“My wife’s name is not Shell,” I said.
He handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it.“They’re pretty good. They won’t rip you off. Take another sample of Mrs Wallace’s writing with you. Well, you’d probably worked that out for yourself.”
I should have thanked him, I suppose. But what I really felt like was a specimen; as if his whole purpose in seeing me had been to study what my life looked like. So I just shovelled the paper into a pocket, and stood.
“You’ve aged well,” he said. “If you don’t mind my saying.”
“I’m surprised you’ve not made Inspector yet,” was the best I could manage in reply.
Back home, I sat at the kitchen table and rang the number Martin Dampner had given me. The woman who answered explained what I could expect from her firm’s services: a definitive statement as to whether the handwriting matched a sample I knew was the subject’s. There was no chance of error. She might have been talking of DNA. She might have been talking of a lot of things, actually, because I stopped listening for a bit. When I tuned back in, she was telling me that they could also produce a psychometric evaluation of the subject. I wasn’t thinking of offering the subject a job, I almost said, but didn’t. If they couldn’t work that out from the postcard, they weren’t much use to anyone.
There was a notepad on the window ledge, as ever. I scribbled down the address she gave me. And then, before anything could prevent my doing so, I transferred my scribble to an envelope, found a stamp, and went out and popped my wife’s last words in the post.
VI
She does not have much spatial awareness — few women do, many men say — but sees no reason to doubt the information she has been given: that this room measures 24 foot by 18, with a ceiling some 20 foot high. It is a cellar, or part of a cellar. The handkerchief of light way over her head is the only part of the room set above ground level. Built into a hillside, see? he’d told her. Yes. She saw.
Apart from herself and the mattress and a thick rough blanket, and the chemical toilet in the corner, this room holds three articles: a plastic beaker three inches deep; a plastic fork five inches long; and a stainless steel tin-opener.
And then there is the second room, and all that it contains.
VII
Had I been asked, during the days following, what I imagined had happened to Michelle, I would have been unable to give an answer. It wasn’t that there was any great dearth of fates to choose from. Open any newspaper. Turn to any channel. But it was as if my imagination — so reliably lurid in other matters — had discreetly changed the locks on this particular chamber, deeming it better, or safer, if I not only did not know what had occurred, but was barred from inventing a version of my own. I can see Michelle in our kitchen last week — of course I can. Just as I can see no trace of her here today, or in any other of her domestic haunts. But what happened to merge the former state into the latter remains white noise. Who stood by while she wrote that note and packed a case? What thrill of inspiration moved her to sign herself Shell? And in quitting her job, in withdrawing half our savings, what threat kept her obedient; made her perform these tasks unassisted?
And underneath all this a treacherous riptide that tugged with subtly increasing force. What if all this was as it seemed? What if she’d left of her own free will?
Things aren’t working, David, and they haven’t been for a long time. I’m sorry, but we both know it’s true.
That’s what her note had said. But that’s true of any marriage. All have their highs and lows, and some years fray just as others swell.
These past few years, you could describe as frayed. We’d had fraught times before — the seven-year itch, of course. A phrase doesn’t get to be cliché just by being a classic movie title. If ever the wheels were to come off, that would have been the time. But we survived, and it bonded us more securely. I truly believe that. And if these past few years had been less than joyful, that was just another dip in a long journey — we’ve been married nineteen years, for goodness’ sake. You could look on this period as one of adjustment; a changing of gear as the view ahead narrows to one of quieter, calmer waters; of a long road dipping into a valley, with fewer turnings available on either side.
But maybe Michelle had other views. Maybe she thought this her last chance to get out.
Once, years ago, a train we were on came to a halt somewhere between Slough and Reading, for one of those unexplained reasons that are the motivating force behind the English railway network. Nearby was a scatter of gravel, a telephone pole, a wire fence and a battleship-grey junction box. Beyond this, a desultory field offered itself for inspection. On the near side of the fence, a wooden sign declared this to be Dolphin Junction.
“Dolphin Junction,” Michelle said. “If you heard the name, you’d summon up a picture easily enough, wouldn’t you? But it wouldn’t look like this.”
Afterwards, it became part of our private language. A trip to Dolphin Junction meant something had turned out disappointing, or less than expected. It meant things had not been as advertised. That anytime soon would be a good moment to turn back, or peel away.
And maybe that was it, when all was said and done. Maybe Michelle, during one of these dips in our journey, caught a glimpse of uninspiring fields ahead, and realized we were headed for Dolphin Junction. Would it have taken more than that? I didn’t know any more. I didn’t know what had happened. All I knew, deep in the gut, was that all wasn’t, in fact, said and done.
Because she had signed her name Shell. Michelle had done that? She’d have been as likely to roll herself in feathers and go dancing down the street.
She just wouldn’t.
A few days later the card came back. Until I heard the thump on the doormat I hadn’t been aware of how keenly I’d been awaiting it, but in that instant everything else vanished like yesterday’s weather. And then, as I went to collect it, a second thing happened. The doorbell rang.
She’s back, was my first thought. Swiftly followed by my second, which was — what, she’s lost her keys?
Padded envelope in hand, I opened the door.
Standing there was Dennis Farlowe.
There are languages, I know, that thrive on compound construction; that from the building blocks of everyday vocabulary cobble together one-time-only adjectives, or bespoke nouns for special circumstances. Legolanguages, Michelle would say. Perhaps one of them includes a word that captures my relationship with Dennis Farlowe: a former close friend who long ago accused me of the rape and murder of his wife; who could manage only the most tortured of apologies on being found wrong; who subsequently moved abroad for a decade, remarried, divorced; and who ultimately returned here a year or so ago, upon which we achieved a tenuous rapprochement, like that of a long-separated couple who remember the good times, without being desperate to relive them.
“David,” he said.
“Dennis.”
“I’m sorry about—” He grimaced and made a hand gesture. Male semaphore. For those moments when speech proves embarrassing.
We went into the kitchen. It’s odd how swiftly an absence can make itself felt in a room. Even had Dennis not already heard the news, it wouldn’t have cost him more than a moment’s intuition to discern a problem.
“Good of you to come,” I said.
Which it probably was, I thought — or he probably thought it was. Truth was, he was the last man I wanted to see. Apart from anything else, the envelope was burning my fingers.