha’s hip, drinking her morning milk bottle. Troy and Jonah are getting ready for school. Al glances down at his hand and then up at her. “Ah,” he says. “Yes. I think I left it in the changing rooms at the gym.”

“What gym?”

“At the hotel. It’s the only explanation. The only time I ever take it off is at the gym. I called them and they said they haven’t seen it, but the manager who was there at the weekend will have a look when he’s in tomorrow. I’m really sorry, darling.”

Blood rushes through Martha’s brain, making her feel light-headed for a moment. He finds time to go to the gym, but not to call her. There’s time for haircuts, but not to reply to her messages. The baby wriggles in her arms and Martha slots her into the high chair, puts a finger of dry toast on the tray in front of her.

“What will you do?” she says. “If they can’t find it?”

“I don’t know. Replace it, I suppose.”

“But, Al, that cost nearly a thousand pounds. I…”

“Maybe the household insurance will cover it?” He looks up at hersheepishly through his black-framed glasses. “I’m really, really sorry. But I feel like it will turn up, you know, that… that the universe will return it to me.” He smiles and she smiles back.

“Well, I hope you’re right,” she says, turning to the dishwasher to put away the boys’ breakfast things. Her gaze goes to the view through the kitchen window, out across her tiny garden, stripped now of all the magical foliage and greenery that make it look like a fairy tale during the spring and summer months: the curved bench under the lilac tree, the firepit surrounded by low-slung teak armchairs with floral cushions. Just then, a flake drifts lazily past, then another and another, and soon the sky is filled with them, and she turns to Al and says, “Look! It’s snowing!”

The boys gather at the window too, and Al plucks Nala from her high chair and brings her over. The five of them stand together watching the wonder of it, the luminescent, airless flakes cascading across the garden, and for a short while, Martha forgets about her lost weekend in Normandy, about the ring, about the haircut, about all of it, and just feels so glad she found a good man who will stand with his baby in his arms and show her how to love the snow.

SIXTEENFOUR YEARS EARLIER

The atmosphere is sour now in our sad little house in Reading. My wife pretends that everything’s fine, but of course it isn’t. Nothing will ever be the same following that visit from the police, and even though they have not found enough evidence to bring harassment charges against me, the backdraft of it lives on in this house, in the space between my wife and me. Also, there’s something strange about the way her daughter, Emma, has been acting since the police visit. She’s over more frequently, usually leaving just as I get home from work, or arriving just as I leave, almost as if she’s timing her visits specifically to avoid seeing me. Sometimes I see the extra mug in the kitchen sink when I get back from work and I know that she’s been, but my wife doesn’t mention it to me.

I know what all the secrecy means. It means that my wife is discussing the next stage of her life with her daughter, planning her exit strategy, and that, I’m afraid, I cannot countenance, absolutely not. This marriage ends when I am ready for it to end, and not a moment sooner.

On Wednesday afternoon I had been going to tell my wife that I had to travel to Belfast on Friday, for the weekend. I was going to tell herthat there had been a bust-up between the general manager and the housekeeping manager of a boutique hotel there and that I was being called in to broker peace. In reality, I had planned to take Martha to Cambridge for the weekend: punting, the Bridge of Sighs, the splendor and awe of it all. But now I don’t feel safe leaving the house for a whole weekend; it will give my wife too much space to plan and plot, to change locks, call in the cavalry. But I can’t not see Martha. I ache for her. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this about a woman, and I wonder, maybe if I’d met Martha when I was younger, then none of the other bad stuff would have happened. All the bad marriages.

But maybe it’s not too late for my happy ending?

I walk to the end of the garden and call her.

“Martha,” I say. “It’s me. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make this weekend after all. Something’s come up at work.”

“Oh,” she says, and I can hear the flutter of disappointment in her tone. “Oh, that’s a shame.”

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