The Judas Tree, page 23
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘You know why.’
‘Please, Luke.’
‘I need to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave now and be with you in half an hour.’
‘Christ, don’t come here,’ she whispered desperately. She took the phone away from her face and looked up at the ceiling. Then exhaled slowly, before returning to the phone. ‘Please, don’t come here. If you do, I’ll call the police.’
‘I have to see you. I need to make you understand. You’re not thinking straight.’
This had to stop. Harmony squeezed her eyes shut as she thought about what she should do.
‘Harmony? Are you there?’
‘Fine,’ she said, keeping her voice quiet and steady. ‘We’ll meet. But not now. I’m tired and need some sleep. I’ll text you when I wake.’
In the morning, as Will watered the plants, she sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea she was too nervous to drink, and picked up her phone.
What time and where?
His reply came through immediately.
I’m free all afternoon and evening. We could meet for lunch or an early supper?
She didn’t want to be seen out with him. She wanted to be free to shout at him. Cause a scene. Tell him in no uncertain terms to leave her the fuck alone.
No. I’ll come to yours. 3pm.
She hesitated before pressing send. Her chest tightening. Was that the right thing to do? Would it be better in a public place? She remembered how she’d panicked when she saw Ian in the restaurant and how not being spotted had taken priority over making sure Luke knew it was over. He wasn’t going to hurt her. He was obsessed with her and she needed to do whatever she had to to make this go away. She pressed send.
He sent the address. She turned her phone off and walked to the door, clutching her tea, watching Will watering the plants and debated telling him. If she told him then it didn’t matter how much Luke called or if he threatened to turn up. But she couldn’t hurt him. It was her guilt and her problem. She needed to deal with it.
She decided to get off the tube two stops early at Westminster so she could calm herself with a walk along the river. She crossed Westminster Bridge and turned onto the South Bank, which heaved with weekend crowds. People poured in and out of the Aquarium and the galleries, and hung around on the Embankment eating Pret sandwiches and taking photographs. Harmony weaved through the crowds. Ordinarily, she’d have walked with a spring in her step; she loved this part of London. It was unique with its historic buildings and famous landmarks nestling comfortably beside utilitarian pieces of modernist architecture. It was even more beautiful at night. She and Will used to come here to eat fish and chips and look at the lights strung like pearls beside the river, their reflections rippling silently in the oily nighttime blackness of the water. Those were happy times. When nothing mattered but the two of them. When love was straightforward.
His flat was in a huge concrete and glass building beside Blackfriars Bridge that loomed over the river. When she walked into the reception area the dark grey of the exterior was replaced with a shiny chequerboard floor and wall-to-wall mirrors. There were two lifts, and she pressed the button and waited, tapping her foot as she did so in an attempt to ease her nerves. His flat was on the top floor, and by the time the lift got there she worried she might throw up. Had she made a terrible decision to come to his place? Maybe a pub would have been better. Or the park. A park would have been ideal.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she whispered aloud. ‘He’s a lawyer and a friend of Ian’s, not a bloody axe-murderer.’
When he answered the door he smiled at her as if nothing was untoward. He leant forward to kiss her mouth, but she turned her head, deflecting his kiss so it landed on her cheek. His smell filled her and she had a sudden flashback to the afternoon they’d spent together, the clash of their bodies, the frenzy and desire, the way he’d clung to her, buried his face in her neck. Her stomach heaved; any attraction she’d felt had vanished.
She walked past him and into the flat. ‘I’m not staying long.’
He closed the door and she heard the click of the lock. She pushed her shoulders back and lifted her chin.
‘You look lovely. I’ve not seen you without make-up before.’
‘There are lots of things about me you haven’t seen.’
He laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose there must be.’
She followed him into the main room, which was twice the size of her and Will’s flat alone. There were two full-height windows that overlooked London as far as the eye could see and glazed double doors that opened onto an empty concrete roof terrace. Harmony walked up to the central window and took in the panorama, a sea of roofs and glinting towers and famous buildings.
‘Not a bad view, is it?’ he said, from behind her. ‘It’s at its best at dawn.’
She turned to face him.
‘I bought this flat after my wife died. I couldn’t sleep in our house without her so I sold it and bought this.’ He smiled at her. ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
Her eyes scanned the room. The walls were brilliant white with abstract paintings in muted black and greys. The floor was polished concrete with a high sheen in a swirl of charcoal greys. There were no rugs to soften the effect and the furniture was sparse: a large white corner sofa, a glass coffee table and a couple of sixties-style chrome-and-black leather seats. There was a stainless steel kitchen area with an ornate faceted metal ceiling light that hung over the island unit and a solid steel-and-glass dining table to one side. The whole place was spotless – no clutter or books, no ornaments, nothing on the kitchen surfaces apart from an expensive-looking coffee machine. She tried to keep herself relaxed, but as she looked around the sterile, soulless room, her skin prickled with unease.
He told her to sit down so she did, perched on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together, hands in her lap. She watched him open the fridge and get out a bottle of champagne.
‘I don’t want a drink.’
‘Just a small glass?’
‘No.’
