She feels for the table as she steps back from him.
‘Yes, well, you never know.’
Miles arrived at the firm while she was on maternity leave, a new partner poached from Carrier’s, along with half the M&A team.
‘Good to let the hair down now and then.’ He slicks a hand across his bald patch.
She laughs, but perhaps the gesture was unconscious because he doesn’t respond. She glances over to see if Sarah is still with Delia.
‘Bet you could do with a bit of down time,’ he says.
‘Couldn’t we all?’
‘New mother. Hard to keep the pace.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘No room for passengers on a team like this one.’
He isn’t smiling any more, and she feels a jab of alarm.
‘You’re joking, right?’
Her work record is impeccable, she’s on the cusp of partnership. She keeps on smiling, though. Because? Well, because she doesn’t know how else to react.
‘Husband pulling his weight?’
Max is waving at her now, pulling faces behind Miles’s back, and she prepares to move away before she loses her temper.
‘Oh, you know what US clients are like. They think he’s a twenty-four-hour drive-through.’
‘So, no.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she laughs. ‘Did I say that? Surely not.’
She had forgotten this side of work, how tiresome it can be, dealing with people like Miles. He takes a step towards her, and there’s a sheen of moisture on his upper lip.
‘Are we going to dance?’
She glances at the empty dance floor. ‘I doubt it, Miles, but thanks.’
‘I think you’re wrong there. I think it’s only a matter of time.’
Sarah has returned. She stands there a moment, looking from one to the other, then hands Jess the Bellini.
‘Waylaid. Sorry. You must be dying for this.’
‘Catch you when the music changes,’ Miles says, and walks away.
‘What was that about?’ Sarah says.
‘I honestly have no idea.’
She pulls a face. ‘He’s an idiot. Come on, let’s find Max.’
Max gives her a puppyish hug, and almost knocks the drink from her hand. He is talking holiday destinations with some of the trainees.
‘Already had mine, sadly. Just back from Italy,’ Sarah says.
Max says he’s going to Slovenia. ‘We’re staying at a place called Hisa—’
Jess’s phone purrs in the little bag she wears slung across her like a sash. She glances at it and sees it’s Hana. And then she notices the three missed calls, all from Hana too.
‘Hang on a sec,’ she tells them. ‘Ask me about it when I get back. It’s just outside Kobarid, but I’ve got to take this.’
She steps away from them to make the call, which Hana answers on the second ring.
‘OK, Hana. OK. Just slow down a bit. Hang on, I can’t hear a word with this racket. Let me call you back.’
She walks out the other end of the marquee, where a huge Gingko biloba blots out the sky. Her heels sink into the lawn, so she moves on to the gravel path where the cellist from earlier is leaning against a tree, talking intently into her phone. To preserve the woman’s privacy, Jess moves deeper into the garden, to a bench by a clump of artichokes sprouting punk shocks of purple. She presses the speed dial. Behind her, the genteel jazz has given way to a beat.
‘Hey, Hana. That’s much better.’
‘They wanted to stay and wait, but I said no, better to come back later. No uniforms or nothing. Just a badge that could mean anything. And so—’
‘Who are we talking about?’
‘They say they are police. But when I ask is it about a car parked in wrong place, or a break-in in house down road, or what is it about, they just say it is not urgent matter, but they need to speak to you.’
Hana sounds insulted by that.
‘Oh, it’s probably just the community support people. I’m sure you know not to let anyone into the house unless Charlie or I—’
‘They will come back tomorrow. Ruby is sleeping now, so you can stay out late if you want.’
She does not want. She closes her eyes a moment and inhales the complicated fragrance of a summer evening on the turn – cinder and basil and something that might be chamomile. The crunch of gravel alerts her. When she opens her eyes, Miles is standing over her. The first thing she notices is that he has nothing in his hands, no drink or phone or cigarette. The top two buttons of his white shirt are open.
‘Oh, hello there.’ She is startled, and doesn’t try to hide it.
