After You'd Gone (30 page)

The machine clicked off, beeping angrily as someone picked up the phone. 'Hi, John.'

'Alice? ls that you?' 'No. It's Rachel.'

'Rachel, have you spoken to her? Do you know where she

is?'

There was a pause from the other end.

'Rachel, I know you'll know. Please tell me. I'm desperate. '

'She's here. She's fine. Don't worry.' 'Can I talk to her?'

'I'm not sure. Hold on a sec.' Rachel covers the phone but he can just about hear her say, 'Al, it's him. I've told him

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you' re here . . .' There is an unintelligible expostulation from Alice, presumably, then Rachel says, 'Come on, Al, he has a right to know, the poor bugger. He wants to talk to you.'

He can hear the timbre of Alice's voice talking, but can't make out what she's saying. He feels as if every nerve and fibre in his body is straining, on the point of snapping. Alice, please. Come to the phone.

Then her voice, right next to his ear. 'Hello.' 'Alice.'

'What?' She sounds very small and very far away. 'Alice, please come back. Don't do this.'

'I had to.' He hears the slightest quiver in her voice. 'There was a postcard . . .'

'I know. I saw it. I ripped it up.'

They are both silent. John wants to shout come home, come home, please come home.

'How did you find me?' she asks.

'The appliance of science. Last-number redial.'

'Oh.'

Another pause. John winds the springy wire round and round his fingers. 'I also spent a good while running through the list of your friends and family, wondering who you'd be with. I thought of Rachel but couldn't remember her surname.'

'Saunders.'

'Right. I'll remember that next time you leave me.' 'John, I'm
so
sorry. I didn't want to-'

He cuts across her. 'He doesn't mean it, you know. It's emotional blackmail. Can't you see? He wrote that card because he wanted precisely this to happen.'

She is silent again, but he can feel her listening. 'He wanted you to see it and he wanted you to walk out on me. You're playing right into his hands. It's evil and cruel of him, he doesn't mean a word of it, and please, please, please come back.'

'But he said-'

'He said a lot of old shit.'

'But what if he really does mean it? I can't let you do that. I can't . . . I just thought . . .' He hears her suppressing a sob. 'I just thought it would be easier for us this way.'

She starts to cry in earnest and she must be removing the mouthpiece from her face because it's beginning to sound very distant. Is she going to hang up?

'Alice?' He grips the phone so hard his knuckles begin to ache. 'Alice! Are you there?'

'Yes.'

'Give me Rachel's address. I' m coming round to get you. '

'I don't know, John . . I think maybe- -'

'This is absolute madness. I love you.' He hears her sigh heavily and can feel her wavering. At least she's stopped crying. 'He doesn't mean it, I promise you. Look, even if you are going to dump me, we can't exactly leave it like this, can we?'

She laughs and then sniffs. 'I can get the tube back to Camden. It's all right. You don't need to drive over here.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Give me the address. I'll be there as soon as I can.'

'OK.'

Forty minutes later, John is peering at the range of dimly illuminated bells on the front door of the converted town house that Rachel's flat is in. He tries one at random and gets an irritable German man telling him, 'It's the third floor and please would you ask them to label the bell?' Rachel lets him in and he takes the stairs two at a time. On the third floor, Rachel is waiting for him with her door open. Alice's rucksack is propped up next to her on the landing.

'Hi, John.' She gives him a swift kiss on the cheek. 'That was quick. '

'There wasn't much traffic and I was probably breaking the speed limit all the way.'

Rachel smiles. 'It must be love.'

'Yeah. Something like that.' John is impatient, craning to look behind her. 'Where is she anyway?'

Rachel turns round and shouts, 'Alice! Lover boy's here.' 'I'm really sorry about all this, Rachel.'

'Don't apologise. It's completely fine. She's seen me through plenty of crises.'

Alice appears in the corridor, a faint smile on her face, her eyes large and damp. 'Hello, John.'

He holds her to him, kissing the top of her head. Her arms are tight around his shoulders and the warmth of her breath soaks through his collar.

'All right, that's enough.' Rachel says. 'I'm getting cold standing here with the door open. '

Alice gives Rachel a hug. 'Thanks, Rach. Sorry I couldn't stay.'

'Never mind. Next time, maybe.'

'Don't tell me this is going to be a regular occurrence,' John protests.

'Just remember,' Rachel says to Alice, as she's closing the

door, 'he knows where I live now.'

In the car, he fits the keys into the ignition. Alice pulls down the mirror above the passenger seat and examines her reflection critically. 'I look awful,' she grumbles, then turns to him, grinning: 'Are you sure you don't want me to stay here?'

John doesn't answer. She sighs deeply and rubs her eyes. 'I am absolutely knackered. Let's go home. '

Alice sits opposite him in the bath, her knees drawn up to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. They study each other through the steam. John scoops up water between his palms and pours it over her shoulders. It trickles in silver rivulets

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down her arms, her back and over her chest. 'Don't ever do that again, will you?'

She doesn't answer but takes a deep breath, filling out her cheeks, and plunges face first into the water. He jerks back in surprise. Water sloshes violently over the sides and on to the lino. Her fingers fasten on to his ribs and tickle them. Hard. He writhes away from her. More water slops over the side.

'Alice!' He is cross. He grabs her shoulders and pulls her up out of the water. She emerges laughing and coughing, a wet mermaid, her hair and face streaming, her eyelashes stuck into wet spikes. Her face is inches from his and her smile dies when she sees he isn't laughing.

