The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (7 page)

I bent down to pick up my bag and the man next to me said, ‘Rather an apt place to show that film, don’t you think?’

I must have looked puzzled.

‘Doctor Frankenstein could do his experiments here...’

He nodded his head towards the examination table that stood in front of the screen and the scrubbing sink at the side by the door.

‘Ah, yes, I see...’

‘I’m Markus. Can I buy you a coffee?’

‘I’m Heja.’ We shook gloved hands.

‘Do you know somewhere round here?’

We walked through the cold night air to a coffee shop and found a table near the back. I took my gloves off. My hands were numb in spite of them. He brought two coffees and a ham sandwich to our table and sat back in his chair, his eyes full on me. I looked down at my purple and blue tweed skirt, smoothing it over my knees. His eyes were extraordinary.

‘It will snow tonight,’ I said, feeling foolish as I stirred sugar into my coffee and held the cup to warm my hands.

He said, ‘Did you enjoy the film?’

‘Yes, I did. It was sad, though. Why did everyone laugh? I didn’t think it was funny at all.’

‘It had its moments.’

‘I liked the monster and I hated his persecutors. Even the bride they made for him rejects him. His last hope of contact with another...’

‘So he destroys them both, saying, “We belong to the dead.”
By the way, did you want any of this sandwich?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘If you like them, they’re showing classic movies late on Friday nights on the main channel,’ he said.

‘I don’t like watching films on television. I think they should be projected.’

‘I thought you might be a purist.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because you plait your hair so perfectly...’

And we were together from that night for the next nine years.

I looked into her chaotic study again. This was the room I needed time to go through, not tonight. I could feel my power growing as I walked silently around her flat, unknown to her. I am so much stronger than she is. I had to go into her room once more before I left. Still she slept and was oblivious as I walked to the side of the bed so that I stood inches from her. I could see the rise and fall of her chest and the puffy, almost childlike quality of her sleeping face.

JUNE

This morning I had to present my proposal on the World Heritage Sites guide to Philip Parr and to Victoria. She is our head of PR and Marketing and wears these sexy little suits, has a flirty style with Philip and I’m never sure quite how much influence she wields with him. He’s a known womanizer. She’s friendly enough towards me, though. I was well prepared and arrived early. He kept us both waiting outside his office for ten minutes, so I took the time to show Victoria the board I had made up. It was a picture and text layout on Siena as a sample article.

I was fine while explaining my ideas to Victoria. The moment Philip called us into his office my stomach went into spasm and my mouth went dry. He stood up behind his desk and indicated that we should sit on the stylish, uncomfortable chairs in front of his desk. He leaned back in his executive swivel chair and said I had ten minutes to make my pitch.

I had spent hours making that display board on Siena and I handed it to him now.

‘There are three hundred and eighty plus World Heritage Sites in Europe and they include some of the greatest architectural masterpieces. These are the buildings people want to see when they go abroad. They like to come home and say they saw that important building. So we will produce an accessible guide that gives our readers all the information they need to understand and appreciate these sites.

‘The guide will be visually strong with stunning pictures. Some pictures can be commissioned and we’ll get the rest from existing sources. We’ll put in key information on the history of the sites and the style of architecture. The guides can run as pull-outs in the magazine for a year. I would like them to have a reference quality to them, so that people will want to collect them and keep them.’

He looked at my display board for several minutes.

‘Nice idea, Kathy, but this would cost a lot. Think of the travel and hotel bills,’ he said. ‘We’d have to pay a photographer and a writer to go to all these sites.’

I had known he would raise the subject of cost.

‘Yes, there are costs entailed. We can use local photographers. I have contacts all over Europe, some very good names. The team here would do all the writing as part of their core work. I’ve done a draft budget and I think the advertising sales will exceed the costs.’

