Killing Me Softly

Thirty-one

Joanna Noble lit a cigarette. ‘Before we start, do you mind if I say something that might sound harsh?’

‘Before we start? You make it sound as if you’re a doctor or lawyer.’

‘Well, what am I? That’s part of my point. Hang on, wait a second.’ She filled our glasses from the bottle of white wine I’d bought at the bar.

‘Cheers,’ I said ironically.

She took a gulp of wine, and jabbed in my direction with her cigarette. ‘Look, Alice, I’ve interviewed loads of people and sometimes I hated them and a few times I’ve thought we might become friends but we never did, for whatever reason. Now it looks as if I’m becoming friendly with the wife of somebody I interviewed, except…’

‘Except what?’

She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘I don’t know what you’re up to. If you want to meet me, is it because I’m such a nice supportive reassuring person and you can’t think of anybody better to pour out your troubles to? Or is it that you think I have some kind of professional expertise that you can draw on? What are we doing here? I suppose I’m wondering whether the sort of thing I expect you’re going to say to me wouldn’t be better being said to a friend or a relative or –’

‘Or a psychiatrist?’ I interrupted angrily, and then stopped myself. It wasn’t fair to blame her for being suspicious. I was suspicious of myself. ‘You’re not a friend, I know, but this is something I couldn’t talk to a friend about, or a relative. And you are right to distrust me. I’m turning to you because you know things other people don’t know.’

‘Is that our bond?’ Joanna asked, almost with a sneer, but then smiled more sympathetically. ‘Never mind. I’m also pleased, in a way, that you wanted to talk to me. So what is it?’

I took a deep breath, then told her in a low voice of what I had done over the previous days and weeks: of the details I had exchanged with Adam about our sexual history, about the letters from the unknown Adele I had found, about the death of her sister, of going to see their mother. At this Joanna raised her eyebrows but said nothing. It felt utterly strange to me to put all this into words and I found myself listening to myself as I talked, as if I were hearing a story told by a woman I didn’t know. It made me realize the hermetic existence I had been leading, going over and over this in my head with nobody to confide in. I tried to tell it like a story, chronologically and clearly. When I had finished, I showed Joanna the cutting about Adele’s disappearance. She read it with a frown of concentration, then handed it back to me.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Am I mad?’

She lit another cigarette. ‘Look,’ she said in an uncomfortable tone, ‘if it’s all gone wrong, why don’t you just leave the guy?’

‘Adele left Adam. I’ve got the letter in which she broke with him. It’s dated the fourteenth of January 1990.’

Joanna looked genuinely startled and made a visible effort to gather her thoughts and speak.

‘Let me just spell this out,’ she said finally, ‘so that we can acknowledge what is being talked about. You are saying that when this Adele broke up with Adam – your husband – he killed her and managed to dispose of the body so brilliantly that it was never found.’

‘Somebody disposed of her body.’

‘Or she killed herself. Or she just left home and never called.’

‘People don’t just disappear like that.’

‘Oh, don’t they? Do you know how many people are currently listed as missing in Britain?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘It’s as many people as live in Bristol or Stockport or some medium-sized town or other. There’s a whole secret ghostly town in Britain, which consists of the disappeared and lost. People do just leave.’

‘Her last letter to Adam wasn’t desperate. It was all about staying with her husband, about committing herself to her life.’

Joanna filled our glasses again. ‘Do you happen to have any evidence of any kind about Adam? How do you know he wasn’t on a climbing expedition?’

‘It was the winter. Anyway, her letter was sent to him at a London address.’

‘For God’s sake, it’s not just a matter of having no evidence at all. Do you really think he’s capable of coolly killing a woman and just carrying on with his life?’

I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think that there’s anything Adam couldn’t do if he wanted to do it.’

Joanna smiled. ‘I can’t make you out. For the first time today, you really sounded like you loved him.’

‘Of course. That’s not the point. But what do you think, Joanna? About what I’ve told you.’

‘What do you mean, what do I think? What are you asking for? I feel responsible for this in a way. It was me who told you about the rape case and sent you off into this lunacy. I feel that I’ve put you under this pressure so that you want to prove something, anything, just so that you can really know. Look…’ She gestured helplessly. ‘People don’t do things like that.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said. I was feeling unexpectedly calm. ‘You of all people know that. But what should I do?’

‘Even if this were true, which it isn’t, there is no evidence and no way of finding any. You’re stuck with what you know now, which is nothing. So that means that you’ve got two choices. The first is to leave Adam.’

‘I couldn’t. I don’t dare to do it. You don’t know him. If you were me, you’d just know that that was impossible.’

‘If you’re going to stay with him, you can’t spend the rest of your life living like a double agent. You’ll poison everything. If you’re going to make a go of it, then you owe it to both of you to tell him about everything. Explain your fears to him.’

I laughed. It wasn’t funny at all but I couldn’t help it.

‘You want to put some ice on it.’

‘Which bit, Bill? All the bits hurt.’

He laughed. ‘But think what a favour you’ve done to your cardiovascular system.’

