Chapter 15

15

"Don't worry. Take your time."

I glance down at his hands interlaced on the table and the slim gold band gleaming on his wedding finger. As I look, he reflexively touches it with his other hand, his fingers sliding it up and down, an imperceptible shift in mood.

"Everything okay?"

He swallows hard, arms crossed tight around his chest. "Sure, I guess, but before we get into all this, I've been thinking."

He hesitates, pausing as a waitress approaches us. We sit in a moment or two of insufferable silence while she removes our unfinished plates, glacially circling our table. As she finally walks away, Nate starts again.

"I can see it's been a bit of a battle for you, trying to get to the bottom of the story. I know how I can come across. It seems to me we've probably got a bit more in common than we thought."

"I somehow doubt that," I say, dryly.

"I meant we're inquisitive but too good, perhaps, at deflecting personal questions. Both of us have different reasons. I have theories about yours—"

"I've just told you all there is to say," I cut through impatiently. "And what's your reason?"

Silence. He looks unconvinced, but then lets out a longer sigh. "It absolutely can't go in the book, or anywhere."

"Of course, I've signed the NDA form. Whatever you say is completely confidential."

"There's no way you can record any of this. For Eva's sake. You do understand, don't you?"

I pick up my recorder sitting between us, slide it across to him. He checks it's switched off and passes it back toward me.

"No one has to know about whatever you and Eva are hiding, but you need to tell me what really happened, even if it's only to know how we're going to conceal it." My voice has fallen to a whisper.

He glances down at his hands. "Our marriage was complicated."

"As most marriages are."

"Ours more than most, I think."

I look at him in silence, willing him to say more.

"Eva and I were so different. It was a case of opposites attract, you could say. She was open...to all sorts of things when we first met, sexually, recreationally. Drugs, well, cocaine. I'm not sure exactly how often she took it. It was a social thing, mainly, but it contributed to our growing arguments."

"You knew about it? At the inquest you denied you knew anything."

"I needed to protect her. I was her husband. Kath was convinced her sister wasn't a regular drug user and I wanted to support her. I'd told Eva many times she was mad to take it, that her mom had died of a heart attack in her fifties; there was a history of heart disease in her family. But she told me I was making a fuss. What's the harm in a line or two, she would say. What could I do?" He shrugs. "But it wasn't just drug-taking. The fact is...she was seeing someone else."

I blink, taking this in. You little fool. Of course, it was an affair .

"Nate, I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

"No? You, the journalist who can read everyone?"

"Well, perhaps not everything. Anyway, you can never really understand any marriage unless you're inside it and even then... But are you sure?"

"No doubt at all, I know she was." He lets out a short bitter laugh, gives me a shattered look. It's difficult not to feel sorry for him. His love for her etched in his crushed expression. My empathy lay with Eva for so long, but now I'm not so sure.

"It must have been hard for you to carry all that alone. Does Priya know?"

An uneasy silence falls between us.

"Priya," I repeat slowly, and as I do, I think of that picture, the rage that passed across his features when he caught me in Eva's study. "She took that photo, didn't she?"

He nods. "They were always close friends, and for a long time, I never suspected anything..."

"And she knows you knew about them?"

"No, she'd be horrified if I knew," he says quickly. "It's our secret, Anna, you understand that? It can never be part of the memoir we create."

Create . That word snags on me briefly, but I let it go, in favor of the other word: we . I nod, but I still feel there's something he isn't telling me.

"Of course. Can I ask, how did you find out?"

"How everyone finds out: by accident. If you believe in accidents."

"You think she wanted you to discover them?"

"At some level, yes. I believe anyone who has an affair always does. It's a catalyst. So they can be forgiven or punished or released, or whatever it is they're really searching for. But it wasn't the affair that upset me most. That was only one part of what I discovered that day," he says darkly, before we're interrupted by his phone. It vibrates, lights up with a message, and he glances at it. For a moment I'm afraid I'm losing him.

"You can tell me, Nate," I press. He looks at me uncertainly, lost for words.

"What happened?"

"One afternoon I came home without telling her. Never a good idea. I'd been preparing a lecture I was really excited about, the results of a breakthrough we'd made in identifying a particular gene, SCN9A. An hour or two before I was supposed to leave, I realized I had the wrong notes. Somehow, I'd printed out an old version and forgotten to pick up the new one stored on my home computer. I called Eva to email them to me but she didn't answer. So I rushed back."

"And found them together?"

"Worse than that. I think that would have been easier somehow. After I found my papers, I went to the bathroom before leaving the house. And that's when I saw it, on the surface next to the basin."

He pauses, takes another breath.

"I thought it was a thermometer at first, lying there on its side, until I turned it over. There it was. That miracle hormone HCG."

"HCG," I repeat. "Pregnant."

He nods, his features strained. "The thin blue line in all its glory. It was pretty miraculous, given that we barely had sex that year. By the end I felt as if we inhabited two separate islands with no way to row back. Instead, we left the gap open for someone else to walk in, another reason I can't help but blame myself for her affair with Priya." He shakes his head. "But then finding this..."

"The pregnancy test," I press on. "What was the problem, you didn't want to have a baby?"

