“Where did these come from?” he had asked. She had been surprised by his tone, stopped doing what she was doing.
“Someone left them with reception.”
“Who?”
“I’ll find out,” she said and picked up the phone with Robert standing over her. She turned to him.
“It was a man. An old man. Lucy said he handed her the envelope and told her they were for you. He didn’t say anything else. She said he looked a bit, well, rough. She thought he was a tramp but he was polite and he didn’t hang around, just left the envelope and walked out.”
“Thanks, I’ll see you in the morning,” and he’d dismissed her.
He is still sitting at his desk, the photographs spread before him like a Hockney collage: small images pieced together to reveal a bigger picture. But Robert cannot see what that bigger picture is. What he sees is Catherine. Catherine on a beach fingering the ties at the side of her red bikini with Nicholas nearby, smiling at the camera. Catherine asleep, peaceful. Another with her propped up on one arm, her breasts pushed together, beautiful, spilling over the top of her bikini, her smiling face resting on her hand. Who is she smiling at? Catherine and Nicholas sitting in the shallows, Nicholas looking out to sea but Catherine looking directly at the camera. She looks sexy, swelling with it, and their little boy, five at the time, sitting at her feet.
The photographs have been taken over a series of days, not just one day, but several. More than several? He tries to remember. Nicholas is in most of the beach scenes. But there are other photographs too, where Nicholas does not appear. But was he there? In the background? He must have been nearby. Was he in the same room? Was he in the next room? Alone? Was he asleep? What did he see? What did he hear? In these other photographs Catherine is wearing underwear, not a bikini. Knickers and bra. Definitely not a bikini. Lace. Straps that slip off shoulders. Nipples seen, sharp, through the lace. Knickers, not bikini bottoms. Nothing as robust as that. Tiny, fragile. Nothing that would stay on underwater. He should know — he had bought them for her, for their holiday. And her hand is down the front of her knickers and her head is back as if she is looking at something on the ceiling, but she is clearly not looking at anything. She has taken herself away somewhere else; she has reached a place which has parted her lips and closed her eyes. Lost in her own exquisite space. But not quite alone because someone else is there. A silent, appreciative witness. Invisible. Except in one photograph. One slipup. A shadow on the edge of the frame.
Robert is grateful he is alone, grateful that no one is there to witness his tears. The initial shock at seeing the pictures has given way to an ache which runs through him like a steel blade, which has sliced down from the crown of his head to his stomach. He feels his insides leaking from the gash. His fingers had been shaking when he’d texted Catherine to say he was stuck at work. A text was all he could manage. He couldn’t speak to her, not yet. He was not capable of having the conversation he knew they would have to have at some point, but not now.
He wants to believe that it is a mistake but he cannot deny what he is looking at. It is her. In full colour, in close-up. He can almost smell her body coming off the shiny prints. The images speak for themselves, images which are new to him, and yet flashes of which he recognises. The underwear. He had chosen it, and the red bikini. Her face is the same, younger, but the same, and yet her expression is not one he quite recognises. And that is so, so painful. He has never seen the absolute abandon on Catherine’s face. It is Catherine but it is not his wife. The location he recognises too. Spain in, when was it ’91, ’92? A small Spanish seaside town. A summer holiday for the three of them. And then his anger rises, and he is grateful for it — allowing it to overwhelm the pain for a moment. He remembers he had missed part of that holiday. He had flown back early, leaving Catherine and Nicholas behind. A case had come up, something which must have felt important at the time but now is lost in the more important fact that it took him away from his wife and child.
Catherine may not look like his wife in the photographs, but Nicholas is absolutely recognisable as his son. His smile. His slender body, baby fat gone, very much a little boy, no longer an infant. All angles, knobbly knees, sharp elbows. A constantly moving flash of a boy, electric with curiosity. Looking at this little boy fuels his anger. What did Nicholas witness? How much did he see? How much did he understand? The poor little mite would have had no choice. He couldn’t catch a flight home. He couldn’t ask Daddy to come and fetch him.
Robert pushes his mind back to when Catherine and Nicholas came home from that holiday. It was soon after that when Catherine announced she wanted to go back to work full-time. He remembers it well. It had come out of the blue. He had assumed she would stay at home a little longer, then go back part-time. It wasn’t the money; he was earning more than she was — enough for both of them. It had upset him, but he didn’t say anything; he covered up what he felt because he put her needs before his. He had kept his disappointment to himself. He swallows down the phlegm that has gathered at the back of his throat. She’d told him she was depressed, that she missed her work. She didn’t say it, but he could tell that being a mother was just not enough for her; she put her own needs before their child’s. But so had he. He had put Catherine’s needs before Nick’s. So it hadn’t been about work — it had been about her affair on holiday.
She was depressed about their marriage, not about being at home. He looks at the photos spread out on his desk. She found something more exciting on that holiday. Fucking hell, he’s been such an idiot. He should have pushed her the other night when he caught her burning the book. She was about to tell him, and she would have if he’d insisted. But of course he didn’t. He played right into her hands as always. That’s why she hasn’t been sleeping, that’s why she’s so fucking caught up with herself: she’s been found out. It wasn’t about Nick moving out, or her guilt — she doesn’t give a fuck for Nick or him. No, she’s been found out, that’s what this is about. Found out about an affair she had years ago. An affair she had under their son’s nose. Jesus Christ.
Poor Nicholas trapped in Spain with his mother and who else? Who was there with them? His mother with a stranger and him, a five-year-old witnessing god knows what. The perfect stranger? He rakes through his memory to see if he can retrieve any conversation he might have had with Catherine when she came home, something which might give him a clue. But all he comes up with are innocuous phrases: “We missed you,” “It wasn’t the same once you’d left.” Well, that’s for fucking sure.
And what about Nicholas? Did he say anything which Robert could have picked up on? Should have picked up on? Did his behaviour change? Was he withdrawn? But Robert can’t remember Nicholas saying anything at all. Surely he would have said something like, “Mummy’s friend did this,” or “We met this nice man,” or “Mummy made a friend,” but he can’t remember his son saying anything, ever, about the time when he was alone with Mummy on holiday. And a stranger. Was it a stranger? Or did he know him? It worries him that Nicholas said nothing. It is not normal. For a child to simply say nothing. Children only say nothing when they are hiding something, something that is unsayable.
His phone beeps. A text from Catherine: “Wish you’d let me know earlier.” No kiss this time. He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t want to talk to her, or text her even. But his son he must talk to. He must see him. Remembering the Nicholas in the photographs and knowing how he is now as a young man, he is struck by the discrepancy. That crash-bang-wallop of a child is nowhere to be seen now in the plodding, rather aimless, twenty-five-year-old Nicholas. That child was snuffed out by adolescence — smoked out — and never quite recovered. He’d always asked himself, why? Why did he drop out? Why was he so unmotivated? And his mother had said nothing. Well, maybe this is why. Maybe little Nick saw, heard things he shouldn’t have. Perhaps now Robert has the key to unlock whatever it is that knocked the fizz out of his son.