The Most Difficult Thing

I smiled to myself, leaning back, breathing deeply, drinking in his smell, letting the coolness of the sheets settle against my skin.

‘It’s OK, I’ll make it.’ I went to stand but he got up first.

‘No, no, it’s fine. You stay there.’

I watched him walk through the bedroom door to the kitchen in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, the cotton rubbing against the curve of his shoulder blade.

Contentedly, I let my eyes drift around the room, soaking up the old press cuttings, a couple in frames against one wall, a thick stack of books on either side of the fireplace.

It was not like me to overstep boundaries with Harry. But it was in both our interests, I told myself as my toes pressed silently onto the floor next to the bed, the wooden boards soft against the soles of my feet.

Still, I was reassured by the sound of the kettle lightly humming in the kitchen as I wrapped the bedsheet around myself, turning slightly to the empty doorway before moving towards his desk.

I stopped again, giving myself a chance to back out; but it was not as if I was snooping, I reminded myself as I lowered myself slowly into his empty seat, which was still warm. It was hardly rummaging through his secret possessions; it was just a pile of papers and a pad, his writing, unconcealed, the thick, loopy scrawl of someone who thought too quickly.

I did not touch anything, I did not have to turn my head to read it. It was just there, in the middle of a series of words connected by arrows, streaking angrily back and forth across the page, the word ‘TradeSmart’ circled in pen.

My whole body tensed. That could not be right. I looked again, picking up the notepad this time, turning it so that the words were in sharp focus in front of my face.

As I raised the pad, a photo fell loose, landing face up on the floorboards by my feet. I looked down, and the image stared back at me. The single image of a boy, his extremities protruding from under a white sheet – a child of six or seven.

If it wasn’t for the skin, which was black, and the hair, which clung to his head in tight curls, it might have been Thomas. My own brother’s face, his skin unnaturally white that day, beneath a scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, had shared the same slackness of the jaw, the same unmistakable absence of life. His blond hair stuck to his forehead where he had pushed away the heat of the summer’s day with a tiny wrist.

‘Your coffee?’ Harry stopped when he saw my expression.

My eyes were unable to leave the photo. As if looking in from somewhere else, I heard myself gag, watched myself stand too quickly and then the chair falling away behind me.

‘Anna?’

Harry rushed towards me and I pulled myself away, making it to the bathroom just in time.

He had not been angry about me prying and, like a fool, I had taken his softness as a sign of his love. Rather, he had merely sighed, as if there was an inevitability about what was to come.

Leading me into the living room, he held a cigarette packet in his hand as we sat opposite each other on the sofa, spinning the box slowly between his fingers as he spoke.

After some deviation, we got to the point.

‘The thing is, Anna, for the past four years I’ve been part of a team looking at a company called TradeSmart.’

‘I know who they are.’

‘Of course you do.’

He dropped his eyes, looking away momentarily, releasing a small sigh.

‘Well, as you may or may not know, David’s dad’s company, they’re a massive FTSE 100 organisation. A leading logistics and commodity trading company, by their own account.’

He lit a cigarette, his forehead creasing, sliding the pack along to me.

‘Clive Witherall, David’s father, he’s …’ He paused. What was he thinking in that moment? Did he ever doubt me – did he ever wonder if it was safe to carry on? Or was I so clearly enraptured by then that he already knew what I would be prepared to do?

‘We haven’t met.’ I filled in the gaps.

He carried on after a moment, holding my eyes.

‘Well, as you might be aware, to the outside world, Witherall is a bit of a saint. Philanthropist, socialite … Runs a couple of orphanages in Central Africa, patron of several charities, friend to the great and the good, whatever else you like.’

He took a drag of his cigarette between words, exhaling a thin, steady stream of smoke.

‘You’ve probably seen him on TV. He’s a cocky fucker, always up on his soap-box, brazen as anything. What he’s less keen to stand up and talk about, though, is the fact that TradeSmart, for all its talk of corporate social responsibility and ethical foundations, is responsible for dumping a shitload of toxic waste at the edge of villages in Equatorial Guinea, through a series of local contractors. The fallout of which has meant thousands of people have died.’

