by Tina Seskis
‘OK,’ she said. Her mind seemed to be floating about three feet above her head still.
He kissed the tip of her nose.
‘I love you, Mrs Romaine.’ The name jolted her. Her name jolted her.
‘I love you too,’ she managed. He passed by her then, and as he did so he gave her a tiny shove, towards the bathroom. It was subtle, but deliberate. As Christie locked the door, she no longer had the remotest idea what was going on in this deviant, messed-up world. All she knew was that it was no longer fear she was feeling. It was something much more complex and cosseting and dread-inducing than that.
72
ELEANOR
It felt surreal speaking to her father again. Since she’d been in England, aside from a couple of trips home, communication between them had mostly comprised of greeting cards and the odd email. Phone calls had never been their thing, which was curious, seeing as talking was meant to be her father’s business. He’d been her hero when she was little, but her disastrous spell in New York had put paid to any closeness between them. Being thirteen and buck-toothed and lispy, with gangly legs and unexplained mood swings, was not the time for your mom to decide to send you to live in Manhattan with a father you barely ever saw. Eleanor had never thought of it quite like that until Brianna had gone through puberty herself, and she’d made sure she’d been there for her own daughter every step of the way – on the tear-sodden night Brianna’s periods had started; during the times when the other girls at school had acted like bitches; when her daughter’s spots had started erupting so fast it was practically happening in real time. Eleanor hadn’t wanted Brianna to go through what she herself had experienced – and yet, Eleanor realised as she heard her father’s voice, the irony was that in a way Brianna had. Brianna too had an absent, unengaged father who continually broke his promises, no matter how admirable the reason. Eleanor had been patient, but now, even if Alex did turn out to be safe, she wondered whether she might finally have had enough. Jeez, his job might be important, but sometimes she and the kids needed him too.
‘How are you, Eleanor?’ her father said, from the other side of the Atlantic. His voice had a vague thread of irritation in it, as though he had no idea why his daughter might be calling him and that now wasn’t a good time, if it wasn’t a bona fide emergency.
‘I’m OK, thanks.’ The bright pink gerberas on the mantelpiece were just starting to droop, and it occurred to Eleanor that they’d be dead soon. She couldn’t decide whether to cut them off in their prime or leave them to wither naturally. As she eyeballed them encouragingly, perhaps trying to coax some life back into them, she kept the phone hunched between her ear and her shoulder.
‘How’s Alex and the kids? Everyone safe?’
Eleanor hesitated. She’d only rung her father because she’d convinced herself that Alex was dead or injured, but now it felt stupid to say so – as if she were just being hysterical.
‘Er, yes, I think so.’
‘Good to hear . . . Hey, did that old friend of yours manage to track you down?’
‘What?’ she said. ‘Who?’
‘Robert? Rupert? I forget his name now.’
‘Sorry, Dad, what are you talking about?’
‘A guy called the practice, with a real posh English accent, saying that he was arranging some kind of reunion, and asking for your address so he could mail you the invite.’
Eleanor felt her knees bend, just a little. Rufus. Was that how he’d found her? How he knew she was married? Did he even live in Crouch End – or was that merely his excuse for running into her? Surely not. And if so, why? What was wrong with him?
A new thread of disquiet, about what Rufus was up to, entered Eleanor’s throat, but she swallowed it down. She’d deal with that later. Right now, the father of her children was missing. She had other things on her mind.
‘Dad, can I ask you a question?’
Her father paused. ‘It depends what it is.’
‘Were you and Mom ever happy?’
‘What?’
‘Just that.’ She needed to know now, whether her very being was a lie.
‘Well . . . of course we were.’
Silence rang between them, through the invisible phone lines, over the ocean, the falsehood expanding and amplifying. There was nothing else to say.
‘Eleanor.’ Her father’s voice sounded concerned at last. ‘Look, is everything OK?’
