by Stella Duffy
Carla Epstein wasn’t sure why the comparison made her uneasy, but she didn’t bother to mention it to Jake. She was well-aware that Grant was dedicated both to the work and to Max and she was very much hoping that first real love would bring him round to a slightly less intense reality as it had at least done with her, if not with his father.
So neither Carla nor Jake had bothered to mention Jasmine to Max while she was living at the House, then time passed and it became even less relevant. Which is why he was horrified to receive a note at the bottom of his ten-page fax from San Francisco.
By the way, we met someone today who knows Jasmine in London. I guess she must have caught up with you after all these years. She wasn’t with us long and it wasn’t exactly successful, so I thought it better not to bother you with it. Hope I did right? Anyway, I’m sure working with you will be great for her. Give her our love and tell her I met her friend this afternoon. Sarah seems like a nice girl, though a little too interested in the Past by your standards, I guess the Process didn’t quite clear her, huh? Maybe we can speed her Forwards from here!
With best regards as ever and holding our breath for the inevitable great results and the next research project, Jake & Carla.
Max turned white and threw up into the rubbish basket beside his desk. His head was reeling with untenable thoughts. Jasmine was in London. Anita was dead but her daughter was here. Their daughter, the child Max had carefully excised from his thoughts, choosing to believe she was John’s daughter. Preferring to believe, on the rare occasions he looked at his past, that he had created an orphan rather than killing the mother of his own child. It sat far easier on his conscience to see Anita and John as a separate family than as a genetic link to himself. Only now she was here, not in his thoughts by his choice and for him to deal with privately, but of her own volition and with her own agenda, and just maybe she was his daughter after all. Why hadn’t she contacted him? And who the hell was this Sarah that Jake met today? Except that it wasn’t today any more. Whoever it was had met Jake yesterday. Had spoken to Jake yesterday. Max felt out of control. He couldn’t bear being out of control, it terrified him. He undid his tie and the top buttons of his shirt, panic perspiration making his fingers clumsy, his gleaming white and chrome office spinning around him. The girl who might be his daughter had come back into his life and chosen not to make herself known to him. Which in Max’s confused thoughts could only mean one thing. That she knew. She knew about him and she knew about his past and now she knew him. He didn’t even know her name, because no one in his London group was called Jasmine, he was certain he would have remembered that. Max threw up again and from the pit of his stomach where the memories were kept he disgorged both his breakfast and a picture of Anita. Anita lying in his arms, kissing her on holiday in Mexico, kissing her in the garden of the House, kissing her as her last breath came from her. Kissing Anita and holding Anita and killing Anita. Very much in the same way he had first held Michael and kissed Michael as he handed him the razor blade to kill himself with, leaving him at the door with a quiet “Goodnight”. Very much in the same way that almost ten years ago he had held Deb and kissed Deb as he cut her wrists for her. Very much in the same way that he had eventually convinced Anna Johnson that drowning would be a soft and pleasant death.
Max was nearly fifty-three and had spent almost half his life developing and refining the Process. With his family and establishment contacts and the several favours which had been owing to him since Anna Johnson’s death when he had let it be known to one or two key figures that he was hanging on to her secrets, he had built up a position so that now he was ready to take the Process to the public arena and over a third of the hospitals nationwide. It was to be the culmination of his desires. Sure, the money and prestige would be nice, but the value of the Process was way beyond that. It would be available to all. This was no longer any silly youthful delusion of grandeur, this was exactly what he’d set out to achieve all those years ago – something that mattered. Then it had been a vague dream, now it was reality. And now this girl was here, this loose cannon. Two loose cannons. Jasmine here, and this Sarah, whoever she was, in America.
To take the Process this far Max had pretty much given up on personal relationships, on the possibility of a family. Had pretty much given up everything. And he’d been fine about that, happy to make the sacrifice. The only thing he would not give up was the Process. This girl was a danger and a worry, but she was not an insurmountable problem. Max went to his cool office bathroom and wiped his face with fresh water and a lemon scented towel. It would be all right. He’d deal with this girl, just like all the others. Once he found her.
The woman takes my hand and leads me between them.
Between the two men and I do not know which is mine.
Though I have chosen.
The small waves hit against my small bare feet and I wait for the seventh wave. I count the first six.
At the great wave I will unleash myself.
He does not know me still, but he will.
She is guiding me, walking very near me. She is taking me close.
I am the puppet master and I will take control.
The woman is pleased with me.
I am pleased with the woman I have chosen.
She too is coming close.
Can he smell the women returning?
Is he scared?
I hope he is. I am hungry for the taste of his fear.
The woman is very pleased with me.
CHAPTER 25
It wasn’t so much that Saz didn’t enjoy the “adult children and parents” meeting. It wasn’t even that she didn’t grasp a few valuable insights of her own. It was more that all the while she was discussing the difficulty of becoming friends with your family, and all the while she was “opening her heart and mind to the possibility of a New Loving Paradigm”, she would have preferred to be opening the records and files of the House to the somewhat more juicy possibility of uncovering the truth about Maxwell North.
