The Night Book (24 page)

Roza turned. Her face was contorted into a smile as false as his own, and so pale it seemed drained, almost haggard. There was a faint squeak in her voice. ‘I don’t think I can do it now. It’s too late.’

Clarice looked at Simon. ‘I can look at scheduling another day?’

He came forward. ‘Sorry I’m late. I had some complications in theatre this morning, and it’s just gone on from there.’

Roza said, ‘I really can’t now. The time …’ She gave a panicky half-laugh and gestured at the door.

Simon came closer. ‘I’d hate you to have to make another appointment.’

He was suddenly very clear about this. For a moment he’d felt relieved that she was backing off — he wouldn’t have to face her. But no, he wasn’t going through another minute wondering what she wanted.

Roza hesitated.

He said, ‘Right. Clarice, perhaps you could see if Denis has an appointment in the next few days.’

He turned smoothly to Roza, ‘Denis Weintraub, one of my partners. He might have a slot for you tomorrow, Ms …?’

Roza blinked, as though he’d slapped her. She smoothed her hair distractedly. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘It’s all right. It’ll be fine.’

‘Are you sure? It’s no problem to …’

‘Yes, no,
yes
.’

He ushered her in, glancing at Clarice, who gave him her special poker-faced look that expressed, by the holding of the gaze, solidarity. He raised his eyebrows at her, went in and shut the door.

‘Have a seat.’ He was able to look at Roza calmly. By forcing the issue, he had regained control.

She sat with her handbag primly on her knees, holding the handle with both hands. She was agitated, dark under the eyes, and he felt a kind of amazement at the sight of her in the familiar, clinical order of his consulting room, so beautiful and frazzled, so harried out of her mind.

‘Why send me to your partner?’ she said angrily, turning her eyes on him. ‘I came to see you.’

He didn’t reply.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘Tell me what you want, Roza. Tell me what this is all about.’

‘But why …?’ She paused, biting her lip. She put her handbag on the floor, then reached over and straightened some papers on his desk, her movements quick and nervous. She glanced up, saw him looking at her hands, and blushed.

He said, with a hint of iron, ‘Roza, the receptionist’s out there. We can’t take too long. What is it you want to tell me? Do you have a problem I can help you with? Some symptoms? Something you’re worried about? Why are we here?’

She looked stunned by his tone, then angry. She sat mute, glaring.

‘Roza, this is my work. You can’t just sit here.’

Her voice went high. ‘All right. All
right
. Give me a minute.’

He tilted his chair back and put his fingers to his forehead. He said, ‘I’m sorry. This is making me rather nervous, for some reason. Just … take a minute. Sure.’

She said, ‘I can’t do this.’

He let his chair fall forward. ‘Do what?’ he said roughly. ‘Do
what
?’

She put out her hands, as if to fend something off. Her fingers shook. Her mouth turned down, tears welled. He stood up, came around the desk. He wondered whether she was going to collapse.

But she waved him away, took a tissue from the box on his desk. She wiped her face and blew her nose, shaking her head, muttering, holding him at bay with one hand raised.

‘What are you saying? What’s that?’ he said, leaning down.

‘Sorry … Just so mad … I’ve been out of my mind … All right now … I’m so sorry …’ She spoke in a high, fluty, artificial voice.

He waited, utterly perplexed.

She got up, smoothed down her clothes and hair, picked up her handbag and put it on her shoulder. ‘There. All better.’ She looked at him, smiling, and he was struck by the desolation in her eyes.

‘Goodbye, Simon.’

‘Roza …’

‘I wanted to tell you …’ She gasped, like someone jumping into cold water. ‘I wanted to tell you that Elke … your Elke, is my daughter.’

She drew in sharp breaths and couldn’t breathe out. Her expression was panicky.

‘I am Elke’s real mother. I had her adopted out.’

Simon had the same rush he’d felt when he was told his mother had died. His body thrilled with excitement. And then the sense
that he was on the brink of a sudden, heartbreaking drop — that the crash, when it came, would be shocking.

The body reeled, but on some level the brain went on with its work. He stared at Roza, oblivious for a moment to her distress, and felt his mind turn, with a kind of wonder, to the implications of what she’d said. They were so numerous and complicated — the possible scenarios, the light it cast on his feelings for Roza, what it said about his role as Elke’s father — that he could barely begin to untangle them.

