The Accident Read online

  As Gordon sat, he asked, ‘So you started smoking again? As of today?’

  ‘I’m full of surprises.’ David took the opposite chair.

  ‘Either that, or we don’t know each other very well.’

  ‘Don’t tell Tara.’ Why did I say that? In David’s list of priorities, avoiding Tara’s anger was a distant second to Ryan’s disappearance. ‘It’s been a difficult few months with the build. Now that it’s over I’ve decided to treat myself.’ Casually, he drifted away from the edge of the table until he leaned into the backrest of the chair. Trying to ignore his quickening pulse and the tautness in his chest, he forced himself to ask, ‘So... Have you found Ryan?’ He pictured his builder’s concussed manifestation; Ryan telling everyone that David had thrown him out of the attic window. The only favourable outcome would be Ryan emerging from the streets and not remembering anything. But David had learned that life generally didn’t do people favours.

  Gordon placed his hands flat on the table, as if demonstrating that he came in peace – no weapons. ‘All I know is that wherever Ryan is right now, he doesn’t want to be there.’

  There was a tremor in David’s fingers. He remembered his first day of teaching, his notes rattling in his hands like he was a soldier on the brink of the terrible battle he’d been lecturing on.

  Speaking almost compassionately, Gordon said, ‘You don’t like Ryan. You never liked him.’

  David raised his eyes, trying to convey surprise and bewilderment, as if he couldn’t quite believe that Gordon had questions about his open, innocent, no-secrets-here life. ‘What? Me? Are you crazy? Ryan is a great builder... I trust him.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Everything was already wrong about this conversation.

  ‘I said, I don’t believe you.’

  ‘And I don’t care what you believe.’ David clenched a fist and placed it on the table between them. It was time for his architect to be put in his place.

  ‘I just never sensed a bond between you two. I saw you watching Ryan and Tara. They were once an item, weren’t they? Long before you came on the scene.’

  David reddened. He frowned to make it look like anger and extended a pointed finger inches from Gordon’s nose. ‘Everyone knows that. Jesus, Ryan and me even laughed about it. I couldn’t give a damn about who my wife saw before she met me. He’s a good builder. That’s why I gave him the job. I was building a house – not looking for friends. And I find your tone and questions insulting. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘That’s all bullshit, Dave.’

  ‘Have you lost your mind? I like you, Gordon. You’re interesting to be around. But don’t think you can talk to me like that.’ What does he know? There must be a point to his architect’s behaviour. It just hadn’t become clear yet.

  ‘We’re not talking about Ryan the builder. We’re talking about Ryan the man who did it all with Tara before you even met her. You hate him. Admit it.’

  David didn’t blink. ‘No, I do not, Gordon. And you’re about to be fired.’

  ‘Here’s a great idea. Maybe you should tell the truth for a change? Seriously. Try it out. You might like it.’

  Gordon’s conduct was burning a hole in David’s stomach. He needed to know what his architect knew. Give him something; get something back. ‘Fine, there’s nothing wrong with Ryan that a personality implant and ego reduction wouldn’t fix. But I don’t hate him. I’ve known worse parasites. I just dislike him. Happy?’

  ‘Finally.’ Slowly, Gordon clapped three times.

  David fell back into his seat. A tumour of exhaustion grew heavier with each passing minute and pulsed warmly behind his eyes, even though it was only 9.30 a.m. and a long day stretched ahead with its challenges and traps. Knowing that life was only going to get harder – his life and the lives of his wife and child – was already becoming a heavy, constant fatigue. In a low voice, he said, ‘There better be a good reason for this. Because if not, then you and me – we are done.’

  ‘Done? Is that what you think? Really? Dear oh dear – we’re not done. We’re just starting, Dave. Speaking the truth is only the first step to getting to the truth. See, I admire you and Tara. Healthy, successful, young-ish. Maybe you and Tara will beat the odds. Maybe you’ll disprove the old adage that marriage is a long dull meal with the pudding served first. I can see you both getting older and handsomer. But without her, you’d be nothing much – just another mid-lifer who moisturises.’

