But maybe he was just dreaming a flight for himself through her. A fugue. An escape while one’s everyday self went into abeyance, mute. Yet there was another channel he must force himself to pursue. That had become clear. Whatever name, Gould or Holland, this Leo took, her worry was undeniably contagious.
He could feel her now, wanting to leave, but not knowing quite how to extricate herself. She would be ringing the police as soon as she reached home, ordering them to check all flights to Australia from a variety of European cities.
Aron Field’s invitation had beguiled him into a bizarre predicament. He hadn’t expected any guests tonight apart from Emily, certainly not a patient who had left him on hardly the best of terms.
Of course he had bumped into patients outside their analytic hour before, but it had always been possible to move away after the first nod of recognition. It had its interest, yet he sensed that had he been going to see Leo again as a patient, he couldn’t have allowed it. He would have felt forced to leave on the grounds of any excuse he could contrive. Why? Was it simply that he felt he had to stick to certain rules since he broke so many others. An empty formulation passed down through time.
‘How’s your little boy, Daniel?’ Emily’s question jarred his reverie and also provided an instant answer to his internal query. It wasn’t so much how he saw Leo that was the problem, but how the fantasies she might begin to have about him would play over and through her. Evidently Emily hadn’t guessed that he had already met Leo under rather different circumstances. That was to the good.
‘He’s fine. Managing very well,’ he replied and quickly deflected her by posing a professional question to Aron Field.
Watching him, Leo was aware that the shutters had abruptly come down again, closing off any access to the man within. Why wouldn’t he tolerate questions about his son? Because they probably led to thoughts of his dead wife.
She pushed her chair away from the table. ‘I know this is very rude, but I really must go. You’ll excuse me. I just feel that I need to follow up what Daniel’s said and ring the police.’
‘If you wait, Emily and I can drop you.’
Startled, Leo met his eyes. ‘;No…no, really. That’s very kind. But I don’t want to cut your evening short. I… Thank-you, Dr. Field.’ Leo stumbled, feeling like an awkward girl again. ‘It’s been a terrific evening.’ She kissed him quickly on the cheek and raced up the grand staircase, only catching her breath as she reached the door.
When her taxi turned off Finsbury Square into streets made desolate by night, Leo began to rue her hasty decision. She should have accepted Daniel’s offer of a lift. She could have invited both him and Emily up to the loft, pressed Daniel further in his forthcoming mood. Far better embarrassment than the ghostly emptiness that awaited her.
The resident’s parking bays were all occupied, but there were no lights visible anywhere in the building. The taxi pulled up short by the fenced car park. Reluctantly, Leo got out of the cab and dug into her bag for her purse.
It was then that she had the distinct feeling of eyes focussed on her back, probing, penetrating. She veered round. Like some kidnapper waiting in ambush, a shadowy figure lurked on the outdoor steps of the building. At her gaze, he strode quickly away.
Leo shivered. She had an eerie feeling that the man knew her. Which meant that she had seen him somewhere before. Where? The toad from Origen leapt into her mind. Yet the walk wasn’t quite right. Or was it?
‘It’s £8.50 Miss.’ The taxi driver urged her on.
‘Yes, of course.’ Leo took out a £10 note and had a desire to ask him in with her for a cup of tea.
‘Keep the change,’ she murmured.
He grunted a ‘Ta’.
She watched him speed away, then raced along the street. She peered over her shoulder while she unlocked the door. She took the stairs two at a time, double-locking the flat as soon as she was inside. She turned on all the lights. Her heart was pounding, but its sound was the only noise in the apartment.
As she surveyed the room, she had the uncanny sense that someone had been here. Yet nothing seemed to have been disturbed. She walked round, deliberately allowing her heels to set up a comforting clatter and checked each room in turn.
There was no red light signalling on the answerphone. No Beast either, anywhere in sight. For the comfort of a presence, she pressed the ‘all messages’ button and heard the woman from the South Bank and Paola Webster and Norfolk and Faraday and Isabel’s aunt all over again. Then came a new message, one she was certain she hadn’t heard before. Norfolk was checking in from Amsterdam, asking her how she was, but leaving no return number.
