by Flynn Berry
• • •
A few weeks later, Rose opened her front door in a tailored shift and stockings. Her suitcase was behind her in the hall, she must have just gotten home. She’d been working on a case in Belfast for the past six weeks, and Faye had been waiting to talk to her about Colin in person. Faye breathed in the smell of her, like milled almond soap. She’d missed seeing her, they usually had dinner together at the pub by Cheyne Walk once a week.
“How was Ireland?”
“Fine,” said Rose, which meant they’d won. Faye looked at Rose’s clear, clever eyes. She was a good barrister, she understood why people behaved in certain ways, even when it went against their own best interests. She would understand why Colin had left, and once Faye knew that, she could fix it. “Want to go to the Cross Keys?” she asked.
Rose shook her head.
“Right, you must be tired from the trip, let’s stay in. Shall I go pick up a bottle of wine?”
“I can’t,” said Rose.
Faye laughed. She looked at Rose’s pale unpainted mouth, the sharp angle of her collarbone, which she’d broken in a riding accident. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rose. “I’ve known him for longer.”
10
I SPENT CHRISTMAS in Scotland with Nell. I’d invited Robbie, but he said he didn’t fancy it. I tried not to think about how he would spend it instead. Nell lives in Crail now, she and her husband moved back after they had their son. We went for long walks on the coast path, and I told her about the man who had been arrested, who had not been my father.
“He’s never going to be found,” she said. She has been telling me this since we were sixteen. “You’re only harming yourself.”
My eyes smarted and I tried to argue with Nell, but she was right. It was so obvious there, on the coast path, with Rory ahead of us chasing Jasper, and the waves and the thick salt air. I wanted to be finished, I wanted to be clean of it.
• • •
For the past five months, I’ve been working, seeing my friends, going on dates, visiting Robbie at his flat in Peckham. I signed up for a boxing class, on Nell’s suggestion, and a pottery one, on Laila’s, and learned that I’m pretty good at boxing and terrible at pottery, though I love it. On the last bank holiday weekend, I went to Brighton with Laila and Harriet, and didn’t think about my father at all. It’s been a good spring, which is why, now, I’m trying not to think too much about what I’m doing.
The thing is, it came to me. It came into my flat, into my home. I’m on the mailing list for the Royal Court Theatre, and in the first week of April an invitation arrived to their spring benefit. I didn’t look at it carefully at first, I might have recycled it without reading it at all, but then I was waiting for the kettle to boil, and the invitation was on the kitchen counter, and I picked it up. Inside was a list of the event’s patrons, and the third one was James Fraser.
I went online and bought a ticket then, with the invitation still in my hand. I was worried it would already be sold out. The ticket was two hundred pounds, more than I usually spend in a week, but I typed in my credit card number and billing address. I did all of this automatically, like I hadn’t even decided whether or not I’d go, and then I went back to the kitchen and finished making my tea.
It’s the fifth of May now, and I’m across Sloane Square from the theater, imagining what Nell would say if she knew. She would tell me to go home, she would ask if I want to go back to feeling the way I did for weeks after the sighting, dull and inert and defeated. A bus is coming up the King’s Road. If I step forward, the driver will stop. I can leave now. But then I think of my father wrapping tape around a steel pipe, and I’m crossing the square to join the crowd outside the theater doors.
I hold out my phone with the ticket and follow the others down the stairs, the noise growing louder until we’re in a large room underground. I make it across the room to the bar, but I don’t see James. I keep circling through the crowd as more people arrive and it grows harder to move. He might not come, I realize. He might only send a check.
Upstairs, the doors to a small black box theater are open, and I sit down, staring at the empty, scratched stage, trying to work out what to do. If my father could see me now, I think he’d feel sorry for me, he’d find this pathetic. My head twitches, like that will clear away the thought. The first time I had it was in primary school in Crail, after I said something stupid in class and a few of the other children laughed—this idea of my father watching and being embarrassed for me—and I’m weary at still having it as an adult.
I leave to check the alley, even though James doesn’t smoke, then try to find the men’s toilets. I’m down a corridor, near the theater’s offices, when through an open door I hear voices and pots clinking.
A man comes out of the room holding a tray of lemon cakes, and I press my back to the wall so he can pass. I walk to the open door and look inside at a large industrial space under fluorescent lights. It might be used for costumes or storage normally, but now it’s filled with long trestle tables covered in baking trays and tubs of ingredients. I can see red fruit inside one of the tubs, its liquid pressing against the plastic. Three people are working at different stations, two men and a woman, all moving at pace. I watch them absently, and then the woman at the middle table turns around, and the cords in the back of my neck stiffen.
I didn’t know she was back. After university, Alice moved to San Francisco. She was still in America the last time I checked, she must have moved home recently. Her head is lowered, she doesn’t see me crossing the room. She’s bent from the waist, piping custard into a tray of éclairs with graceful, practiced movements.
