The House of Memories

by Monica McInerney

  ‘Bye,’ he said. ‘Bye, Mama. Bye, Felix.’

  I laughed, and repeated it. ‘Bye, Felix!’ I kissed Aidan and I kissed Felix. Felix kissed me back, on my left cheek, then my right cheek and then on my chin, our own little ritual. I didn’t know then that it would be the last time we’d ever do it.

  I checked I had my phone with me.

  ‘Leave it behind, Ella,’ Aidan said. ‘Have a proper day off.’

  ‘I’ll take it, just in case. Ring if you need anything, a pint of milk, a stiff gin —’

  ‘I won’t ring. Forget about us. You’ve never seen us before. You are about to go back in time to your free and single days.’ He turned around so he and Felix were facing away from me. ‘Can you see her, Felix? No, me either. That’s because she’s disappeared. She’s now invisible. You have an invisible mother. Isn’t that amazing?’

  I walked into the city, an easy forty minutes from home. It was a beautiful morning, crisp and bright. I went to the library, into bookshops, clothes shops. I rang Aidan at eleven.

  ‘Who is this?’ he said. ‘My wife? She left me this morning in a time machine. I’m not expecting her back until tonight. She may even be full of champagne by then. What am I to do?’

  I laughed. ‘Is Felix all right?’

  ‘Who is this stranger asking me about my own son? Are you a Russian spy? Has someone bugged this phone? But let me ask him. Felix, are you all right?’

  I heard his reply down the phone. His shout. ‘I’m Felix O’Hanlon!’

  ‘Did he eat his breakfast?’ I asked. ‘There’s extra juice in the freezer if you need it.’

  ‘Leave us alone or I’ll call the police and report you for harassment. I’m turning off my phone. What do you say, Felix?’

  I heard it again. ‘I’m Felix O’Hanlon!’

  I was still smiling two hours later, possibly helped by the glass of very good white wine I had with my Italian lunch. I was trying to decide whether to see a film or go to the botanic gardens when I passed a beauty salon. The door was open. Classical music was playing. Inside, it looked calm and relaxing, the decor a luxurious combination of velvet and soft shades of blue. There was a price list on the window, including a special offer on massages. An hour-long massage, with scented oils and soft music, suddenly seemed to be the thing I wanted most in the world.

  I was in luck. The beautician was free. ‘Leave your belongings in the locker. Just bring your key.’

  I was relaxed and obedient. I left my phone in my bag, my bag in the locker. I would be in the massage room for an hour. What could possibly happen?

  Felix died in that hour.

  In the treatment room, I had a brief conversation with the beautician before she began. Had I had a massage recently? she asked. I laughed and told her, no, not for years. I explained that my husband had practically pushed me out the door and told me to treat myself. A husband in a million, she said. I agreed that he was.

  She gave me the best massage I’d ever had. She found all the knots in my shoulders and teased them loose. She pushed deep into my back and relaxed muscles I didn’t know I had. She gently excused herself towards the end of the hour, tiptoed out and then a minute or two later came back. She didn’t have another client for an hour. She’d just learned a new facial technique. Could she practise it on me at no charge? I’d be her guinea pig. Did I have the time to spare?

  Of course I said yes.

  I came out of the treatment room forty minutes later, in a dreamlike state. I got dressed and then took out my phone. Only then. Not the moment I came out. That’s how bad a mother I was. How selfish I was. In those ten minutes I could have been on my way to the hospital.

  I don’t care that the doctors say I would still have been too late. I might not have been. I don’t care what the coroner said about the time of death. If Felix had heard my voice, if he had felt my touch, he would have done all he could to fight whatever it was that was pulling him away from me. I’ve relived those moments over and over. Why didn’t I check my phone the moment I came out of the massage room? Why didn’t I take the phone into the massage room with me? Why did I accept the invitation for the free facial? Why did I even take the day off? Why, why, why …

  I had thirty missed calls. Three from Jess, the rest from Aidan. The phone rang even as I was registering there had been so many.

