Waterhouse And Zailer: The Carrier Part 24

"If Jasons anywhere in the vicinity, she wont tell you a thing. Even if he isnt, she probably wont." I close my eyes. "You dont get it, do you?"

"Actually, I do," says Charlie. I hear defensiveness in her voice. "Im trying to explain that my powers are limited, but Ill do what I can. In the meantime, Im more concerned about you."

"Dont be. I can look after myself. Lauren cant."

"This . . . warning, from Jasons henchman-what happened? You say he came to your house? Did he warn you verbally?"

I nod.

"Was that all he did?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You seem very distressed. And we were alerted to a possible attack. Someone posted an urgent appeal for help on Twitter."

On Twitter. Where things can be retweeted dozens, hundreds of times.

So its out there, in the world. People know. I dig my fingernails into my palms as the horror in my mind pulls the plastic covering off its head and swings round to face me. I couldnt see while it was happening; now its everywhere I look.

"Whoever it was, they used Tim Brearys Twitter ID and urged anyone reading to contact the police. They said you were being attacked in your driveway. Behind your house."

Someone wanted to help me. I cant dwell on that; it would involve seeing myself from the outside, as they saw me. Self-pity wont achieve anything.

Smoke. I smelled smoke.

"Gaby? What is it?"

"The tweets saying . . . were they . . . How badly written were they?"

"What do you mean?" Charlie asks.

"Grammar, spelling, punctuation."

"Lots of spelling mistakes. Grammar and punctuation pretty much nonexistent."

"Lauren," I say. "She smokes. She was there. Watching." My vision warps. I am looking at the room through a layer of oil, a wobbly film that coats my eyes. I can see things on its surface: lines, dark blots swimming diagonally downward. "Someone was smoking. I a.s.sumed it was the man who attacked me, but he didnt smell of smoke. I smelled his breath: no smoke. It was Lauren smoking. Whoever he was, he brought her with him. Shed have wanted to stop him but been too scared and too weak. He needs her to stay scared. Look, please, can you check shes all right? Now?"

"She was all right two hours ago, but Ill have someone check again," Charlie says, pulling her mobile phone out of her pocket. She jabs at it with her thumb, swearing under her breath when she hits the wrong letter. "Did this man attack you physically?" she asks me, her eyes on the message shes composing.

"Is this off the record?"

Charlie looks up. "Im sorry, but I dont think it can be. Anything you tell me that I think might be relevant to the Francine Breary case, Ill have to pa.s.s on."

"In that case, lets move on."

"Gaby, I understand that you might feel frightened or ashamed . . ."

"Its not that," I tell her. How gutless does she think I am, exactly? Yes, Im scared and ashamed, but Im not letting those feelings make decisions for me. "I want to talk to Tim first. Until I know whats going on in his mind, why hes saying he killed Francine . . ." I know what I mean, but its hard to put into words on no sleep. "Im not prepared to add any extra pressure to the situation until I understand all the permutations of what Im adding to. Does that make sense?"

Charlie nods slowly.

"How soon can I see Tim? Today?"

"Thats unlikely. Tomorrow, maybe, if the prisons favorite detective, DC Waterhouse, waves his magic wand."

"Then make him wave it." Tomorrow. The thought dissolves all others. Sitting opposite Tim, seeing him smile . . . What if he doesnt smile? What will be the first thing he says to me? What will he secretly be thinking?

Ive never liked surprises. Tim is surprising enough for me in ordinary circ.u.mstances, everyday surroundings. Though when we were together it was never ordinary.

h.e.l.l try not to let you help him. As always.

"I want to go into that prison knowing as much as I can," I tell Charlie. "The more you can find out and tell me before I go, the better. I know you dont have to tell me anything, but . . ."

"Gaby, I cant-" she starts to say.

I cut her off. "Have you searched Kerry and Dans house? You need to search Tims room. I dont know what youll find, but theres something. There must be. Dan was on his guard the whole time we were in there yesterday, keen to usher me out as soon as possible. I dont think it was just that he didnt want me to notice the books."

"Books?"

"True crime books, biographies of murderers, terrorists, dictators-Tim would never buy or read anything like that. Someones put them there to make it look more like a killers bedroom."

"Maybe Tim himself," Charlie suggests.

"I dont think so. He might want to pretend to be a murderer, but he wouldnt use props. Hes cleverer than that." I lose patience with the sound of my own voice. Charlie and I could waste hours speculating when there are people who know for sure.