“Hello,” I say, and she straightens. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Alice smiles, waiting for me to continue. She looks the same. She never resembled her mum. Rose seems to belong indoors, and Alice outdoors. She has flushed cheeks, pale freckles, and dark blonde hair pulled back in a braid. Her teeth are white and still slightly crooked.
“I’m Claire.” I’ve stopped breathing, I don’t know what I’ll say if she recognizes me.
“Alice,” she says. We don’t shake hands, she’s still holding the piping bag. I imagine she’s eager to finish the tray, but hiding her impatience. She’s wearing a denim work shirt with a burlap apron tied over it. Her sleeves are rolled up, but she hasn’t taken off her jewelry, a few thin gold bracelets and rings. Her polite expression doesn’t shift with recognition. She’s two years younger than me, she was only six the last time we saw each other, and my appearance has changed more than hers. Part of me is still disappointed, like there was a chance she’d be expecting me.
“The food’s brilliant.”
“Oh, thank you,” she says, in a warm, slightly hoarse voice.
“Do you have a card?”
While she finds one for me, I remember, for the first time in years, the mirror at Ashdown with a frame made of white antlers. Alice and I used to dare each other to stand in front of it. It was strange to see your own reflection in the glass, like the mirror was meant to show you something else entirely.
11
AFTER THE SEPARATION, my father moved into a flat on Ebury Street. It was only around the corner, Mum always expected to see him in the neighborhood, but the first time they ran into each other was two months later at a bar in Covent Garden, where a friend of Sabrina’s was having a birthday party. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Sam’s seeing Catherine,” he said.
“Who’s that?”
“Friend of Paula’s. Why are you here?”
“She’s Sabrina’s mate from work.”
Colin nodded. “What are you drinking?”
“Rum and Coke.”
He smiled. “Of course you are.” He turned to order, but kept his hand at the small of her back. The music was loud and he spoke with his mout
h close to her head, so she could feel the warmth through her hair.
She made him laugh a few times, and he ducked his head, smiling. He was himself again. Not the strange, sardonic man who’d come to the house to fill boxes with his things. Who, when she asked what had made him suddenly decide to leave, had sighed and said, “No, I’ve known for a while.”
“Come on,” she said. “We should talk to other people.”
“Why?” he asked.
My husband, she thought. They weren’t even formally separated, he’d only been out of the house for two months.
They went on talking, and she went on saying the right thing, the funny or sharp or appealing thing. He was the warmest place in the world, and she lit up in return. She could be magnetic too, as it happened, she could marshal her own powers.
He said, “I don’t get to do this anymore, I don’t talk to anyone like this.”
Faye considered him. She could leave, she could be in a cab in minutes, on her way home. One day, she wouldn’t think about him every hour, her mind would be clear. She tried to make that the more appealing option.
He held her hand outside the bar, his other arm raised for a cab. She said, “Have you been with anyone else?”
“No,” he said. “Have you?”
She shook her head. A cab drew up beside them. By the time they reached his flat, both of them were giddy, shushing each other on the stairs, pushing into the door as he turned the key, like they’d been kept apart against their will.
Afterwards she looked at herself in the mirror. Her pupils were large and black in the strange light, and she looked about nineteen. Colin put on a record. She tucked her legs beneath her on the sofa, and he kissed the top of her head.
At three in the morning, he toasted a baguette and put tiles of dark chocolate inside so they melted into the bread. It was her favorite snack, it had been since the trip to Perpignan when they stayed above a bakery, and he often made it for her. They ate standing in the kitchen, tearing at the bread, spilling the melted chocolate.
• • •
Faye woke first. When she put her feet on the cold floor, something was by her right foot, almost under the bed. She pulled the sheet out of the way and bent down to pick it up. A black hair tie, with a few blond hairs wrapped around it.
She went into the kitchen. The foil from the bread was still on the counter, the chocolate still dripped on the floor. She opened the dishwasher and saw two white cups and saucers, and two plates smeared with chocolate. Not theirs, though. Their plates were still in the sink. He’d made it for someone else.
Faye stayed in the kitchen until she heard Colin run a shower, then put on her clothes and waited for him to come out. “Are you free tonight?” she asked, out of perversity.
“I wish,” he said, “but we have a client dinner.” His voice wasn’t pitching in the usual way, and he kept his eyes down as he toweled his hair.
“Right,” she said. “I’m off.”
He kissed her. His cheek was cold and wet from the shower, and he didn’t meet her eyes. She went down the stairs. His car was parked in front of the building, and she stopped to consider it. She could put a brick through its windows. But that wouldn’t cause enough damage, would it? Not nearly.
12
I STAY UP LATE after the Royal Court event searching for information about Alice. She has a catering business now, James must have recommended her for the event. I sift through her company’s website, read an interview with her in a magazine, study pictures from a wedding she catered last week. Her social media accounts are private, but I can see that we have six friends in common. Four of my acquaintances from university, a consultant neurosurgeon I worked with at St. George’s, and Laila’s cousin Reza.
Before our first patients arrive, I knock on the door to Laila’s consulting room. “Do you want to get a drink tonight?”
