Crossing the Lines

by Sulari Gentill

  “Good. I’ll organise the contracts. In the meantime, suppose you tell me what you’re working on.”

  “How did you know I was—?”

  “I can see it in your eyes…a distraction. You’re not all here.”

  “Not all here? Charming.”

  “Don’t pretend to be offended. Who are you with?”

  Edward told her about Madeleine. Leith listened.

  “You don’t think this novel will be too self-referential?”

  He shrugged. “All novels are self-referential to some extent.”

  Leith stood and opened his refrigerator. Her smile was knowing, teasing. “Look at you…you’re excited.”

  “Shut up.” Edward was suddenly embarrassed.

  She laughed at him. “Have you started? Do you have something I can look at?”

  “Yes, I’ve started, but I’m not ready for you to look. I don’t want to break the spell, Leith. This might be the best thing I’ve ever written.”

  Leith rolled her eyes. “Writers! I ask for a manuscript and you start mumbling about black magic.” She took an unopened bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and placed it on the bench. “Very well…keep it to yourself for now, but I want you to show me something soon.”

  Edward saluted.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “Now find some glasses so we can toast Sentience.”

  ***

  Madeleine barely noticed when Hugh returned. She had been languishing in the world of Edward McGinnity all day. A collection of used coffee mugs marked the hours she had spent at the laptop.

  “You let the fire go out.” Hugh opened the door of the cast-iron fireplace. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t notice. It must have only just died down.”

  Hugh put his hand on the firebox. “It’s stone cold, Maddie.”

  “Really? Sorry.”

  Hugh struck a match to light kindling and revive the flames. “I suppose I should see about tea.”

  Madeleine wrinkled her nose. It was a veiled reproach. Hugh had expected she’d organise something. He’d been at work all day while she was at home.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said closing the laptop. “You watch the news while I rustle something up.” She tossed him the remote control as she headed to the kitchen with no idea what she’d cook. Her culinary skills were rudimentary at the best of times. She opened the freezer compartment and stared in. Frozen pies—they’d do. Madeleine popped three into the oven and, having found salvation in the freezer once, returned there in search of accompaniments. A bag of frozen vegetables rewarded her faith, and its contents were duly dropped into a double boiler.

  Edward wrote the manner in which she tidied aimlessly while the pies warmed, the fact that she remained in the kitchen rather than returning to the living room. There was a faint, almost imperceptible trepidation in the choice. Edward studied her, poked at her barely noticeable unease. He didn’t think she was afraid of Hugh…so what else? What was it she’d told Leith?…“things have just got back to normal”…Was she afraid that so little could derail normality? Edward tapped the end of his pencil against his chin, contemplating the nature of this vulnerability. Perhaps this was what would draw her to him.

  And so he stayed with her while she prepared the meal, until Madeleine was able to return to Hugh with a peace offering of dinner.

  Having been soothed by half an hour of national news, Hugh Lamond seemed less prickly. And he liked pies. Over dinner he told Madeleine about the rigours of his day, the politics of the hospital, and the frustrations of patient care. At some point he stood and paced.

  Madeleine didn’t say a great deal. When in this murky mood, Hugh required an ear, not counsel. The problems were not necessarily solvable anyway. The system would probably always be unwieldy and people would probably always be difficult. Joe Oswald’s condition had not yet improved, and neither had his wife’s situation. Hugh rubbed his face wearily. Mrs. Oswald had taken up half his morning in laments and hysteria, but how could he turn her away? He’d used the ten minutes he’d had for lunch to find a solicitor to draw up power of attorney documents to ensure that they would never be in such a desperate place.

  Again there was reproach in the words. Madeleine wished now she’d drafted the documents herself. It would have been one less thing that Hugh had to do. Perhaps she really wasn’t pulling her weight.

  After they’d cleared the dinner plates, Madeleine opened the can of black cherries Hugh had brought home and they ate it with chocolate ice cream. It was close enough to Black Forest cake and required a lot less in terms of effort.

