Deep Water, Thin Ice (21 page)

The house which she had shared with Simon sat under a grey November afternoon sky, rapidly darkening into a long winter night. Its windows stared out vacantly. Dead leaves had been blown into the front garden and up against the front doorstep; rain had left them soft, slippery and dank but at least the journalists no longer hung around outside. Despite the constant sounds of traffic and the hums and drones of planes far overhead, the place felt bleakly silent.

She remembered the first time she’d seen the house. Simon had heard from a colleague that it was going up for sale long before it had reached an agent and had insisted that she drop everything and come with him to see it. He was excited. ‘We’ll have to be quick or it’ll go. This sort of house doesn’t come up that often.’ The area had been known for years as the home to many famous musicians, artists and writers. He was keen to live there. It was the place to be; it projected the right image. Simon had always been very concerned about image. ‘It’s important,’ he’d said to her. ‘Even if the music’s wonderful, if the image is wrong people won’t even bother to listen. That’s the sort of society we live in.’ They’d argued about it several times, Alex finally acknowledging that maybe she just didn’t want to believe that it was true. But they hadn’t argued much about the house, only about whether they could – or should - afford it. She looked up at it now. She had loved the house for itself. It was spacious, light and welcoming and was near to the heath where she liked to walk. It had also been very expensive. They hadn’t even sold their apartment when they put in an offer for it and Simon’s mother had put up a lot of money to ease them through the purchase. But even if Alex had not been keen, she knew they’d have ended up buying it. Simon had always had a way of persuading her. Withdrawn, hurt silence had been a favoured technique.

Once inside Alex walked over junk mail and a free newspaper on the mat. Piled up on a side table in the hall were more papers and more junk. On one of the work surfaces in the kitchen were yet more. Erica had obviously been in and deposited them wherever a space presented. Normally she would have meticulously put them out into the recycling bin; their presence suggested her sulking rebellion.

Alex drifted from room to room. She’d dreaded coming back and had expected anguish but all she felt now was sorrow. The place was replete with memories, both good and bad, which loomed into her mind unbidden. Everywhere she looked Simon was there: the baby grand piano he used to sit at sometimes to compose; the cherished Hoffnung originals, framed and hung on the wall in his study; his electric razor, still on the shelf in the bathroom and his toothbrush, still in the rack. In the bedroom his dressing gown hung limply behind the door. She hadn’t had the courage to part with anything that he had owned before she’d left; she hadn’t even considered it. Now, after being away for so long, she felt at a slight remove from it all and it was like looking at an arrested moment in time, a moment that would never come again. She stretched out a hand to run a finger over Simon’s watch, carefully placed back on his bedside cabinet the way he always left it. Her eyes started to fill and then a prickle of discomfort ran over her. After her experiences in Hillen Hall, she recognised the danger in keeping it like this; she needed to do some sorting.

She walked as purposefully as she could out of the bedroom and back downstairs. Before going out to the car to get her bags, she went into the sitting room and put a Sinatra CD on to play, turning the volume up loud. The house was all too achingly quiet.

*

‘There’s no reply.’ Theo shut down the call and tried another number. ‘Her mobile’s not on either. Hell.’ He threw down the phone and then glared at his mother as if she were personally responsible.

‘I told you she’d gone away,’ said Sarah. ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Of course I believed you. That’s why I came back as soon as the show finished. But why would she go away?’

‘
I
don’t know. But I know she’s cancelled her newspaper; Billy told me that when he brought ours yesterday morning. The lazy boy was so pleased he didn’t have to do the rest of the hill, he was bragging about it.’

Sarah was crabby. Theo had driven through the night and had woken her up early. When she’d come downstairs she’d gone to the whisky decanter to get a drink and Theo had walked over and taken it off her, insisting he needed breakfast and encouraging her into the kitchen.

‘You’ve done something to upset her probably,’ she added now irritably.

