Atlantic Shift

by Emily Barr

  Mum laughs warmly. ‘Evie, don’t be silly.’

  ‘I know, I know. I wish I’d kept her.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Mum, did you ever tell anyone else what happened? Anyone at all?’

  ‘No, darling. You know that. It was just Phil and me and your father, and, I assume, now Sonia. Nobody else. Of course your school had to know, and you told Louise . . .’

  ‘Because I don’t mind if you did.’

  She is slightly aggrieved. ‘But I didn’t! I promise I didn’t, Evie. I wouldn’t have done that.’

  I twirl the phone cord around my finger. ‘It’s just, I sometimes wonder if Guy knows. He gives me the creeps, lately, and I’m not sure why.’

  Mum chuckles. She sounds relieved. ‘He probably fancies you, old fool that he is. He certainly has no idea of what happened, don’t worry about that. Honestly, though. He’s making himself ridiculous with Megan. You must all laugh at him terribly. We’re pleased to see him happy. He seems more animated than he has been for years. Perhaps a twenty-year-old girl is what he’s been missing all this time.’

  ‘Twenty-seven. And I wish they’d go to a hotel sometimes. It makes my skin crawl, the way they carry on. It’s disgusting.’

  The flat is empty. I came home two days ago, and haven’t seen Megan yet. I’ve heard her, through my jet-lagged sleep, getting up early in the morning and going to work, but I haven’t had the energy to get up and see her. She was out all evening, yesterday and the day before, and stumbled home long after I was in bed. I did hear a loud orgasmic exclamation (male) at some point in the night, but decided not to get up to say hello. This morning, as it’s Saturday, I thought we’d meet in the kitchen and finally manage to speak to each other, with Guy butting in every two seconds. I have been quite looking forward to the opportunity to size him up as a potential writer of threatening letters.

  The letters are scaring me now. I came home to a pile of them. They have long since progressed from single words to explicit threats. I want them to be from Guy. I long for him to be messing around with me. He might hate me: the fact that I have known him all my life doesn’t mean anything. I don’t believe that Guy would ever really want to harm me, unlike the faceless reader of tabloid newspapers. So I want these letters to be his.

  As it happened, though, I didn’t wake up till eleven, and no one was home. The only company I have is my cello, and while I appreciate it, it isn’t a great conversationalist. I stroke its curves, and consider taking over the living room for three hours. I would prefer to speak to a person.

  Megan placed a pile of letters on my desk, very neatly, while I was away. Four of them were threats, one was a fan letter forwarded by Jane at the Daily Mail, with a compliments slip bearing a jaunty ‘How’s things? Lunch? J x’. The rest were bills from Vodafone, my accountant, and Visa. I took the dodgy letters to the police station yesterday, weary with it all. There were a couple of phone messages for me, but nothing from Jack. Dominic called, and so did Heat magazine. I rang Heat back, and ignored Dominic. I can’t face his oafish charms at the moment. There was no word from Dan. I was glad. I have no desire, any more, to hang around with a boy on my arm.

  I didn’t tell the policeman that I had a new suspect for the letters. I tried to match their syntax to Guy’s, but I failed. Sometimes the letters are misspelt, and sometimes they’re not. Whoever is writing them is messing around, avoiding detection. This latest batch called me a bitch and a cunt. The writer said he knew I was waiting for him. He went into graphic detail about what he is going to do to me.

  I can’t think of anyone but Guy. Megan could be an unwitting accomplice. He could be using her to get to me. I used to feel secure on the nights when he was in the flat. Now I wonder where I can go tonight, to get away from him. I might even check into a hotel. All that is missing, for Guy, is a motive.

  Guy might, of course, be completely innocent, just a horny old man. I know that’s more likely. And yet I can’t stop thinking about his wife. Nobody has ever even hinted about what happened to her. Mum won’t say a word, not even when she’s drunk. I know Guy’s wife was pregnant around the same time that Mum was pregnant with me, and I know she died when the baby was nearly due. And I know that Guy was so traumatised that Megan is his first proper relationship in the thirty years that have passed. Did he kill her? Did he torment her first, like he is tormenting me? Who knows what else he has done? Whatever it is, he has got away with it.

