by Sarah Dunant
Then she tried a shy smile at herself. “That’s better,” she murmured aloud to her own reflection. “See. You don’t have to be so scared all the time. It’s not as bad as you think. He’s not a monster. He unlocked the door and let you out, didn’t he? That has to mean something.”
She paused. The woman staring back at her remained unconvinced.
She frowned. “What if he’s telling the truth? If all he wants is your company. It’s only two days. You talk, get to know each other, see him through a bad time, and then you go home. He lets you go. He keeps his word and you keep yours. No one has to know. It’s your secret. Between the two of you. You can do that, can’t you? For Lily’s sake you can do that.”
She gave herself—and him—a bright smile as if in answer to her question. And then, at last, she heard it: the small but unmistakable noise—half click, half scrape—that placed him at that moment on the other side of the wall. It ran a scalpel into her gut, cold and clean. Go on, keep on snapping, take as many as you want, she thought. Because I’m going to get out of here. And when I do I’m going to be taking your films with me.
She dropped her eyes and moved back toward the chair. And as she did she thought she heard another move, more muffled this time. Another roll of film, or had he had enough? Somewhere close by, the darkroom would be waiting. Was it the same room or somewhere else? Wherever it was, he wouldn’t want to risk her hearing him go there. Not now. Better to wait until she had left before he made his move.
She glanced around the room. The horse was still on the table, wobbly but still standing. They needed to be reunited before she could leave. She gave another yawn, bigger this time, equally genuine once it took hold, then, placing herself between the mirror and the table, she gathered up the wooden animal along with the book. From there she walked slowly and noisily out of the room, snapping the light off behind her.
She kept up the obvious soundtrack as she mounted the stairs to her room and opened and closed her door loudly. Then, slipping off her shoes, she retraced her footsteps silently, downstairs, along the corridor, and back into the living room, to a vantage point just inside where she couldn’t be seen, but from where she could hear everything.
Sure enough, now he thought she was gone he was noisier. She could hear him quite distinctly now, footsteps on stone, then the sound of an object dragging or being pushed. Except somehow she had got the geography wrong. Because the sounds weren’t coming from the other room, they were happening right underneath her, below the very floorboards on which she was standing.
She processed the information fast. Somewhere down below . . . To have got himself back into the house again from where he left the car would have taken time, however quickly he moved. He couldn’t or wouldn’t have risked coming in on the ground floor, because he must have known that she might be up and about by then. Of course, that was why the front door didn’t open. It was never meant to. The real entrance to the house was not there, but underneath. In the cellar. The perfect place to hide all manner of darkness. And the only way in and the only way out, which was why he could afford to have her roaming around elsewhere, while he darted between the floors creating his glorious works of art.
That would be what he was doing now. Believing she had gone to bed, he probably wouldn’t bother to check, just deliver his precious film into the darkroom and start to play with her in his developing tray.
She had to find a way down to him.
She shifted her weight slightly and the noise beneath her suddenly stopped. She froze—he couldn’t have heard her, could he? There was nothing to hear. She imagined him standing underneath, staring upward, puzzled. If he even suspected she was still there, he would need to know what she was doing, just to check. Her silence would make him too nervous.
She was right. About twenty seconds later she heard him moving again, underneath the hall this time, then making his way upward, not, as she had first assumed, into the room next door, but from another set of steps. She heard a door open somewhere in the darkness under the stairwell. Got you, she thought. Got you. . . . She slipped herself behind the living room door. He wouldn’t search here first, not until he had checked the rest of the house.
As soon as she heard him move upstairs she slid out of the living room, across the hall, and into the recess under the stairs. She pushed herself to the back, sliding her hands frantically across the wall in search of the door which she knew had to be there. Above, she could hear him in the bedroom now, lights snapping on and off, doors opening, furniture being pulled this way and that, his movements as urgent as her own. He would be getting agitated now. In a house with so many locked doors there were only so many places where a person could hide.
