The Dilemma Read online

  ‘Do you want me to call back when you’ve finished?’ I offered.

  ‘No, it’s fine, as long as you don’t mind only seeing the top of my head. We’re going out to dinner later, to a really nice restaurant. I’m going to have a lovely long bath in a minute.’

  ‘You’re going to miss the hotel when they leave,’ I teased. ‘Where have they gone today?’

  ‘To Stanley Market.’ She raised her head. ‘I wish you could see it, Mum, it’s amazing. You should have come with Cleo and Rob. You could have gone sightseeing with Rob and given me and Cleo a bit of time together.’

  ‘Is he cramping your style?’ I asked, amused.

  ‘No, it’s fine actually.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly done you good to see them,’ I said. ‘You look happy.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be happy in this beautiful hotel?’ she said, laughing.

  I peered into the screen. ‘Has Cleo changed rooms?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her head was bent over her nails again.

  ‘The prints on the wall,’ I explained. ‘They weren’t lotus flowers.’

  ‘Oh yes – the other room she had was next to the lift and it was so noisy she asked to change.’

  I was about to point out that they now had the luxury of a huge king-size bed instead of two singles, when the door behind her opened and I saw a man standing in the doorway rubbing his hair dry with a towel, obviously straight out of the shower. My shock was nothing to do with the fact that he was naked but more to do with the fact that Marnie had brought her boyfriend to Cleo’s hotel room. But I supposed Cleo was fine with it because Marnie must have asked her.

  ‘It’s so lovely here, far more comfortable than my own grotty room in the halls of residence,’ Marnie was saying, oblivious to her boyfriend in full frontal view. At the sound of her voice, he raised his head from the towel and, realising she was on FaceTime, stepped quickly back into the bathroom and closed the door. But not before I’d seen his face.

  My heart almost stopped. Then, aware that I needed to say something, because I didn’t want Marnie to look up and see how devastated I was, I forced words from my mouth.

  ‘Well, you may as well make the most of it,’ I said, hoping my voice sounded the same as it had before.

  ‘That’s what I thought. So, how are preparations going for your party, only six weeks to go now!’

  ‘I know, I can’t believe it! Liz came over yesterday with samples of food,’ I told her, talking too fast. ‘It was delicious, I’m so glad I chose her to do the catering. She’s bringing three staff with her to serve the food and clear up after, so I won’t have anything to do.’

  ‘I wish I could be there,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘Me too.’

  She straightened up and dangled her fingers in front of the screen. The sleeves of her bathrobe fell back, and I could see her tattoo: An angel walking to the Devil’s beat.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Navy blue isn’t really my colour,’ I said, amazed that I managed to force out a laugh. ‘But they look lovely. Are you wearing your blue dress tonight?’

  ‘How did you guess? Sorry, Mum, I’d better go, Cleo and Rob will be back soon so I need to go and have that bath.’

  ‘Make sure your varnish is dry first,’ I warned.

  She waggled her hands in the air. ‘I will, don’t worry. Speak soon?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll call you in a couple of days.’

  ‘Bye. Send Dad my love.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the blank screen, unable to move my body but unable to still my mind, which was careering all over the place, trying to make sense of what I’d just seen. I tried to tell myself that I’d been mistaken, that it hadn’t been Rob standing naked in the doorway, but another man. And when I could no longer lie to myself, I tried to find excuses – Rob was using Cleo’s bathroom because there was a problem with his and he hadn’t known Marnie was there when he’d come out naked, which was why he’d ducked back in again quickly. I didn’t want to believe that Marnie had been lying to me from the beginning of the conversation, when she’d told me that Rob was out with Cleo, and that Cleo had changed rooms. I didn’t want to believe that the reason she was painting her nails in Rob’s room, waiting to use the bathroom he’d just come out of, was because the two of them were having an affair. There had to be some other explanation.

