Falling Off Air (16 page)

I bathe the children. I dress them in their nightclothes. At seven-thirty I try calling Adam's mobile, but it rings and rings
and no one answers. At eight I give up on him. I mean I give up properly, forever. He has not managed this one simple thing.
He has been delayed by some trivia, diverted by some irrelevance, one way or another there's something he would rather do
than meet his own children. He has as good as turned his back on them. I contain myself until the children are in bed and
then I pace the floor fuming and fulminating, cursing myself for ever having listened to him, hating myself for wanting him
to come, despising myself for ever having believed in him.

By ten I have calmed down. The first trickle of relief has found its way through the hurt. I am not going to have to deal
with Adam. There will be no agonized discussions about his involvement in our lives, the children will be all mine again.
I am under no obligation to him. For the first time since Adam and I parted I go and kneel by the cupboard where my papers
are stored and I pull out a box of photographs that I have avoided like the plague. I stare down at the picture on the top
of the pile, Adam and I, arms around each other's shoulders on holiday in Morocco, both tanned, happy grins on our faces.
I put the photographs down and go and pour myself a whiskey in the kitchen, then I return to the photographs with the bottle
and sit cross-legged on the floor and work my way through the images of our time together. It is a grand farewell. Laughing,
hands clasped, arms entwined, even one of us kissing, his hands on my face, pulling me to him. I close my eyes, lean back
against the sofa, and run our time together like a movie in my head.

I was working for financial news and documentaries and I'd got a whiff of scandal before the country knew it as a scandal.
I'd had word that Paper Money, a young but outstandingly successful investment company, was concealing huge losses from the
public with the help of some creative accounting. It was nothing more than a whisper, and small investors couldn't resist,
continuing to throw their money into the void. For six months I pushed and probed and combed the company accounts. I wined,
I dined, I flattered. I even flirted, which is something I only do under duress.

It was at this point that I met Adam. He egged me on, even as Paper Money got wind of my interest and tried to intimidate
me with talk of lawsuits. Eventually my breakthrough came in the form of a Deep Throat from the Serious Fraud Office. Then
Adam presented the forty-minute documentary that caused Paper Money's demise and won me a prestigious award. It wasn't the
award that gave me a kick so much as the fact that I'd single-handedly brought Paper Money down. I was drunk on my own power
and I was hungry for the next challenge. I don't know what that challenge might have been because I fell in love with Adam
and, after a few months, became pregnant with twins, and then he left.

Adam was my best friend as well as my lover, but all of it was tied up with work. Work was who we were, both of us. We talked
endlessly about it, laughed about it, we made love after it and before it. When I started to change, when the double helping
of life inside my belly started to move my head and my heart in new directions, Adam stayed where he was. And when he found
himself alone in that place he looked around for a new companion.

I didn't know the details, the who or the where or the how many times, but that there was someone else I am certain. I suspected
it in the week before his declaration of non-love for me. Then, when I challenged him, he didn't deny it. It made all the
difference to me. If there had been no one else, if Adam was just afraid of how parenthood was going to change his life, I
would have dragged him kicking and screaming into domesticity, but when I knew there was already someone else, then I knew
he'd made a choice and that choice was not to be with me and with our children.

“To closure,” I murmur and raise my whiskey glass in a farewell toast. I sip. Time for bed.

But “Greensleeves” shatters the silence and I haul myself to my feet. I find Finney and D.C. Mann on my doorstep.

“Miss Ballantyne,” Finney says, “do you own a red 1990 BMW?”

“Yes, what's—?”

“Can you tell me the license number?”

I recite it and Finney nods, and looks sadder than I have seen him. Which makes no sense.

“We need to come in,” he says, and I stand back, mystified.

We go, all three of us, in the sitting room. The glass in the window has been replaced, but during my evening of fury I have
not once paused to pull the curtains closed. I can see the Carmichael house, all lit up, on the other side of the street.
Finney runs his eyes over the room. I see him take note of my tumbler of Laphroaig, the stack of photographs scattered where
my foot caught them carelessly when I went to answer the door.

“I need your car keys, Robin,” Mann says.

I stare at her. Go automatically to my bag. I search for the keys, first calmly, then upending everything on the table. My
house keys tumble to the floor and I seize them up, then realize that the car key isn't on the key ring as it usually is.

“I don't …” My brain has gone blank. Then I realize what must have happened. “I had the car inspected this afternoon,” I explain,
“so I gave the key to the mechanic, and I suppose I didn't put it back on my key ring when I picked up the car … I had my
hands full …”

“So where is it?” D.C. Mann is not interested in my story of domestic life.

“If it's not here …” I shake my head at the contents of my bag. “Sometimes I leave the key in the ignition when my arms are
full. Usually I realize when I get to the front door, and I have to go back, but this evening I had my house keys, so I might
not have noticed … Has my car been stolen?”

“Where were you this evening, Robin?” Mann asks. She and I had struck up a fledgling friendship the night Paula Carmichael
died. She is wearing brown trousers that cling to her thighs, and a volcanic orange sweater that drapes over a figure honed
in the gym, but I can feel the hard professionalism under the informality. The earth underneath us has shifted and I cannot
find my footing.

“I was here,” I say, “all evening. Hannah and William are asleep upstairs.”

Mann glances at Finney and he gives her a small nod. She turns and leaves the room and I stare at him as I hear her run lightly
up the stairs, pause outside the children's room, push open the door, step inside.

“What the fuck is going on?” I demand, approaching Finney. Our eyes meet, and I learn from what I see there that something
awful has happened. I wait in shocked silence, and in a moment Mann reappears and nods at Finney. She is relieved. He is reassured.

