Conrad & Eleanor by Jane Rogers Page B

clear now: she must lie. Better for Con, better for the baby, better for Paul and Megan, better for Glenn. Better for everyone, to lie. To let life be as Con would like it to be. As Con deserves.
    And the lie had taken, and beautiful blonde Cara was born, and Con loved her more than any of the other three. He was her father, a wonderful father, and she was his daughter. And El had hugged her past to herself and imagined herself safe from discovery. As indeed she was for nineteen years. This house was wonderful then – they had bought it the year before, with money El inherited from her grandfather. A big old weaver’s house, right on the road, with the back rooms facing south, and sunshine pouring in. A previous owner had installed rather inappropriate French windows, but when they stood open on a summer’s day, letting onto the stone-flagged garden area which was bounded by a wide lawn, ending in an overgrown vegetable garden, it was idyllic. Con planted roses and honeysuckle and buddleia, and the children wore little pathways in the flower beds to their favourite hidey-holes behind the bushes. It seems it was always summer, when they were little.
    She is dragged from her memories by Paul, who claims he also could not sleep, and says they must call the police today.
    â€˜I’ll tell them,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to do anything.’
    â€˜They’ll want to come round and question us all.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜They’ll go through his things – his computer.’
    â€˜Of course. That’s how they’ll try and trace him.’
    â€˜Paul, I just don’t think it’s necessary yet.’
    â€˜I’m phoning them now, Mum, right now.’ He heads for the kitchen.
    El has realised she has not scoured Con’s computer as thoroughly as she meant to. What if they take it today? She dresses quickly and goes to Con’s study. She’ll have to call in sick, there’s no way she can do the departmental meeting and the lecture. She’ll try to go in later and finish the grant application.
    Turning on the computer and sitting at his desk, she feels sick with dread. The dread of finding something out, something secret, shameful, something he has chosen to keep hidden from her. The grey box on the desk in front of her is basically an extension of his brain; flicking through its files and folders, its Work, Home, Contacts, is fully as invasive as prying into his mind. She imagines a surgeon peering into an opened skull, delicately probing the dense grey tissue, pressing apart the folds in the living cortex with his blunt pink fingers.
    As the computer slowly churns to life and opens its programs, she steels herself. Bad as his disappearance is, to find out the truth of it will be worse. Because then she will have to know. People talk about closure, thinks El. The first time she saw it in the press, she thought it typically American. Part of a culture that talks too much, faking understanding with the glib vocabulary of therapy. In so far as she understands closure, she surely doesn’t want it. How can the end of this story be good? As long as it is unknown there is a chance it might be OK. There is a tiny space for hope. With closure, there will be none.
    Scanning his emails is not as big a job as she imagined. His desktop is only a year old, and the email traffic is tiny in comparison to hers. His emails are mainly junk and intermittent exchanges with colleagues about research papers. The Deleted box is empty, but to judge from the spam in his Inbox, that is because he has never deleted anything, rather than because he is a scrupulous PC housekeeper. There are storage folders labelled HOUSE, ADMIN and MAD. She clicks on MAD. There are seven emails, the first dated four months ago. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you, wanker . The subject line is empty and there’s no signature. The sender’s address is [email protected].
    The