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ten (#ulink_b7262538-4a2c-50f0-a133-3060925e65a8)
Locust Valley, Long Island, New York, 7 January 1996
High Barn is very large and made of wood and glass. It stands alone on a hill and from her bedroom window she can see the garden’s well-kept lawns, a winding road, a copse of trees and then in the distance, the quiet roofs of a small town. She remembers little of her journey here. A meal at the hospital, a car ride through dark streets where exhaustion had come from nowhere, filling her eyes and nostrils like mud. She recalls being led through a large, frightening place full of light and people, walls of glass through which she could see monstrous metal birds roaring to the sky. Later she had woken only once, groggy and confused in a small narrow bed, a low drone all around her, a row of closed white shutters, a pale, cold light. And then, oblivion again.
She understands only that she’s very far from home, that her old life and everything familiar and loved is far behind her now. This bedroom has sloping ceilings and a pattern of rose buds on the walls. Each night she dreams of the silent man, the stone cottage, the forest. Each morning she wakes in this strange, new bed and waits for the woman to lead her down to breakfast.
The woman is very tall and has yellow-white hair tied tightly back from a face that’s long and pointed as a whittled stick. Her pale eyes are rimmed in pink as if perpetually sore and sometimes the girl will catch little glimpses of the skin on her arms, patches of flaky redness. It’s this tenderness, this rawness that Elodie at once and will always associate with the woman whose name she understands is Ingrid long before she can say the word.
And from the beginning she understands that Ingrid is all she has now: the one constant amidst the strangeness, the one link to her old life and her only means of navigating this new one. Ingrid’s hands are very white, cool and dry to the touch, and in those first few days, the girl, Elodie, clings to those slender fingers as if to a twig dangling from the highest branch.
The house has many rooms filled with soft, elegant furniture very different from the few crude pieces left behind in the cottage. On the gleaming wooden floors lie thick, muted rugs. Slowly, under Ingrid’s patient, pink-eyed gaze, the child begins to explore her new surroundings. The shelves full of books, the strange box that fires shockingly into noisy, colourful life at the touch of a button, a large blue bowl filled with dead, perfumed leaves. Each new object she explores tactilely, sniffing and touching until it’s known to her. And wherever she goes she takes the little carved bird with her, her fingers always circling its smooth round head or tracing the delicate grooves of its wings.
On the kitchen table where they eat their meals, a large silver eagle stands, its half-raised wings perpetually poised for flight. In the window, a glass mobile throws squares of blue, green and red light upon the floor. There’s a framed photograph of a little boy hanging upon the wall. Nothing escapes Elodie’s careful examination. Even Ingrid must sit patiently while the child explores her with slow and careful fingertips. Every day, fastened to her blouse or sweater Ingrid wears a broach. It’s in the shape of a cat and Elodie likes to trace its sharp, sparkly edges, to touch the eyes made from clusters of shiny red stones that glint and twinkle in the light. She notices that a few of them have come loose, leaving behind black, sightless craters. She wonders what became of them – those tiny lost specks of red.
At High Barn, meals are eaten from large white plates three times a day at the kitchen table. Elodie and Ingrid sit opposite each other, always in the same chairs, and as the small neat portions are doled out to her, she thinks about the man in the forest, of the steaming rabbit stew they would make together then eat from chipped bowls. Afterwards, she would wash them in the river, returning to find the man smiling, waiting for her to sing to him. She sees again his thick fingers nudging tobacco into flimsy squares of paper while he listens. The pain slams into her. On the long, polished table the reflection of the silver eagle gleams.
One evening when Elodie has been at High Barn for over a week, she follows Ingrid to the kitchen for dinner as usual but stops in her tracks to see a stranger sitting there, a large glass of wine in front of him, a suitcase by his feet. Ingrid’s husband Robert is a thickset, stocky man with curly brown hair only lightly touched with grey. They consider each other for a moment or two and then he raises his eyebrows and smiles, an easy grin that pulls Elodie at once across the room towards him. Ignoring her usual place setting she takes the chair beside him, staring up at him with wide-eyed curiosity, while the man gives a short burst of laughter and Ingrid, her lips pinched into a tight, thin line, slides Elodie’s plate across to her.
