I sighed. The subject was already exhausted as far as I was concerned. Part of our signed agreement was that he promised never again to sell information about me to any newspaper or media outlet – rather like shutting the stable door after the horse is gone, in my view, but Stephen was insistent.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I said. It didn’t.
‘I know I’ve hardly been the ideal husband,’ he murmured, ‘but I really am sorry it worked out this way.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’ My hands were cold and I shoved them into my pockets. On the road, taxis were honking at one another over some perceived slight. The chill had brought out the roses in his cheeks.
‘Can I ask a question? Since we’re here?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘Did you really not know you were this Bethan Avery person?’
I craned up to look at him. ‘Are you serious?’
He shrugged, as if to say, Well yes.
‘No,’ I said coldly. ‘No I didn’t.’
It was his turn to sigh. ‘I suppose it explains a few things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like why our marriage failed.’ He opened his palms, as though this were a fait accompli. ‘I mean, if you had no idea who you were, how was I supposed to know who you were?’
I stood up straight. It was time to go.
‘Does it matter? The important thing has always been that you knew who you were. You knew who you were and what you wanted and kept me posted.’
‘But…’
I wanted to tell him that our marriage failed because he left me for another woman, because he was greedy and egotistical, but instead, I simply tightened my scarf around my neck.
‘Eddy, I would love to stay and chat, but I have to go.’ I extended a hand. ‘I’ll see you around, no doubt.’
He wanted to say more, I think, but realized it would be pointless. We shook hands, like business colleagues, and within moments the human swell of commuterdom had funnelled him away into the depths of the Central Line, leaving me alone.
Martin was waiting outside the Delaunay, chafing his gloved hands together.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
‘Eddy,’ I sighed out. Though my old rage, that furious, uncontrollable chthonic monster, has now subsided, sunk back into the depths, I am still bitterly disappointed in Eddy. However, I was not surprised. I could see past it.
I was coping better than Martin, it seemed.
‘You can’t stop the greedy bastard selling his story again,’ he said. ‘He can just turn “anonymous source”, and unless we catch him red-handed, there’s nothing you can do.’ He ground one fist into his palm, an unconscious gesture of rage. ‘Just so you know.’
I nodded. I understood.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and one of those hands now closed around my own.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I actually meant it.
‘Are you ready to celebrate your divorce?’
I gazed up at the brilliantly lit windows of the restaurant, and bit my lip. It smelled good. It looked good.
‘Yeah, I am…’ I was tired, and not terribly publicly inclined right then, but there was no way to say this without hurting him.
‘You’re not so sure, are you?’
I hesitated, mortified that my feelings had been so obvious to him. This was meant to be a treat he’d planned for me, after all.
‘You know,’ he said, and there was a warm twinkle in his eye as he slipped my hand into his pocket, ‘it’s entirely possible to celebrate divorces at home too, and in equally splendid style. Which is an option we should consider.’
‘But I-’
‘No. Not another word. You’re exhausted, I can tell. Let’s get a takeaway, stay in and chill some champagne.’
I grinned at him, pleased and relieved that he got it.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’
I took the arm he offered, and we began the journey back to Little Wilbraham, to the house on the Fens.
‘What do I call you now?’ he asked me, the first time he took me back there. His voice was thick, drowsy.
I turned around in his arms. I had been sure he was asleep. I do not really sleep, myself, not yet.
‘What do you call me?’
I had been dodging this question for nearly two weeks at that point. I told everybody I was too exhausted to think about it – the reporters, the police, concerned well-wishers… the parents of the other murdered girls. Yes, I’ve been meeting them too. Again and again, I keep waiting for them to confront me – if Bethan, the first victim, had gone to the police instead of on some seventeen-year amnesiac bender, then so many lives might have been saved.
But none of them confront me.
Instead, they pity me.
It’s much, much worse.
‘Yes, you silly mare,’ said Martin. ‘You need a name.’
He was quite right. I must pick an identity and stick with it. Until then, I was in limbo.
‘I can’t decide,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be Bethan Avery – you know, the mad girl who was kidnapped and kept in a cellar, then forgot about it for nearly twenty years. And I’m not sure I’m legally allowed to be Margot Lewis still.’
‘I can’t see why you’d want to be Lewis anyway.’
Well, that much was definitely true.
They fired me in the end, once Eddy’s revelations hit the papers.
It was bound to happen, of course. It’s a different world nowadays, or so they would have you believe. What with the dissociative amnesia, identity theft, fugue states and putting a child molester’s eye out – it all marks a girl’s card.
To be fair to St Hilda’s, I wasn’t exactly fired; I was placed on leave while ‘everything got sorted out’, as the head said, but we both knew I would never be coming back. I was lucky nobody was pressing charges against me, and at that point it was by no means clear that they wouldn’t in future.
Lily took me out to buy me exit cocktails at the Varsity Hotel rooftop bar, to take away the sting, but it was such a faff getting security to throw the reporters out that I couldn’t, for the life of me, relax for the first couple of hours.
That said, once they were gone, it’s impossible to stay unhappy up there, with the beautiful vista of Cambridge spread out on all sides, the frowsy towers and ivied walls, the emerald-green patches of garden, the river with its bracketing willows.
Also, they have booze.
‘What will you do?’ she asked me.
‘Years and years of therapy,’ I knocked back the remains of my white port Martini. ‘Or so they tell me.’
She tried to fight through the discomfort the idea gave her, and put on a brave face. I love her for that.
‘No, I mean, what will you do? How will you live?’
I set the glass on the table, looked to catch the waiter’s eye.
‘One day at a time.’
‘Sweet Jesus.’
‘I see what you did there. Very droll.’
She mimed a crash of cymbals, and I laughed out loud for the first time since I’d arrived.
‘There’s a third alternative,’ murmured Martin into my hair.
‘Yes?’
‘You could choose a new name. People do in these situations.’
I fell silent. This had occurred to me before.
‘A new name.’ I relaxed into his shifting grip. I didn’t say my primary thought out loud – but it feels like more running. ‘What would it be?’
‘Anything you like. Jane Smith. Princess Cuddlybottom. Spot…’
‘Spot?!’ I slapped at his hand.
‘Desperate Davinia, the Most Wanted Woman in East Anglia…’
‘Now you’re talking…’
‘Keith Bloggs. HMS Pinafore. Knickerbocker Glory. The Big Easy…’
I laughed, smothering it against his chest. ‘The sky’s the limit, I suppose.’
‘I think you would have trouble fitting that on a credit card, but yeah, it could work.’