“So what about you, Ed? Why are you in London?”
“Exactly what it says on the packet,” he said cheerfully, “this is my house and I’ve decided to come back to London and live in it.
Who knows, I may even go back to work in the shop.”
My father had inherited money as a young man and had indulged in what my mother always referred to as a “dusty” profession. Edward Bartholomew Books was a tiny stall tucked away in Portobello Market dealing in antiquarian books. My father had sat there happily losing money every Saturday until my mother had yanked him off to France, at which point he’d turned his space over to a young whippersnapper who now used it to sell punk memorabilia.
“Your mother’s got this new life in New York,” he said, “so she
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really doesn’t need it.Although as soon as she hears I’m here I expect she’ll want it back,” he added ruefully. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
As he was speaking I realized with a sinking feeling that he didn’t know about the Phillionaire. And why would he? Nobody had thought to call him, buried as he was in the depths of the French countryside, least of all my mother or me.
I made a fresh pot of coffee to stave off my encroaching jet lag and talked him through the events of the last month culminating in the Phillionaire’s untimely death.To my surprise he looked unbelievably sad.
“I must call your mother,” he said. “This is the worst thing that could have happened to her. It really sounded as if she had found someone who could get through to her.”
I don’t think I could have been more amazed if he had said he was sprouting wings underneath his dressing gown.
“Don’t look so stunned,” he said. “Your mother and I have had a few conversations since she met him—in fact I’m a little sad she didn’t call and tell me he had died—and I could tell by the way she talked about him that she loved him. And it sounded as though she actually believed that he loved her, not like—”
He stopped suddenly and I wasn’t sure what to say. Surely he hadn’t been about to tell me my mother didn’t believe my father’s love for her.
Apparently he had.
“I mean, I should never have married her,” he went on and I held my breath. He was musing to himself, almost as if I were not even there beside him. But then he said something that told me he was very much aware of my presence, more than at any other time I could remember.
“I’m like you, Nathalie. I like being on my own. I had absolutely no intention of getting married. Ever. It’s a rare thing but
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there really are a few people who are better off going through life on their own. I’m one of them and I’ve always suspected you are too. But then I met Vanessa and she was this stunning, exciting creature. I was seduced by her energy, her wonderful ability to embrace life full on. She literally swept me up in her wake and it wasn’t until I was totally smitten that I discovered how complicated she really was.”
“Complicated?”
“She was needy in a way I hadn’t anticipated. She was so desperate for us to get married that I found I couldn’t resist her, even though I knew I should.Yet she couldn’t seem to accept the fact that I really loved her. Nor did she ever really say she loved me. She smothered me with attention but she always seemed to back away—mentally—when I tried to express my feeling for her. She was—I don’t know any other way to describe it—she was awkward.”
I knew exactly what he meant. And so had the Phillionaire.
“But you loved her, Ed?”
“Always. But I didn’t need to be married to her. Still, as you can imagine, that’s the last thing I could have told her given how insecure she was about my love for her. I just went ahead with it and hoped for the best. As you probably noticed, I had a hard time keeping up with her.”
“Join the club,” I said and he laughed. It saddened me to realize what had happened. He had retreated into himself, worn down like everybody else by my mother’s hyperactive personality. I recalled a conversation I had had with her shortly after she had told me they were going to separate, when she had made a remark that I realized now had probably been fueled by resentment. She had told me that once the initial passion of their married life was over, she had decided my father was boring and had no conversation. But sitting here in the kitchen with him, I
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sensed that in the same way I had begun to access my mother’s more vulnerable persona, I would now unearth a long repressed side of my father that was far from boring.
I stayed awake as long as I could, given part of my body, and indeed my mind, was still entrenched in Long Island. But after my father and I had shared an early supper of a mushroom omelet and a frisée salad, expertly prepared by him, I made my excuses and escaped to bed. Before I went, however, I called my mother, chatted for a few minutes, and then handed the phone to my father.Then I went upstairs to take a bath and slipped into bed. But as sometimes happens when you are desperately in need of it, sleep wouldn’t come and after about an hour, I slipped downstairs to make myself a milky drink.
And to my amazement I could still hear my father talking in low urgent tones to my mother.
It was a little weird having him back in the house. I woke up the next morning and suddenly realized I wouldn’t have the place to myself like I used to. When I went down to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, there he was, sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of bills laid out before him and his checkbook.
“I don’t think your mother’s paid a single bill since she took off for New York,” he said. “So unlike her.”
“Ed,” I said, sitting down beside him, “there’s something I want to ask you. Mum’s never said anything to me about the divorce, like how far along you are, who’s getting the house, stuff like that.”
“Nathalie, I already told you,” said my father, not looking up, the merest hint of steel in his voice, “it’s my house. I know your mother always behaved as if it belonged to both of us, or even just to her, but the deeds are in my name.The place in France is hers.”