73
CHRISTIE, NEARLY A YEAR LATER
It was the twentieth of December, and Christie was even more stressed than usual for this time of year. Her father had refused point-blank to come to Ware for Christmas, so she and Piers had travelled to Worcestershire to give him his presents, and it was pitiful to see her once-proud father, his skin slack and wrinkled and pulling away from his bones, his cardigan hanging off him. He was sitting in his chair with his head resting on his chest as though he’d given up on the world, and Christie wasn’t sure whether he was asleep or simply pretending. She sat down on the sofa next to him and put her hand on his arm.
‘Dad,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me, Christie.’
‘Oh. Hello, Christie love,’ he said, opening his eyes, and she was so happy he’d got her name right for a change. The curtains were open and thin winter sunshine was slanting through, glinting against her mother’s prized brass on the hearth, and it was good to see how spotless his carer kept the place. The only thing that differentiated the house from before was the presence of a walking frame, and a high-backed easy chair with a plastic seat, and the strong smell of bleach that permeated everywhere now, covering up something even more unpleasant.
‘And who’s this?’ said her father.
‘It’s Piers, Dad. Remember? My husband.’ Christie kept her voice even and calm, so as not to risk upsetting her father. She couldn’t even say ‘new’ any more, for fear of offending Piers. It had been more than a year, after all.
‘Oh, have you got a husband? I thought he’d hanged himself?’
Christie drew in her breath at the baldness of the statement.
‘Paul died, Dad, that’s right, but not . . .’ She tailed off, as what was the point? She tried again. ‘But this is Piers, Dad. He’s my second husband. Remember?’ Christie shot a look of apology at Piers, but he just shrugged and gave her an understanding smile.
‘So who’s this then?’ said her father, grumpily. ‘What happened to Paul? Did you divorce him?’
Christie sighed inside. Fortunately, the carer rescued the situation, as she bustled in with a tray for lunch, and Christie was grateful to her.
‘So, Stanley,’ said Piers now, as the sports highlights flashed on to the always-on TV screen, ‘have you been watching the football?’
‘Ridiculous game, Paul,’ said Christie’s father. ‘Overpaid bunch of morons.’ Again, Christie cringed, and she didn’t know whether this was her real father, or if that had been him. It was hard to gauge who he really was – and therefore who she was. She felt conflicted, and part of her wanted to bundle her father in the car and take him home with her so that she could look after him, and the other half wanted to leave him there and never come back. She didn’t dare discuss it with Piers though, not until she’d got her own head straight. Christie wasn’t quite ready to admit it, but she was finding Piers’s moods hard to gauge, and it was stressing her out. He seemed to have changed so much since she’d married him. Now he’d get irritated over such silly things, like if she bought the wrong type of apples, or if she wore a dress he decided he didn’t like. He’d pretty much banned Karen across the road from the house, saying that she was too nosy, and he barely mentioned Christie’s children any more, as if they didn’t even exist, were a threat almost. It was making Christie doubt herself. Paul had never been like that.
Christie’s father was eating his lunch now, and he had a trail of beef stew dribbling from each corner of his mouth. He seemed to have forgotten that she and Piers were even there, and when the news headlines came on he grabbed the remo
te control and turned the volume right up, and it was remarkable how he seemed to have such trouble with his cutlery, yet was still an absolute whizz with the remote control.
‘Bloody terrorists,’ he said now, as the images of yet another security alert filled the screen. ‘I’m glad your mother and I live in the country.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Christie. ‘But life goes on, Dad. We can’t let them beat us.’
‘Oh Jean, that’s a stupid thing to say. Every time they kill us they bloody well get the better of us. Round ’em all up and hang the lot of ’em, that’s what I say.’ Christie looked at Piers, but he gave nothing away. Did he even know how anxious she was, how overriding her fears were, and how they seemed to be growing by the day . . . Already Christie could feel the stress start to rise in her body again, as if someone were physically pumping it into her.