  I felt sick as I went onto Cleo’s Facebook page. There were photos of Stanley Market, and other views of Hong Kong, but Rob wasn’t in any of them. There were a couple of selfies of Cleo, one with a caption underneath: Visiting on my own again today, followed by a sad-faced emoji. Looking back at other posts, it was clear that since she and Rob had arrived in Hong Kong, Cleo had been doing a lot of sightseeing on her own. I tried to close my eyes to the truth staring me in the face, telling myself that Marnie would never have done something so immoral, so damaging, as embarking on an affair with someone who had been part of our family since before she’d been born. It was inconceivable. Not only was Rob twenty years older than Marnie, he was also Jess’s husband, Nelson’s brother and the father of her best friend.

  I remember the nausea that rose up inside me, the panic that swept through me when the floorboards creaked in the bedroom upstairs, a sign that Jess was out of bed and on her way down to the kitchen. Snatching up my bag, I ran into the hall and out of the door, grabbing my car keys as I went. And then I drove, not to the office, but out to the country, where I parked up and burst into tears.

  5 P.M. – 6 P.M.

  Adam

  ‘Do you need me to do anything?’ I ask Livia, desperate to leave the terrace.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ she says, getting to her feet at the sound of the caterers arriving. ‘Why don’t you go and get ready? I’ll need the bathroom from six o’clock.’

  As I go into the house, my phone beeps, telling me a message has come in. I stop at the bottom of the stairs, my heart crashing in my chest, my hands shaking as I pull my mobile from my pocket. I close my eyes, offer a silent prayer, then look. It’s a message from Izzy.

  Hey bro! Hope Liv’s having a great day. Ian and I are running bit late but will see you as soon as we can get there. Can’t wait! xx

  Crushing disappointment makes me want to hurl my phone at the wall. I can’t go on like this, I can’t keep waiting for Marnie to get through. As I go upstairs, I open the BBC news app to find the emergency number set up for relatives of those on the flight. If I explain that Marnie missed the flight and is somewhere at the airport, they might be able to get a message to her via the Pyramid Airline desk. A wave of guilt hits when I think of the families who are having to call the number for another reason, but I can’t think of any other way of contacting her.

  Flooding in Indonesia is the main news, then a fatal stabbing in London. The plane crash is the third item down. There’s a photo next to the headline, a tangle of debris and flames. I sit down heavily on the bed and scroll quickly past it, looking for the number. Two words jump out at me – local reports. But – if there are videos coming out of Cairo Airport, why hasn’t Marnie been able to call me, message me? With a horrible sense of foreboding, I play one of the videos.

  A young man is gesticulating. ‘I was standing right here,’ a voice translates, ‘and I could hear a plane, it was louder than usual and I looked up and I saw it, it was very low in the sky, I knew it should have been higher at that point because I often watch them, I see them just after they’ve taken off. But this one, instead of climbing higher, it stopped, right there, in the middle of the sky. And then it fell.’

  The blood is pounding so hard in my ears that I struggle to keep up with what he’s saying. I knew it should have been higher at that point because I often watch them, I see them just after they’ve taken off. But the plane that crashed, the one Marnie should have been on, crashed twenty minutes into its flight. I remember calculating it, it crashed at eleven f
ifty-five, twenty minutes after its departure time of eleven thirty-five. So why did the man in the video say it had crashed just after take-off?

  My fingers are shaking so much I can hardly hold my phone. I scroll back to the news report and scan the text, searching, searching for the information that will tell me that I’m right and everyone else is wrong, that the plane didn’t crash just after take-off but twenty minutes into its flight. Then I see it, in black and white – The plane crashed three minutes after take-off from Cairo International Airport – and I freeze, because the only way it can have crashed after take-off, at eleven fifty-five, is if it left late.