“But when you took up with Josiane, Mum left you there and came back to live here.”
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“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said. “And as for the divorce, I never wanted one. She started proceedings.”
“And?”
“And,” my father repeated, “that’s where it stands. And. She met Philip Abernathy and got herself so distracted, everything seemed to grind to a halt. Again, ironic. But that’s your mother for you,” he said, scrawling his signature across a check in such a wild flourish that it seemed to me the end of “Bartholomew”
landed on the table.
The phone rang and it was my agent, Genevieve, who never seemed to be able to wait until she got to her office to call me.
“So, you’ve arrived. Good.We need to meet. Flight okay?” She was as brisk as ever.
“Yes, thanks, Genny. How are you?”
“Busy as a busy busy bee and very happy to be so. When are you going to come and see me? I’ve got a new assignment for you.”
“You have?” This was exciting.
“I don’t know what’s been going on but no sooner does Shotgun Marriott say he doesn’t want to continue with his book than his ex-wife decides she wants to tell her story. And of course she wants you to do it with her. I’ve had her on the phone three times in the last two days.Wants to see you as soon as possible.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, stunned. “How does she know I’m here?”
“Your friend Cathleen Clark told her you were coming to London and suggested she call me to set up a time. So when can you come in and see me?”
I said I’d be there that afternoon and then I called Cath.
“I gather you’ve been telling a
ll and sundry I’m back in town.”
“Yeah, so? I told Angie Marriott, where’s the harm in that? I already told you I knew her from AA and that she wanted to talk
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to you. I didn’t think you’d have a problem with that. Anyway don’t get your knickers in a twist about it, just come to dinner tomorrow night. Come around seven. I want you to see your godson in his bath before I put him to bed.”
My mind was in a turmoil as I set off a couple of hours later on a short walk around the neighborhood. I’d called an immigra-tion lawyer to inquire whether there was any point applying for a long-term visa to America. The trouble was I just didn’t have a clue what the future held for me. If I was going to continue with the book about Shotgun, then I would need to go back indefinitely. But if I wound up working with Angie Marriott instead, then how long would I be staying here? I had absolutely no idea.
Nor did I feel entirely comfortable with the idea of suddenly switching to Angie’s story. But no doubt Genevieve would make up my mind for me as she always did.
The hustle and bustle of Notting Hill, where I’d lived all my life, was quite a shock to the system after the idyllic beauty of my Long Island beach existence. Ugly housing projects rose cheek by jowl with elegant Georgian mansions and brightly colored Vic-torian terraced houses. Running through the center of the area like a cheerful, nonjudgmental artery was the Portobello Market where the hip and the affluent jostled for their fruit and veg with drug dealers, street kids, and Irish and West Indian immigrants who had lived there for forty years. Crime was rampant now and for the last ten years I had holed up in my parents’ house, terrified of what might be happening outside in the streets, and emerging only under cover of daylight.
And yet within hours of escaping to the relative safety of Long Island I had been catapulted into the midst of not one but two murder investigations. I could already hear Cath admonishing me— For God’s sake, Lee, get a grip! You’re paranoid, you really are! —
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but I was seriously beginning to believe that wherever I went I would encounter violence.
Later in the day on my way to Genevieve’s office in Covent Garden, I found myself thinking about what my father had said. I had absolutely no intention of getting married. As far as I knew Genevieve had never been married. Maybe she was another member of the Polar Bear Club. As I climbed the steep flight of stairs to her tiny office I wondered how she would react if I broke our unspoken rule that we didn’t discuss our personal lives.What if I asked her if she thought I should marry Tommy. But as I reached the top step, slightly out of breath, I was hit with the sudden realization that I was back where I had been a couple of years ago. I was no longer fretting about the fact that Tommy had decided he didn’t want to marry me. Now I seemed to be more interested in trying to decide whether I wanted to marry him.
Or, more to the point, whether I wanted to get married at all.
In any case Genevieve was all business when I walked in. She waved at me and smiled but didn’t get up to embrace me. Just as well because the differential in our height meant that her face always landed in my chest and I was left pecking the air above the top of her head. She always sat firmly behind her desk and I suspected it was because then you couldn’t see the way her body spread out below the waist, giving her the look of someone wearing a crinoline.
“One way or another you’ve got a book to do,” she said, getting straight to the point, “whether it’s for the husband or the wife.”
“Or for myself,” I said. “Shotgun doesn’t want to go ahead. My plan is to write my own book even if it’s an unauthorized version.”
“Hmmm.” Genevieve didn’t seem too keen on that idea.
“Won’t sell as well.You know what I think you should do? Put the
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whole project on the back burner for a while till they convict someone for those murders. You can’t really do anything until you have the whole story, can you? Just assemble your notes and prepare what you might write should you have to write it.”
“What about Angie Marriott?”
“Shotgun’s is the story that will sell but Bettina always did say that the wife was the key and if she could get her to talk, she’d have Shotgun over a barrel.”
