The Missing World (29 page)

“You don’t have any idea, do you, what this is all about? It’s not very complicated.” Her voice cracked, then steadied. “I love Hazel. And unfortunately, I’m in love with you.”

Lunch, a sour memory, rose in his throat. He swallowed and swallowed again, no longer hearing the watch, breath, traffic, any sound save his own bubbling disgust. How could she? At the same time, all the bewildering twists and turns of the last two months fell into a straight line. She trapped me like a fly in her sticky web.

Maud raised her eyes, and it was his turn to drop his gaze. “I know it’s hopeless,” she went on, speaking more quickly now. “You feel about Hazel the way I feel about you but, as you say, you’re fond of me. Which is better than nothing.”

Briefly, curiosity eclipsed disgust. “How can you stand it?”

“What choice do I have?” she fired back. “It would be nice if the world were a binary operation, either/or, but it doesn’t work like that. You love Hazel, and you find me attractive. One ought to make the other impossible. Instead the two coexist side by side. If I sat on your lap right now, you’d get a hard-on—even though you hate what I’m saying.”

Involuntarily, he glanced down. His head was swimming
with the sense of everything changing from black to white, round to square, earth to fire. “I always thought you disapproved of me,” he said.

“I was worried Hazel might guess—you know how intuitive she is—and last autumn, after she left you … well, I got my hopes up. It drove me mad, the way you’d suggest we meet and then all you’d talk about was Hazel. As if you’d do anything not to be with me.” From the front of the shop came the door rattling, one last desperate customer. “Did something happen the other night?”

“The other night?” An arrow parted the clouds.

“When she had that massive seizure. She seemed to be getting better. Then suddenly she was right back in the thick of it.”

He babbled about setbacks, side effects, new medicine.

Maud watched. “I’d been wondering”—her tongue slid over her lower lip—“if you might’ve forced yourself on her.”

After the headlines of the last few minutes, her tone was so quiet, so casual that it took a moment for her meaning to reach him. She’s mad, he thought, edging his chair back the final inch, absolutely barking.

Before he could protest, Maud was speaking again. “Ever since then she’s been in a terrible state. She keeps asking me to tell her the truth.”

“What do you mean, ‘state’?”

“She says she’s afraid of you. She doesn’t want to marry you, but she doesn’t know what else to do.” She leaned forward and, before he could protest, took his hands in hers. “I don’t think it’s going to work, Jonathan. And even if it does, so what? I left my husband while he was at the pub. Marriage doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee anymore.”

He pulled free of her grasp. “You don’t understand.” He glared at the row of files:
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE, SUPPLIERS, DEVELOPMENT, PROMOTION
. “Hazel loves me. When she came
to, I was the one she recognised, not you. Her illness makes her confused. I’ve messed things up between us—once, twice—but this time I’m going to do everything right.”

“Like make love with me?” Again her tongue slid over her lips.

There was nothing he could say: damned if he claimed it was a momentary lapse, damned if he didn’t. I should’ve accepted Finch’s offer of a bottle, he thought. “What did Mrs. Craig want?” he said. “And that roofer?”

“Let’s get out of here. Who’s minding Hazel?”

“The nurse’s sister. I called from the office and asked her to stay late.”

“Is that okay? Apparently Hazel didn’t show up for her massage, and no one answered the door. That’s why Mrs. Craig came round. She was worried and couldn’t remember the name of your company. The roofer gave her a lift.”

“Hazel probably just forgot. Everything was fine when I phoned a couple of hours ago. Charlotte said they might go for a walk. If there was any problem, she’d call Bernadette.”

Maud stood; he did too. In the small room her breath touched his face. She looked so sad that, for the first time since he seized her wrist, he found himself thinking not of Hazel or himself but of her. What had he done to deserve such devotion? Nothing. Poor Maud. It was a cruel, cosmic joke.

He followed her back into the shop, the buckets of flowers on one side, the ficus and ferns, ivies and cyclamens on the other. “Do you need to put things away?”

“No, all done.” She moved a couple of buckets closer together. “You know, once I was sitting on your sofa, checking through recipes, when you came and sat down beside me.… That was all it took.”

“Oh, Maud,” he said gently.