He popped the cork on the champagne anyway and the noise echoed. He poured himself a glass then put some music on. Her mouth and throat felt dry as she began to worry how vulnerable she was. She was painfully aware that nobody knew where she was, and as she looked out of the huge window and the far-reaching view over London, her head began to spin as if she had vertigo.
‘I need you to accept this is over and that anything we had is finished,’ she said. He sat down beside her. Too close. His knee touching hers. She pulled herself away. ‘You can’t call me, or text or email.’
‘I don’t have a choice.’ Suddenly there was a dark desperation about him; his eyes flicked back and forth over her face as if searching for something.
‘Of course you do.’ She was aware her breathing had become quick and shallow. She tried to take a fuller breath to calm herself. ‘Luke, listen to me. I made a mistake. I was in a bad place and I never should have done it.’
‘There are no such things as mistakes. There are things you do and things you don’t do. We were not a mistake. You and I have something special.’
‘You and I have nothing, Luke.’
‘We have a connection.’
‘We don’t have a connection, for God’s sake!’ she said with exasperation. ‘We had sex against a wall in a lock-up on an industrial park.’
Luke took hold of her arm below her elbow. ‘Leave him and be with me.’
‘Christ,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t even know me!’
He stared at her, his face blank, his mind visibly whirring. ‘Come with me,’ he said then, leaning forward to put his glass on the coffee table. He stood then walked away from her and disappeared into another room.
‘Luke?’ she called after him. He didn’t answer her. She swore quietly then followed him to the doorway. ‘I don’t understa—’
She stopped speaking and stared. What the hell was she looking at? She stood, mouth ajar, and tried to make sense of it. It was his bedroom, large and white-walled like the main room, with a neatly made bed and a bedside table with nothing on it but a stainless steel lamp and a photo frame. But her eyes were drawn to the wall directly behind the bed. Hanging on it was a large canvas. A blown-up photograph.
A photograph of her.
‘Where did you get that?’ she breathed.
The canvas was at least a metre in width and half a metre high; it was the photo Will had taken on their wedding night on one of the disposable cameras they’d put out for their friends. It was one of his favourites, taken just after they’d made love. She stared at it, mesmerised, fear mounting with every breath she took. As she stepped closer she saw the photo frame by the bed also had a picture of her. She walked over and picked it up. It was her profile picture from Facebook.
Luke leant against the wall. His arms were crossed, eyes dead, mouth set. She noticed to the left of him there was a chest of drawers and on it were a dozen or so more photographs.
All of them were of her or Will.
A cold sweat crept over her body. One of the pictures showed her walking down the steps at work. It was winter, and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. She wore a woollen hat and gloves and her long navy trench coat. The quality of the picture was grainy, as if it had been enlarged.
‘You photographed me?’ she whispered, weak with growing horror.
She looked back at the canvas above his bed, the face of a young woman so besotted with her new husband, the scent of sex fresh on her skin, her eyes full of him. She heard his voice telling her to smile, laughing as he stroked his hand down the inside of her thigh, telling her he loved her, that he would always love her.
Oh, God, she’d been so stupid.
She reached up to the smaller version of it, the one in a silver frame on the chest of drawers. ‘You took this from our flat.’
‘Yes, when I came for dinner and you went to talk to him in the kitchen.’ There was an eerie flatness to his voice that startled her.
‘But … but why …’ she stuttered. ‘Why have you got these?’
‘He’ll hurt you, Harmony.’
She pushed her fingers against her temples and moved them in small circles, trying to relieve the pressure that was building. She looked back at the photographs. Looked at the ones of Will. Will walking into the wine shop. Will laughing in a café, the picture taken from outside on the street. Will opening their car door. Then she noticed a yellowed Polaroid tucked into the frame of another photo. Two boys, about thirteen or fourteen, both in short-sleeved shirts, school ties loosened at the neck, arms looped around each other’s shoulders, matching grins on their faces from ear to ear. One of the boys she recognised immediately – her husband, his crop of white-blond unruly hair catching the sunlight, his ruddy cheeks smeared with dirt, that smile of his luminescent even then. The other boy was skinny with clear, pale skin, dark hair, shorter than Will, his good looks feminine, with high chiselled cheekbones and delicate pink lips. They were outside on a games field, rugby posts in the background, other boys sitting about on the grass behind them, talking, watching sport, picking at blades of grass. She put the Polaroid back and as she did she heard Will’s voice. His desperate anguish as he’d stood up from the dinner table and asked why Luke had come. The look on his face at that lunch when Luke walked through the French windows, a mix of alarm and distress.
It was as if a blindfold was removed from her eyes.
‘This isn’t about me, is it?’ she said. ‘It’s about Will.’
‘It was. At the beginning. But I fell in love with you, Harmony. I didn’t expect to but I did. I didn’t think I was capable of loving another woman. Will took my life away. Falling in love with you gave me it back.’
‘I don’t understand …’ Her words drifted to nothing as she tried to untangle her thoughts, went back over everything that had happened, every conversation, every look, trying to work out how she hadn’t seen any of this.