  I answered. ‘Aidan, what is it? Is something wrong?’

  ‘Ella – Ella, it’s Felix —’

  I screamed when he told me. The receptionist ran in. I was standing there with the phone.

  ‘Miss? Are you okay?’

  I couldn’t speak.

  She took the phone. She talked to Aidan. I don’t remember it happening, but she must have called a taxi and given them the address of the hospital. She came with me. I never found out her name, and I can never go back and thank her. But she came on that taxi ride with me and held me the whole way until we arrived and she could hand me over to Aidan.

  Felix was already dead. He had been dead for fifty minutes.

  It was Jess’s fault. It was Aidan’s fault. It was my fault.

  That morning, ten minutes after Aidan had joked and teased and told me to forget all about him and Felix, he’d got a phone call from his office. An emergency. Last-minute trade negotiations, a senior interpreter urgently needed. The ambassador had requested him. How quickly could he get in? He couldn’t, he said. He was looking after his son. His wife was away. He was very sorry, but —

  There had to be a way. They needed him now. It had to be him. It was about contracts worth millions of dollars. Hundreds of jobs were at stake. No, he couldn’t bring his son with him. It was a high-level meeting. ‘Can’t someone in your family look after him, even for an hour? A neighbour? Anyone?’

  Aidan rang my mother’s number. She answered on the third ring. She, Walter and Jess had just landed, just collected their luggage, were at the taxi rank about to find their way to their hotel. Walter wasn’t well. He’d got a nosebleed on the flight. He’d be fine, it wasn’t serious, but he just needed to lie down for an hour or so. But of course Jess could babysit Felix. No problem at all. They’d get two separate taxis from the airport. She’d be there in ten minutes. The timing couldn’t have been better, they all agreed, marvelling at how wonderful fate was sometimes. What were families for, but to appear just when you needed them?

  If Aidan had received that call from work an hour later, Walter’s nosebleed would have been better and he and Mum could have looked after Felix. If Mum had decided to celebrate Walter’s birthday in a different way, they wouldn’t have been in Canberra at all. Aidan would have had to take Felix into work with him. Felix would have been spoiled and entertained by one of the secretaries or junior researchers and he would have entertained and charmed them in return.

  If.

  Aidan was at the front door in his suit, briefcase in hand, car keys rattling when the taxi dropped Jess off. Felix was on the living-room floor, playing with his blocks, all smiles, waving and laughing at this surprise visitor. ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ Aidan said to Jess. ‘I shouldn’t be long, two hours at the most. He’s had lunch, had his nap, all he’d love is some fresh air.’

  ‘Me too. That plane smelt disgusting,’ Jess said. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.’

  Aidan told Jess I was in town, that there was no need to worry me, he should be back before I was, but if he wasn’t, it would be a nice surprise for me to find Jess there with Felix. Walter and Meredith might even have arrived by then too. It would be a welcoming committee, Aidan said.

  Jess took Felix to the park two streets away. Felix loved the park. He loved the swings, the slippery dip, the climbing frame and the sandpit. Most of all, he loved the small nature reserve beside the playground. There was a fence running along the boundary, separating the tended trees from the bushland. If we had time, we’d lift him up, hold him tightly around the waist and he would inch his way like a little tightrope walker along the top rail of the fence, laughing
so hard that we’d soon be laughing too.

  He was only twenty months old. Not big enough to climb a fence on his own. Not yet. Not without one of us holding him. He was a great walker, and he had good balance, but he was only twenty months old.

  Aidan told me that Jess told him that as they were walking back towards home Felix ran to the fence beside the nature reserve and he insisted, he yelled, until she lifted him up and walked him along the fence. She’d been with us on a previous trip, seen us do it, knew what he wanted. Three times they did it, one end of the rail to the other, back, back again.

  It happened on the fourth time.

  Her phone rang. It was her on-again, off-again boyfriend. They spoke. Beside her, Felix tugged at her skirt and tried to climb up the fence again. Still on the phone, Jess lifted Felix up, balanced his feet on the top of the fence and started walking. Felix laughed. She kept talking.