As Elodie eats she takes in the man’s thick wrists, the heavy features of his face, the incongruously small chin. She watches the way he drinks with large rapid gulps, the way he bites at his bread; how when he finishes his meal he drops his cutlery with a clatter, stretches and gives a loud, satisfied sigh. She feels a nip of disappointment when he takes his plate to the sink and then, with a brief word to Ingrid and a smile and a wave to her, takes his suitcase and disappears up the stairs. Left alone Elodie ponders this surprising turn of events. She had thought that only she and Ingrid lived in this large, many roomed house, and is intrigued to discover her mistake.
It’s some time before she sees Robert again. Every day he leaves early in the morning, often not returning until after she’s in bed. At the weekends he keeps to his study and the only sign of him is the faint rumble of the radio or television seeping from under his door. Often he will disappear with his big suitcase for weeks at a time. And mostly she and Ingrid keep to the top floor of High Barn, in the little room full of mysterious equipment that she will one day refer to as ‘the schoolroom’. Sometimes a whole month can pass where she doesn’t see Robert at all.
On the rare occasions that the three of them do eat together, Elodie begins to sense something in the air between Ingrid and Robert that troubles her. Although their voices are calm and quiet when they speak, there is nevertheless a strange, shivery tension that hovers in the gaps between their words. Sometimes Elodie will wake in the night and hear angry, raised voices, the slamming of doors. Gradually she begins to sense that the raw tenderness of Ingrid, the sadness she sometimes sees in her is somehow worse when Robert is at home, and that there’s a subtle loosening of tension when they hear his car disappearing down the long, gravel drive each morning.
But she has little time to dwell on it. Her new life is too full of new experiences, too overwhelming and all-consuming for Robert to feature very heavily in her thoughts.
‘Cat.’ ‘Sky.’ ‘House.’ ‘Tree.’ Elodie understands that everything in the world has a corresponding sound, and that everything she and Ingrid do together is with the aim of helping her decipher them. The instinctive hunger that had begun to take root in her at the hospital returns and gathers strength, and it’s Ingrid, she understands, who holds the key. Wherever they go, whatever they do, whatever they see, everything is labelled for her. ‘Chair.’ ‘Window.’ ‘Elodie.’ ‘Ingrid.’ ‘Bowl.’ A constant stream of words accompanies their daily walks together. ‘Car.’ ‘Tree.’ ‘House.’ ‘Man.’ ‘Cat.’ She understands that the games they play in the room next to her bedroom – the picture cards, the puzzles, the books – are all somehow linked to this endeavour. And she sees, too, that Ingrid’s determination to teach her is as intense as her own desire to learn.
‘Eeeee.’ ‘Ooooo.’ ‘Essssss.’ ‘Tuh.’ ‘Puh-puh-puh.’. Over and over she tries to mimic the shapes Ingrid makes with her mouth, to produce the same sounds that come from her teacher’s throat. Over and over she fails.
At night in her dreams the silent man waves to her from the window of his rusty blue pick-up truck, before slowly driving away, disappearing between the trees. Sometimes she half-wakes in the darkness and believes for a moment that she’s back there, in the cottage in the woods. For a moment she hears the sound of the wind in the trees outside, the man’s low snores. In her half slumber she smiles and thinks how, in a moment, she will rise and go to listen to the birds’ dawn song. And then she wakes and even as the stone walls of the cottage melt away, she’s reaching for the little wooden bird, clasping it tightly in her fist as if to squeeze what comfort she can from it.
