Dancing in the Dark (13 page)

‘Sounds good. Buy it, and I'll reimburse you.' I pat the sketches. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if the Crawfurds wanted to incorporate some of these ideas into their own garden, to make things easier for their daughter.'

‘Great!' There's a flush of colour in her usually pale face.

‘If you run out of things to do while I'm gone, you can go and weed the herbaceous beds alongside the house and then draw up a list of all the plants they contain, see how many you recognize, but keep an ear out for the phone. And you can check that the seedlings in the greenhouses are watered. Also, I'd better warn you that there's a guy called Harry who's doing some work for me, just so you know he's not an intruder if you see him in the garden. By the way,' I say, ‘you've turned seventeen, haven't you?'

‘Ten days ago.'

‘You should have told me. It'd be much easier for you to get back and forth with a car. If you learn to drive, there's an old banger in the garage you could use.'

‘You serious?'

‘Never anything else.'

‘I
can
drive,' she says. ‘My boyfriend taught me.'

‘Have you got your licence?'

‘Got it on my birthday.'

‘I'll take you out on the road in the next day or two, see how you go with the Ford, and if you feel confident with it, you can use it.'

‘OK!' The grin on her face is enormous.

‘Don't think it's just me being nice,' I add sternly. At least I feel I've gone a little way towards making up for my behaviour to Marnie. ‘It's as much for my sake as yours. You'd be able to run errands for me. Deliver things. Pick stuff up.'

‘I can do that.' She hesitates. ‘I could help out with letters and that, too, if you like.'

‘I thought you were interested in gardening.'

‘I am. But it's not all growing things, digging and stuff, is it? I did typing at school, computer studies.'

Which reminds me . . . ‘You already answered the phone,' I say. ‘Where was I?'

‘Dunno, but it was ringing and ringing. I made a note of who rang you . . . didn't you find it? The only urgent one was some Donald Duck woman, wanted to see you like the day before yesterday.'

‘I'm seeing her tomorrow.' I smile a little wryly at her. ‘She said you'd suggested a Zen version of her garden.'

‘I was just trying to stop her yacking on.' She glances at her hands. ‘I also asked her if she'd realized how much all this chopping and changing was costing her.'

‘Did you?' I raise my eyebrows. ‘And had she?'

‘Don't think so, 'cos she shut up right away and asked when you wanted to get started.'

‘Believe it or not, she's changed her mind yet again.'

‘The customer is always right.'

‘Not this one!' We grin at each other like old friends.

Walking down the Edgware Road early the next morning, I can only think of one thing: if Luna can so easily have invented a father for me, can she also have invented his death? In other words, is it possible that the car accident which haunted my childhood never actually took place?

Between them, James Bellamy and my mother have created a void into which drops every man I pass who is the right sort of age. It could be him across the road, or that one over there, or the one flagging down a taxi with a rolled umbrella. If he's not who she has always maintained he was, he could be anybody at all. He could be married with a family. I imagine the half-siblings I might have somewhere, the aunts and uncles, the cousins.

As I reach the double doors of the Lotus Flower Hotel, I notice a man standing against the railings which enclose the gardens across the road. He's dressed in black: black suit over black shirt, like a portent of death, but it's not his dress which catches my attention, it's the fixity of his gaze as he surveys the street. He looks up and down, and up again, his handsome narrow face expectant, as though waiting for someone to appear and throw a bomb in his direction. Turning into the hotel, I feel ice between my shoulder blades. I know I've seen him before, somewhere, long ago.

The girl behind the reception-counter smiles at me. When I ask for Lucia Cairns, she nods at the dining room, from which emanates a smell of fried bacon and a hum of breakfast conversation.

