This Must Be the Place

by Maggie O'Farrell

  ‘Is she with you?’

  The voice, muffled, still distinctly Brooklyn, comes through the cracks at the edges. Lucas allows himself a small smile. From the years in his former job as a social worker, he knows that any kind of dialogue is the first step to communication, to establishing trust. Or re-establishing, in this case.

  ‘Is she here?’ Daniel is asking from behind the door.

  Lucas shuffles rapidly through possible replies, trying to calibrate the least-damaging response. Would Daniel want her to be here? Or not want her? Hard to say.

  ‘She’s with the children, in Ireland,’ he says eventually.

  Lucas hears Daniel sigh. ‘So,’ comes the laconic voice, ‘I’ve got the monkey, not the organ-grinder.’

  Lucas puts his hand in his pocket, feels the sharp corners of the papers Claudette gave him. ‘I suppose we could look at it like that,’ he says. ‘Do you fancy a coffee with this particular monkey?’

  There is a silence from behind the door. Lucas sees the spyhole darken, the bright dot at its centre become eclipsed, and he knows that Daniel is looking out at him. He tries to arrange his features into a friendly, unthreatening expression.

  ‘What did you …’ Daniel begins indistinctly, and the rest of the sentence is inaudible.

  ‘What was that?’ Lucas leans close to the door. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I said, what in God’s name did you do to your hair?’

  ‘My hair?’ Lucas puts up a hand to his head. ‘Nothing, I think.’

  ‘Was it always so … long?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Lucas says. ‘I don’t remember. Perhaps it’s time for a cut.’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  The spyhole returns to its bright pinprick and Lucas hears the sliding, clunking sound of locks. The door swings open.

  The light in the mansion-block corridor is so glaring that, for a moment, Daniel is just a dark silhouette, swaying slightly in his doorway.

  ‘You want to go out,’ Lucas says, ‘or …?’

  Daniel steps back and Lucas sees his face for the first time. He is careful not to betray any kind of shock but Daniel’s appearance is rather worse than he’d been expecting. A grey pallor to the skin, several days’ worth of unshaven beard, eyes carrying a yellowish tinge, a frame several pounds lighter than it ought to be, a bathrobe worn over some crumpled clothes. Lucas sees it all. Hair standing on end. Fingertips stained ochre. The skin around his lips chapped and split.

  The two men consider each other for a moment, then Daniel turns and disappears into his flat.

  ‘I’ll come in, then,’ Lucas says to the retreating figure.

  Daniel doesn’t answer and, after a moment, Lucas steps over the threshold and follows him down a short passageway into a room, where Daniel has thrown himself onto a sofa.

  The living room of Daniel’s flat is strewn with papers, a desiccated potplant or two, discarded clothing, and books – books, everywhere. Lined up on shelves, stacked on the floor, tipping sideways on the windowsill, splayed face-down on the coffee-table. No sign of bottles, empty or otherwise, Lucas finds himself noting, no drug paraphernalia. A roll-up cigarette smoulders in an ashtray, a line of smoke rising in such a straight line that, for a moment, it seems to Lucas to be performing some kind of optical illusion, as if the cigarette is suspended from the ceiling by a thread of smoke.

  ‘So,’ Daniel’s voice interrupts his reverie, ‘what’s the verdict?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw you,’ Daniel points the edge of a book in Lucas’s direction, ‘casting your professional eye over the place. Casing the joint. I was just wondering what conclusion you’d come to. Drug den? Alcoholic’s lair? Depressive’s hangout?’

  Lucas shakes his head. ‘Daniel, come on, I just wanted to see how you were doing, how—’

  Daniel waves this sentence away with a dismissive gesture. ‘Lucas,’ he says, ‘I’ve always had a lot of time for you. You and you alone remain the only in-law of mine that I have ever liked, but I would bet my last dollar that you have something intended for me in one of those zipped-up, all-weather pockets of yours.’

  Lucas swallows and says nothing. He takes a step sideways and sits down in a chair opposite Daniel.

  ‘Am I right,’ Daniel says, folding his arms over his bathrobe, a wolfish scowl on his face, ‘or am I right?’

