Now
Less than an hour later, I’m outside his house. Seeing it in the afternoon enrages me more than it did last night; in the day, the house doesn’t just look tidy – it’s pristine. There are no cobwebs at the corners of the stable door, the cream-painted brick looks recently washed, even the drainpipe looks like it’s been wiped. He belongs here. Fresh out of prison and, instantly, he belongs.
He rubs his eyes when he opens the door, he can’t quite believe I’m here. Behind him, the house isn’t the pale grey of my memory – the walls are a sumptuous indigo. It reminds me of a private members’ club, the inside of a yacht, so different from stained prison walls, strip lighting, metal grates. He wants no reminder of the place he was in just a week ago.
He follows my gaze. ‘Do you like the colour?’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘It was the name that sold it to me, they called it “Mazarine Blue”, after—’
‘—I know what a Mazarine Blue is.’ It’s a blue butterfly, extinctin the British Isles. As well as Asian butterflies, Daniel specialised in Blues.
‘I taught you well.’
I will not react to this. To all the things he should and shouldn’t have taught me. ‘How have you done all this? I thought you got out last week.’
He shrugs. ‘I knew what I wanted, I had eighteen years to plan it. As soon as I got my release date, I contacted some builders, an interior designer, I gave them very detailed instructions. So last week, when I came home, everything was ready, everything was perfect.’
He’ll have made them visit him in prison; he’s always disliked talking on the phone. Behind smudgy glass, they’ll have shown him mood boards, fabric swatches, pressed a grey telephone receiver to their ears. What did they think when he explained the paint was named after an extinct British butterfly? Did they know he’d been given the maximum sentence for a hit and run, for running a man over and never going back? Or did they simply ask for proof of funds? A deposit with enough zeros after the digit?
‘Do you want to come in?’ he asks carefully.
I shake my head. ‘Let’s go to Holland Park.’
It’s a cop-out and he knows it, two humiliated spots bloom on his cheeks – he thinks I don’t want to be in the house of a criminal. But the truth is, I am less frightened of him than myself. Butterflies, empty nets, the twist of his bedsheets – dangerous evocations. I’m not ready to see those. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.
He is still for a second; he is debating if he should confront me. But he decides against it. He unhooks his blazer and pulls the door shut.
We walk to the top of the mews then left along Abbotsbury Road, he toys with the collar of his shirt because it’s so warm. I loved the area when Mama brought us to visit even before he pointed out the Beckhams’ house, Richard Branson’s, Michael Jackson’s, because it wasn’t the white Italianate mansions or the private gardens that captivated me but the trees, the height of them, how they canopied the pavements in sap-green light.
‘I’m sorry about earlier, at the museum,’ he says. The park gate squeaks as he pushes it open. A girl and boy are playing on the bronze sculptures of tortoises. ‘I scared you off.’
We take the oak-lined path to the right. The air swarms with the shouts of children, over the low fence is a playground. A wooden boardwalk snakes through the trees, there’s a silver slide, a zip line. I smile at the sandpit. Sand is Millie’s favourite, if she was here, she’d ignore the impressive equipment and head straight for it, commandeer a discarded spade, form a girl gang to dig a hole.
A baby is crying. It’s a girl, I can see her white frilled socks and pink shoes. Her mum pushes the pram back and forth, she’s distracted, she’s talking to her older son, and I am seized by the urge to walk over, unbuckle the baby and take her to the hotel. She’d sleep on the bed next to me, on me, whatever she wants, let us be marsupials, pouched and animally close, breathing the warmth of each other’s skin. I could call Kit, he’d come and I’d uncover a corner of the warm blanket, say, ‘Look. I didn’t lose her at all, it’s Faye, right here.’
‘Lolly?’
I blink back tears. I can’t be here anymore. Too many buggies. Too many children.
‘Are you okay?’
My breasts are swelling. I took medication to stop my milk coming through but that hasn’t stopped the sensation, real or imaginary, that they are filling every time I think too much about Faye. I cross my arms over my chest and pull ahead of Daniel.
He catches up at the Dutch Garden. Geometric beds display cheerful alstroemeria and showy dahlias, too pretty for me, too pretty for everything that’s happened. We don’t speak as we walk past the giant chessboard but I can feel him taking me in, his sly, sideways glances.
‘Are you unwell?’
‘I’m fine.’
We fall in step with each other, easily, too easily. Kit is tall, lanky even, it’s a joke between us, the difference between our heights, he has to deliberately slow himself down to keep pace with me. With Daniel, there is a rhythm to our bodies, instinctive. I hang back, let him walk ahead.
When we pass the copper fountain, something changes in him, an electric current amped up. Under the orangery arches, he squeezes through a slim gap between a group of tourists and then, he rushes along the path in front of Holland House. I don’t call after him. I know where he is going. I find him at the bench opposite the football pitches. It’s the bench he took me to see the primroses.
After he tells me about Mama, he gives me a choice, I can stay at Wyatt or go back to London with him. I go with him. I am frightened. Something is coming, I can feel it, tremoring at the back of my mind, distant at first but picking up speed. I don’t want to be with new people, pretending everything’s okay.
It is not the funeral that brings me really low, because there isn’t one. Daniel says he can’t bear the thought of people he doesn’t know – her pupils, members of orchestras and quartets – he doesn’t want them to offer him hugs or shake his hand or tell them their memories of her, but if I want a big funeral, of course he’ll organise one. I shake my head, struck by the fact that, in my grief, I am not alone, that there are things he cannot bear either.