At the door, I stand looking for my mother and see her at the end of the room, back against the wall, reading the paper. She looks preoccupied, as though she is thinking of someone else, somewhere else. There are lines on her face I don't remember. How she is and how I imagine her to be when I'm not with her are two quite distinct images. Is it the white streaks in her hair, with their explicit message of time passing, of lost youth, lost hope, or is it her unguarded expression, the almost unnoticeable stiffness of her carriage, the slight droop of her shoulders, which make me see that she, too, is vulnerable? If only I could turn time back, enfold her in my arms, the way I used to. My heart unexpectedly aches. I remember the feel of her bones beneath the cover of her flesh, the warmth of her. She loved me once, I know she did. What happened to make her stop? What did I do? Why did she drop out of my life for that pitiless decade? Oh, Luna, I think sadly, if only we had not grown so far away from each other.

I make my way between the tables and stand in front of her. She looks up, her face registering terror, her hand fluttering at her chest. Her eyes dart round the room, and back to me, beyond me, as though she suspects I'm not alone.

‘Theodora,' she says, half rising from her seat. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘It's nice to see you, too.' I bend down to plant an awkward kiss on her cheek and pull out a chair.

She frowns. ‘How did you know where I was?'

‘Terry told me you'd be staying here.' I look round for a waitress and realize that it's self-service. If I get up and help myself to coffee, I'm afraid she'll melt away, out of the door, down the street, and I'll have lost her again.

‘You've got that determined look in your eye.' She looks at me warily. ‘You've obviously come about something important.'

‘Yes.' There are tall windows along one side of the room and I can see out into the street, see the ceaseless passing of traffic, the gardens, carcasses in the butcher's window across the road. The man in black has gone.

I take a deep breath. ‘A few days ago, a complete stranger turned up at my house, wanting to buy the painting you gave me when I was eight. He insisted that the man I've always known as
my
father is actually
his
father. He told me when his father died, which was well before I was born, so there's no possibility that we're both right. He even brought another painting with him, a companion piece, to prove what he was saying.'

She picks up her coffee cup and holds it in both hands. ‘I don't know what to say.'

‘But you're not surprised.'

‘No.'

‘Luna, I'm in shock. I'm . . .' I spread my hands. ‘Why did you tell me it was my father when you knew it wasn't?'

She makes no attempt to deny or apologize. ‘It gave you what you needed at the time.'

‘So everything you told me about him was lies?'

‘Not lies, Theodora. It was a story for a little girl who wanted to believe in fairytales.' She reaches for my hand. I've forgotten how soft her fingers are, how moth-like on my skin. Nor have I noticed before the way they curl inwards on themselves, like the delicate claw of a crab. She sips a couple of times then sets the cup carefully back on its saucer. ‘Look, about your father . . . this is not an avenue you should explore.'

I think I understand. ‘Am I illegitimate? Is that what this is all about? A good Catholic girl getting pregnant outside the bonds of holy matrimony?'

She smiles. ‘Who said I was good?'

I ignore this. ‘Were you actually married to him? Was he really in the army? Is his name even John Cairns?'

She just looks at me.

‘Luna,' I say, trying to hold on to my self-possession, ‘my whole life feels as if it's suddenly been put on hold. I must find out the truth.'

‘What is truth?' she asks. ‘Isn't it just what you believe you know?'

‘I'm not going to get into a metaphysical argument with you.'

‘All right.' She picks up her spoon and stirs the grounds in her cup. ‘I admit that the painting is not what I said it was.'

I reach across the table to grab her by the wrist and am taken aback by how wasted it seems, the bones lying only just below the skin. ‘Luna, who is my father? Or don't you know yourself?'

‘Don't be silly. Just believe me when I say there are compelling reasons why you shouldn't know.'

‘I'm grown-up now, I can be trusted.'

She picks up her coffee cup again. ‘You'll have to accept that I'm not going to tell you.'

My chest begins to constrict. ‘But
why
?' My voice wavers. More than anything else, I want to lay my head on the table and howl.

‘Who your father was doesn't matter much in the end, does it?' she says gently. Her long silver earrings turn in the light from the window. ‘Darling Theodora, what matters is who
you
are, what
you've
become, not who it was that provided the genes and chromosomes thirty years back.'

