Sleepless Nights (22 page)

She reached over, picked up the carafe, and poured herself another cup of coffee. “No, there isn’t. I’m sorry Q, I’m just ve-ry tired,” she replied, sighing. “A lot going on. And you know, Alison says children with colic often experience minor developmental delays, so I think you should just forget about those six measly inches. No point worrying yourself over small things like that.”

For a second, the world seemed to have stopped turning on its axis. “Alison says—
what?”

Jeanie choked on her coffee. “Alison says—I mean, that is to say, she once told me—I remember her talking about somebody
else’s
child who has colic—”

“Jeanie, have you been talking to Alison about Samuel?”

The expression of guilt on her face was ludicrously obvious. “No. I mean. Not really. A bit, I suppose. Now and again. She guessed—”

“Oh my God, you have! You’ve been talking to Alison. I don’t believe it,” I gasped, rigid with fury. “What else have you told her?”

She shrank away from me, her eyes wide and round. “I didn’t mean—I just—I wanted her advice about Samuel, you see, and—and—” She swallowed; her face turned red. “Christ, Q, you are
such
a prima donna!” She stood up to face me, robe hanging open, hair loose and tousled. “You don’t want Alison to know anything! But she just wants to help, you know. She’s worried about you, she’s on the other side of the world, but you cut her out, you behave as though she’s some sort of monster. What, because she has a nice house and she dresses her children in white?”

“Jeanie, I can’t even believe you’re saying this,” I retorted. “You know Alison as well as I do—or at least, I thought you did. She’s not just any old sister, she’s—Alison. She’s been itching to prove I’m failing at motherhood for months. I thought we were on the same side; now it seems you’ve been going behind my back for—how long?”

“For bloody years!” (We were both panting now.) “If I want advice, I go to Alison actually, did you know that? I don’t go to you Q, because you just tell me to ‘grow up.’ Alison actually listens and tries to help. She gives me practical advice.
You
condescend to me. And you think Alison’s superior? Take a fucking look in the mirror, sister dear!

“And you tell everyone—like those rich people we met, Adjile and Lily—that you and I feel the same way about her. “We think her art is terrible. We don’t really like her.’ Did you ever think to ask
me
before you announced my opinion to the world? Of course not! As it happens, Q, I think some of her recent stuff has been bloody good, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. She’s had some really good write-ups in the press, not that you’d know anything about it. I think if one of the three of us is going to be remembered fifty years from now, it’s going to be
her.”

“Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize she had her very own fan club. With you as the president.” The floor seemed to be dropping away under my feet; I was so tired, so utterly bone-shattered, and now
this!

“Don’t belittle me, Q.” Jeanie was mutinous. “Don’t put me down. I’m not an idiot.”

She swooped out of the kitchen in a violent
swoosh
of pink velvet, robe tie trailing behind her. I stared, baffled, at the space where she had been sitting.

39

Jeanie

H
ello.” His voice was warm and husky. “Can you meet me at the juice bar across the street?”

I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom, knees hugged to my chest, sobbing in the aftermath of a vast, terrible fight with my sister Q, when the phone began to ring. I waited, expecting her to pick it up, but she didn’t; eventually I went and answered it. The apartment was empty.

His voice came pouring like thick honey into my ears.
Can you meet me?
Of course, I murmured, forgetting Q, forgetting the two nerve-straining days of no phone call, in a second, forgetting ev
erything. I threw myself into the shower and into some clothes. (Not too many, of course. Just an olive-green top trimmed with lace and a black skirt made from chiffon that might just blow away in a breeze. Hair up, neckline down; the old adage. He wanted to see me!)

This is too soon, it’s too soon after Dave, I shouldn’t be doing this
—the thought thrummed in my brain as I dodged the cabs that dart through the traffic like so many tropical fish, and flew across the road. I saw him waiting for me on a barstool by the window of the juice bar, and all conscious thoughts evaporated from my mind. He looked up through long lashes, his expression amused, quizzical. One hand was loosely in his trouser pocket, the other casually, delicately, twirling a straw. He stood up as I came in, a funny little show of old manners, then stooped down to kiss me, swiftly, on the lips.

I sat down on the stool next to him, wishing away the space between us, although he arranged himself so that his knees were touching my hip. Hot as sunburn. “So?” His voice was low. I had to bend closer to listen.

“So?” I returned, pulling slightly away again, playfully stupid. He put his head on one side, looking quizzical. “I’ll have something—with raspberries, I think,” I went on, demurely, ponytail nodding.

He went to order my drink, appearing a few moments later with a tall pink beaker armed with a swizzle stick topped with a plastic raspberry. “There, is that what you wanted?” Standing behind me, he murmured the words in my ear; I could feel his hot breath on my skin. Everything prickled.
I don’t know you, I don’t know you
…For a second the thoughts throbbed inside me, then I looked up into his face.

“What did you tell your sister?” he asked.

“I didn’t say—er—anything,” I replied, a little consciously. “She’s—out.” I investigated his broad, handsome face. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

He grinned at me. “I’m skiving—isn’t that what you Brits say? I’m on my way to visit a client uptown, the car found itself on Second
Avenue, and I couldn’t bring myself to sail straight past your apartment building. Driver’s waiting over there for me, actually.”

