Page 54 of Behind Her Eyes
‘The thing is,’ I say, in a long pause after I’ve finished, ‘these notes he’s been keeping go back pretty much ten years. I thought maybe he was trying to get you sectioned to keep your money, but that would be a more recent thing, surely? He couldn’t have been planning that all this time. I mean, could he? It doesn’t make any sense.’
Adele stares straight ahead, her face filled with sadness. ‘It makes sense to me,’ she says eventually. ‘It’s an insurance policy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I did have some problems when I was younger, after my parents, after Westlands, but that’s not it. That’s not why he’s got this file. It’s about Rob.’
I frown, confused. ‘What about Rob?’
‘It’s insurance in case I decide to voice my suspicions about what happened to him. Who would anyone believe? The respectable doctor or his crazy lady wife?’
‘I don’t get it.’ This is a new twist in their crazy marriage. ‘What happened to Rob?’
‘Rob’s our unspoken secret,’ she says, and then lets out a long sigh. She looks small in the chair, narrower with her shoulders hunched, as if she’s trying to fold in on herself and disappear. She’s thinner too. Vanishing.
‘I want to show you something,’ she says. She gets up and I follow her as she leads me up the stairs.
My heart is racing. Am I finally going to learn what’s at the core of this marriage that’s entangled me? I follow her into the large master bedroom, high ceilinged and airy, with an en-suite in the corner. Everything in it is elegant, from the metal-framed bed, sturdy and wide and clearly from somewhere like Liberty’s rather than some lightweight chain-brand copy, to the Egyptian cotton duvet set, a deep brown off-setting the olive green of the walls and the rich worn wood of the floor. On a feature wall behind the chest of drawers, three thick stripes of varied greens run from floor to ceiling. I could never be this stylish.
‘It was all magnolia when we moved in,’ she says. ‘Some off-white shade anyway.’ She’s looking at the walls, thoughtful and reflective. ‘I chose these colours to test him. They’re the colours of the woods on my parents’ estate. We never go back there. Not since I was there after Westlands. Not since Rob came to visit.’ She brushes her fingers across the walls as if feeling the bark of a tree rather than cool plaster.
‘He refuses to sell it even though it’s just sitting there, empty and forgotten.’ She’s talking softly, as much to herself as to me. ‘I think that’s part of the reason he’d be reluctant to give control of my money back. He knows I’ll get rid of it. And that’s too much of a risk.’
‘What happened to Rob?’ I ask as my heart races. She turns to me then, wide-eyed and beautiful, and spills out her answer as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to say.
‘I think David killed him.’
Hearing it out loud, rather than some almost suspicion in my own head, makes me reel. David. A killer? Is that even possible? I step backwards and find the bed, sitting down heavily.
I think David killed him.I feel like I did when Ian told me Lisa was pregnant, but everything is amplified.
‘Rob came to stay,’ Adele continues. ‘He was so unhappy with his awful sister and he texted me, and I insisted he come to Perth. He’d been so good to me. He’d brought me back to life. I wanted to help him in return. Maybe give him some money to set himself up somewhere away from that awful place he lived. I was happy to have him around. He did that for you, Rob. He made you happy. He made you feel special. I suggested to David that he could live with us for a bit when we were married. Just until he got himself sorted. David didn’t like the idea. He was jealous of Rob. David had always looked after me, but at Westlands Rob had taken on his role. He was suspicious that there was more than friendship going on, even though I kept telling him it wasn’t like that. I loved Rob, but not in that way. I don’t think he loved me in that way either. We were like brother and sister.’
I’m hanging on her every word with both anticipation and dread. ‘What happened?’ My mouth is tinder dry and I can barely get the words out.
‘David came for a weekend while Rob was staying. I thought that once they got to know each other they’d be fine. I thought that because I loved them both it would be enough for them to love each other even though they were very different. Looking back, I was so naïve. Rob was determined to make an effort – on his best behaviour for such a wild thing – but David was off with him. On the Saturday, David seemed to thaw a bit, so Rob told me to go to bed and leave them to it. He thought they could use some man-to-man time.’ She looks back at the walls, the forest colours, her eyes drifting over them as if the past was written there.
‘When I woke up, Rob was gone,’ she continues. ‘David said he’d decided to leave, and at first I thought maybe David had paid him off. But that didn’t make sense. I’d already offered Rob money, and he wouldn’t have taken a bribe not to be my friend. He wasn’t like that. He’d have laughed at that. Sometimes, when I play it over in my mind, I wonder if he decided to have it out with David about my money. Maybe he told him he had to give it back. He said he wouldn’t mention it, but who knows? Perhaps he did. Maybe that sent David over the edge into one of his terrible moods. Maybe they fought and it got out of hand. The one thing I do know is that Rob would never have left without saying goodbye.’
‘Are you sure?’ I ask, trying to find something rational here that doesn’t involve my married ex-lover having killed a rival. ‘I mean, maybe they had an argument or a fight, and Rob thought it was best to leave. That’s possible, isn’t it?’
She shakes her head. ‘Rob had hidden his stash of drugs and the notebook in the barn. I didn’t find them until after David and I were married, but Rob wouldn’t have left the drugs behind. Not if he was angry. He’d have wanted to get high.’
‘Did you ever confront David about it? Ask him?’
‘No. We got married very quickly, maybe a month or so after I last saw Rob, and David had changed by then. He was more reserved. Cooler with me. Then I found out I was pregnant.’ Her eyes fill with tears that don’t quite spill as I sink into the awfulness of it all with her.
‘I was so happy.Sohappy. But David made me have an abortion. He said he couldn’t be sure it was his. After that I had a little breakdown – I think I couldn’t face my fears about Rob, and I was still recovering from my parents’ deaths, and then the abortion on top of it all was too much. We moved down to England, and that was that. David softened and looked after me, but he refused to sell the estate.’
‘You think Rob’s still there, don’t you?’ I say, lost in their past and terrified by our present. ‘Somewhere in the grounds?’
She stays very still for a long moment and then nods. ‘Rob would never have upped and vanished on me like that. Never. I was all he had. He’d have got in touch.’ She sits on the bed beside me. ‘If he was still alive.’
Neither of us says anything for a long time after that.
43
ADELE
