Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [142]
Nicholas had slept badly as well. Something was very wrong.
The first evidence of this had come over dinner on the previous evening. He toyed with his food, mostly cutting the meat and moving it round the plate, mostly slicing the potatoes neatly and piling them up like poker chips. To her question of what was bothering him, he’d smiled vaguely and said, “Just a bit off my food tonight,” and ultimately he’d pushed away from the table and wandered off into the drawing room, where he’d sat in the fireplace inglenook briefly and then paced the room as if it were a cage and he the imprisoned animal on display.
When they’d gone to bed, things had been worse. With a rising feeling of dread, she’d approached him. A hand on his chest, she’d said, “Nicky, something’s wrong. Tell me,” although the truth was that she feared hearing his answer more than she feared her own restless mind and where it took her when she allowed it free rein. He’d said, “Nothing. Really, darling. Just tired or something. Just a bit on edge,” and when she’d not been able to prevent a look of alarm washing over her features, he’d gone on to say, “You’re not to worry, Allie,” and she knew he was reassuring her that whatever was going on inside him, it bore no relationship to his past with drugs. She hadn’t thought it had, however, but she played along, saying, “You might want to talk to someone, Nicky. You know how it is,” and he nodded. But he looked at her with so much love in his face that she realised whatever was on his mind most likely had to do with her.
They hadn’t made love. This, too, was unlike her husband because she had approached him and not the opposite, and he’d long loved to be approached by her because he was not a fool and he knew very well how disparate was everything about them, at least everything visible to a world that judged people’s equality by external matters. So the fact that she would want him at least as often as he wanted her had always thrilled Nicholas, who had always responded. This too was a sign.
So when Alatea left the house and made her way to the garden, it was in part because she needed to do something to take her mind off the terrifying possibilities that had been assailing her throughout the night. But it was also in part to avoid seeing Nicholas because eventually what was bothering him was going to come out into the open and she didn’t think she’d be able to face it.
There were several thousand bulbs to be planted. She planned the lawn to be filled with early glories of the snow so that a bank of blue upon green would fall from the house down to the seawall, and this was going to take considerable work, for which she was glad. She would not, of course, be able to complete it in this one morning. But she could make a very good start. She set upon it with shovel and spade and the hours passed quickly. When she was sure her husband would have left Arnside House to make the drive to Barrow-in-Furness for his half day at Fairclough Industries prior to his work at the pele project, she finished up what she was doing and stretched and rubbed the sore spots on her back.
It was only when she headed to the house that she saw his car and understood that Nicholas hadn’t gone to work at all. Her gaze then went from the car to the house, and the dread she felt crept up her spine.
He was in the kitchen. He was sitting at the broad oak table, and he appeared to be brooding. There was a cup of coffee in front of him, with a cafetiere and a bowl of sugar nearby. But the cup of coffee appeared undrunk and a ring of sediment round the inside of the cafetiere suggested its contents had long gone cold.
He hadn’t dressed for the day. He wore the trousers of his pyjamas and the dressing gown she’d given him for his birthday. His feet were bare although he didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that the tiles on the floor would