Nick could feel his skin tightening under the early-afternoon sun. Given the number of melanomas he saw, his own relative lack of caution was inexcusable. Donna thought so too and was keen on reminding him of the fact. She used a cabinet’s worth of creams on her own skin, whether lying in the sun or not, different ones for different parts of her body, some promising rejuvenating benefits that Nick did his best not to remark on, since he knew the remarks would not be well received.
A week had passed since the wine-tasting lunch in Durbanville. It was the Saturday before Christmas and they were at a cove the Scammells had mentioned with affection several times, summoned there by a last-minute plea to help Mike celebrate his thirty-eighth birthday. The girls had been dispatched to the Waterfront Mall under the watchful eye of their neighbours’ Dutch au pair, with money for Christmas shopping and pizzas afterwards. The cove was on the Atlantic side of the cape, formed by two vast arms of rock reaching out from a stretch of coast too wild and too far north of Table Bay to be frequented by tourists. They could not have picked a better day; the sea was choppy thanks to a brisk breeze but glassy blue under the beam of a cloudless sky. The lines of breakers rolling onto the beach were only waist-high, regular and foam-topped, perfect for bodysurfing. After the swim, they were heading back towards town for an early dinner at Mike’s favourite restaurant, a seafood shack hidden among the docks beyond Milnerton.
Both the Scammells were already in the sea. Donna had settled herself in the lee of her windbreaker with her iPhone, her expression unreadable behind her big black winged sunglasses. She was wearing a new white sun hat with a long pink sash that streamed in the breeze like bunting.
Nick sat up and looked towards the water where their neighbours were signalling for them to join them. ‘You coming in?’
Donna kept her gaze on her phone screen. ‘You go. I’m barely warm enough as it is.’
Nick let his gaze remain on his wife for several moments. Somehow, the conversation wasn’t about warmth or swimming. It struck him with sudden force that very few of their conversations were ever really about what they seemed; the real dialogue was always unspoken, a subtext. Donna not swimming was unusual. She was excellent and hardy in the water, the legacy of a childhood spent beside pools and beaches, and more than up to bodysurfing on a hot breezy afternoon. And it would give her the chance to be near Mike.
Nick turned his gaze to the water edge, where their neighbour was now clowning around, putting his solid square body through collapsing handstands and cartwheels while the hapless Lindy clapped like a seal.
‘Okay.’ Nick got off his towel and stretched until his back clicked. He waved at Mike, wondering if it was the show the man was laying on for his wife that was deterring Donna’s entry into the water. Presumably the pair of them had swum together countless times, before and after making love, in their respective swimming pools, on snatched picnics by the sea. Nick let the images form, staring them out in his mind’s eye. He had been doing a lot of this in recent days, discovering that the more head-on he came at them, the less potent such images grew. There had been a sense of sadness too for a while, but that was utterly gone now. It wasn’t possible to mourn losing something already so well and truly lost.
‘Hey, Nick?’
‘Yeah?’
She had taken the hat off, placed the phone face-down on her stomach and was staring at him. There was something in her voice that sounded true for once. Maybe she knows I know, Nick thought suddenly. Maybe she is going to say something.
Instead, she said, ‘Just to be clear. If I wanted any work doing on my face, you would do it, wouldn’t you?’
Nick laughed. He couldn’t help it. Not because it was a ridiculous idea – though it was – Donna’s skin was drum-tight, over a face and body of such robust bone structure that it was clear she would remain a standout beauty of whichever decade she inhabited – but because of the crude indication that potentially she still regarded him as having certain uses. ‘You don’t need cosmetic surgery, Donna. But to answer your question, no I wouldn’t do it.’
‘Well, that’s just fucking great,’ she snapped, either not seeing or choosing to ignore the compliment veiled in his refusal. ‘What’s the good of being married to a guy who’s only prepared to make other women look better?’
‘It is not about that, as you well know. Of course I wouldn’t stop you having work done if you really thought you needed it. It is just that I couldn’t be the one to do it. It is about being a doctor versus being… a person. For me the two worlds are separate and need to stay that way. In addition to which, as you also know, it is not my favourite area of expertise. My day at the clinic is purely to pay bills.’ Nick tightened the waist string on his Bermudas. He had been losing weight recently, without trying. He was simply burning more energy, he could feel it. Getting through every day, every conversation, took effort. ‘And besides, you couldn’t look more beautiful than you already do,’ he added with some force. It was true after all. ‘Beauty is not your problem.’