He didn’t doubt that what she’d told him was true. It fitted so exactly into the problem he’d been puzzling over for weeks that it came less as a surprise than a logical solution, an answer he might have arrived at himself if he’d been given more time.

Two emotions fought it out in his mind. He was strongly attracted to her. She was the mother of his child. He recoiled from her, because it struck him immediately that she might take his child away. He loved her, because he loved Elke. He had fallen in love with her because she
resembled
Elke. But what did this say about his love for Elke?

He suddenly became aware of her. She was still drawing in tight little breaths, as if she couldn’t exhale properly.

He went close, took her hands between his, rubbed them, patted her shoulder and said automatically what he would have said to Claire: ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine, we’ll sort it out, take a deep breath, there, see, you’ll be all right.’

She made an effort. Her breathing slowed, grew deeper.

When he was sure she wasn’t going to faint or panic and run out, he drew his chair next to hers, and tried to order his thoughts.

‘The first thing is, we can’t discuss this here. You and I and Karen and David are going to have to meet.’

She clutched his arm. ‘No. No. You can’t tell anyone. David doesn’t know.’

He said, amazed, ‘But why not? In this day and age. You must have had her very young, but there’s no shame.’

She said rapidly, licking her dry lips, ‘The shame is that I gave her up. In this day and age. When I didn’t
need to
because it’s this day and age. And then I didn’t tell David when we first met, and after a while I’d kept the secret so long it seemed impossible to tell him — it would have looked like I’d been deceiving him. He won’t be able to forgive either fact — that I gave her up and that I didn’t tell him.’

‘He will be able to forgive both those things. Of course he will. It must have been years before you met him.’

‘No. No.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

She hesitated, bent her head. She said, ‘I’m telling you all this in confidence, in private, you understand?’

‘Of course,’ he said impatiently.

‘I’m … an alcoholic.’

He let out a short laugh. ‘I knew
that
.’

She snapped, ‘How did you know?’

‘Well okay, I didn’t know really, but it crossed my mind. You don’t drink. Lots of people who don’t drink are alcoholic. Teetotallers are quite rare. Alcoholics are common. But what’s that got to do with telling David?’

The feeling went out of her face. She said bleakly, ‘I was, y’know, “recovered” when I met him. Everything depended on not looking back. I’d made a completely new self. I thought, If I look back, I’ll start to drink again. I couldn’t talk about
anything
in the past, couldn’t think about it. And he didn’t want to look back either — he was escaping from the past too, the death of his wife.’ She said, her expression appalled, ‘He married a fake. An invented person.’

Simon stared at her.

‘See, denying the past was part of inventing the new self. The longer I stuck to it, the more I became the new self. I left the old one behind.’

She was fiddling compulsively with the strap of her handbag. He looked at her slim hands. Elke’s fingers. Her breath was metallic and sour, as if she had a fever. She ran on, almost gabbling, ‘Now, there’s the election — think of what it’s going to be like if he wins — and he wants us to have a baby. And somehow, I’ve started to feel the new self peeling away, and the old one’s still there underneath. It never went away. It’s come out.’ She drew in a breath. ‘I’m so frightened I don’t know what to do.’

She screwed her head around and looked at him. Her expression was bleak. Her anxiety had started to infect him; he was trapped in a situation where everything was false, but necessarily so, because what lay beneath was too difficult to face.

The thought of Mereana came like a stab of neuralgia.

She whispered, ‘I want the fake self back. I want to be happy.’

He rapped out, suddenly angry, ‘What about Elke? Isn’t she important?’

She turned on him, her eyes wide. ‘You’re not, you’re
not
going to force me into anything.’

‘She’s your child. She has a right to know.’

‘Don’t talk to me about rights! What use am I to her now? She’s got you and Karen. She can’t meet me now, not when I’m trapped this way. How can you suggest it? I’m not in a state to talk to her, to tell her. I can’t. I can’t. It’s impossible. Not now.’ She twisted the leather strap in her hands.

He looked at the door and motioned to her to be quiet. They listened.

He said heavily, ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Help me,’ she said, imploring.