Occasionally Ingrid will take Elodie with her on her errands to the nearby town. On their first visit to the food store while Ingrid pays at the checkout Elodie slips away to wander alone through the aisles, stopping now and then to marvel at the neat, colourful rows of boxes and tins. At the fruit counter she picks up a banana, biting into the hard, rubbery skin before throwing it to the floor with a grimace. Next she trails a bunch of grapes across her face, first sniffing and then nibbling at the little purple fruits, rolling her eyes at the sweet explosions on her tongue. She spies an elderly man staring at her, amazed, across the aisle and going to him she circles her arms around his waist and rests her head upon his belly. Moments later she finds herself being pulled gently away, and while a dozen astonished customers look on, Ingrid leads her quickly out of the store.
Every week Ingrid takes Elodie in the car to the big, red-bricked building in the middle of the city. As they drive she stares out of the window and marvels at what she sees. What shocks her most about this new world is all the people in it. There seem to be as many people as there are blades of grass or stars. Everywhere she looks, there they are: smiling and talking and frowning and laughing, and each of them, somehow, connected, connecting.
Inside, the red-bricked building is exactly like the hospital she left behind in France and sometimes they spend the whole morning there. Often she must lie perfectly still while a white dome glides noiselessly over her head. She notices that the men and women who lead her down the long white corridors to this room and that, and who put her on this bed or that chair, who shine lights in her eyes and stare and point things out to each other on the flickering screens, all share the way in which they behave towards Ingrid. She sees how keenly they listen to her when she speaks, how careful they are to do as she asks. She sees that they are a little afraid of her. And a part of her recognises this nervousness, this fear of displeasing, of disappointing, of provoking that brief, flash of impatience in those pink-rimed eyes.
She has been at High Barn three weeks when Colin and Yaya arrive. Two strangers who walk into the schoolroom next to her bedroom one morning while she and Ingrid are looking at a picture book together. Later, she will understand that they are graduate students, handpicked by Ingrid to assist her in her work, to make the endless reports on her progress over the coming months. But on that morning she knows only that from the moment they arrive, with the smell of the wind on their coats, their arms full of boxes and files and their faces lit with curious, excited smiles, that they bring a sudden warmth and light to High Barn that hadn’t been there before.
The man, Colin, is quiet and always busy setting up cameras or writing things down or fiddling with the tape recorder or laying out the games and books and cards, but he smiles at her a lot and pulls faces to make her laugh. It’s Yaya she loves the most. Yaya with her soft, tinkling voice like rain on the river, her glowing, dark-brown skin the colour of the earth, her long skirts and the rainbow scarves wrapped around and around her head, her bracelet of little silver bells that jingle when she walks, the warm, natural ease of her. When Elodie makes a mistake Yaya smiles and says, ‘Never mind, little one. Never mind.’ And even before Elodie knows what these words mean, she understands the kindness of them.
Over the following weeks the four of them settle into a routine. Every day, after breakfast, Elodie watches eagerly from the schoolroom window while Ingrid sets up the equipment for the day. She notices that whatever they do is led, always, by Ingrid, and that Colin and Yaya treat her with the same careful respect as the people in the hospital.
The days pass, and then the weeks, the months. She has got better at mimicking the sounds the others make, of pushing her lips into the correct shapes. She understands that this is a picture of a cat, this is a bed, and that a chair. She understands, but still the words will not come. The sounds she offers are not right, she can tell by the almost imperceptible tightening of Ingrid’s lips, the increasing disappointment in her eyes.
Each week, she and Ingrid make the trip to the hospital and every visit there is someone new to meet, some new stranger to be stared at by. Sometimes these strangers come to the house, and watch silently while she plays with Yaya and Colin. She knows that they have come to see her, that they, like everyone else are waiting for something. Once she tries to sing to them, the old calls and noises from the forest, hoping that they will make them happy, but they are not what’s wanted now.
And then, a year after arriving at High Barn, it happens. She is standing by the schoolroom window when she sees Yaya approaching across the lawn below, carrying her big red bag with the tassels and laughing with Colin. Suddenly, something in that moment fuses in Elodie’s brain. The image of Yaya and the sound of her name. ‘Yaya.’ It escapes her mouth before she’s even aware what her tongue and lips are doing. ‘Yaya.’ As effortlessly as a breath.