The group were the usual eclectic bunch these things turned out and Saz was glad she had at least attended the one-day Process or most of the concepts and jargon bandied about the whitewashed room would have been incomprehensible to her. Saz had long ago accustomed herself to the fact that her parents were fallible and as likely to make mistakes as anyone else and she was echoed in her thoughts by Grant, who tried his best to get the group to pass on from their anger and into something slightly more constructive – like looking at the future, even if it was only tomorrow. He was fairly successful with all but one man who, in his early forties, was still blaming his mother for his inability to relate successfully to women. Saz thought that might have a little more to do with his rampant sexism, but forbore to say so, as he’d already bridled perceptibly when she came out at the beginning of the evening.
Over a cup of jasmine tea for Grant and pure caffeineridden coffee for Saz at the end of the session, the two of them agreed that the most obvious thing they’d seen in the meeting was that those who were prepared to forgive and then just get on with it, did so fairly readily, once the concept of “letting go” had been clearly explained to them. But those who were scared of actually having a life were the ones most likely to want to stay exactly where they were. As Grant explained,
“God Saz, if that guy Bob actually had the guts to do it, he’d probably be a great actor – I’ve seen his work. He’s good. But he’s just too damn scared. So he gets to say ‘Mommy didn’t love me’ and at forty-two he’s going nowhere fast, because he would rather blame others for his failure than have a life of his own and risk the possibility of failing on his own terms.”
When Saz nodded her agreement, Grant asked, “So perhaps you’d like to take a risk and be honest with me now?”
Saz just managed to put down her cup before she spilt it all down her front and stuttered, “Ah, sure … um, OK.”
Grant smiled and patted her hand.
“Good. Ill just farewell t
he others and then you can tell me all about it. I love stories.”
Saz, cursing herself for consenting to come to the meeting when what she really needed was a good night’s sleep, swallowed her coffee and muttered, “Yeah, well I hope you’re going to love this one.”
Grant said goodnight to the last of the participants and then took Saz two blocks down the road to a small, dimly lit Chinese restaurant with a huge sign proclaiming “NO MSG” on the door. It was quite warm and they sat by the open front window while Saz told Grant all. Or made it look like she was telling him all. Grant was charming and terribly good-looking and very friendly and perceptive, possibly even more perceptive than his father, but while Saz could have used his co-operation, she was not prepared to risk her own safety at the hands of this boy. This boy who was bending over backwards to make himself look like a good guy. This boy who obviously worshipped Max. Admonishing herself for her lack of trust in the world, Saz nonetheless told him a heavily censored version of the whole story. She told him about the first letter, about going to the weekend Process and coming home to find the flowers. She told him about some of the discrepancies in Max’s past dates – how in most press records his early years at the House just didn’t feature at all. And when Grant, like Jake, tried to tell her that this secrecy was to protect the House from the pointlessness of delving into the past, she nodded and told him she was sure he was right. For good measure she told him a little about her relationship with Molly and the strain it was under due to her preoccupation with the case. She told him about her time with Caron McKenna but she didn’t tell him about the apparent suicide of Caron’s PA. She told him she thought there was something odd going on, and that she didn’t know what it was. Knowing that Grant wasn’t especially enamoured of Jasmine, Saz told him she thought it was all connected to her. That she now believed Jasmine to be her mystery employer, but she still wasn’t clear why she’d been employed in the first place. When she finished, she waited, studying Grant’s impassive face. He asked her,
“So what do you think all this has to do with Max?”
“I don’t know. Apparently he wasn’t even in the country when everything went wrong for Jasmine, when her mother died. But I think maybe she blames him somehow.”
“Think or know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything for sure. It’s not as if I even know Jasmine either. And from what both you and Jake have said, she may not be the most trustworthy witness.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. What do you want from me?”
“You could look up the records. Tell me who else was living in the House in the early days. Jake mentioned Michael, the guy who left? I’d love to find out where he went, talk to him. Anyone who was there really. People from the early days.”
Grant was quiet for a moment, stabbing his chopsticks into the glazed vegetables in front of him. Then he looked up and smiled at Saz, running his hands through his long hair, it was the first clear smile he’d given her since the session began earlier that night and she was surprised to find she was glad to have him smiling at her, pleased that he seemed to like her. Which disturbed her even more.
“Leave it with me, yeah? It’s been a long night. I’ll go through some things in the morning, Carla will be teaching and Jake’s got to be at the store first thing, I’ll have plenty of time. You go back to your hotel and get some sleep.”
“OK, thanks. I’m really grateful for this Grant. I needed an ally.”
“Sure.”
At the door to the House Saz hugged Grant goodnight and wasn’t surprised that she didn’t get much response from him, she reasoned that she must have confused him, and he was only eighteen after all.
“Night Grant. I’ll meet you around lunchtime, yeah?”
“Uh-huh. See you later, Saz.”
Grant slammed and locked the door behind her and Saz walked out into the night, and commencing the brief but painful trek up the hill she turned to smile back at the view, feeling pleased with herself as she correctly turned the corner to the hotel and tucked another chunk of San Francisco cartography under her belt.
