“Mum! I’m serious! I wasn’t going to say anything, I was going to wait until I had more evidence—”
“Evidence? Ash, what on earth are you talking about? You’re acting like you think Nick is some kind of criminal.”
“Well, how do you know he isn’t?”
“And this… I mean, this woman who said he was living with a wife and children. Where did you find her? Who is she?”
“She’s literally just a woman. And I found her online.”
“Oh, Ash.” She sees concern flicker across her mum’s face. “Is this…? I mean, you’re not…?”
“What? Going mad again? No, Mum, I am not going mad again.”
“I did not say that, Ash. I never said you were mad.”
“Yes, but I was. Clearly I was. And I am many things right now, I am sad and I am grieving and I am lonely and I am lost—but I am not mad. This”—she stabs her finger at the screen of her phone—“this is real. This guy… there’s something off about him, Mum. And I’m doing this because I love you so much, and I love Dad so much, and I love everything that you built together, and I cannot deal with the thought of anyone coming into this”—she gestures around them—“into Dad’s beautiful world, and making a mess in it. Mum, please tell me that, at the very least, you’ll talk to him. Here.” She picks up her phone and messages the screenshot of Justin Warshaw to her mother’s phone. “Just show Nick that. See how he responds. And ask to go to his wine bar. See how he responds to that too. Please, Mum. Promise me you will. Not for me. But for us.”
“OK,” says Nina slowly. “Of course I will. I’m sure that there’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything. He’s had a very colorful life. He’s had a lot of trauma. A lot of drama. I’m sure this will just be another bizarre episode with a completely benign explanation.”
“Yes,” says Ash, with a sigh. “Maybe it will be.”
THIRTY-EIGHTFOUR YEARS EARLIER
Amanda and I are sharing a bed again. Thank God. My back could not have taken much longer on that sofa.
I’ve also been frequenting the café on the high street, the one with the macramé plant holders and the sour-faced girl called Kadija. I go in there primarily for the cake but also to antagonize her. She wears skintight jeans and has one of those backsides that all the young girls yearn for, but which I’m not a fan of. Her hair is always tied back, pulled tight enough to ensure that everyone can see how good her skin is, how exquisite her bone structure. She hates me, and I play on it because it gives me a huge rush of energy, makes me feel like my sex, my age, my height, are my superpowers. All I have to do is sit there and watch her and she is filled with a rage so putrid and raw that I can feel it in the very air. But it’s stoking my need for sex. It’s been over a week, and I wanted to save myself for Martha, but Amanda is here, literally sharing the same space as me, and she has that look in her eyes when I walk through her tiny flat in my boxer shorts and a T-shirt. I know she has not had sex for years and I know that that’s because of me. Because I “died” and left her with the imprint of the perfect husband, the perfect lover, and how the hell was anyone else ever going to step into those boots?
It didn’t take much, in the end. All I had to do was tell Amanda shelooked good. Tell her she looked better than most women her age. Tell her how hard it’s been living with my lunatic ex all these years, how I could not bring myself to have sex with her and how hard it was not to just come back here to her. And Amanda came to me, and shortly after that we were in bed and when I fucked her, I closed my eyes and pretended she was the girl from the coffee shop, and yes, it was a little, let’s say, energetic, and frankly, I have not enjoyed sex quite so much in a very long time.
“Darling.”
I’ve started calling Amanda darling again. It’s that muscle memory, like the twenty years in between never really happened.
“Yes?” She looks up from the kitchen sink, which she’s scouring with a battered-looking sponge.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need to ask for another tiny loan. They need me in for more treatment next week, and I’ll have to stay in a hotel. Three nights. Maybe more. And the train prices are extortionate. I’m so, so sorry to ask you, I really am.”
I didn’t ask her where the last loan came from. She had just given me the bundle of notes with a tight smile, and I could tell she felt conflicted about it but had made her decision and was going with it.
“Oh God, Damian, I can’t, I really can’t. I borrowed that last lot from Joel. I said it was to cover some unexpected bills. I can’t tell him that again. Not so soon. I mean—four hundred pounds, Damian. I can’t believe you’ve spent it already.”
“Amanda—my God, do you think I’ve just been off on jollies with it? I wish I had! And I haven’t spent it all, I just don’t have enough left to cover the next lot of treatment expenses. Especially three nights in a hotel. I mean, a couple of hundred would do. Three, tops. And then I’ll pay you back, all of it. I promise.”
“But I don’t think you understand. I literally can’t. Joel had toreally scrape together that four hundred pounds for me and I can’t ask Sam, he’s already in debt himself. I’ve pushed it as far as I can. I mean, surely there must be someone else you could ask? What about your mum?”
“My mum? Amanda—she’s eighty-one now. She’s senile. She’s in no position to be lending me money.”
“But you think your children are?”
I sigh. I’ve taken the wrong approach. “Sorry,” I say. “You’re right. Of course you are. But the woman I’ve been living with, the stalker, the money she has kept back from me, it’s a lot. I mean… over five hundred K. When I get that back from her, not only can I pay Joel back, but you and I, we could start afresh. Sell this place, get something decent. I mean—well, bigger,” I elaborate, seeing the look on her face. “We could slowly get our lives back together. Bring the boys into the picture. But we can’t do any of that if I’m sick. And the only way I’m going to get better is to continue this treatment. And if I miss one appointment, they’ll take me off the trial. They have a waiting list a mile long for people wanting to be on it. I have to be there. So is there anything, literally anything, you can think of, any way whatever of getting hold of this money?”
I know what she needs to do, and she knows what she needs to do, but I know that it’s the last thing in the whole world she wants to do, that her stomach is probably churning with nausea just thinking about it. I beam the correct answer into her skull with my eyes, which are filled with tears to convey my fear of her not asking this person for this money. She closes her eyes for a beat or two, then opens them and sighs. “I could ask Bella.”
Bella is her sister. Bella is incredibly wealthy, and Amanda and Bella fell out horribly in their thirties and no doubt Amanda has taken not a penny off her sister over the past twenty years since I “died.” There was a horrible episode toward the end of our marriage when I persuaded Amanda to ask Bella for a loan for the business (I thoughtshe should be expanding into homewares), which she did under much duress from me, and Bella loaned her £50,000, and sadly, I can’t quite remember now how the money disappeared. But that was the nail in the coffin of their relationship, which had been fraught for a long time before I met either one of them, I hasten to add.
“You could,” I say now, softly. “I know it would be hard. I appreciate that. But Bella—I mean, it’s all a drop in the ocean to her. She wouldn’t even notice it.”
“But what would I tell her it was for?”