by Nuala Casey
As the years passed, Matthew grew more and more intolerant of Kerstin’s obsessive behaviour – which also included a complete refusal to use the tube, the bus or fly in an aeroplane, citing the fact that the planes struck the twin towers in New York on her nineteenth birthday, how could all these cataclysmic events not be connected to her? – and in 2009, he had told her it was over and she had nodded her head. Inside she was screaming, begging him to stay but her compulsion for order was stronger than her need for Matthew. They had moved out of the Bloomsbury flat, and on a freezing February morning while her ex-lover boarded a plane taking him to a new life and a new job in the US, she had carried her few possessions up to the little, anonymous flat at the dark end of Old Church Street where she has stayed ever since, living a life as silent and spartan as a contemplative nun.
She turns on the gleaming, stainless steel oven and places a small potato into a glass dish. She knows she is trapped, a prisoner of London as well as her obsession. Refusing to use the tube or buses means she has a four-and-a-half mile round trip on foot each working day. She is constantly exhausted and it is beginning to show in her work. She is finding it more and more difficult to finish reports on time. Factoring in her daily rituals, work has become an inconvenient obstacle. Dominic Stratton has made his disappointment clear in recent weeks, which is why the Delta report is so important. She cannot afford to lose this job, and there are plenty around her desperate to take her place. Cal Simpson would eat off his own hand to do so. But she can do it, she will be able to get it delivered on time as long as everything remains just so, no ripped purses, no mess, no disorder. She puts the potato in the oven and sets the timer for thirty minutes. Just enough time to get some cleaning done.
*
Seb sits by the window looking out onto the shadowy mass of trees that constitute Battersea Park at night. Though the room is in darkness, his face is illuminated by the streetlight outside and the soft white glow of the moon which hangs above the park like a great twinkling eye.
He can hear Cosima snoring gently in her little bed on the other side of the room. He hears the muffled sound of the television in the living room along the corridor and Yasmine making tea in the kitchen, but the clanking of cups and the BBC news, normally a comforting sound at this time of night, makes him anxious. The feeling that had gripped him as they walked through Soho and made their way home has returned.
He hadn’t felt it when they arrived at Maggie’s to pick Cosima up, but then it is hard to feel anything but sunny in Maggie’s eccentric world. Cosima had greeted them at the door with a little dance that she had picked up from a TV programme, then as they walked home along Battersea Bridge Road, she had talked non-stop about what she had eaten for dinner, about the photo album Maggie had shown her of Yasmine’s father when he was a young boy in Tangier – ‘he looked just like Mummy’ – and the playdate she has tomorrow at Gracie Marshall’s house in Wandsworth – ‘and she’s got guinea pigs … can we get a guinea pig, Daddy?’
By the time they got home, they were all exhausted and Cosima had gone straight to her bedroom and flopped onto the bed while Yasmine wriggled her into a clean pair of pyjamas. Seb had spent ten minutes in his study, answering emails then he had come and sat by Cosima’s bed to read her a bedtime story. This was normally the highlight of his day, sitting making up stories with funny voices and elaborate characters while his little girl shrieked with laughter. Tonight though, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to make up a story so he had reached over to the little bookshelf by the bed and taken out a thin volume that Cosima had borrowed from the library. Underneath the protective plastic sleeve there was a picture of a little boy and a dinosaur and Seb had squirmed at the crudeness of the illustration as he often does with children’s books. As a child he had loved the dark, squiggly drawings of Arthur Rackham, they seemed to have so much more magic and bite than the generic, flabby drawings in modern children’s books.
He had started to read but his voice must have been as uninspired as the story because Cosima was sound asleep by page two. Seb had closed the book and placed a kiss on his little girl’s forehead but as he tucked her in and switched off her bedside lamp – a paper lantern showing the map of the world – he was struck by an indescribable sense of doom and horror, a force drawing him back into the room.
One day she will grow up and I won’t be able to protect her.
The words roll round his head as he sits in the chair, it’s a comfortable chair and Cosima likes having it in her room because it is the chair Yasmine used to sit in to feed her when she was a baby.