Donna, who had picked up her phone, slowly lowered it again. ‘Oh yes? And what is my problem?’
There was the usual menace in her tone, but Nick could sense the new uncertainty in her too. Something had shifted between them and she couldn’t put her finger on it. He wondered sometimes if this was the main reason he hadn’t said anything yet about Mike. It wasn’t how he had planned to tackle things, but somehow the days had been slipping by and still he had put a confrontation off. ‘I’m not sure, Donna. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure it out.’ He turned and strolled towards the sea, but then turned parallel to it, deciding to take a walk first. He kept his shoulders loose. He knew she was watching and he wanted her to think he was fine. In a way he was. Finer than he had been in years.
Eleanor raised herself onto her elbow and lifted up the thin curtain covering her bedroom window. Below her the muddy scrub separating her block of flats from the rail embankment bore testament to the dankness of the late December weather. The trains had kept her awake again, all night it felt like, shaking her back to consciousness every time she was on the verge of sleep. Like a form of torture.
It had to be late morning, but the day held no light to speak of. Eleanor tried to recall when she had last seen the sun. Two weeks ago? Three? She endeavoured to think forwards instead. Christmas was six days away. She pictured Howard and the children, the rituals they would all have to go through; the rituals they would expect her to go through. There had been a card that week, inviting her to join them; one line in Howard’s miniature cobweb writing.
Do please come for Christmas. Kat would have wanted it. We want it.
Eleanor propped herself up on her elbows, shoving the curtain out of the way. A large piece of dirty plastic clung to the lower branches of a tree. It had been blowing round the garden for as long as she could remember, gusting into different positions, getting dirtier, tattier.
When the landline on her bedside table rang, she shuddered. She had thought getting back to London would make everything easier, but it hadn’t. It had made things the opposite of easier. She stared at the phone for ten rings and then slowly lifted the receiver to her ear.
‘Eleanor?’
Eleanor hesitated. ‘Megan?’
‘I just heard about Kat,’ blurted her old friend, ‘Billy heard – from a rugby mate who works with Howard in the city… Jesus, Eleanor, I am so sorry, I had no idea. Now I know why you’ve been silent for months and months – and I’ve been so busy – but I wish you had told me. You should have told me… but, oh God, how are you, darling girl? Are you coping?’
‘I… I’m not sure.’
‘Fucking cancer. Bowel, Billy said, is that right?’
‘Yup.’
‘But, of course, you probably don’t want to go into it all now… on the phone…’
‘No, I…’
‘I need to see you. Talk properly. I can’t get away this week but maybe could you come and visit us instead? Pack a bag this minute. Come for Christmas. Billy would love it too. Fresh Welsh air, dogs and cows, not to mention our three thugs who can be quite sweet when required, I promise you…’
Eleanor rubbed at a smear on the windowpane with her fingers, making it worse. She thought of Billy, his wide, wonky rugby player’s nose and deep-set eyes, blinking sheepishly at hers as she opened her flat door to him. Bumping into each other at the nightclub. London heaving in the Christmas party season. Her on one of her mad nights. Him on a stag do. The shared taxi. So many rotten decisions. Was it genes or bad luck that made a supposedly clever person so repetitively stupid?
‘Thanks, Megan, but there’s still a lot to… sort out… you know.’ She saw out of the corner of her eye that it was almost midday.
‘Oh, yes. There must be… of course… Oh, Eleanor, I am just so very sorry for your loss,’ Megan’s voice was cracking. ‘I never met Kat, but I know she…’ There was a silence, the chance to speak. And Eleanor would have filled it, if only she could have thought of a single thing she could say. ‘It will have to be in the New Year then,’ Megan went on firmly. ‘I’ll come to London, kick off the wellies, take you out to lunch. In fact, what about the nineteenth of January, as I have to be in town that day to talk to someone about cows. The nineteenth, Eleanor. Four weeks from now. Will that work for you?’ She spoke with great vehemence, as if she sensed the need to keep a grip on something more than the conversation.
‘The nineteenth,’ Eleanor echoed, already resolving to pull out. ‘That would be nice. Thanks.’
‘And you are doing okay, are you, apart from being sad?’
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, a dim part of her thinking that losing her best friend, as well as her sister, was the least she deserved, given what she had done. She looked round her room, wondering what Megan, who these days ran a herd of prize-winning cattle as well as her family of three sons, would say if she could see her, still marooned on the grubby island of her bed in the middle of the day, surrounded by an ocean of dirty laundry, her phone and laptop cold, and nothing in the fridge but an out-of-date pot of humus. ‘I mean, at least with cancer you have a chance to say goodbye,’ she managed, snatching at the words Howard had used like a lifeline.
