While I was at it I decided to look up Heja too. I typed in her name and lots of pictures came up this time. There were a series of glamorous shots of her seated behind a news desk, and what looked like several PR shots of her that had a glossy edge to them. There was a picture of her interviewing a man who looked like a politician. There was some accompanying text in English that described her role at the TV station and some information about programme ratings. It seemed that she had indeed been one of the top news presenters in Finland. It was all information about her work, who she had interviewed and the events she had covered.
There was nothing personal. I could find no links to Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter. Well, that figured. Heja would be the last person to share information about herself on any social media sites. Why, she shared little enough with her colleagues who she saw every day. I still could not understand why she had left such a high-profile television job. She was in her mid-thirties and would have had more TV years ahead of her surely; and all to make the jump to writing about architecture for a magazine? It was odd.
Heja
JULY
Early in July I received a letter from my mother, Solange.
My dear Heja
You are proving so elusive this year that your father and I have decided that if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain we will come to you.
Your father has not been himself and I am concerned about his health. He will keep working and pushing himself quite unnecessarily. However, I have persuaded him to take a four-week holiday. We will be taking a ten-day cruise in August. We start in London, then on to Paris for two nights before taking a train to Marseille to board the ship. We then visit Genoa, the Amalfi coast, Sicily, Carthage and Barcelona. The cruise returns us to Marseille. We then plan to spend two weeks in Provence. It will all be very comfortable and Father is keen for you to join us on the cruise. I too think it will do you good to have a break from your work. Father is happy to pay for everything.
If, however, and as I expect, you say that you can’t get away for so long we plan to fly to London early so that we can spend some time with you. We have been recommended a good hotel right in the centre, the Brownsage Hotel in Charlotte Street. I would be grateful if you would check it out for us before I confirm the booking.
Let me know as soon as possible if you wish to join us, as Father will need to reserve your cabin on the ship.
With love, as ever,
Solange
I can think of few fates worse than spending ten days on a ship with my mother, vying with her for my father’s attention. She is the most jealous woman in the world. Why, if Dad fills my glass before hers there is a scene. And it is quite clear that she does not want me to join them.
I remember when I told her I was leaving my job in television. She was furious with me. She may not have loved me but she had enjoyed having a famous daughter. I couldn’t tell her the real reason I was giving it up. I hoped she might see the suffering daughter beneath the façade I presented to her. She saw nothing. She could not have been more icy or critical. I gave up on her then. I do not even call her mother any more. She is Solange to the world and Solange to me.
When my parents arrived in London a couple of weeks later I took Robert along to act as a buffer and to stop the usual questioning I always got from her. She was standing in the foyer of the Brownsage Hotel, elegant in a dark green shirtdress and jacket. Robert kissed her on the cheek and she gave him a little smile. It had been obvious she liked him the night before when we had joined them for dinner at their hotel. She turned to me.
‘Pieter won’t be coming with us this morning. He had a bad night and needs to rest. He’ll meet us for lunch.’
‘He didn’t look well last night,’ I said uneasily.
‘I made that clear in my letter, Heja. He’s not been well.’
‘What is it?’
A spasm of irritation moved over her mouth and cheeks, a passing tremor.
‘He’s got a heart problem,’ she said, lowering her voice.
‘How serious is it?’
‘He needs to be careful.’
‘Can’t they do anything?’
‘They are doing all sorts of things and it’s under control. He just has to take it easy sometimes.’
Robert could feel the tension between us. He pulled his mouth down in the way he does when he is holding back words. He stroked my arm and said to Solange, ‘Do you still want to go to Tate Modern? We could call it off.’
‘No, no, I very much want to go and Pieter wants me to buy him a catalogue.’
I was looking at the geometric pattern on the floor of the hotel’s foyer. There were grey and white blocks of marble cut and laid with precision. Robert pressed my arm again.
‘Shall we go now?’
‘I’d like to stay and keep Dad company here. Would you mind terribly?’
I looked up at him and then over at her.
‘Your father needs to sleep,’ she said crisply.
‘I wouldn’t wake him. Give me the keys to the room. I’ll sit in there and when he wakes up I’ll make him some tea.’
‘You were going to show us around.’
How I hated her. I had not seen my father for months and months and yet she resented us having any time on our own.
‘I’d be delighted to show you around,’ Robert said.
‘Thank you, Robert.’
She turned to me. ‘We’ll see you both at the restaurant, then.’
‘The table is booked for one-fifteen,’ Robert said, giving me a conspiratorial look as if to say, yes, he could see she was a difficult woman.
Dad was not asleep. He was sitting in his dressing gown in an armchair by the window.
‘Darling, where are the others?’
‘They’ve gone to the Tate. I wanted to keep you company.’
He stood up and we hugged tightly.
‘I’m so pleased,’ he said.
I sat next to him and looked at his face lit by the light from the window. His colour was not good.
‘Did you have a bad night, Dad?’
‘I didn’t sleep very well, just wanted to take it a bit easy this morning, nothing to worry about.’