  They were nearly at the end of the fence, two feet away at the most, when an insect flew at Jess’s face. A bee, a wasp, she couldn’t remember. She reacted, jumping back. She let go of Felix. Not her phone, but Felix. Felix fell. Not towards Jess. Not towards the playground. To the other side, the nature reserve, where there were tree roots, clods of earth and a large rock, hidden by leaves.

  His head hit the rock at full impact.

  He didn’t suffer, Aidan told me, again and again. ‘It was instant, Ella. He died instantly.’

  He was falling while I was lying on a massage table, drifting to sounds of ocean music, inhaling lavender oil and thinking to myself that this was perhaps the closest I’d been to heaven. I was wrong. It was the closest I had ever been to hell.

  Jess climbed over the fence, held Felix, tried to resuscitate him, phoned for an ambulance, shouted until passersby and other parents came to her. I know the details but I can’t repeat them again, because all I see are strangers, dozens of strangers, leaning over my son’s body, and it is too late, they are too late, and I am not there.

  I wasn’t there when Jess called my mobile number, three times, hysterical.

  I wasn’t there when she rang Aidan’s mobile, interrupted his meeting and told him what had happened.

  I wasn’t there when Aidan arrived at the playground at the same time as the ambulance.

  I wasn’t in the back of the ambulance when they screamed through the city streets, the paramedics still working on my son’s body.

  I wasn’t there until my son had been dead for nearly an hour.

  I can’t say what Felix looked like when I finally saw him. I don’t remember what he looked like. All I remember is holding him. Holding him, tight, tightly. Aidan held me, holding Felix. The three of us. But it was now just the two of us.

  I didn’t see Jess. She was there at the hospital with Mum and Walter but I didn’t see her or talk to her. I didn’t blame her. Not then. I hadn’t heard the whole story by then.

  I heard it the next day.

  That’s when I started blaming her.

  I haven’t stopped.

  Chapter Seven

  Lucas’s house suddenly felt too quiet.

  Keep busy.

  I’d already tidied the kitchen. I knew from experience not to dare tidy Lucas’s withdrawing room too much, or any of the tutors’ rooms at all. I’d already unpacked. Already tidied my own room.

  Think of something else. Observe. Distract.

  I was in London. Staying with Lucas. Lucas had offered me a job.

  Think about that.

  When Lucas had said that he needed my help, I’d assumed he meant as a housekeeper. He knew I’d enjoyed doing the job in the past. I think he also knew I wanted to be as physically busy as possible. That I needed to be as busy as possible.

  ‘Let me give you a bit of background first, Ella,’ he’d said the night before. He had four students living with him and working as his tutors at the moment, he told me. One woman, three men.

  ‘And there the problem lies,’ he said. ‘I don’t know which one it is.’

  I was confused. ‘Which one?’

  He turned and checked the door was shut. It was. ‘You know, Ella, that my client list has changed? Gone up a gear, in modern terms?’

  I nodded. It had started to happen when I was staying with him three years earlier. Originally, his tutors had spent 90 per cent of their time coaching ‘normal’ kids – the children of eager, middle-class parents who needed private tuition on top of the generally good education they got at school. The other 10 per cent had been anything but normal: the children of London’s super-rich – the millionaire executives, rock stars, film actors, Russian oligarchs … Lucas had never advertised his services, relying on recommendations. In the past year or so, he explained, the word-of-mouth had increased, aided by the fact that three of his tutors’ charges had scored some of the best A-level results in the country. One of them had featured on the front page of The Times, after perfect grades in six different subjects. The phone calls started coming in that day. Not from the ‘normal’ parents, but from the ‘other’ group. His clients were now almost exclusively the super-rich parents.

  ‘It’s how people operate at that level of society,’ Lucas said. ‘They all want what the other has, be it a new car, a villa in Tuscany or a brainy child.’