He looks out onto the street; a young woman walks past carrying a pizza box and a bottle of wine. She looks tentative as she hurries along, casting furtive glances over her shoulder. It makes him think of that song by The Cure: the one where the woman is being followed down a dark street. As she disappears from view, he wills her to keep walking fast; to get home safely. An inky blue cloud moves across the moon and the park looks like a deep, black hole sucking all the light out of the street. Beyond the park flows the river; the dirty, brown serpent that has dragged so many souls into its depths. It’s an uncompromising city, thinks Seb, a cruel, wretched place.
It had been a night very much like this one; warm and still, with a moon that was almost full. London had just won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics, not that he had cared back then. He had drunk himself silly in a bar and ended up sitting on a bench in Soho Square Gardens where he had amused himself with apparitions and voices. He was convinced that his dead girlfriend had come back, he could hear her voice, feel her breath on his face as he sat there alone on the bench, falling into a drunken stupor. Then he had woken up to see another girl standing above him: Zoe. The girl from the office where he was working at the time – a glamour model agency of all things, dreamed up by Henry in his quest for world domination.
She had wanted to be a model; had arranged an appointment with Becky Woods, the chief model booker but Becky had forgotten and left Zoe sitting in the waiting room all day. And after such a crap day and the horrendous evening she went on to have – it all came out in court, how Zoe’s landlady had set her up, tricked her into going to a party full of crack-heads and prostitutes and Zoe had fled with the landlady’s ill-gotten cash – after all that, she still took it upon herself to see if Seb was okay when she saw him flat out on the bench. She thought he had collapsed so she pulled herself over the railings of the little garden square just to check, to make sure he was safe.
Seb shivers, though the room is not cold. He looks over at Cosima. Her chest rises and falls peacefully. Life, he whispers. This is all it comes down to: breathing in, breathing out, feeling safe …
He had not returned Zoe’s concern. After unloading his tales of woe onto her as she sat beside him on a freezing bench for almost three hours he had left her standing alone in the street. What had she said again? ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll go and find a McDonalds to sit in.’ He had been so impatient to get back to the office to finish his painting of Sophie that he had effectively sent her off to meet her murderer. What was he thinking letting her go off into the night like that? She had been due to catch a train back home to Middlesbrough the next morning. He should have told her to get in a taxi to King’s Cross where it would be light and full of people; he should have waited with her while they hailed one. She wasn’t streetwise despite her bravado, she was like a lost child wandering away from her parent.
In court he had tried to keep it together. He had been called as a witness, the last person to talk to her. It all sounded so dodgy, their evening together – a drunk man sitting with a young woman in a locked deserted square for three hours in the middle of the night. She was young and attractive, she had been wearing a skimpy dress, surely something must have happened? He told them how he had seen her as he was leaving the office that night; she had looked like a little girl playing dress ups in her high heels and short dress. He had told her that Becky had gone, told her to try again tomorrow
but she had burst into tears and handed him a set of photographs. ‘Can you give these to Becky,’ she had pleaded and because he had been in a rush to get to the pub, he had relented but he had put the photos in his bag as Becky’s office was closed. He could feel the eyes of the jury bore into him, though he was not the defendant; somehow his cross examination made the whole evening sound seedy, as though he were in the same league as the sleazy landlady and the crack-head who had paid for Zoe to come to the party then murdered her. Despite his sharp Paul Smith suit and his confident public school-honed voice, he had felt vulnerable, a fraud.
As he had walked to the witness stand he had seen Zoe’s mother. She looked like a tiny bird, a lost, half-person, floating between worlds. Her face was grey and creased with deep lines, the result of day after day of incessant weeping. She held a set of rosary beads in her hands and when the details of her daughter’s death were read out to the court along with the grisly post mortem photographs, she had wrapped the beads around her fingers so tightly it looked like they might snap.