‘We argued the night she died.’ He leant his head back against the wall, closed his eyes. Harmony noticed his fists were clenched. ‘She told me I was impossible to live with. Said my head was too messed up. She wanted to leave me.’ He turned his head to look at Harmony. ‘She was pregnant,’ he said. ‘Eight months pregnant with our daughter when she died. I lost them both. I lost everything.’
Harmony felt her stomach turn over. She tried to swallow. ‘But that’s not Will’s fault,’ she managed to whisper.
‘It’s all his fault. Will lives a life he doesn’t deserve.’ Luke pushed himself off the wall and walked towards her. ‘He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve your love.’ He smiled at her, a smile that made her flinch, so out of place. ‘I lied when I said I didn’t believe in love,’ he said. ‘Love is all we have.’ He lifted his hand to stroke the side of her face and she recoiled from his touch. ‘I can give you the love you need, Harmony. I’ll be there for you in a way he never can be. Our love is our salvation.’
‘I don’t love you. It was never even close to love, Christ almighty, Luke. I don’t even know you.’ She shook her head with incredulity. ‘It was sex. Just sex, for God’s sake.’
She turned on her heel and walked out of the bedroom, back into the living room.
‘So that’s what you are?’ he suddenly shouted, following her. He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her. He yanked her around to face him and she saw his eyes had frozen over, cold and hard. ‘Some cheap dirty whore who has sex with men she doesn’t know?’ His lips curled into a sneer. ‘You’re a fucking whore?’
His venomous words, piercing and angry, cut into her like blades. She stared at him, the wind taken out of her, sharply feeling the bite of fear. ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ she said quietly.
‘Is that what you do? You go around flirting with men, seducing them?’ His rage grew with every syllable and she remembered what Will had said about his fiery temper that could erupt from nowhere. ‘Sleeping around with anybody who catches your eye?’
‘Let go of me—’
‘Is this a game to you?’ He dragged her towards the coffee table and bent to pick up the bottle of champagne. ‘The drinks? The flirtatious glances? The fiddling with your fucking necklace while you flutter your eyelashes?’ He lifted the bottle close to her face, pushing the icy glass, wet with condensation, against her cheek.
Adrenaline pumped through her. She flicked her eyes towards the door. Would anybody hear if she called out.
‘Is this a game?’ he repeated.
‘Of course it’s not a game.’ Harmony swallowed and tried to lean away from him. Everything in her body screamed at her to run. ‘You’re scaring me. Put the bottle down. It’s not a game. I don’t think that. I—’
‘Be quiet!’ he shouted.
Then he drew his arm back and for a moment she thought he might bring the bottle down on her, but instead he hurled it hard against the wall. It smashed loudly, broken bottle and champagne spilling down the wall and onto the polished concrete floor where it made a pool of fizzing liquid and shattered glass.
Harmony watched, terrified, as his hands flew to his face, his fingers clawing his scalp, again and again. ‘Will betrayed me. He abandoned me. This is all his fault.’ Then he cried out as if wounded, then dropped to the floor, crouching, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Then his fury began to fade and he folded his arms over his head as if sheltering from falling debris. She stood frozen to the spot and stared at Luke, who was shaking, cowering on the floor in front of her, battling whatever demons raged inside him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to whisper, heart hammering with fear, knees feeling like they might buckle at any moment. ‘But it’s not Will’s fault. It’s mine. Whatever happened at school, he was just a child. But I’m not and I shouldn’t have let this happen. Will was just a child.’
Luke lifted his head, his face drained of colour, drained of fight. ‘We were all just children.’ His eyes were glassy and unblinking, focused on something far away. ‘Leave me alone now,’ he said.
For the briefest of moments, she wondered if she should leave him in this state, but then she glanced at the mess of glass and champagne on the floor, thought of the photo of her on the wall in his bedroom, recalled the way the red mist had descended over him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she turned and fled.
A few hours later, with an overnight bag in the boot of the car, she drove along the Talgarth Road, heading out towards the M4. She couldn’t stop thinking about the look in Luke’s eyes, that eerie mix of hatred and hurt. She relived the crash of the champagne bottle as it hit the wall. She tried not to think of him following them, of the pictures he had of her and Will in his empty, cold bedroom, but it was difficult to think about anything else. She knew she should tell someone but she didn’t dare. She would have to confess her infidelity and if Will found out about her and Luke she was convinced it would be the final straw, that her marriage would collapse, and she was determined to do what she could to try and save it. There were issues they’d have to work through – those hadn’t gone away – but the episode with Luke had focused her mind; she and Will had too much to lose.
When she joined the M25 she found it gridlocked. The traffic was solid and unmoving. Harmony swore and craned her neck to see how far the line of stationary cars stretched. It seemed to go on for miles.
‘Must be an accident,’ she said to herself, wiping her brow and lying back against the headrest. ‘Of all the nights.’
An hour passed and she’d only moved two miles. She kept glancing at her phone, imagining she heard it ring, imagining it was him, calling or texting. She would have to get a new number, a new email address too, maybe even change their landline number. She wondered how she would explain that to Will.
Up ahead, some way away, she saw the blink of flashing blue lights and heard the distant sound of sirens. ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Hurry up and clear the traffic.’