Theo thought back to the night he’d spent in Alex’s bed before going away. She hadn’t seemed upset when he’d left early the next morning; she’d been curled up against him when he’d come to, naked, soft and vulnerable. He hadn’t done anything that night which could have upset her as far as he could remember. He’d made love to her thoroughly and attentively and afterwards she’d fallen asleep in his arms. Before getting up to leave he’d whispered in her ear and she’d murmured a reply and reached for him as he slipped out of the bed. She’d opened her eyes as he’d left her and had looked surprised, perhaps even a little embarrassed. Yes, that would be it. He’d half pulled the quilt off her as he’d got out and she’d looked down at herself and seen her nakedness. Ideally he’d have taken the time to reassure her, maybe made love to her again to reinforce their new intimacy, but he’d had to go; he’d been due to meet up with Patrick from the yard at eight.

Theo shook his head and paced round the kitchen.

‘You’re sure she didn’t tell anyone where she was going?’ he said fractiously.

‘No-one that I know. But how do I know who she knows?’

Sarah filled the kettle, spilling water down the sides of it and dabbing it afterwards with the dishcloth. Theo stopped pacing and brought his fist down hard on the table.

‘Bugger,’ he said, and threw himself down in a chair by the table.

‘Perhaps she’s missing London,’ said Sarah. ‘Still…I’m sure she’ll be back…don’t you think she’ll be back? I thought you said she adored you.’ There was a note of reproach in her voice as though he’d told her a lie, as he would when a boy, accused of taking something of Julian’s.

‘I thought she did.’

‘Maybe she’s gone to see her sister. You said they were close?’

‘
She
said they were, though she hasn’t seen much of her recently.’

‘Well I hope she comes back.’ She paused. ‘You slept with her didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did. Everything seemed to be going so well,’ he muttered, and ran a hand through his hair.

Sarah came to stand behind his chair and raised a hand to stroke his hair back into position. Then she put both hands on his wide shoulders and massaged into his muscles. Her fingers were so weak, to him it was like the touch of a butterfly.

‘I’m sure she’ll come back,’ she said. ‘Who could turn their back on my handsome son?’

Theo leant his head sideways to rest it on his mother’s hand.

‘I’m sure she will too,’ he lied.

*

When Alex turned up at Erica’s door later that first evening their reunion was stiff. The weeks of telephone conversations which had apparently soothed the atmosphere between them were as if they had never been. Alex could see in Erica’s eyes that, face to face, her sister remembered as clearly as she did those rows at Hillen Hall.

‘I’m sorry. I should have told you I was coming,’ Alex offered tentatively. ‘It was a sudden decision to come.’

‘Isn’t it always?’ Erica said with a tight smile and hesitated just fractionally before coming forward to hug her. ‘Come in. I was just about to make supper.’

‘Am I disturbing you? It doesn’t matter if you’re busy.’

‘Not at all. It’s fine. Ben’s staying over at a friend’s. Have you eaten? I haven’t had anything yet. I’ll make something for us both. It didn’t seem worth it just for me.’

Erica fussed and busied herself making risotto and opened a bottle of white wine. She talked about her job and about Ben and what he’d been doing; she talked of Alex’s house and all the burglaries in the area and ‘God, I’ll bet it’s dusty’; she fretted over Christmas presents and the cards she hadn’t even bought yet, let alone written. It seemed to Alex that her sister was intentionally filling the air with sound, determined to keep a check on the conversation, unsure where it might lead.

‘So you’re back,’ Erica at last said, more comfortably, when they’d eaten, had cleared away and were sitting with a second glass of wine.

‘Mm, for a while.’

‘You’re not staying?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’ve only just got back.’

‘Of course.’ Erica clamped her lips together as if she were afraid something might escape them and then managed to stretch them sideways into an unconvincing smile.

‘Look, I’m not sure what I want to do,’ Alex said. ‘I thought it was time to see how I felt back in London, to see if there’s any future for me here.’ It was little more than a half truth, but Erica looked pleased.

