The Gap of Time (9 page)

Milo's door was open. Leo went inside and pushed the door shut with his body. The night-light was on, casting its moonbeams across the wall.

Leo laid Milo down in the rucked-up bed. He was suddenly tired. So tired. He eased Milo gently over to the wall and got in beside him, pulling the covers up over them both. His son put his arm across his father's chest. The small, determined warmth of him was like sleep. It was sleep. Leo began to drift away, his eyes closing, his breath slowing.

When he woke up it wouldn't be night. When he woke up it would be different.

Don't be afraid.

MiMi was lying in the hospital bed, looking at the ceiling.

She knew she had to keep still. If she moved her wings she would topple the houses into the street. But the houses had toppled, hadn't they?

How had the angel fallen into the courtyard? That hadn't been explained—the sudden drop, the sudden folding of wings to stop them breaking.

And was the angel alone in the courtyard?

They had given her an injection to make her sleepy. An opiate of some kind. She was part dream, part one who dreams.

It is never fully dark in a hospital room. Never quiet. She heard the call bell from the room next door and the nurse coming down the corridor. The baby was breathing quietly.

She wanted to adjust her pillow.

What had happened to the cushion stuffed with the angel's feathers?

The door opened. The nurse deftly fastened the wide band round MiMi's upper arm and took the blood-pressure reading. The machine beeped.

“Do you believe in angels?” said MiMi.

The nurse was African. She belonged to an evangelical church. “Let me show you something,” she said. She pulled back the curtains. MiMi could see the old church outside the window. “Look up high,” said the nurse. The church had a clock tower. On top of the tower, one at each compass point, were four stone angels. “You see?” said the nurse. “How they see it all? The cars going by, the men and women on the streets. All the hope and the heartbreak. Yes, that is what they see. And though the earth is lost, she will be found.

“Whatever is lost will be found.”

Leo was talking to his gardener, Tony Gonzales.

“Fifty large, Tony; you can retire. All you have to do is take the baby to Xeno.”

Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money.

Leo was persuasive. He had the story all worked out. Start again. He couldn't raise another man's child, not when it was his best friend—his best man at his wedding—who had betrayed him. MiMi was ill, guilty, distracted. She didn't know what to do next. Surely Tony could understand that? Yes, Leo said he had spoken to Xeno. Yes, Leo said Xeno had agreed to take the child.

But still Tony looked puzzled. It was all moving too fast. He was a gardener. Nature takes time.

“So why does he not come himself?”

“Tony, Tony, how would you feel in my situation? I never want to see Xeno again. And I never want MiMi to see him again. Understand?”

Tony understood. He was sixty-two. His parents had come to England from Mexico in the 1950s. They had eloped together in Xalapa—she from a convent school, his father from the military. His father had found work slum-clearing for housing in the East End of London. He had been killed on a building site when Tony was two. Soon after, too soon after, his mother married the foreman of the site—and Tony always believed that man had killed his father; there are many ways of killing someone—a block of concrete falling from a crane is just one.

There were more children. Tony was neglected. Then beaten. His stepfather didn't want him. His mother couldn't protect him. The blues and yellows in her Xalapa soul had dirtied down to English grey. She was indifferent, then depressed. Tony had left home at sixteen, slept in a hostel and got a low-paid job sweeping leaves in the royal parks. But he loved plants and he soon learned. He studied for a horticulture degree at the Open University. He never married. He didn't trust human nature. Plants were better. When he retired from the parks at sixty, as a senior gardener, he had taken a part-time job with Leo and Sicilia.

He managed the garden in Little Venice and the planting and landscaping at the offices. Lately, he had been working for Pauline too. He liked Pauline. When he worked in her garden he tied up a bouquet of stems, leaves, flowers, whatever was in season, and left it in water in the watering can by the back door. She made him think—almost—that…perhaps.

And Pauline liked Tony. He was built like a small bear. Strong arms. Hands that were never quite clean. He always wore a tie—checked shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows and a wool tie neatly at the collar and tucked in at the third button. He was a man from another time.

Pauline was a woman of her time. She hadn't had the leisure for a relationship. She had been a career woman all her life. She noted there was no such thing as a career man. She had made her choices. No regrets. But there were losses. There always are.

“You get it, Tony, don't you? New starts for old.”

“But Xeno has his own son. He has a wife. What will she say?”

“She's not his wife. They have an arrangement. You want to give me a lecture on family values or will you take the cash and do the job?”

“When do I have to leave?”

“That's more like it! I'll fly you Business Class. Book a decent car at the airport. Get you a new suit. Looking the part is half the battle. Say you're her grandfather. Be confident.”

“But when do I leave?”

“Soon. Soon. And, Tony, if you say anything—one word—to Pauline, no deal, OK?”

Tony felt uneasy. He trusted Pauline. He didn't trust Leo. So why…? But he put the thought aside.

Getting a passport for Perdita was easy. Leo was on the birth certificate as her father. MiMi had registered the birth. Even the photograph was simple because Pauline kept emailing them to him.

Leo hadn't seen MiMi for three months. Milo spent half his time at Pauline's with his mother and the other half at home with Leo. Leo explained this as MiMi needing time to get better.

“Why can't she get better with us?”

“She will do…soon.”

“So, Leo,” said Pauline, barging into his office as she always did, the cunt, “how long is this going to go on?”

Leo didn't look up. “Is that a real question?”

“Can you stop behaving like a schmendrick and get a DNA test so that we can all stop this?”

“I didn't start it. I can't stop it.”