“What was that all about?” I ask again, but she ignores my question and waves me to sit down. I continue to stand and she
perches on the arm of the sofa to continue her interrogation.

“You didn't go out even briefly?” she insists, glancing at Finney. “You didn't nip out to the corner shop or anything?”

“I told you,” I say, my voice rising, “I've been here with the children. They've been asleep since eight o'clock. I couldn't
have gone out even if I'd wanted to.”

“Well what did you do all evening?” she asks, her voice taking on a chatty tone.

“Nothing,” I say.

I know at once that “nothing” is not enough. I waited, was what I should have said, I waited for Adam. I should have come
clean then, but it is none of their business, and I cling to the mistaken belief that if I am stubborn they will just back
off.

“Did you watch television, Robin?” Mann persists.

Finney squats down at my feet and picks up the pile of photographs. He looks up at me and our eyes meet.

“Do you mind?” he asks softly.

“Do I have a choice?” I snap back.

He stands then and walks over to the light, his back to me.

“No,” I say, my eyes glued to Finney, knowing that if I lie I will be caught out, “I didn't watch television.”

He takes a photograph from the top of the pile, replaces it at the bottom, works his way through the pictures, pausing now
and again, head bowed.

“Did you eat dinner, Robin? You must have eaten something.” Mann is losing patience. “You can't have just sat here all evening
doing nothing.”

I shake my head. There is a tight feeling in my chest, and what has been an amorphous sense of unease is turning into downright
panic.

“What's this all about?”

Finney sighs, hands Mann the pile of photographs.

“Where did you park your car?” he asks wearily.

I shake my head.

“It's up the road,” I say. “I couldn't get a parking space.”

“When did you last drive it?”

“This afternoon, I told you. Look, I refuse,” I say as calmly as I am able, “to answer any more questions until you tell me
what this is about.”

Finney regards me with disdain, and this frightens me as much as anything else. He and I were as good as playing footsy twenty-four
hours ago. What has happened?

“There's been an accident,” he says, his voice low and relentless, his eyes like a hawk. No, I want to correct him, that was
days ago. Paula Carmichael fell out the window days ago, what's taken you so long? But his voice is already taking me beyond
that, his words like a wrecking ball, demolishing my life.

“Adam Wills has been killed by a speeding car, just up the road,” he says. “The car was a red 1990 BMW, registered to you.”

I stare at him, past caring what he sees in my eyes. Then my knees give way and I slump onto the sofa. My stomach seems to
fold over itself.

“What am I supposed to think?” he defends himself, as though I have challenged him. “You own a car, it killed a man. I've
seen his body. The deceased is the man you told me you were going to see this evening. And what the fuck am I supposed to
make of these?” He snatches the photographs from Mann and brandishes them at me. Several fall to the floor.

D.C. Mann reels. “Sir?” she says uncertainly.

I am overwhelmed by nausea. A deep chill has seized me by the shoulders and is shaking me with huge racking tremors. My stomach
is a fiery ball, leeching heat from my body. What energy I can harness I use to shake my head over and over again. Mann comes
over to kneel next to me in concern. She puts her hand on my arm.

“The children are his,” I say to her. How can they think I would kill my children's father?

“What?” Finney has not heard.

Mann stays where she is, her hand clutching my arm, but she turns her head toward him.

“She says the children are his.”

It comes as no surprise to him, not after the photographs. He nods grimly.

“Hey presto, a motive,” he mutters, sarcastic as ever.

I look up at him and our eyes lock. I cannot begin to fathom the disappointment I see there. Here is a man who makes me distrust
myself, who weakens me. But I cannot afford to be weak, not with my children upstairs.

“I want a lawyer,” I say.

When my lawyer comes, her skin is still soft from bed, her hair hangs loose around her shoulders and her eyes are wide with
anxiety and love. She, my mother, encloses me in her arms where I still sit on the sofa, but I am numb. The blood is departing
from my limbs in order to keep my vital functions going. I am cold, shivering. As if at a great distance I see my mother's
face fall as Finney talks to her. She seems to be arguing with him, but he shakes his head and talks in a low voice to her.
They both turn to me and I hear words that inform me that the house is to be searched. Ma tells me that she has given my permission
for the search and has told Finney that a warrant is not necessary. Her eyes seek mine out and I understand that she wants
to confirm that she is doing the right thing by volunteering cooperation, but I am not capable of involvement in their negotiations.
I force myself upright and to the door. I climb the stairs, their eyes on me. I open the door to the room where, I now understand,
Mann went to check that I had not murdered my children in their beds. There is no space for a chair in there, so I seat myself
cross-legged at the foot of their cribs and wait for the men to come and tear our home apart around us.

T
HE search of my house the night before did not, as far as I was aware, uncover anything more sinister than dust and grime,
great clumps of which emerged from hiding behind the sofa and underneath the fridge. The police did not trash the place, but
things were not as they were. I found the cutlery upended into the kitchen sink, clothes off hangers and papers sorted and
resorted until they were in no order at all. My peacock feathers were trampled into the dirt and one of the mirrors I'd painted
had sweaty fingerprints all over it. I tossed the feathers and the mirror into the bin and for good measure followed them
with the mobiles I had made. Everything felt grubby to me now.

All that they had taken away were the photographs of Adam and me, and some letters and documents belonging to Adam that had
got mixed up with my things, and that I had retained only because I had not been aware that I had them. I signed a receipt
for these items and thought nothing of it. They couldn't be incriminating because I had committed no crime. I was in no hurry
to get them back.