‘That's the whole point – suddenly I don't
know
who I am. Besides, if it doesn't matter, why shouldn't you tell me?'

Her expression grows steely. ‘I have
not
spent the last thirty years doing everything in my power to—' She breaks off.

‘To what?' There is an undercurrent here that I don't comprehend.

She folds her lips together. Pushes the sugar bowl further away from her then brings it back. Straightens her shoulders. ‘Keep you safe,' she says finally. Reluctantly.

‘Safe? What from?'

‘Those who might want to harm you. Or me.' She seems absolutely serious. In the mundane atmosphere of the Lotus Flower Hotel's dining room, the words sound melodramatic. I recall the bad days, just before she disappeared. How we kept running from place to place, city to city, trying to escape from an unseen, non-existent enemy. The chocolate bar snatched from my hand, the spider on the pillow.

‘Do you mean my father?'

‘Not him.'

‘Who then? A jealous wife? In any case, why would anyone want to harm
us
? And even if they did once – which I find hard to believe – it was thirty years ago. How can any of it – whatever it was – still matter?'

She clears her throat. ‘It matters even more now than it did then.'

‘
Please
tell me why.'

‘I'm truly sorry, but I can't.'

‘Was his name John Vincent Cairns?'

‘I
told
you.'

‘I know you
told
me. But was it true?'

‘Yes, it was.' Her eyes shift, the concentration of their colour changes. I know she's lying. ‘Look, he's dead,' she says. ‘That's the important thing as far as you're concerned.'

‘Is he?'

‘Yes.'

‘
Is
he? Truly?' Outside, the sky has turned the colour of roof-slates; rain is beginning to fall.

‘Yes.' She picks up her coffee cup again. Her hand is trembling. ‘Yes, yes,
yes
.'

‘Then how compelling can the reasons be for not telling me about him?'

‘Listen to me, Theodora. It's utterly pointless for you to go on wasting time and emotion on this.'

Behind me, a door opens, there's a murmur of voices from the hotel lobby. She starts, stares, her eyes wide with alarm. She leans her upper body towards me, as though hoping to shield me from any suffering that might befall me. I, too, begin to turn, my heart beating harder, adrenalin sparking at my wrists, before I force myself to stay as I was. Though her fear is contagious, I refuse to be sucked into her fantasies.

‘He's still alive, isn't he?' I drop the question casually into the conversation and see her turn pale.

‘No!' Her expression is terrified. ‘I told you: he died before you were even born. He was run over. You were a posthumous baby.' She's getting to her feet. ‘I don't want to discuss this any further,' she says.

‘But I do.' I, too, rise. ‘I can't let you get away with not telling me.'

‘Theodora,' she says, sounding desperate. ‘I can only entreat you – for your own good – to accept that I can't.'

‘Is it Hugo?'

‘Is Hugo your father?
Hugo?
Absolutely not.' With a gesture, she waves the subject away.

‘Bellamy,' I say.

Her face grows still again. She raises a hand to her hair and plays with the dragonfly clip holding it together. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Did you know Thomas Bellamy? The man in the picture?'

‘No.'

‘Where did it come from?'

‘I . . . Oh, God.' She sits down again, passes a hand across her eyes. ‘All right, I saw it in a shop window one day. A little art gallery. I thought it might solve some problems if I gave you what you seemed to want most – a father – so I bought it. And yes,' she continues, the room emptying around us, tables being cleared. ‘I made it all up, nearly all of it. Not the fact that I loved your father but . . . most of the rest. It was for your own safety. If anyone ever . . . ever started asking questions, you'd be able to satisfy them that you weren't who they were looking for.'

‘That's a bit over the top, isn't it? Why would anyone be asking me questions?'

She doesn't answer.

I lean towards her, lower my voice. ‘Was he a spy, or something? Mafia? A professional assassin? A . . . a terrorist? Or was he a member of some minor royal family or something?' Each possibility I offer sounds more ridiculous than the last. I'm becoming as paranoid as she is.