Bill Levenson may have looked like a retired lifeguard but in fact he was the senior executive from Pittsburgh in charge of our division. He had arrived at the beginning of the week and had been conducting meetings and making assessments. I had expected to be summoned for a grilling in the boardroom but instead he had invited me to meet him at his health club to play a game called racquetball. I told him I’d never heard of it.

‘Have you played squash?’

‘No.’

‘Have you played tennis?’

‘At school.’

‘Same thing.’

I turned up with some rather fetching checked shorts and met him outside what looked like a normal squash court. He handed me an eye-guard and a racquet that looked like a snowshoe. Racquetball turned out not to be at all the same thing as tennis. I had a few distant memories of tennis at school: a bit of pretty scampering up and down the baseline, some delicate swings of the racquet, lots of giggling and flirting with the male coach. Racquetball consisted of desperate sweaty lunges and sprints, which quickly reduced me to a tubercular wheeze while muscles started to nutter and spasm in strange recesses of my thighs and upper arms. It was good for a few minutes to devote myself to an activity that drove all my worries from my mind. If only my body had been able to tolerate the burden.

After twenty minutes of the scheduled half-hour I fell to my knees, mouthed, ‘Enough,’ and Bill led me from the court. At least I was in no condition to observe the response of the other lithe, tanned members of Bill’s club. He led me to the door of the women’s changing room. When I rejoined him in the bar, I was at least looking better, but walking had become something I had to concentrate on, as if I had only just learned.

‘I ordered a bottle of water for us both,’ Bill said, standing to receive me. ‘You need rehydrating.’

What I needed was a double gin and tonic and a lie-down, but I cravenly accepted the water. Bill removed his wristwatch and laid it on the table between us. ‘I read your report and we’re going to deal with it in precisely five minutes.’

I opened my mouth to protest but for once I couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘It was bullshit. As you know. The Drakloop is going into a black hole fast and we’re paying for it. From your, shall I say detached?, tone in the report, I would infer that you are aware of that.’

All I could have said honestly in reply was that the tone of my report was detached because for the last few months my mind had been on other things. So I said nothing.

Bill continued, ‘The new design hasn’t yet worked. I don’t believe it’s going to work. And you don’t believe it’s going to work. What I ought to do is shut the division down. If there’s anything else I should do instead, tell me now.’

I buried my head in my hands and for a second I considered just leaving it there until Bill had gone away. Or maybe I should leave myself. The other bit of my life was now a disaster as well. Then I thought, Oh, fuck it. I raised my head and looked at the slightly surprised face of Bill. Perhaps he thought I had gone to sleep. ‘Well,’ I said, giving myself time to think, ‘the impregnated copper was a waste of time. The benefits weren’t significant and they haven’t managed to make it anyway. The emphasis on ease of fitting was a mistake as well. That makes it less reliable as a contraceptive.’ I took a sip of water. ‘The problem isn’t with the design of the Drak III. The problem is with the design of the cervixes that they are attached to.’

‘So?’ said Bill. ‘What do we do?’

I shrugged. ‘Dump the Drak IV. Give the Drak III a few tweaks and call it the Drak IV. Then spend money on advertisements in women’s magazines. But not with soft-focus pictures of couples watching the sunset on a beach. Give detailed information about the women IUDs are suitable for and those they aren’t. Above all, give them advice on getting them fitted. Competent fitting would achieve a greater improvement than the Drak IV would have managed, even if it had worked.’ A thought struck me. ‘And you could get Giovanna to organize a programme of retraining GPs for fitting it. There you are. I’m done.’

Bill gave a grunt and picked up his watch. ‘The five minutes is up anyway,’ he said, fastening it back on to his wrist. Then he lifted a small leather case from the ground, placed it on the table and snapped it open. I assumed he was going to produce my redundancy papers but instead he had a glossy magazine in his hand. It was called Guy and was evidently for men. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘I know something about you.’ My heart sank but I carried on smiling. I knew what was coming. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘your husband is incredible.’ He opened the magazine. I saw a flash of mountain peaks, faces in goggles – some familiar ones: Klaus, the elegant snap of Françoise that seemed to be the only one anybody could get hold of, a gorgeous one of Adam caught off-guard talking to Greg.

‘Yes, he’s incredible,’ I said.

‘I used to do some hiking when I was in high school and I do some skiing but those climbers – that is something. That’s what we’d all like to be able to do.’

‘Lots of them died, you know,’ I said.

‘I don’t mean that. I mean what your husband did. You know, Alice, I’d give up everything, my career, everything, to be able to know that about myself, to have proved myself in that way. It’s an amazing article. They’ve interviewed everybody, and he did it. Adam was the man. Look, I don’t know how you’re fixed but I’m flying out on Sunday. Maybe we can all get together.’

‘That would be good,’ I said warily.

‘It would be my privilege,’ Bill said.

‘Can I borrow this?’ I said, pointing at the magazine.

‘Sure,’ said Bill. ‘It’ll be a treat for you.’