Leo stared at the machine. Something must have gone wrong with its mechanism, a failure in its new-messages system. Either that or… Leo shivered again. Either that or someone had been in here and listened to the messages. For whatever reason, Isabel’s flat was being watched by someone who had the keys.
She rushed to the door and barricaded a chair against it, then quickly rang Faraday. She told him what Daniel Lukas had said about Amsterdam, adding incoherently that Isabel could have chosen any other city to leave from. Keeping her voice even, she also said that she thought someone had been into the flat. Then, having wedged another chair in front of her bedroom door, she went to bed and drew the covers over her head, like a child terrified of bogeys.
She tried not to let the violent images which cascaded through her augment her fear.
Paola Webster’s office was a minimalist duet in black and white. A vast black sofa faced a white one across the expanse of a geometric table. Beneath it, on the pale beach floor, lay a black and white rug. An ample desk with coordinated leather chairs stood at the far end of the room. Etchings decked the walls. The only splash of colour was a vase filled with blood-red tulips. And Paola herself, vivid in green, her lips carmine.
The room made a bold statement and Leo had to admit she was impressed.
The woman wasted no time. ‘I speak to you as a favour to Dr. Field, but also because I, too, am concerned for Isabel. She is a strong woman, but I am concerned.’
‘When did you last see her?’
The woman threw her a censorious look. ‘In January, I believe it was. She was fine then, doing well…’
Leo interrupted again. For a reason she didn’t altogether understand, she felt she had to keep the advantage. ‘What did you talk about?’
Paola laughed. ‘You are a little naïve, perhaps. We talked about what patients always talk about - family, love, pain. Is there anything else? Here Mariella, put it here nicely.’ She gestured towards a thin young woman, who had just come into the room. The girl meekly followed her gesture and placed a tray on the table. ‘Now you pour the coffee, nicely, nicely. Yes that’s good.’
The girl pushed the cafetiere filter down and shakily poured two cups of coffee, passing one to Leo without meeting her eyes.
‘Thank-you, Mariella. You can go now. Help yourself to a croissant, Ms Holland. They are fresh.’ Paola bit into one with relish, wiped a crumb from her top and rushed on. ‘Where were we? Yes. I do not have much to tell you. My idea is that Isabel is in Australia.’
‘Could she have had … some kind of nervous collapse?’
Paola stared her down. ‘If you keep interrupting me Ms Holland, our time will be gone and you will have discovered nothing with which I can help you. Yes. It is possible. Just possible, though I do not think altogether likely. Isabel had discovered in the course of our work together that her mother had helped to do her father in, as you say.’
Leo lurched forward, spilling a little coffee on her lap.
Paola scowled then carried on in a bland tone. ‘She was learning to be a woman, despite all that. Learning to hate herself less. She was going to go to Australia to find proof, to confront. To question her mother. Then as you undoubtedly know, her mother died. This must have been difficult for Isabel. And she didn’t return for my help. We still had some way to go. There was still much self
-hatred and confusion. She should not have cut so soon.’ Paola made an abrupt slicing gesture. ‘The healing takes time.’
‘Killed?’ Leo managed to bring the word out at last. ‘Her father was killed…’
A scornful look met her stumbling query.
‘Yes. Many terrible things happen in families, Ms Holland. Do not appear so surprised. You should read my book.’ She pointed to a copy of Scar Tissue, which was prominently displayed on the coffee table. ‘Your background is perhaps one of a certain financial and emotional privilege. You have been spared. You are among the lucky few.’
‘Isabel…?’
‘My idea is that Isabel is in Australia finding things out. Otherwise she would be here with me. Deep down, she is a sensible person. It is only unfortunate that her mother died just then. Most unfortunate. Do you have children, Ms Holland?’
‘Yes. A daughter.’
The woman scrutinized Leo with an anatomist’s coldness. ‘Just the one. No more. The experience wasn’t good enough.’
Leo was about to protest, but Paola carried on. ‘Are you kind to her, not too cold, too distant, too nervous?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Leo was amazed at the woman’s gall. ‘And you?’
