Two brown-clad girls traipsed out of the school door, their chatter as vivid as their laughing faces. Without thinking, she followed them down the hill. She was there now. At the juncture of Cromwell Road. A sharp turn to the left and she would find herself in front of the sprawling house with its generous bay. Would another couple be sitting at the scrubbed pine table with a child poised between them, a daffodil-stuffed vase peaking over the edge of the window? She resisted the tug of nostalgia and forced herself to cross to the other side of the street.
Isabel had come to visit them at the apartment, but only once or twice. During that London year, they had most often met in noisy Soho restaurants or at the National Theatre bar or in front of a Leicester Square cinema. Highgate was too placid and familial a place for a high-voltage Isabel.
Leo continued up the hill. The brick wall on her left hid the rolling fields and shrub-banked lakes of Waterlow Park. She stopped for a moment in front of a wrought iron gate and looked at the graceful facade of Lauderdale House, site of puppet shows and more coffee mornings, this time at the wobbly tables of the little restaurant perched at the edge of the Park. Judging from the posters, children’s theatre groups still came here. She thought of little Becca again, her dimpled face beneath the crown of dark curls, so like her father’s. She would phone her later and tell her she had been here, but do it in a steady, cheerful voice. She hurried on.
Opposite the bookshop, she saw the street sign she had half-forgotten she was looking for. Bisham Gardens. It was a tidy unremarkable street of brick terraced houses. She walked at an even pace, glad of her rubber soled shoes, slowing only when she reached the memorised number. Apart from its front door, painted in bright Mediterranean blue and a terracotta window box filled with primroses, the house was identical to its neighbours. Had she expected Gothic arches, peeling paint, an assortment of gables, and a wild-haired screaming figure perched on a ledge? Would that have been an appropriate domain for a psychoanalyst? Leo mocked herself.
She tried to see in, but the ground floor window betrayed no inhabitants, only the shadowy outline of a sofa and a stream of light possibly indicating another window at the back. At the basement level, just beneath her, the curtains were tightly drawn. For a moment she was tempted to ring one of the three bells at the side of the door. But that wouldn’t have served her purpose.
She walked on. The end of the short street came quickly and before she had met a fellow stroller. A wall marked its end. Beyond it, rose the elegant steeple of the parish church. To her left she recognised the precipitous road which wound between the park and Highgate cemetery. She had walked in both so often with Becca, that the child she then was would ask whether today they were going to the park of the living or the park of the dead. Funny, given that she knew the streets on either side so well, that she had never in fact stepped on the pavements of Bisham Gardens before. Isabel hadn’t thought to mention to her that her analyst lived in haunts once familiar to Leo.
Slowly, Leo retraced her route on the opposite side of the street. Perhaps she would get a better view from there. She felt a need to familiarise herself with the place.
She had only taken a few steps when she saw a woman emerge from a door - that door, she was certain of it. The woman was long-legged, trousered. Honey gold hair fell over her shoulders.
‘Isabel,’ Leo’s shout echoed through the quiet of the street.
The woman didn’t turn.
‘Isabel,’ Leo called again.
A white van came trundling past her and for a moment blocked her vision. Leo ran. By the time she could see clearly again, the woman had disappeared.
She raced to the High Street corner, searched uphill and down, but there was no sign of her.
Had it been Isabel? Leo stood there and rubbed her eyes, wishing them into a clarity she momentarily felt she had lost. If the woman had gone into a shop, she would come out again within a few minutes. But if she had been Isabel, surely she would have stopped at Leo’s call. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. Perhaps she was so over-wrought, so whipped by inner confusion, that no external sound could penetrate.
Leo waited. She waited for a good quarter of an hour. A score of people passed her. Traffic snaked up the hill, more slowly than the slowest pedestrian. In the waiting, Leo made up her mind. She had to know, never mind all her carefully laid plans. She headed back for the analyst’s door. As she neared it a man emerged. He was tall, broad-shouldered in a ribbed blue sweater around which a raincoat flapped as he hopped down the steps with a carefree air. He gave her a nod and a half-smile as their paths crossed. He was so unlike the image she had conjured up, that it was only when she pressed the doorbell next to the Dr. D Lukas name, that it occurred to her he might be the very man she had come to see.
