by Celia Walden
‘Is it our fault, Anna?’
‘Of course not.’
Involuntarily my toe brushed against his foot; it was cold.
‘You’re right.’ He had turned towards me now, his faultless face half buried in the pillow, a tiny bleached feather bent backwards against his cheek. ‘There’s no way she could have known about us.’
‘Of course there’s no way.’ I felt impatient now, angry that he was trying to turn something that had nothing to do with us into an act of retribution, and disappointed that he would let something as absurd as superstition get to him.
‘We haven’t slept,’ I reached for my phone to check the time, ‘and it’s 4 a.m. That’s the only reason you’re thinking like this.’
So typical, so very like a man to seek a convenient release from guilt the moment desire had been quenched – the same desire that had bred this situation to begin with. If he’s not strong enough for this, I thought spitefully, he shouldn’t have done what he did, and he shouldn’t be lying here now.
‘And if you really think that Beth is the kind of girl who would ever do anything to herself, then you know her even less well than I thought.’ I shifted on to my side to avoid the intensifying dislike in his eyes.
‘I know exactly how Beth felt about that, actually,’ he muttered.
Refusing to give him the satisfaction of turning around, I replied: ‘So you and she sat about discussing life, death and suicide, did you? How wrong I must have been about your relationship.’
‘Life and death, no,’ he began quietly, missing, or choosing to ignore, my sarcasm, ‘but we did discuss suicide once.’
‘Pillow talk, was it?’ I couldn’t stop myself.
‘No.’ A pause. ‘It was the night we came back from my brother’s. I know I shouldn’t have, but I told her about the girl.’
He moved in closer behind me, tracing the underside of my breast apologetically with a finger. Something jarred in my mind.
‘And don’t worry, obviously I didn’t tell her that I was with you. I’m not that stupid. No, I told her that I was out with some guys from work, that we were coming back from a big night out together when we saw it, her … whatever.’
I heard myself cry out – a noise that was part animal, part child.
‘Jesus Christ, Anna, what is it? Are you OK?’
Memories slammed into one another, each one gathering momentum, until with agonising lucidity, I replayed the final hour I had spent with Beth, heard my own soothing voice telling her that her father’s life had been rich, not cut off in its prime – not like the girl I had seen, the girl on the bridge.
‘You idiot.’ I was sobbing now, curled up as far from Christian as the mattress would allow. ‘You idiot.’
Seized by a morbid curiosity to watch his face collapse as the realisation took hold, I turned to look at him. When I think of his expression now, it makes me flinch with sadness. The half-closed lids were drawn right back, their enchanting quality replaced by a kind of vapid disbelief, and for the first time I noticed that there were shallow lines beneath them. The idea that I had ever loved this person was laughable. Where Beth and I had seen mystery, there was only an unexceptional being painted over with our own desire. He was saying something over and over again, so quickly that at first I couldn’t catch it.
‘What have we done? Oh God, what have we done?’
I left him there – he wasn’t talking to me in any case – and ran to the toilet. Holding my hair back with one hand, I waited. Nothing came except a small jet of saliva, which burst open in the water like a botched firework, then disappeared. When I got back a few minutes later, Christian had gone out. I was thankful to him at least for that, for realising that it wouldn’t have helped either of us to have had to face each other at that moment. Still, the thought of lying there alone with my thoughts appalled me. I dressed quickly and tiptoed down the stairs into the somnolent streets below.
The digital clock outside the pharmacy on the rue de la Tour was flashing a quarter to five in the morning, and the whirring of a machine swabbing down the street unlocked a silent world. Turning to check that the figure on the opposite corner was not Christian, I almost collided with a box on wheels which completely obscured the delivery man pushing it along. Muttering ‘Pardon’, and stuffing my hands in my pockets, I walked down the narrow, dawn-tinted pavements past rows of overflowing green bins until I reached the avenue Henri Martin. There I felt able to breathe again, as though the width of it alone were reassuring, swallowing me in its ascetic anonymity. In Paris, even in the small hours, some bars are still open. Through a window I watched three workmen drinking Pastis, one throwing his head back with laughter at something the barman had said. I wondered how I would describe the moment to Beth. But Beth was no longer there.