As Saz walked slowly back to her hotel, enjoying the glittering map of San Francisco all around her, Grant ran upstairs to his bedroom and put in an urgent telephone call to Maxwell North.
CHAPTER 26
Jasmine met Caron on the third night of her exhibition, a “gallery evening” designed to keep the flow of press coming after the first day and keep Caron’s name in the papers. It usually worked very well. The exhibition had been warmly received, as was to be expected from a Caron McKenna show, the stark white gallery was bright with the tinkling glasses and affected smiles of all the right people. Only Max was absent from the opening but Caron had passed that off as a pressing work commitment on his part, which was not far wrong. His obsessive behaviour and constant phone calls to San Francisco could only be work-related, though he wasn’t likely to discuss it in any detail with her. Her artistic entourage were long-used to seeing Caron as a woman in her own right and didn’t really care whether Max was available to chatter to the press or not – only the press seemed to mind about that. For her part, Caron was glad not to have to talk to Max since she’d been forced into remembering so much about Deb. Caron’s “Kitchen Works” installation was particularly attracting a great deal of favourable interest, used pots, pans and other kitchen implements hung at different heights and revolving incredibly slowly on a wire washing line around the perfectly placed pieces of a shattered ebony head. Deb’s head. Jasmine introduced herself as an old wrought iron pan scraped past the shards.
“Ms McKenna? I’m Jasmine, Anita’s daughter. Maybe Max has mentioned me?”
Caron nearly dropped her glass of barely touched wine when the young woman stepped in front of her and introduced herself, quickly reaching out her hand to steady the glass.
“Careful, wouldn’t want any blood spilt, would we?”
Caron took in the younger woman’s small, terribly thin body dressed, highly inappropriately for the gallery, in old jeans and a dark red shirt, her hair was long, fine and white blonde, her high cheekbones cutting a fine line under startlingly pale blue eyes. Max’s eyes.
Seeing another reviewer coming towards her, Caron regained her composure and taking the younger woman’s hand from her glass, pulled her into the gallery office, excusing herself from the Evening Standard feature writer who was almost upon her now and was desperately trying to extract a witty quote to contrast with what he knew would be a scathing attack from the paper’s arts critic. Caron shut the door behind them and turned to look at Jasmine. She sat herself down on the office desk, legs folded under her, chin resting on her right fist. She smiled and Caron couldn’t escape the fleeting image of a malevolent elf.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
“Couldn’t you have chosen a slightly less public place?”
“Why? You don’t think these people would be interested in your long lost step-daughter?”
“Oh, I know they’d be fascinated, but I’m afraid I’m not interested in providing them with salacious gossip for their tacky rags.”
“Oh well, I guess you’ll do for now. I’m not exactly desperate for publicity myself.”
Jasmine’s mouth smiled at Caron, her eyes scrutinizing the artist’s face.
“Did he kill her?”
“What?”
“Max. My father. Daddy. Did he kill her? You know, your assistant? Deb, wasn’t it?”
“Suddenly the whole world wants to know. Shame none of you asked this ten years ago. Deb committed suicide.”
“Oh, yeah. Silly me. Now, just tell me this, did you see her do it or did he tell you?”
“I saw her body. She was very dead.”
“Who saw her last?”
Caron stepped back towards the door looking through the little side window at her guests.
“Look, I really don’t know why you’re here or what you want, but this j
ust isn’t the right time. We can meet for lunch if you want.”
Jasmine swung her legs off the desk and walked the few steps across the little office to Caron.
“No I don’t want, I don’t want any of your nice English lunch shit. Just answer the question, who saw her last?”
Caron looked at the floor, bewildered.
“It was a very long time ago. I don’t think about it much. I don’t like being made to think about it. I don’t want to talk about her …”
Jasmine reached out to Caron’s face and turned the older, trembling woman around, her small cold fingers pinched Caron’s jawbone.
“Listen to me, I don’t mean to scare you, I know I’m acting weird … acting? God, I probably am weird and maybe this has nothing to do with you, I don’t know … it’s him, Max … look, will you just tell me, who saw her last?”
Caron looked down at the glass in her hand and almost whispered.
“He did.”
“Yeah, right, and he told you she’d killed herself?”
Caron pushed Jasmine away and leant back against the wall.
“Well, forgive me, but it certainly looked like it from the pool of blood she lay in.”
Caron was crying now, tears dripping down her cheeks and into the glass, her agent pushed the door open and looked in.
“Oh … Caron … I’m so sorry, I’m intruding. I apologize.”
Caron took a deep breath and turned to face him, smiling.
“No Paul, it’s fine, I’ll be with you in a moment. I’m sorry.”
Paul closed the door behind him and Jasmine laughed.
“Christ, you’re all so God damned sorry.”
“No, we’re just English. Now look, Miss North …”
“De Vries, I use my mother’s name, not his.”
“Fine. De Vries? Well, quite frankly, I can’t deal with this just now. I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m not interested in any of your questions, any of you. This exhibition is very important to me, my work is all I have left and I have no intention of making a mess of this too.”