Atlantic Shift

by Emily Barr

  ‘He knows about the letters, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Megan, can I tell you something? You might not like it.’

  ‘That’s never stopped you before.’

  ‘I do wonder why you’re here, but since you are, here goes. I thought Guy might be writing those letters. Don’t interrupt. So when we were at the Mediterranean Kitchen, I told him that I knew. I didn’t say what I knew. I was testing him a bit. He went white and asked if I was threatening him.’

  She is quiet for half a minute. I wait for her to speak. ‘Oh,’ she says, eventually.

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean he is writing the letters, but he’s hiding something.’

  ‘Oh heavens.’ She tuts. ‘I never thought you might think he was writing to you. But since you mention weird letters, he has given me something to post, Evie, and I have no idea why that is. A letter to a woman. Someone he knows here. He said it would be cheaper to post it from New York. I mean, for one thing it’s a matter of pennies, and for another. . . He wouldn’t tell me anything about this woman. He pretended it was something to do with work, but if it was, work would pay for the stamp. And now you think he’s been writing to you. It almost makes sense. Except it’s Guy and he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Ian doesn’t trust him either.’

  ‘Will you come with me tomorrow,’ she says, ‘to see this woman? We can take her the letter and see who she is. Ms King. That’s what it says on the front of the envelope.’

  ‘Of course. It would be good to do something. We should open it first.’

  ‘No, we should let her open it.’

  ‘Meg,’ I say, ‘has Guy ever said anything to you about his wife?’

  She props herself up on the pillow. ‘Marianne? Not really. That’s something that freaks me out. He told me about a month ago that I was his first real relationship for thirty years. Now I’m sorry, but that’s scary.’

  ‘He has had girlfriends in that time, but not very many, and they’ve never lasted. So her name was Marianne?’ I shiver at the confirmation. The beautiful girl from medical school is dead.

  ‘He mentioned her, and he said that she’d died while she was pregnant. When I asked what had happened, he clammed up completely. He kept shaking his head. In the end he said it could have been avoided and that he blamed himself. Then he changed the subject and that was it.’

  I try to focus my sleepy brain on this information. Even though it’s scant, it’s more than my mother has ever told me.

  It is a perfect spring day, like an exceptional English summer. The sky is pale blue, and we wear T-shirts and sandals. I am being resolutely upbeat. It is good to be doing something. Megan and I are unlikely partners, but we are united in wanting to discover what Guy is up to.

  Ms King, it seems, lives in a stunning apartment block on Central Park West. I am adamant that we should not deliver the letter without opening it first. Megan insists that we should hand it over, wait for her to read it, then recruit this woman to our small detective team. I give in.

  ‘I bet she’s got huge windows and a view of lovely grass and trees,’ I say wistfully, as we wait for the doorman to call her for us. I’m not sure what my apartment, courtesy of Alexis, will be like, but I am willing to bet that Ms King and I will not be neighbours.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Megan grumpily. ‘You can have a view of trees and grass in Somerset and it doesn’t cost you two million dollars.’ She is suffering far worse than I am today. I don’t think she went back to sleep at all last night.

  ‘Who the hell is this woman?’ I wonder again. ‘He didn’t say anything?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Meg confirms. ‘I should have made him tell me, but I had too much else going on to think about it.’

  ‘Yes you should,’ I say, cross with her, and uneasy. ‘You should have refused to take the letter without him telling you who she was. You’re his girlfriend. You’re allowed to make demands like that. It’s very trusting of him to assume that you won’t read it.’

  ‘Not really. Guy knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t.’

  The doorman, who is red-faced and middle-aged, puts the receiver down.

  ‘She’s not answering, ladies,’ he tells us.

  I am relieved. ‘Great. Let’s go for coffee and open the bloody thing.’

  The lift door opens, and a woman steps out. She is tall and skinny and beautiful. Her hair is blonder than mine, and she is wearing a simple, deadly-expensive trouser suit.

  ‘Oh, Miss King,’ the doorman says, in greeting. ‘These young ladies are asking for you.’

  ‘Yes?’ she asks, turning to us with an impatient half-smile. ‘May I help you?’

