The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham Page B

rejoin us in the kitchen for hot chocolate.
    When I first met Cate, Barnaby was already forty, but looked good for his age. And he could get away with things because he was so supremely confident. I saw him do it countless times at restaurants, on school open days and in the middle of the street. He could say the most outrageous things, using double entendres and playful squeezes and women would simply giggle and go weak at the knees.
    He cal ed me his “Indian princess” and his “Bol ywood beauty” and, one time, when he took us horse riding, I actual y felt dizzy when he put his hands around my waist and lifted me down from the saddle.
    I would never have confessed it to anyone, but Cate guessed the truth. It wasn’t hard. I was always inviting myself back to her place and making excuses to talk to her father. She didn’t even know about the times I rode my bicycle past his office, hoping he might see me and wave. Twice I ran into open car doors.
    Cate, of course, found my infatuation hilarious beyond measure, thus ensuring I have never admitted to loving any man.
    See the sort of stuff I remember! It’s al coming back, the good, the bad and the ugly. My mind aches.
    I’ve been dreading this moment—seeing Barnaby again. Ever since the accident he has slept at Cate’s house, according to Jarrod. He hasn’t been to work or answered cal s.
    The front door has stained-glass panels and a tarnished knocker in the shape of a naked torso. I grab her hips. Nobody answers. I try again.
    A lock turns. The door opens a crack. Unshaven and unwashed, Barnaby doesn’t want to see me. Self-pity needs his ful attention.
    “Please, let me in.”
    He hesitates but the door opens. I move inside, stepping around him as though he’s surrounded by a force field. The place is musty and closed up. Windows need opening. Plants need watering.
    I fol ow him to the kitchen and dining area, open plan, looking out into the garden. Cate’s touches are everywhere from the French provincial dining table to the art deco posters on the wal s. There are photographs on the mantel. One of them, a wedding picture, shows Cate in a twenties flapper dress trimmed with mother-of-pearl.
    Folding himself onto a sofa, Barnaby crosses his legs. A trouser cuff slides up to reveal a bald shin. People used to say he was ageless and joke about him having a portrait in his attic. It’s not true. His features are too feminine to age wel . Instead of growing character lines he has wrinkled and one day, ten years from now, he’l wake up an old man.
    I never imagined speaking to him again. It doesn’t seem so hard, although grief makes everything more intimate.
    “They always say that a father is the last person to know anything,” he says. “Cate used to laugh at me. ‘Dear old Dad,’ she said. ‘Always in the dark.’” Confusion clouds his eyes. Doubt.
    “Did Felix know?”
    “They weren’t sleeping together.”
    “He told you that.”
    “Cate wouldn’t let him touch her. She said it might harm the baby. They slept in different beds—in different rooms.”
    “Surely a husband would—”
    “Marriage and sex aren’t mutual y inclusive,” he says, perhaps too knowingly. I feel myself growing uncomfortable. “Cate even told Felix he could see a prostitute if he wanted. Said she wouldn’t mind. What sort of wife says that? He should have seen something was wrong.”
    “Why couldn’t she conceive?”
    “Her womb destroyed his sperm. I don’t know the medical name for it. They tried for seven years. IVF, drugs, injections, herbal remedies; they exorcised the house of evil spirits and sprinkled Chinese lemongrass oil on the garden. Cate was a walking bloody textbook on infertility. That’s why it came as such a surprise. Cate was over the moon—I’ve never seen her happier. I remember looking at Felix and he was trying hard to be excited—I guess he was—but it’s like he had a question inside him that wouldn’t go away.”
    “He had