Piers leaned forward and took the remote control from the old man, who let him. He even failed to complain when Piers turned off the TV, leaving a haunting black hole in the room, still and silent, like death. It was almost as if Piers were being deliberately cruel, and it was unnerving to witness the power play unfolding. Finally, her father harrumphed and said mildly, and with a grudging hint of admiration, ‘I was watching that, Paul.’
74
ELEANOR
Alex had booked a hotel in the South of France for the whole family for a week, almost certainly in penance for failing to contact Eleanor during the last terror attack. His phone had been dead and there’d been just too much going on, he’d explained when he’d finally rung her, but Eleanor had been angrier than she’d ever been. This was his final chance, she’d yelled down the phone at him, and she’d been so shocked at her outburst she still didn’t know whether the fact that Rufus had reappeared in her life had anything to do with her sudden ultimatum, or whether she’d meant it. But either way, she was becoming tired of her and Alex’s situation, was seriously beginning to imagine a different future for herself. One without her husband in it. Even the thought made Eleanor feel disloyal.
As Eleanor double-checked that she’d turned off the boiler before they left for the airport, she told herself that she needed to give her marriage one last try. She owed Alex that and, to give him his due, he’d been way more attentive lately. Maybe he was even becoming aware of his own mortality at last. Times felt wild and dangerous, and unprecedented, with apparent terror threats almost daily, making it feel like nowhere was safe. But Alex was right. You had to just get on with it – and he knew better than anyone else.
Eleanor called up the stairs. ‘Brianna, hurry up, sweetie. We need to leave.’
‘All right,’ came the reply, which was uncalled for. Brianna was always late, and it drove Eleanor mad. In a bid not to harangue her daughter further, as all it did was make the situation worse, Eleanor went and waited in the living room, which was where she’d once sat for hours watching the TV news, trying to spot Alex – dead or alive.
Eleanor checked her phone. Twenty past five in the morning. Twenty minutes later than she’d announced they would be leaving. Ten earlier than they actually needed to. Mason and Alex were already in the car. Alex would go berserk if Brianna took much longer. Hurry up.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Eleanor, to no one in particular.
‘What?’ said Brianna, thundering down the stairs and bursting into the room, a huge handbag slung over her shoulder. She was what Eleanor had heard being called a slip of a girl, with a tiny waist and delicate bones, and yet she managed to make more noise than Mason.
Eleanor ignored her. She was standing stock still now, too shocked to move, fixated by her phone.
‘I thought you said we were in a hurry,’ Brianna said.
‘There’s been an incident, in Nice.’
‘What kind of an incident?’
Eleanor looked at her daughter, at her long smooth hair, her open expression, Brianna’s skin as plump as her own had once been. It was a face that didn’t need corrupting. Not now.
‘I’m not sure, love,’ Eleanor said at last. She could hear the infinite sorrow in her voice and wondered whether Brianna could tell. But was this the world’s new reality, that people had to worry about being shot or mown down on holiday? And was there no respite for her family, anywhere, ever? Should they even be going on this trip?
Eleanor felt overwhelmed suddenly, as if there was no point even trying, when evil greater than anything she could comprehend seemed to be taking over the world, winning even . . . and then she reminded herself that that was no way to think, and that she had her children to consider, and that you could never submit to malevolence, as good would triumph in the end. She had to believe that as, otherwise, what hope was there for anyone?
Eleanor turned to her daughter, did her absolute best to brighten her tone. The truth would have to wait; they had a plane to catch. ‘Come on, honey, we need to get a move on.’
75
CHRISTIE
Jake was due home any minute now, and Christie was part-dreading it, part-racked with an anticipation that was sending her nerves haywire. She wasn’t even sure if he was going to show. Jake had never been known for his reliability, even before he’d become so detached from the family. But the truth was, he hardly ever came home any more, although it seemed he still saw Daisy sometimes – but Daisy was always rather circumspect about how her brother actually was, no matter how much Christie tried to find out.