I root in my bag, pull out the creased envelope and pa.s.s it to Charlie. "Please could you give this to Lauren? Make sure Jasons not around when you do. Its a letter I wrote her in Germany, after she ran away."

"Do you mind if I read it first?" Charlie asks.

Can it do any harm if the police know Tims and my history, such as it is? It cant be an invasion of my privacy if Im the one handing her the envelope. She wouldnt know anything about the letter if I hadnt told her.

Still, I cant bring myself to give her permission. "Youll read it anyway, whatever I say. Just dont read it in front of me. And when youve read it, dont ask me about it." I dont know how to warn her about its contents, or if I need to. Wouldnt that be like warning a burglar that the sharp corners of your TV might damage his jacket? "Its more of a love story than a letter," I say in the end. "I just thought . . . if it doesnt make Lauren want to tell the truth, nothing will, and something has to."

"Gaby, I need to ask you a question. You might find it distressing, but I have to ask. Have you been s.e.xually a.s.saulted?"

"No." Its not a lie. He didnt touch me, not in that way. Only my wrists and neck, and leaning against me, crus.h.i.+ng me against my car. I realize I have no idea whether the removal of clothes counts as a s.e.xual a.s.sault, and I cant ask without revealing more than Im willing to at this stage.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Have you sustained any physical injuries? Do you need me to take you to a hospital?"

"No." Two men have physically attacked me in the last twenty-four hours-Sean and the monster-and I have no marks to show for it. I choose to take this as proof of my resilience.

Charlie sighs. "All right. If you ever decide you want to say more about what happened, you can. Whenever youre ready."

"Thanks." If I do, itll be a strategic decision. I wish shed stop talking to me as if Im a volatile bundle of emotion.

"You need sleep," she says. "Is it true youve left your partner, Sean?"

I nod. Partner. Thats a joke; Sean was never that.

"So we need to sort you out with somewhere to stay. Do you have a friend you can go to?"

"I have plenty of friends that I dont need to stay with. Ive booked myself a room at the Best Western in Combingham. You need to sort yourself out with another visit to the Dower House," I tell her. In case she has forgotten the to-do list I gave her or thinks it doesnt matter, I decide to go through the action points again as I would at the end of a meeting. In my work, Im known for being either very or too thorough, depending on your point of view. Some CEOs wont work with me because of it. My companies consistently outperform theirs. "Go back to the Dower House," I say to Charlie. "Give Lauren my letter. Get her out of there and away from Jason-thats a priority. Whatever it takes, do it. And tell Kerry . . ." I hesitate. Am I certain? I could wait and ask Tim. Or talk to Kerry first. If she admits it, Tim wont be able to deny it.

Great idea: go back to two people who have lied to you and give them the opportunity to lie again.

"Tell Kerry I know that Tim has a history of taking credit for things he had nothing to do with."

"Meaning?"

"I know who The Carrier is-tell her that. It wasnt Tim. It was her."

POLICE EXHIBIT 1442B/SK-

TRANSCRIPT OF HANDWRITTEN LETTER FROM GABY STRUTHERS TO LAUREN COOKSON, UNDATED, WRITTEN FRIDAY 11 MARCH 2011.

Dear Lauren, Well, I cant find you, and I cant think where else to look. And I cant sleep because Im too shaken by what Ive found out, so I thought Id write to you. I hope youll calm down and get yourself to the airport in time for our flight in the morning. If not, Ill track you down at home. Shouldnt be too hard.

Lauren, I dont know you at all, but I do know that you seemed interested when I was telling you about my feelings for Tim. Really interested. And you seem to care that hes been charged with a crime he didnt commit. I think youre a good person (Im sorry if I didnt make that clear in the brief period we spent together) and I hope that youll care even more if I tell you what Tim means and has meant to me. I need to make him matter to you as much as he does to me, so that youll do the right thing and tell the truth.

Youve known Tim more recently than I have, and you might well know him better than I ever did, but do you like him? Tims not always uncomplicatedly likable. Hes not uncomplicatedly anything. I sometimes think hes the human equivalent of a question with no answer, and thats why Im so drawn to him. Ive never met anyone more unresolved than Tim, or more contradictory. He makes me want to formulate theories, prove certain things about his character are true. Ive never felt that way about anyone else. I should point out that this reaction is not unique to me. People want to solve Tim, cure him, define him, but no one ever can. Everybody tells themselves they will be the one to do it. If you know Tim well, Lauren, youll hopefully understand what I mean. Youll know that every bit of time you spend with him makes you less certain of who he is, and more certain of who you are. He has a rare talent, but I couldnt begin to describe what it is. As someone who can easily solve most a.n.a.lytical and practical problems, I have always found this annoying and irresistible.