  Madeleine reopened her laptop.

  “Did you get much writing done today?” Hugh asked. His tone was friendly, conciliatory. Perhaps he’d sensed her hesitation.

  Madeleine nodded. “Yes, it’s been a good day.”

  “Has he solved the crime yet, your writer?”

  Madeleine regarded him disdainfully. “It’d be a pretty dull book if he’d worked it out already.”

  “I suppose the hero of a detective novel must necessarily be a little stupid.”

  Madeleine knew he was baiting her. “Yes…perhaps I should make him a doctor, after all.”

  Trouble Begins

  Edward was cooking breakfast when he received the call. He’d run that morning, more out of a need to meter his mind than any particular yen for exercise. The pounding rhythm of his own stride slowed his thoughts, shook them, so that they settled into some form of order.

  He’d returned sweaty and ravenous, showering quickly and raiding the kitchen in nothing but a towel. Mrs. Jesmond didn’t come on weekends, rendering both the act and the attire in which he chose to do it, if not necessary, at least acceptable.

  Edward extracted eggs, bacon, pineapple, and spinach from the refrigerator and a loaf of sourdough from the cupboard and fried it all. The result was quite surprisingly edible, or so he thought, sampling directly from the pan.

  The phone call, however, meant that his culinary efforts were for naught. Edward turned off the hot plate as he spoke, and ran upstairs to dress the moment he’d placed down the receiver.

  Jeans and t-shirt donned in seconds, finding his car keys took a couple of minutes, and then he left the house for the home of Willow Meriwether. He didn’t make it in time.

  Elliot Kaufman answered the door of the run-down terrace. He wore paint-splattered overalls—the bib and brace kind—his broad, sculpted chest bare beneath. A red bandanna covered his hair. Madeleine detailed the artist quickly: the disdainful arch of his brow, the slight curl of pity—perhaps contempt—in his lips. Elliot knew Edward McGinnity loved his wife. It pleased him, having something another man coveted. “What the fuck are you doing here, McGinnity?”

  Edward didn’t flinch. Kaufman had always spoken like a fourteen-year-old who’d just discovered profanity. “Will called me. She said the police—”

  “They’ve taken her in for questioning.” Kaufman left the door open and walked back into the house.

  For a moment Edward hesitated and then he followed the man in. The house was what Willow and Kaufman called their “space.” Every room doubled as a studio, furniture lost amongst easels and stacks of canvases. A kind of creative melee in the midst of which two artists lived. “Why have they taken her in?” Edward asked.

  Kaufman shrugged. “Fucked if I know—some new evidence about last night. Shall I get her to call you when she gets back?”

  “I might go to the police station. Do you want a lift?”

  “Where?”

  “To the station.”

  “Fuck, no. Will’s a big girl.”

  “Don’t you think you should—?”

  “I think you should mind your own fucking business, McGinnity.”

  The exchange escalated from there. Madeleine observe
d more than wrote. She was not really interested in Elliot Kaufman. His character was simple, motivated by arrogance and envy. It was Edward’s reaction she cared about, his anger, his fury that he had lost Willow to a man who treated her like she was nothing.

  “Willow is my fucking wife,” Kaufman sneered. “At the moment, she may be flattered, amused by your simpering devotion, but I can guarantee you, mate, that in time she will find it as fucking pathetic as I do. We’ll laugh about it in our old age after she’s spread her legs for me—”

  Edward hit him then. “She’s your wife. Well done. You’ve won. Now why don’t you act like you remotely deserve to have her!”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Elliot wiped the blood from his nose. “I’ll be speaking to the fucking police, all right, McGinnity. But it won’t have anything to do with bloody Willow. Now get the fuck out!”

  Madeleine felt strangely startled as Edward walked away, Kaufman swearing and threatening in his wake. This was a turn she’d not expected. The level of vitriol between the two was not something she’d planned; it was too extreme to ignore. Elliot Kaufman was going to force his way into this story, however minor she had intended to write his part. She left the artist and followed the writer.

