When I hear the EastEnders music again, I realize that her program must have finished. I was so busy playing on the machine that I forgot all about going upstairs for my dinner. I hope Maggie isn’t mad with me. I run up the stairs and into the kitchen; the Deep Fat Fryer is still on, so maybe I’m not too late.
“There you are.” Maggie stands in the doorway. Her face looks strange, I don’t think I like it. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Really? Because I called you half an hour ago and you ignored me.”
She steps forward and I take a step back.
“Dinner has all gone, I’m afraid. No chips for you tonight, Baby Girl. I’m cooking something else now. Something special. You want to see?”
I don’t think that I do.
I turn and try to leave the kitchen, but she grabs me, lifts me up with one hand, and opens the lid of the fryer with the other.
The oil is hot and I can see something bubbling on top.
I scream when I see what it is.
I start to cry and try to look away, but she holds my chin with her hand, forcing me to watch.
Then she whispers in my ear, “Poor Cheeks. Never mind, I’m sure he’s running in circles somewhere in hamster heaven. You don’t need anyone except me, Aimee. It’s a lesson you really should have learned by now. Next time I tell you to do something, I suggest you do it.”
Thirty-six
London, 2017
People say we can be anyone we want to be in life.
That’s a lie.
The truth is, we can be anyone we believe we can be. There’s a big difference.
If I believe I am Aimee Sinclair, then I am.
If I believe I am an actress, then I am.
If I believe I am loved, then I am.
Destroy the belief, destroy the reality it gave birth to.
I’m starting to think maybe my marriage was little more than a lie. I find myself wandering around central London with no memory of how I got here. For a moment, I consider the possibility that the amnesia diagnosis all those years ago was correct, and that I’ve been kidding myself all this time, thinking that I could remember everything that has ever happened to me, and everything that I’ve done, but then I manage to shake the thought. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
I walk and I think and I try and fail to make sense of everything that has happened over the past few days. I don’t know where to go, or who to turn to, and the realization that there is nobody I feel that I can trust at all makes everything seem even worse than it already is.
Ben can’t be dead, because I don’t believe it.
The unspoken thoughts rattle around inside my head, bouncing off the walls of my mind, looking for a way out. But there is no way out. Not this time. I think about the tide of hate I’ve had to swim against for the last few months. I think about what Ben did to me that night, and I think about my gun not being where I normally keep it, hidden beneath our bed. For the first time since this whole nightmare began, I sincerely start to doubt myself and accept that my grip on reality seems a little less firm than it used to.
Surely I’d know if my husband was really dead?
Surely I would have felt something?
Maybe not.
I feel as if I’ve been put in slow motion, and when I look around at all the people rushing by, everyone seems to be in such a desperate hurry. Most of them are too busy staring at their phones to be able to see where they are going, or where they have been. I find myself standing outside the TBN office where Ben works, without remembering the journey here. The sight of the place takes me back in time, to when we first got together. We used to meet here all the time when we started dating.
We were virtual strangers when we met online.
We were emotional strangers after almost two years of marriage.
I could never do that now—use my real name and picture on a dating website—but back then, nobody knew who I was, not really. My name meant very little to anyone, including me. Ben made the first move. He sent me a message, we exchanged a few emails, and I agreed to meet in real life. Everything was practically perfect until a few months after our wedding. Then we lived happily never after.
Ben loves his job. He’s away almost as often as I am, traveling to any corner of the world that we deem to be more troubled than our own. The news is like an addiction for him, whereas I rarely pay any attention to it nowadays. If something bad had really happened, if he wasn’t able to go to work, then his employer would know; I’ve never known him to be off sick for a single day. All I have to do is prove that my husband is still alive, and that he is the one trying to hurt me, not the other way around. He’s trying to damage my reputation and destroy my career because he knows that’s all I have left and that, without it, I am nothing.
I force myself to walk through the revolving doors and approach the reception desk. I wait for the woman staring at her screen to look up, then I open my mouth, but the question seems too afraid to come out. The receptionist’s skin is a perfect black canvas, painted with critical eyes and an unsmiling mouth. Her hair is as restrained as her welcome, thick black strands pulled into a ponytail so tight, it results in an unnecessary face-lift. The lanyard around her neck displays a name badge reading JOY. From what I’ve seen of her so far, this seems a little ironic. My prolonged silence causes Joy to look at me as though I might be dangerously dim. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I am.
“Can I speak to Ben Bailey please?” I manage at last.
Her eyes, which had narrowed, widen, before a frown makes itself at home on her face. “Can I take your name?”
I don’t want to give her my name, I’d rather keep it to myself. I never give it willingly to anyone anymore.
“I’m his wife,” I settle on eventually.
She raises a drawn-on eyebrow in my general direction, then taps something on her keyboard. The name wife seems to satisfy the system for now. “Take a seat over there.”
I move to the red sofa where she wants me to wait. She doesn’t pick up the phone on her desk until I sit down, and she watches me the whole time while saying words I can’t hear.
I sit. People come and go. I watch the silver-colored lifts behind reception swallow some inside the building and spit others back out. Joy looks at and speaks in the same frosty fashion to everyone who approaches her desk, as though her thermostat is broken. The temperature of her tone is unchanging, and I think that it’s sad how some people are predisposed to coldness.
When the shape of a young man pops out of the lift and walks in my direction, I presume his outstretched hand is on its way to greet someone else, until I remember that I’m the only person still waiting. His twentysomething-year-old hair is too long, just like his gangly limbs, which jut out at peculiar angles beneath his shiny suit. He smells of aftershave and breath mints and youth.
“Hello, I believe you were asking for Ben Bailey?” His deep, upper-class voice doesn’t match his appearance. I nod and let him shake my hand. “I’m afraid Ben hasn’t worked here for over two years now. I said the same thing to the police yesterday. Did you tell reception that you were his wife?”
I can’t seem to form words just now, I’m too busy processing his, so I just nod again.
“How strange.” He takes in my appearance as though seeing me for the first time. His features adopt the familiar expression people wear when they can’t pinpoint how they know my face. He stumbles on, his sentences tripping over themselves in their eagerness to be heard. “I mean, Ben was the kind of guy who kept himself to himself, never came to the pub after work or anything like that. I didn’t really know him, none of us did. I’m sorry I can’t help. Is he in some sort of trouble?”