He nodded out the window. A long black car was parked on the street corner; a man in a black suit with dark glasses was standing beside it, smoking a cigarette while drumming his fingers against the roof. He seemed hot and uncomfortable in the morning sun.

“He looks warm,” I said, feeling sorry for him.

“That’s New York for you. It’s been a terrible summer. Listen, I’m sorry I was out of town this weekend. When can we have dinner?”

“Well” (I sighed heavily), “we’re going back up to your house in Connecticut the day after tomorrow, so…”

“Tonight or tomorrow, then,” he replied, musing. “But tonight is difficult for me, it would have to be late, I’ve got a midnight deadline for filing papers at the courthouse. I’ll have more time tomorrow night…” He pulled his organizer out of his pocket, and flicked through some screens with the stylus. I can honestly say it was the first time I’d ever been out with someone who had to use a BlackBerry to schedule me in.

“It’s a shame you’re a lawyer,” I said, watching him. “The hours, I mean. Q complains about them all the time. And Tom too. I don’t know how you live like this. So little free time. Were you working all weekend? I mean it’s like that film,
The Firm,
isn’t it?”

He laughed. “Not really. And yes, I had a series of meetings with some people from IBM.”

I blushed and twiddled my fingers. “But you do have to defend all kinds of awful people.”

“What do you mean?” He looked surprised.

I blushed even more deeply. “Well—murderers and fraudsters, I mean. You have to take on their cases just because they’re rich. Isn’t it terribly unfair?”

Paul had drawn back from me slightly, but after a moment his face relaxed in a smile, and he took my hand. “Jeanie, you’ll have to come with me into the office sometime,” he said. “You might be sur
prised. It’s not just defending ‘murderers and fraudsters,” as you put it. Firms don’t just do criminal law. And besides, there are plenty of innocent people…”

“Well, but that’s just it, they aren’t all innocent, are they? I mean, how do you feel, defending someone you know is guilty of raping a woman, and he has the money to hire you, and she doesn’t? Or some company has dumped tons of toxic waste into a river, and half the residents glow bright green in the dark, but they can’t afford you while the company can? Isn’t that terrible?” It wasn’t clear to me that this was the best line to take with him. But for some reason I was cross, I didn’t want him to think I was impressed by his big Lincoln town car, and my mouth kept on going.

Paul stared at me, brows deeply pronounced. “Is this a settled antipathy to lawyers, Jeanie? Or just the opinion of the moment?” he asked coolly.

It was the BlackBerry that finally did it, I think. It made him seem so unaccountably alien.

“No, I mean—well, I’m just asking…”

“And that’s what I like about you.” Leaning even closer, he took my hand. “Listen, Jeanie, some time we can talk properly about this, I can explain more about what I do. It’ll have to be over dinner, though; I can’t keep my client waiting any longer. So you’ll have to keep imagining me as Satan incarnate for the next twenty-four hours, I suppose. What do you think: are you willing to eat with the devil tomorrow night?”

He was utterly beautiful, and he was looking back at me with an expression that was frankly desiring. Vague ideas of lawyers and their wrongs evaporated entirely from my mind. I lifted my face, and for answer—feeling nervous, a tiny bit shocked at my own daring—I touched my lips to his.

A businessman on the stool on the other side of Paul hastily lifted up his newspaper; at a nearby table, two thin girls with lashings of
hair giggled and muttered something spiteful. I vaguely noticed their expressions, and for about a second I felt a tiny part of me that was uneasy in the bottom of my stomach quite acutely, like a pea beneath the mattress. And then it dissolved, or maybe I simply didn’t notice it anymore. Even in a brightly lit juice bar at ten o’clock on a Monday morning Paul made me think of mojitos and salsa. You just wish
you
had a man like this, I telegraphed to the spiteful girls with a small, smug smile. He had his hand on the small of my back, where the olive-green top met the waistband of my chiffon nonsense, and he was pulling me half off my stool into him. I had the same hazy feeling of the other night, as if I was losing myself in his body.

He pulled away at last, and rested his forehead against the top of my head. “This isn’t the place,” he whispered into my eyes (I could see his chest thumping through his perfect white shirt, the cotton vibrating gently to its rhythm). “And I really have to go…” He reached down and lifted up my chin with delicate, gentle fingers. “We can’t forget about Brett outside in the heat now, can we?” he said, laughing. “I’ll call you later today.” I nodded, or maybe I shook my head, I don’t quite know, and he kissed me again, hard, then reached down and picked up a briefcase from under the counter. I saw Brett chuck away his cigarette butt as Paul approached, then smartly open the door. Paul got in, and his tall form was immediately lost behind the car’s smoky windows. The long black limousine pulled off into the traffic.

