“Where did you keep it? I don’t remember seeing it in the apartment.”
“I had it in the car. Under a rug, so you wouldn’t spot it.”
“When did you pick it up?”
“Thursday afternoon.”
“You ordered it before you got here? But . . . but you hadn’t even seen my suitcase then. For all you knew it might have been brand-new.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t, though, was it? I told you, I gave it some thought. Maybe I know you better than you realize.”
She stared back at the case. She imagined it moving toward her on a slow conveyor belt in the Heathrow arrivals hall, preening itself, so much classier than its companions. Look at me. I’m here now. Let’s go home together. It was indeed a clever present. He was right. Not only would she never have bought it for herself, but it meant that whatever happened between them he would continue to travel with her, to be with her on planes and in hotel bedrooms all over the world, regardless of who else she might be sharing them with. She played further with the image of the carousel, this time with half a dozen identical cases juddering their elegant way around the long bend and half a dozen separate women walking dreamily toward them, then stopping and noticing each other with a dawning horror in their eyes. The cynicism behind the image shocked her. That wasn’t really what she thought of him, was it? Maybe she was just not used to being given presents. Or not such expensive ones. Different styles . . . She decided to give in gracefully.
“Well, it’s beautiful. . . . Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“I told you, you don’t need to say anything. I’m just glad you like it.”
She got up to come over to him and as she did so misjudged the distance between her and the open wardrobe door. The crack to the side of her forehead was hard enough for them both to hear it.
“Jesus. You all right?” he said, clambering off the bed to get to her.
“Oh, God.” She blinked back the tears, more of shock than of pain. “Yeah. Fine. Well, almost fine.”
He held her head gently in his two hands and ran a light finger over the reddening skin on the eyebrow ridge of her right eye. “Nasty crack. You’re going to have a black eye. We’d better be careful with the hotel staff. People are going to think I beat you.”
She smiled. “And do you?”
“What?”
“Beat women?”
He grinned. “Only if they ask me to. Do you want me to go and get some ice?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, really.”
“Well, you better come and lie down, just for a bit.”
As he took her to the bed the towel fell off her. He didn’t bother to pick it up again.
Home—Saturday P.M.
I WENT BACK to the first magazine and noted down the advertisement numbers carefully. On the front page of the section there were instructions as to how to use the service. I dialed the number. It connected immediately. A woman’s voice, disjointed, as if she had some developing neurological disease, welcomed me to the main menu and gave me instructions as to which button to pick for which service. I chose men. The voice came back again. “Thank you. Enter the number of the advertisement you wish to listen to.” I punched in the details of “Sorted, straight, looking for a woman to walk on the wild side.”
“Message Line. ML 457911,” the woman said, her vocal disability further advanced as each number was plucked out from the computer bank. A soft, rather apologetic male voice jumped into my ear. Straight, no doubt, but not that sorted. I tried to imagine Anna sitting in my place listening.
“Hello. It’s hard to know what to say really. Right. Well, my name is Frank. I’m forty-two years old. Divorced, with one child, whom I see at weekends and I’m very attached to. I work in business, an export manager for an overseas company, so I spend a fair amount of time away from home. I’m fit, active—gym, swimming, that kind of thing. I like all the usual things: music, football, cinema. And I’m learning to scuba dive. I want to go to the Red Sea in the autumn. I keep myself very busy, and I like my work, but I want to be able to make time for a different kind of life. I suppose the woman I’m looking for would be attractive; no preference for blond or brunette, but I’d like her to be slim, have a sense of humor and be intelligent. Be nice if you shared some of my interests. My politics are, well, I suppose center left, but I don’t have much truck with politicians. I don’t know what else to say. I’m a caring kind of bloke, who’s looking for a caring kind of woman. I’m not frightened of commitment—at least I don’t think I am. Anyway, I want to meet you if you think you fit the bill. So please leave me a message and I’ll call you back. And if you don’t want to leave a message, then good luck with your search anyway. Thanks for calling.”
The metallic lady cut back in, asking if I would like to hear the message again or leave a reply or hear another selection of messages. I scrabbled for another number. The professional looking for GSOH. GSOH?
The voice was gruffer, tougher, but still in need: “Hi, I’m Graham. I’m thirty-nine years old. I work in the City. I’ve never been married, I own my own house, and I have a wide circle of friends. I’m five foot nine, weigh one hundred and sixty pounds and belong to a gym. I like football, music—all kinds, particular fondness for country and western—and traveling. I’ve just come back from a safari in Tanzania. The woman I would like to meet will be thirty to forty, small, curvy, and blond with a love of life, an optimistic disposition, and a good sense of humor. Does that sound like you? If so, leave your message and I’ll call you back.”
I could almost hear the crinkle of paper as he folded away the script. GSOH = Good Sense Of Humor. WLTM = Would Like To Meet. The codes weren’t exactly taxing. I wondered what Graham would be doing on this Saturday morning. In bed with a curvaceous blond optimist, or bent double over the latest Guide to see if any of the new women’s ads might fit the bill?