The moment Eleanor put the phone down it rang again. She picked it up automatically, thinking Megan had wanted to add something, but it was Trevor Downs.
‘Sweetie, you’re not answering your mobile, and you’re not here. Are you okay?’
‘Not there?’
‘Yes… er… we had an arrangement that you would come today at eleven. I know it’s a Saturday, but we have done that before…’ Trevor hesitated, acutely aware of the tragic business of the sister. He nearly hadn’t rung. ‘You are writing the story of my life, remember?’ he cajoled gently. ‘We once had a deadline of Christmas and have got rather behind. I live in Chiswick, and in the normal run of things you get on a train to come and see me…’
‘Oh God, Trevor, sorry. I… somehow… I forgot.’
‘Darling, don’t apologise. We can leave it.’
‘No, I…’
‘Though it would be splendid if you came,’ Trevor pushed on, because they were badly in need of the session. ‘I’ll rustle up some lunch. Just get here as soon as you can.’ Trevor put down his phone with a compassionate sigh. His ghostwriter had been hard to like at the beginning, such an Amazon of a girl, bullying with her tape recorder and her timelines. The illness of the younger sister had softened her. Progress on the book of his life had faltered accordingly, but it had seemed impossibly churlish to mind. With the loss of his own dear Larry still so raw two years on, his heart had gone out to her.
Trevor set about making a duck salad, propping his recipe book against the fruit bowl and flicking the radio to Classic FM. They were playing Mahler’s second. It was near the end, when the mezzo soprano took off. Resurrection and redemption galloping in on white chargers. Trevor started on a bottle of Prosecco and sang along in the falsetto that he reserved for times of absolute privacy, breaking off as a title for his memoirs popped into his head. For My Sins. Sincere. Faintly saucy. Yes, it had distinct possibilities.
He sang on, happier. He would run it past Eleanor. Grief might have caused the poor girl to lose a bit of focus, but he still trusted her literary judgement. Indeed, given the calibre of her background – the first-class Oxford degree and the well-reviewed book written on behalf of some eminent Russian academic – the cheapness of her fee had seemed astonishing. It was because the book on Igor Strovsky hadn’t sold, his agent Julian had explained at the time, adding the unnecessary but compelling detail that Eleanor and the Russian had also been lovers, until the man bolted back to his wife and his homeland.
She was on his doorstep within the hour, her face gaunt, her long frizzy hair as black and wild as a thunderstorm. ‘Trevor. What can I say.’ She plucked at the frayed strap of the bulging canvas satchel in which she kept her notes and laptop.
‘Say you’ll have a glass,’ Trevor said briskly, ushering her inside. ‘I’ve got a bottle on the go. Not proper fizz but it’s cold and dry and packs just the punch one needs on such a dingy day. Roll on Christmas.’ He flung his arms up in theatrical despair as he led her through into his recently completed glass-domed conservatory, inwardly bracing himself for a barrage of compliments, since Eleanor had borne witness to some of the disruption the work had caused. But Eleanor dropped wearily onto his new scarlet sofa without a word, dumping her workbag at her feet.
Trevor trotted back to the kitchen to fetch another glass of Prosecco and pressed it into her hands. He had been saving a funny story to tell her about a fan cornering him in the supermarket, but noticing how stiff and low she seemed, he sat down next to her instead. ‘My dear, you look really carved up. I was a bully to make you come. Forget my silly book. Let’s just have a nice lunch.’
Eleanor took a sip of her drink. The bubbles felt like needles, stabbing her throat, pleasantly sharp, something to push against as she swallowed. Something to push against. It was what Kat had said.
Trevor started to say something else but she cut across him, blurting, ‘I can’t go on, Trevor. With your book. With anything. I can’t do it.’
‘There now. Goodness me.’ Trevor hid his dismay, patting her knee. ‘My dear girl, you are in the eye of the storm. The grief will – it does – get better.’ He withdrew his hand, guiltily aware that he was rather enjoying offering comfort.
Eleanor sank backwards, staring at the ceiling, her glass lodged precariously between her thighs. ‘There have been terrible things… unforgiveable things…’ She chewed at her beautiful mouth.
Trevor hesitated, curiosity vying with compassion. ‘Unforgivable is a strong word, sweetie.’
‘I impersonated my sister,’ she snarled, flinging herself round to face him, her dark eyes glassy with self-disgust. ‘My sick, now dead sister. Is that unforgivable enough for you?’