The details of Zoe’s murder were horrific. She had been stabbed fifteen times in the chest, puncturing her lung and sending her into cardiac arrest. After watching her slowly bleed to death, Martin Harris had taken her lifeless body and raped her before discarding her underneath a pile of bin bags at the back of Hanway Street.
When the Guilty verdict was returned, Seb had looked over at Zoe’s mother. Her head was bowed and she seemed to be praying, her lips moving noiselessly as she stared at the floor. It was then that Seb caught the eye of the man sitting next to her, a thick-set, tough-looking man in his late twenties – Zoe’s brother, Mark. His eyes were dry and he stared at Seb with such hatred, such menace that Seb had quickly looked away, but he could feel the cold, blue eyes upon him as he stood up and crossed the court room to the exit, as he opened the door and emerged into the stark, strip-lit corridor. When he finally got outside, into the noisy fug of Ludgate Hill, he had taken a deep breath and tried to rid himself of the horror of what he had just heard; the image in his head of Zoe bleeding to death while that psycho brutalised her, and the look in her brother’s eyes. In those few moments when he had fallen under Mark’s gaze it felt like he had been ripped open and examined; it felt like all his faults, all his weaknesses had been exposed, like it was him and not Martin Harris who had murdered Zoe.
‘Are you okay?’
He jumps at the sound of Yasmine’s voice in the dark, silent room. She is standing behind him. He turns and smiles at her comforting form. She is dressed for bed in a pair of his old stripy pyjamas and a grey ribbed vest. Her face looks tired and she suppresses a yawn as she stands there with her arms folded across her chest. He pulls her towards him and rests his head against her stomach. He wants to lose himself in the softness of her skin, burrow deep down into her warm body, breathe in all her strength, all her goodness.
‘I’m fine,’ he says, lifting his head. ‘I was just thinking.’
Yasmine looks at him as though she doesn’t fully believe him yet is too tired to dig deeper. She pulls the curtains and everything collapses into darkness. The room looks like a deserted theatre stage, the colourful, happy pink-and-purple decor dissolves leaving just a set of props: a bed, a chair, a table, a chest of drawers.
‘Come on,’ says Yasmine. ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow.’
Seb stands up and stretches. ‘I’ll be right with you,’ he says, yawning. ‘Just need to brush my teeth.’
He follows Yasmine out of the room but instead of going to the bathroom, he walks along the corridor to the front door. It is a big wooden door, thick and sturdy. He turns the latch; it is locked. He looks at the metal chain hanging limply by the side of the latch. They rarely use it; being on the first floor they have always felt pretty secure but tonight he needs more reassurance. He holds the chain between his fingers like Zoe’s mother and her rosary beads. It looks so thin; how can something so feeble protect him and his family from the monsters out there; the Martin Harrises who stalk the city’s streets, who kill and rape and destroy lives. If Seb had a padlock he would use it now; he would put it on the door and double lock it but all he has is this chain, this delicate string of loops. As he slides it across the latch, he hopes it is enough.
9
Stella sits on the edge of the sumptuous king-size bed and slowly removes her shoes while Paula snuggles under the covers, propping herself up with a thick, fluffy pillow. She lays her green notebook on the bed in front of her and removes the lid of her pen in preparation.
Stella stands up and slips out of her dress. The warm air feels delicious on her bare skin and Paula looks so beautiful lying there in the half-light.
‘Do we have to do this tonight?’ Stella asks, pointing at the questionnaire that Paula is flicking through, the one that was sent from the fertility clinic almost a month ago. ‘Why don’t we fill it in tomorrow with fresh eyes; we can talk it over while we have breakfast.’ She leans across the bed and goes to kiss Paula’s mouth but Paula bows her head at the last minute and Stella’s lips brush awkwardly across the top of Paula’s forehead.
Paula looks up at her and raises her eyebrows. ‘Stella, you’ve been putting this off ever since the forms arrived. I’ve asked you over and over this last month to sit down and fill it in and still, the night before the appointment, you’re trying to put it off.’