Pushing open the doors of the bar, braving the workmen’s stares, I settled on a banquette by the window. I can’t remember how long I sat there, taking mechanical sips of the coffee I’d ordered, waiting for my imagination to uncover an escape route which might absolve me of any responsibility. But the scenes I played out in my mind only served to cement the realisation of the damage I had done. Beth had been vulnerable. She had come to Paris to start a new life, away from her sick father and the memories of a broken engagement. There she had lived quite happily with Stephen until I had appeared, falling a little bit in love with her and the way she made me feel, and wanting to take everything that was hers. Guilt and resentment flooded through me: why had she not seen me for what I was?
Did I ever truly believe that Beth might have ended her own life over the discovery? No, I never did. Perhaps because it would have made my shame unbearable, but also because I still believe today that I really did know Beth. And I knew that for all the soft lines of her face and figure, and all the tenderness she bestowed upon others, there was a kernel of toughness, bred in the hard realities of farming families. She would run from it all, yes, but I felt sure that she would start afresh somewhere else, just as she had tried to do here.
During the autumn months, at precisely half past eight in the morning, every street lamp in Paris goes out, officially announcing the end of night. Walking slowly across the pont des Invalides, nearing the museum, I had only one thought: I had to reach Stephen. The instant he returned from Ireland Christian and I would have to sit him down and tell him what we’d done. I tried to imagine his face, tried to persuade myself that he already knew, that it would not come as the shock I expected it would be, but all that was wishful thinking. Putting a hand in my pocket, I realised that I had left with nothing but my purse. Unwilling to return to the flat, I stopped at a nearby phone box, rang Stephen, and left him Isabelle’s number, thinking she, at least, would be sure to relay any message to me. That, it turned out, would be the finishing touch to my catalogue of mistakes.
Every morning, when I walked into the museum, the world instantly felt calmer. Here was a place where loud voices, dramatic gestures and violent emotions were stifled. Simply to take my place on that wooden chair, surrounded by the past and its sublimated emotions, restored some of my sangfroid. A brittle cough made me jump: for once those whispering slippers had failed to announce her arrival.
‘Ça va?’ She’d crept up on me, shattering the first steady heartbeat I had experienced that day. ‘Oh Anna. You look terrible. Have you slept at all?’
I shook my head, willing her away. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s quiet today, and I’d rather be here than at home, waiting by the phone. By the way,’ I watched her brighten as she anticipated the favour I would ask, thinking with grim amusement that it was all coming together nicely for her, ‘I gave Stephen your mobile number. I hope that’s all right. It’s just that I left mine at home, and he promised he’d call when he gets back from Ireland later today.’
‘Of course that’s fine. I’ll let you know the second he calls.’
But he didn’t call that morning, or that afternoon, and the fear that he had found Beth in Ireland and that she had told
him everything dominated my thoughts. For some reason the idea of Stephen finding out was almost as horrifying to me as the knowledge that Beth already had. I had twice fought the urge to go and find Isabelle, and twice succumbed, only to be greeted with the same doleful smile and shaking head: Stephen still hadn’t called.
I stayed at the museum as late as I could that night, desperate to avoid Christian. I needn’t have bothered; he didn’t come home. At a quarter to one Stephen woke me up. He was back at the flat, but his voice sounded tinny, as though he were still in Ireland.
‘When did you get back?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘And you didn’t call me? How was it? Did you find her?’
There was a pause, as though this last question – the only question I was ever going to ask – had come as a surprise.
‘No. Can you get out of work tomorrow morning? I need to see you.’
He delivered the phrase in a businesslike manner. My instincts told me that he had found Beth, and that she had told him everything.
* * *
‘Christian.’
