Fatal Choices

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘That was your job,’ I said. ‘You’re his father.’

  ‘He wanted Naomi.’

  ‘He wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘She was just there, it was on offer. I have needs, Louise.’

  ‘Don’t you dare, don’t you dare put this onto me. If you’d wanted to look elsewhere, you should have told me. I might have said thanks for giving me a break.’

  ‘Give me a break. It’s – Jesus, it’s ten past four in the morning.’

  ‘I can’t live with you anymore,’ I told him. ‘I’ve tried my best. I think you should stay in London at the week end. Nicky has a party to go to and I have to think about my options. By the way, her father is less than pleased. He left a message earlier. He’s taking legal action.’

  ‘What for? She’s all grown up.’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ I said. ‘All I want is for you to keep away from us for a while.’

  ‘I’ll get the early morning plane.’

  ‘No, don’t do that. I said I don’t want to see you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll talk to Nicky.’

  ‘To say what? He’s five years old. He doesn’t need to know the sordid details. You have destroyed his innocence.’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic, Louise. I had no idea he was watching. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry doesn’t cut it, Chas. Stay away.’

  To regain a different focus, I opened my laptop and ran a search for people who had died in assisted-suicide clinics over the last six months. I could not get past the idea that anyone who booked into a place that offered death as a service was crying out for help, that the clinics were exploiting this desperation in the name of profit. I was not convinced by Dr Schlosser’s statement that Buz had made a competent and rational decision to end his life. As well as the Huntington’s disease, the comments made by Androssoff about the foundering research project might have been a stimulus for a deeper depression; and it was a short step from that to life-limiting despair – but Buz could have been helped with that. I wondered if I should apply to the Zurich coroner to have the video tape released. I wanted to see Buz making his competent decision. I wanted to see it for myself. I knew Buz well. I had trained as a counsellor, I knew a bit about reading people. Then again, I had not read Buz’s intention the last time I saw him. He had swung Nicky up in the air and given me a bear hug before he said goodbye. I hadn’t had a clue.

  There were eight assisted suicides by Britons at the Charon Clinic in the past six months. There was a condolences page on which relatives and well-wishers could post a short message. A twenty four year old surfer from Cornwall had broken his spine and decided his life was no longer worth living. Could he know that, aged twenty four? Why had he been allowed to go ahead with the sodium pentobarbitol on what seemed like spurious, possibly hysterical reasons? How could his parents have paid out seven thousand euros to watch their son die? God knows, I had been depressed in my time, even entertaining thoughts of ending it all, but I could not imagine anything like this, anything as cold and clinically efficient as this procedure. But then, was it any worse, in the end, than jumping off a bridge, or shooting oneself in the mouth, or hanging from a light fitting? The outcome, as Androssoff said, would be the same. Why was he always behind me? Why couldn’t I just turn the love-rat off?

  8

  By the time he let himself into the apartment later that morning, I was in a very agitated state, though doing my best to hide it from my son. Nicky was colouring a dinosaur book given to him by the excellent Mrs Kingsley, and was, naturally, shocked to see his father appearing out of the blue, looking like he’d had a bad night on the tiles, and completely scuppering his routine. I was forced to pretend that everything was in order, that daddy had just got an extra day off work, but I could have murdered Androssoff.

  ‘I can take you to Kindergarten,’ he told Nicky. ‘Where are you going, Louise?’

  ‘I thought I’d go and see Rodolfo for a minute.’

  ‘I’ve just got here.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’

  ‘Nothing, sweetheart. I won’t be long.’

  Then something happened which was completely unexpected, a fantastic deus ex machina which threw me completely off course. Rodolfo was outside our front door, accompanied by two police officers. He nodded courteously to me, ignoring Androssoff, who had followed me into the hall, and went upstairs. At first, I thought the officers had come to arrest Androssoff at the request of the Neopolitan Questura, but it had nothing to do with Naomi or Rodolfo, or her father. They had come to inform us that my car had been found in the early hours of the morning on an industrial estate near Zurich. In the car were two men engaged in a suspicious activity. They said they had hired the car from a garage on the industrial estate which the police had had under surveillance for some time for receiving stolen vehicles, customising them and handing them over to an Eastern European network of criminals. The operative at our garage in Geneva had already been arrested in connection with this activity.

  ‘What was the suspicious activity which was taking place in our car?’ Androssoff asked.

  ‘You are acquainted with Dr Marcus Schlosser, madame?’

  I clapped my hand to my mouth.

  ‘Madame?’

  Nicky had wandered into the hall: ‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’

  Androssoff glared at me. ‘I’ll take him out. Go and get the ball, Nick.’

  I asked the officers in and told them I’d consulted Dr Schlosser about his role in the assisted-suicide of my friend, Professor Vrubin at the Charon clinic in Zurich.

  ‘Have you arrested him? What happened to the other one? He isn’t ...’

  ‘Dr Schlosser is helping with our enquiries. The other man was taken to hospital.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Andrew Joffey, from London.’