I handed him a spreadsheet with my calculations and I gave a copy to Victoria too, as I wanted to keep her onside. Philip examined the sheet for several long minutes. When he’s thinking his whole face tightens and he purses his mouth in an unpleasant way. I’ve never really liked him. He’s one of those men that people describe as ‘political’, and by political they mean devious and into power. As the silence stretched out I started to feel angry with myself. I try too hard; I know I try too hard. I wished I didn’t care so much. I wished I could be cooler about things.

Finally, he put the spreadsheet down on his desk and he kept me waiting while he said, ‘What do you think, Victoria?’

‘I think it’s got a lot of potential. There are some very glamorous sites on the list. I’m sure we could sell a lot of travel advertising. And it will have a long shelf life too. I might be able to do a tie-in with one of the Sunday supplements, a competition – you know, win a trip to the historic city of Siena.’

‘We wouldn’t need to send writers to every site,’ I said, hoping to clinch the deal. ‘We could get a lot of material from other sources.’

‘OK; I like the idea. I want to check these figures. In principle, it’s a yes. I’ll need you to do a presentation to the board. They like to be kept informed and they’ll need persuading on the costs.’

‘Of course; delighted to do that. Thank you, Philip.’

He’s famously hard-headed so this was quite a victory. Victoria and I left the office together.

‘Well done!’ she said. ‘Your team just lucked out.’

‘We all did, and there are more than enough great sites to keep everyone happy. Thanks for your support today, I really appreciate it.’

My euphoria lasted all afternoon. I couldn’t tell the team about it just yet because Philip had said ‘in principle’ and I didn’t want any idle chatter about it to derail the project. I was feeling so cheerful, though, so I treated them all to coffees and a box of home-made cupcakes from the local patisserie. I chose vanilla and strawberry cakes and bought one for Victoria too. Aisha and I sat in my office and we ate the deliciously soft cakes, which were topped with sweet buttercream. I told Aisha in confidence about what Philip had said.

Then I sat and wrote notes for most of the afternoon. Ideas for what should be included in the guide came thick and fast. I planned to cover the Portuguese sites myself. It would mean that Markus and I could make that long-promised trip to my parents in Lisbon and I could show him all my special places there.

I was home before Markus and as soon as I heard his key in the lock I rushed up to him in the hall. I’d been looking forward to telling him my news.

‘Philip agreed,’ I said. ‘It’s on.’

‘That’s really good news.’

I wanted a hug and stood in front of him. He didn’t reach for me so I initiated the hug and we stood in the hall holding each other.

‘Do you want some wine?’ I said. ‘To celebrate...’

‘Better not, I’ve got to work tonight.’

‘Well, I think I will.’

I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine, talking all the time.

‘He only agreed to us doing the really important sites from scratch. I had to tell him we would use archive sources for a lot of places, so it’s not a complete triumph. If it takes off, who knows?’

‘You’ve come up with a good formula.’

‘Thanks, I’m so relieved. I was worried my ideas had stopped coming. I can start on the Portuguese sites soon. We can have that week in Lisbon. What bliss...’

Now he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face. ‘You know I can’t come with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not. I’ve got a mountain of work to do on the Durham project.’

‘It would only be five days away. I could show you all my favourite places.
Please
come.’

‘I can’t, Kathy. I wouldn’t relax for a minute. You’ll have a great time and your parents can spend time with Billy.’

‘They want to get to know you too, they really do.’

‘Sorry, that will just have to wait. I’ve got to work on the project flat out for the next two months.’

It all sounded so reasonable. After all, he has his career and I have mine. Yet like a small child denied a longed-for treat I started to cry. I couldn’t stop myself. I stood in front of him with tears pouring down my cheeks and I felt foolish and useless and knew my tears would alienate him.

‘This is silly, Kathy. You’re tired and overwrought. The visit will do you good. I wish I could come but I can’t. Now I
must
get on with my drawings.’

