The Book of You: A Novel (23 page)

Friday

I
T WAS EXACTLY
how Robert would have done it, she thought, as Azarola walked sure-footedly to the witness box and gazed steadily out, straight and unflinching and looking more than ever like a Spanish pop star. He wore a gray knitted V-neck vest over a dazzlingly white scoop-neck T-shirt.

“You say you can’t remember what you were doing over the weekend that a young woman was allegedly kidnapped and falsely imprisoned and raped.” Mr. Williams was being tough with his boy.

Azarola shook his head in helpless bewilderment. “Yeah. Because I don’t know her. I’ve never met her. I wasn’t there.” He wasn’t quite as tall as Robert, but he had the same narrow hips and waist and long legs.

“Then why would your own supposed friend, Mr. Sparkle, tell the police you were?”

“He’s lying. He’s a competitor.” Maybe firemen had to spend part of each day in the gym. Prisoners probably chose to, if they were smart. “He wants me put away. Out of the way.”

R
OBERT AND
C
LARISSA
were on their usual walk to the station. “I’ve never been caught by a speed camera,” he said. “Never even had a parking ticket.”

“Were you a Boy Scout?” She pushed her hair over her ears to try to warm them. She’d left her hat in her bag. Though he’d seen her in it before, she was suddenly self-conscious, wondering if it was too little-girlish a thing to wear in front of him.

“Nope.”

“I was teasing you again. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look as if he minded. “You’re shivering. Don’t you have your hat? You can wear mine.”

His was shaped like a Russian Cossack’s hat; the dark-navy fleece definitely covered his ears. She rummaged for her own, making herself look surprised and pleased to find it.

“Nice,” he said.

“My mother knitted it. She likes me to be warm.”

“She sounds very wise.” Apparently satisfied that she would be safe from frostbite, he resumed their subject. “Boys need structured frameworks for their aggression. Need to learn to discipline it. The Fire Service is the thing. If our friends in the dock had joined at eighteen, they wouldn’t be sitting there now.”

“It’s not for everybody, though, is it? Not anyone can join. You need special qualities.”

He looked surprised by this idea.

“What percentage of applicants get in?” she asked.

“One in four. There are aptitude tests, personality tests. You can’t fool the tests.”

“I’d bet Azarola could. He’d win on charisma alone.” She was reaching into her bag for her ringing mobile as she spoke. “And I think he’s smarter than all the barristers put together.” She could see DC Hughes’s name on the screen. “I’m so sorry, Robert.” She pulled her hat off again so her ear wouldn’t be muffled. “I need to take this.”

“I’ll walk ahead. Catch up to me if you finish. Otherwise I’ll see you Monday.”

She spoke very little as she listened to DC Hughes. She told him she was walking on a public street, with an acquaintance nearby.

He seemed instantly to understand the position she was in. “Happy to fill you in while you listen.” He hadn’t wanted to leave her wondering all weekend, but he was about to go off duty.

Robert paused to glance around at her, and she tried to smile at him. She rolled her eyes, as if she wished she could get the call over with and finished, and he moved forward again.

DC Hughes’s information was firsthand; he’d been in court himself that afternoon. He warned Clarissa that though Mr. Solmes’s account of his actions was as they had predicted, she would still find it ugly and painful to hear.

Mr. Solmes had bowed his head as his solicitor explained that from his client’s point of view it was all a terrible and sad misunderstanding, a tragic case of poor communication that should never have been brought within the legal system. Mr. Solmes had certainly never meant to intimidate Miss Bourne or burden her with unwelcome attention.

The photographs had been part of sex games that his client and Miss Bourne had enjoyed together as two consenting adults, and which Miss Bourne in particular had sought. Mr. Solmes had reluctantly agreed to them because he wished to please her; he profoundly regretted that Miss Bourne had felt the need to share something so personal with the police.

Clarissa’s throat tightened. She coughed, to clear it, and a choking noise came out. Robert turned once more to look at her. They were crossing a busy road at the green man’s signal. He seemed to want to check she wasn’t too distracted to do this safely.

Mr. Solmes had been particularly shocked that she could regard the beautiful flowers as a death threat. He worried that she must be under considerable strain and exhaustion to imagine such a thing.

He’d thought that she reciprocated his feelings; they’d even chosen an engagement ring together, which Miss Bourne had accepted and retained. Until three days ago, he’d had no indication that Miss Bourne had come to feel differently since the night they shared back in November, when she agreed to marry him. He’d been completely blindsided when the police knocked on his door on Tuesday; it had taken him time to absorb this new state of affairs.

Despite what she had done to him, Miss Bourne’s withdrawn and distressed behavior was causing Mr. Solmes high levels of concern about her well-being. She appeared to be quite visibly deteriorating in health, and it was known that she had become addicted to sleeping pills. He had persisted in trying to contact her only to offer much-needed assistance. He’d even joined with her best friend in staging an intervention, but Miss Bourne refused that, too. It was a sign of how desperate her condition was that she did not recognize the importance of accepting help.