She turns to Ingrid, who is staring at her open mouthed, the pen that she had been writing with poised in mid-air. ‘Yaya,’ she says again, pointing through the window to where she stands in the garden below. And seconds later she’s in Ingrid’s arms, being hugged so tightly it takes her breath away.
From that moment words grow and multiply on her lips like leaves on a vine. It’s pure joy to her, this sudden mental unbolting and now that it has begun, she cannot, will not stop. Her hunger for new words is limitless. ‘Sky.’ ‘Chair.’ ‘Me.’ ‘Ingrid,’ she says. ‘Table.’ ‘House.’ ‘Balloon.’ The four of them work harder still, and even after Yaya and Colin have left for the day she and Ingrid will often continue until supper. As the words multiply and become sentences – ‘Elodie go there’ – as she begins to master plurals – ‘One spoon, two spoons’ – and negations – ‘No! Don’t want that’ – and questions – ‘Where Colin?’ – as her grasp of grammar and syntax becomes ever more accomplished, she begins to let go, a little, of her old life.
Sometimes, alone in her room at night, she will allow herself to wander beneath the forest’s ceiling, will linger in the cottage by the fire and smell the embers burning in the hearth. Sometimes she will let herself rest for a while by the man’s side, smiling up at his sad, grey eyes. But then she will rouse herself, and push the memories away. More and more often now she will leave the little carved bird behind in her bedroom when she goes to the schoolroom each morning.
Each of Elodie’s successes and accomplishments binds her closer to Ingrid. Day by day, a new warmth grows between them. Often she will look up and find herself the focus of that pale-blue gaze and sees a new softness there. Now, when Elodie takes her hand or puts her arms around her, the tiny resistance, the barely perceptible tension she used to sense has gone. Now, Ingrid returns her embraces freely, takes her hand with a brief, reciprocal squeeze.
One morning the two of them take a trip to Oyster Bay. Although they’ve been there many times before, the sight of the ocean never fails to amaze the child. As soon as they arrive she heads as usual straight for the water, impatiently shedding her shoes and socks as she runs to jump in the shallow waves. Usually Ingrid watches from the beach, calling her in too soon to return to the house to work, or to keep an appointment at the hospital. Today however Elodie looks up in amazement to find her standing next to her in the surf, her shoes and socks dangling from her hand, an unexpectedly shrill laugh escaping from her lips.
And Elodie works hard to keep Ingrid’s affection, anxious not to provoke the flashes of displeasure that her mistakes can sometimes bring. At night, when she’s woken by the sound of slamming doors or raised voices, she awaits the next day’s lessons unhappily, immediately scanning her teacher’s face for the familiar, tell-tale swollen eyes and creeping redness on her arms.
One afternoon she comes to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water when she finds Robert sitting at the table eating a sandwich.
‘Hey, Elodie,’ he says.
‘Hello.’ Shyly she sidles up to him and watches him eat for a while. One of his hands rests next to his plate and she silently admires how square and large it is. Somehow, Robert’s broad shoulders, his scent, the stubble on his chin, the deepness of his voice seems focussed in that one hand lying so innocently upon the table top. On impulse she takes a step closer and rests her own upon it, comparing her pale, slender fingers with his. Quick as a flash he slides his hand out from beneath hers and brings it neatly down on her fingers, trapping them on the table. She giggles and does the same. Quicker and quicker they take it in turns to pounce upon the other. But, ‘You win,’ Robert says at last, ending the game with a smile. Abruptly he rises and puts his plate in the sink.
Disappointed, Elodie gazes around the room, anxious to keep him from leaving. At last she spots the picture of the little boy on the wall and carefully reaches up and lifts it down. Robert is still standing with his back to her when she brings it to him and taps him on the arm. ‘Picture,’ she says.