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, unsure what to say.

‘Shit. That’s terrible.’

‘It is terrible. I mean, we’re talking babies, children, women … and hundreds more left with horrific health problems.’

I had no idea where this was going; I was just so happy, so grateful, to be party at last to his inner life. Perhaps once he learned he could trust me, then we could become a proper couple. I could move in, introduce him to my work colleagues …

Even then, my mind had skated to David but only for a second. The presents, the house? For Harry I would have given it all up in a second.

‘That’s so fucked up. I can’t believe it. I mean, seriously, to hear David talk about it, you would think his dad was like some kind of god. So you’re writing a piece about this?’

He pushed himself up from the sofa, moving purposefully back towards his desk, shoulders broadening.

He opened the drawer slowly, as if still unsure whether to show me or not. By the time he pulled out the folder, turning to face me with renewed purpose, he had me rapt.

‘It gets worse.’ His voice lowered as he sat. ‘A lot worse, Anna … The problem with people like Clive Witherall, you see, is that they have friends everywhere.’

I nodded along, the dutiful student.

‘And when you have the right friends in the right places and the means to take advantage of destabilised borders, there is no limit to what you can get away with … The problem is, right now, we’ve hit a wall. It doesn’t matter what we know, because if we can’t prove it—’

He cut himself off, his demeanour visibly shifting, as if suddenly aware of the line he had crossed.

‘God, Anna, I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear this.’

‘No, I do.’

I unfolded my legs, on cue, turning my attention to what he was holding. After just enough deliberation, he took a step towards me, taking in my silence as he handed me the file – an A4 folder, neatly stuffed with papers and photographs.

Amidst the horror of what was being revealed, there was something so natural about sitting there with him, the intensity of the secrets passing between us. I felt his eyes on me as I flicked through pages of transcripts, studying my reaction to the images of dead bodies scattered across a dirt track; weapons, lined up like contestants in a beauty pageant – caring what I thought.

Yet, as I turned the page again, I felt my chest contract. The image had hit me in the chest with the force of a hammer.

At first my eyes were hesitant to settle on the lines of the child’s face, but after that I could not wrench them away.

He would have been six or seven, the same age as Thomas, his eyes closed as if in sleep, peering out from under a white sheet. His mother’s arms were locked around her son, her face twisted; it was the same expression I saw when I closed my eyes at night.

Here, in Harry’s flat, in this image of someone else’s child, stiff and lifeless under the sheet, I saw the tiny mound of limbs on the driveway of my parents’ home, my own mother’s heart being torn from her body.

I dropped the file as soon as I saw it, turning from Harry, my fingernails running down my arms.

‘Anna?’

‘Who is that?’

Harry’s face gave nothing away, but clearly he knew he was safe to carry on.

‘This is one of the children who died after a TradeSmart contractor was paid to dump seriously toxic waste at the edge of a playground.’

He let the words settle, waiting for me to soak them in.

‘And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In that folder you’re holding we have transcripts from women, children who …’

He must have seen the unease that spread across my face.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this.’

Taking a step back, he took a final pull of his cigarette before smearing the butt across the windowsill and letting it drop from his hand.

We were silent for a few minutes. I don’t remember taking a single breath as I processed his words, leaning forward, the image of the boy’s body soldering into me, intensified by my desperation for Harry’s faith in me. Desperation not just to know, but to be the one he chose to confide in.

‘Harry, please tell me.’

I could feel the burning in my cheeks as he sat back at the other end of the sofa, cupping his face with his hands. Closing his eyes, he circled his fingers over the dark lids, tracing the grooves of his skull.

Eventually, his hands dropped away from his face and he bent his knees, lowering himself beside me. I moved closer in response, holding out my hands.

‘How can I help? Is there research, or could I …’

He shook his head.