‘No, I cannot. But that is an old story.’ She wiped her mouth primly. ‘Do you sleep with Isabel?’
Leo put her cup down with a clatter. ‘What makes you ask?’
‘Do not look at me like that. It is not a crime. When Isabel came to me all her antipathy was towards men. I thought that maybe, as we worked that through, she might have experimented. She is a sensual woman. You have had therapy? No. I do not really need to ask. It might do you good, Ms Holland. Meanwhile, do not try to control Isabel with your nervousness.’
Paola looked at her watch, tapped it. Her time was up.
Leo took a moment to get up. She felt as if she had been flattened by a steamroller. No wonder Isabel hadn’t been herself at Christmas.
She rose slowly, met the woman’s eyes. ‘I think, Ms Webster, that if there is any controlling going on here, it really is all yours. Thank Mariella for the coffee.’
She turned on her heel and walked towards the door. On the desk, she noticed a squat fertility figure, all giant belly and inchoate fleshy stone. She had an odd desire to fling it to the floor and watch it shatter. But it wouldn’t shatter, she reminded herself. It would lie there, eternally composed, however hard she flung it. She threw a question she had forgotten instead.
‘Does the name Morgenstern mean anything to you, Ms Webster?’
‘Even if that is not a trick question, Ms Holland, I have no answer for you. Now go, please.’
Leo half-ran down the street of stately white houses into Fitzjohn’s Avenue. After last night’s episode with the prowler, she had assumed the interview with Paola would be a waste of time. She had veered again to thinking that Norfolk was right, that Isabel’s disappearance was due to her investigation into the work of the biotech multinationals who were still looking for something in the loft. But she had come anyway.
Now the frail rubber dinghy of her suppositions lay in ruins, shredded by the hard rock of Paola Webster’s shattering certainties.
The full terror of what Paola had communicated burned into Leo’s mind as she made a pretense of tidying the flat in anticipation of Isabel’s aunt’s arrival. Murder, the woman had suggested matter-of-factly. Without so much as a tremor. The flatness of the announcement seemed to render its content less significant than the fact that Isabel hadn’t continued her therapy with Paola.
Yet the impact on Isabel of unearthing and confronting such a momentous family secret must have been devastating. Was it this savage fact of her early history that had propelled Isabel over the edge, that had made her shun everything and everyone in order to undertake a mission so dangerous that it had already resulted in the death of a colleague? Could it also be what had tipped her into accepting money from one multinational - as Faraday suspected - in order to spy on another?
Somehow, Leo reflected, she would have to broach the whole hideous tangle of Isabel’s early history with her aunt. It was quite possible that Isabel’ s row with Martha had been precisely about this.
The sound of the doorbell gave her a start and put an end to her musing. She wasn’t expecting anyone, unless Faraday had taken it upon himself to arrive unannounced to check things out.
She tiptoed to the videophone, saw no-one. Thrusting her shoulders back, she peered through the eye-hole. For a moment she didn’t recognise the distorted face. When it came into focus, she quickly opened the door.
Mike Newson stood there, a crooked half-smile on his narrow face. He was holding a suitcase in his hand.
‘Hi. Everything OK?’ He walked past her without waiting for an answer and deposited the case in the middle of the living room floor.
‘Someone came to deliver this earlier. You weren’t here so he left it with me. It’s Isabel’s.’
Leo stared at the case, unable to take in its material reality.
‘Courtesy of Quantas. Lost in transit.’
‘Where?’ She stooped to read the passenger label. The name Iris Morgenstern was printed on it, together with the loft’s address. But there was no destination marked. ‘Lost where?’ She repeated.
Mike Newson shrugged. ‘He didn’t say. He was just a delivery bloke.’
Leo threw him a sour look, but he carried on undeflected, his smile growing bigger. ‘Guess she had to buy new gear in Perth or Alice Springs or Melbourne or Brisbane or Sydney. Or maybe Singapore or Hong Kong. But we can all stop worrying. She’s somewhere down under and she’ll be back soon.’
With a shaky hand, Leo unzipped the case. It wasn’t locked. Inside the clothes were neatly folded.