He turns to her and when he notices the photograph in her hand a look of such sadness falls upon his face that Elodie takes a step backwards in surprise. Wordlessly they stare at each other for a moment, and then, taking it from her hands, Robert crosses the room and gently puts the picture back on the wall.
At that moment, Ingrid comes into the room. ‘We’re waiting for you, Elodie,’ she says, a hint of displeasure in her voice, and obediently, Elodie follows her from the kitchen.
The way the words multiply is mysterious, organic. Her understanding seems to work on a level below her consciousness, where language spreads instinctively like wild fire. But for all the natural ease with which she learns, she cherishes every new word, marvelling and crowing over them when she’s alone at night. Each one a hard-won treasure.
The more she learns and the wider her vocabulary grows, the happier she becomes. From the moment she wakes until she goes to bed, she talks. Alone in her room she will name every object she can see, or open her window wide and call out to the trees. ‘Come on now, chatter box,’ Ingrid will say as she takes her down to breakfast. ‘Hurry up.’ But Elodie will notice that even as she scolds her, Ingrid’s face shines with pride.
For some months Elodie’s trips to the hospital have included regular visits to a Doctor Menzies. Unlike the other specialists, Ingrid and Doctor Menzies always greet each other warmly, with a hug and kisses. But these sessions are almost unbearably dull to Elodie. The activities she’s made to do seem pointless. Often she’ll be told to draw a picture, and will then be asked endless questions about it. Sometimes she’ll be asked about her old life in the forest, and Elodie will answer as best she can, all the while staring restlessly out of the window. Other times the doctor will give her dolls to play with, while she watches and makes notes, scratching away with her pen in her notebook. When, at last, the hour finally drags to an end, she’s made to sit outside, while Ingrid and the doctor murmur to each other behind the closed door.
It’s after one of these sessions that Elodie firsts asks Ingrid about her mother. They are in the midst of reading a story about a family of bears when she interrupts and says, ‘Do I have one?’
The anxiety that flashes across her teacher’s eyes is brief and almost imperceptible. Ingrid sits down in the chair next to her, and it’s a while before she answers. When she does, her voice is very careful. ‘You do have a mother, yes, Elodie,’ she says. ‘But she’s very far away and not very well. You will see her soon, when she’s feeling a little better.’
Elodie nods, and turns the page. After a pause, Ingrid continues reading. ‘Who has been sleeping in my bed?’ she says.
Only one strange incident mars the contentment of this time; something confusing that happens one afternoon, shortly before they are about to finish work for the day. Ingrid has been called to the telephone and Colin is busy packing up his movie camera and files of notes when Elodie wanders from her desk to where Yaya sits. Putting her arms around her neck, she idly plays with a strand of black, springy hair that has come loose from the older woman’s headscarf, tickling her ear with it until Yaya starts to laugh and pulls Elodie towards her in a hug.
But their laughter comes to an abrupt halt when a sound from the door distracts them and they both turn to see Ingrid staring in at them.
Elodie isn’t sure what it is about the expression in Ingrid’s eyes, only that both she and Yaya react to it instantly by jumping apart. It’s brief, the look she shoots them before quickly turning away, but Elodie is seized by unaccustomed and confusing feelings of guilt. The moment passes. Quietly, Elodie goes back to her own chair and her books and the four of them continue with their work.
But still Ingrid’s expression confuses her. Later that night when Elodie is getting ready for bed the little gnawing feeling of doubt returns. There had been something unrecognisable in Ingrid’s eyes, a dark and painful thing she couldn’t understand. That night, when Ingrid comes to say good night, instead of the brief kiss on her cheek that she usually bestows, Elodie finds herself pulled into a tight embrace. And when Ingrid releases her, the sense of unease lingers.