  David spotted a blue line of biro on the white cuff of Gordon’s shirt beneath his Gucci suit. That sartorial slur, so unusual for Gordon, warmed him. Maybe the biro mark was just the first surface indication of a deeper fracture? Imagine Gordon doesn’t know anything. Imagine he’s just having a breakdown.

  Gordon said, ‘For six months, I’ve witnessed the work crew mooning like schoolboys every time Tara came around. As for you – they just saw you as another prick with more money than them, thus proving their working-class belief that any woman will give in to you when you spend cash on her. Of course, they weren’t to know that it was Tara’s money. The tits-and-footie tabloids don’t review art launches at the RHA.’

  David calmly inhaled, telling himself to be patient, to take what his architect was giving, because soon he’d find out just what Gordon had.

  ‘So Dave, what’s between you two? Ten long years? I’m sure that for your age you can still effortlessly conjure up world-class boners. But ever wonder what it’s going to be like when you’re sixty and there’s a lot more salt than pepper in your hair, and she’s still a hot MILF who wants to see the world and have some fun?’

  Yes. ‘No. Now why are you still here?’ David stood and pushed back his chair.

  ‘Taking all that into account, I have to admit that I wasn’t that surprised that Tara fucked Ryan last night.’

  David slowly sat back down. Every new revelation was adding a fresh layer of dust to the heavy crust already settling over his very essence.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Gordon drawled. ‘That spooked the horses.’ He stretched out his arms and yawned, his big mouth forming a circle. He was lazy and assured: as if he had the perfect plan and knew that he was smarter than everyone else. ‘Look, Dave, don’t blame her. Ryan has an effect on women. He knows how to talk to them. He grew up in a house full of girls – five sisters. He’s lucky with women – the way any good-looking, funny guy is.’

  David spoke slowly and clearly: ‘You have no idea what happened between them. And you understand nothing about Tara and me as a couple.’

  ‘Some would call you naive. But I think it’s rather cute – even touching – to have made it this far without realising that you can’t trust women. But hats off to Tara – she’s not really like other thirty-something housewives who still present well. With most of them, there’s a sense of pointlessness about the performance. But Tara’s the type that has never gone unnoticed in public and is well capable of dealing with leering men, jealous women and misogynists. It’s just a pity that she didn’t have an old-fashioned view of how to run her marriage. You know, the way it should be: the man has his interests and the woman tries to be interested in those interests.’

  ‘Gordon, I genuinely thought we were friends. I respected you. Admired you, even. But you actually hate Tara and me.’

  Gordon smiled, made the shape of a gun with finger and thumb, aimed and pulled the trigger. ‘Oh, you have no fucking idea just how much.’

  ‘Fine. I get it. But so what? I’m supposed to care because…?’

  Gordon stood and fastened his jacket. He then walked across the patio to the kitchen door. David wiped his hand across his sticky forehead. Go. Leave. But instead, Gordon turned about and smiled, communicating that he knew exactly what David was thinking. ‘Dave, it’s pointless.’

  David didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. It was as if he could feel every single hair piercing into his scalp. This can only get worse.

  ‘I know what you did to R
yan.’

  Bingo.

  ‘You killed him.’

  Instinctively David rose from his seat, the movement repositioning his clothes against his skin, making him aware of the dampness under his arms. He lit a cigarette and followed Gordon to the patio, his hands clenched together, letting the oozing sweat mix in a vile sliding flesh-on-flesh sensation.

  ‘Dave,’ Gordon said. ‘We’ll finish this in an hour at the university. But for now you’d better stub out that smoke. She’s here.’

  David followed Gordon’s gaze into the kitchen and down the tunnel of light between the French library doors, to where the front bay window looked out onto the driveway. There was Tara, in grey jeans and a white All Saints shirt, the top button undone, revealing her slender neck, bare and ready as Marie Antoinette’s.