Trevor picked a speck of red sofa fluff off his trouser leg. ‘I think unhappiness can make one do all sorts of things,’ he said carefully, his mind filling with all the nights he had worn Larry’s clothes, standing in front of the mirror, weeping. ‘You can’t rush these things, sweetness. And of course you are probably angry with her, for dying. A lot of grief is simply a sort of rage.’
Eleanor stood up stiffly, as if he had insulted her. ‘I’m afraid what Kat and I went through doesn’t fit into any kind of easy category.’ She set her still full glass on the table and picked up her bag. ‘I am sorry, Trevor, I shouldn’t have come. I’m wasting your time. I’ll speak to Julian about finding someone to take over.’
‘Take over?’ Trevor could feel his toes slide to the front of his brogues as he got to his feet. The shoes were too big, but Larry had bought them for him so it didn’t matter. ‘Come on now, you need to take a deep breath.’ He spoke urgently, genuinely alarmed now by the wild look in her big brown eyes. ‘I don’t care whether you have impersonated your sister or the man in the moon. I need you, Eleanor,’ he added grandly. ‘Shall we do some work? Would that help? I have had all sorts of new ideas… stories coming back to me for that middle section which we are agreed is a little thin. The time in Hollywood – the box-office flop – there is so much I can add. Quirky stuff, sad stuff, happy stuff. It brought me Larry, after all.’ He had hoped to soften her expression, to divert her a little from her own woes, but she didn’t even blink.
Instead she was shaking her head again. ‘I can’t do it. Writing. Making sense. Of life. Your life. Anybody’s life… I am an imposter, Trevor. I am not what I seem.’
‘Oh, but we’re all imposters,’ Trevor cried, almost laughing because she was so much wiser than she knew, ‘It’s only the brave ones who admit it.’
But she had stopped listening and was striding away to the front door. ‘You have been so patient,’ she said in a hollow voice, when he caught up with her. ‘Thank you for that and for being so nice. Really, truly, nice.’ She opened the door, letting in jets of icy air that flicked round their ankles.
‘Don’t decide anything today, okay?’ Trevor talked fast. She was poised on the front step, clutching her bag to her chest, steeling herself in a way that made him think of a parachutist crouched to jump. ‘This impersonation of yours, sweetie,’ he rushed on, ‘I suppose it was for… money?’ He tried to recall the sister whom she had showed him a picture of once on her phone, months before – a petite creature, a long loose tangle of silver-white hair, big baby-blue eyes. Impersonation in any real sense seemed improbable.
A moment of involuntary surprise lit up Eleanor’s face. ‘Oh no, nothing like that.’
‘What then?’ Trevor pressed. He had assumed it was something to do with penury and forged signatures. His ghostwriter was clearly poor. It oozed out of her – the ancient tiny phone, the big scratched laptop, the racehorse figure decked in charity shop clothes.
‘I can’t tell you.’ Her face had gone blank again. ‘I can’t tell anyone.’
‘But surely nothing is that bad,’ Trevor began, but she had already launched herself off the step and was grappling with the stiff handle on his gate.
It was three o clock by the time Nick returned from his stroll to their patch of beach. Mike and Lindy were back messing around at the water’s edge, Mike hoisting her onto his shoulders, rising from the water like a dripping leviathan, and roaring with laughter as he tipped her off sideways. Lindy was shrieking with delight, playing the game. It made Nick feel sorry for her. It almost made him feel sorry for Donna, having to watch. Almost. If she loved Mike, it must be hard.
Nick plunged into the surf, relishing the shock of the Atlantic cold. After joshing round in the shallows for a bit, he sprint-crawled away from his neighbours and the handful of other swimmers and made for the middle of the bay. It felt good to be properly on his own. He trod water for a few minutes, admiring the big rocky arms of the cove, stretched out round him like an embrace, and then swam on until he was in the great blue canvas of the open sea. The water was chillier, choppier. He flipped over onto his back and floated, letting his limbs drift and ride the swell. The sea was a silky mattress beneath him, moulding itself to his body. Overhead, the sky was already its rich afternoon blue. It seemed to bear down; as if he was a specimen on a glass slide, Nick decided dreamily, closing his eyes.
Nick floated. Mike and Donna. The truth had been laid bare. And though it was a truth that brought burdens, it also had manifold blessings. Already there was the new dynamic at home. He felt empowered. More surprising perhaps was that he had been enjoying work much more too. Each day that week, swinging into his reserved slot in the Queen Elizabeth car park, he had felt more positive, more hopeful. No one could deny he had forged a fantastic career. He had done well. He could remain a doctor or give it up. He had options, on all fronts.
