Emily Barr - The Sleeper

‘God, you poor thing.’

She forced a little smile. ‘Yes. So, how is Sam Finch? They didn’t have children. How’s he coping?’

I sighed. ‘I have no idea how he’s going to get through this.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded and stared at something far away. ‘The same as me, but different. His wife. My husband. Both gone. Fucking hell.’ She tried to smile. ‘I never swear, by the way. I’m not the type. So tell me about her. How do you know her? What was her life like before she decided to help herself to my husband? And did you genuinely not know? Because I won’t hold it against you if you did, my dear. I honestly won’t. I’m so far beyond. We’ve all supported girlfriends in unconscionable behaviour. God knows, I have.’

I shifted on my chair. ‘I didn’t know. But I did have an inkling that she wasn’t completely happy with Sam. I met her on the ferry …’

We settled in for the afternoon, and I told Guy’s widow everything I knew about the woman everyone thought was his killer.

chapter seventeen

The press pack ran after me when I left, but Diana had warned me they would. She said that all you had to do was to be firm and keep going. ‘They’ll tire of us soon enough,’ she said. ‘Here’s hoping, anyway.’

‘How’s Di doing?’ yelled a woman, right up close to me.

I ignored her and grabbed my bike, grateful that none of them had stolen it. Diana was right: despite their youth, they did not, on the whole, look like cyclists.

‘How is she? How’s Diana?’ called others. I got on it and tried to leave. They were blocking me in, the whole intimidating crowd of them. I decided just to go and hope they got out of the way. If I were a car, after all, they would. I pulled my helmet down over my forehead, feeling it right across my eyebrows, and put my foot on the pedal. Then I set off, wobbling slowly at first. There was a man in front of me, quite a good-looking one. He was smirking in my face, blocking my path. I rode towards him and he declined to get out of the way.

It was the slowest of slow-motion crashes. I kept riding, though I was lurching a bit as I had had no time to get any speed up to balance myself. He was standing in my path. I could not go round him because people were in the way there too, so I just rode straight into him. He did not perform the necessary side-step. My tyre hit his leg, and I had to put my foot back on the ground.

He burst out laughing.

‘She biked right into me!’ He was addressing the crowd. He had the unmistakable accent of a local, and I wondered whether he was from one of the Cornish papers.

‘You were supposed to get out of the way,’ I told him. ‘You would have done if I were a car.’

‘True. I would. But you’re on a fucking pushbike!’

‘Am I meant to say sorry here? Because I’m not going to. All I’m trying to do is leave. Let you get on with your relentless harassment of a grieving widow.’

‘Nah. I’m probably meant to say sorry to you, but I’m not going to either. All I’m trying to do is get you to talk to me.’

‘Oh, shut up and let me go home.’

‘Seriously, though.’ His voice was lower, solemn. ‘Off the record. How is she?’

‘No you don’t.’

His cheeks were red with the cold and he looked about twenty-five. That made him more than a decade younger than me.

‘Oh bloody Christ,’ he complained. ‘Why do people have this thing about not being able to talk to the press? Like we’re Hitler or something. I’m from the Western Morning News , not the freaking Daily Star . Though obviously some of these guys are from the tabs. All you have to do is say “She’s … whatever” and we’ll all be able to say “Friends said that Mrs Thomas was … whatever.” Then we won’t have to stand here, freezing, trying to get half a sentence to put in the paper.’

‘But surely you just say “Friends said that Mrs Thomas was … whatever” anyway? You make it up.’

He sighed. ‘It would be better if it bore some resemblance to the truth, don’t you think?’

I got ready to pedal away, then paused.

‘OK,’ I told him, impulsively composing something in my head. The rest of them were gathered around, ready to pounce on whatever I said. ‘She’s a very strong woman, and she’s doing as well as she could be, considering. Her children are her priority, and she’d appreciate it if you guys would leave her alone. She’s not going to come out and cry for your cameras, so in fact you might as well bugger off.’

‘Who are you?’ yelled the crowd. ‘What’s your name?’

As I started to cycle off, the young man reached over and dropped something into the pocket of my duffel coat. I stopped at once.

‘What was that?’ I demanded.

‘My card. Just in case you think of anything else you want to say.’

At that, the rest of them started surging forward with their cards too. I rode off as fast as I could, down the lane, past their little cars parked in the ditch, past the van and down the hill. All of a sudden the world opened out again, and I was able to look at the open spaces, the rocks, the slatey line of the distant Atlantic. The air was fresh, the winter sun occasionally emerging from behind a cloud. I freewheeled down hills, took blind corners faster than I should have done, pedalled frantically in a low gear until I felt my cheeks flush, warmed from the inside but still cold on the outside. My legs began to ache and I was free again.

There was something inside me, unfurling and demanding attention. Lara did not do this. Someone else had been on the train. Somebody had killed Guy and set Lara up. I could imagine her having the affair, I told myself once again, as I sped through a hamlet that was half bungalows, half stone cottages. Sam was intense and needy, though I only really knew him since his faithless wife had vanished without a trace, so that was not a fair assessment. All the same, he had devoted his life to waiting for her to come back from London, and I could see how stifling that would have been.

I could see her leaving him. He would have been devastated, yet, as Diana had said, it was not exactly an untrampled path. Marriages ended.

I wondered whether to call Laurie and say I would be back soon. He would not expect it. He was used to waiting for me. I wondered what he would think if I ventured further afield. He had not forgiven me for drinking wine with Alex. I was pushing the boundaries.

As I chained my bike up outside a Penzance pasty shop, I found that I could not stop looking at the people around me, just in case. There was the slimmest of chances that she was here, in the town at the end of the line. She could have got off the train at Penzance and slipped away.

She had not, of course. Penzance was not a place in which anyone could disappear. If she were in Penzance she would have been found days ago.

People walked past, their breath making clouds around them. The sky had lowered since I left Diana, and now it was only just overhead, black with the promise of imminent freezing rain.

The pasty shop was empty. I knew that I could have gone into any restaurant I wanted for lunch, but I wanted a pasty. The secret money in my bank account, the fact that I never needed to worry about my finances again, seemed so unlikely that I mainly lived as though it were not there. If I spent three pounds on a pasty and a can of Diet Coke, things were reassuringly normal.

At home I cooked the most lovely meals I could for the two of us, considering my small budget. I made soups with local vegetables, and baked bread. I ate well and exercised and was healthy and boring. I could not do anything extravagant at home, because I had not told him about the money. If I told him now, I would have to explain why I hadn’t mentioned it before. It became increasingly impossible.