‘It’s been a busy month,’ says Stella, her libido draining from her like water down a plughole. It is strange, but lately Paula’s voice has taken on a whiny tone. It grates on Stella, makes her think she is always on the verge of some deeply, unpleasant argument.
‘Anyway,’ says Paula, tapping the notebook with the tip of her pen. ‘We have no choice but to do it tonight because there will be no time in the morning; I have to drop off the plants at nine and the appointment’s at eleven.’
‘Okay,’ says Stella, pulling a cotton dressing gown round her half-naked body. ‘Let’s get started.’ She climbs into the bed and rests her head on Paula’s shoulders.
Paula turns and smiles. ‘Thank you,’ she says, gently.
Stella slides her hand under the covers and rests it on Paula’s stomach, trying to imagine the alien concept of a baby growing inside that smooth, taut space.
‘I love you,’ she whispers, moving her hand slowly down to the top of Paula’s pelvis.
‘I love you, too,’ says Paula, her voice rising with an inflection on the last word that Stella understands. It’s a ‘let’s get on with this’ tone of voice, a call to arms. Stella takes her hand away and sits up straight.
‘Now,’ says Paula, clearing her throat. ‘There’s a checklist here, a kind of wish list, I suppose, of what we are looking for in a donor. First attribute: ethnicity.’
There is a silence. Stella looks at Paula blankly. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well,’ says Paula, briskly. ‘I think the donor should be white, because we are. We want this baby to look like it’s come from me and you.’
Stella nods her head. But the baby won’t come from you and me, she thinks. It will come from Paula and some stranger, some random number on a test tube. Stella feels like she is standing on the edge of the room looking in, like a ghost. What will she be to the baby? Yes, her name will be on the birth certificate alongside Paula’s but her blood will not run through its veins, there will be no familial features, no character quirks that she can say she contributed to.
‘… yes, definitely green.’ Paula is onto the next question already. She looks up at Stella, quizzically. ‘Do you agree?’
‘Sorry,’ says Stella, blinking her tired eyes. The glass of wine at dinner turned into a bottle and now she is feeling a little drowsy. ‘Er … you were saying, green?’
‘Eye colour,’ says Paula, sharply. ‘I should think green if possible, don’t you?’
Stella looks at Paula’s bright face and smiles inside, remembering the first time she saw her: twenty-one years old with holes in her jeans and a mind as sharp
as steel, she had sat down next to the shy sixteen-year-old Stella and mesmerised her with those beautiful, laughing green eyes. Stella strokes Paula’s cheek, tenderly. Despite their bickering, despite all these years of living together, of knowing each other’s bad habits and irritating quirks, Stella still gets an ache in the pit of her stomach when she looks into Paula’s eyes. Yet it is a duller ache than it was at the beginning of their relationship; a melancholy one, perhaps mourning the zest and spark of those early years.
‘Yes, let’s put green eyes,’ she says, gently. ‘Although, with you for a mummy I think the baby has a good chance of having them anyway.’
Paula smiles and makes a little note on the paper in her spidery handwriting.
They breeze through the next three questions: Hair colour (dark); height (six feet); religion (any).
‘Okay,’ says Paula. ‘Next one: occupation?’
‘Artist,’ says Stella.
‘Why artist?’ asks Paula, her eyes narrowing.
‘It was the first thing that came into my head,’ says Stella.
Paula’s lips purse and she stares at the notebook, not speaking for what seems like an age.
‘Well, we want someone creative, don’t we?’ says Stella, trying to keep her voice upbeat. ‘Someone like us.’
‘Yes,’ says Paula, folding her arms across her chest. ‘But you didn’t say writer or horticulturalist, you specifically said artist.’
‘A writer is an artist,’ says Stella, sitting up. ‘And what you do – well that’s certainly art of a sort.’
‘Hmm,’ says Paula. ‘Well actually I think we could do with a scientist then the baby might end up really contributing something to society – a cure for cancer or AIDs – or a mathematician, yes that might be good, we could have a financial whizz to help us in our old age.’ She laughs a strange, snorty laugh but Stella remains straight-faced.