Mr. Solmes felt it to be a painful injustice that he should be dragged into court as a result of his kindness and humanity. He would now cease all attentions to Miss Bourne. However, he had instructed his solicitor to express the fact that despite his deep hurt, it was his sincere hope that Miss Bourne would seek personal and medical support elsewhere; Mr. Solmes only wished her well.

The judge didn’t buy any of it, DC Hughes said. He granted bail but issued a restraining order.

Mr. Solmes’s solicitor protested that the restraining order would make his client’s job impossible, destroying his livelihood and career, as he and Miss Bourne worked on the same site.

DC Hughes hastened to reassure Clarissa that the judge did not change his mind. More than that, he made it clear to Mr. Solmes’s solicitor that if his client breached the restraining order, the penalty would be severe and certainly involve a significant prison sentence.

DC Hughes advised Clarissa to remain watchful and careful, but to be optimistic that Mr. Solmes would now leave her alone.

She had a terrible realization then. It occurred to her that she had actually been lucky that his behavior had been so extreme. It wasn’t such a bad thing after all to be a high-priority case. Had his pestering been of a more moderate nature, it might not have been taken so seriously. The police might not have helped. She might never have got that restraining order. She might have had to live with a low level of his constant presence until she died, every minute of her existence diminished by slow poison.

All she wanted now was to grab at her own life, to possess it again and bask in it being entirely hers and entirely private. That wasn’t something she would ever again take for granted, as so many people did.

By the time she slipped the mobile back into her bag, she was calmer. As she walked along the approach to the station, Robert slowed to wait for her.

“Interesting call?” he asked neutrally.

“No.” She shook her head, too, to insist, convincing herself as she spoke. “It’s a very boring thing that’s all over.”

He paused to consider, then spoke as if unable to stop himself. “I wondered if it was a man. Maybe someone you’re seeing . . .”

“No. Goodness, no.” Robert’s face relaxed. She said softly, shyly, “There’s no one like that, Robert.” She tried to think of how she could tell him something close to the truth. “It was a colleague. There’s something I’d been worried about, a work thing, but he had good news for me. The problem has gone away.”

She and Robert were standing in front of the ticket gates.

“That’s good,” Robert said.

She nodded. “It is.” She fed her ticket into the machine and walked through the turnstile. “It really, really is. I don’t want to think about it anymore.” They paused at the top of the stairs that led down to the trains. “I’m not seeing anyone.” She looked straight into his blindingly blue eyes. “There’s only one person I’d want to see.”

Saturday and Sunday

S
HE TESTED HERSELF
over the weekend, to see if she could feel free and not look over her shoulder. On Saturday she wandered through the town center, shopping slowly at the farmers’ market, wondering fleetingly about the possibility that Polly Horton was nearly kidnapped there by Godfrey; she was struck by what a busy and safe-seeming place it was.

She ordered a latte at the coffee bar. While she was waiting for it, she texted Caroline on the off chance that she was free to come to dinner that night, though she wondered if Caroline would be annoyed with her for declining that lunch invitation two weeks ago. Almost instantly, taking her by surprise, Caroline texted back that she’d be there at eight, and that she couldn’t wait to tell Clarissa about a top-secret plan to restructure the university.

The latte still wasn’t ready, so she texted Rowena, too: I love you and miss you. That was all. There was no immediate response to that one, though. She feared Rowena would take shears to the silk nightdress she’d posted earlier that morning, but pushed the thought out of her mind and let herself be excited by the prospect of Caroline’s visit.

She bought bright red tulips, the first of the season, and olives and oak-roasted tomatoes and ricotta-stuffed peppers and sweet dark rye bread and handmade halloumi cheese and a bottle of her favorite amarone. From the French chocolatier she bought pralines and truffles and cocoa-dusted almonds. She bought the ingredients for her mother’s beef casserole, too.

When she returned home, there were no letters or presents. There was only a credit-card bill that seemed like a lovely thing.

O
N
S
UNDAY SHE
walked for a long time in quiet fields where she and Henry used to watch foxes in the late summer twilight. It always seemed magical that somewhere so quiet and rural-seeming could be so close to a city.

She liked the feel of springy moss beneath her feet as she wandered through the overgrown old churchyard that bordered a small farm. She was moved by the sight of fresh flowers and a new-looking teddy bear on the grave of a young child who’d died forty years earlier. Had the mother left them? She’d probably be an old woman now, but Clarissa didn’t find it surprising that she could still be mourning her lost child all these years later. Clarissa knew one child could never be replaced by another, but hoped nonetheless that there’d been at least one other for that grieving mother.

Only when the sun was so low that she had to squint did she cease from looking at the dates and names on the stone angels and ornate crosses. Only then did she pause in her impulse to make up stories for lives that were cut short, trying not to count Laura’s among them.