"To the contrary. I was thrilled when I saw it. I was ready to be a father. I thought, here is this miracle that could bring us back together after years of drifting apart. Naively I assumed she might feel the same way. But as soon as I saw her expression later when I confronted her about it, I knew something was horribly wrong. She froze."

"And?"

"She told me, very calmly, that she didn't want to have this baby, that she didn't want to raise a child with CIP, for its sake as well as ours, knowing the mortality risks involved. We both knew the chance of inheriting her condition was fifty percent. I suggested genetic testing, reminded her that this was an opportunity, but she'd made up her mind.

"She had planned to keep the whole thing a secret from me. I tried to persuade her. I said I'd be willing to take a sabbatical, go part-time, whatever it would take to make it easier for her. She gave me this look, a sort of, ‘you just don't get it, do you?' expression. I was upset, dumbfounded. Then she said there was something else she wanted to tell me."

"About Priya?" The photo of her flashes brightly in my mind, their arms sloped around each other.

He stares out across the dining room. "I was angry, of course, at the deception and infidelity. But then something else, something I didn't expect. Relief, maybe?"

"Why is that? Unless...you were having an affair too?"

"Honestly, I think it felt like something had lifted, that suddenly it wasn't my fault it had all gone so hopelessly wrong. Now I was absolved. In the end that's all that marriage boils down to, blame. What you can avoid, what you can stick on the other person. She blamed her affair on me. I remember her saying, ‘Any wife would do the same. I sit in trainee sessions listening to client problems and I think, if only you knew. I'm the one who needs therapy. Someone to help me understand my fucked-up work-obsessed husband.'" Nate recoils, looking pale and weary in the gray light.

"As she tossed the pregnancy test in the kitchen bin, she told me her plan. She would have an early termination. She was on her way to qualifying as a psychotherapist and had a big sculpture show coming up. And here I was, on the verge of publishing my paper about the real possibility of a pain-free existence—ironic, given the circumstances." He lets out a hollow laugh. "And so many findings were based on her. I remember her shouting at me, ‘The most interesting thing about you will always be me.' She was right. Without Eva, there was no pain research. No publicity, no world interest. We agreed to carry on, that I would support her decision to terminate her pregnancy, there would be no children."

"And none of this came out at the inquest?"

He scans my face, seeing the doubt reflected there. "I didn't say anything because I wanted to protect her. I didn't tell a soul about the affair or the pregnancy. If I'd said something, the press would have had a field day. I couldn't bear that."

"You didn't feel uneasy, holding back that information from the police?"

"There was no reason to tell them by then." His face is riven with fresh anxiety. "Perhaps I've told you too much. I should have—"

"No, I had to know. I won't tell anyone, and none of it needs to go in the book. But, Nate...do you ever talk about it with her? Priya?"

"Never. Priya adored her, she was devastated when Eva died. I think that's why she's so obsessed with this memoir, desperate to get it published. I guess it's her way of closure, to set the record straight."

"And what about you and Priya? You're not..."

"Never, no. I promise you it was only ever really about Eva. I was mad about her." He touches his hand to his chest, reminiscing. "But in the end, her compulsion to seek out new experiences made me feel I wasn't exactly the novelty she was looking for."

Not for the first time I wonder if there was a strange codependency at the heart of their marriage. Her self-destructive flaws were the key to him being the perfect scientist, to be seen to be caring for her while using her to find a cure for pain. I suspect that unconsciously he didn't want it any other way.

"So why did you do it?" I ask. "Why did you say yes to the book, why continue to work with your wife's ex-lover, knowing all this, that it's all so—complicated, such a mess?"

"I owe Grayson another book. And as I say, it was Priya's idea, not mine. But lately I'm not sure it's worth a book contract, or that I can preserve Eva's legacy." He gives me a wistful look. "What can be gained by constantly raking through the past? Who's it really serving?"

You , I want to say, but something holds me back. Maybe the nagging sense that what he's told me still doesn't make sense, it doesn't quite fit. Something about the time frame...

"Sorry, Nate, where did you say this lecture was?"

"At the Rosen."

"Okay, and when did it happen, I mean, how long before she died?"

Nate looks down, frowns with the effort of remembering. "I guess it must have been March. That's when I was working on that particular paper, so three months before she died."

"Three months," I echo. "You're sure?"

"Yes, completely sure."

"So, you're telling me that after the day you discovered she was pregnant, you made up and life returned to normal?"

He hesitates. " Normal isn't the word I'd use. True to her word, she had an early termination and I supported her through that. It wasn't easy but we made a go of it. We had always been a team of sorts, but maybe just not a very romantic one. We needed each other. Everyone loved her at the clinic fundraisers. My reputation as a neuroscientist would help her in the psychotherapy field. We worked as the golden career couple."

He sits back, folds his arms, waiting for my reaction.

"It sounds so cold, so transactional."

He shakes his head, looks down.

"Look, I realize I wasn't exactly a sympathetic ear for her. I was wrapped up in my research, not thinking about the emotional toll of her condition. It must have tortured her, feeling she couldn't have children because of the genetic risks. I was in my own denial." He shakes his head. "I'll always have to live with that."