  I walk aimlessly around the apartment, which suddenly feels like a prison. It’s just me and the cello between these walls. I could lose myself in music for a few hours. Then I pick up my mobile and text Megan. I need to see him, to see how he behaves with me. Now that I’m looking, I will be able to work him out.

  hey stranger, I write, where are you? am home alone.

  Within a couple of seconds, just as I am tightening my bow, the phone beeps.

  round the corner. lunch, now, mediterranean kitchen. come & join us. m xxx

  I was expecting to meet two people, not four. When I see Kate and Ian sitting at the table, with Megan and Guy, I feel a stab of betrayal. Why didn’t Meg ask me before? Why didn’t Kate? They all knew where to find me. This is one of our favourite restaurants, a matter of yards from our flat. I can’t believe they came without me.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, staring at Kate and making my surprise obvious. ‘How come you’re here?’

  Ian smiles. ‘Meg called us a while ago, asked if we wanted to come along. We were going to ring you, but we were worried about waking you. We all know what jet lag’s like.’

  I smile back thinly. ‘I wouldn’t have minded being woken. It would have been more fun waking to a phone call than to an empty flat.’

  Kate reaches for my hand. ‘Sorry. We were going to go back afterwards to see you. How are you doing?’

  Guy has leapt to his feet and found a spare chair, which he carefully places at the end of the table, so I’m sitting between Kate and Ian.

  ‘Evie, lovely girl, you’re looking wonderful as ever,’ he says, kissing me hard on each cheek. His pores are open, and up close his skin is meaty. He looks supremely pleased with himself as he sits back down and strokes Megan’s arm.

  ‘You do, Evie,’ she agrees, glancing at me, then looking back to Guy. Her eyes are shining, and her skin is glowing. ‘You look great. Not at all jet-lagged.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Ian takes a wine glass from a neighbouring table, fills it with red, and passes it to me.

  ‘So what’s new?’ I ask breezily. I take a sip, and look round expectantly. A waiter hands me a menu and arranges cutlery in front of me. The atmosphere here is just right for a long lunch. Everything is made from dark wood, and there are blackboards of specials around the room. It’s small, but not poky, and we have a prime table in the window.

  ‘Oh, we were just talking about Ron Thomas,’ says Kate. ‘Guy was telling us what he remembered of him from medical school.’

  ‘We weren’t particularly matey,’ Guy interjects. He seems, ludicrously, to be attempting to dress younger these days. I can’t imagine why: he carried off the Al Pacino look rather well. Today he is wearing a pair of indigo jeans, with a white linen shirt with one too many buttons undone. There is a leather jacket over the back of his chair. I cringe on his behalf. I am used to seeing him dressing his age. I know he used to wear his work shoes at weekends. Now I bet he’s hiding a pair of brand-new trainers under the table. We look like a bunch of youngsters being taken on a birthday treat by someone’s dad.

  ‘Apparently Ron was the boring swot at college,’ Kate says, with a laugh. ‘I suppose that’s good. I’d rather entrust my fertility to him than to the class pisshead.’

  Guy raises his glass. ‘I don’t do fertility anyway, my love.’

  ‘So you’re back out there in three weeks?’ I say, turning to Kate.

  ‘And counting! If this works, wow.’

  ‘Wow,’ echoes Megan.

  ‘We’ll sign over every penny we ever earn in our li
ves to Ron if he pulls it off. In fact, I have a feeling we’ve already done that.’

  ‘You probably have, my dears,’ says Guy, with a nod. ‘But tell me, I hate to imagine the worst, but I’m intrigued as to what rabbit Ron will pull out of the hat if this doesn’t work? What has he said?’

  Kate looks at Ian. Ian takes a swig of wine. ‘There’s no great mystery,’ he says. ‘He’s not going to clone us or anything. He’ll just keep selecting the strongest eggs and sperm, keep checking us, Kate particularly, that we’re healthy, and keep trying. We’ve signed up to something where we donate spare embryos to other couples, or for his research, and that way we get a discount.’

  Guy shakes his head. ‘I hope it works for you two. I hope Ron delivers on his promises. Make sure he explains exactly what he’s doing at every stage. He used to be a slippery customer. And he is a well-known advocate of human cloning. Make sure he doesn’t get it past you couched in medical euphemisms. “Genetic material exclusively from the healthier partner”, that kind of thing.’

