I’m aware that Rachel is still talking, she’s asking me questions. I haven’t been listening to her. I feel so tired.
‘Anna,’ she says, coming closer to me, those intense dark eyes searching mine. ‘Have you ever met any of them?’
‘Met who?’
‘His friends from the army? Have you ever actually been introduced to any of them?’ I shake my head. ‘Do you not think that’s odd?’ It strikes me then that what’s really odd is her showing up in my garden first thing on a Sunday morning.
‘Not really,’ I say. ‘They’re part of another life. Another of his lives. Like you are. Like you were supposed to be, anyway, but we can’t seem to get rid of you.’ She flinches, wounded. ‘What are you doing here, Rachel?’
‘You know why I’m here,’ she says. ‘You know that something … something has been going on.’ She has this earnest look on her face, as though she’s concerned about me. Under different circumstances, it might be touching.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ I say, and she nods.
I make the coffee and we sit side by side on the patio in silence that feels almost companionable. ‘What were you suggesting?’ I ask her. ‘That Tom’s friends from the army don’t really exist? That he made them up? That he’s actually off with some other woman?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says.
‘Rachel?’ She looks at me then and I can see in her eyes that she’s afraid. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’
‘Have you ever met Tom’s family?’ she asks me. ‘His parents.’
‘No. They’re not talking. They stopped talking to him when he ran off with me.’
She shakes her head. ‘That isn’t true,’ she says. ‘I’ve never met them either. They don’t even know me, so why would they care about him leaving me?’
There’s darkness in my head, right at the back of my skull. I’ve been trying to keep it at bay ever since I heard her voice on the phone, but now it starts to swell, it blooms.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say. ‘Why would he lie about that?’
‘Because he lies about everything.’
I get to my feet and walk away from her. I feel annoyed with her for telling me this. I feel annoyed with myself, because I think I do believe her. I think I’ve always known that Tom lies. It’s just that in the past, his lies tended to suit me.
‘He is a good liar,’ I say to her. ‘You were totally clueless for ages, weren’t you? All those months we were meeting up, fucking each other’s brains out in that house on Cranham Street, and you never suspected a thing.’
She swallows, bites her lip hard. ‘Megan,’ she says. ‘What about Megan?’
‘I know. They had an affair.’ The words sound strange to me – this is the first time that I’ve said them out loud. He cheated on me. He cheated on me. ‘I’m sure that amuses you,’ I say to her, ‘but she’s gone now, so it doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘Anna …’
The darkness gets bigger; it’s pushing at the edges of my skull, clouding my vision. I grab Evie by the hand and start to drag her inside. She protests vociferously.
‘Anna …’
‘They had an affair. That’s it. Nothing else. It doesn’t necessarily mean—’
‘That he killed her?’
‘Don’t say that!’ I find myself yelling at her. ‘Don’t say that in front of my child.’
I give Evie her mid-morning snack, which she eats without complaint for the first time in weeks. It’s almost as though she knows that I have other things to worry about, and I adore her for it. I feel immeasurably calmer when we go back outside, even if Rachel is still there, standing down at the bottom of the garden by the fence, watching one of the trains go past. After a while, when she realizes that I’m back outside, she walks towards me.
‘You like them, don’t you?’ I say. ‘The trains. I hate them. Absolutely bloody loathe them.’
She gives me a half-smile. I notice that she has a deep dimple on the left side of her face. I’ve never seen that before. I suppose I haven’t seen her smile very often. Ever.
‘Another thing he lied about,’ she says. ‘He told me you loved this house, loved everything about it, even the trains. He told me that you wouldn’t dream of finding a new place, that you wanted to move in here with him, even if I had been here first.’
I shake my head. ‘Why on earth would he tell you that?’ I ask her. ‘It’s utter bullshit. I’ve been trying to get him to sell this house for two years.’
She shrugs. ‘Because he lies, Anna. All the time.’
The darkness blossoms. I pull Evie on to my lap and she sits there quite contentedly, she’s getting sleepy in the sunshine. ‘So all those phone calls …’ I say. It’s only really starting to make sense now. ‘They weren’t from you? I mean, I know some of them were, but some—’
‘Were from Megan? Yes, I imagine so.’
It’s odd, because I know now that all this time I’ve been hating the wrong woman, and yet knowing this doesn’t make me dislike Rachel any less. If anything, seeing her like this, calm, concerned, sober, I’m starting to see what she once was, and I resent her more, because I’m starting to see what he must have seen in her. What he must have loved.
I glance down at my watch. It’s after eleven. He left around eight, I think. It might even have been earlier. He must know about the phone by now. He must have known for quite some time. Perhaps he thinks it fell out of the bag. Perhaps he imagines it’s under the bed upstairs.
‘How long have you known?’ I ask her. ‘About the affair.’
‘I didn’t,’ she says. ‘Until today. I mean I don’t know what was going on. I just know—’ Thankfully she falls silent, because I’m not sure I can stand hearing her talk about my husband’s infidelity. The thought that she and I – fat, sad Rachel and I – are now in the same boat is unbearable.
‘Do you think it was his?’ she asks me. ‘Do you think the baby was his?’
I’m looking at her, but I’m not really seeing her, not seeing anything but darkness, not hearing anything but a roaring in my ears, like the sea, or a plane right overhead.