He waits in the lantern room in the gathering dark, looking out for the blue lights, seeing himself reflected back in the glass. This room was built to look outwards in all directions at once and it holds on to the view until the last embers of the day have gone out. Then it snaps shut. The darkness comes rushing in and wraps around the windows as if there is nothing more worth seeing. This is the still moment, the claustrophobic moment. The moment that makes his pulse rise every time. The panic.
His face looms up in the glass. God, he looks knackered. More than ever. There will be no sleep when the police come and ask what Sarah is doing here and why he didn’t tell them. He’ll be in trouble for that. Magda was frightened. Should he have called an ambulance? They will be here soon. If Sarah is lucky, she will wake up in a hospital, in a bed with clean white linen, under the care of someone who knows how to treat her properly. That’s what she needs, not to be hiding here with him, for reasons he does not understand. It will be over soon anyway. Magda will tell them. She will have done so by now. Why are the police taking so long?
‘Please don’t let them take me away from here tonight.’
Sarah’s in the stairwell, looking up into the room.
‘Hey. Come up. Hang on a second. Look at this.’ He lights a church candle in a tall metal lantern, then reaches across to switch off the main lamp. Now the infinite darkness outside is revealed and the room appears to be suspended in the black of space. She rises from the stairs as if entering a space station, woozy and weightless. They could be in orbit above a mystery planet, astronauts in some kind of steampunk Victorian command module with metal window frames, and glass that reflects the million stars. There is also the moon, a pale orange disc caught in the glass beside, behind and beyond her. Three moons – it is impossible to say which is real.
‘Wow.’
‘I know. How are you feeling?’
‘I have an elephant on my head. Wow though. Really.’
Sarah slides into the room and he can’t help himself: he’s wowed by the way she moves. Wrapped in a bottle green blanket, hair wild, eyes bloodshot, chalk on her rusty jeans, it doesn’t matter, she’s . . . stop this.
‘What happened—’
They say it together.
‘I thought you’d tell me,’ he says.
‘I don’t remember. Magda, is it? She was being nice, trying to help.’
Gabe sits down beside her on the bench that runs along the curve of half the room, a semi-circular wooden frame of the kind you might find on a ship. He’s going to build hot-air heaters underneath it and hide them with the slats that are piled by the top of the stairs, as yet untreated. For now, there is warmth and an orange glow from a stinky old paraffin heater.
‘The police will want to know what you took.’
‘What do you mean? Nothing.’
‘Look at you.’ He nods at the black mirror of the window.
She looks, and winces. ‘Not good.’
‘Oh, I don’t know . . . Listen, Sarah, you’ve got to tell me what this is.’
‘There is no time. Unless you promise I can stay here. Until the morning, first thing. When they come, let me hide. Tell them I’m okay.’
‘They won’t listen. Jack was here. Yesterday. Before I knew you were . . . hiding. I sent him away. We had a bit of a row. A fight.’
‘Oh. Gabe.’
She has not said his name before. It snags his breath. Panic rising, he moves away quickly. Rí? Where has she gone?
‘I was exhausted, that’s all. I think. You don’t think . . .’
He’s not listening, he’s trying to get a grip, focus on what’s happening here, what it means. ‘Talk to me, Sarah. Tell me. I need to know.’
She will talk. Make a start at least, before they come. She owes him that. Maybe she can still persuade him to give her the time she needs. Just until morning, that is all. Then she will be gone, out of here, either way. But where to start? Four days ago, when she knew she had to get away? When she clicked on the photograph and suddenly knew what to do? Or before that, way back, on the day she became a childless woman? The day the doctor told her it would be impossible to have a baby without spending money, more money than she had or would ever have. Her mind races through the memory, coming out in a daze to a crowded hospital corridor, a waiting room with toys and games and cartoons on the wall and Jack angry. No, not there. In the bedroom? Should she start that way? Lying on the bed in the early morning with her trousers half down, waiting for Jack to crack the ampoules, fill the syringe, make the injection. Bruising her, every time. He cut his thumb and cursed, every time. Not there either. Where?
‘Ask me questions,’ she says.
Gabe tries to put on a friendly face. ‘Okay. So.’ He can’t be direct. He must take it easy. Let her talk. ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’
A flick of the head says no.
‘How about your mum and dad, are they around?’
The silence that follows makes him think he has said completely the wrong thing, again. But then she says, ‘My father is alone. He has friends, of course. He is in the south of France this week, staying with someone from church. I envy him the sunshine. I should have gone with him.’
‘Why did you come here?’
Too soon. She pulls the blanket tighter.
‘Okay. Tell me about Jack . . .’
‘Really? You want to do this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Gabe. ‘You don’t have to.’
‘I thought—’
‘You asked about Rí. I told you.’
‘Yes.’
‘So tell me.’
She will not sit still, but wriggles and shifts and tucks her legs up, puts them down again. All the time looking out of the windows, eyes searching west, north and east for the blue lights. She judges the directions from a stained-glass compass point in the centre circle of the roof. How much longer has she got?
‘You have to let me stay here,’ she says. ‘Please. I need this time. I will know what to do in the morning.’ Her hands move as if she needs a cigarette. He wishes he smoked. She’s chewing her nails now, but tuts and tucks her hand back under the blanket. ‘I love my husband. I should say that. He makes me laugh. He is a kind person, who cares about the world. He is a good man. It is not his fault. I am tired. It all hurts too much. I wish I had the energy to love him in the way that he needs, but I do not. It is my fault.’