  ‘I don’t know him. How could he do such a thing in a car? It must be illegal.’

  ‘Assisted suicide is not illegal in Switzerland.’

  ‘I know that, but surely – in a car?’

  ‘It has happened before.’ The officer looked at his watch. ‘The clinic has had problems renting properties to use for their procedures. If they have been using stolen cars to assist their clients, we need to investigate further. There will be a full enquiry.’

  ‘Will I need to make a statement?’

  ‘Not at this stage. We will contact you if we need you.’

  Androssoff and I both walked Nicky to Kindergarten. He ran ahead of us as we entered the park.

  ‘He can’t wait to get there,’ I said. ‘Don’t go on too far, Nicky. Wait for me.’

  ‘Leave him alone, we can see him, can’t we? What’s up with Dr Schlosser?’

  ‘He’s helping the police with their enquiries.’

  ‘Did you lend him your car?’

  ‘Of course not. It was stolen.’

  ‘It seems a kind of weird coincidence.’

  ‘Yes, it does, it’s uncanny. Maybe Buz is sending us a message.’

  We were approaching the gates of the Kindergarten. Nicky was already through them, stopping to greet the admirable Mrs Kingsley, her hair up in a pleat like a slab of gruyere cheese. I waved him goodbye but he wasn’t looking.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ Androssoff said. ‘Just the two of us.’

  ‘Let’s have it out, shall we? We’ll go to the terrasse, neutral territory.’

  I headed for a table next to the parapet that overhung the lake, as far away as I could get from flapping ears and prying eyes. It was the table where Buz had sat when I first met him, that shy, reclusive, frightened man – Androssoff’s mentor and Nicky’s benefactor. Androssoff was still Chas then and we were still living in London, having an affair – an affair between colleagues, he being the organ grinder, me the monkey. I had begged him to take me with him to Geneva, and I fell in love with the city while he was at the conference. Here we were again, although the circumstances could not have been less fa
vourable. Androssoff waved at the waiter and commanded a beer and a glass of white wine.

  ‘I’ve gone off wine. I’ll have a Guinness.’

  ‘Il n’y a que la bierre blonde, madame’

  ‘Alors, un citron pressé.’

  ‘To go with the sour grapes,’ Androssoff said. I told him not to push me too far, then he began his excuses.

  ‘You have every right to be angry with me, Louise, but you know it really didn’t mean a thing. It was just an easy lay, a port in a storm, you know what I mean? I didn’t start it.’

  ‘You just can’t see it, can you? It’s not about you having sex with that little tart – you can have sex with all the teenage tarts in Geneva for all I care – Bonga-Bonga. It’s the fact that you did it in front of my son.’

  ‘Our son.’

  ‘How do you think he felt? He saw her bottom.’

  A group of Chinese tourists rose from their table and looked at us strangely. I tried to keep my dignity.

  ‘I can’t be with you anymore. Not even at weekends. Obviously, I want Nicky to suffer as little as possible.’

  ‘You’re going a funny way about it.’

  ‘You’re blaming me for this situation? You’ve probably damaged him for life.’

  ‘What he saw is hardly going to damage him for life. He’ll forget about it soon enough if you don’t make a big thing of it.’

  ‘Blaming me again. This is not my responsibility.’

  ‘I am taking full responsibility for what I did. Now it’s your responsibility to keep it together.’

  ‘You are really pushing me now.’

  ‘If you let this trivial thing split us up, that is bound to screw him up big time. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Of course not. What I want is for you to be a responsible father.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was watching.’

  ‘If you had been watching him like you were supposed to be doing, there wouldn’t have been anything for him to see.’

  ‘You can’t know how badly I regret that.’

  The waiter brought the tray of drinks. I poured the sachet of sugar into the lemon juice and added some water. Androssoff dropped some coins onto the tray and when the waiter hovered, asked me to make up the difference since he hadn’t been to the cashpoint.

  ‘It’s that lemon,’ he said. ‘It cost twice as much as the beer.’

  ‘You’ll be stumping up a hell of a lot more after the divorce.’

  ‘Louise, we’re not going to divorce. OK, I know things have been sliding for a while, but nobody gets a divorce for something like this. You know I don’t play around.’

  ‘I can cite adultery. I can cite irretrievable breakdown.’

  ‘You can cite whatever shit you want – but you won’t.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  ‘Let’s go back to the apartment.’

  Across the lake, the white peaks of Mont Blanc shimmered in the afternoon sun. A swan waddled into the lake then swam off gracefully. Whiteness, I thought, a clearness. I so wanted things to be clear.

  ‘You go back and get your bag,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait here till it’s time to fetch Nicky. When we get back, I don’t want to find you there.’

  ‘Louise ...’

  ‘If you are there, I’ll take Nicky to stay with some friends of mine.’ I was thinking of Masha and Zonni. They would give us shelter, I was sure of it; if not, we could go to a hotel.

  ‘I love you, Louise. You’re my wife and the mother of my son.’

  ‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘I’m saying it now.’

