Marcus sat down next to Abby. She was staring at the floor. The priest continued.
‘Infidelity, lies, a body in a lake. Of course I’ll have to quit if this comes out. Nonsense in a newspaper, I can handle. But not this. I should have seen it. The Devil was working in you and Lee all along, working his evil way through my own Course leaders, and now it is all ruined. Everything I worked to build. . ruined.’
David marched from the room, climbed the stairs and retreated behind the door of his study. The rest of the Course members sat in silence. After several minutes, the Earl stood up.
‘I must be getting home. The car is waiting outside. I take it we can rely upon your discretion, Marcus?’ He strode from the room.
Mouse fixed his large eyes on Marcus, hopefully.
Marcus turned to Abby and said, ‘I think we should go.’
*
When they got home, Marcus lifted Abby’s suitcase from the boot of the car and walked with her into the flat. She padded through the rooms, taking deep breaths, nudging the pile of unwashed shirts in their bedroom with her toe. Marcus felt bruised and empty. His head roared and he could barely speak through his swollen throat. He bent down and started to pick up the dirty clothes.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ Marcus began, but Abby threw her arms around him and kissed him long and wet on the lips.
‘I’m pregnant again,’ she said.
Marcus took her hands in his.
‘That’s amazing,’ he said.
‘I started feeling really tired in New York, and I realised that I hadn’t had my period. I know it’s only early days, but I think that if the baby has made it this far, through all this stress, then it must have a pretty good chance. I mean, I’m really not counting on it, but it just feels much more real this time. Much more like something that should happen to us, after Lee and everything.’
Marcus lifted her T-shirt and put a hand on her belly. Her stomach was warm and pudgy and he smiled at her.
‘How far gone do you think you are?’
‘Five weeks, maybe a little more.’
Marcus went out to the shops and bought some vegetables and chicken which he stir-fried in a wok. They sat and ate at the dinner table, facing each other, refusing to talk about Mouse or the meeting earlier. When they were finished, Abby pushed her bowl away and reached over to take Marcus’s hand.
‘Darling, we need to discuss things. Mouse, Lee, everything. But first, there’s something else I wanted to speak to you about.’
Marcus poured himself a glass of wine and sat looking over at his wife.
‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be in the States. The Course has just exploded over there. And of course we have only done the North-East. There’s such enormous potential.’
Her face glowed as she spoke.
‘The priests out there really get it. There’s so much energy in the way they deliver the speeches. It feels like it did for us, right at the beginning. The start of an extraordinary journey.’
She paused for a moment.
‘David has asked me to go out there full-time. He needs an administrator in the US, someone he can rely upon to run things, look after the expansion.’
Marcus felt his face drop.
‘But. .’ he began.
‘He wants you to go with me.’
He stared at Abby.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He wants you to come and work for the Course. We’d share responsibilities. You’d run things while I have the baby. It would be a fresh start for us. It would take us away from all of this.’
‘But what about my job?’
‘You hate it. You said you were desperate to leave. The Course can’t match your salary. But we’d be doing something we really loved.’
‘And the baby?’
‘I’ll have it out there. I told David about it and he said he’d make sure the Course looked after the whole thing. It would be wonderful.’
He pictured the two of them pushing a buggy through Central Park on a Saturday morning, imagined what it would be like to be away from London, away from the guilt and the memories.
‘Can I think about it? I mean, it sounds great, but so much has happened. I just need some time to get it all straight in my head.’
*
Mouse didn’t come to the service the next day. It was very cold and Marcus thought that the canal might have frozen over. Mouse used to worry that the Gentle Ben’s hull would crack in the ice and had spent several days the previous winter boiling kettles and pouring them down the side of the boat. Marcus kept looking out for his friend as the service progressed, hoping somehow that seeing him would help unravel the knot of conflicting emotions in his cold-muddled mind.
After the service they went over to the rectory for coffee. The Earl stood in the corner of the drawing room talking to a tall couple. The woman held a tiny baby in her arms and looked down at it, clucking every so often. Her husband smiled at her approvingly. His name was Simon Cooper-Jones and he was one of the City’s most successful hedge-fund managers, not yet forty and worth tens of millions. He was devoted to the Course and a major donor. Marcus crossed and leaned against the mantelpiece beside them, listening.
‘Your boys are doing a fine job of managing the Course funds,’ the Earl said, chucking the sleeping baby under the chin with a meaty finger, but keeping his eyes on Simon. ‘Up twenty per cent plus in this market isn’t easy.’
‘We’re the best. You know that by now. You should give us a bit more of your own cash.’
‘I might just do that. You’re not worried about another Crash?’
‘Always worried, never fearful. That’s my motto. How’s the US expansion going? I really think it’s an extraordinary untapped market.’
‘It’s going very well in New York,’ the Earl replied. ‘David is doing some work with the Ivy League universities. We’re going at the market top-down — it served us well here and I don’t see why it shouldn’t work out there. Do you have a New York office?’
‘Of course. Let me know which church you want them to attend and I’ll send some of my team along.’
After they had finished their coffee, Marcus and Abby stepped out into the frosty sunlit day. As they crossed the car park in front of the church, the Earl jogged to catch up with them. He took Abby’s arm.
‘I hear that you two are thinking of going out to New York full-time. I’m delighted. It has been a ghastly few weeks. It’ll be a new start for you both. And the Course will flourish over there. I know it. You must treat my apartment as your own. Stay for as long as you like. I’m rarely over there these days. Too old and tired for the transatlantic life.’
As Marcus pulled out onto the King’s Road, he saw a man in a faded velvet jacket walking away from them, west towards Fulham. The collar of the jacket was raised against the wind and the man was smoking, taking deep, angry drags and then blowing the smoke into the air above him. Marcus tried to turn around, but the traffic was heavy in both directions. Abby followed his gaze and opened her mouth to speak. A bus crossed in front of them and when it was gone, the figure had disappeared.
When they got home, Abby walked out to the shops to buy lunch. Marcus sat at the table in the drawing room and thought. He realised that he was being given another chance, an opportunity to make things right with Abby, and that this decision would change everything, define the person he was, and who he would become. He crossed to the window, opened it a crack and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the cold air. Everything had changed. Even if he stayed in London, it would be a hollow simulacrum of his old life. He’d be like those friends from college who had remained at university to do MAs and PhDs with the same tutors, who would then teach at the college, forever walking in the footsteps of their teenage selves, trying to recapture those happy years. He worried about leaving Mouse, but otherwise there was nothing keeping him here. He finished his cigarette and shut the window.