‘Oh, come on, Harry. I could do it, you know I could. You know how committed I am, I could help …’

He looked away, clearing his throat, preparing himself.

‘Of course I know that, Anna. It’s not that I … It’s just …’

The more he resisted me, the more forcefully I pleaded with him.

‘Come on. What’s wrong with you? You have just told me this man is a child murderer, but you don’t want as much help as you can get in exposing him? I live with his son, for God’s sake, Harry. We’re sleeping together. How could you not want to use me?’

How, in uttering those words, did I not understand what was happening?

‘You would do that?’ Holding my gaze, he sniffed. ‘There are complications.’

I stayed quiet then, giving him the space he needed, the room to make the decision for himself.

‘OK.’ He had said it as if to himself. ‘You really want to know, then I’ll tell you. I don’t really know how to … So I’m just going to come out and say it. I’m not writing an article about TradeSmart.’

I stared back at him blankly.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m not writing a piece about Clive Witherall. I’m looking into him, yes, but it’s not for an article. Not for a newspaper. The truth is, I’m working for … an organisation, an agency, let’s say, to help bring down a man essentially responsible for genocide. And yes, we do need your help, desperately. I just don’t know if I can …’

He looked at me for a final time before continuing.

‘The problem is that Clive, he’s an extremely powerful man … What we really need is someone on the inside, someone who can get close to him …’

The realisation slowly dawned. Drawing a cigarette from the packet he had dropped on the sofa, I let it roll between my fingers as I listened.

‘Who is we?’

He held my gaze, unblinking.

My voice sounded more self-assured than I had expected, when I continued.

‘Harry, if you expect me to trust you it has to go both ways. You can’t ask me to be involved with something and not tell me who I’m getting involved with. You can’t think I’m that naive.’

The truth, of course, was that he hardly needed to say, and I hardly needed to push. We both knew what we were talking about. MI5, MI6 … Did it matter which? I wasn’t prepared to ask myself the right questions at the time, let alone to ask him. But the truth is, it can’t have been that easy. There must have been a moment in which I stepped back long enough to question where all this would lead, a chill grazing the bare skin of my forearms. Yet, if there was any doubt, I have pushed it so far into the recesses of my memory that I cannot get it back.

‘You wouldn’t have to report to anyone but me. You would be paid a retainer.’

He said it as an afterthought, having returned from the kitchen with a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

‘Obviously it would come from another source so it didn’t look obvious.’

Had a smile formed on my lips? Or was it something else I was feeling, a sense that I was stepping with each second that passed towards devastating self-destruction?

It was hard to say right now exactly how much money I would receive, Harry added, but enough to make my life comfortable.

‘Only this has to come from you. If you were going to get involved in this, Anna, it would have to be off your own bat. You hear me? For the right reasons – because you wanted to help.’

My expression must have sharpened, a pang of annoyance that he even needed to say this.

‘No one will think any less of you if you decide you can’t. Plenty of people know awful things are happening but choose – understandably – not to get involved. Even if they could help, they don’t. And that doesn’t mean that they’re bad people, it just means—’

‘I get it.’

He considered me for a while, as if noticing something in my face that he had not seen before. After a minute or so, he nodded.

‘If you’re serious … Either way, you need to go away and give it some thought. Let me know, when you’re ready.

‘More than anything,’ he added, drawing a line under the conversation, ‘you must know that I will always be there, if you decide to go ahead. If ever you need me.’

CHAPTER 11

Anna

David had already left by the time I woke up. Drawn outside by the light spilling in through every crevice of the house, the sound of the birds perched on the feeder outside the kitchen window, I took my cup onto the patio.

Following the curve of the garden, I walked towards the ornate iron bench which stood next to the door leading out onto the Heath, settling to feel the morning sun brushing against my face, the occasional call of a dog walker, the gurgle of a toddler, rising over the wall.