  Chapter Two

  ‘We’re home, Dora,’ said Tara, standing in the driveway’s landscaped gravel circle, holding the handle of her tabby’s cage. With the hoarding dismantled, the driveway was like a dense forest suddenly denuded of foliage. It led to the stone steps sweeping up to the front door of the three-storey Georgian. Observing their home being built over the last six months had been like watching the slow passage of an antelope through the lengthy gut of a boa constrictor. But it was truly theirs now. They had designed it, shaped it, rebuilt it. It was their personalised machine to live in. Surveying the face of the house with its cornice moulds as white as icing, she imagined that it had magically formed itself, flying together into its own wonderful blueprint, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles. For Tara, this was a house about to be filled with hope and adventure.

  Lawrence Court was in the lethargic grip of August, the road spotted with shade, front lawns needing timed sprinklers, the sun sending shimmering waves of heat off the roofs of parked cars. Tara looked at the small yachts parked in some of the driveways. Her new neighbours had the money to be lazy. She wondered what all these people could have accomplished in their relatively short lives to become this wealthy. Someone a few doors up was practising Satie’s ‘Gymnopédie No. 1’ behind an opened window, making the odd mistake but offering a peaceful, if melancholy sound. Across the road, a ponytailed neighbour dressed for Pilates buckled her two toddlers into the back of a jungle-conquering SUV. Tara imagined the distractions that filled the days of all these urban gentry housewives – t’ai chi classes, am-dram, book clubs, volunteer work – all before the kids came home.

  One day, David and I will be dead and then strangers will take over our castle. A second thought occurred: But there’ll be a lineage. Maybe our grandchildren will live here.

  Tara’s pregnancy still had the ability to surprise her, like walking into glass. She glanced down, as if expecting to see her stomach round and taut like a space hopper. But of course the child hadn’t even begun to suggest itself. She rubbed her flat belly. It was only the start of her third month, and so far the only symptom of her condition was that her breasts were beginning to feel tender. Sometimes Tara couldn’t wait until it began to show. Other times, she dreaded it. Until just eight weeks ago she’d never wanted to feel that growth, that frantic multiplication of cells, the sense of something inside feeding on her. She didn’t want to wreck her body. She liked sleep. Her cat, Dora, had been more than enough. But then her clockwork period had skipped and the pregnancy test had been taken. Tara remembered its twin lines winking like candy stripes; the designers’ assumption that they would be sweet and gentle harbingers of happiness. She’d wrapped it in tissue and, shell-shocked, dropped it into the bin. When she told David, she’d found herself surprised that he wasn’t depressed about it, or at least conflicted. Instead he had acted as if it was something that would be interesting, like a really cool project. A few days later, David had said, ‘If Dora’s OK with it, then I’m up for it too. It’s no big deal. Sure, if it doesn’t suit then we’ll just take it back.’

  Tara hesitated at the front door. The feeling that she was about to check into a fantastic hotel evaporated. Awaiting her was the initial fucked-up moment of standing in the same room as Ryan and her husband. She remembered that when she was leaving Ryan last night, he’d given her a peck on the cheek. It was a strange thing; the way people simply came in and out of your life. Because of his flippancy, Tara hoped that Ryan was the type of guy who could sail through this. This. What is ‘this’? Thankfully, she hadn’t seen David when she’d gone home. As usual for a Sunday night, she’d fallen asleep before he’d returned from the pub after training; and he’d already gone to the university when she’d woken that morning.

  She deposited Dora’s cage in the side passageway and then entered the house, her bag hanging off her shoulder. There, in the hallway, one of her life’s ambitions would finally be sated – a home gallery of her own work. Later today she would hang her favourites: leftovers from the series that had made her – and paid for the house – Erdős Landscapes. Tara had always believed that a person could not be surrounded by music and poems in the same way that they could be surrounded by their pictures. It would be nice to enjoy her work without being sandwiched between socialites and dealers who would forgive her anything except for the crime of boring them.

  Mike was standing on a stepladder, screwing in a wall light.

  ‘Hey sparky, where’s Ryan?’

  ‘You’re the third person to ask me that in twenty minutes. No one knows, and his phone’s off.’