• • •

When Jonathan rang that morning, Charlotte had begun by refusing in spite of his offer of extra pay. I have plans, she said, and it was true. Given the crisis with Bernie, the debacle with Jason, the last thing she ought to be doing was rushing all over London, babysitting. Then he put Hazel on the line—Please, I know you’re madly busy—and Charlotte melted. Here was someone who wanted, even needed her.

At the house Jonathan greeted her with a twenty-pound note. “In case you want to pop out to the shops,” he had said and, as she took the money, brushed her palm with his fingers.

The gesture was so startling, so intimate, that for a moment Charlotte thought she’d dreamed it. Then he banged out of the front door, and she knew she hadn’t. Was he coming on to her, or something more sinister? She folded the note into her purse and headed upstairs.

Hazel was seated on the bed, fully dressed; no weeping in the pillow today. Is he gone, she asked, getting to her feet. At the kitchen table, she produced a list of some sort and poured out a fantastic story.

“Wait a minute,” said Charlotte. “You’re saying that last spring you discovered Jonathan had a child with an old girlfriend which he’d forgotten to mention. Then, in the autumn, you moved into your own flat, taking your desk, and that’s where you were living when you had the accident.”

Hazel nodded.

“And Jonathan pretended you’d been living here all along.”

“Exactly. Remember what you said about how he might like his version of the past to be the only one.”

“So where is the flat?”

“I was hoping,” Hazel said, “you’d help me to find out.”

This took two phone calls, one to directory enquiries and the second to the listed number where a man answered, and said that of course Hazel could come over to collect a jacket. “His
name’s Daniel,” Charlotte announced triumphantly. “Any time before four is fine.”

Then, seeing Hazel’s face, she shepherded her onto the sofa. “Read to me,” Hazel whispered, and she did. She was finishing the chapter on water rationing, when the phone rang and she had to summon all her actorly skills at the sound of Jonathan’s voice. An emergency at the office, he claimed. She could feel Hazel listening as they negotiated an extension of her day. Bollocks, this was going to push her over the edge. But, hanging up, she discovered Hazel galvanised rather than upset. Let’s go, she said. In the taxi the air tightened as if they were approaching a crucial audition. Charlotte knew she was hoping that the flat would bring back everything, good and bad, from the missing years.

If anything, the reverse occurred. Hazel showed no signs of recognition as they neared the house. Upstairs, she wandered from room to room, saying, “This is mine, I bought it in Bombay,” or “Here’s my desk,” but of her life in the flat not a single detail returned. Charlotte joined with the tenant, a dishevelled academic with juglike ears, in trying to cheer her. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Daniel said, and offered to start looking for new digs.

In the taxi on the way home, Hazel began to tremble. Is this a seizure, Charlotte asked apprehensively. No, Hazel said, this is rage. Back at the house, however, she had become curiously subdued and insisted on Scrabble. Later they ate supper in the living-room and Charlotte, on a whim, lined the bay with all the candles she could find.

When Jonathan arrived home, even later than he’d promised, it was clear that the pub had played a part in his emergency, but she could scarcely complain. She’d opened a bottle of wine at supper only to learn that Hazel wasn’t drinking and then, on impulse, while Jonathan was phoning a cab, she’d
lifted a second bottle from the wine rack into her bag. She could feel its satisfying weight in her bag now as the cab trundled down the Liverpool Road.

“Seventy-four?” the driver asked, his first words since she’d slid into the back seat. “Here we are.”

She stepped out of the car and—somehow the pavement wasn’t where she expected—grabbed the door to steady herself.

“All right?”

“Brill.”

A Coke can lay at her feet, and a strange spiky object which on second glance Charlotte recognised as an umbrella. Then the taxi drifted away and she was standing alone in the deserted street singing,

“Sail bonnie boat like a bird on the wing
Over the sea to Skye
.
Carry the lad that is born to be king
Over the sea to Skye …”

What came next? Bernie would know, Dad’s favourite song.

