Getting Home (14 page)

To stabilise her mind, she turned the map sideways to read the scale, put her ruler against the page and calculated that Astrakhan was 400 kilometres from Grozny, the name faintly familiar from half-heard news bulletins. To the north, Volgograd was the same distance. She had last heard Stewart's voice from Volgograd. Her calculator told her that 400 kilometres was 250 miles. On the facing page was a map showing population density, on which the region of Astrakhan was coloured burnt siena, indicating 10.25 inhabitants per square kilometre. There were five million Kazakhs in the total population. On the next map the whole area around the Don was coloured light green for arable land with meadow, permanent grassland and grazing.

She was sitting at the little desk in an alcove outside their bedroom which Stewart used for household business. He was a major empty desk man, generating surfaces which were blatantly bare, boasting spaciously of decisions actioned and paperwork eliminated. A screen, a space, that was it. The mouse and the keyboard were concealed in a nifty drawer, the fax and phone had a hidden shelf, the cables were invisibly integrated.

Stephanie was for clutter, up to a point. In fact, quite a high point. She was also attached to paper. It was, after all, derived from vegetable matter. Baskets with documents lapping over their edges felt industrious. Well-stuffed files were a testament to security. You never knew when you were going to need a list or a letter or a certificate or something.

She conducted the business of The Terrace Garden Design Studio among slithering, fluttering mounds of paper, and Stewart administered everything else from this naked desk. They were one of those fraternal couples who looked alike and thought alike, so this pocket of disharmony in their relationship was exciting. They made much of it, this little interface of yin and yang. She crowed when his system crashed. He laughed when she could not find her driver's licence. She gave him Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus programme for his birthday. He gave her a magnetic badge reading ‘hedgehog on the information superhighway'.

He ran the household accounts on a spreadsheet which he had taught her how to enter several times. She had the instructions written down on a piece of paper inside the cover of her organiser. Or maybe on the pinboard. Or the pending tray. Or if not there, down the back of her desk where things which fell off the pinboard might be found. When he went away, which he had done more than they were comfortable with in the past year, she preserved their mail casually in a willow, basket to demonstrate that life was perfectly viable without the computer. When he came back, he updated the system and threw the papers away.

Somehow, in the six weeks Stewart had been missing, treacherous paper had crept on to his desk. Here was a note she had written herself about ferns, a catalogue of children's clothes, the leaflet from a new moisturiser, a couple of cards from her Rolodex. Here also was the morning's mail, and among it something she had read once and hidden under the rest until she was ready to read it again, a letter from Marcus. ‘I am sending on to you a note from the partnership's insurers … you should be aware that in this situation we can continue to pay Stewart's salary at the full rate only until next month and at 50 per cent for a further three months afterwards. Our cover does not extend beyond that time.'

Marcus was a pig. Everything was money to him, his heart was a balance sheet, his veins ran dollars. He should be lying filthy and unshaven chained to the wall in some windowless concrete basement crawling with cockroaches, and Stewart should be here at this desk, the bridge of this enterprise, their family.

The letter ought to be filed. She wanted to burn it. It would poison the house. People did not write such letters unless they had legal significance, it had to be kept. In the end she devised a compromise, screwed it into a ball and threw it into the waste bin, planning to recover it when she felt better. You're crazy, she told herself. Without Stewart you're going mad.

She went back to the map. How had they travelled 250 miles? In a car with a gun to his head and a jittery finger on the trigger and potholes in the road? The Beirut hostages had been taped up like mummies and nailed into crates like coffins. Why had she ever agreed to see
Pulp Fiction?
Horrible muddled visions were filling her empty head when the doorbell rang.

In the morning, doorbells in Westwick rang for service calls – the dog walkers, laundry deliveries and Derek and Dave reporting with the summer bedding for her clients, who abhorred contact with the soil. Stephanie did not see herself as mature enough to need such services. From behind the curtains of Max's room she saw Lauren Pike on her front path.

‘I thought perhaps it was about time I came round.' Being trim, immaculate and blonde, Lauren was not a natural for the role of Hera in the neighbourhood Olympus. Allie had once compared her to a West Highland Terrier, game for anything in her jolly little way. As was required of the wife of the BSD, Lauren had grand manner to assume for the right occasion, and Stephanie saw that this visit was such an event. Lauren had put on a suit, and carried a folder.