Her fingers located an edge and she followed around it until she found the handle. She yanked it down but the door stayed shut. She had to bite her lip not to let out the moan of disappointment. He had locked it. He had locked it. How could he have done that so quickly? She had found the way out but she couldn’t get to it.
Above her she heard his footsteps coming down the stairs.
Away—Sunday early A.M.
AT THE BOTTOM of the stairs, the reception area was empty. Anna rang the bell. After a while a man came out, mid-thirties, comfortably unfashionable in a cardigan and slippers. According to Samuel’s guidebook it was a family hotel, not exactly five stars but charming in its way.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she said in Italian. “I’m from room fourteen.”
“Yes. I know,” he said, and his gaze hovered nervously over the ugly bruise that was coming into flower above her right eye. “Can I help you, Signora Taylor?”
Mrs. Taylor. Appendage to Mr. Taylor. Of course. He would have registered her on his passport. The Italians didn’t give a toss anyway. It was more to do with employment for bureaucrats than with morals. “Er . . . my husband is asleep and I need to make a phone call. I don’t want to wake him.”
“Of course. There is a phone in the lobby. You speak Italian very well.”
“I used to. A long time ago. It’s long distance.”
“Fine. Shall I put it on your room bill?”
“Er, no. I mean—I wonder if I could pay you in cash. It’s just, er—well, I mean it’s a private call. I don’t want my husband to know.”
He made a small face, midway between a shrug and a smirk. His wife was a pretty woman, plump and pouty with deep brown eyes and spreading breasts. It seemed doubtful that he had ever wanted to call anyone else while she was in the house, but presumably, like all men, he reserved the right to imagine. “Of course. No problem. Why don’t you call from the office? It’s more private in there. I’m in the back if you need me.”
She sat herself down at the desk and picked up the receiver. She found that her fingers were shaking. Two in the morning. It would be five—no, six—hours earlier in New York. Anyone with a life would be preparing to go out and enjoy it. She dug out the crunched-up piece of paper. 87 87. The last two digits.
The number connected and an answering machine came on, an Ella Fitzgerald track offering a few sassy well-chosen lyrics before the music faded and the woman’s big voice cracked in:
“Hi, Sophie Wagner here. But not in person,” it said with that neon optimism which nestles so close to depression in many Americans. “Why don’t you—” Then the machine cut out and another voice cut in. Same timbre, not quite the same irrepressible bounce. “Hi, it’s me.”
“Sophie Wagner?”
“Yeah. Who’s that?”
“Er, you don’t know me, but I got your number from a friend. I’m calling you from Italy, actually.”
“Italy. Great. Who’s the friend?”
She took a breath. “Samuel Taylor.”
There was a pause. Then: “I’m sorry. I don’t know anybody by that name.” But the voice was still up, perplexed rather than hurt.
“Oh . . . Oh dear. He said . . . I mean . . . Well, it’s possible that when you met him he used another name. He’s an
Englishman? Tall, maybe six one, six two. Late thirties, early forties. Firm build, slightly graying hair. Full face. Attractive. Smiling eyes. Good sense of humor.” There was a short pause. How else could she put it? “Good in bed.”
“Hey. I don’t need this,” Sophie Wagner said, and the line went dead.
Anna held the receiver in her hand while her heart returned to its normal tempo. Then she dialed again. This time it was engaged. She counted to twenty and repeated the operation. The answering machine kicked in. It ran the whole message this time. As the beep came she imagined Sophie sitting at the table, curling her fingers nervously around a wineglass, trying not to give a damn.
“Listen, Sophie, I’m really sorry to bother you. My name is Anna Franklin. And I need to talk to you about this guy. Because . . . Well, because I’m sure you know him or knew him and I need some advice. I’m a professional woman, sorted, not a hysteric, but I think I’m in trouble and I need your help. So please, if you’re there, will you pick up the phone?”