  Edward McGinnity drove directly to the police station. He took a deep breath before stepping out of the Jaguar, reining in his fury. Willow had no idea how much he and Kaufman loathed each other. They had competed for her hand and he had lost. Now his friendship with Willow depended on her believing he’d accepted that. Kaufman knew better, of course, but he, too, maintained the farce because it suited his need to gloat.

  The constable with whom Edward spoke was young, condescendingly cheerful. She directed him to take a seat in the public waiting room.

  Edward sat down beside a woman who had probably never been a girl. Her mouth curved fleetingly, scarlet lipstick on thin lips, broad shoulders hunched self-consciously. He said “Good morning,” and they both fell into a polite disengagement. The waiting room of a police station was probably not the best place to make friends.

  “Edward? Edward McGinnity?”

  Edward’s head snapped up towards the voice.

  A middle-aged woman at the front desk, her bob proudly silver, her figure solid, her stance wide and steady. She left the forms she’d been filling out. Edward stood, unconsciously stepping back.

  Her eyes softened, and she smiled as she approached him. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. Edward hadn’t seen Charlotte Adelaide in years but he hadn’t forgotten her. They’d first met fifteen years ago in the hospital. She’d been at his bedside when he came out of the anaesthesia. She’d told him that his entire family was dead. He’d been thirteen, and she’d been assigned as his social worker.

  Madeleine closed the laptop. She needed to stop. To take a moment in the face of such overwhelming grief. To work out how she would put it into words…if it could be put into words. It was time to make coffee.

  But the look on Edward McGinnity’s face did not leave her. Not as she made coffee, nor as she drank. Not as she scrolled through her e-mails, answering the urgent and the interesting. Even after all these years, the broken horror in Edward’s eyes clutched at her chest. She fortified herself with another cup of coffee and a hunk of chocolate before returning to her laptop.

  Charlotte Adelaide caught Edward in a maternal embrace, which was startling in its strength. Resisting would have been futile.

  “Well, look at you, sweetie, all grown up. I always knew you’d be a handsome man. I had hoped never to encounter you in a place like this, but considering what you’ve been through…”

  “I’m waiting for a friend, Miss Adelaide.”

  “Drugs?” she whispered. “Is it drugs? I know of some excellent programs…”

  “I’m waiting for a friend,” Edward said again. “She’s giving a statement.”

  The social worker studied him, and deciding suddenly that he was telling the truth, she tittered. “Oh, dear. I thought…forgive me, Edward. It’s a professional habit. How have you been? What are you doing with yourself now?”

  “I…I write.”

  “Books? How wonderful! I’ve always thought I should write a book—the things I’ve seen! If it weren’t for the legalities…”

  Edward smiled. “I have no doubt.”

  “Your friend…who you’re waiting for…is it drugs?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Charlotte Adelaide sighed, disappointed. “Pity. I could have helped, if so.” She rummaged in her bulging handbag and eventually extracted a packet of Mentos. She grabbed his hand and dropped a couple of sweets into it, before popping another into her own mouth.

  Edward stared at the white pellets, turning them over in his hand as the social worker prattled on. God, it was familiar. The background noise of Charlotte Adelaide and her Mentos. And that feeling…like he was hollow. He shook his head to dislodge the memory, to bring himself back from the edge of that yawning hole into which everything he had known and loved and trusted had fallen.

  But the social worker would not allow it, reminiscing relentlessly, catching him up on the foster families with whom he had been placed initially. They were grey in his memory, and vague. Like an idea never seriously considered. But he had been so consumed with grief and guilt and anger then that the world had receded out of his reach, out of his comprehension. Perhaps the foster families had been kind, perhaps they had tried to love him…he couldn’t remember.

  Madeleine gazed at the words on her screen, trying to pull away. This was backstory. A novice writer’s mistake. And yet she could not leave it alone. She had to know what had happened to the orphaned boy. How had he lived? Who had sent him to school? Who had cared about him…comforted him?