eleven (#ulink_49503faa-7954-53c1-97a4-7922b65fa5e3)
Deptford, south-east London, 15 December 2003
Historically, Frank’s track record with women wasn’t great. At twenty-five, it wasn’t that he ever really found it a problem attracting girls – it was the keeping hold of them he always seemed to struggle with. He had a habit of falling hook, line and sinker for a person, putting her so high upon a pedestal that the only inevitable direction they could go after that was down. All would be great for the first few months, but then, out of the blue, entirely without warning, everything he had once found so charming about her would start to sour. Her laugh would begin to grate, in mid conversation she’d say something dumb, he’d notice that when she stayed she’d leave her things all over the bathroom floor. Suddenly, reality would come screaming into focus and the relationship would become instantly and irretrievably intolerable. Pretty rich, he knew: he was hardly catch of the year. But there it was.
When he was ten, something happened to Frank that would stay with him forever. It was a few weeks after his dad had left and his Aunt Joanie had taken him and her spaniel Bongo to Greenwich Park. It was a beautiful day and the place had been full of sunbathing tourists, picnicking families, kids playing football. The dog had been running in circles at their feet as they walked, and Frank remembered thinking how strange it was that the sky was so blue and the air so warm when inside he felt so horribly cold, so horribly grey.
‘You’re going to have to be a big, brave boy now Frankie,’ his aunt was saying as they tramped along. ‘The thing is, sometimes grown-ups find life difficult …’ He tried his hardest to block out her voice but suddenly he couldn’t bear it any more. Why was everyone talking like his dad wasn’t coming back? Why had his mum not gotten out of bed for three weeks? It was disgusting, stupid the way they were all talking. He pulled his hand from Joanie’s and throwing a stick for Bongo, began to run.
Ignoring his aunt’s call he threw the stick further and further, tearing after Bongo up the steep hill, on and on until he’d left the crowds and Joanie far behind. Of course his dad was coming back. Of course he was. He ran until he was in a part of the park secluded from the rest, on the heath side, near the deer and the big oak trees. And then he’d seen her. Under a tree twenty yards away was a girl of about seventeen, her legs stretched out before her, a book resting upon her lap. Bongo was sitting next to her, his big stupid tongue lolling out. Both of them watched him as he approached.
‘Hello,’ she said, when he reached her.
He had opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed he’d forgotten how. The sun was low in the sky behind her and shone through her curls so her face was framed in a flaming halo of golden red. Her eyes were luminous; dragon-fly green. Never, never had he seen anything so beautiful. He could barely breathe, certain that if he even blinked she’d disappear, or he’d wake and find himself back in his bedroom, staring at his collection of dinosaurs. A feeling of perfect calm settled upon him.
She was very slender, across the pale skin of her chest was a faint sprinkling of freckles. Through the thin white cotton of her top he could just make out the swell of her breasts and he felt himself flush red as something unrecognisable began to stir in his underpants. He gazed at her. Everything – the green of her eyes, the golden red of her hair, the blue of the sky – was supernaturally bright. With a little sigh, Bongo had flopped down and rested his head in her lap, and Frank had almost groaned with jealousy when her small, white hand had reached over and stroked the dog’s ears.
‘Are you lost?’ she’d asked.
And even though he wasn’t, not really, he had nodded. She’d smiled, and after considering him a while said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find your way back.’
He felt as if he could stand there looking at her for the rest of his life. The world was perfectly silent, perfectly still. The sun sank lower in the sky. Just at that moment he heard Joanie’s voice calling him. ‘Frank! Frank!’ His name drifted to them like a sound from another world. He held his breath and willed her to go away.
‘Who’s that?’ asked the girl.
‘Auntie Joanie.’
‘Ah.’ She continued gazing at him for a while, and then smiled. ‘Well then, Frank,’ she said, ‘give me a kiss and then you’d better go.’
As if she was an exotic bird that might take flight at any moment, very, very slowly he had knelt down and carefully kissed her cheek.
She smiled. ‘Bye then, Frank. Be good.’
And then he had turned and run towards Joanie’s voice, Bongo racing after him.
‘Did you see her?’ he asked urgently, when he reached his aunt. ‘Did you see her?’