She began to rummage for her keys. After five minutes she set the Chardonnay on the doorstep and sat down to continue her search. Later this would seem like the one small sign of prescience: by not ringing the bell she had refrained from ratcheting Bernie’s wrath a notch higher. Ah, here they were, safety-pinned together, tangled in what proved to be a spring onion. She leaned back, the step above jutting into her spine. Smothered in clouds, the moon was hanging over St. Pancras. She would make her peace with Bernie. That was what the wine was for, a glass each and here’s to you and Rory. She was sorry she’d taken umbrage. Just the shock. Not to worry. As Bernie said, forget Cedric, forget Jason, she had loads of friends.

She drew a deep breath—
I must, I must
—and rose to her feet. Yes, she felt better. The brief rest, the dank air, the glimpse
of the moon, had revived her. The key turned smoothly on the first attempt. Inside was a line of black bags. Bernie must be making one of her periodic trips to the Oxfam shop. Typical, Charlotte thought. What else did you do to celebrate your husband’s return? She peered into the nearest bag and saw a black cardigan, not unlike one she owned. She stepped farther into the hall, lured by the next bag, and then, feeling a draft, went back to close the door.

No radio, no TV. Could Bernie already be asleep? Forgetting the bags—she’d check them out in the morning—she looked into the kitchen, then the living-room. She almost dropped the bottle when she saw her sister seated in an armchair. “Hey, Bernie, I thought you’d gone to bed. Would you like a glass of wine? Mr. Littleton gave me a bottle. Chardonnay—a good year, he said.”

Bernie moved not a muscle. Was she practising for Madame Tussaud’s or trying some kind of relaxation technique? “Is that where you’ve been?” she said at last.

“Yes, taking care of Hazel. She sends her love.”

“What about Melissa and Oliver?”

“It’s Wednesday. Rory collects them.”

“No, I said in my note that he couldn’t this week.”

Charlotte felt her cheeks go scarlet. “What note? Mr. Littleton rang this morning to ask if I could come. Then all kinds of things happened and he had to work late. You’re the one who told me Hazel can’t be left—”

“Don’t give me this crap. You didn’t think about Mel and Oliver for one second. They flew out of your tiny, self-centred brain. Who cares if they wait in the playground, watch all their friends leave, and listen to their teacher ringing around to find someone, anyone, who will care for them. Rory had a meeting, I was at the dentist’s. Finally, the teacher reached their old child minder. Melissa cried for three hours.”

“I’m so sorry.” She wrung her hands. “Oh, Bernie, I didn’t forget. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t get your note. I love Melissa and Oliver. I’d never hurt them.”

“Charlotte, I left it for you on the table on Monday, about our plans for the week. I know you got it. I found it in the rubbish later. If I had my way, you’d never speak to the children again, but Rory convinced me it would be better if you phoned tomorrow to apologise. Explain that you won’t be seeing them for a while. Unfortunately, I’ve allowed you to become part of their lives and you can’t vanish without a trace. Your things are in the hall. Call a taxi and get out.”

“What things?” She sank into the nearest chair. Something jabbed her thigh; she removed a fire engine and set it on the floor.

“I blame myself.” Bernie no longer bothered even to look at her, staring fiercely at the silent TV, where two men in welling-tons tramped across a ploughed field. “I knew you were hopeless about everything—men, work, money—but I thought the children were different. I couldn’t believe you’d take out your neuroses on them.”

Everything, thought Charlotte. Bernie’s words whizzed past like stones. Meanwhile, inside her skull, her brain shuffled and hopped, a toad waking from a long winter. She knew what had happened; after reading the part about her moving out, she’d crumpled the rest of her sister’s note unread, into the bin. Still, there must be something she could say or do to make this right. Didn’t one hear, almost every week, about parents leaving their kids in supermarkets and playgrounds? Nothing terrible had happened and, for god’s sake, it wasn’t as if she’d been out gallivanting. What had Hazel said after their trip to the flat? I couldn’t have managed without you.

Bernie came over, held out her hand. “Keys.”

Her palm was the colour of a seashell. Charlotte didn’t dare to meet those eyes so exactly like her own.

“I remember the first year of your training,” she said, “I came to see you. It was awful being at home without you, and I’d decided to run away and find a flat of my own. You had an exam the next day, anatomy, so you made me quiz you on the bones of the hand and the foot, metacarpals and metatarsals. Afterwards I got into bed, a mattress on the floor, and told you what I’d been thinking and you said, Don’t do it, it’ll mess up your whole life if you quit school now.”