This is where I was still sitting, nursing a cup of cold coffee, when David appeared through the French doors half an hour later. It was a Saturday morning and the promise of spring danced between puffs of light cloud.

He wore a look of appreciation as he approached, the sun lighting him from behind. With the halo effect of the light around his head, I had a flash of memory: that first afternoon drinking together on the beach at Brighton. It was the same look, one that I could now recognise as adoration, which he wore then. Without the affectations of his university brand – the Camden Market-style jewellery traded in for a simple leather watch; the hooded jumper replaced with a casual light blue shirt – he looked younger, somehow, like a boy who had raided his father’s wardrobe.

He was about to say something, I could tell, but he paused briefly, as if enjoying the spectacle of this moment together in the garden of the house he grew up in too much to interrupt. When he finally pulled up a chair, he pressed his lips on mine.

I smiled, pulling myself slightly away from him, meeting his eyes.

‘I was thinking, we should get a gardener,’ I said, once he had settled himself, leaning back against the bench, his legs splayed.

I had been working up to the suggestion over the past few days, still unsure whether it was within my remit to request such a thing. This was still very much his family home but, beautiful as it was, it had begun to feel frayed, the toll of David’s once steady stream of parties having worn into the edges.

He shrugged. ‘Sure.’ The glint in his eyes remained intact.

I nodded, pleased at his easy reaction, looking away for a moment before feeling my attention drawn back to him.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

He was staring, the smile pinched at either side of his mouth.

‘What, David?’ I tried not to sound impatient, pushing playfully at his arm. ‘What do you want?’

‘I bought croissants,’ he said, reaching down towards a shopping bag. ‘And juice.’

I arranged myself in my chair, ‘Excellent, thank you.’

‘And …’ he paused before reaching into his pocket, drawing out an envelope. There was a loaded silence and then he started to speak. ‘These past months with you … I know, I know, but humour me, please … These past few months with you have been the best of my life. I know it sounds horribly cheesy but it’s true. And …’

He made the sound of a drum-roll, then placed the envelope between my fingers.

Trying to read his face, I opened it and pulled out two tickets, feeling my heartbeat rise.

He watched me as I raised one hand to my mouth, the other hand clutching the plane tickets. ‘Oh my God, David, I can’t, this is too much …’

‘It’s not.’

He held my knee in his hand, squeezing harder with every second that passed.

‘I know sometimes maybe you feel I’m pushing things too fast, but I really mean it when I say that you are the most extraordinary girl …’ He corrected himself, ‘You are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met. And I know how hard you’ve been working, and, well, it’s a selfish act. I want you there, I want you to meet my family. My dad.’

He watched me, my teeth biting down onto my lip so that I could taste the blood inside my mouth.

‘Sorry, that sounded intense. I just mean I want to spend time with you, away from here. I want you to be part of my life. Properly.’

I swallowed, looking up at him, pausing just long enough to see his desire grow a little more.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Say you’ll come?’ He moved closer.

Greece. I felt my stomach flip.

Placing my hand on the side of my chair to steady myself, I breathed in.

‘I’ll come.’

‘He’s invited me to Greece.’

I blurted it out as soon as I had stepped inside Harry’s front door, the reality of what was happening jolting through me in fretful waves.

It was only the third time I had been at the flat since I moved in with David, feigning overnight stays with friends; claims I had been waiting for him to question, and which he never did – trusting me implicitly from the very start.

Harry was still standing with one hand on the front door, but after a moment a smile crept across his face and he pushed it closed.

‘Really?’

He moved towards me and for once I moved away, unsure of what I needed, unable to stand still long enough to accept his touch.

He was gentle with me, careful not to push, always gauging his impact on me perfectly.

‘And Clive, he’ll be there too?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’re brilliant.’

This time I stayed put as he placed his hands on my hips, pressing his palms against the gentle roll of the bone.

‘What did you say when he asked you?’

‘What do you think?’

He nodded, absorbing my words. I felt his eyes weighing me up, the balance of power between us shifting imperceptibly.

