by Adele Geras
‘Come in. Come and sit in the study. Phyllis, can you bring the tea through there? Thank you.’
Eva led the way.
‘Do sit down, my dear. We’ll be more comfortable here. There was no need to come all this way and bring the magazine yourself. It’s really very kind of you.’
‘I’m so sorry. About the changes, I mean … here you are.’
Eva took the copy of lipstick from Megan and went to sit beside her on the sofa. The door opened.
‘I’ve brought some Melting Moments too,’ said Phyllis, putting the tray carefully on the coffee table.
‘Lovely,’ said Eva, ‘thank you!’ Phyllis left the room and Eva picked up the teapot and began to pour. To Megan she said, ‘Do have a Melting Moment. I’m sure that’ll cheer you up.’
Megan took a biscuit and smiled. ‘I expect you think I’m mad. No one in their right mind would care so much about edits someone had made to an article.’
‘If I were a writer,’ Eva said, ‘I probably would. I hate anyone interfering with anything I’ve made. Let me read the piece and we’ll speak when I’ve finished. All right?’
Megan nodded. ‘Page forty-three,’ she said. Eva opened lipstick and at first sight, she was very pleased with the look of the thing. The photographs were not Antoine Bragonard, but they were good of their kind and Salix House was as photogenic as ever. The study, with Eva herself looking not too bad on the scarlet sofa and the wall of books in the background. That teal silk shirt was a good colour with her hair. She didn’t look too ancient and it crossed her mind that airbrushing might have been used. Well, why not? she thought. Antoine used to say that the camera always lied to some degree, so why not do everything you can to make people look better? There were good pictures of the hall and the dress room, where one of her designs from the Ghost collection was up on a dressmaker’s dummy. The silver grey chiffon with satin-trimmed sleeves. Yes, it looked good. She smiled at Megan and said, ‘Well, I haven’t read it yet but the pictures are lovely.’
Megan said, ‘Yes, I know. And the article’s probably fine too. I’m sure I’m making a fuss about nothing.’
Eva read the piece, conscious of Megan waiting; conscious of her unhappiness. Surely no one could be so wretched simply on account of an editor’s changes to her text? But as she read, she could see that there were places where the piece had been cut. There was almost nothing about her coming to England as a child on the Kindertransport. The paragraph she remembered about finding the house with Antoine and how they had done it up together was missing as well. The editor, whoever he was, had been a bit savage, but still, the article read well and Eva was happy to be able to say so honestly.
‘You mustn’t worry, Megan, ‘she said. ‘It reads very well. Whatever the editor deleted or changed, only you and I will notice, so there’s no harm done.’
‘There is harm done,’ Megan said. She stopped abruptly as if there was something she wanted to add. Eva looked at her, surprised.
*
I didn’t know what to say to Eva. I sat on the sofa and stared out of the window at the monkey-puzzle tree. She got up and placed the magazine on the desk. She turned to me and said, ‘Dee and Bridie will enjoy seeing the pictures. They’ll think I’m quite famous.’
‘You are,’ I said. ‘You’ll probably have other journalists ringing up and asking for interviews now.’
‘Really?’ She looked alarmed so I added, ‘But of course you don’t need to see anyone if you don’t want to. Just get anyone who answers the phone to say that you’re giving no further interviews.’
‘No one would come to Salix House, would they? Doorstepping? Is that what they call it now?’
I laughed. The idea of a bank of paparazzi standing in the drive to catch Eva as she came out of the house was incongruous. I said, ‘No, don’t worry. Dead lazy, most journalists are. It might have been different if you’d been living in London.’
Eva shook her head. She was sitting at the desk now, facing the sofa, looking at me searchingly. ‘I don’t care, actually,’ she said. ‘No one is really interested in me, I know that. I thought it was a little strange that lipstick was so keen on a feature like this.’
‘Our fashion editor, Felix, is a huge fan of yours. It was his idea, at the beginning. Now you’ll have a whole lot of new fans, at least.’
‘Well, I’m most grateful to you, Megan, and I’m very happy with the piece, even with changes. And I know you’re hurt by them but that’s not the whole reason you’re so upset, is it? And if you don’t wish to tell me, then of course I wouldn’t dream of prying.’
