After Isabella

by Rosie Fiore

  ‘Then she’s still dead,’ said Sally gently. ‘If you believe in God, then you’ll believe she’s watching you from heaven and knows what’s in your heart. If you don’t, then you’ll believe she’s gone completely, so how can your actions hurt her?’

  ‘It’s easy for you to think like that,’ said Esther bitterly. ‘You cared for your mum – and for Isabella. My mother killed herself rather than let me care for her. That’s how little she thought of me.’

  ‘Is that what you think? Really?’

  ‘What else can I possibly think?’

  ‘That maybe it wasn’t about you? When people are ill, they turn inwards. Often, they think only of themselves. It’s not surprising. And sometimes they do and say things… that they wouldn’t if they were entirely in their right minds.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘There are a lot of things I don’t know about,’ said Sally softly, ‘but I do know about sick and dying people. And I know about grief.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Esther. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m going to call you every day,’ said Sally. ‘At around this time. If you don’t want to talk, or you’re busy, don’t pick up. I’ll understand. But I’m going to keep calling, in case you do need to talk. And of course you can ring me anytime you want to. Anytime. Day or night. I’m a very light sleeper.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t deserve your kindness.’

  ‘Of course you do. Sleep tight.’

  Lucie came back from Stephen’s, Esther went back to work and, at least on the surface, life regained some semblance of normality. She lectured, she administrated, she cooked meals and started running again. She spent nights and weekends with Michael and took Lucie out to do things whenever she could get a slot in her daughter’s busy social calendar. And every night, give or take the odd one when she was out, she sat on the edge of her bed and talked to Sally.

  Sometimes the calls were short. Sally would just say, ‘How are you?’ and Esther would reply, ‘A little better today,’ and they’d make small talk for a couple of minutes and then ring off. Sometimes the phone rang and she didn’t want to answer it because she felt almost happy that day, and she didn’t want to have to think about Laura. But guilt would make her pick up the phone and, somehow, talking to Sally would make her feel a little less like she was betraying her mother’s memory by carrying on with her life.

  And some days she was barely able to drag herself through the hours of work and beyond, so heavy was her heart. She’d count the minutes until half past nine, the magical hour when Sally would ring. And on those days, when she could barely croak ‘Hello’, Sally would understand and would keep up a quiet, murmuring monologue, as if she was speaking to an invalid or someone who was unconscious.

  ‘I had my driving lesson today,’ she said on one such evening. ‘Harry, my driving teacher, says I’m making very good progress. I’m planning to take my test next month. I got him to drop me on the high street, and I went to that posh new coffee shop, do you know the one I mean? They have macarons. Fancy that! I’d never had a macaron before. I didn’t even know what they were. They came in all sorts of pretty colours – pinks and peaches and yellows – and they’re so light.’

  ‘My mum…’ Esther began, but then couldn’t continue.

  ‘Your mum?’ prompted Sally gently.

  ‘My mum… made the most beautiful macarons. Light as a feather and so delicious. Lucie loved them.’

  ‘Do you bake?’

  ‘A bit. But I don’t have a tenth of Mum’s skill, or her artistic flair.’

  ‘She was very artistic. She worked, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she was a junior school teacher. Never at our school – she never wanted me to be the teacher’s child – but at another school in the area.’

  ‘I bet she was a wonderful teacher.’

  ‘I think she was firm but fair, as they say. She certainly didn’t stand for any nonsense from me, so I can’t imagine she’d have put up with it from children in her class. I know she used to come up with wonderful art projects for the children. She always had the most brilliant classroom displays. She’d transform the whole room into an undersea wonderland, or put castle battlements around all the walls and get the children to design flags and shields.’