  ‘He’s said we will end up with a baby. Just like that. He can’t say when but he can say that it will happen, even if it ended up as a surrogate baby.’

  Meg looks at them with interest. ‘Is that legal?’

  Kate nods. ‘Legal, but probably a nightmare. We’d rather not get into it if we could avoid it. I’d rather adopt than turn to surrogacy. And I don’t want to adopt at all.’

  I glance at Guy. He is looking very strange. He seems sad, and lost in thought. I realise I barely know him at all.

  Someone needs to break the silence. I am opening my mouth to babble about New York when Guy seems to pull himself together.

  ‘Did you see your mail, Evie?’ he asks, with his usual bonhomie. ‘Megan and I put it in your room for you. You seem remarkably popular.’

  I stare. My heart starts beating faster. ‘I got it, thanks.’

  ‘It didn’t just look like bills either, did it, Meg? You seem to have a correspondent. It’s not that pop singer boy, is it?’

  ‘There’s been another letter since then,’ says Meg, smiling at Guy. I am embarrassed by her devotion to him. She has no idea what she’s getting into. Neither do I, of course, but I sense it’s not good. I wonder if I could try to tell her to stay away from him. ‘I put that in her room for her too,’ she says, awaiting her lover’s approval.

  ‘You’re a devoted flatmate,’ he replies, with a smile that turns my stomach.

  ‘Well, it was mainly bills,’ I say, too harshly. ‘And no, I’ve dumped the pop singer boy.’

  After two large glasses of wine, I get up just after Guy and follow him to the loo. I wait outside the men’s until he comes out. He starts, surprised to see me. We are round the corner from our table. No one can see us.

  ‘Hello, Evie,’ he says, trying to get past.

  ‘Guy,’ I tell him, ‘I just want to say, I know.’

  He hesitates. ‘You know what?’

  ‘You know what. What you’ve just been talking about. I know.’

  He looks into the middle distance. The colour has drained from his normally florid face. ‘How do you know?’ he asks.

  ‘I just do. So don’t mess with me, all right?’

  ‘Is this some sort of a threat, Evie?’

  I walk away, into the ladies’ loo, and shut my eyes. He is hiding something. I knew it.

  It is pouring with rain when we leave. We have been there for three hours, and have eaten far too much. When I ordered an extra portion of chips I never expected them to be piled into an enormous wooden bowl, and to represent a meal in themselves. I will have to go to the gym, later, because of them.

  ‘I’m a bit drunk, actually,’ I tell Kate, as we shout a final goodbye to the waiter and fall through the door on to the slippery pavement.

  ‘I can see that,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’m not.’

  We follow the others back towards the flat. Even though it’s not far, I get soaked through. None of us has an umbrella. I like the way my hair sticks to my head. I can feel water running down my face, and hope my mascara really is waterproof. My thighs are soaked, my jeans unpleasantly heavy.

  ‘How’s Jack?’ I ask, at once.

  Kate looks at me and laughs. ‘He’s doing fine. Back from Scotland, renting a flat in Camden. He came back rather abruptly for some reason.’

  ‘And Sophia?’

  ‘Around, I think. Why? Are you jealous?’

  ‘Of course not. I left him, didn’t I?’ I resign myself to being drenched, and slow down.

  ‘Of course you did.’

  We take a few steps in silence before I change the subject. ‘So you’ll be implanted in three weeks?’ I ask. ‘It’s been quicker than that before, when you had IVF here, hasn’t it?’

  Kate has pulled up the woollen hood of her cardigan, from underneath her coat. ‘Yes. Ron’s more thorough, I think, with his quality control. Plus we wanted to space out our trips a little. There’s no point coming home and then rushing straight back out there. At least this way we minimise our time off work. Christ, Evie. I’d forgotten what this was like. How awful it is.’

  ‘The weather?’