‘You’re not slipping away.’ The question comes out as a statement that she chooses to translate back into a question.
‘In fact, yes, I am. I’ve got something to deal with at home.’
‘And nothing to deal with here?’
He seems angry with her. She is puzzled, and searches their earlier conversation for clues. She wonders then if something might have hit the fan in the meantime – a deadline missed, the wrong client copied in on an email?
‘Is something the matter, Miles?’
He leans forward and presses her shoulder into the bench, applying his weight to it. She is so shocked that she is unable to speak. Everything is suddenly indecipherable – the galaxy of multicoloured paper globes that hang from the trees, the luxuriant vegetation, this man who has taken ill or lost his balance. But when he shoves his weight down on her other shoulder, she realises that something is going very badly wrong. She has trained herself never to take risks – there are no dark alleys in Jess’s life, no unlocked doors – and yet she has been caught, pinned like a moth.
‘Stop pretending you don’t remember me,’ he says. ‘Just stop it.’
His voice has changed. She can see the underside of his chin, where he has nicked himself shaving. He is not looking at her at all, but at something above her head. She realises then that he is keeping an eye out, and the fact that he is sober enough to be cautious worries her more than anything else. She smells sweat, and something fishy, and then she remembers the rice balls and thinks she might be sick. Instinct tells her to stay silent, to let his anger blow itself out, but her mouth does the talking.
‘I’ve no idea wh—’
‘Cut the crap,’ he says.
She catches a speck of spittle on her upper lip and turns her face away. The slats of the bench are pressing into her back, and she can’t heave enough breath to power a scream. The pathetic squeak she does manage is soaked up by the ambient traffic and the thud of music from the marquee. But he has only two hands, and they are both necessary to hold her firm. In the split second that he reaches for something – his pocket, his fly – she kicks hard and he falls back, flailing.
She is gone before he gets to his feet. She makes for the marquee along the gravel path, then takes to the lawn instead. Her shoes are off now, tucked under her arm, and she weaves in among the display beds until she reaches the gatehouse. A nice lady in pearls who is selling memberships surveys Jess’s wild hair, her bare feet, then tactfully resumes reading. Out on Swan Walk, Jess puts her shoes back on and is instantly stronger. She hastens her step, leaving behind her laptop, and the Oxfordshire garden, and the thick, squat palms that might have come from Goa. Over the wall wafts ‘Viva la Vida’. She already knows she will not tell anyone this story. She needs the job too much. But the thought of Miles hauling himself out of the flower bed and charging after her like a maddened bull frightens her. It makes her think she would be wise to report a man like that.
She reaches Royal Hospital Road, where there are always taxis, and hops in one to take her south. In the comforting dark of the back seat, she is aware of her own breath, coming ragged and fast. The driver seems to notice it too. He glances up at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘You all right back there?’
She closes her eyes as they cross the river. She leans back in the seat and starts to call Charlie, but h
er hands are shaking and he will still be with the client. And what would she say? What did happen, exactly, in that garden?
As the taxi sweeps through the summer evening, people are still standing outside bars, light-hearted and loose-limbed. And all the while Jess is picking through memories – awkward encounters, rows, drunken parties, people she might have slighted without even realising. She relishes a professional argument, but backs off at the first sign of a personal clash. She is careful of people’s feelings, is never rude. She can’t imagine what she could have done to provoke such anger. There was once an incident of road rage, memorable only for the fact that it was so unusual, but the driver who threatened her was older, she is sure. But by the time the taxi reaches the Common she has remembered something. It must be eight, ten years now, soon after she left uni. A group of them had travelled over to Switzerland for a long weekend – a friend’s birthday. Faithie, that’s it. There was a flight to Geneva, a train ride along the lake past Montreux, and then a bus up to Villars, where Faithie’s parents had a chalet. They were all lawyers, and the same vintage, give or take. But there was this other guy, a little older than the rest of them, who was someone’s flatmate’s brother and who’d come along at the last minute. She remembers a mix-up in the queue that left her sharing a six-person chairlift with him, just the two of them on one of those long, long climbs to the top of the mountain.