The current was pulling on him, little tugs. Nick began composing an imaginary email to Kat.
Happy Christmas!
Change your mind about January. Please. I want to meet the Keating girls!
What harm could one drink do? It could be any drink you like! Wine. Coffee. Tea. Water…
Nick opened his eyes. He had thought he heard something, but it was only the roar of the sea in his ears. The sky was the same. The sea felt even colder, though, and much more active. He righted himself, observing with some amazement that he had drifted well beyond the reach of the cove and was out in the open water. The figures on the beach had shrunk to the size of pin men. A couple were moving, most were lying still. One seemed to signal in his direction, but it was hard to be sure. Nick waved back anyway and started swimming. The cold had numbed him to a point, almost, of not noticing it. Sharks didn’t like the cold though, he reminded himself, which was good. The bay wasn’t that far away, perhaps a half mile, and he was a strong swimmer.
Within a few minutes, however, Nick found himself wishing he had made more of the brunch Donna had thrown together before they left the house. It had been a busy morning – a long work phone-call about a patient, chivvying the girls because they were dilly-dallying as usual and Donna, packing for the beach, was getting irritable. He had eaten a banana. A piece of toast, a mouthful of cheese, two tomatoes. Nick forced himself to calculate the details as he ploughed his way back through the water, trying to take his mind off the mounting physical effort and a sudden raging thirst. But it was hard work and the tide fought him back, stroke for stroke.
He fixed his eye on a jagged rock near the mouth of the cove and started counting. Ten. Thirty. Fifty. One hundred. The point seemed to get no closer. In fact it looked further away. Nick swam on against the current, keeping his head down now. He wasn’t a quitter, he reminded himself. He wasn’t even that tired yet but should probably try to pace himself. He stopped counting and switched to slower strokes, squinting in a fresh effort to make out what was going on at the beach, but it had shrunk to a slim band of white, stretched between two rocky sections of the coast.
The sea had begun churning into frothy peaks, flinging spray and salt into his eyes, making it hard to keep them open, let alone see. Drifting for a while would be fine, he told himself. If it came to that. The cove was isolated, but Donna and the Scammells had almost certainly summoned help. It wasn’t like he was having a heart attack.
Nick paused to look behind him, treading water, catching his breath. There had been a speedboat earlier on, but now the horizon was empty.
On the train after leaving Trevor’s, Eleanor found a new, numb calm overtaking her. She decided to text him, put on a show of the normality she did not feel.
Sorry for being an idiot.
She took her time, picking a word calculated to reassure. Choosing words was one thing she did at least know how to do, she reflected darkly.
Eleanor pressed send, but the screen on her phone went blank. She tapped it, shaking the phone urgently, panic gushing back in. The battery had died. When the train pulled into the next station, even though it was too soon, she got off. It didn’t matter where she was. She needed to move, to breathe.
In the street, she saw a sign to Wandsworth Common and followed it, walking fast.
Nick was flooding her head suddenly. He seemed to do that, as if it was something he controlled rather than her. Always at her weakest moments, pouncing like a need that could not be satisfied. A thwarted first love, it was pitiful to have got so enthralled again. Eleanor summoned to mind the beautiful South African wife and two teenage daughters, the wretchedness of her deceit, allowing Nick to believe he was writing to Kat. Kat, who was dead. Kat, who had been touched – touched – by their father. Eleanor stopped in the middle of the path. A man hurrying behind her steering a bike, cursed as he dodged past.
Further questioning of Howard had got her nowhere, not even the next day when he was sober. It had been a few occasions during Kat’s early to mid-teens, he had repeated miserably. Fumbling, touching, never full sex, usually – from what he could gather – when Vincent had had a few drinks. It had messed with her head, but Kat was adamant that she had got over it, even forgiven the bastard, in spite of the fact that Howard himself could not and would never forgive him. It was why he had been so reluctant even to have the man at the funeral, Howard had explained, before pleading with Eleanor to leave the matter alone. He had told her all he knew – he swore – all that Kat had ever told him. What seemed to distress him most was that he had broken his pledge of silence.