I don't say anything for a moment, glance up at the couple sitting next to us who are about to leave. One of the waitresses is cleaning the glasses, there's the solid clunk of cutlery as she circles each table, laying them for supper.

Something dark flares inside me, a deep unease. Is this guilt all truly genuine? He's still evasive about Priya's affair with Eva, notably lacking in detail. There's something about it all that doesn't ring true, Priya's and Nate's body language when they interviewed me, the familiarity between the two of them. As if they're in this together. I also wonder how he could have forgiven Eva so easily. Although it could explain why he had been so upset when he saw me taking a picture on my phone.

I sigh. "You do know it's going to change everything, all the work we've done so far?"

"All I know is that I wanted to be honest with you. It's such a relief to talk like this." He sits up straighter, his eyes alight. "Thanks, Anna, for listening. You don't know how good it feels to finally share all this with you."

As we walk back along the beach to head home, the curve of a new moon turns the shoreline to silver. We reach the car park, the woodland on one side now shrouded in darkness.

"Everything okay?" he asks, noticing my distracted expression.

"Sure," I reply, a wave of anxiety slides over me. My mind spins with the complexities of his story, their past. I want to believe there are no more secrets lurking.

We're in the car park and he reaches for the key; the electronic bleep of the car doors cuts the air like a final full stop. I slip into the passenger seat and he starts the engine.

"I guess every memoir creates a version of the truth, and that's what I'm asking you to do," he says. "You're so good at adopting her voice. For a narrative that suits all of us? Makes us all our best selves?"

"Sure. It's just—it's a lot to think about, a lot more work. We need a plan," I say, more decisively than I feel.

He peers through the windshield, a fine rain like needles streams into the beam of his headlights as he navigates the narrow lanes back to the highway. We say little on the ride until London draws nearer and our conversation lightens. I joke about the waitress who took a shine to him as we continued working on the book at the restaurant. At some point we fall into reflective silence instead. I think back to his confession, the shifting sands of truth in the Reid marriage, wondering how accurate his memories really are, what he's really hiding from me.

Either way, I tell myself, it's a better story, even if we have to edit and remold. The ultimate power couple, gilding each other's achievements, gilded on the surface, rotten underneath.

In the hypnotic glare of the highway signs that flash up before me, my mind fizzes with possibilities. There's a lot of stuff to reframe now, but also so much more material to work with. We'll definitely need to bury the infidelity, but we can allude to their smaller struggles and differences, how every marriage needs hard work to maintain it, the nature of forgiveness and growth. If I hit the right tone, it could be exactly the kind of "honest material" Priya's looking for after all.

Nate fixes his gaze on the road ahead as we draw closer to my apartment. I'm suddenly acutely aware of his presence beside me in the car. How funny that at first it was Eva that drew me, her voice inside my head calling me on; I had to follow her story to the source. Now, somehow...as Nate draws up to my street, it is his voice in my head, reciting the new opening chapter of his book, our book.

"So." I sit up straighter as he parks the car, turns to me. "I have a road map in my head. Changes, revisions, more interviews. We need to be way more focused in the short time we have. But I think we can do it."

"I know we can," he says. "Thank you for being such a good listener, Anna."

I click off my seat belt and his arm reaches over reflexively to say goodbye.

His lips graze my cheek, shrinking the distance between us. There is a beat of stillness when one of us could or should move away. But we don't.

My chest freezes. I tilt my face up to his, lips parting. His mouth moves over mine into a kiss, an exquisite second of free fall. I press against him in the darkness and he shifts his body, a statement of sorts, kissing me more urgently. He breathes hard, I find it difficult to breathe at all. For a few brief seconds there is nothing except us, but then, a sound. A car door slams nearby and we pull apart instinctively, the world outside the car slipping back in. In the dull trickle of streetlight, we study each other in silent bemusement.

"Ah. Anna, the last thing I want to do is make this difficult for you—for us. It's been a strange dynamic, over this past month of working together." He hesitates, fumblingly he reaches for my hand.

I nod. "I suppose this trip didn't make it any easier."

"It was a terrible idea," he says and we both laugh as he pulls me toward him again, his mouth on mine, longer and more intense. This time he pulls away first, looks at me intently, his demeanor shifting. "I should let you go. I'm so sorry." He shakes his head. "It's...bad timing, all wrong. I—"

"No, you're right. I should—"

"I want you to know I'm not normally like this," he interrupts. "You're the first person I've been remotely... Well, the first time since..." I can't bear his apologetic tone. Glancing out the window up at my empty apartment, I feel a sudden nausea, an overwhelming desire to be away from him.

"Really, it's nothing," I say, pointlessly.

He kisses me more chastely now on my cheek. I move away, stung by the formality of it, by his self-control, ashamed somehow that it is he who holds back, not me.

He crossed a professional line for her, why won't he cross the line for me?

I reach down to grab my handbag, scramble to release the door. The rush of raw air from outside wraps around me as I step out.

"Bye, Anna," he says. I smile, struggling to regain my senses, to appear unscathed.

"Nothing happened. Nothing at all," I repeat to myself, over and over, in the darkness.