Are you still reading, or have you given up? I should try not to make this too complicated.

I first met Tim in a library in Rawndesley called the Proscenium. Its not an ordinary library. Its also a private club that you can join, and anyone who isnt a member or a guest of a member cant go in at all, unless its to make an inquiry about joining. Among other things, the library has a large collection of very old, rare poetry books, mainly first editions, as well as lots of modern poetry-thats its specialism. Theres also a restaurant where members and guests can have lunch, a drawing room where people can talk, though only quietly, and a reading room where if you talk AT ALL the librarian will descend on you in a fury and threaten to turf you out, member or not.

Remember I told you I had my own company and sold it for millions? Well, when I was first thinking of starting up that company, I needed to find money to fund it. A lot of money. Id done some research, and I had my eye on Sir Milton Oetzmann as a possible key investor. Youve probably heard his name on the local news, but in case you havent: hes a philanthropist (that means someone whose hobby is to give away huge amounts of money to worthy causes) and I knew he was a member of the Proscenium. I met him in person shortly after I joined the library. I was up-front with him about what I hoped he might be able to do for me, and he was keen. He saw there was a good chance hed end up making a shedload of money.

When Tim first approached me, I hadnt seen him before at the Proscenium. I must have been blind, because he told me later that hed seen me several times. But I didnt notice him at all until he plonked himself down in a chair that had been vacated ten minutes earlier by Sir Milton after one of our long chats. I was packing away my paperwork, looked up and saw a face that shocked me (warning: this is going to sound very weird and corny) by being the face Id been craving a glimpse of all my life, even though I hadnt known that until I saw Tim. I didnt even fancy him, not at first sight or for quite a while afterward. It was more a feeling of "Thats him," accompanied by this craving for proximity that had nothing to do with s.e.xual attraction, initially. It was far stranger than just fancying someone, nothing like the way I fancied Sean when I first met him. (Seans my partner, remember?) Does that make any sense at all? I couldnt look away, and Tim didnt seem to be able to either. We both understood that there didnt need to be a reason why hed come over and sat down next to me. The reason couldnt have been more starkly obvious. After a few seconds, embarra.s.sment set in. We realized that, as strangers, we would have to go through the motions of pretending we didnt know what we knew, so Tim introduced himself and said he hoped I didnt mind his accosting me, but he feared I was about to make a serious mistake. He was an accountant, he told me, specializing in tax planning, and one of his clients had had extensive dealings with Sir Milton that had made him want nothing more to do with him, even if that meant losing a substantial chunk of his funding stream.

Im sure youre not interested in the finer details, Lauren, but in a nutsh.e.l.l: Tim said, yes, Sir Milton might be keen to invest in my company, but hed also want to micromanage everything (be involved in every aspect of my business rather than just letting me get on with it), and Id end up wis.h.i.+ng Id never gone to him. I was on the point of asking Tim if he was perhaps a bit biased because of his clients negative experience when he said, "Ill get you the money you need." It was so outrageous, it made me laugh. I needed serious money from a venture capitalist (a person or firm worth several hundred million whose sole purpose and function is to fund start-up companies), and here was a local accountant offering to drum up a bit of cash for me. I asked Tim what he had in mind. Was he going to organize a raffle? Sell tickets to a karaoke night at his local pub?

I stopped laughing when he told me he dealt with the tax affairs of the Lammonby Foundation, and that Peter Lammonby tended to follow his advice to the letter. Id thought about approaching Lammonby instead of Sir Milton, and only hadnt for a ridiculous reason: Lammonbys daughter had just made a fortune (one she didnt deserve, in my not at all humble opinion) from some new-age you-can-reinvent-your-life-type book. Not that that was her fathers fault, but still. Milton Oetzmann had no connection with any personal growth nonsense as far as I knew, so Id decided to focus on him.