The shock waves of abhorrence and betrayal had followed Eleanor back to London and then settled, a darkness in her head that teemed with new understanding. Kat’s souring as she hit adolescence, the hostility – even the promiscuity – she saw it all in a new light now. As to what her sister had actually been through, what Vincent might or might not have subjected her to, the dread Kat must have felt on his nightly prowls, Eleanor could not bring herself to imagine. Instead, worsening like a pain as each day passed, was the longing to speak to Kat herself: to ask her why she had not shared this most terrible of secrets with her own sister; to offer her what clumsy comfort she could; but, most of all, to say sorry, for having been too blind, too self-centred, to see what had been under her nose.
But Kat wasn’t around for speaking to. And never would be again. Like their mother. Only the ones who deserved to be dead were still alive.
Eleanor started to run across the common, her feet catching in sludgy drifts of old wet leaves. She stumbled, veering left away from the main path and weaving through a sloping bank of thin trees. Ahead, some fencing came into view, high and rusted. Through its metal lattice she glimpsed an embankment snarled with brambles.
Straightforward and trusting, Nick had written. But she wasn’t even that. Kat had known it. Kat hadn’t trusted her. Kat had endured hell rather than trust her.
Above her a train crashed past, deafening. Faces flashed at the windows. Eleanor stared up at them through the cage of brown wire fencing, her eyes streaming; the outsider looking in. The people in the carriages had families and livelihoods to go to, jobs they were on top of, pasts that made sense. Their lives hadn’t stalled. Or been built on lies.
A few yards to her left a gap in the fencing caught her eye. It was a tempting hole with spiked, bright curling edges, recently cut. From there it would be a two-minute scramble up to the top. The trains were so frequent. So fast. Maybe her life could make sense too. Circles could be completed. It took courage, that was all. Courage that her mother had had, and Kat too, in her way.
Nick returned to swimming with maximum effort, working through his repertoire of strokes to give his various muscle sets time to rest. Crawl. Breaststroke. Backstroke. Fifty of each. He thought about Natalie and Sasha. He wanted to be a part of their futures, whatever they held; he wanted to be involved in all of it. As for Donna… But as he tried to look ahead, his mind looped backwards, to Oxford, the cradle of the supposedly ‘gilded’ youth into which he had never truly settled, and to Eleanor and Kat. Such a striking, intense pair, with their strange priestly father and tragic childhood loss. They had instantly stood out from the crowd, both of them. The thought catapulted Nick back into the café in the covered market, Eleanor talking at him across a red gingham table cloth, a plastic flower between the salt and pepper pots, flashes of doubt and intelligence scudding across her big honest brown eyes. Fowles and Nabokov. Lepidopterists. Prisoners. Later, on a few occasions, there had been kissing.
The threads of memory fluttered behind Nick’s salt-sore eyes, easing the aching cold and the tiredness of his body. Life wasn’t a line, he realised with sudden lucidity. It was simply a widening circle. Nothing got left behind. All of it was there, always.
The sluggishness of his limbs was worsening, like they were forgetting how to swim. His temples thumped and his throat was sticky. Nick flipped onto his back to rest again. The sun had sunk to a point almost in line with his vision, a thick beam straight into his face. He let his eyelids fall closed, relishing the soothing cool of the water lapping round his hot pounding head. Drifting. Let the current take him. Yes, that was okay, that would do. He was good at drifting. A master.
Nick made another monumental effort to think properly about Donna, about what he was going to do. But new rows of thicker higher waves were starting to arrive, flooding his mouth, his nose, his ears. He fought them off, windmilling his leaden arms, trying backstroke. His thoughts spun to being happy, how he missed it, how he deserved it, how hard it was to achieve. Kat had said something about that once in one of her emails, but he couldn’t remember what. And loss, she had said things about that too. Wise, moving things. She had been through so much, known so much. Nick began to shout. In frustration. Despair. For Kat. For help. But the waves kept coming, pummelling his head, punch after punch.
Trevor peered gingerly under the sheepskin trim of his left glove, checking his watch for the umpteenth time. It was still only four-thirty – not five hours since Eleanor had stumbled out of his house, and only twenty minutes since the start of his vigil on her doorstep. Overhead, the security light kept coming on and off. He had taken the precaution of wearing his fleece liner under his cashmere coat, as well as a scarf to plug the gap between his fedora and the top of his collar, but was cold to his bones nonetheless. He had poor circulation, that was the trouble. Thanks to low blood pressure, which was supposed to be good. Larry had been the opposite – high blood pressure, so dangerous that they had eventually lived like vegans – but in the end it had been a stroke that got him, not his heart. A massive one. Bed with a headache one minute, waxy-skinned and lifeless beside him the next. It still made Trevor tremble to think of it. Death was always such a violent shock, even an expected one, like slamming into a brick wall. Trevor wished he had thought to mention this to Eleanor.
