“God, tell me more.”
“Later,” she says, a stern expression in her eyes. “What gives?”
I take a breath and tell her everything about my morning with Tom, bar the sex, and then motor through the overheard conversation and my find on Facebook in the afternoon. Vick fiddles with the coffee-making contraption.
“He went absolutely schiz,” I say, miserable at the memory.
She puffs out through her cheeks. “Blimey, that’s a lot to take in. So are you suggesting Tom is cheating on you?”
“I don’t know, but after his revelations about no children and, frankly, no wedding, not that this bothers me so much,” I add hastily, thinking that I’m a liar, “it seems a distinct possibility.” Now that I say it aloud, the full force of its implications shrivels me.
“Sugar and cream?” she says, pouring out a thick stream of strong dark liquid into two white mugs, no adornment.
“Cream, please.”
She pushes my drink towards me; sits down opposite. “The kid in the Facebook photograph could be someone else’s.”
I agree without conviction.
“Repeat the conversation you overheard again.”
I do, word for horrible word.
“So, he’s going to meet someone, maybe this woman, on Wednesday,” Vick suggests. Less than a week’s time, I think anxiously. “Simple. Follow him.”
“Wednesday’s our busiest day at the newspaper. I can’t take off.”
“But I could.”
“You can’t. He’ll recognise you.”
Vick arches an eyebrow and flashes a smile. “I’m an actor, mistress of disguise.”
I have a sudden vision of my best friend dressed in a raincoat with a false moustache and spectacles with milk-bottle lenses. Scrub that thought. “You won’t be allowed to take time off work.”
“Who said anything about asking? I’ll throw a sickie.”
“They’ll fire you.”
“So what? If this role comes off, I’m packing my job in anyway.”
“Goodness,” I stutter. This really is a dream come true and I’m pleased for her. I’m less thrilled by her next piece of news.
“Could be away for several months. It’s a touring theatre company.”
I make all the right noises despite the sense of impending abandonment.
“Anyway, this isn’t really helping. Why don’t you check Tom’s phone?”
I baulk at the prospect. It displays such a blatant lack of trust. If Tom did that to me, I’d be furious. I burble the same.
“Desperate measures,” Vick says, as if Tom’s behaviour hands me carte blanche to do as I please. Truth is, part of me doesn’t want to know. If I find a string of texts or calls to an unknown number, I’m sunk.
“Pity he isn’t more active online,” Vick muses. “A quick search could yield all manner of results.”
Simply because Tom appears to have no digital footprint does not rule out that somewhere, some place he is as busy as hell online. There’s the Dark Net that people keep banging on about, usually with heavy associations with child sexual exploitation. Hell, what am I thinking? Thankfully, Vick interrupts my more wild-card thoughts. “What about the castle?”
“What about it? A pile of ruins isn’t that identifiable.”
Vick flicks a smile, tips her head to one side. Her earrings catch the light and jangle. “You know, there could be a rational explanation. I mean the woman could be ancient history. A hanger-on. She could be nobody at all.”
I wish I could believe my friend. She peers at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “Is there something you’re not saying?”
My mouth tightens in dismay. “She looks like me.”
“What?”
“Here, I’ll show you.”
I drag out my laptop, fire it up and point out Stephanie Charteris. Vick’s strained expression, the way her cheekbones tug, tells me that she’s as astonished as me. She looks again. “The child definitely looks like the mother.”
My head snaps up. “Oh God, do you really think so?”
“I didn’t say the child looks like Tom,” Vick says in reproof.
“What about the rest of the stuff,” I say, shutting the laptop down, “the phone call?”
“Only way to find out – ask him.”
I sip my coffee. I know this.
“Or you could ask her.”
“God, Vick, I don’t think I have the nerve.”
Her expression infers that I’m not normally lacking when it comes to courage. I might be horizontal – admittedly not at this very moment – but I don’t lack fire when the need arises. I haven’t managed this long without a shred of steel in my adult backbone.
“Do you really think Tom means what he says?” Vick says after a pause. “You know, about kids.”
“Vick, if you’d seen him this morning, you’d understand he meant every single word.” I look her in the eye. Honest people find it difficult to be dishonest. Something about the way in which Vick fails to hold my gaze, the way in which she cradles her drink, the slight hunch in her shoulders, reveals there is something she isn’t saying.
“What?” I push her.
She returns the mug of coffee to the table, untouched. I hold my breath so tight I feel dizzy. Her eyes remain fixed on the scrubbed wood. “I like Tom. I like him a lot. I know he makes you happy, Roz.”
“You think he’s a player, don’t you?” I blurt out.
She looks back up. Straightens. Gathers herself. She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Seems to be a popular pastime.” There’s a cynical, bitter, cheated-upon twist to her voice. I get it. Vick’s love life was, and is, a mess. “I’ve known a few chefs in my time. Some prone to alcohol addiction alcoholism and, occasionally, pathologically hostile, and every one of them is highly strung and angst-ridden.”
“But that’s not Tom at all.”
“He’s no drunk.” She speaks in a tone that leaves open the possibility of other unappealing traits. “I know you both seem loved-up.” Seem. Oh my God, what is Vick driving at? That I’m deluded, that my heart rules my head, that I’m bonkers to pin so much on Tom as prospective father material? Even as I think it, I recognise it for what it is: the truth. I’m so distraught I barely catch hold of what she says next. “I don’t know. Little things start to make sense.”
“What little things?” I repeat. My voice is dull, no energy, no shine. Aged. I think immediately of Tom’s fear of the dark, of his aversion to confined spaces, his rabid hatred of any record by Frank Sinatra. In the realm of ‘peculiar things I detest’, this is one of the strangest, surely. And then there’s the other thing, the big thing, the bloody elephant in the room thing that is not standing idly in the corner but running amuck.
“The packed rucksack under the bed,” Vick declares.
Why did I mention it, I silently wail, but how else to explain my discovery not long after me and Tom moved in together? When I delved inside I found a change of clothes, money in a separate wallet and a brand-new phone. I teased Tom about it at first until he explained it away as an adult-sized comforter,