  I can’t breathe. For a moment, the room spins. I close my eyes, tell myself to get a grip. I mustn’t panic, it’s going to be OK, I just need to calculate what time the flight actually left. It seems impossible to do the simple sum. I force myself to focus – it crashed three minutes into its flight and I know it crashed at eleven fifty-five, so all I need to do is take three from fifty-five to find its departure time. Fifty-two, the plane would have taken off at eleven fifty-two, not eleven thirty-five, so seventeen minutes late. Marnie’s flight from Hong Kong was meant to arrive in Cairo at ten fifteen, but the flight app I checked earlier confirmed her flight arrived at eleven twenty-five. If the Amsterdam flight only left at eleven-fifty-two then—

  Nausea rises inside me. I lurch to the bathroom and stand over the sink, my hands gripping the sides, willing myself not to be sick. I stare at my face in the mirror, searching desperately for something to ground me, to stop my panic from spiralling out of control. What if Marnie made the flight? But she couldn’t have, I’d know, I’d know if something had happened to her. She’s such a part of me I’d just know. Marnie’s safe, she has to be.

  Sweat springs from my pores. I feel suffocatingly hot and begin tearing off my clothes, the button of my jeans too stiff for my fingers, tugging and pulling until I’m standing naked, the whole of me shaking. I pull open the shower door and almost fall inside. I reach blindly for the lever and water cascades down, drumming onto my head, filling my mouth, my nose, my throat until instinct forces me to take a breath. And all I can think is: Marnie’s safe, she has to be, Marnie’s safe, she has to be.

  I push my way out of the shower, pull a towel around me. A blast of music comes from the garden, dragging me back to reality. I can’t carry on fooling myself. Marnie might not be safe. She could have made the flight that crashed. She had twenty-seven minutes to make the connection, not ten.

  Unless she had to change terminals. I don’t know if there’s more than one terminal at the airport in Cairo but I can find out. I sit on the edge of the curved bath and type ‘how many terminals at Cairo Airport’ into my search engine. ‘THREE’ comes up, and I almost laugh, because it’s as if they’ve used big letters to reassure me. All I need to know now is that Marnie’s flight from Hong Kong arrived at a different terminal to the one that left for Amsterdam.

  ‘Please,’ I mutter. ‘Please let it be a different terminal.’

  I find her first flight, the one from Hong Kong; it arrived at Terminal 3. Then I type in the flight number of the Pyramid Air flight, holding my breath while I wait to find out. It comes up – Terminal 2.

  I close my eyes in relief. Even if the terminals are close enough to each other to walk, she would only have had twenty-seven minutes to get off her plane and make it out of Terminal 3 and into Terminal 2. She’d still have to find the gate.

  My fingers move quickly on the screen, searching for more information on Cairo International Airport. I find the official website and read that terminals 2 and 3 are linked by a footbridge. OK, so how long would it take to disembark from one flight, find the footbridge, walk all the way across it to the other terminal, find the gate – and still be there twenty minutes before the departure time? Marnie couldn’t have made it.

  I should feel reassured. But I can’t get away from the fact that if she had missed the flight, she would have contacted me. If news reports are getting through, the phone networks must be working.

  I’m so damn scared.

  I need to tell Livia. I turn to leave the bathroom, and catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror. I stare at my clammy skin, at the pulse beating in my temple – I can’t let Livia see me like this. I don’t want her to guess that something is wrong before I’ve made her sit down, before I’ve taken her hands in mine and have somehow found the words to tell her that Marnie, our daughter, could have been on a plane that crashed. First, I need to chase the fear from my eyes. And the only way I’m going to be able to do that is by believing there’s still hope.

  I’m not going to call the emergency number, not until I’ve spoken to Livia.

  Livia

  The food looks amazing. I can’t stop walking around the kitchen, in awe of it all. My birthday cards have been moved to the sitting room and all the work surfaces are now covered with trays of delicious canapés.

  ‘This is lovely, Liz, thank you. It looks beautiful!’

  ‘And I can guarantee it tastes delicious too,’ she says, smiling at me, which I already know, because I tasted one when I first booked her.

  There’s also food in the dining room – two whole salmon, a huge side of cold beef, platters of other cold meats, wonderfully coloured salads, the biggest cheeseboard I’ve ever seen, and a variety of desserts, which will be taken out to the marquee at different stages throughout the evening. And for when people first arrive, the trays of canapés. Liz and her team will be there to serve and clear away, which means I’ll be free to enjoy the evening.