  As she spoke, it became clear to her that just talking about Laura had lifted the weight from her chest a little. It was so good to remember her – remember what she had been like before the terrible end she had chosen. Sally was right. She did know about grief. Her simple acts of kindness, the daily phone calls, were saving Esther’s life. And yet Esther couldn’t help thinking the kindness, the intimacy was – disproportionate. What kind of person made an effort like that for an acquaintance? What kind indeed?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  One Monday morning, Esther was sitting at her desk, working through her emails when her office phone rang.

  ‘Professor Hart?’ Esther recognized the breathy voice. Abigail from the press office, an enthusiastic young woman with a tendency to flap in a crisis. This was not an ideal quality in someone who sometimes had to firefight bad-news stories about the university or deal with insistent journalists.

  ‘Yes,’ said Esther cautiously.

  ‘Have you seen the news?’ said Abigail. ‘It’s all over the BBC and the broadsheets.’

  ‘Er… what news?’ Esther opened her internet browser and called up the BBC site. She couldn’t immediately see anything on the front page that might overexcite someone in the press office of a university. But then she spotted it in the ‘Most Read’ stories in the bottom right-hand corner: ‘Possible new Dickens manuscript discovered’.

  ‘Is it the Dickens thing?’ she asked, opening the story and scanning it.

  ‘Yes!’ said Abigail. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

  Academics at a small university in the South East had been approached by an anonymous person who had found a boxful of papers that he said had been in his family for some generations. Among them was a handwritten story, full of corrections and crossings-out. He could see it was very old but had no idea how old exactly or who might have written it. The academics at the university had suspected from the handwriting and the style that it might be an early story by Charles Dickens himself, although none of them had ever seen it before. They had approached a few experts confidentially and asked their opinions. They were now so cautiously optimistic that they had made a public announcement, little thinking, Esther assumed, that it would break as a national news story.

  Abigail had been waiting impatiently on the other end of the phone for Esther to finish reading the article.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t really offer an opinion,’ said Esther. ‘I haven’t seen the manuscript, and besides, I’m not an expert in Dickens’ handwriting. I just wouldn’t have a clue one way or the other.’

  ‘Do you think you could arrange to have a clue by lunchtime? You see, we have a news crew coming to the university, and they want to ask whether you, as a Dickens expert, think it’s genuine.’

  ‘What?’ said Esther, horrified.

  ‘I’ve got a transcript of the story, which I’m emailing over now.’ Abigail was persistent, Esther had to give her that. ‘You just need to say a few words on camera. Say you don’t have very much information, but you think it might be genuine. Or probably isn’t genuine. Just say something. Please.’

  ‘Abigail, I really can’t—’

  ‘This is the first approach we’ve had from a national television station in years. It would do wonders for the profile of the university. And to have a woman professor—’

  ‘What about my professional credibility? I can’t just pop up on TV, offering opinions on something I’ve skimmed over in an email.’

  ‘Just a few words. A sound bite,’ pleaded Abigail. And then she played her trump card. ‘The principal himself has asked that you do it.’

  Esther sighed. There was no way she could say no now. Not if the ord
er had come from the boss himself. ‘All right. But I’m going to need some time to read the story.’

  ‘It’s in your inbox already!’ Abigail was almost squealing with delight. ‘Thank you, Professor Hart. Thank you so much. I’ll come over to your office at eleven and we’ll decide where to do the interview.’

  Esther didn’t open the email with the transcript. Not yet. She left her office and went to the bathroom to look at her reflection in the mirror. She looked dreadful – washed out, and too thin. Michael had been right. Her hair was long overdue a trim, and she didn’t have any make-up on. At least she was wearing a vaguely presentable blouse and dark blue pencil skirt. She’d put her hair up and slap on some make-up. That would have to do.

  She went back to her desk and, taking a deep breath, opened the email. She spent the next hour and a half going through the transcript (in which, fortunately, all the changes and corrections from the original had been indicated in the typed text) and reading the theories about when the story might have been written. She checked various Dickens biographies, comparing dates and other writings from the time. It was by no means exhaustive, but at least she could fudge a few answers.