I pushed another number. The ER watcher turned out not to have left a message. But you could still record one for him. Why would you do that? Talk to somebody who hadn’t talked to you? But then why would you pick up the phone in the first place? Because you wanted something that life couldn’t give. Was that really what Anna was feeling? I dialed another number. Then another. There was a muddy compulsion to the whole process, like eavesdropping on someone’s therapy session. “I’m not afraid to say I’m looking for a long-term relationship, that I feel ready for that now” . . . “I’m looking for a woman who isn’t too judgmental, and who would be willing to take risks.” Did that mean sexual risks? Surely not. Sex was one thing that nobody mentioned.
The more I heard the more cruel it made me feel. Frank was too apologetic, Graham too pushy, Dan too boring, Ron too earnest . . . The list went on. Why would Anna be interested in any of them? I picked up one of her photos. Was this the next stage? You rang someone up, exchanged pictures, then met under the clock at Waterloo Station?
My eye was drawn to a small box on the page with a set of warning instructions under the heading SAFETY FIRST. It told you to meet in public places, not give your home address to anyone until you were sure, to trust your instincts, and to let your family or friends know when you were meeting someone for the first time.
I rolled back the voices in my head. One might use a lot of adjectives to describe them, but dangerous wouldn’t be on the list. What marked them out was how ordinary they sounded; nervous, casual, sometimes embarrassed, as if they wouldn’t need to be doing this if life had treated them a little better. Sad even, but hardly psychotic. Though no doubt any psychopath would at least make an attempt to disguise it. Nevertheless Anna had picked out their names in black pen, she’d listened to their stories, and if she had met any of them then she certainly didn’t seem to have taken the last piece of advice. But did this have anything to do with her absence? I didn’t have a clue.
On the desk in front of me the phone rang. It nearly plucked my heart out of my chest. “Anna,” I said out loud. “At last. What’s been keepin
g you?” Then I picked up the receiver.
In the background there was a wall of noise, people and music. I shouted hello a couple of times; then a small high voice came through against the chatter.
“Mum?”
“Oh, hi, Lily. It’s not Mum, it’s Stella. How was swimming?”
“Fine. Is Mum there?”
“No. She’s not back yet, darling.”
“Oh.”
She hesitated. “What are you doing?” I said to cover up the gap.
“Er . . . there’s a fair on at the green. We drove past it. Paul says we can go.” She stopped again; someone was saying something in the background. “Do you want to come too?”
“I’d love to. But— Listen, why don’t you let me have a word with him. Is he there?” I said as the phone started to beep frantically, then went dead. It rang again less than thirty seconds later.
“No news,” I said before he asked. “What happened to your mobile? Lily drop it in the bath again?”
“How do you know about that?” How did I know? Anna must have told me. The warp and weave of life recounted through another Friday-night phone call. Where had she been for the last one? “No, I lost it yesterday on the tube. Bloody annoying. It’s the second one I’ve had nicked within three months.”
“In Amsterdam they replace them within the hour.”
“I know. But they also speak Dutch. Listen, our chicken-burger-eater is a little wobbly here.”
“Tears or temper?”
“A bit of both.”
“About Anna?”
“Maybe. Though right at the moment it’s about how many rides she can go on at the fair.”
Bribery. If it’s good enough for the real parents it’s good enough for the surrogates. “Give in,” I said. “It’s not a battle worth fighting. Where do I fit in?”
“I thought she might appreciate a woman’s touch for a while. Do you want to jump in a cab and join us?”
“What if she comes back or rings while we’re out?”
“Leave a note and switch on the answering machine. It’ll only be a couple of hours at most.”
As I put the phone down it struck me that Anna would surely have had Paul’s mobile number in case of emergencies. What if for some reason she couldn’t get through on the others and had called him and left a message? The line would be canceled now and life doesn’t throw up many thieves with hearts big enough to reroute stolen messages.
I had a sudden image of Anna in the middle of a sun-soaked Tuscan landscape with a man from the small ads, someone looking for love and growing violent when he couldn’t find it. There was no way of knowing. That was what hurt the most.
Away—Saturday A.M.
SHE FOUND THE key to the wardrobe in the afternoon, in the place where she was always meant to find it, the place where he must have put it that first night when she was unconscious: buried at the bottom of her handbag. It was inevitable she would go back and look there, not with the same panic she’d felt when she first searched for passport or tickets, but in a calmer, more methodical way, on the lookout for anything that might help her to get out of there, anything that he might possibly have overlooked.
The wardrobe was the only lock it could fit, and as she opened the door and saw it all hanging there in front of her—a life spread out along a line of hangers—she understood more clearly what was being asked of her and why it had been necessary to take away her clothes as well as her liberty. At least it gave her something to fight with.
It had been a bad morning. She had woken early with the sun, plucked out of an intense, enclosing dream of Lily: the two of them sitting in a bath full of bubbles, Lily ducking her head under the water, then coming up for air with a halo of foam and blinking eyes. Everything about it had been real. She could see the chipped soap dish in the shape of a frog, behind her daughter’s head. She could feel the warmth of the water around them, could hear Lily’s giggles before she plunged under again. It was happening. They were actually there. She had come home. She could taste relief like a flood of flavor in her mouth, a kind of salivating. When she woke into the still-locked room, shafts of dappled sunlight playing across the floor and her stomach growling for food, the cheap trick of the dream sent a shock wave through her, the courage of the night before lost in the wave of despair.