  I can’t help worrying about Adam. Expecting him to make small talk for approximately seven hours, because the party won’t finish until two in the morning, might be a bit much if he’s got a migraine. It won’t all be small talk but I need to make sure he doesn’t get stuck with Paula, as she tends to talk about her health in too much detail. I also need to steer him away from Sara, who has a habit of cornering people and showing them a stream of holiday photos on her phone. But if I know Adam, after a brief chat with everyone he’ll spend most of the evening with Nelson and Ian.

  The house phone rings and I go to answer it, wondering if it’s Marnie, if she changed her mind about being off-radar so that she could wish me a happy birthday in person. But it’s Jeannie.

  ‘Hello, love, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday,’ she says.

  ‘Thank you – but you and Mike are coming tonight, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course, we wouldn’t miss it for the world. You’ll be busy though and we might not get the chance to speak very much.’

  ‘I’ll always have time for you and Mike. You’ve been more of a mum and dad to me than my own parents.’

  ‘They’re the ones who’ve missed out. They’ve missed the joy of seeing their grandchildren grow up into lovely young adults.’ She pauses. ‘How’s Adam bearing up?’

  ‘He’s fine. He had a migraine earlier but he’s just had some champagne – Kirin gave us a bottle for the two of us to have before the party – so he must be feeling better.’

  ‘That’s good. Well, I’ll let you get on. Goodbye, love, see you later.’

  Jeannie hangs up and I stand for a moment wondering what I’d have been like if I’d had parents like Jeannie and Mike. A different version of myself? I think of Izzy and her confidence. And Adam with his quiet self-belief.

  I take a minute, watching everything going on around me, at the piles of plates and baskets of cutlery being carried out to the tent, at Emily, the young girl from the caterers, filling small vases with the flowers that I ordered. They arrived when I was out, along with another bouquet, this time from Jess’s mum, who can’t come tonight. Although I’m glad Marnie isn’t here, I hate that she’s missing out on all this because she would have loved it. I look for my phone to take some photos to send her but it isn’t in my bag. I look around; I must have put it down somewhere. I check the terrace but it isn’t on the table, or anywhere in the kitchen.

  Go
ing into the hall, I phone my mobile from our house phone. When it starts ringing, I put down the landline and listen carefully, hoping to hear where it’s coming from. But I can’t locate it, not even when I try again. Maybe I left it at the spa. I remember seeing it face down on the table when we had lunch, but I don’t know what I did with it after that. Hopefully Jess or Kirin will have picked it up. I’m about to phone and ask them when I realise that their numbers are in my mobile. I think about asking Adam to phone Nelson and get him to ask Kirin. But I’ll be seeing them later, so I can ask them then. And I don’t really have time to worry about my phone.

  Liz comes to ask me where I want the cutlery, set out on trays in the tent or in a pot in the middle of each table. She asks me about Marnie, and I tell her that I’m secretly hoping she’ll FaceTime during the evening. If I can show her the garden, if she can see everything, she’ll be able to be part of it.

  A sudden thought hits me – that maybe the reason Marnie has gone away for the weekend to a place without wi-fi is because she needs an excuse not to FaceTime tonight, because Rob will be here and she’s worried she might give something away. Or, more probably, because she can’t face looking Jess in the eye and asking her how she is when she’s having an affair with her husband. I’m so angry with her. How could she? How could she have an affair with Rob? I still can’t get my head round it. I’ve tried to make excuses for her, blame it all on Rob, tell myself that he took advantage of her, that he played on her vulnerability and slowly reeled her in. But at some point, she consciously crossed the line.

  There are no words to describe how I feel about Rob. As I sat in my car that day, the day I discovered the truth, I tried to work out when their affair had started. Even though it made me ill to think about it, I was certain he was the father of the baby Marnie lost. I was sure – hoped – that there hadn’t been anything between them while she was still at school, which meant it must have started once she was at university. But she was at Durham, nearly three hundred miles and a four-hour drive away from Windsor, so how had they been able to see each other to start an affair? Rob worked five days a week and to my knowledge, he’d never gone away for the weekend on some pretext, or missed a Sunday bike ride with Adam and Nelson.