A couple of minutes of silence passed while Erica stared at her wine glass and ran a finger through the condensation on the side of it.

‘Are you still seeing Simon’s cousin?’ she asked casually.

‘Now and then.’

Erica nodded and Theo wasn’t mentioned again. They chatted idly about other things while they finished the wine. Then Alex got up to leave.

‘Do you want to stay over?’ Erica immediately offered, jumping up. ‘I can easily make up the bed in the spare room.’

Alex shook her head and forced a smile. ‘Thanks Ricky but I’d better not. I need to stay in the house. If I don’t do it now, I never will. Got to stand on my own two feet, haven’t I?’ She gave Erica a hug. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,’ she added over her sister’s shoulder before pulling away.

‘Of course you will.’ Erica spoke with the forced cheer of a children’s television presenter. ‘But you’ll come over to eat? Don’t eat alone.’

Alex poked her sister playfully with a finger. ‘Hey, don’t fuss. I’ve been eating alone for months.’

‘Well…yes, I suppose you have.’

*

Back in her own home, Alex tried to settle in and see if she could pick up her old life. She stocked up the house with food and treated herself to new clothes from her favourite shops. She had her hair done, went to the cinema with Ben and Erica, and dodged the bleak November showers to tidy up the tiny garden.

She also made a start on trying to clear away some of Simon’s things, and found herself putting back as much as she threw out. ‘Letting go’ sounded like such an easy thing to do, she thought, but actually involved a lot of pain. She became distracted by old photograph albums and anniversary cards kept and now creased; she intended to throw away old manuscript books with Simon’s cramped notation inside but found herself flicking through them to look for familiar work, humming an odd phrase, and then putting them back in the pile. She took a pile of old books to a charity shop but kept back a battered old copy of Prince Caspian which had been Simon’s childhood favourite.

The piano in the sitting room stood in silent reproach at not being played. Several times Alex walked up to it and then walked away again. One morning she sat on the stool and slowly opened the lid. She had played quite well at one time - it had been an occasional source of relaxation - but she hadn’t played since Simon had died. Even before his accident she’d let it slide. Simon was such a perfectionist about his music that she’d preferred to play when he wasn’t around. In any case she tended to prefer to play light music to unwind and, after one cutting remark expressed early in their marriage, it was obvious he thought Cole Porter played on a baby grand a kind of sacrilege.

She allowed her fingers to run along the keys and then tentatively pressed a few notes of a favourite song. How she missed the music and yet how it terrified her too. She couldn’t understand how she had allowed herself to lose the thing which she’d held so dear ever since she was a child. Music had grown from an instinct to a passion and then to an obsession which had steamrollered everything else in its path. But had it been love of the music itself or the desperate need to justify her choice to Victoria? Or maybe, she wondered, to herself? But she was aware that the cost of that obsession had been the little time or energy she’d had left for anything else. For some time now, there’d been a growing fear, barely acknowledged, that without the music her life had become pointless.

She fumbled her fingers along the keys again, trying to remember the whole tune. After a few mistakes and repeats, it started to come back and she felt a warm glow of relief. That evening, following hours of deliberation, she raised the courage to ring up her old singing coach. After a brief and taut conversation, they arranged to meet for coffee in town the next day.

Francine Vann, reading glasses perched on the end of her long nose, was installed at a table in the café before Alex had even arrived, leafing through a pile of sheet music. Forthright and uncompromising, she was a well-known singing tutor, as feared as she was respected. She’d spotted Alex’s talent early and had taken her under her wing. Without Francine’s support, Alex knew she’d never have been able to withstand Victoria’s opposition to her career. Now, as she set two mugs of cappuccino down on the table and eased into her seat, it struck her that Francine had aged since she’d seen her last and she felt a pang of regret.

‘Why did you want to see me?’ Francine asked brutally, dropping her glasses off her nose to dangle pendulously from the burgundy cord round her neck before coming to rest.