Out of Sight (28 page)

‘I thought maybe you'd had it already.'

‘I lost it. Otherwise I'd have been as big as a house by now. But I didn't want you thinking you were about to be a father when that's no longer going to happen.'

‘You decided not to go ahead?' he asked with a mixture of concern and suspicion.

‘No. I had a miscarriage.' Saying the word still made her want to cry. ‘Back in January. Early miscarriages are quite common, apparently.'

He nodded, staring inward as if untying some internal knot. ‘I'm glad you didn't end it,' he said. Leonie couldn't tell whether his relief was for her or himself.

She regarded him as steadily as she could manage. ‘I really wanted this baby. Losing it was horrible. It hurt. And I was on my own.'

Patrick kept nodding until reprieved by the waitress bringing their coffees. ‘I'm sorry,' he said, once she had gone. ‘But you're all right now?'

‘Yes, I suppose so. Gaby's been wonderful. And Stella.'

‘Good. I'm glad. You've a lot of strength. I always admired you for that.'

Leonie was stung by how easily he dismissed her empty sadness, how readily he imagined that she lacked the imagination to suffer. He must have seen her feelings in her expression, for he reached out to take her hand where it rested on the table beside her foaming cappuccino.

‘I never lied,' he said. ‘You must believe that.'

‘But you stayed silent,' she answered. ‘About a lot of things.'

‘You must think very little of me,' he responded, stroking her fingers with his thumb. And I don't expect you to forgive me. But I never lied to you.' His skin was warm and dry. ‘I do care about you, you know.'

Confused and smarting from disappointment, Leonie withdrew her hand.

‘I had to go when I did,' he went on insistently. ‘You were better off without me. I never meant to hurt you, I just collapsed. I don't know why.'

‘I do,' she said softly, but he appeared not to hear, not to conceive of a world where his secret might be known.

‘And see,' he went on, ‘here you are, safe and sound!' Leonie wondered whether his expression was an appeal for rescue. ‘You are fine now, aren't you?' He reached for her hand again, and she let him take it.

‘I guess so, more or less – but I wasn't.' She raised her chin again defiantly, determined not to be his fool. ‘That's why I left France. Stella took me in. I've had one or two small commissions from translation agencies, but finding a proper job has been really hard.' She could see he wasn't listening, but she wanted him to fully appreciate her predicament. ‘To pay the rent, I work part-time for a posh estate agency that needs my language skills.'

‘Good. I mean it's good you've found something.' He let go of her hand to glance at his watch. ‘Look, I'm sorry, but I have to be somewhere. Give me your number, and we'll meet up properly. Go out somewhere and have some fun.'

He smiled at her kindly. When she did not respond, he seemed to scan her face as if searching for resolution; or maybe, she thought with a certain bitterness, for permission to disappear and leave all this behind. ‘I appreciate your coming to find me,' he said. ‘I'm glad you told me what happened, and I'm so sorry you've had a hard time.
It's good that you're okay.' He pushed his chair back and stood up.

Prepared to be stubborn, she remained seated.

‘I turned out not to be who you thought I was. I wouldn't blame you for hating me, but I swear I never lied to you,' Patrick repeated, and Leonie wondered whether this frail self-defence were all that truly mattered to him, whether he cared for her at all. ‘Do you need anything?' he asked suddenly, sitting down again. ‘Money, or something? I'll help in any way I can, if that's what it is.'

But for the transparency of his desire to make practical amends, she would have been insulted. ‘No,' she said, getting to her feet in turn. ‘I'm fine.'

‘Look, I really do have to go. It's a charity thing I'm involved in. But give me your number, and I'll call.' He took a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. ‘Then we can talk properly.'

Leonie obediently dictated her number, then lingered beside him at the counter as he paid for their coffees. She had a sudden longing to lean in against his shoulder, for everything to be simple.

Out on the pavement, the sky had turned a dark, rich blue, and the crowded street sparkled with lights from passing cars and buses and from the local shops and restaurants. As Patrick bent to kiss her, she offered her cheek, but instead he touched his lips to hers. ‘Bye for now,' he said. She was still his captive.

