Chapter Eight

LATER THAT MORNING, the sky has changed. It is the weak blue and yellow of old people’s eyes. From my office on the first floor of a building in Bond Street, I watch thin women window-shopping, gorging on nothing more than the reflection of their own bodies. I turn back to my desk and finish a chocolate bourbon.

Dominic arrives from a meeting. He sets his jacket across the back of his chair with a matador’s flourish. I smirk as he glances over to Nicole’s office to check whether she witnessed this performance; and I know Nicole is far too smart to let on. Several secretaries did see, however, and, although Dominic regards such women as plankton in the office food chain, it’s clear to me that their visible interest affords his ego minor consolation.

Pleading the need to purchase a muffin (we regret to inform you of the temporary closure today of the staff canteen due to a fire in the stir-fry console), I hand a Dictaphone tape containing three candidate letters to my secretary Maxine, and wander out towards Piccadilly.

Somehow I find myself in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. An old man wearing a raincoat the colour of pigeons is shuffling slowly towards the gallery steps, has already stopped twice to catch his breath. Suddenly he topples forward. All the sinews in my body tense; another man having a stroke. But then I see that actually he’s bending to rescue what is probably an insect from the flagging, carrying it cupped in his hands to a nearby urn for safety.

*

‘Excuse me for asking, but is it free next to you?’

I half squint into the sun. I want to be alone. The shape looming before me, the source of this question, is male. His black shoes are shiny, with square buckles. The trousers are pinstriped – I shift my gaze away from the man’s pubic bone to his suntanned hands. In one he carries a beaker of coffee; a golden disc glints at the cuff, and is scrolled with initials. I take in all this information, make my snap judgement and try to write the man off, to get back to brooding about my dad and to having a good old wallow in self-pity.

Yet I pause. The shirt sleeve at the other wrist flaps. A link is missing; the cuffs are actually frayed, as though they’ve been turned once too often. His skin is the colour Matt’s goes when we’re on holiday. And his accent is just a little too clipped. I’m shoving this man into a box, but the lid refuses to close.

‘—only, there are so many kids here, it’s hard to know where to perch the old B-T-M—’

The phrase makes me smile. I imagine the man learning English by watching the same old Ealing comedies I did as a child. It makes him seem very conscientious.

‘—But, you know, Miss, if you’re waiting for someone, I quite understand—’

‘No, no. Please, feel free.’ In my list of neuroses, as Matt is often telling me, my fear of disapproval has adapted to be one of the fittest. I shuffle along the wall.

‘Any of these kiddies yours?’ he laughs, gesturing vaguely at the crowds in the courtyard.

‘No,’ I reply. ‘I’ve never wanted children.’

I blush, but the man appears not to have noticed my candour. Instead, he strides off into the conversation to ask me what I do. Normally, I prefer to be the one asking the questions. Yet, I tell him.

‘I thought headhunters died out with the pygmies!’

I grin, having never heard that comment before. Or perhaps only every time I announce my job. Still, it’s preferable to the charade of people pretending to search in their pockets for their CV. ‘I only wear a bone through my nose in the privacy of my office.’

‘Wish I’d brought my résumé!’ he continues, patting the sides of his trousers. I have to stop myself rolling my eyes. Only the uninitiated say ‘résumé’. ‘I’m Fergus,’ he concludes, offering a hand in the gesture of a karate player about to split bricks.

‘Fergus,’ I repeat, a little more interested. ‘Well, that’s not what I was expecting.’

‘No one ever is! My mother read Waverley at school in Düsseldorf. She’s so proud I work in London. I’m an investment banker—’

From nowhere comes an urge to shout at this man, that maybe his mother’s trying to turn him into something he’s not, and that he should wise up and work out who he really is. And then I realise how utterly stunned I’d be if anyone spoke to me like that, how deflated I’d feel. A wave of guilt floods my body.