‘You know we've started a victim support scheme,' she opened, tight-jawed. ‘We get names passed to us by the police. When your name came up, since I know you, it seemed the natural thing. But, listen, you can send me away if you want. I'll quite understand. I mean, you might prefer to talk to someone you don't know. It can be easier. Or you might be perfectly OK and not want to talk to anyone. We're just here to offer support if you think it's something you'd like.'

‘Oh. Oh – well, how wonderful.' Stephanie felt quite feeble with relief.

‘You're sure? I wouldn't be at all offended, really …' Lauren stood resolute on the doorstep, unwilling to risk the offence of intrusion until positively assured.

‘Lauren, I'm quite sure. You're a dear, kind friend to take me on. Do, come in. I'll make us some tea.'
At last.
Another sign of madness; she had started communicating in two modes, verbally with the rest of the world to whom she said what was necessary, internally with a voice that said what she thought.
At last.
All these days she had been standing in pain, and all around her people had been brightly correct, concerned to distract her, comfort her, make her strong. She had begun the conspiracy herself, frantic to betray nothing when what she really wanted to do was lie on the ground and scream. Weeping through a box of tissues under Lauren's guidance might be almost as good. Bless this excellent social ecosystem, this community that contained everything necessary for life to flourish.

They sat in the garden. Lauren took the centre of the bench and kept her legs parallel and away from the wood for fear of splinters. Her ankles, girlish perfection when in tennis socks, looked brittle and fussy out of them. She pulled the hem of her dark blue skirt even. Navy blue, Stewart had once said, was the pink of Maple Grove.

‘There hasn't been any more news?'

‘I'd just finished speaking to the Foreign Office when you arrived. They've narrowed it down to one city.'

‘That's encouraging, isn't it?' Brightly, she opened the folder and Stephanie glimpsed Nile-green sheets of fuzzy recycled paper. ‘So they're being good about keeping in touch then. Do you think this man feels disappointed when they've got nothing to tell you?'

‘Yes, maybe.'

Lauren uncapped her fat Mont Blanc pen, then put it down and reached for her cup of tea. She had asked for peppermint tea with sweeteners. In her own home she had loose-leaf tea in spherical silver infusers. Her hand paused over the cup; she seemed unable to decide what to do with her tea bag. ‘And how about Max? You've explained it all to him, I suppose?'

Stephanie sighed, feeling she had been cowardly here. ‘Sort of. They have such a vague sense of time at this age, don't they? I'm not sure he can really understand.'

‘I should know – how old is he, exactly?' There were forms in the folder, and Stephanie noticed that the prissy way Lauren had chosen to sit aslant the bench enabled her to hide what she was writing.

‘He'll be six in November.'

‘And does he ask after his father?'

‘Well – you know Max.' Felix, the youngest of the three Pike children, was in the same class as Max at The Magpies. Between the two boys existed an absolute void of empathy; as far as Stephanie could discover they did not dislike each other, merely recognised, with the cruel sincerity of infants, that they shared absolutely nothing beyond the same class environment for thirty hours a week. ‘He's just like his father, really. A boy of few words. He never asks for anything except to watch
Rug Rats
on Saturday morning.'

Lauren raised her Ventolin and took a shot. She did not approve of
Rug Rats.
‘So his father didn't communicate very, well?'

‘Oh no, I wouldn't say that at all. Stewart's a talker, definitely. That's why he tends to do these trips – the early client contact is his responsibility because he's naturally just very persuasive when he's talking about something he believes in. But when there's something on his mind, you'd only know because he won't talk about it.'

Lauren was not writing anything. She fiddled with her inhaler, turning it end over end on the table top; she had her head on one side with a small fixed smile and seemed to be widening her eyes like a pair of zoom lenses. Stephanie bad never witnessed this performance before. ‘And you feel Max imitates Stewart?'

‘Not exactly – I think they're quite like each other, that's all.'

‘So Max accepts him; there weren't any difficulties with that?'

Shaking her head, Stephanie felt uneasy. Now Lauren was fussing with her folder. She had clearly been hoping for some disclosure which Stephanie had not made. Her speech was flattening under a ridiculous artificial modulation. ‘And how long is it that you've been married?'