  ‘To get yourself off the hook.’

  ‘No, because it needed saying.’ He reached across the table for my hand. ‘We can get past this. Not just for Nicky’s sake, for our sakes.’

  ‘For your sake, you mean. I can’t trust you further than I can throw you. How can I be with you now? How can I leave Nicky with you now? What kind of upbringing is it going to be for him if we’re just going through the motions and you are playing around without a single thought for anything except getting your sodding rocks off with the first little tart who flashes her backside at you? I want you to do as I say and go back to London. I’ll send for you when I have thought about my options. Go. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’

  ‘I’ll go and see Rodolfo.’

  ‘Do you seriously think he will want to see you? I hope Naomi’s father throws the book at you.’

  ‘That’s just bullshit.’

  ‘How would you feel if it was your daughter?’

  ‘If she was all grown up, like Naomi, there’s nothing I could say. You have to let your children go sometime, Louise.’

  ‘You also have to protect them when they’re young. That’s what Naomi’s father is doing and that’s what I’m doing – protecting Nicky from you.’

  ‘You are being completely unreasonable now. You’re hysterical.’

  ‘Don’t pathologise me. I have every right to be angry with you.’

  ‘Angry yes, but this is just getting vindictive.’

  ‘Go. Go now or I’ll call the waiter and say you are bothering me.’

  ‘Hysterical.’

  ‘Just go, Chas, go. Fuck off.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m going.’

  I sat in the park for two hours, then hung around the Kindergarten gates for fifteen minutes, hoping to catch the eye of the other women waiting; the majority of them were au pairs or nannies, and none of them spoke to me. Nicky was one of the first to come out, clutching his dinosaur painting. He looked through me then past me: ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘He’s had to go back to London,’ I said. This was the first lie I ever told him. ‘Let’s get some ice-cream.’

  ‘I want him to play football.’

  ‘You’ve got your party tomorrow, remember?’ It was at the home of a Somali family who lived in Carouge, like Masha and Zonni. ‘Maybe they’ll have a piňata.’

  ‘I don’t want to go, and I don’t want an ice-cream. I want daddy.’

  ‘Not even chocolate chip?’ He shook his head and stayed silent on the rest of the way home. As soon as we got in, he spotted the note Androssoff had left me on the table and went to seize it. He had lately been learning his letters.

  ‘Give that to me, Nicky, please.’

  ‘No. It’s from Daddy.’

  ‘Give it to me, now!’ I knew he wouldn’t be able to read it, but prised it from his fingers. I had rarely shouted at him and I had never smacked him or treated him roughly. This was all Androssoff’s doing. Nicky ran off into his room and slammed the door. I unfolded the note.

  ‘I’ve booked into the Beau Rivage till Monday lunchtime. Call me please – we need to sort this out. Chas x

  p.s. - I spoke to Rodolfo and was suitably penitent. Naomi has gone back to Italy. He doesn’t intend to revoke the tenancy – it’s in your name, anyway.’

  I considered how I could stop all this now if I just called Androssoff at the Beau Rivage. I even picked up the phone, imagining Nicky’s reaction: Daddy’s come back. But then I saw Naomi on top of him, waggling her bare behind, and called Masha instead to ask her if she was free for a coffee tomorrow while the birthday party was in full swing. She said she would be on her own because Zonni was going to spend the week end with her family near Lucerne.

  I called Dr Schlosser and left a voicemail, wondering after that if I should go and speak to Rodolfo myself. He was very old-fashioned when it came to matters concerning the dignity of his ancient family. Perhaps he had been looking for an excuse to get rid of Naomi, either because he didn’t want the responsibility of her or perhaps because he wanted the rent he could get for her room since, as his relative – albeit a distant one, she was paying nothing, and he wasn’t nearly as flush as he’d been in the days when he raced the Bugatti. He could be as pragmatic as he liked. He wasn’t married to Androssoff.

  Nicky stayed shut in his room till I called him to come and eat the fish
fingers he always had for Friday teatime. When Androssoff was here, I cooked lake fish for us to eat for Friday supper after he had read Nicky his bedtime story. There were two big felchen filets sitting in the fridge, but I put them both in the freezer because I had no appetite. I wished the evening would pass quickly, then the night, then the following morning. I wished it was tomorrow afternoon when I could talk to Masha.

  Nicky ate only one fish finger and a spoonful of peas. I couldn’t draw him out, and when I said it was time to get in the bath, he said he didn’t want to and he didn’t want a bedtime story. The thought of Androssoff on standby at the Beau Rivage, a fifteen minute walk away, gave me a pang – though he was the guilty party. I was determined not to contact him; I needed to make a stand.

  Dr Schlosser called me back at nine that evening. He said he had been with the police all day and was deeply sorry about my car. He had hired it from the garage on the instructions of his patient and had no idea it was stolen.

  ‘Why couldn’t you just do it at the clinic? You’ve got offices in Zurich, haven’t you?’

  ‘It is not suitable to carry out the procedure there.’

  ‘How suitable is a car?’