Thirty more minutes, he decided, hugging himself and humming some of the Mahler from the radio. Hearing the click of approaching footsteps on the pavement – female footsteps, he sprang forwards hopefully. But it was a chunky girl, bare-legged in stilettoes and a mini-skirt. ‘Hiya,’ she trilled, giving a sassy wave as she tottered past.
Trevor shuffled back into the lee of the doorway and crouched down, cursing his creaking knees and wishing he hadn’t come. Watching the taxi meter race, he had felt only foolish – rushing to the aid of a woman who almost certainly didn’t want or require it, feigning drama for his own needy purposes. He was sure that was what Larry would have said.
The block of flats had given him something of a jolt. Clapham still had its seedy patches, he knew, but the peeling windows and pebble-dash front, set against a backdrop of bramble thickets and litter that included a broken chair, a washing machine and several items of clothes, had depressed him deeply. He had ducked into the small portico entrance like a soldier seeking cover, relieved and faintly moved to see proof of Eleanor’s residence at the top of the panel of buzzers, written in solid thick italics: KEATING FLAT 3. But there were no lights on in the building and no one answered when he rang.
Twenty more minutes, tops, Trevor decided, leaning back into his corner. But no one came and after a while the discomfort turned to a sort of paralysis and he found himself closing his eyes.
It was six o clock by the time Eleanor turned into her street. Her limbs dragged with fatigue and a blister had formed on her left heel, but she did her best to walk fast. Home, a bed, refuge, was at last in sight. Soon she would be able to sleep, close her eyes, shut out the world. Somehow she had lost her bag, but her keys were in her pocket. She sought them out, gripping their sharp edges till her fingers hurt.
Already what had happened was starting to recede, the details dissolving with the rapidity of a dream. There had been the hole in the fence, she remembered that much, big enough to crawl through, though the spikes had torn at her clothes. Her concentration had been fixed on the task in hand. Accept defeat. It was possible for life to become too much. A deep new wave of understanding and forgiveness had moved through her, melting a long-buried knot of blame and incomprehension. Her mother had given up, that was all. And she was, after all, her mother’s child.
Once through the fence, she had fallen onto all fours for the climb up through the tangle of the embankment. The earth had felt solid under her knees, the snagging brambles no worse than pesky insects. She had swiped and swatted. Her sole aim had been to reach the metal track above.
She was almost at the top when the ground started to come alive under her. A train was on its way. Her train. Eleanor had paused, straining to hear, desperately sure of the importance of getting the timing right. But as she did so, something other than the sound of a diesel engine burst inside her head. It was a voice. A shout, so loud that she jumped and then froze. She looked over her shoulder but there was nobody there. No, it had said. And in that instant it woke her up to the terror of what she was doing. And once the terror was there, it had been impossible to continue.
Eleanor had slithered back down the embankment and sat hugging her knees, trembling as the train, a long goods one, roared past.
On spotting the old man in a brown felt hat, curled up in the corner of the entrance to her flat, Eleanor’s only thought was how to get past without waking him. But the automatic light flashed on, glaring and buzzing.
‘Trevor?’
The old actor scrambled to his feet, disconcerted, tugging at the rim of his hat, wiping his mouth. ‘I was worried,’ he stuttered. ‘When you left… the way you left… what you had said…’ He looked at her properly. ‘Good God, child. What has happened?’
Eleanor gripped the keys harder in her pocket. The concrete under her feet was starting to heave and the shout was back inside her head, repeating and repeating. It sounded like Kat. But it couldn’t be, because Kat was dead. ‘Worried? About me?’ Her voice was small and disbelieving.
‘Have you been mugged?’
‘No, no… but I seem to have lost my bag. Luckily I had these in my pocket.’ She plucked out the keys, holding them high so he could see.
Trevor rubbed his legs which had stiffened badly and were hurting. He was still foggy-headed, and incredulous that, a resigned insomniac for two years, he should have managed to fall so deeply asleep on an icy concrete floor in a dingy doorway. ‘Oh Lordy,’ he said, bringing Eleanor sufficiently into focus to note the smears of mud on her coat, the bits of twig and leaf in her hair. She had clearly been through something. But she was safe and now all Trevor wanted suddenly, very badly, was to return to the comfort of his own home. His conscience was clear. ‘Here, let me.’
‘I can manage, thanks.’ She kept him at bay with her elbow, continuing to work with both hands at twisting the key. There was a streak of mud on one temple, and cuts on the backs of her hands. There were even some scratches on her neck, Trevor noted grimly, his thoughts returning to the possibility of assault.
