Free A Colder War by Charles Cumming Page A

kissing another woman in the kitchen of their house in Cairo. She had walked into the garden, looked up at the house, and seen them together. She had recognized the woman as a member of staff from the embassy. In that moment, her entire understanding of family life had been obliterated. Her father was transformed from a man of strength and dignity, a man she trusted and whom she adored with all her heart, into a stranger who would betray her mother and whose affection for his daughter was apparently meaningless and inchoate.
    What had made the discovery even worse was her father’s realization that he had been spotted. The woman had left the house immediately. Paul had then come out into the garden and had tried to convince the teenage Rachel that he had merely been comforting a distraught colleague. Please do not mention this to your mother. You do not know what you have seen. In her state of shock, Rachel had agreed to the cover-up, but her complicity in the lie changed the nature of their relationship for good. She was not rewarded for keeping the secret; in fact, she was punished. Her father became distant. He withdrew his love. It was as though, as the years went by, he perceived Rachel as a threat. There were times when she felt that she was the one who had betrayed him .
    What Rachel witnessed that day also affected the way she formed and conducted her own relationships in later life. As she grew older, she became aware of trusting no one, of playing games with prospective lovers, of testing men for evidence of duplicity and cunning. Intensely private and concealed, Rachel was habitually drawn to men whom she could not have or could not control. At the same time, particularly in her early twenties, she was often dismissive of those who showed her genuine kindness and affection.
    In the months after the incident in Cairo, Rachel had made it her business to pry into her father’s personal affairs, developing an obsessive fascination with his behavior. She had cross-checked dates in his diaries; investigated “friends” to whom he had introduced her at seemingly benign family gatherings; eavesdropped on telephone calls whenever she found herself passing her father’s office at home or standing outside her parents’ bedroom.
    Then, years later, a reminder of the day that had changed everything.
    Only weeks before her father’s death, Rachel had discovered a letter that he had written to yet another mistress. Sent to the family flat in Gloucester Road. Rachel had recognized the stationery, the handwriting, but not the name of the person to whom the letter had been originally addressed in Croatia: Cecilia Sandor. The envelope was marked “Address Unknown” and there was a demand for excess postage. Rachel had intercepted it before her mother had looked through the morning post.
    She could still recite parts of the letter from memory:
    I cannot stop thinking about you, Cecilia. I want your body, your mouth, the taste of you, the smell of your perfume, your conversation, your laughter—I want all of it, constantly.
    I cannot wait to see you, my darling.
    I love you
    P x
    More than fifteen years after Cairo, Rachel had felt the same wrenching shock that she had experienced as a teenager looking up at the kitchen window. At thirty-one, she was no moralist. Rachel was under no illusions about marital infidelity. But the letter only served to remind her that nothing had changed. That her father would always put his own life, his own passions, his other women, in front of his love for his wife and daughter.
    So why, then, was she grieving him so intensely? Driving back to London the day after the funeral, Rachel had been suddenly so overwhelmed by loss that she had pulled her car over onto the hard shoulder of the motorway and sobbed uncontrollably. It was like being under a spell, a thing she could neither break nor control. As soon as the wave of grief had passed, however, she had felt restored and able to carry on