She’s so trusting and open and, although I feel bad for me, I feel worse exploiting her. “Are you sure? I really wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“What else will I do until my daughter comes home? Sit around and mope? Come on,” she says. “You need cheering up.”
I snap a smile, thinking that Stephanie was a pushover for someone as manipulative as Tom Loxley.
We head for the Fiat and I jump in beside her. Stephanie expertly reverses out and drives back the way we came, taking a left along a narrow street and left again up a hill that finally drops down, past an ancient-looking hotel called The Feathers. I stare up at the exterior, a triumph of Medieval and Tudor architecture.
We don’t speak and already I’m regretting my decision to inveigle my way into her life. What started out as a mission to find out why Tom upped and dumped me changed to something sinister and inexplicable. I remain in a dilemma. Stephanie exists under the illusion her husband and father of her child is dead. How can I shatter that? Should I even try? Surely, it would be too cruel.
Medieval quaintness left behind, we travel over a bridge and underneath a railway arch, up an unprepossessing hill, past a hospital and dental surgery, until we finally turn off into a street of artisan terraced houses, Victorian by the look of them.
Stephanie drops me out while she parks tight along a wall.
“I’m here,” she says, indicating a forest-green-painted front door with an empty hanging basket attached to the red brick by an ornate metal bracket. Having lived in a tepee for the first six years of my life, I tend to notice nice surroundings more than most.
I follow her through a gate, and garden the size of a wardrobe. The front door leads straight into a sitting room with a wood-burner, and two battered sofas, a bookcase along one wall, a dresser against the other, on which there are several photographs in silver frames of a cute-looking big-eyed child, whom I assume is theirs. Only one rare pic with Tom solo graces the family collection. Recalling the photograph of him in the magazine, I’m in no doubt that he is the same man, despite the change in hair colour. I want to linger and snap a copy on my mobile, but Stephanie propels me through to the kitchen
“Sorry about the mess,” she says, although, to my eyes, it’s tidy. She sweeps off her coat with a shiver, dumps it on a chair, on which a fat black cat snoozes. “Sorry, Theo,” she says, although he doesn’t appear to mind. “I’ll put on the heating. Not normally here at this time. Take a pew.”
It’s no figure of speech. A settle in the kitchen looks as if it’s been reclaimed from an old church. I sit and watch as she makes coffee, instant, the way I like it. Mugs apiece, Stephanie stands with her back to a fancy–looking range cooker. I can’t help but notice that she is slimmer than me, her body more toned and supple. I’m not overweight but feel chubby by comparison.
She starts the conversational ball rolling.
“What did you do before you lost your job?”
I tell her. A lot of people react to journalists, or hacks, with hostility. They assume that even lowly reporters are synonymous with gutter journalism, hounding folk to get a story and dig the dirt. Uncomfortably, this is not far off the truth. I am here to dig the dirt.
A smile blossoms on her face.
“Is that funny?” I say, intrigued.
“I meet a lot of people in my line of work. All shapes and sizes. With serious buyers, you usually find out what they do for a living.”
“I suppose you need to know whether they can afford the house they are buying.”
“Not only that – because people love talking about themselves,” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes somebody will spring a surprise, but I’m right ninety per cent of the time.”
“So what did you have me down for?”
She inclines her head. “I didn’t, but now you tell me, it makes sense.”
“Really?” I exclaim, not a little unsettled.
“Journalism is a career I contemplated once but, as a young single mum, it went out of the window.”
I salt the reference to single parenthood away and sip my coffee.
“Can you get another job?” she asks thoughtfully.
I shrug. “Only if I move from Cheltenham.” I don’t enjoy revealing where I live. Makes me jumpy.
“Nice place,” she says. “I see your dilemma.”
I agree with a smile.
“So this man in your life,” Stephanie gently probes.
“Oh, let’s not talk about him.” All I want to talk about is him, but not in the way Stephanie suggests.
Endeavouring to introduce a more personal dynamic to the conversation before I tramped all over it with my big feet, she averts her gaze. Maybe Stephanie regrets inviting a stranger into her home. Eyes now fixed on the quarry-tiled floor, she asks, “What did Anita tell you, exactly?”
“That you have a daughter. That your husband was killed in Thailand in a road accident.”
She looks up with candour, sorrow in her eyes. “Four years ago.” I clamp my teeth together. Barely a year afterwards, Tom shacked up with me. “One of those soft, warm July days when the sun glows and makes promises it never intended to keep.” Her voice cracks with longing, as if a shard of pain penetrated her heart years ago and stayed there. “I’d been so looking forward to having him back.”
Her voice is plaintive and I want to reach out and put an arm around her shoulder. Tell her I’m sorry. For her. For me. Towards Tom, I feel nothing but venom.
“It doesn’t get any easier,” she murmurs.
Not daring to contemplate the difficulty of my own emotional journey, I focus on what I came for: answers.
“How come Adam was in Thailand?”
She shakes her head, grips the handle of the mug until her knuckles almost crack. “His stupid pointless brother.” What might be a plain statement coming from anyone else sounds like a curse from Stephanie’s lips. I am rapt because this doesn’t compute with Tom. Is this why Tom had such a downer on Reg?
“You didn’t know Adam, but he had a wandering spirit. Part of the reason, I loved him.” She snatches a breath, as though it physically hurts her to recollect. “Mikey, Adam’s younger brother, got into a scrape in Thailand. God alone knows what he was doing there, but I can imagine.” There’s a bitter tang to her voice. Mikey sounds like a pain in the rear. “Anyway, Mikey got into trouble with some locals. Had his money stolen and, when he complained to the Thai police, they weren’t interested. So there he is, stuck in a foreign land, destitute, according to him.”
“And Adam went to help?” I don’t mistakenly say ‘Tom’ because already it feels as if I’m talking about a totally different person.
She chews her bottom lip and nods.
“Couldn’t Adam have simply wired funds?”
“There was a problem with it, again according to Mikey.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
She shrugs. “It’s hard to know what I believe any more.” Now is my moment to tell her the truth. I take a breath. A lick of fear travels up my spine. No, I can’t.
“So Adam dropped everything?” I say in a piercing voice that doesn’t sound real.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “He was a chef. Had quite a good job but the pay was