When no answer came, she cursed herself and tried the bell angrily again.
To no avail.
It was still light when she returned to the loft. A soft, early evening glow illuminated the recesses of the spacious room and burnished the floor a deep gold. Leo kicked off her shoes and sat in the crimson sofa. She wished she could as easily kick off the despondency which had overtaken her on her way back here.
It had begun in the restaurant, a French-style café which she had spotted on her trek up Highgate Hill. She was slowly munching her way through a Croque Monsieur and sipping a glass of white wine when she felt the depression settling. It was as tangible as a feather quilt and as oppressive, covering her head, stifling her breath, numbing her feet, so that it was an effort to pay the bill, and walk the short distance to the underground. Despite the beauty of the light, it covered her still.
Isabel was gone, sucked up by the earth like some latter day Persephone. And Leo was alone. Alone and without the necessary resources to trace her. She didn’t, she suddenly felt, have the resources for anything. New York, her work, had receded into some shadowy distance. Without the bulwarks of habit and duty, she was no one. Perhaps Isabel had already sensed that and simply abandoned her. Why bother with a dreary friend, who had little interest and whose need was as invasive as the smell of rotting flesh. Surely it was her own need which had made her so certain over these last days that Isabel was in trouble and needed her.
Leo struggled to push black thoughts away. It was like pushing a heavy car single-handedly up a steep hill. Any lessening of effort and it would slip back and annihilate her.
She forced herself to her feet. A rank of box files still awaited her. Only as she pulled one down, did she notice the red light flashing on the telephone. She prodded the messages button. Stupid of her not to have checked the answering machine as soon as she got home.
‘Isabel, it’s Caroline. Good to hear your voice. You been away? Give me a ring. I still want to convince you to speak in the childhood month at the South Bank. Don’t forget. I’ll buy you lunch if you’ve got the time. And I’m going to pester you.’
As she listened Leo realized that although she had switched on the answering machine, she had failed to record a new message. Maybe she simply hadn’t wanted to lose Isabel’s. But the full stupidity of this only dawned on her as she heard the next voice.
‘Leonora Gould? This is Daniel Lukas. I’ve got an opening on Monday at half past two. If you can manage that, don’t bother to confirm. That’s the fourth of May at 2.30.’
Leo replayed the message several times. She imagined a character from it, gave him the face of the man she had seen in the street. Unlike the face, the voice was formal, each word clearly enunciated as if anyone who needed to see him must be living in a thick fog. The voice gave little away, yet the message in itself, had a casual feel. She noted the slight pause which followed her own queried name. Had Daniel Lukas recognised Isabel’s voice? She pressed the greeting-record button to check whether Isabel, in fact, identified herself.
She didn’t. Of course, she didn’t. She was also Iris Morgenstern, after all. But Leo’s relief was only momentary. Daniel Lukas could hardly fail to recognise a voice he had listened to over
so many months. There was nothing for it. She would have to find a way round. For the time being, it was the sound of Isabel speaking that captured her, that warm, slightly husky tone eliciting messages, transforming this mundane act into an event tinged with comedy. ‘If you have anything to tell me, do so after the tone. I thank you.’
‘Where are you Isabel?’ she whispered into the empty room. ‘I miss you.’
For lack of a live answer, she took down the two files labelled ‘letters’. She began to open one and then, changing her mind carried them to her bedroom. She needed to put her feet up after the day’s exertions, dream herself into Isabel’s state of mind. Her limbs heavy, she put on her night-dress and settled herself beneath the lemon-chequered quilt, the two files at her side. She opened both, leafing through to see whether the letters were arranged in any particular order.
