But I remember thinking that domestic murder was an oxymoron. Doing the ironing on Sunday night and emptying the dishwasher is domestic, not murder.
“I thought Simon and Emilio were both capable of killing her. Emilio had an obvious motive and Simon was clearly obsessed by her; his photos were evidence of that. Both of them were connected to Tess through the college: Simon as a student there and Emilio as a tutor. So after I left the hospital I went to the college. I wanted to see if anyone there could tell me anything.”
Mr. Wright must think I was keen and energetic. But it wasn’t that. I was putting off going home. Partly because I didn’t want to return home without being any farther forward, but also because I wanted to avoid Todd. He’d phoned and offered to come to your funeral but I’d told him there was no need. So he planned to fly back to the States as soon as possible and would be coming to the flat to pick up his things. I didn’t want to be there.
The snow hadn’t been cleared from the paths up to the art college and most of the windows were in darkness.
The secretary with the German accent told me it was the last of three staff training days, so the students were absent. She agreed to my putting up a couple of notices. The first was information about your funeral. And the second asked your friends to meet me in a couple of weeks’ time at a café I’d seen opposite the college. It was an impulsive note, the date of the meeting chosen randomly, and as I pinned it up next to flat shares and equipment for sale I thought it looked like a ridiculous kind of notice and that nobody would come. But I left it anyway.
When I got home, I saw Todd waiting in the darkness, his hood pulled up against the sleet.
“I don’t have a key.”
I’d thought he’d taken one with him. “I’m sorry.”
I unlocked the door and he went into the bedroom.
I watched from the doorway as he packed his clothes, so meticulously. Suddenly he turned and it was as if he’d caught me off guard; for the first time we were properly looking at each other.
“Come back with me? Please.”
I faltered, looking at his immaculately packed clothes, remembering the order and neatness of our life in New York, a refuge from the maelstrom here. But my neatly contained life was in the past. I could never fly back to it.
“Beatrice?”
I shook my head and the small movement of denial made me vertiginous.
He offered to take the car back to the rental car people at the airport. After all, I clearly had no idea how long I’d be staying. And it was ludicrously expensive. The mundanity of our conversation, the attention to practical detail, was so soothingly familiar that I wanted to ask him to stay with me, plead with him to stay. But I couldn’t ask that of him.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to stay for the funeral?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you, though.”
I gave him the keys to the rental car and only when I heard the car start up realized I should have given him the engagement ring. Twisting it around my finger, I watched through the basement window as he drove away and continued watching long after his car had disappeared from sight, the sounds of cars now strangers’ cars.
I felt caged in loneliness.
I have told Mr. Wright about my notice at the college but not about Todd.
“Shall I go and get us some cakes?” he asks.
I am completely taken aback. “That would be nice.”
Nice—I should bring a thesaurus tomorrow. I wonder if he’s being kind. Or hungry. Or maybe it’s a romantic gesture—an old-fashioned tea together. I am surprised by how much I hope it’s the latter.
When he’s left, I dial Todd’s number at work. His PA answers the phone but doesn’t recognize my voice; it must be fully reanglicized. She puts me through to Todd. It’s still awkward between us but less so than it was. We’ve started the process of selling our apartment and discuss the sale. Then he abruptly changes the subject. “I saw you on the news,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine, thank you.”
“I’ve been meaning to apologize.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. Really, I’m the one who—”
“Of course I should apologize. You were right all along about your sister.”
There’s a silence between us, which I break. “So are you moving in with Karen?”
There’s a slight pause before he answers. “Yes. I’ll still pay my share of the mortgage, of course, until it’s sold.”
Karen is his new girlfriend. When he told me, I felt guiltily relieved that he had found a relationship so quickly.
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” says Todd and I think he wants me to mind. He sounds falsely cheerful. “I expect it’s a little like you and me, with the shoe on the other foot.”
I have no idea what I can say to that.
“‘If equal affections cannot be,’” says Todd, his tone light, but I know not to misinterpret that now. I dread him adding “let the more loving one be me.”
We say good-bye.
I reminded you I studied literature, didn’t I? I’ve had an endless supply of quotations at my disposal, but they have always highlighted the inadequacy of my life rather than provided an uplifting literary score to it.
Mr. Wright comes back with the cakes and cups of tea and we have five minutes’ time out from my statement and talk instead about small inconsequential things: the unseasonably warm weather, the bulbs in St. James’s Park, the emerging peony in your garden. Our tea together feels a little romantic, in a safe nineteenth-century kind of way, though I doubt Jane Austen’s heroines took tea from Styrofoam cups and had cakes packed inside clear plastic boxes.
I hope he isn’t slighted that I was too nauseated to finish my cake.
After our tea, we go back over a couple of pages in my statement as he double-checks a few points, and then he suggests we end for the day. He has to stay and finish off some paperwork, but he still accompanies me to the lift. As we walk down the long corridor, past empty unlit offices, it feels as if he’s escorting me to my front door. He waits for the lift doors to open and I am safely inside.
I leave the CPS offices and go to meet Kasia. I’m blowing two days’ wages on tickets for the London Eye, which I had promised her. But I’m worn out, my limbs feel too heavy to belong to me, and I just want to go home and sleep. When I see the length of the queues, I resent the Eye that’s turned London into an urban Cyclops.
I spot Kasia waving at me from the front of a queue. She must have been waiting for hours. People are glancing at her, probably afraid she’s about to go into labor in one of the capsules.
I join her and ten minutes later we are “boarding.”
As our capsule climbs higher, London unfurls beneath us and I no longer feel so ill or tired, but actually elated. And I think that although I’m hardly robust, at least I didn’t black out today, which must be a good sign. So maybe I should allow myself to hope that I’ve survived this intact, that everything really might be okay.
I point out the sights to Kasia, asking people on the south side to move so I can show her Big Ben, Battersea Power Station, the House of Commons, Westminster Bridge. As I wave my arms around, showing off London to Kasia, I feel surprised, not just by the pride I feel for my city but also by the word my. I’d opted to live in New York, an Atlantic Ocean away, but for no discernible reason I feel a sense of belonging here.