I stroked his hand. ‘It is exhausting going around the Tate. It’s huge,’ I said.
‘Yes, I read all about it.’
‘You can’t do it all in one go, although I bet Robert will try!’
My father smiled. ‘I liked him. He’s a clever man.’
‘Yes, he is, very clever and civilized...’
‘Now, those are not very warm words to use about him.’
‘Robert is excellent company. I’m not in love with him.’
‘Oh, dear, I think he’s mad about you.’
I shrugged. My father knew how much I had loved Markus and how much it had hurt me when he left.
‘How are you, Dad, really?’
‘I’m OK. I have to take a few pills and not overdo it. That’s all.’
I was still stroking his hand. His skin was thin and dry.
‘Let me rub some cream into your hands. It will feel nice.’
I went into their bathroom and found a small bottle of complimentary body lotion. It was Persian Lilac.
‘You’ll make me smell like a Turkish harem,’ he said, grinning at me.
I poured a generous amount of lotion onto the top of his left hand and gently worked it into the skin, then massaged each finger, his knucklebones and his wrist.
‘It does feel rather nice,’ he said.
I started to work on his right hand. Every time I see him now I think it might be the last time. And there is still so much unsaid between us.
‘I sometimes think our family is cursed,’ I said, as I worked the lotion round each knuckle of his right hand.
‘Why do you say that, darling?’
‘Tomas and Aunt Tanya... Maybe our genes are cursed.’
‘Tomas died of an infection.’
‘And Tanya?’
&n
bsp; ‘Tanya’s early death was tragic, such a terrible waste, but every family has its share of tragedy. Have you been worrying about this?’
I could tell him now, at this very moment. It would be such a release for me to confide my troubles to my father. I looked at his dear, kind face, his poor colour. He had already buried one of his children. He needed to believe that everything was going well with me.
‘It had an effect on me, of course.’
‘Is it stopping you having children?’ he asked gently.
I shook my head.
‘You told me Solange was never the same after Tomas died.’
‘No, she wasn’t. You see, we just thought he had a cold and that’s why he had the temperature. The doctor said keep him cool and your mother sat up through the night, bathing his limbs to get his temperature down. She fell asleep on the floor of the nursery for maybe an hour and a half. When she woke up Tomas was much worse. He was very pale and did not respond to her at all. She was frantic. We drove him to hospital straight away. He died the next evening. Meningitis comes on so suddenly, so devastatingly.’
‘I’m sorry to have brought it up, Dad. I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘You haven’t upset me. You could never upset me. I know it cast a long shadow over your childhood. Losing Tomas was almost unbearable for your mother. She adored him, you see. I was almost jealous of her feelings for him. I felt profound guilt after he died. I hadn’t helped her enough that night.’
‘You couldn’t have been a better husband to her, Dad. You do so much for her.’
He smiled sadly at me then as if he still felt he had fallen short.
‘She was ill for a couple of years. There was a time when she didn’t want to get out of bed or do anything at all. I bought her a puppy then and she made herself get up to take him out. Slowly she got better. It made me realize how fragile she was, still is in a way.’
‘She never seems fragile to me! She wanted sons and finds it difficult to like me, a mere woman.’
Now he put both his hands under my chin so that my face was cupped in them.
‘She may not show it very often but we are both so proud of our beautiful, talented daughter. Don’t be afraid of having children, darling. They bring such joy.’
I buried my head in his chest then. Of course he wanted me to have children. They were waiting for it. I could hear the faint lub-dup of his poor diseased heart.
We met them at the Connaught at one-fifteen precisely as instructed. Solange was in a good mood. Robert had invited my parents as his guests this time and it was just the sort of place he relished. Over the aperitifs, he told us how General De Gaulle had used the Connaught as his London residence during the war, and that General Eisenhower had been a regular at the restaurant. Robert always chooses these opulent places with their rich food and hushed tones. He recommended the chicken pie, which he said was a speciality of the house. Dad chose it; I think to thank Robert for looking after Solange that morning. They brought him a whole chicken pie in a ceramic pie dish. He cut into the crust of the pie and found a perfect soft boiled quail’s egg nestling under the dome of the crust.
‘Now, that’s a brilliant touch,’ Dad said, slicing delicately into the egg. The rich yolk ran out and mingled with the chicken gravy. He ate a mouthful of the pie.
‘Fantastic. You know that saying, “Little things please little minds”? I’ve often thought it was wrong. Little things can give great pleasure. Take this egg sitting on top of these chicken pieces. That’s a little thing but it raises this chicken pie from the merely good to the great.’
We all laughed.
Robert nodded. ‘Never underestimate the importance of small details. In analysis we think that small things can carry great meanings.’
‘You look better, Pieter,’ Solange said. ‘The rest did you good.’
‘Being with Heja did me good,’ he said, smiling over at me.
I glanced across at her. She let it pass. She was full of Tate Modern and the art and the views and her new-found alliance with Robert.
