‘I could come over more often. Mum probably wouldn’t notice if I never came home at all. Dad definitely wouldn’t.’
Meg let the silk fall and pulled herself up onto her elbow, her eyes alight. ‘In that case, why don’t you move in? Mum wouldn’t mind and I can get around Dad easily.’
Her excitement had been infectious but it wasn’t Meg’s parents who had stood in our way. I never did move in.
When I open my eyes, Meg is gone and it’s Charlie who’s lifted himself up to look at me. His eyes look as scratchy as mine feel.
‘Can you at least find out who Lewis’s girlfriend is?’ I ask. ‘Please, Charlie.’
‘And what exactly do you plan on doing with that information? You can’t contact her, Jen. Please. You don’t know what kind of trouble you might cause.’
I twist onto my side so I can look Charlie in the eye. His frown matches my own. ‘Surely Lewis will be too busy caring for his mum to cause us any more trouble,’ I suggest innocently.
‘Keep away from him, Jen.’
Charlie’s tone makes my cheeks warm with guilt. Dismissing the idea that he might be jealous of the attention I’m giving Lewis, I say, ‘I know he’s dangerous. It’s not like I’ve fallen for the sympathy act.’
‘Neither have I.’
Unconvinced, I add, ‘That’s how men like Lewis get away with what they do. They make you believe they’re nice because they seem vulnerable, or misunderstood, or in need of a second, third or fourth chance.’
‘So being nice is a bad thing?’ says the nicest man I know.
‘No, your kind of nice is good,’ I say, my tone softening as I stroke his cheek.
‘Are you sure about that?’ he asks. His eyes narrow and his words have an edge to them that I’m not expecting. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘But not sure enough to marry me.’
I suppress a groan as I roll onto my back again but I don’t break eye contact. ‘It doesn’t mean I love you any less, Charlie. You’re one of the good ones. I’ve never doubted that, not for a minute.’
Charlie turns his face away from me and gets up without a word. Squeezing my eyes shut, tears burn the back of my closed lids as I listen to him padding across the room.
‘I might nip out and pick up the sour cream,’ he says. ‘When I get back, could we just forget about everyone else for at least one night?’
‘Yeah, that would be good,’ I say. I don’t open my eyes until the door clicks shut, and I don’t move off the bed until I hear Charlie leave the apartment.
Wrapping myself in Charlie’s towelling dressing gown, I return to the living room. I stir the chilli before grabbing my phone and slumping down onto the sofa. I have until Charlie comes back to continue my hunt for Lewis.
Am I being paranoid? A little obsessed perhaps, but isn’t that understandable? Lewis hasn’t simply returned to Liverpool, he’s come back into our lives. The solicitor’s letter might have been a knee-jerk reaction to Ruth’s accusations, but what about Ellie’s call? What if Lewis had been listening in, laughing at me? Ruth was promoting the helpline when she attacked him so it makes sense that it should be his target.
Opening my Facebook app, I see that Jay has refused my friend request and, to my utter humiliation, Meathead has unfriended me too. My sigh of frustration catches in my throat as a new thought strikes. I open a browser and tap in a new search.
Lewis McQueen, the personal trainer, appears on the second page of results with a link to his website. Skimming through the information, I can’t see any mention of the hotel where he works, but it would appear that Lewis offers boot camp sessions in the city centre. Judging by the photo on the bookings page, they take place in Chavasse Park, which is on the upper level of the Liverpool One shopping mall, on the opposite side of the Strand to Mann Island. As I scroll down the page, I find a Twitter feed showing comments and conversations from apparently satisfied customers. Most are women.
From what I read, the six-week courses offer high intensity training and provide Lewis with a legitimate excuse to hurl abuse at women, but I’m looking for something that exposes him for the bully I know him to be. It doesn’t take long to find tweets about him pushing his victims to their limits but none are genuine complaints. He’s actually found a way of turning his cruelty into a business opportunity.
I’ve scrolled past a comment before I realise its importance. There are a few flirtatious comments about one to one workouts, with other boot camp recruits joining in. One mentions that Lewis has a girlfriend. Another replies that it won’t last – she only wants him for his UK citizenship. There follows an argument about the legal status of EU citizens but I’ve found what I needed from this thread. Ellie is his girlfriend.
I’m vaguely aware that the chilli is burning but I can’t take my eyes from my phone as I go back up through the latest tweets. There’s no further mention of Lewis’s girlfriend but one very recent comment catches my attention. A new recruit is begging Lewis to go easy on her when her course starts on Saturday because she’ll be hungover that morning. I check the date of her tweet and realise she’s talking about this weekend.
It would be foolhardy to go there but it’s not like I have to speak to him. Seeing me should be enough to send a message that I can stand up to him. I can’t believe I’m contemplating doing this. It’s not like me. It’s more like Meg and that thought fires me up.
‘See you there,’ I mutter to myself, then hurry to the kitchen to stir the boiling pot that’s been left for far too long.
Ruth
The conference room looks like a war zone, with battle plans scattered across the table. Friday afternoon was not the best time to receive another set of queries from the planning department regarding the Whitespace project, not when we have a meeting with them on Monday morning, so action had to be taken and quickly.
McCoy and Pace’s reputation will be on the line if we don’t secure planning approval but after a quick brainstorming session, I’m quietly confident. Geoff might have a knack for innovation, but whenever we hit a problem with the conceptual boundaries he likes to push, I’m the one who fixes them. And from the look on the faces of the team as they file out of the room, I’ve found a solution they can work with.
‘Geoff looks happier than he did at the beginning of the week,’ Jen says as she gathers up the CAD drawings.
The glass partitioning allows me to look out across the office to where Geoff has pulled up a chair next to one of our senior architects, and he’s pointing at whatever plan she’s opened up on screen. If drinking less is the barometer for my husband’s happiness then, yes, he is happier. I have no other means of measurement. ‘I suppose,’ I reply.
‘Has he mentioned any more about retiring?’ Jen asks quickly as she sees me reach for the door handle.
I pause. ‘Not a word.’
Like me, Geoff has relaxed back into the life we scavenged from the wreckage of Meg’s death but there’s something not quite right between us. This year’s anniversary has caused a ground shift that’s unnerving me, and it’s not difficult to trace the cause. Geoff and I still haven’t sat down and talked about his proposition for our premature retirement; in fact, it’s a subject I’ve been deliberately avoiding, and as a consequence, our conversations at home have stagnated.
Our silences aren’t necessarily a bad thing.