Genevieve lumbered to her feet and tottered over to a cupboard where she kept a kettle. I looked down at her minuscule strappy sandals with their three-inch heels and wondered how on earth they supported her.
“I’m on the fruits of the forest infusion,” she said, “it goes with my outfit, but you can have a coffee if you’d prefer. Nothing? Anyway, Angie Marriott; I think you should at least go and see her.
Whichever book you wind up doing, it’s surely going to be a big plus to have access to her.”
She was right. It was just there was a part of me that didn’t relish discussing Shotgun with her. For some curious reason I felt a kind of weird loyalty to him. But I was also aware that such hesitation was about as unprofessional as you could get. After all, I was going to be putting everything in a book for the whole world to read eventually. I reminded myself that Bettina would have been around there like a shot and held out my hand for Angie’s number.
“I’ll call her,” I said.
“And you might as well have Bettina’s file. She lodged a whole lot of stuff with me for safekeeping. She dug up such a lot of dirt on people that she became a little paranoid, if you must know.
She always thought people would be after her tapes and the names of her sources so she’d send me these sealed packages to store for her. But there’s one marked ‘Shotgun Marriott’ so I
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think you might want to take a look at what’s inside, don’t you?
It’s not like she’s going to be needing it anymore.”
I carried it home wondering how long Genevieve had been planning to sit on it.When I walked into the house my father was on the phone. “I need to call someone,” I mouthed at him. “I won’t be long,” he mouthed back and after a second or two I realized he was talking to my mother again.As I went upstairs I heard him say:
“Vanessa, I’ve always wanted to live in America.”
News to me.
“Nathalie,” I heard him shout a few minutes later, “I’m off the phone and your mother sends her love. Sorry she didn’t have time to speak to you but she was just rushing out.”
Nothing changes, I thought as I dialed the number Genevieve had given me.
“Hello?” The sound of Angie Marriott’s throaty mid-Atlantic drawl took me straight back to our meeting at the Old Stone Market.
“It’s Lee Bartholomew,” I said. “I’m in London and my agent said you wanted to get together.”
“I certainly do,” she said.
“I understand you want to do a book now?” I said.
“I’m certainly thinking about it,” she said. “It’s taken me an awfully long time to come to this decision but I feel I have no other option. I have to tell my side of the story and I’m ready to tell the world what really happened that night.”
“What really happened,” I repeated.
“How my husband killed that girl. I was there. I saw it all and I’m going to talk. Come and have a drink tomorrow and I’ll tell you everything.”
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T HE FOLLOWING EVENING CATH OPENED THE DOOR
to me in her bra and knickers.
I was shaken at the sight of her in a state of undress—I could have been anybody—and my face must have registered my disapproval because she laughed.
“Oh, come on, don’t look like that. Relax, Lee. I took a look through the peephole before I opened the door, saw you standing there.”
I bristled. Relax, Lee. Cath never missed an opportunit
y to have a go at me but that was part and parcel of our friendship.
“Anyway, come in, come in. I don’t want to be caught standing here in me undies if one of the neighbors comes by. I strip down whenever Marcus has his bath because I always get soaked.
By the time he’s finished there’s always more water outside the bath than in.You might think about doing the same.”
“I’ll just stand in the corner and watch,” I said.
“Oh, come on, Lee. You’ve got to get into the spirit of the thing. Sometimes I even climb in with him.Think of it as practice for when you have your own.You and Tommy made any plans in that direction yet?”
Oh, great, jump right in and put me on the spot, why don’t you, Cath? I was about to tell you of my doubts about my future
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with Tommy and ask your advice but, oh no, you have to go right past the finish line and start talking about kids.
“I told him, Lee. Once I’d persuaded him to get up off his butt and go to America and be with you, I said to him, what she wants is a baby,Tommy. And he’d be a terrific dad, you know he would.
Hasn’t he been on about settling down and having kids all these years he’s been with you? So now he’s got the chance, what does he do but run a mile in the opposite direction. Men! Typical!”
“Hold on a sec, what do you mean you persuaded him to go to America to be with me? Didn’t he want to?”
“Of course he wanted to, stupid. Just like he wants to marry you more than anything else in the world. He just doesn’t know it. He needs telling, that’s all.”
“And you told him?”
“I did. I said ‘Tommy, this is your last chance.You don’t marry her now, she’s going to give up on you once and for all.’ Never mind he’s been the one been pestering you to get married for umpteen years and you’ve been the one running in the opposite direction.You’ve got to make them think they’re losing their control over you and then they try to assert it all over again, the nitwits. So he goes ‘Right, I’m on it’ and the next thing I know he’s running round showing me moody head shots for his passport photo.‘Which is my best profile, Cath? I think the left, don’t you?’ I ruined it all by telling him he needed to be face-on for a passport photo. So has he put the cork back in the champagne bottle and repopped the question yet?”
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