Should I say something? Why burden Eva with my problems? Yet she seemed so sympathetic.
‘I’m no longer working there,’ I told her.
‘Oh, no! But why? You seemed so happy working for lipstick. And besides, you’re good. I think you are, anyway. What happened? I’m being too nosey. I’m sorry.’
‘I decided to leave. On Tuesday night, actually.’
‘Just a few days ago?’
I nodded. I could almost see the word Why? hovering in the air above Eva’s head, but she was too polite to say it out loud. ‘I’ve been seeing my boss for the last year. I was in love. He’s just dumped me though and I didn’t want to keep bumping into him at the office, so I left.’
‘He was married?’
‘Yes. I feel … I feel horrible about that.’ I imagined Eva thinking: If you feel so horrible why do it?
What Eva actually said was: ‘It happens. It happens very often. There are many different reasons for such affairs and I don’t, I really don’t think you should torment yourself. You’ve lost your job … that’s quite bad enough to be getting on with, without adding retrospective guilt. Is he feeling bad? Your boss?’
‘I don’t know.’ This was true. In one way, he was probably glad to be rid of me. Perhaps I’d been becoming more and more of a problem for him.
The door burst open and two small girls came rushing into the room.
‘Granny!’ said the younger one. ‘Can we come in here? Daddy says there’s a man looking round the house and we aren’t allowed to rampage around.’
‘Yes, come in, girls,’ said Eva. ‘I’ve got something to show you. But first you must meet Megan.’
‘Hello,’ I said, trying to look happier than I was feeling. ‘I’m Megan Pritchard.’
‘Hello,’ said the elder girl, holding out her hand for me to shake. ‘I’m Dee … well, Deidre really but everyone calls me Dee and that’s Bridie, my sister. Bridget really.’
I shook Bridie’s hand as well. Dee looked like Eva’s daughter, whom I’d met briefly when I came to the house the first time. I guessed Bridie was like her father. She was dark and plump where Dee was skinny and fair. They both stood staring at me, not knowing what to say but before I could think of something, Eva chipped in.
‘Come over here, girls, and have a look at this. Megan’s written an article about me and it’s in a magazine.’
They pored over the pages of lipstick together, exclaiming and asking all sorts of questions like ‘Did you write all these words yourself? How long did it take you?’
I answered the girls as best I could. Dee was obviously reading lipstick for herself. Eva looked over her shoulder, helping her with the occasional word she didn’t understand. Bridie came to sit next to me on the sofa. She turned and stared at me and for a few moments she didn’t say anything and I was frantically searching my mind for topics of conversation suitable for a small child you’d never met before. Then she said, ‘Are you going to be our new nanny?’
What was that about? Where did she get that idea?
‘No, I’m not. I’m just here because I brought that magazine to your granny.’
‘Oh.’ Bridie thought for a moment. ‘Only Mummy said we’re getting a person to be a nanny. And then here you were so I thought it was you.’
‘No, I’m afraid not. I’m just visiting.’
‘I could ask my mummy, if you want. If you
’d like to be our nanny.’
I couldn’t help smiling at Bridie. Since I’d decided not to go back to lipstick, I hadn’t given any thought to what I was going to do next. What I felt like doing was getting in my car and driving as far away from London as I could go. Abroad. I could go abroad and never come back to England. I could go and see Dad in New Zealand. He’d take me in. But I didn’t want to do it because I knew it wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t magically become another person just by leaving my flat.
‘Thanks, Bridie. I hadn’t thought of being a nanny.’
Dee had finished reading and came over to sit down next to her sister. She said, ‘Bridie’s worried about getting a nanny. She thinks she’ll be like Nanny McPhee, with warts on her nose.’
‘No, I don’t, silly!’ said Bridie. She turned to me. ‘You’d be a nice nanny. I wish you could come and look after us.’
‘Bridie!’ Eva said. ‘Stop nagging Megan, please.’
I was just about to tell her not to worry about it when the door opened and Rowena came in.