‘Who?’ Joanie had squinted over in the direction he’d run from, scanning the grass. ‘No dear, I don’t see anyone.’
He had turned and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, but Joanie was right: there was nothing there. The girl had vanished.
Since that day he had tried to find her again, had got into the habit of searching for her in crowds, of scanning the faces of every passing woman, but nothing. Sometimes in his dreams he would find himself back there, under the tree the summer he was ten, but just as he was about to kneel down and kiss her, he’d wake. Occasionally, listening to music, he would come close to finding again that sense of beauty – there amongst the notes and melodies and beats – but it was never quite enough: the thing he was searching for was always just out of his reach. His whole life he had been trying to find that perfection again, and in Kate he knew he had found it; he had found her.
At first, their meetings were maddeningly infrequent. Kate was the most evasive person he had ever met. She had no mobile phone, moved from job to job, avoided talking about her home (to which he was never invited). And yet, just when he was about to give up hope of ever seeing her again she would appear at his door or at the record shop where he worked, saying simply, ‘Hello, Frank,’ with that same, breathtaking smile of hers beneath that same, steady gaze.
But still she would offer nothing concrete for him to hold onto, and he was always under the impression she might disappear at any moment. Whenever they parted she would leave no trace of herself. And he had never met anyone who talked so little about themselves – women, in his experience, always liked to talk about themselves. For hours. In contrast, Kate’s silence was like a blank sheet upon which people were invited to draw whatever version of her they wished.
‘Your accent,’ he said, the second time they met. ‘Sometimes you sound American. Did you used to live there?’ Her response – a short, blithe account of a New York childhood, a car crash that had killed her parents, her move to London to live with an aunt – was so brief and delivered with such a lack of detail that he had hardly been able to land on any part of it and, almost without him noticing, she had asked a question about the record they were listening to and he had been talking enthusiastically about it for a full ten minutes before he realised the original subject had been abandoned.
And he didn’t press her. Frank was good with mystery, with a feeling of being always slightly in the dark. He was used to it, knew where he stood with it. Ever since his father had disappeared – seemingly slipping between the gaps in the pavements one day without so much as a backward glance – he had spent much of his life since wondering what the hell had happened. It was how he loved his father now; in the absence of the physical man his affection had become coloured and finally replaced by a vague, persistent bafflement.
Once or twice he would come across Kate lost in thought and it was like glancing through a window at something he shouldn’t see, something private. With her guard down, just for a second, he would see an altogether different girl looming into view behind those dark blue eyes, like something emerging suddenly from behind a tree. It was like catching sight of a fox streaking down a London street at night; an unexpected glimpse of something wild. But the moment would pass, she would sense his presence and alter instantly back into Kate. These moments would provoke in him an almost unbearable protectiveness, and yet a part of him would be relieved too, frightened of having to deal with something he wasn’t sure he was ready for, something that might demand unknown, difficult things from him.
He was falling in love. Despite the strangeness of their relationship at the heart of it lay something true, he was certain. And when, two months after they met, she didn’t turn up to meet him as planned his anxiety was unbearable. Two days passed, and then two more, and still she didn’t phone or come. Each hour without hearing from her was agony. He was certain that this time she had gone for good. Finally, sick to death of his dark thoughts he had gone to the pub in search of Jimmy and Eugene – anything to take his mind off her.
The Hope and Anchor is a vast Victorian hulk of a boozer that looms malevolently over the New Cross–Old Kent Road junction. Inside its cavernous interior the flock wallpaper is covered in photographs. Yellow, curling Edwardian prints show the neighbourhood lit by gas lamp and patrolled by horse-drawn carriages. Others depict the pub in its sixties heyday: various monochrome gangsters, minor celebrities and glamour girls caught in frozen animation before the same flocked paper. In one, Ronnie and Reggie Kray leer into the camera with dead eyes and mephitic grins. Amongst the photos hang a selection of mysterious brass ornaments interspersed here and there by dead animals in glass cases. The wall above the bar meanwhile is dedicated to the landlord’s boxing trophies, celebrating the now chain-smoking, balding cirrhotic despot’s vainglorious past.
