After You'd Gone (12 page)

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like he does when he talks to very small, very shy children. 'Your mother and I have come to see you.'

Ann strokes her cheek. 'I'm almost afraid to touch her in case I set one of these machines off,' she whispers. 'Do you think she knows we're here?'

Ben isn't sure what he thinks yet, but he nods decisively for his wife's sake. Then they both look back at their daughter. It occurs to Ben that they have expended so much thought on the logistics of the journey and getting themselves to the hospital that neither of them have really thought about what they would do when they got here.

Ann fills the sink. The water flashes and throws icy darts of light up to the ceiling. It is a clear, bright, crisp afternoon

• the best weather for North Berwick. She might go down to the beach later on where the wind will be freezing and scalpel-sharp. From the window, the island of Craigleith is defined clearly against the navy-blue sea. The sea is Ann's weathervane; she can see it from practically wherever she is in the house. Its colour and texture change by the hour and can be anything from a forbidding airforce blue on stormy days to a deep green on cloudless August days. She doesn't hold with forecasts, although she does find a certain rhythmic calm in listening to the shipping forecasts. Years ago Ben, thinking she would be interested, bought her a map of all the places - Faroes, Fairisle, Northutshire, Fisher, Forties, Cromarty. He hadn't understood that she didn't care where they were - and why on earth would she, for heaven's sake? - that it was precisely because it was meaningless to her that she enjoyed it. Ann sighs. She had pinned up the map so as not to hurt his feelings, of course. Then one of the girls had torn it when flouncing out of the back door in a teenage tantrum - probably Alice. In fact, it was definitely Alice. Ann had been secretly
  

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  glad that she could take it down, folding it into itself so that the northern Hebrides gently kissed the Isle of Wight, jagged coastlines rubbing up against each other in the rubbish bin.
  

  A sudden crash from the room above makes her jump. She looks up at the ceiling, listening out for Elspeth's footsteps. The moment stretches, her hand in the cooling water in the sink. Nothing.
  

  'Elspeth?' Her voice sounds strident, still unmistakably English after all these years. 'Elspeth! Are you there?'
  

  Ann wipes her hands on a flowered dish-towel and goes through the sitting room, up the stairs. The door to Elspeth's room is shut. Elspeth has kept on living in the front bedroom. Ann feels periodically irked by this; the room she and Ben have had since they were married is smaller and faces Marmion Road. If you leant out of the side window then you could admittedly see a square patch of sea but it was nothing like the the long line of horizon, broken only by the jutting rocks of Craigleith, Fidra and the Lamb, that dominated the whole of one side of Elspeth's room. 'My view', as Elspeth rather unnecessarily referred to it.
  

  Ann taps at the door with her nails. 'Elspeth? Are you all right?' Her voice quavers a little. She presses down the handle.
  

  Elspeth is lying stretched out on the carpet, one hand flung above her head. Her body forms a perfect parallel to the line of the horizon which, Ann notes, is beginning to darken. Ann lets go of the door handle, which springs back with a loud ping, walks over and stands above Elspeth. Her face is grey, twisted. The position her body has fallen in is an oddly seductive, starlet pose; one arm above her head, the other draped over her chest, her legs drawn up. Ann bends over at the waist. There is no sign of any breathing at all.
  

  She straightens up and tiptoes back across the room.
  

  Half-way, she wonders why she's tiptoeing. She leaves the door open deliberately and goes back down the stairs.
  

  In the kitchen she empties muddied potatoes from a brown paper sack into the sink. They fall against each other in the water and the soil dissolves slowly, sinking into a gritty sediment at the bottom. When a pile of wet peelings has developed at her side, she realises that she won't be needing as many potatoes as she'd thought she would, but doesn't stop peeling.
  

  Later she hears Ben come in and shout, 'Hello!' He treads upstairs and she hears the lavatory flush, the water rushing though the house, him going into their bedroom. She's never realised before how heavily he walks. She waits, listening, her hands resting on the draining-board. There is a short silence. She picks at a loose jag in her thumbnail, reaches for an emery board , but puts it back. Then Ben shouts her name three times, 'Ann, Ann, Ann!' and she waits, turning her head to the doorway, arranging her face into an expression of wide-eyed concern.
  