No matter how hard she tries she can’t remember his face, though he did have a similar physique to Miles Rennie – stocky, with a rugby-player heft to him. Could it have been Miles? She supposes it could. They had talked a little – ski runs, other resorts, whatever – and they were about halfway up when he made some kind of move. It was nothing, really. He might have placed a hand on her Michelin Man padded leg, but she doesn’t think he tried anything too overt. As far as she remembers he didn’t even try to kiss her, though he did say something crass about the two of them going off-piste. It was embarrassing rather than frightening. She just wanted to get away. And she did cloak it with a sort of excuse, something weak about meeting someone halfway down. She remembers gripping tightly to her poles, and shunting herself forward onto the edge of the seat as the top of the mountain approached. Raising the bar and then just skiing away.
It hadn’t really bothered her, and she didn’t acknowledge the incident to him or to anyone else. She just stayed out of his way for the rest of the weekend. It was easy, in a big group like that, to lose him at the opposite end of the long rough tables in the mountain restaurants where they ate endless servings of raclette. And that was that. She is amazed that anyone could consider the slight worth nurturing. And so perhaps she is wrong.
As the taxi pulls into Riverton Street in front of this house she loves, that they can’t really afford, she feels calmer. Perhaps she will try to forget the incident in the Physic Garden ever happened. As soon as she gets in the door, she can hear the snuffle of Ruby’s breath on the baby monitor. Charlie isn’t home yet and as she rushes up the stairs there is a blur of television voices from Hana’s room. She eases open Ruby’s door and home drapes itself back around her. It’s all she can do not to lift the child out of her cot. She stands there and listens to Ruby’s soft breath. She lets it comfort her, and then she gently shuts the door.
Ro’s bus didn’t go to Dublin after all. Instead, it left him stranded in the middle of the bog, some place he’d never heard of where he waited for hours for another one to twist its way around two counties before dropping him off at the Busáras. Now that he’s finally at the ferry port, he can feel Mags Madden all around him – a wispy presence, rustling like a sack of old leaves. To drown her out, he clamps his headphones to his ears and lets Jon Hopkins surge right through him, pumping at his heart, taking a wrecking ball to his head.
The last ferry out of Dublin is full of the kind of people who are normally invisible. Here, isolated from those who run in packs, they are forlorn and obvious. Ro has been on a lot of boats and he has seen a lot of people like the fat man at the next table who is boring on about his time on the rigs to a couple playing Candy Crush. Caspian Sea. Ten years. If he went back he’d be a supervisor, but they can stuff their job.
He feels sorry for the woman opposite, whose head is already a skull, and yet part of him hates her too, like he hates all this tribe of losers, for being in the same boat as him. Now that he’s removed the headphones, the hum is in his ears again. Although it is possible that the real Mags is recovering from her hangover in her Formica kitchen, frying rashers against the late-night munchies, it doesn’t sound like it because the Mags in his head is papery and rustling, dead as autumn.
Once the ferry trembles into life, Ireland passes behind him quickly enough – the fat, round storage tanks, the rat-tail rain. He remembers what it felt like in that caravan – to place one kick, and then another, and another, and then to walk away.
As he queues for coffee at Blazes Boylan’s Bar he wonders at being able to hide what’s in his head – the flashing metal and the battering drums, the Mags Madden shuffle. But this tribe of losers notice nothing, because everything they see is grey. Not like Jess, for whom everything is etched in black and white. The thought of Jess agitates him. Jess, and her inside track.
He isn’t taken with the doughnuts or the crackle-glazed croissants, so he moves on to the Nora Barnacle Food Emporium instead. As he stands in line, he looks out at the approaching dark. There is no horizon, only mist and waves. Rain streams down the sealed, metal-framed windows that are streaked with the rusty tracks of other journeys, and it occurs to him that his mother might have taken this same ferry herself, sat in the same seat, even. Somewhere between Ireland and Wales, he wakes to find the waves have thickened. Sealed off behind those windows those silent waves are menacing. He plugs himself back in to Jon, and it’s like a fuzz in the blood, driving him on and on, to London and Jess and answers.