She waited. She saw the apartment: small, cleverly designed to make the best out of no space. If Sophie was really lucky she was high enough to get a glimpse of the city: an abstract of rooftops, or a bird’s-eye swoop down a grid street, a wind tunnel of light and glass. But however much it thrilled the eye it still wouldn’t give her a life. Maybe she was one of those women who needed a man to do that. The phone line clicked and the machine disconnected.
“Okay. I know this guy,” said Sophie Wagner, the voice tough as old Californian skin now. “Talks a good line, knows how to schmooze and when to pick up the check. In bed he likes the woman to do most of the work during the warmup, then he comes on like a hurricane at the end. Gives good head if he’s got enough energy left.”
Anna thought of the hurricane, all blown out and puffless upstairs. Despite herself it made her smile. “Yes. I believe we’re talking about the same man.”
“Only his name wasn’t Taylor. It was Irving. Marcus Irving. And the only advice I’ve got to give is, if you’re still hanging out with him, take a pair of garden shears and slice it off. Only make sure you dump it someplace where no one can find it, so he can’t get it sewn on again.”
So what if life hadn’t treated Sophie Wagner that well? At least she had kept a sense of humor about it. We could all wish for so much, thought Anna. “Can I ask what happened between you?”
“How far have you gotten?”
She considered how to put it. “I’m beginning to doubt his sincerity.”
On the other end of the line she heard a whoop of delight. “Whooh. You guys have got such a way with understatement. So? What? He’s wined and dined and fucked you, right?”
“Right.”
“Has he started talking serious shit?”
“Yes . . . Sort of . . .”
“Okay. Then you’re almost at the finish line.”
Something turned quietly in her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s going to dump you.”
“But why—I mean . . . I’m sorry, but can you tell me what happened to you?”
“Where did you say you were calling from?”
“Italy.”
“Is he with you now?”
And from all the way across an ocean and half a continent Anna heard something go tight in the woman’s voice. “No, no,” she said quickly. “But I’m due to be meeting him. Tomorrow morning.”
“Invited you on a trip, right?”
“Er . . . Yes, yes, he did.”
“So how did you get my number?”
“I found it. In his address book.”
“Jeez. You must have sharp eyes. Was I one of many?”
“Er . . . I didn’t see. You were on the front page.”
“Oh, really,” Sophie said, her voice like sour milk.
“Listen, please—I mean I know this must be difficult, but . . . will you tell me what happened?”
She gave a snort. “It’s your phone bill.” She paused. At the other end of the line Anna thought she heard the sound of a match being struck and the intake of breath. A New Yorker who still smoked. He would have liked that. Enjoyed the lack of PC about it. “I . . . I put an ad in a magazine. A serious magazine, literary, respectable, with an international academic readership. The New York Review of Books. He answered it and we met for dinner.”
“This was in Manhattan?” Anna said quickly, phone in one hand and pen in the other, scribbling down notes in a fast loopy hand.
“Yeah. He told me he came here a lot. For work. We met once, twice, then we got into the sack, and after about a month of fairly mind-blowing encounters he invited me on this trip to St. Petersburg.”
St. Petersburg, of course. The woman had mentioned that on the phone. “St. Petersburg?”
“Yeah—neat, huh? He went on and on about snow on pre-Revolutionary boulevards, Hermitage art, pepper vodka like frozen spice, that kind of thing. It was a hell of an in-flight movie. I was up for it.”
“Who paid?” Anna asked quietly.
“Good question. I mean, since we were both consenting adults”—Sophie’s tongue hit the syllables with exaggerated care—“I bought my ticket and he took care of the rest, hotels and stuff like that. Sound at all familiar?”
“Yes,” Anna said in a small voice that was not entirely fake. “A little. What happened then?”