W
EEK
S
IX

The Forbidden Key

Monday

H
E’S INTELLIGENT
,” A
NNIE
said to the room.

They were in the annex, waiting for the usher to take them back into Court 12 to witness Mr. Morden’s final attempt at smashing the unsmashable Azarola. Mr. Morden had spent the day being thwarted by Mr. Williams’s interventions, and the jury had spent the day popping in and out of their chairs to allow for matters of legal argument.

Annie leaned toward Clarissa and whispered, “Pretty bra strap, by the way. Do you think Azarola likes pink silk?”

Annie’s whisper was not very whispery. Robert had probably heard it from his usual seat across from Clarissa, though he carefully appeared not to.

Clarissa hid the straps beneath fabric. “I’d have welcomed that information earlier, Annie,” she said.

“Your cheeks are matching it now,” Annie said. “Better than your usual ghost look.”

Wendy was sitting on Clarissa’s other side, hurriedly texting her boyfriend, but she looked up. “Any chance of Azarola using his talents in a good way, someday?”

“I’m thinking no.” Annie sat back in her chair again. “And I’m thinking we’re the ones who’ll be turning his evil genius loose.”

M
R
. M
ORDEN EYED
Azarola with undisguised scorn. “You told Mr. Williams that you gave your phone to one of your boys, Aaron, and that that’s why it moved along the route to London while Miss Lockyer was being kidnapped. If you really weren’t there, then tell us Aaron’s real name.”

Smile, quick negative shake of the head, brief pause before an amused and definite “No.” Clarissa realized that Robert sometimes used this exact sequence of gestures.

“There is no Aaron.” Mr. Morden appeared so furious she wondered if he might actually lose control. “You know it. This jury knows it. You were in that van.”

Monday, March 9, 6:20 p.m.

There is no writing on the envelope, but Miss Norton has stuck a small yellow note to it.
This came this morning, Clarissa. Probably for you? Knock on my door if I’m mistaken
. Even before I open it, I know Miss Norton is not mistaken. Miss Norton is never mistaken.

Inside is the next in your series of photographs, as if you wanted to flip through them one after the other to make a crude film. You’ve changed only one thing in it. You’ve moved one of my stockings, arranging it in a U. You’ve looped the center of it around my neck. You’ve brought the tip of the toe and the rim of the thigh up to the bedstead and tied them to it.

I replay the examination I made of my body the next morning. There’d been no marks on my throat. I’m certain of it. I’d have noticed.

The stocking is merely decorative, if such a word can be used, entirely a reflection of your taste. It’s symbolic, too, though as symbols go, the message is hardly subtle: you want to strangle me, you easily can, you had a chance and didn’t, and you won’t be so generous next time.

I force myself to look carefully at the photo again to confirm that you didn’t actually hurt me with your makeshift noose. However horrifying and threatening the image, your loop is loose.

I am working hard to be rational. It doesn’t matter if you told the police and your solicitor that it was a consensual game, as you did with Laura. It doesn’t matter that this image is even more disgusting and frightening than the last one. What matters is that you’ve hardly got beyond the weekend without breaking the restraining order. That’s a criminal offence that will result in your being brought back to court within twenty-four hours and a certain prison sentence. At least eighteen months, DC Hughes said: the judge warned you that the consequences of a breach would be grave. Plus, you’ll be subject to a lifetime prohibition of all contact with me.

I’ll be rid of you. I’ll be truly safe and free. You’ve actually done me a favor, sending this. I can survive the mortification of having to go to DC Hughes with it.

I call a taxi and go straight to the police station, where I spend the remainder of the evening being interviewed again; I’m growing as expert at this as Lottie must have been.

Afterward, I’m driven home by the same young policeman I blundered into the first time I went there, and I’m glad I get a chance to thank him for being kind and helping me and not making me leave before they’d opened. He smiles sweetly as he concentrates on the road, telling me it’s his job and what he’s there for and he was glad to be able to help.

When he glances to the side at me, my face begins to tremble and redden and I gaze at my lap in a flash of certainty that he has seen those photos. I try to bury the thought. I try to tell myself that I have absolutely no evidence of this. I try to convince myself that if he has looked at them, it was out of pure professional necessity. I try to remind myself that I have just given the police the last and worst of your terrible pictures and it’s probably being studied at this very moment by others, so what difference does it make if this young man knows what I look like naked and tied up; thanks to you, he’s far from alone in that.

By the time the policeman pulls into my road and parks the car and insists on walking me into the building, I have got control of my face again and managed to steady my hands. He checks with me that you haven’t made any new deliveries, then sees me safely up the stairs and into my flat.

I have to resort to the pills to calm myself, but I fall into my deep, doped sleep knowing you will be arrested again. It will happen while I’m dreaming. And you won’t be getting out anytime soon.