Page 52

FIFTY-ONE TWO YEARS EARLIER

For a long while after the news breaks, it remains in the headlines: “The Body in the Woods.” Poor, poor woman.

No signs of sexual assault, no signs of violence, merely a pile of flesh and bones, left to decompose into mulch and acid, leached away by the forest floor to feed microorganisms, worms, creatures so small that nobody even talks about them.

They call her Woman X. Highly unoriginal, but there you go.

I feel edgy, vaguely sick, for quite a few days after the news breaks.

Weirdly, I want to talk to Amanda. She occupies my mind almost constantly.

The sense of connection to her I feel in those days and weeks is almost tangible and I hate to say it, but there is a moment where I keep her face at the forefront of my mind while I’m making love to Martha, which is revolting, I know, but what can I say?

The whole scenario is new to me. I have only dismembered a body once in my life, and there was only one person there to share the experience with me and that’s not the kind of thing you can just shake off in a dash.

And actually, during those awful hours when Amanda and I did what we did with the remains of Tara’s body, I have rarely, if ever, felt closer to another human being.

She really was quite extraordinary. Mainly, of course, because I had somehow managed to persuade her that she was the one who’d killed Tara.

Or at least, she would be blamed for it if Tara’s death ever came to light.

We were in that flat for twelve long hours, doing things that were basically unthinkable, but we got into a rhythm, a dance.

We even, I seem to recall, put on some music.

It still doesn’t feel quite real. But when I look back at it, I feel a kind of triumph.

Because God it was brilliant, quite, quite brilliant.

My mind, which so often operates in cyclones and whirlpools, became entirely still in those hours, I knew exactly what to do and how to do it, and all I had to ensure was that Amanda would go along with it. And she did.

I also have to say that something changed inside me after that day.

I evolved. Which is a strange thing to say about something that was essentially an act of unevolved animal savagery.

But I did feel like I had tapped into something inside me that I didn’t know was there, something vital and energizing, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t relived that last moment of Tara’s sad, pointless life over and over again, and although I do keep coming back to this sense I have of myself as not being a sexual person, I do feel it is related somehow to my latent sexuality.

It’s the same, in a way, as how I feel when I follow women in the street.

It brings me to life in a way that normal sexual interactions simply don’t.

During normal sexual interactions, I am usually very mindful of my performance as a loving and nurturing husband or a highly paid escort.

I know what’s expected and I make sure I deliver it.

I have been married to women who weren’t interested in sex at all, particularly after having a child, and I was unbothered and patient.

But it’s different now. I feel different.

And right now, two years into my relationship with Martha, I would say, sexually speaking, things are very much alive and well.

I’ve been holding off asking her to marry me until I know that the Tara episode is well and truly over, that they have not identified Woman X, that Emma is not coming after me, that nobody anywhere is putting the two parts of the full piece together.

So, for now, for a while longer, we’re just freewheeling, Martha and I, while I use my own hard-earned money to treat her as a woman of her caliber deserves to be treated.

This morning, I awake in the bed of a woman called Marie.

She is sixty, very well kempt, if slightly too thin and crepey in places.

But overall, in the subtle lamplight of her top-floor apartment in a leafy suburb of West London, she is nice enough to look at.

She lives alone, with two dogs who share our bed.

One of them greets me by sniffing my face and I pat its head and tell it it’s a good boy (I think it’s a boy).

Then I roll over and climb out of the bed.

I am wearing underwear. We didn’t have sex last night, or at least not the sort of sex that required me to remove my underwear.

Marie mumbles something from the depths of a nest of fat pillows and I take her hand and give it a tender squeeze.

“Thank you, darling,” I say. “That was just wonderful.”

In her kitchen, I search her fridge and then make myself a hastily assembled sandwich with some fancy-looking ham and a slick of garlic mayonnaise.