“Nothing. We had the greatest time. Just like a movie.” And for a moment the memory of the pleasure blotted out the pain. “He was the perfect lover—bought me presents, told me how important I was to him and how we were going to make it work for each other, then sent me off on my plane to New York glowing like some radioactive romantic.” She paused. Maybe she was watching herself walk back into her apartment from the airport, her stomach a tumble-dryer of emotions. She had probably got through the jet lag by making room in her closet for another set of clothes.
“And then?”
“And then—boom, it stopped. Just like that. Nothing. Zero. Not a word. Not a phone call, a letter, a postcard. I never heard from him again. He dumped me.”
At the hotel desk Anna’s pen had frozen in midair. “But, why? I mean, why bother to tell you it was serious if he wasn’t going to follow through?”
“You think I haven’t asked myself the same question? I have no idea. All I know is that one minute he’s got his face in my crotch and he’s talking marriage, the next he’s disappeared from the surface of the planet.”
“Marriage?”
“Yeah. Joke, huh? Marriage? I have a pretty reliable bullshit detector when it comes to stuff like this, and still I fell for it.”
“So he didn’t tell you about his wife?”
She gave a snort. “No, no. I got the one about his divorce. How he’d been on his own for two years and was ready for something real now. He put it very well. Very emotionally articulate for an Englishman. So, he’s married, huh?”
“I don’t know. I mean, that’s what he told me.”
“And you didn’t mind that?”
“Er, no, well, not really . . . it, well, it suited me.”
“Well, isn’t that a coincidence. Tell me, how did you meet him?”
“Through the want ads.” Anna paused. “A quality paper.”
“Hot dog,” Sophie Wagner said in triumph. “There you go. And does it still suit you that he’s married?”
“Well . . . yes and no. Anyway, I mean recently he, er . . .”
“Don’t tell me—he’s thinking of leaving her, right?”
“Oh God,” she said softly into the phone, but more in solidarity with Sophie Wagner’s pain than in expression of her own. Because right at that moment Anna didn’t feel any pain. Whatever there had been was gone, wrapped up tight and swallowed down with a wad of saliva until it was deep in her stomach, a drip-feed of gastric juices working it over, dissolving and eating away at it. With it gone, she could see for miles, a dazzlingly clear vision over a landscape of revenge. She felt so little pain it almost scared he
r. Upstairs he slept on soundly.
“Hey,” said her American cousin kindly. “Don’t let it do you in. You should be grateful you found out in time.”
“Yes. Thank you. Tell me, how long ago did all this happen?”
“Let’s see. St. Petersburg in February. ‘The most beautiful time of the year,’ ” she said, mimicking an English accent badly. “What does that make? Five months.”
Five months. Five months of waiting for the phone to ring. Even the toughest of souls would find it hard to prevent scarring.
There was a silence, the first between them. Sitting in her New York apartment stubbing out another cigarette, Sophie Wagner would be starting to feel a little exposed now, would be looking for some exposure in return. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a fair transaction. “I suppose this trip to Italy is my St. Petersburg,” said Anna quietly. “Maybe I should go home now before he arrives. But . . . well, listen: I mean if I do stay—if I do see him, would you—do you—want me to say anything to him from you?”
Sophie gave out a gale of laughter, a veritable Bette Midler of sound. “Yeah, sure. Just before he sticks it in why don’t you give him my regards. I’d love to see the look on his face. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack.” And down the phone line, if you listened carefully, you could pick up the howl of pain that followed the words. “No. I don’t want him to know anything about me, d’you understand? Nothing. I don’t want you to mention my name, or say you’ve spoken to me. And if you get hold of that little black book again, I want you to tear out the page with my number on it.”
“No problem. I’ll try my best.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” Sophie said, the voice still big in disguise. “When you get home, make sure to change your locks, or you’re going to be paying for your orgasms out of your insurance money.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look—I have no proof of this, right? But two days after I got home from Russia, I went to work and came back to find my apartment cleaned out. VCR, computer, stereo, two antique rugs from my grandmother, all her heirloom jewelry, my CD collection, everything—all gone.”