  I’m glad I dressed up for this meeting. I look at Megan, who is white and exhausted, with black bags under her eyes.

  ‘We’re friends of Guy Chapman’s,’ I say. Ms King looks blank. I look at Megan again, expecting her to take over, but she is still not prepared to speak.

  ‘He told Megan he knew you,’ I continue, cursing Meg for making me do her dirty work. ‘He’s from England. He asked us to post this to you, but we were passing, so we thought we would drop it off.’ I am smiling my polished smile. Megan holds out the white envelope, and Ms King takes it without looking at it. She is staring at me, instead.

  ‘Forget this Chapman joker,’ she says suddenly. ‘I know you, don’t I? Where have we met?’

  I giggle slightly. ‘On an advert for Calm Iced Tea, probably,’ I tell her. She still looks blank. ‘I play the cello? All the traffic stops?’

  She points at me. ‘I’ve got you! Well, well. Look, girls, I have to go to work now and I have to confess I’m a little baffled by this’ - she glances at it - ‘this communiqué from Britain. If I didn’t have to leave I’d invite you to coffee and we could work out who he was, this man friend of yours. But thank you for the delivery. It’s always a pleasure to meet a musician. I’ll read it in the cab. Whatever it is.’

  And she sweeps away, tucking the letter into her bag. Megan and I look at each other, and raise our eyebrows.

  ‘We should have opened it,’ she says. ‘I really don’t trust him now.’

  I glare at her.

  We go straight to the coffee shop on Lincoln Circle, to meet Kate and Ian. Kate has finished her bed rest, and is now embarked on an intensive programme of not lifting anything or straining herself in any way, and spurning all the gorgeous food around her. She turns down coffee for a cup of ‘’erbal’ tea, and ignores our variations on eggs and potatoes in favour of no breakfast at all.

  ‘I had a fruit salad earlier,’ she says happily, nibbling on a corner of dry toast from Ian’s plate. ‘From the deli. And a smoothie. I have been going wild for fresh fruit. I need some oily fish later.’

  Megan smiles at her. ‘You’re going to be the most fantastic pregnant woman. Your baby will come out doing yoga chants and it’ll be one of those kids who don’t like chocolate.’

  Ian laughs. ‘Not if she breast-feeds.’

  ‘Which I will!’ Kate interjects hastily.

  ‘Because,’ he continues, ‘the moment she’s given birth, Kate will be scoffing chocolate and sweets and cake like there’s no tomorrow. They will flow through the milk and straight into the child. The milk’ll be so chocolatey it’ll come out brown.’

  I watch them exchange a glance, full of the future. There is a tenderness in the look that I barely remember between me and Jack. I think we had it, once. I suspect he might still look at me like that if I would only let him. Jack and I, though, have never been through an ordeal together. I shut him out of the big trauma of my life. No one sitting around this table has any idea who I really am.

  Again, I consider my reserve course of action. I could go back to Jack, and tell him everything. If he loves me like he says he does, like Ian says he does, then he would accept it. The idea of a world where baby Elizabeth is not a shameful secret makes me giddy.

  I stare out of the window, watching a teenage girl walkin
g past. She has brown hair, tied back, and clear skin. She’s slightly shorter than me, and she looks a bit like Britney Spears. Her legs are perfect under a short denim skirt. She could be Elizabeth. So could any of her friends.

  I hope this works for Kate. At least if she has a baby, the balance will be restored. If she has one, there is a chance that maybe, one day, I can tell her about mine. We are all assuming that their fertility troubles are over now, but there is no guarantee, none whatsoever. This is only IVF, and they’ve had it before. A fifteen-year-old gets pregnant by mistake every single day. People with strong relationships, with comfortable homes and good jobs, people who will love and protect their child, are tested to the limits. It will have to work for them soon.

  I force myself to stop examining the teenagers, and tune back into the conversation.

  ‘She was so glam,’ Megan is saying. She looks stressed. ‘Really, not someone you’d expect to be Guy’s friend at all. Plus she didn’t know him.’

  Ian frowns. ‘She didn’t know him?’