"I think I know nearly as much about your business as Sir Milton does by now," Tim told me presumptuously. "Ive listened in on at least two of your conversations with him. Im confident I could get Peter Lammonby on board, and he really would be hands-off-hes your dream investor. My friend Dan might be interested too." "Your friend Dan?" I said scathingly. "What, you think hed want to bung in twenty quid or so?" "Maybe three hundred thousand quid or so," Tim corrected me. "Gaby," he said, sending a s.h.i.+ver of recognition through my body by saying my name, as if Id heard him say it thousands of times before, "I know nothing about scientific innovations, but if what Ive heard you tell Milton Oetzmann is true, I cant see how your company can fail." I told him any company can fail, but he waved it aside. "Give me a month to get you the funds you need to make a start. If I let you down, go back to Sir Milton and write me off as a deluded idiot."

I agreed on the spot. Id have agreed to anything he suggested on the spot, I think. Tim was thrilled. We couldnt stop talking, asking each other hundreds of questions, wanting to know everything about each other. Anyone listening might conceivably have thought nothing more was going on than two Proscenium members enthusiastically getting to know each other.

We arranged to meet again. We had a lot to talk about, so we had to meet often-oh, what a shame! (Thats me being sarcastic.) We didnt only talk about my work and the need to fund it. We talked about poetry. Tim was obsessed with poetry, and I soon was too, though Id never given it a second thought before I met him. We had lunch whenever we could. We never mentioned how we felt about each other-that was taken as read; we didnt need to discuss it, and it would have been awkward if we had. Tim had told me early on that he was married and that his wife would have been beside herself with fury if shed known he was meeting another woman for cozy lunches. He also said that knowing this wasnt enough to stop him, that he preferred my company to hers and there had been nothing in his marriage vows to say he couldnt eat with or talk to another woman.

I got the message: he wasnt ready to do anything that was against the rules. He didnt want to have an affair. Or, rather, he did, but he wasnt going to. At that point, I thought I could live with it if things never went any further. Just being with him and knowing how we felt about each other was enough for me at first. Just looking at his face, hearing his voice, reading his text messages and e-mails, made me feel as if something was grabbing hold of my body from the inside and shaking it. As if Id swallowed an earthquake.

If you were here now, Lauren, I suspect youd ask at this point how Sean fitted into all this. I cant imagine youd ever be a self-serving two-timing hypocrite in the way that I was. Sean and I were already living together, and, yes, I was betraying him, emotionally if not physically. Whats more, I was loving it-loving the idea that I was treating him badly. I had no moral problem with it whatsoever. When I tried to tell myself that I ought to feel guilty, I thought about how Sean complained whenever I had to spend a night away from home because of work and how he expected me to sit and watch him watch football whenever I wasnt away, and I thought, "Sorry, but Im putting my own needs first, and you wont be able to complain about it because you wont know." My relations.h.i.+p with Sean is not ideal, Lauren, as I told you before. Ive always known it wasnt ideal, but it took a weird night in a s.h.i.+tty hotel with you to make me realize quite how hopeless it is.

As promised, Tim got both Peter Lammonby and his friend Dan (Jose, of course) on board to the tune of nearly three million pounds, initially, with a guarantee of more from Lammonby if things went according to plan. Tim thought it would be a good idea to spread the opportunity around a bit, to which end he came up with a genius idea that made me fall even more deeply in love with him, if Im honest. He told me he was sure several of his high-net-worth clients would be interested, but many would be nervous about something so risky. My company hadnt actually done anything yet, so people would literally have been chucking their money at a hope and a prayer. Tim asked me if Id be willing to spend fifty thousand pounds of the companys money (which would have meant borrowing it from the bank at that point) in order to finance what he at first obliquely referred to as "a show of confidence."

I asked him what he meant. Tim outlined a plan that was as neat and perfect as a Shakespeare sonnet: I would spend fifty thousand pounds on his professional services and the services of a Geneva-based firm called Dombeck Zurbrugg. I dont want to bog you down in details, Lauren, so Ill explain this as simply as I can. Dombeck Zurbrugg is a company that helps UK high-net-worths (HNWs basically means very rich people) avoid tax by setting up trusts and parent companies that allow them to have their businesses based in Switzerland, for official purposes. They provide company director and company secretary services and a fiendishly complicated layered structure that makes it look as if its a Swiss company when it isnt, apart from on paper. This enables the UK HNWs to pay much less tax. Its not foolproof, and the UK tax authorities could certainly unravel it if they were willing to devote huge amounts of time to doing so, but many, many people have got away with it and saved millions.