‘Almost seven years. Our anniversary's this month. Isn't that corny – a June bride?'

‘Most people would say it was very nice.' She was writing now, taut strokes of the pen putting hieroglyphs on the form. ‘Seven years, did you say?'

‘Yes.' Disbelief – she actually sensed it and she was sure she was right. ‘I was there when we got married, you know. I've got pictures to prove it.' This was not working out as Stephanie had hoped.

The zoom lenses and the weird grin were Lauren's professional manner, intended to convey a superior, enlightened sympathy. ‘Oh yes, that's your wedding photograph in the dining room, isn't it? I remember it. Very pretty dress. So – about you and Stewart, how were things before he went away?'

‘The same as always. Just normal.'

‘Just normal.'

‘We didn't have any problems, if that's what you mean.'

‘No problems.' Her eyes were almost popping now.

‘Why?' Distinctly, Stephanie was aware of feeling harried.

‘Why?'

‘Yes – Lauren, I'm mystified. Why would how things were in our marriage be significant? Or how long we'd been married. It's not as if I could arrange for him to be kidnapped because he kept leaving the toilet seat up or something.'

‘Stephanie – you've lost me. Nobody was suggesting, … look, perhaps this wasn't the best idea.' She snapped the folder closed in disappointment. ‘Let me give you our helpline number; if there is anything you need to talk about you can ring. Any time, it's twenty-four hours. People take turns to be on call. We can put you in touch with a trained counsellor in your area if later on perhaps you feel you can't cope or you'd like to see someone. OK?' Now she was on her feet and preparing to go, almost squeaking with the desire to be elsewhere and leave this embarrassing interlude behind.

In the hall she stopped and said she needed to use the bathroom, and put her folder and her pen on their claw-footed Empire console. It was one of the symbols of the early Stewart and Stephanie days, dragged home in five shards from a junk shop after their honeymoon and kept in a cupboard for two years before Stewart took a month to fix it together and Stephanie added the lightly distressed paint finish and metal-gilding on the carving.

Stephanie opened the folder. The form was headed ‘Helford & Westwick Victim Support'. She ran her eye down it, deciphering words in Lauren's large, loopy script. She read: ‘Son/stepfather rel?' The word ‘denial'stood out. ‘Withdrawn'could be distinguished. She heard the lavatory flush and closed the folder.

‘Shall we see you at The Cedars later?' Lauren had recomposed herself as if she kept poise in a handbag compact ready to freshen up during the day. ‘It's our class today, isn't it?' Bunbuster was the kind of word which did not fit in Lauren's mouth.

For a merciful moment, Stephanie had no breath with which to reply. Options rushed past – smile, agree, comply? Smile, evade, withdraw? Challenge, demand, protest? To her surprise, she caught the last set by the tail.

‘Lauren, could I look at that form?'

‘It won't help you,' was the tart reply, and the form was picked up with ceremony to invest it with official status. ‘They're just for us. They're confidential.'

Stephanie caught her nervous gaze and held it to the point of rudeness. Lauren's irises were chalky and opaque, the blinds were down on the windows to her soul. Under her make-up, she was colouring but she would not be stared down. In the end, Stephanie said, ‘Lauren, this is me – please, can we talk about this like women? I've looked at it already. Of course you're entitled to write what you want, but I don't understand things like “stepfather”. Stewart's parents have been married thirty years, he has no stepfather. I'm concerned that you're recording stuff that isn't right. And I'm concerned anyway – I don't know what that conversation in the garden just now was all about.'

Lauren was now a colour close to that of Maple Grove brick, and blinking emphatically. Her small chest heaved as she redoubled her self-control. ‘I'm so sorry that you saw that,' she returned on gracious autopilot. ‘That really should not have happened. We – we get our information passed on from the police and someone has obviously made a mistake. And of course, I was
misguided
to take your case, I can appreciate that now. Do, please, forgive me. I'm really not experienced at this yet. Let's just say I was wrong and put it behind us – we musn't fall out, must we?' And she extended her hand, evenly tanned from daily tennis, and Stephanie found herself shaking it although she felt like stabbing her fingers into the opaque grey eyes which were now cast down in suitable repentance.
Fuck you, get out of my house.
‘No harm done,' were Lauren's final words before she marched out to her car.