  I'd never been to Canary Wharf before. I'd seen the tower, of course. It's difficult to miss its flashing pyramidical top in the smoggy London skyline. But despite having always disliked it, I did feel a little awestruck when I stood beside it and tilted my head back to see its sheer height soaring into the sky.
  

  At the security desk I filled in a form saying where I was from, why I was here and who I was seeing. I have gone over in my head so often that moment where I first wrote his name, where the muscles and tendons in my fingers, hands, arm and shoulder conspired to form the curves, spikes, strokes and dashes that spelt out the name 'John Friedmann'. Did I feel anything?
  

  I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you, 'Don't worry. This may be your life but you're not in control. There is something or someone looking out for you - it's already organised.' It's all chance and choice, which is far more frightening.
  

  I'd like to think that as the lift swooped up the floors I sensed that something important was about to take place, that my life was about to split away from my expectation of it. But, of course, I didn't. Who ever does? Life's cruel like that - it gives you no clues.
  

  Alice rises towards the surface of sleep. The phone is ringing. How long has it been ringing for? It is strangely quiet and she realises that the main road that runs past their front door, whose roar she hears unconsciously all day, is silent and empty. She can picture it - the miles of deserted tarmac, leached of colour by the overhead orange street-lights. The phone rings and rings and rings. She strains to hear if her housemates are stirring to answer it.
  

  As soon as she was conscious of the first ring - maybe even before - she knew it was Mario. Who else would phone in the middle of the night and for so long?
  

  It is the first term of Alice's second year at university. She has moved out of the grey university corridors into a house with her friend Rachel and two other girls. The house is small, with no central heating, a rickety narrow staircase, and no kitchen, just a Baby Belling in the comer of the sitting room. They like it, though. It smacks of freedom and independence, giving them a hint of life beyond exams and parents and rules. Their friends still living in university rooms come round and sit in the mismatched armchairs and watch as Alice or one of the others brings a saucepan of pasta to the boil on the tiny white box of a cooker.
  

  In a sudden surge of decisiveness (she's been avoiding his
  

  calls for weeks and the others have become adept at lying to him about her whereabouts) she rips back the blankets and jumps up from her bed - a mattress on the floor. The cold hits her and she feels as if she's entered a wind tunnel. She runs down the stairs on her bare tiptoes and snatches up the receiver. There is a silence. She doesn't speak.
  

  'Alice?'
  

  'Mario, do you know what time it is here?'
  

  There is a fault on the line. The wires have crossed like chromosomes and Alice can hear her own voice echoing back, disconcertingly close to her own ear.
  

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  'Shit, honey, I know, I just had to call. Did I wake you?'
  

  'Of course you bloody well woke me. What do you
  

  want?'
  

  'You know what I want.'
  

  'Mario, I've told you before. It's over. You've got to stop ringing me.'
  

  Her voice sounds thin and frayed relayed back to her. She
  

  shakes the receiver in frustration.
  

  'I know you don't mean that. We can sort this out, I know we can. It is difficult when we're so far apart, I realise that. I want you to come to the States over Christmas. I'll pay. We just need to see each other and talk.'
  

  Alice stares at the boisterously patterned carpet at her feet and conjugates possibilities - I don't love you, I won't love you, I never loved you.
  

  'No.'
  

  'What do you mean "no"? Alice, I can't live without you.
  

  I love you. I love you so much. '
  

  He is crying now. The sobs and gulps coming through the phone sound somehow obscene to her. She feels interested in the fact that his crying has no effect on her whatsoever. What happened with Mario seems so far away it's like something she read or heard about - it wasn't her. She can barely even remember what he looks like. She can't conjure much about him at all - the intimidating size of his presence when he was near her, yes, but not much else; not his smell, or the feel of his weight or his hands, or anything.
  