I told Tim straight-out that I wasnt prepared to do it. Not because Im a fan of paying lots of tax (Im the opposite: I think there should be a fixed, low rate of tax, the same for everyone) but because I didnt want to have to be looking over my shoulder the whole time, wondering if the Inland Revenue was going to come after me. Tim nodded when I said this, as if hed antic.i.p.ated it. "No ones going to come after you because youre not going to do it. Youre not going to actually put any money into the vehicle DZ will set up for you. Itd be tricky anyway, unless you were prepared to relocate to Switzerland-you wouldnt be, would you?" I asked him flirtatiously if he would relocate with me, then wondered what Id said that was so wrong. Tim looked as if Id punched him in the stomach. For an awful second, I panicked in case Id misread the dynamic between us: maybe his interest in me was solely professional, maybe he stared deep into the eyes of all the technological entrepreneurs he met.

"Gaby, I need to be honest with you about something," he said. "I dont think I have it in me to do . . . anything like that. Leave my wife or even . . . well, anything. I hope that isnt going to ruin our friends.h.i.+p." A fortnight earlier, I might have nodded and said, "Fine," but Id been falling more irreversibly in love with him every day, and his declaration of unavailability sounded so horribly final. He was telling me that, on a fundamental level, I had to give up on him. The disappointment was crus.h.i.+ng. It was nearly a minute before I could get any words out. "Moral scruples or fear?" I asked him. "The latter," he said, then qualified it. "No, both. I fear that if I do something thats generally agreed to be wrong . . ." He left the sentence unfinished. I was furious, though I tried not to show it. What was he so scared of? Couldnt he ignore the general agreement and think for himself? How could he think that us being together could be wrong on any level?

I said none of these things. His ethical qualms made me feel ruthless. Actually, Ive always kind of known Im ruthless, Lauren, but, truth be told, Ive always quite liked that about myself. I thought I was ruthless in a nice, healthy way, but suddenly Tim had made me feel like a callous husband thief.

None of this made me love him any less, unfortunately for me. If a s.e.xually frustrated friends.h.i.+p was all that was on offer, I was too much in love with him to turn it down. Keeping my tone light, I asked, "Does the ninety midnights rule still apply?" Tim told me it did. (If you dont want to pay UK tax, you cant spend more than ninety midnights in the UK.) "So we could spend two hundred and seventy-five midnights in Switzerland together, and then for ninety midnights every year wed come back to the UK, youd live with Francine and Id live with Sean. Who, frankly, gets more of my midnights than he deserves at the moment." I often made barbed comments about Sean to Tim. He mentioned Francine as infrequently as possible. I thought it was an attempt to be gentlemanly at first, until I realized he couldnt bear to say her name.

Tim was keen to turn the conversation back to business planning. He told me it didnt matter that I wasnt prepared to become a tax exile and move to Switzerland. I only needed to be willing to waste fifty thousand pounds. He and Dombeck Zurbrugg would then do the work and set up a labyrinthine scheme that I would never use. The important thing was that Tim would be able to tell his clients that I was so confident of making a fortune, I was willing to spend a fortune on tax planning. "A lot of companies in Switzerland and the Isle of Man offer similar services, but DZ are the best and the most expensive," he said. "If I tell my high-net-worths youre spending fifty grand with DZ at this stage, believe me, theyll be queuing up to invest. Theyll think, 'this woman knows shes going to make tens if not hundreds of millions."

He turned out to be right. My wasting fifty grand on the Swiss setup that I never used brought in all the investors I needed, and all of them were Tims clients apart from Dan Jose, who was Tims best friend. But thats jumping ahead. That night, after Tim told me he would never leave Francine, I told Sean I wasnt feeling well and was going to sleep in the spare room. I stayed up all night weeping-with frustration as much as sadness, to be honest. How could Tim accept so readily that what he wanted wasnt possible? Im the sort of person who believes that anything and everything is possible. Anyone who doesnt believe that makes me angry.

By morning, my optimism had returned and Id decided that it was up to me to show Tim that there was a brave man inside him, waiting to be let out. I drew up the romantic equivalent of a business plan and made a concerted effort to make him love me more-so much that he would soon be thinking, "Whos Francine, anyway?" as willing to discard her as if she were a used paper napkin. (Are you disapproving of this, Lauren? If you are, then perhaps youve not yet met a man you love as much as I love Tim. I needed him. For me, Tim was the difference between feeling a hundred percent alive and feeling one percent alive. Its easy to abide by a principle when you arent in the grip of a blazing need that wont be denied.) My campaign worked. One day, in the Prosceniums restaurant while we were having lunch, Tim reached for my hand under the table. It was the first time wed touched, apart from brus.h.i.+ng against each other by-accident-on-purpose. Other people were there who might have seen. Tim knew he was being indiscreet, but was willing to take the risk. I thought to myself, "No matter what happens from now on, even if my heart ends up in pieces, this makes it all worth it, this moment."