I started drinking my weird raspberry drink without really knowing what I was doing. I think I swirled the swizzle stick around a lot, and I clearly spent a great deal of time pleating a napkin. When I eventually glanced up, it was to discover that the newspaper-reading businessman was looking at me as if he was wondering if I offered the same services to all men in suits. The girls at the nearby table looked as if they wanted to strike up a conversation. The little people with white-and-blue hats behind the counter were glower
ing at me as if I’d besmirched their work environment. I hastily put down the beaker (secreting the raspberry swizzle stick in my handbag as I did so, as a small memento), then slid off my stool and left.

I walked slowly to Q’s flat. She was back now, and was sitting with a newspaper spread out in front of her. “Just popped out to get—um-some hankies,” I announced, not very convincingly, to her poker-straight back.

“We have plenty of Kleenex,” she replied suspiciously; “right
there,”
and she pointed to a large, rainbow-colored box smack in the middle of the table.

“Well, I needed some pocket ones,” I explained, feeling as guilty as if—well, as if I was having an affair.

My sister looked dour. “Another secret, Jeanie?” she asked sarcastically, and then she turned round, and went back to her newspaper.

40

Q

I
t took me three attempts to reach Alison. She was out, she explained, preparing for a meeting at the Arts Council to discuss potential funding for a new exhibition of young women sculptors “seeking to capture the life force.” I was so irritated, so pent up, so desperate to vent my frustration on her, I could hardly sit still for
the four hours I was forced, by circumstance, to wait. I remembered a time when I was eight, when she told our mother—something or other, I don’t even remember now—but it wasn’t true, and I was desperate to accuse her. It felt just like that.

“What the hell have you and Jeanie been talking about?” I began furiously, when she eventually picked up my call; there was an astonished pause.

“I’m sorry—?”

“I know you’ve been talking about me. I know she’s been telling you all about Samuel. About his colic.”

“Is that so terrible?” Alison’s tone was mild as milk toast. “She’s very worried about you, darling. And so am I. We talk about you, and I talk with Mother. We wonder how best to help you. Would you rather we didn’t?”

“You know, Alison—” I was almost breathless, choking with rage, but struggling to force my thoughts into coherence—“you know I find your intervention
very
difficult to take.”

“Yes, I do know that, darling.” There was a long pause; through the faint sound of her quickened breathing I could hear that damn clock of hers in the background. It was an heirloom, a wedding present from Sir Evelyn Farquhar, granddaddy and patriarch of the Farquhar family, and its resonant tick, marching on inexorably through the centuries, reminded me of everything I found so frustrating about my sister and her new life.

“You don’t understand the first thing about me, Alison, but you use everything you
do
know to get one over on me,” I continued wrathfully. “You would just love to know that I’m a disastrous mother, wouldn’t you? Q may have a career, you can say to all your friends, but she’s simply terrible at bringing up a baby. It doesn’t come naturally to her, somehow—”

“Oh,
don’t
be ridiculous—”

“And the idea that you’ve conscripted Jeanie in this endeavor makes me just furious.”

“You’ve made your feelings about
that
perfectly clear. Q is angry with Alison. Here we are again. I thought we were starting to understand each other a bit better during your pregnancy, when I came out to visit you. But obviously not.”
Tick, tick, tick
; Granddaddy Farquhar marched on.

“No. And we won’t be making any progress as long as you try to undermine me.” I matched her tone, feeling triumphant.

There was a long silence; Alison was clearly debating her next move. When it came, though, it wasn’t what I expected at all.

“Geoffrey had colic,” she blurted out, and at that moment the clock struck loudly in the background, a deep, sonorous bass that for a second dominated everything.
Bong, bong, bong
…the tones were rich and golden, the clock’s voice filling her room, my ear, with confident noise. It was eight o’clock in London. Even as I took in the meaning of her words I found myself wondering where her husband was.

“He had colic? Really?” It is a sign of how poor our relationship had become that I didn’t quite believe her.

“Really.”

“I—
when?”

“From about five weeks to four months, or thereabouts,” she went on. “I’m not making this up, Q, so you needn’t sound so suspicious! It was the worst experience of my life. By far. I thought I was going to go mad. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Maybe—maybe in a sense I did, looking back. One night I was so desperate to sleep I—I almost threw him out the window. It was about five o’clock in the morning, he’d been screaming for the best part of forty-eight hours, I hadn’t slept for two months, and I was right on the edge.
Right
on the edge. It was only the feel of the night air on my skin, when I actually opened the window, that stopped me.”

I took this in. “You never said anything,” I said at last.

“No.”
Tick, tick, tick
. She laughed mirthlessly. “Like you, I suppose.”

I tried to think what to say. “Alison, I—”

“I mean, how could I even
think
about hurting my son?” she cut
in; to my utter astonishment, tears flooded her voice. “Every time I look at him, even now Q, I think about what I almost did. I remember how detached I’d become, how I—almost hated him. I suppose at least” (she half-laughed, half-gasped) “I know the worst part of myself now. The bottom; the blackest part. I couldn’t explain it all to Gregory, you see, he’s not—” she stopped herself—“I mean, he’s a wonderful father in lots of ways, but he couldn’t bear it when the baby cried. He said he had too much to do at work, he just couldn’t bear it. He wanted me to make it all go away, make the crying stop. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t!