  “Tell me love, how is Mr. Finlay?” Charlotte Adelaide enquired, sitting down in the waiting room and patting the plastic chair beside her.

  Slowly Edward took the seat, the Mentos still in his hand. “He’s in London—some kind of sabbatical, I believe.”

  “Oh, is he? I expect you’re still close. I can tell you it was a weight off my mind when he agreed to take you in. You were happy there, weren’t you, Edward?” The question was tentative.

  “Yes,” Edward replied. It wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t been happy for a long time after the accident, but he had been less unhappy with Andrew Finlay.

  An associate of his father’s, Finlay had appointed himself Edward’s lawyer. He’d sued a number of multinationals on his young client’s behalf, faceless conglomerates who had built the bridge which had collapsed under a passing car and wiped out all but one member of a family.

  The barrister was not family, but he had been familiar at a time when Edward needed something from before. It was only after a succession of unsuccessful foster placements, that the courts had allowed Edward McGinnity to live with his lawyer. Finlay did not attempt to father him. They’d been housemates of a kind, friends in a master and apprentice sort of way.

  The various lawsuits were eventually settled the year Edward attained majority, for a sum that ensured both he and Finlay would thereafter be rich men. Still, Edward had never considered his fortune to be good fortune; it was just one of the things that happened after everyone died.

  He checked his watch, unsure what to say. He knew almost nothing about Charlotte Adelaide. Was there a husband or children about whom to politely enquire? A dog? A cat? Edward had no idea. She had brought him the news that his family was dead, and held his hand until he had been able to breathe. He had no doubt that she’d genuinely cared, but when he’d finally moved beyond his grief, he’d left her behind. Charlotte Adelaide had somehow become fused with his loss. Seeing her now made him feel bad in so many ways.

  She gave him her card, the cheaply printed generic business cards issued by the Department. He promised himself that he would send her flowers a
nd a note.

  She reached over and patted his hand. “I’d better get back to my client,” she said. “It’s been lovely seeing you, pet. I’m so glad you found your way. I’ll pop into the library tomorrow and ask for your books—you’ll be the first famous author I actually know.”

  He stood. “It was nice to see you too, Ms. Adelaide.”

  Perhaps she knew he was lying. The social worker smiled sadly and returned to the counter and her forms, while Edward resumed the plastic seat to wait for Willow. He felt sick, congested with the memory of first knowing. It was like bile, bitter. He gagged, closing his eyes and breathing. This was ridiculous…it had been fifteen years. And yet suddenly, he once again felt completely, overwhelmingly alone.

  And then a gaze locked on his, though he’d not yet opened his eyes. Her gaze—Madeleine’s, her presence. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking of her now, but he was glad. If he focussed on her—this literary construct of his—perhaps the panic would subside. She would give him something else to think about, a reason to step away from the abyss of remembering.

  Edward exhaled slowly, and pulled back, just enough so he could see more than the warm brown of her eyes. Madeleine d’Leon wore pyjamas. She was writing. He pulled back further. There was something else he wanted to see. She’d mentioned a miscarriage…he knew already that it had changed her. He needed to know. And so he looked for her two years before.

  Madeleine wore jeans now, an oversized cotton jumper with a scorch hole in the back where she’d stood too close to the fire, and well-weathered work boots as she pushed an ancient lawnmower over the paddock grass that masqueraded as a garden lawn. The day was crisp, the kind of sunbathed day that follows a frost. The light seemed cleaner somehow, the air sharp. The perfume of jonquils overlaid the duller earthy scent of newly cut, slightly wet grass.

  Madeleine pressed a hand to her cheek. She could feel the heat in her face. She cut the mower’s engine, moving slowly, heavily and sat on the rough steps which led from a small verandah. It was only then that she noticed the splotchy rash on her arms—a reaction to the roses she’d been pruning, no doubt.