From then on we held hands regularly, under as many of the Prosceniums tables as we could: in the restaurant, the reading room, the drawing room. People must have noticed, but everyone pretended not to. One day, Tim asked me if Id be willing to have dinner with him. I was over the moon, then puzzled when he told me that Dan Jose and his wife Kerry would be there too. "Theyre eager to meet the genius whos going to make them rich," he said. I was confused. The way hed started the conversation-"Will you have dinner with me, Gaby?"-had sounded like a different proposition. "So this is a business dinner?" I asked. "Nope," Tim said cheerfully. "Dan and Kerry are my closest friends. Its about time they met you. If they dont know you, and know you and me together, then they dont know me, and I think they ought to, since theyre my elective relatives. Is that okay with you?" I told him it was more than okay. "Only a matter of time until Francines history," I thought.

Tim and I never had dinner alone, but the dinners with Kerry and Dan (our chaperones, as Tim called them) became a regular thing. So did kissing. I was blissfully happy for a few months, thinking things were going my way. Then I started to get angry. Tims love for me was plain to see, but he hadnt said he loved me, not once. I hadnt said it either, and at a certain point I decided I wouldnt, not unless he said it first.

We went to Switzerland together to meet the Dombeck Zurbrugg people. Same hotel, separate rooms. It killed me, Lauren: the sheer, outrageous waste of it. Tim mumbled something about it not being easy for him. That was on our first night there. I hoped he might see sense in time for us to spend the second and last night of the trip together. It didnt happen. On the way to the airport for the flight home, I lightheartedly mentioned the ninety midnights plan again, and Tim turned to me in the back of our taxi and said, "Gaby, what weve got now . . . I really dont think Ill ever be able to offer you any more. Francine would know if anything happened. Shed sense it, Im sure she would. I just . . . Its a line I cant cross. Do you understand what Im saying?" I understood. No s.e.x, ever: that was what he was telling me. He asked if it was okay with me, if I could handle it. Every cell of my body was wailing, "No!" and, "You f.u.c.king hypocrite! 'Francine would know if anything happened? But so much is happening, all the time-we stand on the street kissing pa.s.sionately, our bodies locked together, and Francine doesnt know anything about it! At least if we had s.e.x wed be likely to do it more discreetly, in a room with the curtains shut!" I didnt say any of that to Tim, Lauren. Instead, I said, "Yes, of course." I said it because a) if you want to tempt a man to leave or cheat on his wife, turning into a wailing harpy isnt the best approach, and b) I finally woke up and realized I might have to accept Tims limits. If he could never leave Francine or be properly unfaithful to her, I faced a stark choice: either lose him altogether or live with the best he could do.

It wasnt a choice, Lauren. I couldnt lose him. I resigned myself to a tortured existence. And then, to my astonishment, less than two weeks later, something momentous happened. On Valentines Day. Sean didnt get me anything, not even a card. He and I had never bothered with Valentines Day. Im so not a Valentines kind of person that I didnt think to send Tim a card either, but a card for me arrived at my work that morning. There was a poem in it by a poet called e. e. c.u.mmings, a pa.s.sionately romantic one. Youll find it on the Internet if you Google "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)." The card contained the words "I love you" and was signed "The Carrier." It could only be from Tim, I thought. Tim was the carrier of my heart, and he knew it.

I left work immediately and went to his work, where Id never been before. We always met at the Proscenium. I walked into his office, sat on his desk and said, "I love you too, Tim. Im sorry I didnt send you a card, but yours has made not only my day but my entire life." He looked terrified. Instantly, I felt stupid and cra.s.s and insensitive. I realized that Tim had signed his card "The Carrier" for a reason. To write the words "I love you" and sign the card in his own name would have been too much for him, given his fear of Francine. Hed have been paranoid that any such card with his signature at the bottom might fall into her hands. He needed to hide behind the safety of a pseudonym. Feeling clumsy and painfully exposed, I started to apologize, but Tim interrupted me and said, "Do you really love me, Gaby?" He looked so wary, it made me laugh. I told him I adored him and had from the second Id met him. I told him I felt as if there was a magnet in my gut, pulling me toward him, every moment of every day. He said, "Thats it. Thats how I feel about you too. We need to try and work something out, dont we?" I didnt dare say a word, couldnt believe he meant what I thought he meant. But he did. I think hearing me say I loved him made a difference.