The second box contained the most recent correspondence. Again Leo found herself astonished at an orderliness which Isabel seemed now to have stretched into her personal life. For these letters, at least the first of them, were indeed personal. The top ones all came from unknown Australian addresses and seemed to be letters of condolence relating to the death of Isabel’s mother. Leo skimmed through a variety of spindly scripts which called for decoding rather than mere reading. She had lost the habit of handwriting. She wondered if Isabel, like her, was tempted to skim rather than decipher.
Her lids grew heavy with the repetition of sympathy. She whisked through to the first typed letter - a brief sentence under the banner ‘Evolution’ indicated that a brochure was now reprinting and would soon be sent to Isabel. Leo imagined more biotech sites. She let her eyes close. Should she communicate Isabel’s identity as Iris Morgenstern to the police? She would decide on that tomorrow morning. At least she had managed to give that outsize toad of a man the slip.
She didn’t know how long she had slept when a sound woke her. Like the turning of a key in a lock. She sat up, her body taut, her eyes as wide as if she had been awake for hours. She didn’t dare breathe. She listened. Around her everything was dark. Only a glimmer of street light threw a jaundiced streak round the corner of the blind. A soft scuffling noise made its way to her, like rats scurrying over a brief stretch of floorboard. It was inside the apartment, she was certain of that. A glow appeared at the bottom of the door. A lamp had been switched on.
Leo thought quickly. Could it be Isabel? No, Isabel would have known where the lights were and would have put them on as soon as she opened the door. Her upstairs neighbour then, Mike Newson, who had the key. But he would have rung the bell first, assuming she might be here. She looked at the clock radio. 12.40. She could hear footsteps now. A light padding. They were coming towards her. Swiftly she picked up one of the boxfiles and positioned herself at the edge of the door. An image of the loathsome man from Origen flashed through her mind.
When the door opened, she launched the box with all her strength towards the burly shape. The sound of the thud was oddly satisfying.
The brutal lunge which landed her on the bed wasn’t. Nor was the body which suddenly covered her, the fingers pinioning her shoulder, the fist poised to strike at her face. She put out hands to stop its progress.
A truculent voice barked at her. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The man stepped back to stand above her. He rubbed his shoulder where the box had hit him. ‘You were that far away from having your face smashed in. That far.’ His fist made a walloping sound as it hit his palm. ‘Well?’
In the half light, Leo focussed on a big man with a pugilist’s features, all square jaw and cheekbones and squat nose, beneath a glint of blue eyes. Unruly brows arched to meet hair the colour of dark sand.
‘It’s not a bad face either.’ He gave her a malevolent grin and punched his fist into his palm again. ‘So?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Given that I’m the one who’s standing and you’re, well, let’s say, prone, I think I get to ask the questions first, wouldn’t you say?’
Leo sat up, edged towards the far side of the bed. ‘Who are you?’
‘Uh uh, you go first. I’ll give you ten.’
When she didn’t respond, he snorted. ‘I have to admit, the great thing about visiting Isabel is that there’s never a dull moment. Even when she’s not here.’
‘You know Isabel?’
‘Of course, I know Isabel. How the dickens d’you think I got in here. Flew in the window like a fat pigeon? Blew down the door with a big bad wolf puff?’ He stopped himself. ‘Oh I see. Isabel forgot to mention I’d be staying here. Typical. But then she didn’t mention you to me either Miss, Mrs, Ms…
‘Holland. Leo.’
‘OK, Holland Leo. Let’s shake on it. The name this end is Norfolk, Christopher.’ He put out a broad hand.
After an initial hesitation, Leo took it.
‘Between us we’ve got ourselves a damp country and a dank county. What more could one ask? Except that you put a little something on those dainty shoulders and come and sign a truce over a glass of Australia’s best. It’s right out there in the bag that trailed me here, courtesy of Quantas.’
Her robe securely tied, Leo followed him out of the room. She watched him pull a bottle out of a tan carry-all, rummage through kitchen drawers for a cork-screw.
‘So why’d you try and brain me Holland Leo?’ he asked as he poured the wine.