“God no,” she says, and points at the double espresso on her desk. “I’m shattered. Want to come over and watch something?”
After work, we pick up sushi on our way to her flat. While Laila changes into track leggings and a sweatshirt, she says, “They made me go to a club in Stoke Newington. I didn’t get home until four.”
It was her sister’s birthday last night. “Did Yasmin have fun?” I ask, and Laila nods. We sit cross-legged on the couch and open the sushi boxes. She says, “Can we watch Bake Off?”
“That bad?”
“Yes.” She finds the channel. “Look, they’re doing pavlovas tonight.”
“Do you know Alice Fraser?” I ask. Laila shakes her head. “She’s friends with Reza.”
“Oh, that Alice. Sure. She went out with Reza’s friend. Why?”
“I saw her at a thing last night.”
“What thing?”
“A fundraiser for the Royal Court.”
“What were you doing at a fundraiser?”
“I like the Royal Court. Do you know her well?”
“No, this was ages ago, they were still in school. Is there any more wasabi?”
I hand her the container. “Do you think she’d recognize your name?”
Laila shrugs. “She’d recognize my surname from Reza.”
“Can I follow her from your account?”
Laila doesn’t set down the tub of miso soup in her hand. Without looking away from the screen, she says, “How do you know Alice?”
“Her parents were friends with my father,” I say. Laila’s mouth purses as she blows on the broth to cool it. I haven’t told her anything about my father, except that he left us years ago and I don’t know where he is now.
“How can Alice help?” she asks.
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “I think her parents might still talk to him.”
Laila says, “Give me your phone.” After a moment, she hands it back to me. She’s downloaded the app, and typed in her username and password.
I thank her, and she waves her hand. “It’s nothing. I never use it anyway.” She spreads a blanket over us and says, “This part’s going to be very tense. They can’t burn the meringues.”
When the episode ends, Alice still hasn’t accepted the request. Laila stretches and says, “See you tomorrow,” and then I’m on the night bus home, with her account open on my phone.
Alice might have overheard something. Her parents must have grown more relaxed about discussing it, especially in their own house. They might have even visited him. It’s been decades, they’re not under surveillance.
At home, I’ve taken Jasper for his night walk and changed for bed when my phone rings. “Claire Alden?” says a man. While he introduces himself, I move across the room, pick up a glass, put it down. The flat has grown smaller, unfamiliar, and I’m removed from it and numb.
“Your brother’s had a seizure,” says the doctor.
He’s still alive. I never know how scared to be when I get calls like this, if someone would come to tell me the worst news in person. I close my eyes, still holding the phone to my ear, while the doctor asks if I need directions to the hospital, St. Thomas’ in Lambeth. I change into jeans and a sweatshirt, run down the stairs and out to Farringdon Road for a cab.
It’s after midnight, there’s no traffic. In sixteen minutes, we’re crossing Blackfriars Bridge. “Which entrance?” asks the cabdriver.
“A and E, please,” I say, and my voice sounds distant, like water’s blocking my ears.
I check in at A and E, and wait for my brother’s doctor, who explains the circumstances of his seizure. Robbie collapsed outside a bus station. A witness called an ambulance. He had a generalized tonic-clonic seizure.
“Have you done an ECG?”
The doctor nods. “It was normal.”
“How long was he unconscious?”
“Three minutes.”
I wince. I can’t stop picturing him convulsing. Some
one was with him, at least. The witness stayed with him until the ambulance came, she was holding his hand when the paramedics arrived.
“Have you asked him about going into a detox?”
“He hasn’t agreed to that yet,” says the doctor.
When I find his room, my brother is sitting up in bed. He’s thin enough for me to see the tendons in his neck. “Hi, Robbie.”
“Hey.”
I hug him, kiss the side of his head. “Are you sore?”
“A little,” he says. We won’t talk about the detox tonight. He needs to rest. He’s been given a tranquilizer to help with the withdrawal, but he’s still sweating, and he’s been scratching his arm since I came into the room.
He moves over so that I can sit on the bed next to him, and we watch a singing competition show. Robbie makes jokes about the performance. He’s still funny, still a good mimic. Everything to him—his kindness, gentleness, intelligence—is still here, but the tramadol has changed how he looks and sounds. He doesn’t smell like himself anymore.
When the show ends, I stand to go. “Are you comfortable? Do you need more water?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll come tomorrow morning. Are you sure you have everything you need?”
He nods. “They brought my bag.” A red backpack is next to his bed, within arm’s reach.
I ride down in the lift. I wait for the night bus. I open the door to my flat, to my warm bed, my stocked fridge, my job and friends and appointments. I think of my brother trying to fall asleep in the hospital with one arm around his backpack.
• • •
Three years ago, when he was twenty-four, Robbie called me at work and said, “I think I did something to my knee.”
He’d been playing five-a-side football when his leg twisted.
“Does it hurt?”
“Um,” he said. “It’s not good,” which meant it was excruciating.