The next time we had lunch together, Tim told me about his recurring nightmare. Did he think that was the first step toward us "working something out"? I dont know. I also dont know what would have happened if he hadnt mustered the courage to tell me about the dream. Maybe wed still be having lunch together at the Proscenium twice a week, and dinner with Kerry and Dan once a month. Maybe wed still be kissing pa.s.sionately in doorways and car parks. Or perhaps Id have grown tired of the hypocrisy and demanded to know how Tim was able to tell himself that he wasnt being unfaithful to Francine when any fool could see that he was. If hed got drunk every Friday night and screwed a different nameless woman he picked up in a nightclub, that would have been less of a betrayal of his marriage than what he was doing with me. How could he not see that? Even now, years later, the irrationality of it makes me want to howl with rage.

Tim had (has?) a recurring nightmare in which Francine tries to kill him. Or is about to try to kill him: he always wakes up before it happens. In the dream, hes trapped in a small room with her, the hotel room they stayed in when they went on holiday to Leukerbad in Switzerland. She proposed to him on that trip, and hes convinced that she also tried to kill him, because ever since they got back hes been woken regularly by this nightmare. Francine is crossing the room diagonally, walking toward him. Tims cowering in a corner, shaking, unable to keep still. He cant actually see Francine, only her shadow against the white wall, moving closer. Her arm looks funny, thin as string and with a kink in it, as if its been broken and healed badly. Shes carrying a handbag. In the bag is something shes going to use to murder Tim; he doesnt know what. He always wakes up before she reaches him.

After he told me about the dream, I understood a bit better why he was so scared of Francine. If he honestly believed shed made an attempt on his life and might do so again, then, yes, I could see why he wouldnt risk leaving her. What I didnt understand was how it was possible for her to have tried to kill him and him not remember. I know people occasionally talk about trauma and memory loss, but I just didnt buy it. If your partner tries to kill you, generally you know about it consciously. You dont rely on hints in dreams.

I went to Switzerland, Lauren. A bit like you following me to Dsseldorf, I followed Tims nightmare. I didnt think it would do me or him any good, necessarily, but I was in love with him and obsessed with trying to help him. I thought the hotel staff might remember something. Maybe if I asked the right questions, one of them would say, "Oh, yes, Tim Breary-he stayed here with his girlfriend and she plunged a screwdriver into his carotid artery in the middle of the night." I booked myself into the hotel theyd stayed in: Les Sources des Alpes in Leukerbad. Same room. I had to bribe the hotel staff to trawl through old files to find out which room had been theirs.

Would you believe me if I told you I solved the mystery, Lauren? Well, I did. There were no clues in the room or in the hotel, but one day I went for a walk and I saw the answer. I saw that nothing was what Tim thought it was, and I realized his nightmare wasnt a memory. It was a metaphor (something that represents something else). Which meant that, in all probability, Francine hadnt tried to kill him, which explained why he had no conscious memory of her doing so.

Thrilled and proud of my discovery, I couldnt wait to tell Tim. Now my biggest regret is that I didnt keep my mouth shut. As soon as he heard that Id been to Leukerbad, his behavior toward me changed completely. I should have spotted it instantly and started to backtrack, but I was too full of myself and my great discovery. I told him I thought I knew what his dream meant, at least in part, and he completely freaked out. He wouldnt let me tell him, said I should leave him alone, get away from him and stay away, or he might say something hed regret, which of course was worse than if hed actually said whatever it was that was in his mind. I imagined the worst possible thing: "I dont love you and I never have. This was all a terrible mistake. Ill hate you until the day I die."

Youll have noticed I havent told you what I found out in Leukerbad, about Tims dream. Since he refused to be told, and felt so strongly that I had no business knowing, it would hardly be fair for me to tell anyone else.

So, there you have it: my relations.h.i.+p with Tim and how it ended. Since then, my lifes been monochrome. Diminished. I didnt realize quite how much until I met you and suddenly my past was dragged into my present.