  She was massively over-prepared. The interviewer arrived with a cameraman, who couldn’t have looked more bored if he tried. The interviewer was a glossy and ambitious young man and didn’t bother hiding the fact that he thought this assignment beneath him. He clearly imagined himself standing outside Number Ten, opining on the political news of the day, not interviewing some stuffy old-lady academic about a long-dead writer who may or may not have written something.

  They set up in a corner of the library so that there was a background of leather-bound spines over Esther’s shoulder. The cameraman arranged a light or two to illuminate the scene. Then he got behind the camera and began to shoot.

  ‘So do you think this manuscript is a real Dickens story?’ asked the interviewer, in a way that suggested he didn’t much care.

  ‘I’m not an expert in the forensics of handwriting, and I also haven’t seen the original, however—’

  ‘Cut, Peter,’ the interviewer said to the cameraman. He turned to Esther. ‘Listen, can you just answer the question without loads of qualifications?’

  ‘Not really. I can’t just throw out a random view.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, the information I’m basing my opinion on is scanty at best. I have to explain the limitations of what I’m saying.’

  ‘No one’s going to hold you to it,’ he said insistently. ‘It’s for five seconds on the five o’clock news. We’ll have dropped this story by tomorrow.’

  ‘Except my academic colleagues,’ said Esther firmly. ‘Anyway, why didn’t you interview the academics who were given the manuscript?’

  ‘They’re all the way down in Surrey,’ said the interviewer. He didn’t even bother to look ashamed.

  ‘Seriously? This is the way the BBC does things?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not from the BBC. We’re Channel 5.’

  She relaxed a fraction then. The Channel 5 news at five? She had thought it a little odd when he’d said the five o’clock, not the six o’clock. She couldn’t imagine anyone she knew would be watching a five o’clock news bulletin on Channel 5 on a weekday. She’d still be very careful what she said, but it was unlikely to cause a stir.

  She and the presenter wrangled over it for a while, but in the end she got away with saying that the manuscript looked very interesting and promising, and that it contained a few references which might relate to where Dickens was purported to have been at the time. He pressed her quite hard and eventually she said, hesitantly, that she thought there was a possibility it might be genuine. It wasn’t too overt a confirmation, she hoped. On balance, she thought she had escaped with her academic credentials intact, even if her hair wasn’t up to much. Hopefully press-office Abigail and the principal would be satisfied. She dashed off a text message to Lucie and sent Michael an email, in case he was anywhere near a TV at five o’clock. Then she promptly forgot about it and got on with the real business of the day.

  She was just pulling up outside her house at about 5.30 that evening when her phone bleeped with a text message, and before she could reach for it, it started to ring. It was a very excited Abigail. Esther had the sense that this was the biggest coup of her publicity career. Abigail was thrilled and said they had given Esther more screen time than she had expected.

  ‘I’ve just got in the door,’ Esther said, trying to stem Abigail’s flood of enthusiastic chatter. ‘I haven’t actually seen it yet.’ Nor would she see it, she realized. There wasn’t a catch-up website for Channel 5 like there was for the BBC, was there? She had no idea.

  Lucie came to meet her at the door and took the stack of books and papers out of her arms. She was clearly trying to get her attention too. Esther nodded and kept trying to get a word in edgewise so she could get off the call with Abigail. Eventually, she spoke a little sharply. ‘Abigail. Abigail!’ she barked, in the split second when Abigail drew breath. ‘I’ve just got home. I need to see to my daughter. Can I call you back later?’

  ‘Of course, of course! Ring me back whenever you can. I’m just going to email the principal.’

  Esther ended the call and then deliberately switched her phone off before it could ring or beep again.

  ‘See to me?’ said Lucie. ‘That makes me sound like an infant, or a dog.’

  ‘I had to say something. I was trying to get rid of the press-office lady.’

  ‘You have a press-office lady now? My mum’s a celeb.’

  ‘Hardly. Did you see it?’