When the ferry docks at Holyhead, he discovers that there isn’t a train for hours. He takes a bluey to keep him going and goes in search of alternatives. The car-hire place is still open, though the guy there could be moonlighting for all he knows. The only vehicle available is a two-door Bug with a 1.3-litre engine. Apart from the Merc, that is. Once seen, he’s sold, but an epic grovel is required before Mr Moonlight will deliver the keys to the Merc in return for a wodge of cash.
It’s a long time since he has driven, and this night driving is like a hallucination. Halfway across Anglesey, there are roadworks, great red Xs overhead that might be a comment on his life. No entry, no entry, no entry. He meets a line of lorries travelling in the opposite direction, cabs with flatbeds strung out behind them. To escape from what looks like a bad omen, he floors the accelerator. Sometimes, he loses the run of the road, no longer sure where the centre is, and it’s exhilarating, this tangle of light – blue ahead, and flashes of red that might be a perimeter, lines of white that might mark an airfield. And still the car surges on. He is tired of choosing, of being let down. Frustrated by all the roads he didn’t take, the leads he didn’t reach in time. Some will-o’-the-wisp is as likely as his rational mind to lead him to his mother.
There are eight pre-sets on the car radio. He tries them all before settling on a chat show with the usual late-night lunatics, the mystery voices and the kiss ’n’ tells. Story after story, lie upon lie. As for their own history, Jess has always claimed to believe the simplest theory, that their parents were attacked on that beach and dragged into the trees, that they were robbed and their bodies hidden, and that it is mere chance that their father’s body has been found and not their mother’s. But his heart is popping now at the thought of those years spent trailing off after Sophie Considine who probably was no longer Sophie Considine at all. Even now, he can hear Mags Madden, whispering in his ear. ‘She won’t be far from Jess.’
Somewhere south of Birmingham, between trance and sleep, he jolts awake to find himself veering off the road. Wresting back control, he pulls onto the hard shoulder while his heart batters
and his mind swerves. He puts his head down on the wheel for a power nap until, woken by the shuddering of a Sainsbury’s juggernaut, he decides to come off the motorway instead. At the next services, the stench of old sausage greets him at the door. The bluey has worn off now, and he is yearning for a bed. Ten minutes later he is in the Travelodge, and sinking into beige and white and glorious sleep.
3
The morning after the Summer Party, Jess goes to the office just as she always does. But, bubbling there beneath the skin of things, there is a sense of dread. She knows how this goes – the day will stagger on, and then whatever peril she has half perceived will hurry in and swamp her. She has trained herself to pick up the warning signs – a feeling of unease, a weight in the air. When she passes the knot of PAs beside the stairwell, two unfamiliar faces – temps, she supposes – look up at her, as if they sense it too, this clinging apprehension. She skips the weekly know-how meeting and leaves the office at lunchtime to try to clear her head. On her short cut to the market, she almost collides with a man peering up at the clouded peak of the latest trophy high-rise. There is no one else around and, when he whips round to face her, she is terrified that this is it, this is the moment. But then he steps aside, and it was nothing after all.
No sooner is she back in the office than Miles is at her door, and she knows for certain then that this squat, balding man in the purple tie is the source of her unease. She offers him a seat, but he remains standing. Leaning there against the door frame, he looks hung-over, shifty. She waits for the apology, but it doesn’t come, and then she is angry with herself for allowing him to make her feel so vulnerable.
‘You look tired, Miles,’ she says. ‘Late night?’
She focuses on a large, angry spot on the side of his nose, horribly compelling in a man of his age. The focus helps her hold back her fear, because she is shocked to find that she is still afraid and therefore that whatever happened was real enough. And then she steels herself to confront him.
‘You seemed upset last night.’
The Orphans Page 3
