Read The Invisible Ones for Free Online Page B

didn’t. That’s what I can’t bear. The years I lost.”
    “But it’s only now you look back, knowing that she was cheating on you, that you are, retrospectively, miserable. You weren’t miserable at the time. That time wasn’t lost—or stolen. When you didn’t know, you were happy.”
    “I thought I was.”
    “If you think you’re happy, then you are. Isn’t that the best we can hope for?”
    He smiled a difficult smile. I think he really cared about her but wasdivorcing her nonetheless. I shrugged. I don’t tell people what to do; I’m just the man they pay to sift through their rubbish. They wouldn’t listen to me, anyway.
    Anyway: stakeout.
    It’s better than rubbish-sifting, which usually isn’t as fruitful as it’s made out to be. To be honest, there’s a certain excitement about a stakeout—at least for five minutes, when you park across the street, camera on the pas-senger seat, Dictaphone, thermos, sandwiches, spare roll of film . . . It’s the same as the door to our office. I insisted on a half-glass door when we were fitting out our premises. Why? So we could have our names on it, like Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep . Every private detective I’ve ever known talks about how there is no glamour in the job. They’re all liars. There’s plenty of tedium, of course, plenty to depress you: uncertainty, insecurity, meeting a lot of people who are not at all happy to see you. But every time I walk through that door, run my eye over the somber gold letters and think, That’s my name, there it is, just for a second: a thrill of pleasure. Isn’t that the same thing as glamour?
    Same with stakeouts. You’ve all seen the movies. Well, so have we. Anything could happen, at any time. Usually doesn’t, granted, but you never know. Although there isn’t any glamour this time, but that’s because this particular party is one I’ve seen before; I’ve already got evidence, bags of it; this evening is just by way of backup. Nail in the coffin of guilt.
    For fifty minutes nothing happens, unless you count my eating a ham sandwich and drinking a cup of tea. I’m watching a house on a street of identical houses on the edge of Twickenham. There’s a light on upstairs, but it could be on a timer, so I don’t read too much into that. At 7:28 a car parks down the street, and a man—fortyish, slightly overweight, foolish face—gets out, walks up to the house, and lets himself in with a key. There could be a flicker of movement inside the hall, but I can’t be sure.
    He has a key.
    At 8:09 the door opens again and the man comes back out, havingchanged his jacket for something warmer. So he has clothes at this address. Now he is accompanied by a woman of a similar age, flamboyantly dressed, good-looking, slim, Chinese. They walk toward his car, side by side but without touching, seemingly without exchanging a word. As they turn out of the gate and onto the street, the woman flicks her head in my direction, but I can’t tell whether she’s registered my car or if it means anything to her. Ruler-straight dark hair swings across her face as she does so—like the swift strokes of a brush. I take a couple of photographs. They’re not very good ones, profile at best, and the light is pretty poor, so there won’t be much detail. Not that it matters.
    I know exactly who they are.
    In the morning, Hen eyes me warily from his desk. He’s had a row with his wife, Madeleine—that’s clear. He also has a sleep-deprived, haggard look about him—apparently Charlie, the youngest, was up all night with some unidentified childhood ailment.
    “All right now, is he?”
    “I expect he’ll live.”
    The pencil between his teeth waggles up and down—a cigarette substitute.
    “Madeleine wants me to invite you for dinner. Tomorrow.” “Tomorrow? Oh, I don’t know that—”
    “She won’t take no for an answer.”
    “What if I have a prior engagement?”
    “Do you?”
    “I might have. I might have a life.