I give the dogs some ham too, and then, from its place resting against the toaster, I take the envelope with my name scrawled on it (“André”), check the contents (￡500), grab my bag and my coat, and head to my car in the guest parking space outside.

Four hours later, I am back in Enderford, where I scrub my face raw in the bathroom with a flannel, soap, and some very hot water.

I use some of the ￡500 to take Martha out for dinner that night. It’s a place I keep reading about in the local press, and then last weekend it was in The Times , listed as one of the “top twenty seafood restaurants in the UK.”

It’s called Paddy’s in Whitstable. I tell Martha that it’s a surprise and that she doesn’t need to dress up, but that she should expect it to be nice.

She looks excited as she gets ready. Her boys are staying with their father that night, so we don’t need to rush back for a babysitter and will have the house all to ourselves when we return.

I like Martha’s boys, especially the youngest, who reminds me so much of myself in so many ways, or at least the pitiful version of myself that existed during my childhood, but it’s nice to have a night or two every week without them.

When she comes downstairs, Martha has her hair up, just as I like it, and small gold spheres hanging from her ears.

She wears jeans, a simple black T-shirt, and a beautiful velvet jacket in a smoky green.

She looks exquisite and I tell her so and she smiles, revealing perfectly white teeth, that dimple, a tiny hint of gum.

I’m wearing jeans, too, with a smart jacket and expensive new trainers, and for the next hour or so I forget about where the money came from to pay for these nice things and focus more on the fruits of my rather sordid labor.

Our taxi arrives at six o’clock and Martha and I sit holding hands across the back seat, talking easily and lightly, as we always do, and soon we are dropped outside Paddy’s, directly onto the cobbles of a picturesque side street just as the sun is going down on the town.

The ambience of the restaurant is evident even from the street: the sounds of laughter, conversation, the smells of garlic and the sea.

I’m hungry after all my travels and the late night before with Marie.

A young girl shows us to our table. She’s not terribly pretty and I am jolly and avuncular as she seats us and passes us menus and explains things to us as though we are children who have never before been out to eat.

“The small plates at the top, we recommend two or three, then here, in the middle, large plates, for two to share, plus some sides, but we also have ‘Something While You’re Waiting’?”—she points out some italicized text at the very top of the menu—“in case you’ve come hungry.

” She smiles and I smile back encouragingly, then she talks us through the specials, which are all things fresh from the sea, including a type of fish I’ve never heard of before that I immediately know I will order.

We have razor clams and oysters and blinis with salmon roe and truffle cream.

We have smoked trout and crisp apple slices and a beautiful local sparkling wine from a Kentish vineyard.

Our waitress is great, and I already know I’ll give her a good tip.

I look around at the people who surround us, and I feel a dizzying clash of emotions: pride at the realization that we are the best-looking couple in here by a mile, but a blow of shame at the thought that in order to afford my place here, last night I had to perform cunnilingus on a lonely sixty-year-old woman while her cavapoos looked on.

I banish the thought and focus instead on Martha’s smile and the spectacular remoulade that comes alongside my exciting new fish with a name that I’ve already forgotten.

And then I feel the air in the restaurant change.

The atmosphere ramps up, diners turn slightly.

I see a few people break into smiles as a man appears in a chef’s apron and matching hat.

He’s a small man, barely five foot nine, he has a paunch, he wears scuffed trainers with baggy combat trousers, his hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat, and he glows with the heat of the kitchen.

I see him perform a complicated teenage handshake with a customer and then pull out a chair.

“I assume,” says Martha, a little breathlessly, “that that is Paddy himself?”

The way she says the word “himself”—it makes me experience a strange burst of rage.

It reminds me, I realize, of the way people used to respond to seeing my father outside his practice.

The way they’d bring themselves up taller, or, if it was a family, the way they’d form a kind of queue, almost doff their fucking caps at him as if he was important somehow.

Purely because he’d learned some stuff that they didn’t know.

Purely because he could do things that they couldn’t do.