He walked into his workroom. I sat at the kitchen table and cried for a long time. In my agitation, reaching for the box of tissues, I knocked over and broke a lovely little glazed apple green jug, which had been a present from Aunt Jennie when I moved into the flat. I wasn’t just crying about Markus not coming to Lisbon with me, I was crying for my lost self. Too much had happened to me too quickly: the final break with Eddie; meeting Markus; getting pregnant and the birth of my precious boy. I was tired, of course, yet it was the lack of warmth from Markus that was starting to hurt me. I loved him and I wanted him to be kinder towards me, as he had been when I was pregnant. We’d had a special feeling between us then and it couldn’t have gone for good.

He had said ‘a good formula’ about my idea for the guide. ‘Formula’ was such a cold word somehow. He hadn’t hugged me properly or wanted to celebrate. Eddie would have reacted differently. He would have hugged me tightly and insisted we go to the pub at once to toast my success. Then we would both have drunk far too much, and I couldn’t cope with that either, could I?

I had this sudden memory of Eddie. I’d just got back from work and could hear loud music on the radio from our sitting room in our old flat. I walked in there to find him lying on the sofa, singing along with the radio at the top of his voice. He grinned at me and I knew at once that he was drunk. I saw that his right hand was bleeding. I turned the radio down.

‘What happened?’

‘This guy was being a cunt to his girlfriend, pushing her around, so I smacked him.’

‘Your hand...!’

I went into the kitchen and found a packet of frozen peas in the freezer. I sat down next to him on the sofa and held the packet against his bleeding knuckles. He winced as I touched his hand and went on singing. I felt such a mixture of emotions as I sat there looking at him. I was angry with him for drinking and getting into another fight, yet I found myself also loving him for defending the woman who was being abused. When Eddie got drunk he could get aggressive with other men. He had a real old-fashioned thing about how women should be treated and he would never have laid a finger on a woman. He despised men who hurt women.

The phone rang and it was Heja. I tried to pull myself together quickly and blew my nose on a tissue

‘I am sorry to phone you at home. Could I have tomorrow off? I am sorry the notice is so short.’

She gave no further explanation, which was very like Heja. I didn’t mind as I didn’t want to prolong the conversation.

‘It’s fine to call me at home, Heja. Will you have all your stuff in by Friday?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘Then certainly take tomorrow off and I’ll see you on Friday.’

I put the phone down and looked up, and Markus was standing in the doorway. Why did he look at me so intently? Was he trying to work out if my emotional outburst had spent itself so that it was now safe to come back into the kitchen? He walked over to the table and picked up the three broken pieces of the little green jug.

‘I can mend this for you,’ he said. ‘I know how much you like it.’

‘Can you?’ I sniffed back a tear.

‘Yes, look, the breaks are clean. I can glue it and it will be as good as new.’

‘Thank you.’

He wrapped the pieces carefully in kitchen roll.

‘We ought to eat something,’ he said.

Billy started to cry and I got up to get him. ‘Would pizza be OK? I’m bushed,’ I said.

When I came back into the kitchen, carrying Billy, Markus was taking two fillets of plaice out of the freezer.

‘We both need to eat properly,’ he said.

‘I’ll do that. Just let me change Billy and then I’ll put them in the oven. You get back to work.’

When I first met Markus I thought he was so strong and sure of himself. I had seen how he dominated that conference discussion in Newcastle. And he had so much integrity too. Here was a man I could feel safe with at last. He had good values, he was practical and he didn’t let people push him around. There is a down side to his strength. It’s an inflexible strength that he maintains by shutting people out. He has started to shut me out too, and yet I know that something in his life has made him unhappy. If only he would let me approach this sore patch, whatever it is, I know we could get close and tender again as we were in the early months of my pregnancy.

I carried Billy into the bathroom. I can never get it warm in here because it has tiles that run halfway up the walls and a polished wood floor as I can’t bear carpets in bathrooms. I took Billy’s changing mat and all the paraphernalia into the kitchen and changed him on the rug by the dresser. His latest discovery is that he can suck his toes and he put his left big toe into his mouth and it made me laugh. I left him lying there and washed my hands. The oven takes an age to heat up because it’s old. Dinner would be late again. I collected the laundry basket from the bathroom and started to fill the washing machine. The phone rang again and it was Fran, my childminder.