  ‘She couldn’t think who he was. But she took the letter off us because she recognised Evie off the advert.’

  ‘Right.’ Ian is trying to catch my eye, but I refuse to look at him. I don’t want to think about what Megan and I have just done. I went against my better judgement every step of the way. Instead, I turn away from his puzzled glance and pat Kate’s tummy. I know lots of pregnant women don’t like people doing this, but I also know that Kate will appreciate it. She has been longing to have something pattable in there.

  ‘Three little babies, hey?’ I say.

  ‘Embryos,’ she corrects me. ‘They become foetuses at twelve weeks and babies at twenty-eight weeks. Currently they are about three weeks. Not many people even know they have a fertilised embryo at three weeks. I won’t believe it till I miss a period.’

  ‘Three tiny embryos,’ I say. ‘Wow.’

  ‘I’m trying so hard not to worry,’ she says, ‘because it can’t do them any good. But it’s impossible to think about anything else. You know?’

  I remember the day I was forced to face my own pregnancy, after twenty-nine weeks of wilful ignorance. Elizabeth had graduated from embryo to foetus and on to babyhood before I acknowledged her. I will never forget my four months in New York, waiting for her, losing her, and trying to see a way forward without her.

  ‘I know,’ I tell her.

  ‘I wish I could forget. But when you’ve been thinking about something for so long, you just can’t.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  Ian claps his hands. ‘Babies are banned. We’re going to talk about Meg and Evie instead. Evie’s concert. Meg’s holiday. Shall we go up the Empire State Building?’ He catches Kate’s eye. ‘It is perfectly safe for a woman in your condition,’ he adds, forestalling her protest. ‘Eat up, everyone,’ he orders. ‘We’re tourists, and we’ve got work to do.’

  The queue isn’t as long as I expected. Last time I came here I was sixteen, and it went all the way round the room and out of the door before doubling back on itself. This time we only have to wait ten minutes.

  Last time I was wobbly and faint and my abdomen was still aching. My baby had been cut out of me and taken away four weeks before, and I was killing time until I was allowed to fly again. I found myself free from the shame of pointed fingers and whispered comments, real or imagined. No one knew I had a daughter. Nobody knew that my slightly saggy stomach wasn’t always like that. Howard took me out sightseeing against my wishes, and in the end I was glad he had. Whatever else happened, I had seen the view from the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center, Manhattan and the Boroughs spread out dizzyingly and exhilaratingly below me. I had been inside the Statue of Liberty and across to Staten Island on the ferry. Taylor, who was five, was impressed with all the souvenirs I brought back for him. Nobody else thought to ask.

  We go up in a lift, swap to a different one, and go up again. Kate, Ian and Megan stand together, looking downtown, to the skyscrapers and the Harbour. I walk away, slowly. They don’t notice. I stand on my own, looking north to the park, and watch the cars navigating the city, streaming towards me or away from me, obeying the one-way system. I can make out the tiny shapes of pedestrians. The wind plays with my hair as I stare down. One of those people could be Elizabeth. The chances are that I can see where she lives from here. This is the closest I have felt to her for years.

  chapter sixteen

  April

  Aurora is at her desk, but she looks subdued.

  ‘Hi!’ I say, beaming at her, fully expecting to be greeted effusively. She looks up and seems to force a small smile.

  ‘Hi there,’ she says, without feeling. Her hair has been pulled into a ponytail without being styled at all, and her make-up is cursory.

  ‘Aurora,’ I say to her, ‘are you all right?’

  She looks at me, and behind me, at Kate, Ian and Megan. ‘Yes, sure. I’m just a little off colour today,’ she says, smiling at everyone. ‘I’ll page Ron for you now. Take a seat.’

  Kate and Ian don’t seem to have noticed anything, since their attention is focused squarely on the blood test they are about to have, and its instant result. Megan hasn’t met Aurora before, so she doesn’t see the transformation.

  ‘She was completely different last time,’ I mutter to her quietly. ‘She was really funny.’