‘I… I thought you were someone else.’
‘Lucky him. Who?’
She hedged the question. Beneath the charm, she sensed something dangerous about him. She wasn’t quite ready for trust. ‘Isabel’s gone.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I mean no one knows where she is.’
‘Sure we do. She’s off in the United States of Adventure. Pleasuring herself, no doubt. Or mourning. Maybe a little of both.’
Leo shook her head. ‘No, she’s not. She never turned up.’
‘Are you sure?’ He examined her steadily, as if she weren’t the most reliable person in the world.
‘Altogether sure. She’s just vanished. She was supposed to be with me and she isn’t. And I can’t find any trace of her. Through anyone.’
He fidgeted slightly, then got up from the sofa and strode across the room and back with the light, easy movements of a man used to the outdoors. His light charcoal suit looked as if he had slept in it for more nights than one.
‘People don’t just vanish. Not without trace. Or not unless they’re very rich. And then the letter in cut-up newsprint arrives. Or the muffled voice over the telephone.’ He planted himself in front of her and looked down at her expectantly.
‘Well there’ve been no letters or muffled demands and Isabel’s vanished. People can if they live alone.’ There was a plaintive note in her voice which she wished hadn’t found its way there.
‘You mean in this big bad megalopolis where we’re all lonely strays without a place of belonging and a safety net of community, people can just up and disappear and turn up years later in a lot of little pieces in some psychopath’s garden.’
Leo couldn’t find her voice.
‘Isabel’s hardly a helpless teeny-tot fleeing the evil carers. She probably met a hunk on the way to the airport and forgot to check in. Either that or…’
Leo leapt up and raced across the room.
‘Hey, Holland Leo, I didn’t mean to insult.’
She didn’t answer him. She was staring at the answering machine. Hamish Macgregor had just come into her mind. He hadn’t got back to her, despite the slew of messages she had left on both numbers. And there was no flashing red light now either. She would try him again first thing in the morning. She went back into the living room. The man was sitting there, stretched into the crimson sofa as if he had always sat there, as if this was his home.
He had refilled their glasses, found peanuts. Something in Leo rankled.
‘How long have you known Isabel?
He raised slate-blue e
yes to her. ‘Forever. Maybe an added day.’
‘What exactly does that mean?’
‘We met when she was one of your teeny-tots. A veritable Venus fresh from the surf of Bondai and longing to make a mark on the earthly world.’
‘What do you do?’
‘What is this? The inquisition?
‘Just an ordinary question. I want to know who I’m flat-sharing with.’
‘Your secret sharer is an old hack. Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald.’
‘And what are you doing here?’
‘My, my. We started off friendly and now we’re getting friendlier and friendlier. At the moment, I’m scoffing nuts. And you?’
‘I’m trying to find out what’s happened to Isabel. Goodnight.’
Leo stopped herself from slamming her door. She stretched out on the bed. Sleep wouldn’t come. The man’s sudden arrival, the leap of violence, all had taken on the quality of a nightmare she couldn’t shake off. She tired to remember whether Isabel had ever mentioned an old friend called Christopher Norfolk. She listened for sounds, a pattern of movement. When, after some twenty minutes, none came, she decided she could venture out. If nothing else, a shower would relax her.
The living room was darkened now, but at its far end light spilled out through the half open door of Isabel’s study. What could he want in there? She tiptoed forwards and stopped abruptly.
He was standing over Isabel’s in tray, rifling through letters, half reading. He seemed to know what he was looking for. One of the letters disappeared into his pocket as she watched.
‘I’ll have that,’ Leo heard herself saying. Her voice was as icy as an Arctic gust.
He veered round. Something brutal played over his tautly tanned face, then settled into a satisfied smile. He patted his pocket. ‘Uh uh. It’s mine.’
‘What are you doing in here?’ As she said it, Leo was abysmally aware that in any open contest of strength she would hardly come out the winner. For the umpteenth time in her life, she rued her slightness. But she repeated her question.
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