“You need to know the truth.”

“I don't need to know what I know.”

“You some kind of psychic?”

“Can't you ever shut up?”

“Why don't you ask me how your wife is? Or do you know that via your spooky psychic powers too?”

Leo got up. At least he was much taller than Pauline.

“How's MiMi?”

“How do you think she is?”

“I have no idea—you told me to ask—so tell me.”

“She's fragile, hurt, humiliated. I'd never talk to you again if I were her.”

“She isn't talking to me.”

“She's still there for you, Leo, even after all the murdering. Why won't you take a DNA test?”

“So that MiMi can have her humiliation written on a piece of paper?”

“What, you want to hang it round her neck with a giant letter A for Adulterer written on it?”

“The baby is Xeno's.”

“I don't know how to handle this madness, Leo. Look, just come over later, will you? Sit down. Talk. Please…”

“Does MiMi want to talk to me?”

“Just come over.”

Leo left work early. He picked Milo up from school. “Is Mummy coming home with us today?”

“Not today. I'm coming with you to see Mummy.”

Milo was pleased. They talked about football in the car and Leo promised to take him to a game at the weekend. By the time he got to Pauline's he had almost forgotten, or some part of him had forgotten, that MiMi had left him, or had he left her? He couldn't remember.

As he parked the Range Rover and Milo went running up the steps, Leo saw MiMi in the window. The short, dark, heavy hair. The red lipstick. She was wearing an oversized check shirt. He stood still, just looking at her. He realised his face was wet. Was it raining?

“Daddy! Come on!”

Leo followed Milo in. MiMi bent and kissed her son, ruffled his hair. “Go and get changed and see you in the kitchen. Go on!
Dépêche-toi!
”

Milo hesitated—his father still at the door, his mother at the foot of the stairs.

Neither parent spoke. Milo stood between them like a lighthouse between the rocks and the shipwreck.

MiMi opened the door into the drawing room. Leo followed behind her. He lifted his hand, put it down. He lifted his hand and touched her shoulder. She flinched.
She doesn't want me.

She took something from the console table, turned and gave it to Leo. It looked like a letter.

“I can't talk to you, Leo. Not yet. Pauline…she only wants the best for us. I said I'd see you and then I realised I can't. I wrote you this.”

Milo came running down the stairs in his tracksuit. He saw his parents. He felt it all. His open face closed. He went quietly down to the kitchen.

“He's confused,” said MiMi.

“I want him to live with me,” said Leo.

“Pardon?”

“I want custody of Milo.”

Even as Leo was saying what he said he couldn't believe that such idiot words could come out of the idiot mouth in his idiot face when all he wanted to do was put his arms round his wife and cry until his tears made a river that would float them both away from this landlocked place.

MiMi left the room.

Leo opened the letter.

Dear Leo,

Does time make fools of us all? I was not easy to marry, I know that. I tried not to marry you because neither of us have a happy-ever-after story written inside us. We both come from broken families. We are wary as wild animals.

You made your way the way men do in the outside world. I was lucky because I have music. Music is the world inside me. I am a performer, but whether or not I perform, the music is there.

I know you find me hard to read. We used to joke that you never learned to read music. You said right at the beginning of our relationship that men find women impossible to know. Do you remember?

Do I know you? I thought I did. I know the way you are vulnerable and fearless all at the same time. The way that nothing seems too hard for you. The way you grab life. Your big mouth.

I have felt safe with you and that was unexpected. I don't feel safe anymore and that is making me ill.

Did you not want this baby? Why not? Why did we not talk about that? I thought when you saw her you would love her.

These last few months I was sure you were having an affair. You have been so distant. And all the time you thought I was having an affair. And all the time neither of us spoke. I guess I had decided to wait until you got over it. Or came in one day to tell me you were leaving.

I am married to you, Leo. I would not use Xeno to end our marriage. If I no longer loved you I would leave you. Do you not know that about me? Not even that?

And do you not know that about him?

Is it because you would do such things that you imagine it is what I am doing to you? What he is doing to you?

When did I lose your love?

Leo put down the letter. There was an old note folded in the envelope. A wine stain on the back. He opened it. It was his handwriting.

Leo stood in Pauline's wide-windowed drawing room. There was a piano in the bay. Pauline had played since she was a girl. On the music stand were some practice pieces of Milo's. Then he saw the manuscript paper. MiMi was writing a song. What were the words? “
Abandon ship, baby. Before it's too late. Jump ship, baby, don't wait. The threat's not yours, it's mine. We're caught in a gap of time
.”

Scribbled on the top was “PERDITA.”

Leo took it.

A week later Tony was gardening at Pauline's when she came out of the house carrying the baby. “Is Leo home? He isn't answering his phone.”

“He's home,” said Tony. “Keeps himself to himself these days, y'know.”

“There's an old saying,” said Pauline. “What's past help should be past grief.”

“That's Shakespeare,” said Tony.

“
The Winter's Tale
,” said Pauline.

She went down to the Audi on the drive. Tony put down his fork and, coming after her, said—too suddenly, because he had been thinking about it for days—“Would you like to go to a movie tonight?”

“Do you mean me?” said Pauline.

“Yes, I do,” said Tony.

“Because you were looking straight into that bush,” said Pauline.

Tony looked at the gravel. “There's a Lauren Bacall season on at the Everyman. Tonight is
To Have and Have Not
.”

“I'd like that,” said Pauline. “Yes.”

Tony watched Pauline drive away. He could feel his heart beating.