  Lucas crosses his legs, leans on the arm of his chair. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Sure you do.’ Daniel nods at him. ‘Take a look. Go on. Open up your pockets, empty them out. What will we find? Could it be a set of divorce papers, just for me?’

  ‘I came because I was in London and I wanted to see you, OK? Don’t try and twist this. I thought we could—’

  Daniel holds up a finger. ‘Cut the crap. Tell me yes or no. Do you have divorce papers on you?’

  ‘Daniel, when did you last eat? Have you—’

  ‘Yes or no, Lucas.’

  Lucas sighs. ‘Yes.’

  There is a short silence in the room. Daniel sits back, tightens the fold of his arms. A muscle to the side of his jaw clenches and something like a shiver runs over him. Lucas finds he himself is barely breathing. He tries and tries to meet Daniel’s eyes but he can’t. Why, he wants to yell, did he accept this mission? What was he thinking? He had told Claudette it was a terrible idea, him delivering these horrible papers, but she had begged and pleaded until he had given in; Maeve had left the room, shaking her head.

  Daniel scrubs at his face with his sleeve, scuffs a foot against a stack of newspapers on the floor. ‘So,’ he says, ‘she’s decided to go the whole hog, has she? Nice of her to let me know. I mean, she could have discussed this with me, at the very least, or—’

  ‘She’s tried,’ Lucas says. ‘You must know that. I think she just needs some closure on this. She says she’s emailed you several times and written you a letter. We even asked our lawyer to get in touch. But you didn’t respond, you didn’t—’

  ‘Well,’ Daniel snaps, ‘I’ve kind of had a lot on my mind.’

  Another silence. Lucas thinks he should probably just go. This is not working. He had pictured himself and Daniel going out for coffee, sitting opposite each other in a bright, noisy café somewhere. He would hand over the papers, sliding them across the table towards his brother-in-law, and Daniel would take them quickly, wordlessly, tucking them away without discussion. But, then, has Daniel ever done anything without discussion? How did Lucas forget that about him?

  Lucas will leave. He would almost rather be anywhere than this dim, airless room. How can Daniel stand it, day after day? How can he live like this? The debris all over the table, the laurel leaves pressing themselves in at the windows, the fug of cigarette smoke. He will get up and leave the papers on this table right here. He could tell Claudette that he did as she’d requested and that she can never, ever ask such a thing of him again.

  Daniel is speaking. ‘Well, I guess now we know where we stand. Now we’ve established why you’re really here.’

  ‘Can I say one thing?’ Lucas asks, standing up.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Daniel squints up at him. ‘Is it more lies, more dissembling, or is it something that resembles the truth?’

  ‘I was coming to London and I told her I would be seeing you. Or that I would at least try. And she asked me to bring the papers. So the seeing-you came first, do you understand? I’m going now but I want you to know that I came here with good intentions. It was always—’

  ‘Here’s a question,’ Daniel says, ignoring his imminent departure, sounding for all the world like the professor he so recently was. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of being her messenger boy?’

  Lucas leans one hand against the wall. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘I often used to wonder,’ Daniel says, his gaze directed out of the window to the communal garden with uneven paving and overgrown shrubs, ‘how you stood it.’

  ‘Stood what?’

  Da
niel swings his head around and looks him right in the eye. Lucas has forgotten the penetration of that blue gaze. ‘Lucas, buy this house for me. Lucas, call my lawyer for me. Lucas, get in touch with my ex. Lucas, go to Ari’s sports day. Lucas, get Daniel to sign these divorce papers. Lucas, enable my whole insane lifestyle.’

  Lucas clears his throat. ‘You know, you do a pretty good imitation of her voice. I never knew you could—’

  Daniel leans forward and jabs his finger at him. ‘Aren’t you ever tempted to tell her to just fuck off?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Not even once? Not ever? You realise, don’t you, that her whole existence is entirely predicated on your assistance, your collusion? Without you, her cover would be—’ Daniel makes a gesture like a firework going off. ‘She’d be outed. She’d be rumbled. She wouldn’t last a week without you. You know that? She’d have to come down off that mountain and face the bloody music. And yet she treats you like shit, like a PA, like an unpaid lackey, like a bodyguard, like a—’

  ‘Daniel.’ Lucas cuts him off in a steady voice, he is not going to let this get to him, he is not, ‘you need to stop. You’re out of line, OK?’