‘The views of St Paul’s are quite stunning. I think I prefer the views through those magnificent windows to the actual art in the rooms,’ she said.
Now, if I had ever chosen to invite Robert to dinner at our family home in Helsinki she would most certainly have brought out the porcelain and the silver for him!
Wednesday morning and she called a team meeting at short notice and told us that she is going to be away next week: in Cornwall; St Ives; a family holiday. She said if we had any problems we were to let Aisha know. Aisha would contact her if necessary. She was sure, she said, putting on her friendly face and smiling at each of us in turn, that there would be no need to contact her; we were a great team and she appreciated our efforts.
I sat there feeling icy cold. I could just imagine it: the pretty little family staying in the hotel; the days on the beach; Billy with a sun hat on; them both playing with him on the sand. She would wear a bikini, her large breasts on show. She is proud of them. He would rub sun-cream into her back and over her shoulders. He would have his camera with him. She would go for a swim and as she came out of the sea her breasts would almost be slipping from her bikini top. He would take photos of her then as she picked her way up the beach. He always likes to take unposed shots. He would wait until she was drying herself with a rough beach towel, rubbing herself awkwardly behind a rock, laughing and wriggling underneath the towel. And with every shared experience, with every photograph he took of her and Billy, they would be building their life together, giving it stronger foundations.
I had to see him again before he left for this week away with her. I wanted us to have our dinner in Durham. He said he would show me the site where he is going to build the arts centre. I left the office as soon as the team meeting had ended. I called his work number. The receptionist told me he was away in Durham for three days and would not be back until Friday. I felt myself filling up with silent fury. They were going away on Saturday so there was no way I could see him now until his return from Cornwall. Why hadn’t he suggested we meet in Durham this week? It would have been the perfect time to do it.
I walked back to the office slowly. She was walking down the stairs with Philip Parr. He nodded in my direction and I made a point of stopping in the foyer as they crossed the floor towards me.
I smiled at them both and then turned towards her and said, with a concerned look on my face, ‘So we are to contact Aisha if there’s a problem?’
She flushed slightly. ‘Yes, please, though I’m sure you’ll all cope brilliantly. It’s only a week.’
Philip said. ‘Or speak to me, Heja, if something crops up.’
I thanked him with a smile and she did not like that. I could tell by the way she pushed her lips together in an effort not to grimace. They walked out of the building together.
That night I sat outside her flat in my car. At first I thought I would not go in again. I was just sitting there, watching the building. The last time Markus was away that man had showed up. I wanted to see if he would show up again. As the lights in her flat were gradually turned off until the only light remaining was the orange light from Billy’s bedroom, I found myself standing at the entrance to the block. I let myself in. And then I was walking up the three flights of stairs to her flat. And then I was standing outside her front door. I knew I was taking a big risk. I’d done it before and she had not woken up. She might wake up this time. That thought made me feel very alive as I turned the key in her front door.
Perhaps I was less careful than before. Perhaps I had made some slight noise as I walked down the corridor, but once I was standing in her bedroom, watching the mound of her body under the cover, she stirred and made a little moan. I glided out of the room and into Markus’s room. I heard her come out of her bedroom and walk down the corridor to the bathroom. She put the light on and then I heard her flush the toilet. Then she walked back along the corridor right past Markus’s room, where I was standing
in the shadows. She went into Billy’s room. After a few moments, she walked back into her bedroom, carrying Billy. She must have taken him into the bed with her. He was making funny little noises and she was making soothing sounds back.
I stood and I waited, my hand resting on Markus’s drawing table. Gradually my breathing settled. My eyes got accustomed to the dark and to the outline of his things. How I loathed her. This room is the only room that is truly Markus. Everything else is hers – her furniture, her mess, her sticky cooking things, her baby. She has spread her mess everywhere and she is gradually sucking him into her orbit.
I would not leave the flat until I had seen her again. I waited for a long time, sitting on the floor in Markus’s work room with my head resting on his chair. The flat was silent and eventually I got to my knees and then stood up. I walked to the threshold of her bedroom and looked in. She was lying asleep, with Billy in the crook of her arm. I stood and watched them, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, the smaller movements in the baby’s body, mother and son sleeping peacefully.
Kathy
AUGUST
‘Wake up, Kathy, it’s time to get up.’
I pulled my eyelids open. Markus put a mug of coffee down next to the clock, which showed 05.27.
‘Five more minutes,’ I murmured.
‘You need to get up. I want to leave by six to avoid the traffic. You and Billy can sleep in the car.’
Markus had finally agreed to a one-week holiday, at short notice, so I had rung around and booked us into a family hotel in St Ives that my aunt Jennie recommended. I struggled into a sitting position and sipped the very strong coffee he had made me.
‘If we get there by lunchtime I might be able to get a dive in,’ he said. He was moving around our bedroom full of energy, willing me to get up.
I let Billy sleep on while I had a quick wash and got dressed. Markus had arrived back late from Durham the night before so I had packed all the bags, including his clothes.
The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine Page 13