  He could have taken on fifty more tutors, there was so much work on offer, but he didn’t want the extra work, or the extra lodgers. The more he said no, the more money he was offered. The more he looked around his house, the more he realised what he could do with that money.

  ‘I did my sums, Ella. This house needs urgent renovation. A lot of it. The fees I could charge would refit the entire house. Add an extension, more bedrooms, more study areas. Two years of working with those clients, difficult or demanding as they might be, would buy me and my students a renovated house and five years of research time. I decided it was worth it.’

  It wasn’t difficult to find very bright tutors. There was a waiting list of graduates wanting to spend a year living and working with Lucas. After a week of interviews, he took in four new lodgers, all in their late twenties, experts in languages, science, mathematics and physics. All four were studying for their PhD. All four spent every free moment from their own studies working as tutors. Two of the clients’ children had recently won academic awards. All of the parents reported improvements. All of the fees had been paid in full, too. Lucas had already hired an architect. The renovation work was due to begin on the house at the end of summer.

  It all sounded positive. I couldn’t see where I fitted in. ‘Do you want me to manage the renovations?’

  ‘No. The architect will do that.’

  ‘Look after the tutors’ timetables?’

  ‘No, I do that myself. With help from Henrietta. She helps me do the students’ appraisals too.’

  Henrietta wasn’t just a fellow lecturer at his university. She was also Lucas’s long-term girlfriend. I didn’t pursue that subject for now. ‘Then how can I help?’

  ‘Ella, I need you to play detective.’

  I smiled. I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘I have a thief in the house.’

  I thought of the chaos on every floor. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Not this house. Let me explain.’

  He told me that the four tutors divided their time between the different clients’ houses, depending on what subjects were required.

  ‘Much as I’d like to offer one person who can teach applied physics, advanced Mandarin, French, Spanish, classic literature and algebra, it doesn’t work like that. Each tutor has an area of excellence. So each of them visits different houses at different times.’

  I knew that from my previous stay. Back then, Aidan had been Lucas’s language expert. He was fluent in French, German, Spanish and Italian, as well as his native Irish. Not that there’d been a great call for the Irish language among the upper-class children of London.

  Lucas told me that two months earlier he’d received a phone call from
a long-standing client. The man’s two oldest children had been coached into Cambridge by Lucas’s tutors. The third child, in her late teens, had her sights set on Yale. All four of Lucas’s current tutors were helping her on her way. Lucas wouldn’t have called the father a friend, but they had a long association.

  ‘Your tutors haven’t noticed anyone or anything unusual in the house, have they?’ the father asked. ‘It’s just that something has gone missing.’

  The ‘something’ was a small but valuable eighteenth-century maritime map. Over dinner, over breakfast, in casual encounters in the house, Lucas had carefully posed the question to his four lodgers. No, no one had noticed anything untoward, Lucas reported back.

  ‘It’s just disappeared into thin air,’ the client said.

  Three weeks later, Lucas received another phone call, a similar question from a different client. Discreet, not wanting to create alarm. A diamond necklace had disappeared. The client suspected one of their domestic staff. Had the tutors noticed or overheard anything, by chance? Lucas asked again. The tutors hadn’t.

  Ten days later, a third call. This time, it was a small sculpture. A valuable figurine. Once again, he asked his tutors if they’d seen or heard anything. Nothing, they assured him.

  Two weeks previously, a fourth call. An antique ring was missing. No, the tutors hadn’t seen a thing.

  Four clients, four thefts in as many months. Lucas knew that his clients didn’t speak to each other. His tutors’ contracts had confidentiality clauses. But it was too coincidental for all four clients to be burgled around the same time. There had to be a connection. And the only common thread was Lucas’s tutors.

  ‘Did they all call the police?’ I asked.

  ‘Two of them did, yes. The police reviewed CCTV footage where possible and interviewed everyone, including my tutors. All without result.’

  ‘And the other two clients?’

  Lucas hesitated. ‘My understanding was they didn’t want the police involved.’

  ‘The goods were already stolen property?’