‘Hello, darlings!’ she said to the girls. ‘I was wondering where you were, Ma. Luke wants to leave now but he can’t move his car …’
‘Oh, that must be me,’ I said. ‘Boxing him in. I’m so sorry.’
I followed Rowena into the hall. A man, presumably Luke though Rowena obviously didn’t think introductions were necessary, was standing by the round marble-topped table. I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry. I’ll move my car.’
He didn’t say: That’s okay. He tried a smile but it didn’t quite work. He was clearly pissed off. He looked … I found it hard to work out what he looked like but his expression made me think he fancied himself and didn’t have that great an opinion of anyone else, least of all me. I dashed out to my car and reversed so that he could get out.
‘Much obliged,’ he said, bending down to speak through my half-open window. His eyes were strange: a kind of light orangey brown, like an animal’s eyes. He was handsome in a chilly sort of way. Most people, I thought, would have been okay with ‘Thanks’. I decided he was stuck-up as well as self-satisfied. He didn’t look obliged at all. Maybe he was in a rush or something. I said, ‘Sorry to have held you up.’
‘Not a problem,’ he replied and waved a hand as he got into his car and whooshed away down the drive. I would have followed him but I hadn’t said goodbye to Eva and the girls, so I got out of my car and walked back towards the front door, thinking about the man I’d just met. Was he really interested in buying Salix House? The idea of him owning it, the idea of Eva’s lovely dresses taken out of the wardrobes in the dress room and packed up in storage boxes or given away or sold, depressed me. I couldn’t imagine Eva anywhere else. He could be, I thought, a speculator. A developer, who’d tear down Salix House and put up ten little box-like structures in its place. I really, really hoped he wasn’t.
My phone rang just as I stepped on to the porch. I’d forgotten it was in my jacket pocket and the ringtone startled me. I didn’t look to see who it was but held it to my ear and said, ‘Hello?’
‘Megan?’
Simon. I felt winded and turned towards the car again. I should put the phone down. I can’t speak to him here. These half-formed thoughts flew through my mind. I didn’t hang up. I walked back to the car and got in, still holding the phone to my ear. I hardly heard what Simon was saying, so shaken was I by the fact that he’d rung me.
‘Hi, Megan,’ he said and I could tell just from those two words that he was drunk. He had a particular way of drawling, of not exactly slurring but stringing out his words a bit more than usual when he’d had a glass or two. Perhaps he’d had a boozy lunch and not bothered to go back into the office. ‘Just touching base. Seeing if you’re okay. How you are, I mean. And how are you?’
‘It’s none of your business how I am, Simon.’ I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice.
‘No need to be shirty,’ he said. ‘I still care about you, Megan, in spite of everything.’
‘Care about me? I don’t know how you have the nerve to ring me up.’
‘Come on, now, be fair! I explained everything, didn’t I? I know I did.’
I lost it then. ‘And that makes it okay, does it? Well, get this, Simon. I don’t want to hear from you ever again and if you try and phone me, I won’t answer.’
‘How dare you yell at me!’ he shouted.
I flinched, but quickly recovered.
‘Stop it!’ I shouted back at him. ‘Fuck off, Simon. Just fuck off and let me be. Go back to your precious wife and your precious baby and I hope you’re all very happy together.’
‘Well, there’s not going to be a baby—’
‘What? What do you mean?’ He was almost panting at the other end of the line, like someone who’d just run a race. If I’d been feeling angry before, this enraged me so much that I found it hard to breathe.
‘You told me you were expecting a baby. What happened? Or were you lying about your wife being pregnant?”
‘No, no, of course not. There was a baby …’ He sighed. ‘There’s no baby any more. She’s lost it. Bet you thought: Let’s see if I can get something really really bad to happen.’
‘Hang on,’ I said. I needed time to think about what he’d said. ‘Are you saying your wife had a miscarriage?’
‘Yup, that’s exactly what I was saying.’
‘Simon, you’re pissed. I can hear that you are. Do you know what you’re saying at all?’
‘Of course I do! Gail lost the baby. Him. It was a him. No more baby.’
‘And you’re saying it’s my fault?’