‘Not sure I believe that,’ says Gabe too quickly.
‘You cannot know. You know nothing about it.’
‘No. Okay. Fair enough.’
‘Jack has dreams to chase. Demons chase him.’
That he can believe.
‘He was a mess when I met him, a bundle of nerves.’
Not much has changed then.
‘When I first met Jack, he was always quoting his father. He was so idealistic, there were all these words about changing the world. It was inspiring, to be with someone who cared so much. I would ask when we could meet and Jack was keen for that to happen, but it was never the right time. I should have realized, I suppose, but then one time I was watching the guy on YouTube, to see what he was like—’
‘What is he, a preacher?’
‘Not quite.’ She says his name and Gabe is surprised. He knows the music and used to like some of it, on the right night. Epic, overblown gothic love songs.
‘I asked Jack about it when he came home, and he went really quiet on me. I remember that so well, he had never been like it. He was always on the move, fidgeting, drumming, but then he was absolutely still, on the sofa. There was a CD on the coffee table. He picked it up, slipped out the paper inlay and kissed it, like he was kissing his dad on the forehead. Then he ripped the picture up, slowly, into little pieces. All over the floor. Do you know why?’
‘It wasn’t really his dad?’
‘No, he is his father. That’s for sure. His mother loved that man, I think, truly. She was young. Very young. Still at school. She went to see him at a gig and he picked her out of the crowd. Kidnapped her, effectively. She wanted to go with him, though, that is true. Nobody noticed, because she was in care; they thought she’d absconded and gave her up as a runaway, which I suppose she was, in a way. Then he left her at a hotel in Vegas, a fortnight later. They all left while she was sleeping. There was no note, or anything. She was pregnant.’
‘Bastard,’ says Gabe, wondering if it is true.
‘You look as if you don’t believe me.’
‘I believe you. That’s not the issue.’
‘Well, I know Chana. That’s her name now. I admire her. She brought her son up alone, in terrible places. She was a virgin when she met that man, and two weeks later she was a coke user with a baby inside her. In Vegas. With nothing. Can you imagine? Jack was a handful too. As a child he wouldn’t speak for hours at a time, but would sit there drumming out rhythms on his own head, or lash out at anyone who came close. Even his mum. They were always fighting but she was in control. She is a survivor. Sometimes she even laughs about him. She told me that he called her Layla.’
‘After the Eric Clapton song? God, that’s cheesy.’
‘Yes, probably, but it is also some kind of woman of the night in Hebrew, Chana told me. Spelt differently, but still. Nice nickname for a little girl. I looked it up and this Leila has to do with conception. How ironic is that? When Jack was old enough to ask questions, she had no answers. So she went to a lawyer, had a DNA test and they sued.’
‘Did she win?’
‘He paid her off, to keep it out of the papers.’
‘That’s something.’
‘Money always runs out. She paid the lawyer and bought Jack an education, which was a good one, but that was more or less it. Everything else that she has she built up by herself. There was just one other thing that she paid for, with the last of his money . . .’ Sarah pats her knees in a little rhythm, like Jack, underneath the blanket. She inhales and exhales, as if with an invisible cigarette, and it seems to calm her.
‘Go on . . .’
‘Well. Look. We got this present, just before our wedding. From him. There was a note. Rings, incredibly expensive, Cartier. “Sorry I can’t be there. To my son and his bride, love Dad.” Love? That was the giveaway.’
‘Chana?’
‘She sent the rings herself. Jack’s father never knew a thing about it.’
‘You don’t wear a ring.’
‘Not now. It is in the drawer at home. But that’s a cheaper ring, a more comfortable one to wear in the classroom, you know? The Cartier was in the bank, in the safe. I sold it, to pay for . . . treatment.’
‘And Jack?’
‘He kept his. Refused to sell. Said it was his only link to his father.’
‘But it wasn’t from him—’
‘Try telling him that. Good luck. He says all these things from his father as if he was told them when they were going fishing or watching a game or something, but you know what? They are all taken from songs and interviews. “Music can change the world, because music can change people,” or something like that. Lifted. He learned them off by heart. They’ve never met. Jack tried once, at the apartment in New York. It was like something from The Great Gatsby. He was turned away.’
She feels sorry for him, thinks Gabe. That’s how this works.
‘Jack came here because he wanted to be someone else, you see? He leant on me and I let him, I liked it. I wanted someone to love. That was okay, then. Now, it’s different. I can’t help him in the same way, because I need some of that kind of love myself and he doesn’t know what to do about that,’ she says, shifting again in the chair, stretching out her legs and looking at her boots. ‘I think that’s a fair, accurate summary. He would shout me down, though. Jack is a hothead, always moving, drumming. Passionate. He always wanted me to tell him that everything would be all right. He still does.’ Sarah pats the wood at the back of the sofa bench, then spreads out her palms as if arranging an imaginary table. She has unwound in the telling of the story, her voice is less dislocated now, less abstract.
You’re in the room, thinks Gabe. Good.
Suddenly, she turns to look him in the eyes. ‘I don’t think everything will be all right. Not at all.’