The River House. Margaret Leroy
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I scrabble in my handbag, thinking it’s Molly.
It’s a number I don’t recognise.
‘Now, am I speaking to Ginnie?’
My pulse has skittered off before I consciously recognise his voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Ginnie,’ he says. ‘It’s Will.’ I notice how he doesn’t give his surname. ‘Look, I’ve got some info on your little patient. Quite interesting.’
‘Thanks so much,’ I tell him.
There’s a little pause, as though he’s drawing breath or working out how to put something. The sun through the window is warm on the skin of my arms.
‘Would you like to meet up to talk about it?’ he says.
‘That would be really helpful,’ I tell him.
‘I wondered about after work today,’ he says. ‘About six. I could do that if it suits you.’
I tell him, yes, it would suit me. We talk for a moment or two with enthusiasm about how useful this will be—to talk about it properly. Our voices are level, reasonable: we are two professionals planning a case discussion. I have a crazy fear that even over the phone he can hear the thud of my heart.
‘There’s a pub,’ he says. ‘In Acton Street. D’you know it?’
I explain, perhaps with rather too much emphasis, that it will be the easiest place in the world for me to find.
‘I’ll see you there,’ he says.
I put down the phone but his voice is still inside me. Desire ambushes me, taking away my breath.
I ring Amber. It’s her voicemail.
‘Sweetheart, look, I’m going to be late, I have to go to a meeting. There’s some lamb stew from yesterday in the fridge. It just needs heating through. Make sure you heat it for ten minutes, and be really careful to switch the ring off afterwards.’ But I know she’ll ignore my message, and go to the Co-op for crisps and a pack of Cherry Bakewells.
In the cloakroom I study myself in the mirror for a moment. I think of the dream I had of him. I hold my hands under the tap then pull wet fingers through my hair. At least I have a lipstick. My skin is still flushed from talking to him.
I take my coat from my office, and the bag with the fish in—though I’ll probably have to throw it out, it needs to be cooked today—and the catalogue with all its therapeutic toys. I decide I shall order the butterfly.
CHAPTER 10
It’s the pub that I passed when I walked home from work, a lumbering building with purple paintwork and advertisements for Sports Night. I get there too early and sit in my car round the corner, nervous, suddenly wondering why I’m here.
At exactly six I go in. At first I can’t see him. I try to remember his face, but it eludes me, though I saw it so precisely in my dream. I worry, like a girl on a first date, that he’s here and I haven’t recognised him.
He’s in the corner, by the fruit machine. I see him before he sees me. In that brief moment before he knows I’m there, he seems quite different from when we met before, his shoulders bowed, head lowered—as though something weighs on him and presses him down. As though there’s a shadow on him. This surprises me.
He looks up.
‘Ginnie.’
He’s vivid, eager, again. I forget the shadow.
He stands and kisses me lightly, his mouth just brushing my skin. I breathe in his smell of smoke and cinnamon.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he says.
‘I’d love a whisky.’ I wish that my voice didn’t sound so girlish and high.
The pub looks as though it hasn’t been decorated for years. The chairs have grubby corduroy seats, and there are curtains with heavy swags, and eighties ragrolled walls. You can smell hot chip oil. The place is filling up with workers from local offices, relaxing before their journey home—raucous men with florid ties, and women in crisp trouser suits and wearing lots of lip gloss. A teenage boy with an undernourished look and blue shadows round his mouth and eyes comes up to the fruit machine and starts to play.
I take off my coat, rather carefully: my body feels clumsy and ungainly. I watch all the glittering colours that chase across the fruit machine. I have a strong sense that I’m forgetting something important. Pictures of home move through my mind, a catalogue of possible disasters: Amber losing her keys and waiting on the doorstep in the cold, or starting a fire because she heats up the casserole after all and then gets sidetracked by an urgent text message. I take out my phone, I’m about to ring her again. But Will is coming back with my drink. I watch his easy grace as he weaves through the crowd towards me. Instead of ringing Amber, I turn off my phone.
He sits.
‘So you’re OK?’ he asks. Just to fill in the silence. His eyes linger on my face for a moment, then flick away. I realise he too is nervous.
‘I’m fine.’
He smiles at me rather earnestly, as though this is encouraging information.
‘I hope this pub’s all right,’ he says. ‘I thought it would be easier to talk here.’
‘Of course, it’s great,’ I tell him.
I think of the dream I had about him, his warm slide into me, the shocking openness of it. Now, sitting here in this banal place with this man who’s still a stranger, I’m embarrassed by the memory of my dream.
He sips his beer.
‘Let me tell you,’ he says. ‘About young Kyle.’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘You were absolutely right,’ he says. ‘In what you suspected. The father’s very violent.’
I nod.
‘The mother called us a few times. I had a word with Naomi Yates, who’s her liaison officer. Nasty stuff: he used to choke her, she said. It started when she was pregnant. As so often.’ A kind of weariness seeps into his voice.
‘Did he ever hurt Kyle directly? ‘
‘Not so far as we know. That happens, doesn’t it?There are men who’ll beat up their wives and not lay a hand on the kids.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
He takes a sip of his beer. I watch his hands, his long pale fingers curving round the glass.
‘She’d leave and then go back to him. You know the story—these women who keep on leaving and then can’t stay away. All it takes is some tears and a bunch of cut-price roses. It’s one of the great mysteries, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Why women don’t just give up on these psycho husbands.’ When he frowns, there are hard lines etched in his face. ‘There’s fear, of course, but it isn’t always fear. I don’t want to buy into that whole hooked-on-violence thing, but you’ve got to wonder.’
‘Perhaps it’s remorse they get hooked on,’ I say.
This interests him. Lights from the fruit machine with all their kaleidoscopic colours glitter in his eyes.
‘You could be onto something,’ he says. ‘I imagine it’s very seductive. He sobs and says he’s sorry and it’ll never happen again… We believe what we want to believe, I guess. About the people we love.’ His gaze is on me, that intent look. ‘I mean, we all do that, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
This hint of intimacy stirs something in me, a little shimmer of sex.
‘You know about this stuff, then, Ginnie,’ he says,after a moment. ‘Well, of course you would. You work with the kids who get caught up in it all.’