And so today, the prospect of Jake not turning up was even worse for Christie than worrying about how she might find him. What would be would be, she thought. She just wanted to put her arms around her son and tell him she loved him. If he’d let her.
Christie went into the bathroom for the umpteenth time that morning, and her stomach felt unbalanced, as though it were awash with adrenaline. She checked her hair in the mirror, and despite her blonde highlights the grey down her parting was starting to become obvious now. She was in the sixth decade of her life, and it seemed that at last her body was beginning to show its age. She went back downstairs and checked on the casserole she’d made for Jake, and its smell was rich and meaty, and she hoped that he hadn’t become vegetarian. She went to the window, looked through the shutters down the street. Still he didn’t come.
Christie sat down on the club chair she’d had covered for Paul’s birthday in the softest champagne-coloured leather and opened her laptop to check her emails, the news, Twitter, in a bid to distract herself. There was an email from her accountant, which she immediately flagged for later, and then closed. After Paul had died she’d found the prospect of managing her finances one of the most overwhelming aspects of life without him, and she certainly wasn’t in the right frame of mind to look at tax returns right now. She’d ask Piers when he came home from Bristol on Tuesday. She might have other misgivings about their marriage these days but at least she was grateful to him in that way. He’d really stepped in and helped relieve the pressure on her in sorting out the piles of paperwork that she barely understood anyway. Sometimes she thought about giving away the bulk of her money to the kids and just being done with it. And then she’d remember her concerns about Jake and quash the idea.
Christie felt a rancid, rotten sensation building in her gut as the minutes ticked by. There seemed to be such a fissure in her relationship with her son, and it was as if every second of his lateness was widening it, expanding it to the point of breaking. She didn’t care any more if he thought she was harassing him, and she tried calling, and although it connected for once, the phone simply rang out. At least it was a British ringtone, she thought. At least he was definitely here in the UK, as he’d said he was. She went upstairs to her bedroom, looked out on to the quiet street again, but still no one came. The next-door neighbour’s cat was lying out in the sun, its legs so stiff and perpendicular to its body that it appeared in the advanced stages of rigor mortis, although it always looked like that. There was an unknown car parked on the pavement opposite, and it was yellow, its lines soft and rounded
, and from up here it reminded her of the paddling pool that Daisy and Jake used to have.
The trill of her mobile jolted her. At last. She pulled it out of her back jeans pocket, but it was her father rather than her son. She wasn’t sure she could handle him just now. She found his confusion too upsetting. And then she thought of his own distress at being unable to reach her, and picked up.
‘Hello, Dad,’ she said. She tried to keep her voice bright and chirpy, hide the fact that she was close to tears.
‘Jean. Is that you?’
Christie felt broken, as she did most times she spoke to her father now. Her voice was high and clear, like how you might talk to a nervous child.
‘No, Dad, it’s me, Christie. Your daughter.’
‘Oh, Christie darling, how the devil are you? What are you ringing about? Your mother won’t be home from the shops for another hour. Can you phone back?’ And then she heard a few seconds’ worth of clacking of plastic on plastic, and he was gone.
Christie studied her phone, wondered whether to try to call her father back. She just didn’t know what to do any more. In one way she longed to bring him to Ware, close to her and Piers, so that she could look after him; but on the other she knew both men would hate it. And although Alice did her best, she and her husband lived too far away to offer their father much practical help. Christie was glad that at least she could afford a full-time carer for him. She decided to give the carer a call, just to make sure he was OK.
Maria’s accent was thick, even thicker over the phone, but Christie was used to it now. And she was kind, which helped.
‘Are you with Dad, Maria?’ Christie said.
‘Yes, she’s here.’
‘He sounded confused and upset. Has he taken his medication?’
‘Yes, Chreestie. She’s here right now. You want to speak to him?’
What is it about Maria, Christie thought, that her English is so good, but she just cannot get the hang of ‘he’ and ‘she’? The doorbell rang. At last. Christie stood up, raked her hand through her hair, and headed out into the hallway.