*

Patrick had walked half-way home to Stoke Newington before his head cleared enough for him to consider Leonie's unheralded appearance. He realised with some surprise that he had barely entertained a single thought of her during the past months. He was embarrassed that she had tracked him down to the Angel Sanctuary. His role there was belittling, and he disliked being identified with such a frivolous place, but with very few contacts in London he had needed the work and a colleague had tipped him off about it. He intended to use it to build up a clientèle before opening a practice of his own again.

He recognised how shallow it was to be vain about his professional image, but sometimes his work seemed like the only honourable achievement in his life; he needed it in order to look himself squarely in the eye, and often worried what would happen to him if, as he increasingly feared, his daily interactions with patients were to become sterile and meaningless.

He didn't want Leonie to think of him like that, or to imagine that their time together had been inconsequential. Last year in France he had savoured the image of himself reflected in her eyes; it had given him an essential shot of courage, something he'd desperately needed to dare to live again.

Too late to cut through the park, he skirted its perimeter, reflecting on the muddle in which he had left Riberac. He knew he was solely to blame. He should have handled things differently. But he couldn't have
stayed to watch Leonie's pregnancy progress without telling her about Daniel, and it had been impossible to reveal the truth. So he had taken the only route left open to him. Several times, he had begun a second letter to her, but had always given up, never sure what to say. It had been a shock to discover her waiting for him tonight, but he realised he was glad to have been found. While he had expected a blaze of recrimination right there in the street, it was clear she had recovered from the shameful way in which he had fled. It was a relief to see that she had been so resilient, that he had evidently caused no lasting harm.

He was late, and Rob was waiting outside his flat, lounging against the gatepost in the soft dusk light, intent on the music on his iPod. His precious bike was chained up nearby. The boy – Rob was twenty, but Patrick couldn't help thinking of him as a boy – removed the earpiece when finally he noticed Patrick, raised a languid hand in greeting, and followed him obligingly indoors.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,' said Patrick, turning on the lights.

‘No problem. I was late anyway.' Rob smiled his winning smile, making Patrick laugh.

‘That's all right then.'

‘Mum says hi.'

Patrick nodded.

‘Did you check out those steel frames?'

‘Yes. Impressive, but I'm not spending that much on a bike.'

Rob grinned. ‘You'll come round to it.' He opened the fridge in the room that served Patrick as both kitchen and living room and surveyed the contents.

‘Hungry?' asked Patrick, not minding the way the boy assumed he could make himself at home. ‘There's some soup I made yesterday.'

‘Great, thanks. If you're sure you've got enough.'

As Patrick removed the pan from the fridge and set it to heat up on the stove, Rob went unthinkingly to the cutlery drawer and laid the table. Patrick reflected again on how well Vicki had brought up her son; despite his ragged art-student clothes and pierced eyebrow, she had taught him wonderfully old-fashioned good manners. When the soup was hot, Patrick poured it into two bowls and put them on the table along with bread and cheese. Saying ‘Cheers', Rob pulled closer the morning's discarded newspaper, picked up his spoon and started to devour the food while simultaneously flicking through the pages. As Patrick ate his own meal, enjoying the easy silence, he observed the boy's appetite, the unself-conscious way he laughed or frowned to himself at items in the paper.

Rob's vitality led Patrick's thoughts back to Leonie. When they first met she, too, had this same engaging robustness; she had breathed new life into him after those terrible years of stagnation. He had tried to resist her, battling his sense of unworthiness, his fear of self-exposure, but the moment he had sensed her desire for him, he was overcome. He had trusted her, and his lonely body had chosen
life. He looked back on his first years in France with real dread, amazed that he had ever survived such isolation, and certain he never could again.

He admitted to himself that he was still dangerously attracted to Leonie, perhaps even more so now that her youthful glow had been tempered by an appealing air of fragility. While it eased things to see her so well, it was completely out of the question to allow himself to become involved with her again, though eventually he probably ought to give her a call. She might well choose to tell him to get lost, but he owed her at least the opportunity to talk things over further, if she so wished.

