“If he hurts you, you should go to the police.” She’s a hypocrite. She never went to the police, even though she knew what Henry did to her was wrong.
“He threatens me.” Sharon blinks a few times quickly; it makes her seem even more childlike. “After we argue, after he…hurts me, he says that if I go to the police, he’ll harm the children, that he’ll have nothing left, that he won’t have any choice.”
Beverley’s breath catches at the mention of children.
“And—” Sharon’s eyes flick across Beverley’s face, then down to her collarless jacket, Pierre Cardin, and she appears to change her mind. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Go on.” Beverley reaches out and puts her hand on Sharon’s. She is surprised when Sharon grasps her fingers quickly—such an intimate gesture—before removing them and picking up her coffee cup.
“The police deal with people like me in a certain way,” Sharon says evenly. Beverley feels the prick of guilt against her sternum. She thinks of her expensive bag, her watch, her house in Berryview, with a nice garden and a pool that birds come and drink from when it’s hot. She looks at Sharon’s chipped nails, her hands that spend each evening ferrying burgers and fries to teenagers in cars.
“They’re not interested,” Sharon continues. “They just see me as a cheap wife who gets knocked around.”
“I’m sure if you told them what he—”
“Beverley? Please.” The plea is cut through with desperation. “Would you take a look at him? See what you think.”
“I don’t know, Sharon. I’m not sure if—”
“There’s something else.”
Beverley pauses, searches Sharon’s face.
“There’s something I found.” Sharon reaches into her handbag and starts to rummage. “I saw an article in theSignal.” Beverley is not quite sure why, but she can hear her own heartbeat growing louder in her ears. When Sharon withdraws her hand and opens her palm to reveal a shining thing, Beverley cannot help but cry out in shock.
They’re going to have to look into Hank Farrer after all.
Thirty-One
There hasn’t beena single browser in the men’s fashion department for three hours. Margot doesn’t blame anyone for staying away. It’s too damn hot to shop. No one wants Dougie Millings when they’ve got pit stains like a hobo.
Her boss excused himself two hours ago. “Just stepping out”—something he had a habit of doing when the shop was quiet. Margot knows “stepping out” involves a bag of golf clubs and several jugs of Long Island iced tea. Still, it means she has the place to herself.
She moves behind the counter and takes a seat on the stool, humming along to the Lovin’ Spoonful on the speakers. Back here there’s a stash ofLookmagazines that she keeps for quiet days just like this. She idly picks one out and thumps it on the counter. It’s a few years old. Jackie Kennedy is wearing white gloves, a pink coat and a stunning black headscarf.Jacqueline Kennedy Inspires the New International Look. Margot runs her fingers across the cover line, down to the picture, as if she is feeling her way back through theyears, along the threads that link them together: the politician’s wife, the Hamptons socialite, the widow.
Margot was a dedicated wife to Stephen when they’d first got married, blindly accompanying him to rallies and dinners and galas, where he’d speak from the stage for what seemed like hours. Margot would wait stageside, cigarette in hand, and pretend to listen intently. If he returned late from an event, with a headache, a thirst for Johnnie Walker and an axe to grind for a fellow candidate, she’d pour him a drink, rub his shoulders, make the right noises. She was accomplished at keeping quiet, but she could be a songbird, too—always the centerpiece at their parties, the convivial hostess, the woman who danced on tables, hollered for more.
It wasn’t long into their marriage when Margot began to suspect that Stephen was having an affair. It was hardly unlikely. He was a handsome politician—what did she expect? He’d become shifty, secretive and cold. When he returned from a late night at the office and slid into their bed in the small hours of the morning, he no longer wanted to talk, her head resting on his chest, or to make love as the sun came up. Instead, he’d withdraw, mumble that he needed to shower, pull himself out of their tangled sheets. She’d roll over, confused, reaching an arm into that empty space. Eventually she would doze off. By the time she opened her eyes again, he’d already have gone, leaving behind nothing but the scent of shower soap and dirty clothes in the wash basket.
This routine had been playing out for a while when she found the bloody footprint by his car. Now,thatshe had not expected. Lipstick on his collar, a pair of panties in the back of his Rolls-Royce, a whiff of some other woman’s perfume? Sure. But not this. Not blood.
She toyed with asking him about the footprint, the one the exact size of his boot. Instead, she resolved to watch him. She needed to see what he was really doing when he stayed out of their house until fourin the morning. She needed to trail him. It’s what any self-respecting woman would do.
A few evenings after Margot found the footprint, Stephen announced that he had a late meeting with his campaign manager. She kept her face still, kissed him goodbye, watched from the window as he got into his car and steered it smoothly out of the driveway. Then she sprinted out behind him and slid into her Porsche.
On the main roads, she was careful to stay a couple of cars back. She usually took great pains to make herself distinctive, but this was one occasion when she wanted to blend in, to be lost in a blaze of reflections.
When Stephen pulled his car off the main road, she turned her steering wheel hard and followed from a distance. After a while, the road grew narrower and was flanked on either side by an ever-thickening layer of trees. There were no other cars, the night outside the Porsche still and quiet.
Someone else might have been surprised that Stephen was driving in the opposite direction of the downtown area where his alleged meeting was taking place, but Margot was no fool. She’d known for a while that Stephen was lying to her. Now she just needed to find out what it was that he was covering up.
The forest around them was expanding, growing denser and darker, and Margot began to see glimpses of water between the trees. It was black and opalescent, the light of the low-slung moon glancing off its surface in diamond fractals. As the road was otherwise empty, Margot made the decision to switch off her headlights. She wanted to know what Stephen would be doing if no one was watching, why he really came out this way in the dark. She could still see his taillights some distance ahead, and she watched as he took a right-hand turn, the car swallowed up by the trees.
She decreased her speed, hung back, so he would not noticeanother car pulling in behind him. When she finally reached the turnoff, she saw that it was marked with a sign—Silver Lake Lookout. She’d heard of the beauty spot before, but she couldn’t quite place the context. It was certainly not somewhere Stephen had ever mentioned. He had never taken her here. Goddamn it, she would have his balls if this was where he was meeting his mistress, like some horny teenager.
She turned the wheel and pulled the car off the road, joining a gravel path that stretched toward the lake, a pool of oil in the distance. She could no longer see Stephen’s car, but she kept driving anyway, gravel crunching under the tires, until the path opened out into a space the size of a football field. There, she could just make out the Rolls-Royce parked up at the far side. She could not see Stephen walking around, so she assumed he was still in the driver’s seat, watching the water.
Margot slammed on the brakes and switched off the engine. She still had no lights on, so she was hidden from Stephen’s sight. But from here she could watch his car and any other vehicle coming down the path.