  ‘Saw it, recorded it, posted pictures on the internet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m kidding about the last one. I haven’t posted any. Yet. I got some with my phone – look.’ Lucie held up her phone and Esther saw a pixelated image of her own face, clearly snapped from the TV screen.

  ‘Oh Lord, I look like some kind of mad old-lady academic,’ she said, horrified.

  ‘You looked fine. And hardly mad at all,’ said Lucie. ‘Come and watch it.’

  Esther went through to the living room, pausing long enough in the kitchen to grab a glass of wine.

  Lucie found the clip with the remote, and Esther watched as a blank-faced news anchor she didn’t recognize introduced the story. The young presenter who had come to interview her gave a short introduction over a montage of images from Dickens book covers and TV adaptations. And then suddenly Esther saw herself on screen. She knew many of her lectures were filmed or recorded for students to use as reference, but she had never watched more than a few moments of any of them. This was completely different. There she was in high definition, on her own TV screen at home. She had heard from colleagues who did a lot of television and radio that it was always a shock the first time you saw yourself on screen or heard your voice. They weren’t lying. To her own eyes, she looked old. Very old, and haggard; her hair was scraped back from her too-thin face, and her voice sounded high and reedy. She had thought she was relaxed and confident, but she looked ill at ease and amateurish. Worst of all, they had cut what she said to ribbons. They showed her making a few introductory remarks about the context and the time in which the story was written. Then they had shots of her hands (veined and thin, she noted), moving over the copy of the manuscript they had brought with them. But when they cut to her face, they had edited her words significantly. ‘Yes,’ she said, and then they cut away to her sitting looking at her PC screen, and she heard her own voice saying, ‘Every possibility it’s genuine’. She knew she hadn’t said that in those exact words – it was clearly a clever splicing job, to make her sound more definite than she had been.

  ‘Oh, this is awful!’ she said, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘I look terrible, and I sound worse… and they’ve made me say things I didn’t say!’

  ‘No, it isn’t awful,’ said Lucie. ‘You look fine. And you sound very professional.’

  ‘If yo
u say I look fine, that means I always look like that. And that makes it worse. That means I’ve been walking around looking like a haggard old mad cat-lady for years, and no one has told me!’

  ‘Not a haggard old mad cat-lady. Not one of the ones with fur-covered clothes that smell of cat pee. More like a slightly eccentric academic lady who might have a cat or two.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m teasing. You looked fine. And you still have a boyfriend, so you can’t be a total hag.’

  ‘That’s true. Although I clearly need feeding up. Shall we order pizza?’

  ‘Well, now you’re a celebrity, we obviously can’t go out to a restaurant. What with the paparazzi and the autograph hunters.’

  ‘And I’ve given the bodyguards the night off.’

  ‘Pizza it is then. Is Michael coming over?’

  ‘Not tonight. He’s got some thrilling faculty meeting that’s due to go on till eight or so. He will have missed my star appearance.’

  ‘Poor guy. Can we get pepperoni? And dough balls too?’

  Esther ordered pizza and pottered around putting laundry on and tidying the house. The pizza arrived and she and Lucie ate it in front of the TV. She heard the landline phone ring, at the time that Sally usually called, but she left it to go to message. She was grateful for the thought, but she was cautiously content this evening and wanted to enjoy this small bubble of peace with Lucie. Sally would understand.

  Lucie found a film she wanted to watch and by the time it had ended and Esther had persuaded her to go to bed it was nearly ten o’clock. She glanced at her watch and idly thought that it was a bit odd that Michael hadn’t rung her. Then she remembered clicking off her mobile as she came through the door. She switched it back on and it bleeped several times with texts and voice messages. She was astonished. There were five or six texts and a couple of messages from friends who had seen her on TV, as well as two voice messages from Michael. ‘I didn’t want to ring the landline,’ he said in the second one, ‘in case Lucie’s already in bed. I’ll be up late. Call me.’