  Tara tried to figure out what that meant. Internally, she took a step back. Of course everything was fine. Ryan was simply off on another job, at the suppliers, with another woman, out with friends, just running late. Looking through the kitchen door, she saw David outside on the patio, hands in pockets, staring at his feet. God, he was so handsome, and soon he’d be the most handsome dad on Lawrence Court. How could I have done that to him?

  David was everything she’d ever wanted. He ticked every box for a great life partner, best friend and perfect father. She felt her brain grow when talking to him. She felt herself wanting to live her life so much more fully. She didn’t even want to share him with others. At his fortieth birthday she hadn’t been able to sing or clap. She’d just stood in the background, observing the contentedness he had with all those people – the weight it lifted clear and clean off his heart. She’d been jealous of them. She’d wanted him back all to herself. She wanted to be his only real friend. She wanted to be the centre of his attention. She wanted to receive the highest voltage of his energy. All those guests in their apartment – they’d been just stealing her life from her.

  And yet, categorically, she’d had to fuck Ryan. There had been no choice about it. I don’t want to grow old. I don’t want to grow old just like that. Did she regret it? She listened to her thoughts: a great silence. While she’d had a final adventure, David was unhurt. He was unchanged. For them both, the world had continued to spin as always.

  Why is David staring at the patio? Did he regret the tumbled travertine? Did he not think it was worth the extra money? Sandstone is so vanilla.

  Suddenly Bruno rounded the corner and almost knocked into her. Tara suppressed a sigh and adjusted the strap of her shoulder bag. She had nothing against Bruno, but being stuck talking to him was like being stranded in the boredom of a non-moving queue. Bruno had met her husband back when David had worked nights driving forklifts and unloading forty-foot containers of Korean computer hardware so that he could feed his mother and sister while also studying at university during the day. But while David had moved on to lecture for his PhD, to drive a BMW, to marry a famous artist who commanded five figures per painting, Bruno had been let go and drifted into his brother’s plastering and landscaping firm. Since their warehouse days, David and Bruno jointly managed an under-12s’ football team in the tough working-class area of Cawley. Tara knew that David’s involvement, and more importantly, the sponsorship he’d arranged for the team, was an attempt to assuage his guilt at having escaped the Cawley Estates with a scholarship and a determination to take
everything he’d ever wanted from life.

  ‘You ready for the big move, Tara?’ Bruno asked with a forced smile. ‘You must have been very busy. That was why Dave left training early last night without saying?’

  It was irritating, the way Bruno would always address questions to her that he should be putting to David. But then the relevance of what he’d asked suddenly hit her. ‘Hold on – you’re saying that David left training the boys early last night? You sure?’

  ‘Not at drinks in pub after either.’

  That’s weird. He must’ve been visiting his mother – making sure her new full-time carers he got are doing their job. He was probably also getting stuff done for today. To make it easy for us. Tara reddened, thinking of how she’d spent last night. ‘He’s outside. Why didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘Dave not in good mood. Stressed. I could see it. So I ask you.’

  Moving the subject along, she said, ‘The removal truck’s coming at three – so I hope everything will be done by then.’

  ‘We’ll be gone by midday.’

  Tara knew that it must be galling for Bruno to have to help build the temple to David’s success. His predicament often touched Tara, like he was unexpectedly revealed as an abandoned animal. But there was nothing she could do for him. David had done what he’d had to do to flourish. And yet she also knew that David had never contemplated leaving Bruno behind; after all, he had got him his current gig, a fact the Lithuanian had never acknowledged. Though over the course of the build, David had often wondered aloud if it had been wise to bring Bruno into his house – to mix the oil of his past with the water of the present.

  Tara’s mobile began to ring. She entered the empty white sprawl of the front room, took it out of her bag and answered it.

  ‘I want to speak to Tara Brown.’

  She’d never liked the sound of her full name: Tara Brown – that catch-all, everywoman name. She’d thought about taking David’s, but that had just seemed so old-fashioned. She was who she was.