‘Yup. This is Isabel’s.’ Unhindered by modesty, Mike Newson shunted aside some lingerie and pulled out a linen jacket. ‘I remember it distinctly. She wore it for the pilot.’
Leo took the jacket jealously from his hand and placed it on the sofa. The cat appeared from nowhere and curled himself into its folds.
‘Whatever happened to your joint project by the way.’
Mike ran his fingers through his hair and bent abstractedly towards the case again. ‘Nothing.’ He lifted a pair of trousers from the case and flung them towards the sofa. His face had a belligerent edge. ‘It went down the plug hole. The commissioning editor thought Isabel was too old to front it. My mistake. Don’t tell her.’
Leo wished he would go
He didn’t. He shuffled his feet instead, cleared his throat. ‘Rosie tells me you do this fabulous cartoon strip about Manhattan. I’d love to see it.’
So that was it. Leo restrained a wild laugh. She had come up in his estimation. She was someone in the world, that dreamed of world that he had splashed on to his walls and windows.
‘I’ll send you both a book when I go back.’
‘OK, thanks. Great.’
No sooner had he left, than Leo slowly emptied the case, one item at a time searching for she didn’t know what. Why wasn’t she feeling elated? Was it simply that she sensed that Faraday would now give her a peeved look and stop his investigations. Isabel’s disappearance was either a matter for the Australian police or it was no matter at all. Emotional temperature, her friend’s or her own, was of no interest to him.
Yes, Isabel was in Australia. She must have gone there right after she had left the hotel in Lynton. Her business was too intimate and shaming to communicate, even to Leo. Or perhaps she had still hoped to arrive in New York on the appointed day.
From under a pair of trousers, Leo pulled out a glossy brochure announcing the marvel that was Bioworld and sat down with a bump. So the biotech investigation was part of the Australian trip as well. Isabel had the presence of mind for that, if not for ringing Leo.
For reasons she couldn’t altogether place, Leo felt as if her face had been slapped. Betrayal. That’s what it was. It left a flush of humiliation in its wake. She needed Isabel, needed
her openess, her vibrant sense of life, far more than Isabel had ever needed her.
Yet her anxiety wouldn’t disperse. It hovered like a black cloud over her head, despite the brightness of the day and the tangible relief that the suitcase should have brought with it. Maybe Daniel Lukas was right. Maybe she was simply loathe to recognize that Isabel’s life was not an integral part of her own.
PART FOUR
NOTES TOWARDS A CASE HISTORY (III)
After she had broached the matter of her father and his death, I didn’t expect Anna to turn up for her next session.
I guessed that if I had become even a little important to her, even a little real, she would play out abandoning me to ward off the inevitability of my abandoning her - as her father had done and with such utter finality. It was the pattern of her life, a cycle of repetition in which she was trapped - leaving as soon as anyone became too real, averting being left. Leaving if she felt needed or sniffed the signs of her own growing dependence.
I was wrong. She came punctually. But she wouldn’t talk about death or her father. She started to give me dreams: the next weeks were filled with dreams and with accounts of her mother’s cold harshness. Her mother, it became clear, had never forgiven her father for being who he was or for dying on her and leaving her to cope independently. Her relationship to Anna was a series of incessant, invasive plaints interspersed by absence. She would never talk about the father or his death, nor was Anna, when she could speak again, permitted to. It was as if the man had never existed.
In her dreams Anna was often underground in a dark, oozing labyrinth, almost like the interstices of a body but with no visible exits. Or she was paralysed. Unable to move. I took this at first as an identification with her father, a residue of the period of his illness, her greatest dread. But it was also the paralysis of the repetition she was caught in: never having been allowed or able to confront her feelings about her father’s dying and death, these had gone underground, leaving her to replay again and again a pattern of seduction and betrayal she could cope with. Eroticising the damage. Mastering early trauma by transforming it into excitement. Part of her had learned to enjoy the paralysis of repetition. Seduction and abandonment also freed her from a certain kind of emotional responsibility. Better not to have any responsibility if that primary one - keeping her father alive — had been so impossibly great and inevitably doomed.
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