‘If the cap fits …’
Bastard, I thought. What was he doing? What was he accusing me of? Killing his child? No wonder he wanted to phone me. Why should we be the only unhappy ones? Megan can suffer too. Right. Brilliant. I was almost sure that he’d wake up tomorrow with no memory of even having spoken to me. I wanted to cut him off but I managed to blurt out some kind of apology.
‘Simon. I really am so … so sorry. That’s if I had anything to do with it.’
I snapped my phone shut. I didn’t want to hear his reply. But could it be true? Everything except the shock of what I might have done left my head. I forgot that I was there, in the early evening darkness in front of Salix House. Eva, Rowena, the girls, the article, everything that had been in my head before I spoke to Simon seemed to contract into a hard knot of anguish.
I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when the knocking came on the window. Eva. Oh, God, I thought. What’ll I say to her? How can I explain? I blinked, realized I’d been crying, scrabbled in my glove compartment for a tissue and blew my nose. It occurred to me that I could drive off, never see Salix House or Eva or anyone ever again. But I’d left my things in the study and Eva was standing there, looking concerned, so I wound my window down.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, before she could ask me. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to come and find me like this. I had a phone call …’
‘From him? The one you were telling me about?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let him get to me, but he did.’ I wasn’t about to tell her what he’d said.
‘Come back inside. Come and sit for a while. Have another cup of tea or something stronger.’
‘Thank you. You’re being so kind.’
‘You will get over it, you know,’ Eva said as we walked up to the house. ‘It’s a cliché and everyone always rushes to say it but it’s true. Doesn’t mean you don’t go through hell first, of course, but you do get over it in the end.’
I tried to smile. When we reached the hall, I said, ‘I’d better go home now. You’ve been so nice. But I really should go. If I could just wash my face a bit, before I set off. I’ll go and get my handbag. I left it in the study, I think.’
‘Of course.’ She pointed to a door. ‘You remember where the downstairs loo is? Come and get your things and I’ll see you when you’re ready.’
The downstairs cloakroom was off the corridor leading to the kitchen. My make up, I knew, would have disappeared and I imagined my face must be a mess. As soon as I went in and locked the door behind me, I wanted to open it again. I had no idea what it was about the room but it was very cold and I felt suddenly uneasy. Pull yourself together, Megan. It’s the poshest downstairs loo you’ve ever been in. Fluffy dark blue towels. L’Occitane soap. One of Eva’s designs – her own original drawing – on the wall to the right of the basin. A white china bowl of pot-pourri with a fragrance of vanilla and roses on the wide window sill.
I calmed down after a bit. Maybe I was uncomfortable here because I was feeling so rotten in general. The mirror was set too high up on the wall: that was the only thing wrong in the whole room. Eva must have put it up there to suit her son-in-law.
After I’d washed my face, I put down the lid of the lavatory, and sat on it. Then I fished around in my handbag and found my hand mirror and a lipstick. For the thousandth time, I promised myself that I’d try to become the kind of person who carried everything she needed for a make-up repair job in a neat, zipped-up case. I squinted into the mirror, moving it around so that I could see all of my face. As expected, I looked as crap as I felt and there wasn’t much I could do about it. I focused on my mouth and began to apply my lipstick and then the mirror fell out of my hand and I scrabbled round on the floor and picked it up and thrust it into the depths of my bag. I opened the door as quickly as I could and came out on to the corridor.
I could hear childish voices coming from the study. The girls must be in there with Eva, I thought. Looking to my right, I could see up the corridor to the hall. There was the vase, on the table, full of silk flowers. The grandfather clock in the corner outside the dining-room door. I must have imagined it, I told myself. There was no one in the loo with you, Megan. You are seriously losing it. Seriously. I took two or three deep breaths and reckoned I was okay to go back to where Eva was. There was no way I could have seen anything else reflected in my small, inadequate mirror. But I had. I’d seen something. Someone. A bit of someone’s face. It must have been a bit of your face, you idiot. Maybe you turned the mirror in a funny way without thinking about it. But it wasn’t my face. It was a face I had never seen before and didn’t recognize. It vanished as soon as my eyes fell on it, but it had been there. I could have sworn that something had been there, a kind of shadow moving across the glass.
