Page 51 of The Lie
Now, she gave Dr Beech a tight smile.Six weeks …the words closed round her, like a fist.
‘Thanks, Guy.’ Romy moved towards the front door, folding the prescription absentmindedly in her hand.
‘He shouldn’t be left alone. These panic attacks are very debilitating.’ Dr Beech rocked back and forth in his polished brogues. ‘But Michael’s tough. The arm’s not good, but getting his negative feelings under control will help … Another three or four months and he’ll be a new man.’ He patted her arm encouragingly as he added, ‘Lucky he’s got you.’
34
Jenny was already outside the pub when Finch pulled in on his bike. He regretted agreeing to meet up, but he’d bumped into his friend in the Co-op earlier in the week and she’d immediately put her head on one side, frowning at his appearance. ‘Goodness me, you do look miserable.’ When he hadn’t offered any explanation, she’d gone on, ‘Listen, there’s the village art trail on Friday. Let’s meet for a nice lunch and have a potter round. That’ll cheer you up.’
Finch had been too slow to think up a good excuse. He wasn’t in the least bit interested in local art – collecting stuff of any kind was not his thing – but he’d been slowly going crazy alone in the house in the three days since he’d told Romy about Grace and Michael. Running had helped – to a degree – in managing severe bouts of despair at losing Nell, but this thing with Romy was different. It wasn’t clear-cut, like a death, but tormenting and infuriatingly complex. Finch felt only anger towards the man who had attacked Grace – but he couldn’t avoid a reluctant sympathy for the man currently so disabled by a stroke. He was furious with Romy for siding so stubbornly with Michael – but he could partially understand why she did so in the context of her marriage. Every day he ran and ran, but all these contradictory emotions ran doggedly alongside him.
Jenny kissed his cheek and took his arm as they turned towards the pub door. ‘There’s a pensioners’ lunch going on in there, I hope they don’t think we’re candidates.’
Finch laughed. ‘Better sit outside, then.’
‘Now,’ said Jenny, as soon as they were settled at a wooden picnic table, with cider and a ploughman’s each. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’ She gave him a knowing smile. ‘Although maybe I can guess.’
‘You can?’
‘Romy’s gone back to her husband?’ She checked his face to see if she was right and obviously concluded she was, because she went on almost smugly, ‘I was worried she might.’
Finch, embarrassed, said nothing. There was no chance he could open his heart up to Jenny about the real cause of his distress, no way he would betray Grace’s confidence.
She took a hearty bite out of her bread and cheese while she waited for him to reply.
‘It’s complicated,’ was the best he could come up with.
Jenny gave a sympathetic sigh. ‘When are relationships ever not? I mean, look at Euan.’
Finch just nodded. He didn’t want to ‘look at Euan’, not again. It was like plugging in a CD, the exact same bile flowing in a monotonous loop. What he really wanted was to ask Jenny something that had been niggling him, but which he had pushed aside in the face of Grace’s anguish. Grace had mentioned – like Jenny previously – that her mum was a friend of James Bregman. But it was Jenny’s sly expression when she herself had done so that came back to him now.
‘So this James Bregman – Michael’s partner,’ he began. ‘You say he’s an old friend of yours?’
Jenny looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well, we used to chat around the village sometimes, when he had a place here. I wouldn’t call him exactly a friend.’
‘But Nell was?’
Jenny hesitated, then gave a bright grin. ‘Oh, you know Nell, Finch. She made friends with everyone.’
He smiled his agreement. ‘I could never keep up.’
‘Your wife had a very big heart,’ Jenny added, her smile sentimental this time.
But there was something behind the smile that Finch found unsettling. He shook himself. He badly needed to get away from Jenny.
‘Listen, I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, rising too quickly and barking his shins painfully on the wooden bench attached to the table, ‘but I think I’ll give the art trail a miss. I know Nell used to love them, but it’s not really my thing.’
As Finch made his excuses to a clearly disappointed Jenny and rode off through the warm summer afternoon towards his house, he came to a decision:I’ve got to get away. Romy would be back in the village soon, maybe even for the weekend, then the next weekend, and the one after. He couldn’t risk running into her. He didn’t know if he could control himself if he saw her again. He might be tempted to forget Grace’s problems ever existed.
No, he would search out an adventure, maybe travel thousands of miles and do something wild that would totally absorb his attention – the Amazon, New Guinea,Alaska, perhaps. He was used to being on the move, good at being set down in foreign parts and adjusting.
Opening his laptop and settling to email some of his contacts scattered around the world, he started with his friend Paz – short for Pascal. Finch had met him in Bosnia, where Paz, employed by La France Diplomatie, had been involved in the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. It had been an instant friendship, the Frenchman’s irreverence a breath of fresh air in such a grim environment.He’ll come up with something, Finch thought.
For a while, he was buoyed up by action and the drama of his broken heart. But as the evening wore on and he trawled the endless multitude of travel options online, his head began to spin, his eyes to burn and the wine he’d drunk turn to acid in his empty stomach. Finch no longer felt intrepid, just bewildered and alone.
That night he woke with a start. It was a familiar flashback. At one time, back in the nineties, he’d experienced it on a regular basis. But now it seemed only to trouble him when he was under stress and vulnerable – like when Nell was dying.
The incident had occurred in Bosnia. Finch and his team were behind the lines. It was high summer and roasting hot. A black jeep pulled up in a cloud of choking dust and three fighters jumped out. All carried guns, the leader – dressed in black, his eyes cold and dead from too much anger, too much violence – brandished a vintage Winchester rifle, which Finch immediately identified. Finch and his men were there to negotiate – ‘with the minimum use of force’, went the orders. But the dead-eyed Bosnian Serb had other ideas.