  ‘I am? But who else is going to tell you this, Lucas? I worry about you, I really do. I kept my counsel while I was married to your sister – well, I guess I still am married to her, until I sign those papers in your pocket, which, by the way, will be never, you can tell her from me – but no one should have to put up with the amount of crap she heaps on you. No one. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s—’

  ‘Look,’ Lucas interjects, ‘I don’t want to get into this but we both know that Claudette’s is a pretty unusual situation. I can assure you that I am not being taken advantage of. That just doesn’t come into it. She’s my sister. I’d do anything for her and I know she’d do anything for me. She has, in fact, many times, and—’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot.’ Daniel places first one foot then the other on the littered coffee-table. ‘She paid for your whole fertility roller-coaster, didn’t she?’

  Lucas narrows his eyes. After a moment, he nods. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And she footed the bill for the adoption.’

  He nods, once more. ‘She did.’ He refuses to let Daniel rile him; he will not give him the satisfaction.

  ‘So, in effect, she bought you off by procuring you a child. Your own little orphan from China, in exchange for a lifetime of servitude. Wasn’t that nice of her?’

  ‘Fuck you, Daniel.’ The words have flown from his mouth before he is even aware of thinking them. His hand is slamming itself against the wall and he is shouting. ‘How dare you? I don’t want to hear you speak of my family in that way again, ever.’ Lucas feels himself shaking, feels adrenalin firing through him. ‘That’s my daughter you’re talking about. My child. I know you’re going through a really hard time at the moment – we all know – but to bring Zhilan into this is low. Lower than low. I will not have it.’

  Lucas reaches the end of this speech. His throat feels raw and scraped. He has no idea what will happen next. Will Daniel yell back? Or worse? How, he is asking himself, will he explain to Claudette and Maeve that he managed to get into a brawl with Daniel?

  But as Lucas is readying himself, steeling himself, curling his hands into fists, Daniel does nothing. He seems to be contemplating the lacing of his shoes. Lucas is wondering whether the best thing now would be for him to just turn around and leave, when Daniel says something so quiet Lucas can’t make it out.

  ‘What was that?’ Lucas says, straining forward.

  ‘I said, you’re right,’ Daniel mutters, raising his eyes to look at him. ‘I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over … I just … Seeing you, you know, brings it all back and … I thought for a minute there when I heard you at the door that … well, that she had come too and that maybe … I don’t know … I don’t know … I just … I don’t know anything any more.’

  He puts his hands over his face and sits like that, on his sofa. After a moment, Lucas moves towards him, cautiously at first. Then he sits next to him. He puts a tentative hand on Daniel’s shoulder. ‘Listen, it’s OK.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel keeps muttering into his hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s really OK. We both lost it a bit there. I know you didn’t mean those things. I know you love Zhilan. You’re her favourite uncle. She’s always saying that.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Daniel says, lifting his head, rubbing at his face with the flat of his hands. ‘That makes me feel like shit. Kick a man while he’s down, why don’t you?’

  ‘It’s a good thing, a nice thing, being someone’s favourite uncle.’ Lucas gives him a clap on the shoulder. ‘You should be proud.’

  Daniel pushes himself upright, sniffing. ‘Proud I am most definitely not right now.’ He moves around the coffee-table and out of the room. ‘Can I get you something? You want a drink?’

  Lucas hesitates. ‘A drink? You mean—’

  ‘I mean a drink,’ Daniel calls from the kitchen. ‘A beverage. Of a hot temperature and a non-alcoholic nature. PG-rated liquid in a mug.’

  Lucas smiles. ‘Then, yes. Please. That would be great.’ He gets up and goes to the window. He takes a deep, uneven breath, then another. What a weird thing that was. How did everything get so scrambled so fast? Would he really have punched Daniel back there? What a strange thought.