Rob folded the newspaper and laid down his spoon. ‘So are you really going to ride fifty-four miles on that old bone-shaker?'

Patrick was amused. ‘I've managed okay in the past.'

‘But if you got a steel frame, it'd be worth getting better gears. The technology's beautiful. You'd love it!'

‘Thanks, but it's not a race. I just have to cover the miles. How's your recruitment coming along?'

‘Lots of people at uni have signed up to ride, but it's no good if they don't get enough sponsors. How are you doing?'

‘Only one or two, so far, I'm afraid. I'm not gregarious enough. But one client is down for fifty pence per mile.'

‘Not bad. Most of mine are, like, five pence.' Rob got to his feet. ‘Give me your application form, then, and I'll add it to the bunch.'

‘Thanks.'

While Patrick searched out the form, Rob cleared the table, stacking the dishes by the sink. ‘Want me to wash up before I go?'

‘No, leave it. It's fine.'

Rob hesitated, as if unwilling to forgo the ritual. ‘Well, thanks for feeding me. See ya.' The boy let himself out. He was like a cat, Patrick decided – amused – as the front door banged shut behind him; a creature that reserved the right to be nurtured whenever and by whomever took his fancy. Such compartmentalised promiscuity seemed to Patrick to contain a restful quality which he coveted for himself.

Leonie crept into the flat like a thief. She was not ready to confess to Stella how she had bearded Patrick, yet felt bad about her clear intention to lie. She was no good at deception and was sure to be caught out. She hugged to herself the bigger secret of his kiss. She had worked hard, with Stella's help, to put behind her all those sleepless nights during which she had flayed herself for being blind, clumsy, stupid, unlovable, when she yearned for confirmation that he had loved her. The touch of his lips tonight had transformed the past, assuaging all the horrible stored pain and filling her with elation that she had not been to blame for her abandonment. She was sure Stella would understand how wonderful it felt to be released from months of self-hatred but, for now, she was desperate to guard the sensation, to keep it private and pristine.

‘You seem different,' observed Stella when Leonie appeared for breakfast the next morning. Stella, in her dressing grown, was reading the Saturday papers, which an admiring downstairs neighbour insisted on delivering.

Leonie had showered and thrown on sweatpants and an old tee-shirt. She placed her mobile on the counter as discreetly as possible, before opening the fridge. ‘I'll go out for more milk later,' she offered. But Stella had clocked both the phone and Leonie's self-conscious manner. With a slight raise of an eyebrow, she returned to the article she was reading. Leonie, contrarily, was disappointed not to be pursued for information. As she rinsed out the teapot and waited for the kettle to boil, she tried phrasing a confession, but each attempt confirmed that Stella could only condemn her action. Of course seeing Patrick again had been a huge mistake, but it had been inconceivable not to.

She made toast then sat down with her mug of tea. Stella appeared to be reading, but there was something ominous in the hunch of her shoulders.

‘Do you think,' Leonie began in a deliberately vague tone, ‘that if people around Patrick had known about what happened to his son, he would have behaved differently?'

Stella's head jerked up. ‘He's not Patrice any more, then?'

‘You said he was Patrick now,' stumbled Leonie.

‘You've seen him, haven't you?'

‘I wanted to tell him I'm not having his child,' she defended herself. ‘It seemed only fair.'

‘Fair?' Stella made a huge effort. ‘Okay, so how did he react?'

‘He was relieved I was okay.' Leonie told herself it was mere pride that made her withhold the full story of how lightly he had dismissed her ordeal, but she didn't dare meet Stella's eye.

‘And that's it? You won't see him again?'

‘I doubt it.'

‘I won't have him here. I'm not going to watch it happen all over again.'

‘It won't.'

Stella's chair shrieked against the tiled floor as she stood up. ‘Then why are you waiting for him to ring?' She seized Leonie's phone from the counter and slapped it down in front of her. ‘Why even consider seeing him a second time?'