‘How?’

‘I had to tell you. I had to tell someone.’

‘But what do you
want
?’ His voice was harsh.

‘I want you to keep it a secret. From everyone.’ She held up her hands, trying to quell his protest. ‘And then, please listen, please, as soon as the election’s over and I’ve got control of myself, I’ll tell David and Elke and Karen.’

He made an angry gesture with his hands.

‘Please, Simon. Please,’ she begged. ‘Haven’t you ever been in a situation where you’ve had to lie, pretend you’re someone other than you are, just to get through? No, I suppose you haven’t,’ she added, with a sad, bitter little smile. ‘Well, I have to pretend for a bit longer, just to get through the election, because I’m not like you — a good guy, honest and straightforward. I’m a fake. A liar, a cheat, a drunk. That’s why you’ve got my daughter and I haven’t. You deserve her.’ She bent forward, her shoulders shaking, then wiped away tears, raised her eyes. ‘I met her.’

‘You met her.’

‘I followed you one day to school. I talked to her.’

He stood up. ‘For Christ’s sake. She’s just a young girl. How could you? You can’t play games.’

‘What do you mean games? She didn’t know who I was. She’s
mine
. I look at her and see that she’s mine. You have no idea of the pain. You have no idea how much pain.’

‘Maybe I do.’

She said, ‘There’s the election too. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but if any of this comes out now, it could mess things up for David. Not because anyone else would care but because
he
would. But it’s more than that — I’m trying to keep on an even keel and not drink, and I can’t do that and face Elke at the same time. And now I’ve started to be afraid that people are nervous about me — his people.
Party people. I’m afraid they’re watching me.’

The phone on the desk suddenly shrilled, and their eyes locked. The words rang in his head.
She’s mine.

She whispered, ‘Please.’

He gestured at her to be quiet and picked up the phone.

Clarice said, ‘You needing an interruption?’

‘Oh, hi Clarice. Yes, no problem. Just put the lab results on the file.’ This, in the code they used for dealing with difficult patients, meant: All okay. The phone call was also Clarice’s way of signalling that she’d like to go home now, thanks.

He put the phone down. ‘Why tell me? Why only me?’

‘Because I’m going out of my mind. Because I met you, and there was this
feeling
between us. It wasn’t just me noticing you — you paid attention to me, like you’d sensed we were connected. I thought you would understand — only you.’ Her expression was eager, hungry. ‘We had a connection. I didn’t just imagine it, did I? You didn’t know, and yet …’

His eyes prickled.
Only you.

He said, ‘We did have a connection. Now I know why.’

She studied his face. Her expression changed. ‘You love Elke.’

‘Yes I do.’ He looked away.

‘Then I love you,’ she said.

He felt tears coming, and fought against them, looking out the window and saying, distantly, with a great effort, ‘We have to get out of here. We’ll have to meet somewhere else.’

‘I can’t. What if someone sees?’

He said, brutal, ‘Roza, if you want me to help you we’ve got to talk some more. And not here. It’s impossible here. I want you to ring my cellphone twenty minutes after you’ve left here, and we’ll arrange to meet. There’s no other way.’

‘Can’t you just …’

‘No. I can’t “just” do anything. You ask too much. All this is too much.’ He tried to keep his voice down. ‘Now I’m going to open the door, and usher you out, and if you make any kind of fuss I’ll kill you. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ She smiled through her distress, and he saw pure Elke — how she could suddenly brighten at the point of crisis, and look, though tearstained and bedraggled, expectant and even slightly wicked, as if she’d been crying with only half her mind, while another secret Elke was standing aside, watching.

He squeezed her arm.

‘Ready?’ They inspected each other briefly and nodded. Like lovers, he thought. Conspirators.

They walked into the waiting room, where Clarice was poised, a file in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, both props, since she’d finished her work efficiently half an hour ago.

‘Thanks very much,’ Roza said, in a breathless voice. She left.

He thought of making an excuse to go out after her, but didn’t want to alert Clarice to anything unusual, so he only said, ‘I’ll write this up. You take off now, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Clarice said, ‘Is she related to David Hallwright?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘She’s the wife, I believe. Nice woman. Didn’t like being kept waiting, though, did she.’