And even as my head starts to throb, I’m aware of Fergus’s hands gripping his beaker too tightly (only, sadly, change is on the anvil), of the way they relax (since I’ve just been made redundant), and then contract again (or downsized, as they call it, which has queered my pitch), in an almost obsessive movement (half the department. Threw everyone into a tizzy), of the way the liquid oozes to the top (and I’m not yet forty), before it squirts over his hands—

‘Oh, my!’ he cries, standing up abruptly, dropping the beaker, wringing his hands, flicking his wrists, and distributing globules of coffee over nearby surfaces, including my suit, his trousers and the woman sitting next to me.

Ever prepared, despite my mother’s ban on joining the Brownies, I produce a pack of moist wipes. I offer it to my neighbour, who scowls and takes two, and then to Fergus. When he finishes mopping up the mess, he holds them out for me, sticky and stained. I point out a bin by the wall. His movements are awkward; he’s a toddler learning to walk.

‘So, what will you do?’ I ask, when he returns.

‘I’m currently chalking out my plans.’

‘You could always go travelling. Take some time out.’

‘Ah, yes. The famous gap year. I’m too old for that backpacking malarkey. And what about the rotten hole in my résumé?’

I explain that employers nowadays are terribly open-minded. ‘You might give up investment banking altogether!’

‘Give it up?’ By the panic in his eyes, the idea is clearly on a par with being caught wetting the bed. ‘You’ll be telling me next to sleep under a pyramid construction. Or have people massage my feet. Give it up, eh? I’d say there’s more chance of me falling pregnant!’

*

I enter the basement flat, breathing in its familiar scent of lavender. My shoulders relax. Candles flicker. A tiny, porcelain Kuan Yin figure, for compassionate feng shui, shimmers in the glow. On the coffee table stands a potted African violet.

‘And how’ve you been this week?’ murmurs Ginny, rubbing my back with firm circular movements, as I sit with my feet soaking in warm soapy water. She’s a trim woman in her early sixties, although her blue eyes and smile make her look younger. Above a desk, where a laptop has sat idle for months, hangs a pin-board covered with images of Madonnas and infants, postcards of thanks, and photographs of babies. Ginny specialises in treating infertility.

As she eases me into the chair and wraps my feet in supple towels, I tell her about Dad, and the funeral arrangements. She sets to work on my right foot with gentle scudding gestures.

And suddenly my eyes sting. Because, after meeting Fergus, I entered the gallery, where I saw again the old man in the raincoat, standing close to a painting to scrutinise its brush strokes. Moments later I saw a guard grasp his shoulder, accusing the man of trying to touch the painting.

Ginny continues massaging with one hand and passes me a box of tissues with the other. ‘You miss your father,’ says Ginny, her knuckles grinding the crystal deposits at my heel. I squirm in my chair, and sob for some time.

‘And now I’m about to lose Dylan,’ I say, when I am able to dry my eyes. And I tell her about the adoption announcement.

She wraps my right foot in towelling, unwraps the left. ‘Have you told him how you feel?’

I shake my head. ‘Too scared,’ I pout. ‘And soon I’ll have to contact my mother.’

‘When were you two ladies last in touch?’

I have to think. ‘Maybe eighteen months ago. She sends me postcards now and then, to let me know she hasn’t died.’

‘She wants to make contact.’

‘Not so much that she phones! And when she does write, she rarely bothers to fill the postcard. She scribbles a couple of lines in her tiny writing, and then leaves a gaping space underneath.’

Outside, the evening light is fading. The day has used up its ration.

‘So that makes two of you capable of giving the silent treatment!’ Ginny’s eyes twinkle. ‘You’re terrified of contacting your mother, and she’s terrified—’ Ginny stops.

The flutter of panic resurfaces. Ginny is being insufferably even- handed. I’m not courageous enough to enter that dark labyrinth of what might terrify my own mother.

‘I’m sorry, I have to go now,’ I tell her, and start writing out the cheque.

*

In Sainsbury’s, struggling to think of something for supper, I stand staring at a display of dead fish on ice. Ginny’s parting words ring in my ears: that Mother can no longer hurt me. I want to believe her. I really, really do. But such blind faith, worthy of one of Dylan’s religious retreats, feels reckless and beyond my reach.