When the door opened at last, she jumped round, keeping her back to it, like an animal defending a lair.
‘I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid I meant what I said today and so there’s no point. Also I have nothing to offer. Literally, nothing.’ Her big dark eyes glittered. ‘Not even milk. So thanks for coming by but… perhaps now you wouldn’t mind… leaving me alone?’ Her words had started coming out in rushed clusters, as if she was having trouble timing her breathing between sentences.
Trevor hesitated. She was giving him a way out and he wanted to take it. ‘I’ll see you upstairs first. And I’d like to use the bathroom, if I may.’
She gave a moan of what sounded like exasperation and led the way inside.
Trevor took the stairs slowly. There were a lot of them and they were uncarpeted and covered with stains that he tried not to examine too closely. At the top, she opened the door quickly and easily, but then stopped, dropping her forehead against the jamb.
‘It’s a tip okay?’
Trevor nodded, but then could not contain a gasp as the door widened. ‘Oh my word…’
‘The bathroom is that door there,’ she said fiercely, pointing across a sea of domestic detritus that made his stomach churn. It was clearly the main living room of the flat. He could make out a couple of armchairs and a table, though, like the floor, they were submerged under clothes, papers, books, notepads, dirty crockery, empty bottles and cans, boxes of takeaway, shoes, coat hangers – there seemed to be a lot of coat hangers. In the middle sat an open suitcase, empty but for a hairdryer and a couple of socks, looking somehow as if it were responsible for spewing out the contents of the room.
‘Does it contain a bath?’
She flinched visibly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘A bath. Does your bathroom have one?’
She nodded. ‘You want a bath?’
Trevor smiled, a little sadly. ‘No, my dear. Not for me. For you.’ The desire to be kind was flooding him now. He smiled at her tenderly. ‘I am going to run a bath for you. If there was a drop of bubble bath, I would like to add that too. If there isn’t, I shall purchase some when I go out. Because while you soak yourself – a long soak – I am going to rustle us up something for supper. A curry, I think. Very light – snow peas, coconut milk, chicken, basmati – nothing to startle the stomach.’
He began picking his way across the room, not looking back in case she detected the fact that he was flying blind.
‘It takes courage to admit one needs help,’ he went on, emerging from the bathroom a couple of minutes later to find her still standing by her open front door, her face slack and frightened, as if she might take off down the stairs at any moment. ‘You’ve clearly been through a lot.’ He surveyed the room, bending down to tug a piece of something sticky off the side of his shoe. ‘It’s in danger of burying you. We are all in danger of getting buried. Sometimes we need other people to dig us out.’
Eleanor put a hand against the wall. Trevor and the room were spinning. ‘Why should you—’
‘Because I want to. Because you have helped me this year more than you know.’ Tears had started spilling silently down her face, but it seemed kindest to ignore them. ‘I am going to the shops now. I won’t be long. I’ll take those keys of yours, if I may.’ Trevor spoke sternly, aware of the importance of appearing in charge. Inside he was still quailing. They may have worked in tandem for ten months, but the meetings had been sporadic and they barely knew each other. ‘Are you sure we have nothing we need to report to the police?’
She slowly shook her head, looking stunned.
‘Except the missing bag, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘but we’ll get to that.’
He took the keys from her, suppressing a twist of panic at the idea of all her notes, his precious half-formed life story, falling into a stranger’s hands, being scrutinised, mocked. His heart raced. But that would happen anyway, he realised. Readers were an audience like any other. Some would boo and some would cheer.
‘I am so stupid,’ Eleanor muttered, not looking at him. ‘I’ve got everything wrong. I don’t matter. I’ve never mattered.’
In the doorway Trevor paused. He felt a lump swell in his throat, a reflex of sheer, visceral pity. How did a creature of such capabilities, such beauty, get whittled into so pathetic a state? For a moment he was glad he was helping, simply because it might provide some answers.
‘Everybody matters,’ he said gruffly, going back to put an arm across her shoulders and steering her towards one of the chairs. She stood, her head hanging like a castigated child, while he removed the various items smothering it, and then pressed her gently into its sagging seat. Trevor picked up a pillow in a greying stained case off the floor and tucked it behind her head. ‘Now, do not move, sweetness. That’s an order. Okay?’
Eleanor nodded, the fight seeping out of her; a fight that felt as if it had been going on all her life, though quite what it had been about, she couldn’t at that moment have said.