  His crying is reaching a crescendo of which, as an actor, Mario ought to be proud. She is perched on the arm of a chair, shivering in her thin pyjamas. She wishes she'd put socks on before she came down.
  

  'Mario. This has got to stop. I mean it. It's over between
  

  us. You have to face up to that and get on with your life.'
  

  'I can't!' He is shouting now, getting into the swing of things .. 'I need you!'
  

  She sighs angrily. 'No, you don't. Forget it, Mario, it's over. Just leave me alone. I never want to talk to you again. I'm really tired and really cold and I'm going back to bed now.'
  

  'This can't happen. I won't let it. I won't let you say it's over.'
  

  'Mario . . . just . . . just fuck off.'
  

  There is a stunned silence from America. 'Fuck off? Did you just tell me to fuck off?'
  

  'Yes, I did, and I'll tell you again. Fuck off.' Alice slams the phone down.
  

  John looks up at the sound of a rap at the glass door of his office. Standing in the doorway is a young woman with long dark hair swinging gently down her back. She's holding a book pressed to her chest.
  

  'Hi. I'm looking for John Friedmann.'
  

  'That's me.' John stands. 'You're Alice? Come on in.' She crosses the room and instead of sitting in the chair he indicates for her, goes to the window. He is a bit stunned: he was expecting an earthy-looking, earnest, blue-stocking type with specs and shapeless flowing clothes, and is a little disconcerted by the appearance of this tall, striking woman in a short skirt, knee-high boots and black and green striped tights.
  

  'What an amazing view.'
  

  'It is, isn't it? It's the only compensation for working out in this godforsaken place.' John is also discomfited by her vague familiarity: he feels certain that he's seen her somewhere before but can't place her. It puts him at a disadvantage, somehow. The rather aggressive banter they had over the phone seems impossible now. 'There was the most incredible rainbow
  

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  yesterday - it must have been just after I'd spoken to you on the phone - arching all the way over east London.' He cuts a swathe through the air, describing its curve. 'It lasted for ages. You see quite a few from up here. It must be the height or something.'
  

  'So there's a pot of gold in Leytonstone somewhere.' She
  

  turns her eyes on him.
  

  Is that a flirtatious look? No. She seems to be assessing him. Her eyes are dark, like her hair, with flecks of amber around the pupils. John forces himself to look away, and strides manfully towards his desk. What on earth is the matter with him? The minute some attractive woman walks into his office he goes to pieces. 'You don't look like someone who works at the Literature Trust.' He hopes she'll laugh. She doesn't.
  

  'And what are people who work at the Literature Trust supposed to look like, according to you?'
  

  'I don't know.' He ducks out, angering her further.
  

  'Yes, you do. You think we're all dusty academic types with glasses. Why not say it, if that's what you mean?'
  

  'No! Not at all.' He busies himself in saving the work displayed on his computer screen. She sits down opposite him. 'A'nyway,' he says feebly, 'you have just as many sweeping opinions on journalists, it seems. You think we're all just writing different versions of the same preconceptions.'
  

  She puts her head on one side and narrows her eyes. Beautiful eyes. Lovely neck. For God's sake, get a grip on yourself.
  

  'I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise. That's the dif ference between us. '
  

  Her words hang in the air. The computer 's hard drive hums. They stare at each other. John thinks he has never liked the word 'us' better in his life and has a speedy headrush-fantasy
  

  where an omniscient camera lens zooms out above them and it seems that Canary Wharf, and indeed the whole of London, is empty apart from this room where they are sitting opposite each other. This leads to him trying to remember a quote from a John Donne poem. Something about love making one little room an everywhere, or was it an anywhere?
  

  She is looking at him with faint alarm. Has he been staring at her? He searches wildly for something to say and in a moment of heaven-sent inspiration, catches sight of the book she was carrying when she came in. She's put it on the desk in front of her and has her hand over part of the cover. He can still make out the title.
  The Private Memoirs and Corifessions
  ef
  a J ustified Sinner.
  

  'That sounds a bit of a heavy book.'