Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

Jason didn’t sound reassured. ‘I’ll call again. I can’t believe this.’ He hung up without saying goodbye.

Three men were waiting outside the house, bulky cameras slung over their shoulders like threatening weapons. As Nina parked, they ran up to the car aiming and pulling triggers. ‘Walk in quickly and don’t say anything.’ Ralph got out and moved past the photographers, who circled him as easily as wolves outmanoeuvring a sheep. ‘Ralph! Over here, Ralph! Do you deny the charges?’ shouted one. The others snapped and clicked. Ralph fumbled with the house key, his hand shaking, and then hid behind the front door, slamming it as soon as Nina got in.

In the kitchen, Nina emitted a low, agonised sound that reminded him of a horse he’d once seen with a broken back, which had to be shot. She’s tried the dignified approach of silence, thought Ralph, and that wasn’t much use. As if in reply, she picked up the ceramic bowl of fruit from the table and flung it on the floor where it shattered with rich, splintering cracks, the apples and pears rolling with comic energy across the room. ‘You have to explain,’ she shouted, operatic now. ‘You can’t pretend it will all go away if you don’t speak. That won’t work this time. Tell me, Ralph. Tell me what you did. Enough of the silence, the hiding.’

He was opening his mouth to say something to appease her – anything that would soothe, so he could establish the version he would have to present – when they heard the sound of a key in the front door. They both froze with the vigilance of the hunted. Could the photographers be forcing their way in? A female voice called out, ‘Hello. It’s me.’ They’d forgotten it was one of Anka’s cleaning days. Unable to cope with the situation, Nina rushed out of the room and hurried upstairs.

He didn’t find it hard to deal with the young Polish woman. I’ve lived a whole life dissembling, he thought. It’s easy. ‘How are you, Anka?’

‘Why there men taking photos?’ she asked, unsettled, breathing gently through her mouth, grey eyes rounded from surprise. Her plump, freckled hands flapped vaguely as though they were autonomous creatures.

‘They’re from the newspapers. I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m in a bit of trouble. I can’t say more at the moment. But make sure you don’t speak with any of them, OK?’ He could see she wasn’t satisfied with this answer, but she obediently nodded her head of scraped-back, mouse-brown hair.

‘Sorry, Anka, the fruit bowl got knocked over. Great if you could clear this up. Thanks.’ He gestured towards the shard-littered, slate floor and gave her a grateful, busy look. ‘I’m afraid I need to get on.’

Without going to find Nina, he went straight to the bathroom and locked himself in, running a bath as deep as it would go. Through the venetian blinds, he spotted two more men with cameras on the opposite pavement. All five were drinking coffee and smoking. They chatted companionably, waiting with the patient good humour of soldiers beginning a siege. He dropped his clothes on the floor, kicking them into a pile. They were contaminated by captivity and interrogation, soiled with adrenaline sweats, night fears and urine leaks. Standing naked for a moment, he caught sight of his reflection as if it were someone else’s, before he could straighten or rearrange to give his best. He saw a man as crumpled and wilted as his clothes: the pitifully lax belly on a slim but undeniably sagging body, the nest of grey hairs above his cock, the pallid skin. Without clothes, he could never claim to be a puer aeternus . No, he thought, whatever eternal boy there was has now been destroyed. What remains is an old, cancerous paedophile destined for jail.

He lowered himself into the bath and plunged as far underwater as possible, holding his breath. When he emerged he sobbed as he hadn’t done since his mother’s sudden death from heart failure, almost twenty years before. Like a baby without inhibition or reason, his eyes flooded, his nose blocked, his throat choked and his limbs clenched. Afterwards he lay quietly, exhausted, emitting small gulps that ruffled the surface of the water.

By the time he entered the bedroom in his dressing gown, Nina had calmed down too. She had clearly wept her own storm.

‘I took a Stedon. Would you like one?’ That was something he appreciated about his wife: people assumed she was a purist, earth-mother type from her clothes that looked homespun, the organic food and the willingness to drop everything for children or grandchildren, whereas she was actually a highly pragmatic consumer of modern comforts and conveniences. He took the proffered pill and knocked back his head to swallow it without water.

They lay on their respective sides of the bed, still and separate as the tombs of a medieval knight and his lady. When the diazepam turned his limbs into liquid lead, he gave her a version of the story that was close enough to the truth to be plausible and far enough to avoid pain. No, he corrected himself, pain is unavoidable, but no need to say it was years, or that it was a grand passion: a judicious version.

‘Did you love her?’ The question was horribly simple.

‘It’s so long ago.’ He corrected himself. ‘Yes, in a way. But different to you, to the children. It was something completely separate. I’m not sure if you can understand that?’

‘How many years have I known you?’ She waited but he didn’t reply. ‘It’s forty. This year. We were meant to be having a party, gamo to.’ Nina always swore in Greek. ‘That’s a lifetime, Ralph. We’ve brought up three children. We’re grandparents. I’m not stupid. We didn’t need to spell everything out and sign a document. Don’t think you are the only one with secrets.’

He remained motionless and didn’t react to this slap. Perhaps he was the credulous one, having never suspected he might be wearing the cuckold’s horns.

After a minute, she placed a hand on his arm. ‘You need my help. So you must be clear with me. But now let’s rest. See if you can sleep.’

He heard Anka’s phone ringing a pop-song jingle, and her voice through the floorboards, speaking hurried Polish. High-pitched astonishment gave way to urgent questions and a sudden lowering of her voice. So she knows, he thought, and fell asleep.

Gareth rang her early in the morning to say that Ralph had been arrested. ‘Are you OK? Ready?’

‘Really well. I’m happy. Happy it’s going ahead.’ The energising quality of righteous anger impressed her. There is a razor-sharp purity to knowing I am right and he is wrong, she thought. Libby moved ghost-like around the flat, earphones throbbing a distant beat, transporting her to another realm as she ate breakfast and gathered up school stuff. Daphne had not been able to face telling her about Ralph’s arrest, even though Gareth said it was important to keep her informed as things moved along. But how on earth did you open up a subject like this to a twelve-year-old? She would see her mother as a victim, as a brutalised child victim of abuse and abduction, grooming and rape. Daphne couldn’t bear that. These things could never be unsaid. They would change their relationship for ever and at a point where Lib needed to get her own life into gear and would be thinking about her own sexuality. She knew she could not continue to hide the matter. There would probably be a court case. Libby would need to know. But, for the moment, it was too formidable a test to take her daughter to the edge of this cesspit and make her peer down inside.

Late for work, she cycled so hard that small petals from the plastic flowers wound around the handlebars flew off in the wind. Once inside Hell, however, the day dragged even more slowly than usual. There was a soul-destroying to-do list of calls to Greek utility companies, a series of unreliable island plumbers and electricians, and the director of a yachting company who kept leaving her pervy messages. Fortunately, Jelly had several morning meetings outside the office and Daphne used the time to felt pieces of wool and stitch features on a tiny figurine made from satin that would finish a birthday present for her father.