'I'm serious, Alice. ' He feels suddenly petulant and incred ibly tired. 'Can you imagine what it was like to come back here and find you gone and,' he gestures inarticulately towards the sink, 'find your stuff gone? It was awful. Awful. There was no note. No explanation. I had no idea why you'd gone until I found that bloody card and I didn't know where you were or if you were all right. Don't ever do that again. Please. '

Her brow is puckered and she shakes her head, spraying him with droplets of water. 'John, I'm so sorry . . . I wasn't thinking.' She slides her arms around his neck, her body coming to rest on his. 'I won't ever do it again. I promise.'

Ben twitches the curtains straight and turns to look at his wife in the doorway. 'Ann, we have to sleep here.'

'I know.'

'At least for tonight.' 'I know.'

'There's nowhere else. ' 'I know, Ben, I know.'

Ann sidles across the bedroom and pokes at Alice's bed with the heel of her palm as if testing the mattress for softness. She stays bending over it.

'It's too late to get a hotel room.' No response.

'We could sleep on the sofas downstairs, or there's a camp bed next door, but I don't think either of us would have a good night. We're going to need that, I think.'

'Ben, I know. It's just . . . it feels a bit . . . odd. Don't you think?'

Ann comes round the side of the bed and gives the duvet a little tug.

'Sleeping in Alice's bed?'

She doesn't answer. She has her hand over her mouth, look ing down at one of the pillows, which has the rounded indent of a head in its middle. Even Ben shudders. Ann reaches out

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and Ben watches as she pulls from the pillowcase a single long black hair, and holds it up to the light. It is a slow, thoughtful movement. Two nights ago, Ben thinks, my daughter slept in that bed as normal, and now she is shaven-headed, locked into a private and silent struggle with death. Ann pulls from her pocket a tissue al'\d coils the hair into it.

'Ann . . .' he begins.

She is walking backwards and she sinks into a chair. Ben comes to crouch beside her. 'Ann, I know this is difficult, but I don't see what option we have.'

She clutches the tissue in both her hands.

'Alice wouldn't mind. You know she wouldn't. She'd prefer us to be here than in a hotel, wouldn't she?'

She looks at him. He can see she's thinking about this. 'Wouldn't she?' he persists.

'Maybe,' she concedes. She shifts in the seat, looks down at the chair and begins pulling clothes out from underneath her: socks, a short skirt, stockings, a red blouse. All Alice's. She drapes them one by one over the arm of the chair. 'Maybe if we changed the sheets . . .' She says.

The air of the bedroom is filled with flapping sheets. It feels to Ben like it could be the first movement within these walls for years, as if no one's lived in this room for a long, long time. Ann comes through the door with a pile of clean linen just as he is bundling the sheets up to take downstairs.

'What's that?' she says. 'What?'

'That.' Ann points at a patch of blue in his bundle.

Ben shrugs. 'It's a T-shirt. It was under one of the pillows.'

Ann stares at it, eyes narrowed. 'Alice doesn't wear anything in bed,' she says, almost to herself. 'Sorry?'

'She doesn't ' Ann breaks off, then comes forward and extracts the T-shirt out of the bundle like a conjuror pulling a string of coloured handkerchiefs from a hat. 'Alice never . . .' She stops again and, raising the T-shirt to her face, inhales. She has the kind of look on her face that people have when they are listening to a distant strain of music. Something closed to Ben is passing through her mind. He lifts the end of the limp T-shirt to his own face. Sniffs it. A sleep-soaked smell. Faint but distinct. Male. Ben and Ann look at each other, connected by the different ends of the T-shirt. Ben drops his.

'I don't think we should wash this,' Ann says quickly. 'Just in case,' she adds, and, folding it, puts the T-shirt down on top of Alice's clothes on the chair. Ben doesn't ask, in case of what. He gathers up the sheets again and goes downstairs.

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A few strange weeks passed with the two of them tightroping above anxiety, circling around the subject in all their conver sations. To Alice, it was like the limbo of waiting for exam results all over again: knowing that everything now hung in someone else's hands. John was optimistic and gloomy by turns. She knew he was calling his father and she knew he knew she knew. She also knew that the father kept his answerphone on and never returned John's calls. The weeks trickled past. It became mentioned less and less and he became more and more despondent.

One night, something happened: a train passed, or the curtains were filled by a wintry draught and then pressed flat, or someone shouted in the street outside. She was suddenly wide awake, jolted by something from sleep. The room seemed unnaturally still. John slept on beside her, his arm flung across her, his fingers entwined in her hair.

The certainty that his father intended to make him choose between them was there in her mind. He wasn't just sulking, as John kept determinedly claiming, he meant exactly what he said. He wouldn't return all those calls unless John could tell him that she was out of the house and out of his life.

Alice eased herself up on to her elbow, above him, and looked down at him. He had slid down off the pillow and his

head was resting on the mattress. His arm felt heavy on her body. He must have sensed her sleeplessness or her gaze or something because he stirred. His eyes almost opened and he moved closer, burying his face between her breasts, muttering something. His arm came back to life and he drew her sleepily towards him. Then he stopped. For a few seconds he breathed against her body then he turned his head and looked up at her, eyes wide, fully awake. 'What?' he said.

Alice laid her palm against his cheek. 'I love you.'

He caught her hand in his. 'What is it, Alice? You've got a really scary look on your face.'

She bent and pressed her lips to his briefly, then said, 'I think it's a really scared look. '

He pulled her down towards him so that her face was very close to his and she was looking directly into his eyes. 'What's the matter?' he whispered.