Lily. She had curled up on herself in the bed, trying to contain the pain of the disappointment. Lily. She heard herself groan quietly. Oh, Lily. What would happen to her now? Don’t think about this, she told herself urgently; there is nothing you can do and the horror of it will make you mad and hopeless. But once started it was impossible to stop. She could feel the mental whirling take over, yanking her mind out of her control; constructing pictures, spinning bleak facts into bleaker fantasy, colder than fear, so cold and clear that you couldn’t believe it wasn’t real.
Two nights gone, and her missing would have brought the gathering of the clans. She saw Paul and Estella standing together outside the school gates waiting for Lily to come out. She watched her daughter’s face, solemn and questioning, her right hand flicking her hair behind her ears as she always did when she wasn’t sure of something, as she asked where Mummy was. Once again they would deflect the question, making light of her absence, blaming flights and work, then take her back home to dinner, TV, or the park.
In the days to come, while the police followed a trail that disappeared into thin air in a foreign city, they would continue the pretense. (In this scenario she was already dead, her body buried somewhere in a garden wilderness, her suitcase and belongings all ashes on the wind—though, of course, they wouldn’t know that yet.) They would give her friends to play with and videos to watch, filling up the time so there would be no space for worry. Lily would not be fooled. She would go on as usual for the first couple of days, a little distant, but amiable, obedient, going to bed without fuss, curling up on herself and pulling the bedclothes close around her.
But soon enough it would start to break through. She would wake in the night, getting up and going to sit on the top landing, arms around her knees peering out into the darkness, as she did when something was worrying her. Would Estella know she was there? Would she be awakened by the difference in the night silence, detect her presence on the stairs? And when she did, what horrors would they unlock together, sitting in the darkness where lies burn as bright as fireflies? It would be on such a night that Lily would ask the question that could not be deflected, or, more likely, would say something which proved that she had known all along, and only then would Estella really understand how all of their lives had been changed forever. Poor Lily. Poor Estella. Because she would find herself fighting her own demons on that staircase. Fate could not have played a crueler trick on all of them. Its very symmetry was breathtaking.
She sat behind them on the staircase and tried to put her arms around them both. But she couldn’t help them. They were alone now, that was the point. How long would it take for the missing to turn into the dead? And what would become of Lily then? Would it be better for her to stay at home, even though it wasn’t home anymore, or to go with Stella abroad to a place where forgetting might be easier? They would give her help, no doubt: an army of compassionate therapists with their dolls and paintboxes, teasing out the pain until it was spread thin enough to be absorbed, like oil on ocean waters. Until, eventually, Lily would start to forget her . . .
It was the violence of that thought that had finally forced her back into life. Lily would not forget her, because she was not dead. Yet. She was not dead. Not dead yet. She used the old mantra to get herself moving. When she checked the room she found the chair was as she had left it, but that next to it on the floor lay a folded piece of paper, ripped no doubt from the same exercise book as before. On it were written just two words: “Dinner tonight.”
* * *
She flicked through the wardrobe. The woman who had worn these clothes would have been taller than she, but otherwise there were clear similarities. Their bu
ild was similar, as were their hair and their complexion. Of course they didn’t really look alike—or at least, not from what she could remember of the photographs—but that would depend on what you were wanting to see.
She remembered the way she had caught him staring at her that morning in the shop, as if he already knew her. Of course they had seen each other before. He must have been following her. What did he do? Roam the city in search of look-alikes? Is that how he had known she took sugar in her coffee? She had sat in enough cafés over the last three days. He could have been in any one of them with her. Was it just look-alikes or talk-alikes that he needed? It occurred to her that this wife of his might also have been English. Despite the occasional mistake, his grasp of the language was confident and colloquial. Chances were he had learned it from a native speaker. And someone with whom he had had a lot of practice.
She had died a year ago, he had said. Was it seasonal, then, this pilgrimage for the dead? Did that make her the first? How much worse would it be if she wasn’t? Whatever it was, she would cope. If she was going to get herself home to Lily she would have to. At least now she had something to negotiate with. She felt almost excited. It would be important, however, not to show it.
When he came back for her, he, too, had changed for dinner. She could hear bright shoes chipping their way along the flagstone corridor, her ears acute now to the smallest breaking of the silence. The lock disconnected and the door opened a fraction until it met with the obstruction. She had already moved the chair enough so that with a little effort he could get in. He pushed harder and the door shifted. Another push would do it. She stood up to meet him.
The sight of her seemed to poleax him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, or rather the dress on her. It wasn’t her style, its elegance too traditional, too devoid of any wit, but the color suited: the deep red silk standing out against black hair and pale, almost ghostly skin. Striking. As she remembered from one of the photographs. As he remembered, too. He stood staring at her, eyes shining, no game-playing now, no pretenses of politeness to get in the way. What do you want? she thought. A wife? A substitute? Dream on.