  ‘Not the weather. The treatment, you idiot.’ I look at her, and see the strain on her face. She is pale and exhausted. ‘I can talk about other things,’ she continues, ‘but only because I force myself. Like at lunch today. It’s always going on, this running commentary at the back of my head. What if it works? What if it doesn’t? What if we get a positive pregnancy test and then have a miscarriage? Would that be worse than not getting pregnant at all? Should I eat this steak for the iron or should I be having oily fish for the fatty acids? How soon before I could find out if there was an embryo still in there, or if I’d miscarried them all? Why does a twelve-week scan seem a million years away, when it could be thirteen weeks away? Thirteen weeks is nothing. It’s for ever.’ She looks at me and shrugs, pained. ‘It doesn’t stop. I know I’ve been here before - God knows, you know I’ve been here before, you’ve listened to this endlessly - but I’d forgotten. It’s probably like labour. You forget how terrible it is. The main thing is the question when? When will I get my child? Why can’t it be now? I have a phantom child, you know. The one I would have had if I’d got pregnant the first month we tried. That child would be going to be three in August.’

  I have a phantom child, too. My child is fourteen, and the difference is that she really is out there somewhere. Sometimes I wish I knew that for sure. Some children die, after all. Some children get ill, particularly, perhaps, if their birth mothers have tried to abort them. Even in the most respectable homes, some children are abused. I yearn for Elizabeth. I want to protect her from everything.

  I touch Kate’s arm and we both slow down, letting the others get almost to the front door.

  ‘Kate,’ I tell her, ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I feel sure that this time you’ve got all the luck on your side. The chances are it’s going to happen for you. You’re working with the best, using the best eggs and sperms, put in by the best bloke in the field. You’re doing everything you can to get your baby. Stop me if this is a platitude, but being calm about it is really the best way to help it work.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. So then I start eating myself up with guilt about that. If I keep worrying, I’ll cause a miscarriage.’

  ‘Kate! You will not!’

  ‘Sorry. You can see how easy I am to live with at the moment. Poor old Ian can’t say the right thing. I know you all think we’re perfect together, but sometimes I wonder. I can be a bitch from hell to him. He’s put up with it so far, because he’s a saint, but I do wonder how much longer that can last.’

  ‘He’s not a saint,’ I tell her firmly. ‘He’s a father-to-be, and right now his job is to look after you. If it was men who had to get pregnant, he’d be worse than you are. They all would be. Anyway, soon he’ll be looking back on this as a time of calm and peace, when you’re throwing up all over him every morning.’ We
are on familiar territory now. Kate recites our usual conversation, with a little relief in her voice.

  ‘When I’m showing him my piles,’ she says with a smile.

  ‘When you’re swearing at him all through labour. Not to mention when the two of you are trying to persuade three little babies that they do, actually, want to sleep at night. Not just one or two of them, but all three.’

  She smiles thinly. ‘Thanks, Evie. It’s easy to forget the end result in all this. What if we did have three? How would we even hold them all?’

  We each step in opposite directions to avoid an enormous puddle in the pavement. I tiptoe on the edge of the kerb, just as a number 27 bus speeds past and covers me in dirty spray.

  ‘Wanker!’ I shout after it. A passenger standing at the back, ready to get off, laughs at me, ostentatiously. He is a blur of suit and mouth. I flick him the finger. He vanishes into a haze of rain and spray, and I don’t think he saw my elegant riposte.

  ‘I’ll come and live with you for a bit,’ I offer, wondering if she’ll realise that I’m serious. ‘Hold a baby. Do a bottle-feed in the night. Push a pushchair.’ I wonder how holding a baby would make me feel.

  She laughs. ‘Evie, you’re so sweet. I hope it comes to that, I really do.’

  I tuck my arm through hers. ‘It will.’

  As we turn the corner, dripping wet, towards the apartment block, I try to make myself believe that the spirits of baby Elizabeth and Kate’s many unborn children are walking with us, but of course they’re not. Both of us are on our own. That is the point.

  We arrive at the flat, dripping wet and laughing. I feel childish, like a little girl who has been out jumping puddles. Meg is in the shower, and Guy and Ian are talking in the kitchen.

  ‘Evie!’ says Ian, holding out an envelope. ‘This was on the mat for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, taking it without thinking.

  Guy doesn’t look at me. Nor does he say anything.

  ‘Just a letter,’ says Ian.

  I drop the envelope on the work top and look at the address. This time it just says ‘Evie’, printed, as ever, on a computer. This has been delivered by hand. I take it into my room and drop it on to my bed. He has been here, while I’ve been out. He probably watched me going out. He might have followed me to the Mediterranean Kitchen, and then nipped back to the flat, to leave this letter.