The three of them had been drinking here since their mid teens and the ancient juke box still played the same selection of tired eighties pop. As Frank walked through the door Madness sang One Step Beyond. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and he squinted in the dimness – thick maroon velvet curtains blocked out the afternoon sun. In the Hope and Anchor, it was always midnight.
He found Jimmy and Eugene playing pool and he fetched himself a drink, glad suddenly, that he didn’t have to make conversation. Almost immediately he began to wish he hadn’t come, that he’d stayed at home with the curtains drawn and the stereo on full blast. He barely had the energy to lift his pint he was so hacked-off. After a while, Jimmy potted the final ball and came over.
‘Not seeing Kate tonight?’ he asked after the hellos were over with and he’d sat down.
Frank winced. ‘No.’
Jimmy glanced at him questioningly, but taking in Frank’s face, merely nodded. Eugene began to shout loudly into his mobile phone.
‘How’re the savings coming?’ asked Jimmy after a brief silence. ‘You must be nearly there now.’
Frank had to think for a moment before he realised what Jimmy was talking about. He’d been saving for the past year, trying to get enough money together to go travelling, and it had, until he met Kate, been the subject uppermost in his thoughts. ‘Oh,’ he said vaguely. ‘Yeah … you know. Still saving.’
Jimmy shot him a puzzled look, but Frank ignored him. How could he possibly explain how he felt? That he was half mad with thoughts of a girl he hardly knew? That nothing mattered at the moment apart from the one desperate hope that he would see her again. He knew exactly what his friends’ response would be: Stop being such a fanny, Auvrey.
‘You want a game?’ asked Eugene, nodding over to the pool table.
‘Nah, you’re all right,’ he said, continuing to stare into his pint. Now that he was here, he just couldn’t be fucked to talk to them. ‘You have another one.’ He pretended not to notice the look that passed between them.
He watched them play for a minute or two, before sinking once again into his own thoughts. He felt with Kate as if he’d discovered a whole new country that he was desperate to explore if only he could find where to catch the boat from. How then, when Jimmy asked about his plans to travel could he even contemplate Greece, Turkey, Germany, France? What the fuck did he care about those places – boring, bland, flat compared to Kate – if they were somewhere she was not? He didn’t even have a phone number for her. He hadn’t seen her for nine days.
‘Fancy a line?’
He suddenly realised that Eugene was talking to him.
‘Might cheer you up a bit.’
‘No. You know I don’t do that shit.’ He must have spoken more sharply than he’d meant, because Eugene was pulling a face.
‘Suit yourself. Jim?’
Frank went to the bar and tried to think up an excuse to leave. When he returned he realised that Jimmy and Eugene were arguing about something and half-heartedly he tried to get the gist.
‘Well, what’s the point?’ Jimmy was saying. ‘It’s Sunday for fuck’s sake. Just chill out for a night – lay off it for a bit.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Grumpily, Eugene got up and moved off in the direction of the gents. ‘Just say no, right? Thanks, Jim. Gotcha.’
When he’d gone, Jimmy turned to Frank and appealed to him. ‘It’s starting to do my head in. Seriously, Frank, I’m worried.’
He shrugged. ‘He’ll be all right. You know what he’s like.’ To be honest, the subject bored him. He’d never been into drugs himself, but everyone and their dog seemed to be coked up at the moment – it was a national sport. No big deal.
Jimmy nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah. It’s just that he’s spending all his time with those wankers down the Feathers. Andy Mitchel and that. You know the kind of shit they’re into.’
Inwardly, Frank groaned. Not this. Not now. He couldn’t bear the thought of Eugene becoming one of those sad fucks whose lives revolved around the dole office, the pub, and his next fix. In fact the thought was so depressing he refused to allow it as a possibility.