‘And you are OK with this?’ He spoke quietly, but his words were weighted.

‘Yes.’ My voice was less steady now, less convinced. I felt my body shake, my face turning to the table where his cigarettes lay.

Harry followed my gaze and leaned over to pick up the packet, pulling one out and pressing it into my hand.

‘Are you sure? Because you don’t seem sure.’

‘Harry, for fuck’s sake, I’m sure.’

I stooped to accept his lighter before looking up sharply. His lack of faith had provoked me. What did he think I had been doing these past months?

Sensing my unease, he clamped his right hand softly around the base of my neck, my flesh tingling at his touch. Closing my eyes, I felt the words fall from my mouth, ‘I’ve missed you.’

CHAPTER 12

Anna

The airport that first time was an assault on my senses. Keeping close to David, I followed the endless lines, past armed police officers, parents with toddlers on leashes, women with fixed smiles seizing bottles of perfume; the cacophony of beeps and hums taunting me as I scanned the customs hall for cues as to how to behave.

It had not occurred to me to leave my second phone in my suitcase, and it was not the kind of question I had thought to ask when Harry was talking me though the plan, mistaking my continuous probing for direction in best practice, rather than a plea for basic information. Short of admitting I had never been abroad before, how could I explain to someone to whom international travel was second nature that other than knowing to take my passport, I had no idea what to expect?

While I had never directly lied to Harry about my past, there was plenty I hadn’t mentioned. Our relationship, I was sure, relied on him believing me to possess a degree of sophistication that the full truth would instantly belie.

At security, I mirrored David’s movements, laying my possessions out in a plastic tray, feeling the customs officer’s eyes on me as she beckoned me through a metal arch that shot out a cry as I passed through.

Beckoning me forward, the woman pressed her hand against my body, her palms running up and down my thighs as perspiration stung the top of my lip.

‘Could you empty your pockets for me, please?’

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

David, a metre or so away, was repacking the contents of his rucksack. My hands shaking, I reached hesitantly into the lining of my jacket.

The woman raised an eyebrow, as if to ask, two phones?

‘One’s for work.’ I spoke quickly, my eyes moving to David, who was making his way towards me now.

‘Everything OK?’

Working hard to hold his attention with my eyes, to distract him from my fingers, I arranged my face into a smile, the blood pounding in my chest.

When the customs officer spoke again, I missed her words.

‘Sorry?’

‘I said, you’ll have to run them through the X-ray. Go back through.’

She was becoming exasperated, as were the family behind us, the toddler’s screams growing louder with each second that passed.

Giving David a smile, I followed the woman’s pointed finger back through the metal archway, moving as fast as was reasonable towards the stack of plastic trays, placing the phones side by side in the rectangular cradle. As I scanned my mind for possible explanations I could use to reassure David, all I could focus on was the sound of the child’s voice rising in shrill peaks behind me; the wail of the metal detectors going off one after another across the hall, rising and falling like an air-raid siren.

I could of course repeat that it was a work phone, but he would be instantly suspicious as to why I hadn’t mentioned it before. All of this, everything, relied on me giving him no reason to doubt anything I said. Ever. The moment he started to question me, even for something seemingly innocuous, would be the moment everything would start to unravel.

Besides, I wondered, could I lie to his face without giving myself away? It seems laughable now that I had credited myself with having so much integrity.

David’s eyes stayed on mine as he continued walking towards me, trance-like, and I held them there, willing him with every inch of my body not to look away. If his gaze so much as slipped towards the glistening line of tiny crystals of sweat that had formed above my lips, the spell would be broken.

As I opened my mouth to speak – to tell the only lie my mind could fathom – there was a sound like a gunshot and every eye in the room swooped towards me. Instantly, the room fell quiet. A second later, there was a wail from the child behind us and it was then that I understood the source of the noise: a bottle of milk the boy’s parents had been using in an attempt at placation being thrown and hitting the ground with the force of a missile.