  He lifts his shoulders and lets them fall. Things are back on track now. This is good. Things are looking up. They have made a breakthrough, of sorts. The dilapidated concrete courtyard that passes for a garden in Daniel’s block of flats has taken on a less gloomy aspect. Lucas is sure, fairly sure, that he can make out the green spears of crocuses pushing up from the ashy soil under a tree. A bird alights on a branch for a moment – Lucas sees the flash of a pink-brown underside, a chaffinch, perhaps – and then is gone. He feels himself expanding with relief, feels the earlier adrenalin dispersing. He will be able to tell Claudette that Daniel is, if not exactly well, then showing signs of recovery. He is not painfully thin, as he was a few months ago; he is not too jaundiced. The flat isn’t completely chaotic; it could be rated, in his opinion, as the dwelling of someone who is making progress. Claudette worries about Daniel constantly, is consumed with concern for him, despite how difficult he has made—

  Lucas catches sight of something on the wall. A photograph of Marithe, tacked above a desk. He ducks his head to look at it as it isn’t one he can recall seeing before. In it, Marithe is wearing a denim jacket and she smiles at the camera, her mouth laced with braces. Lucas frowns. Marithe has never, to his knowledge, worn braces: Claudette loathes them, calls orthodontistry ‘child abuse’. Then the realisation hits him. It’s not Marithe. Of course it’s not Marithe. It’s Phoebe. How could he have been so stupid? Lucas looks at her, at Phoebe, the lost daughter, looks right into her eyes, which are crinkled as she must have been facing into the sun, and he gets the urge to reach his hand into the frame of the photograph, to push through its celluloid surface and take hold of her as she was on that day, far away, across the Atlantic, to grasp that sunburnt wrist and to hang on, to never let go.

  He allows his eyes to drift sideways, along the wall above Daniel’s desk. Another picture of Phoebe, older in this one, with her arm around Daniel, Niall standing behind them both. A couple of Calvin and Marithe, one with Ari, in the garden in Donegal. There are several of Claudette, Lucas notes with a grimace, some recent, one of her pregnant, possibly with Marithe, one of her beside a beach campfire, an old publicity shot of her wearing a négligée and a peculiar hat, hair draped over her shoulder. Lucas looks away from this, at a map tacked to the wall. It appears to be the Scottish Borders, with Xs marked in red ink, like a child plotting treasure. A murky, worn photograph of a woman with sharp features, wearing a black cloak, the kind of thing you might put on at Hallowe’en, standing under a crenellated archway, eyeing the camera with a taut, appraising glance.

>   ‘You sure you’ve seen everything?’

  Lucas whips round. Daniel is standing in the doorway, two mugs held in his hands.

  ‘There isn’t anything you missed?’ Daniel’s voice is low with menace and Lucas can see that the other Daniel, the Daniel they all know and love, who reappeared for a moment there, has been subsumed by this other, frightening, furious alter-ego. ‘Are you sure you committed it all to memory?’ He strides across the room and Lucas can’t help himself – he takes a step back. Daniel puts down the mugs on the desk edge. ‘Did you see this?’ He yanks the map of the Borders from the wall and hurls it towards Lucas. ‘And this?’ The photo of the woman in the cloak. ‘How about this? And this?’ Pages, letters, photographs are ripped out of drawers and files and hurled into the space between the two men and still Daniel keeps talking. ‘Make sure you tell her that, yes, I was fired. My compassionate leave magically morphed into a termination of employment. Don’t leave out that I’ve got a restraining order on me, from my friend Todd. Be sure to say that I’m still fixating – her word – on my ex-girlfriend, the one who killed herself. Or did I kill her? I never can work that one out. One of the two, anyway. Maybe you’d like copies of all these. I’ll make you copies. So you can go back to your sister and give her the ammunition she needs, so she can put in a claim that I am unfit, unworthy, that I mustn’t see my children, that they must be kept from me, but you tell her’ – Daniel is yelling now, at the top of his voice – ‘you tell her I won’t have it. I won’t take it lying down. I won’t have anyone do that to me again. I will see those kids, I will. She can send whoever she likes with whatever fucking papers she likes but nobody – nobody – is going to take my kids away from me.’

  ‘Daniel, listen,’ Lucas says. He is near the exit. He has made sure of this. Three steps, maybe four, and he would be at the flat’s door, the one that would lead him out into the corridor and then the lobby. ‘Claudette has no intention of stopping you seeing the children. You know that. She wants you to see them. She would do anything to make that happen.’