  Meg shrugs. ‘Even Americans have off days. Even they must have times when being nice and polite and friendly to absolutely everybody gets too much.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  I look down at my nails. They are perfect. The girls at Aurora’s salon were horrified at the state of them, and soaked them, prodded the cuticles painfully back into place with a pointed stick, smeared them with lotion, put my hands into vibrating warm mittens, filed the nails cleanly (expressing sorrow on my behalf that I could neither grow them nor have false ones attached) and painted them an understated pale pink. I have been using hand cream every day since, and I can’t stop looking at my beautiful new nails. These are someone else’s fingers. However badly I play next week - next week! - at least no one will be criticising my hands.

  While we wait, I kick my shoes off, and straighten my legs. The girls were astonished at the hard skin on my feet, and spent forty minutes fighting it with several different pumice stones. My feet got the moisturiser treatment, as well as the hot vibrating socks. My toenails are neat and tidy, and they are a bright fuchsia pink. I feel polished and buffed. I have a hair appointment for tomorrow, too, with Sonia’s hairdresser. All this self-tweaking feels like a displacement activity. There is far too much going on for me to think about, and I am happier contemplating my own feet.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Dawson!’

  Ron’s voice is hearty, and I glance up, pleased to be seeing him again. When I look at him, however, I see that he too has changed. He has lost weight around his face, and his eyes are ringed with black. Although he’s dressed as well as ever, he is slightly hunched. He catches my eye and smiles weakly, before leading Kate and Ian out of the reception area.

  ‘You know where to find the refreshments, Evie,’ he says over his shoulder, and walks away without waiting for a reply.

  Megan and I sit in the plush reception for a minute or so.

  ‘Did he say refreshments?’ Megan asks after a while.

  ‘Mmmm,’ I tell her. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you go through - they’ve got papers in there, too - and I’ll come in a minute.’ I incline my head towards Aurora. ‘It’s down the corridor, the big room at the end on the left. Follow the smell of coffee. You’ll find it.’

  Meg smiles. She has cheered up enormously in the ten days she’s been in New York. ‘I certainly will,’ she agrees.

  As soon as she has gone, I sit in the chair nearest Aurora.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I ask her.

  She looks up and meets my eyes. ‘Ron didn’t want either of us to say. He doesn’t want to upset Kate. He takes such care of his patients.’ I see tears in he
r eyes, and hand her a paper tissue from the box on her desk. She takes it. ‘Thank you. When he’s got a lady at a delicate stage like that, he won’t allow anything to upset her.’

  My mind is racing through possibilities. Ron or Aurora has cancer. They have been having an affair and have just been found out by Ron’s girlfriend. The clinic is bankrupt. The needles there are infected with hepatitis C.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say, as purposefully as I can manage. I want her to feel she doesn’t have the option of arguing. ‘Tell me and I promise I won’t tell Kate. I’ll only tell her if she isn’t pregnant. I can keep secrets, you know.’

  ‘I believe you. I’m actually surprised you haven’t heard already. I’m afraid it’s worrying news. It’s Anneka. Remember I told you about her? She went missing.’

  ‘Missing?’ I try to let this sink in. ‘Ron’s girlfriend has disappeared, and he’s carrying on without even telling his patients?’

  She nods.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We each have our special way of coping. This is Ron’s way. He carries on. We have no idea whether she has gone away of her own accord, or whether something terrible has happened. She took nothing with her. It does not look good, I’m afraid, Evie. Ron wants, more than ever, to bring new life into the world. I pray to God that Kate has good news. There’s more depending on that than she will ever realise.’

  ‘How long has she been missing?’

  Aurora shakes her head. ‘A few days now. Over a week . . .’ She tails off. I put a hand on her shoulder, then pull my chair right up next to hers, and put my arms around her. She smells of Jennifer Lopez’s perfume. ‘She was my best friend,’ she adds.

  ‘She still is,’ I tell her. ‘You shouldn’t be at work. You should be at home.’

  She shrugs. ‘If she wanted to call me, she would call me here. Do I really want to sit in my apartment watching Ricki Lake and looking through our high-school yearbook and calling the police again? And if Ron’s here, how does it look if I stay away? He needs support.’