I’d awoken the next morning to the sound of his key in the lock. Now he was perched on the edge of the mattress, fiddling with the remote control, the thinning grey fabric of his T-shirt stretched tight across his shoulderblades.
‘Christian.’
He was constantly fixing things: playing with electric cables, changing fuses or mending the stove. Anything to avoid looking at me.
‘Yes?’
He didn’t turn, so I spoke to the neck that no longer aroused me and its ladder of golden hairs.
‘Stephen rang last night. I think he might know, but I’m not sure. Maybe he’s just tired from the trip. Anyway, he definitely sounded weird.’
There was a pause, and the click of a fitting being slid into place, before he replied. ‘Does that surprise you?’
A pause. ‘Why are you making everything sound as though it’s my fault?’ I knew, as I said this, the conversation that would ensue. But I refused to bear the burden alone.
‘I don’t know.’ He turned to face me. ‘Nothing’s ever your fault, is it? But you’re right: it’s also my fault for not avoiding you, for giving in to you. Remember that day on the beach when you thought I was asleep? That was you, Anna. That was you starting this.’
I sat down gracelessly, terrified that I had guessed what he would say next. ‘I’m not coming with you, Anna, to meet Stephen. Because if you’re right, and Beth has told him, then me being there will only make things worse. Stephen has never liked me. How could he? He had Beth all to himself before I came along.’
‘I can’t do this on my own, Christian.’
‘Yes, you can. You don’t need anyone.’
In one last-ditch attempt to convince him I leant towards his face with a smile, and tried to kiss him. But he saw only the desperation in that smile. Catching my chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger, holding me up before him like a piece of fruit on a market stall, lingering over the lips and then moving up, with an expression of distaste, to the eyes, he pushed me away.
‘No, Anna.’
‘You’re a coward.’
His head was once again hunched over the remote control.
‘So are you.’
Eleven
Stephen was already sitting on a bench by the curved stone balustrades overlooking the Palais du Luxembourg ten minutes before we were due to meet. I too had arrived early and spotted him at once, recognising the blond muss of his hair through the trees, rendered unseasonably leafless by that vicious summer.
My heart had sunk when he’d suggested we meet there: it was the backdrop to my happiest days in Paris. Instead of going straight over to Stephen, I watched him staring up into the low sky, a jigsaw puzzle of grey with one piece missing where clear blue shone through. He checked his watch, and I tried, from that gesture, and from the fact that his back was not resting against the slated spine of the bench but anxiously bent forward, to decipher whether he knew. I began my approach, with a half-smile neither too brash nor too culpable. It soon faded.
‘How was Ireland? You look exhausted. Did you find anything out?’
I was aware only that I had to keep talking.
‘No. No, I didn’t. And when I got back last night, I tried to call you on that number you gave me.’
The events of the past few days had blurred my memory, and for a moment I couldn’t remember which number he was talking about.
‘I got hold of Isabelle, who told me to come over; that you’d be back at any minute. So I took a taxi round there.’
He hadn’t looked at me once, still gazing upwards, as though trying to establish whether it might rain, and I looked at the blue wrist lying upturned in his lap, wondering at Isabelle’s extraordinary manoeuvres.
‘And I waited, and waited. But you weren’t there. Which makes sense, considering you don’t live there and you never have done.’
‘Stephen, you know that Isabelle’s a little …’
‘So there I am, in this flat (which, by the way, is nowhere near where you said it was) talking to Isabelle, when she takes a deep breath and says she has something to tell me.’
It was pointless to try to interrupt. I could tell that he had written out the script in his head and would not stop until he had recited it all.
‘And she starts this long, convoluted story, and at first I can’t understand what she’s telling me, and then I realise that she is only repeating things you’ve told her. And that it’s all true. So I stop interrupting and let her finish, and at the end, she tells me that she’s sorry to have to be the one to tell me, and, like a school teacher, asks me if I have any questions. And I do have one, as it happens, but it turns out that it’s the only question she doesn’t really know the answer to.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked flatly.
‘How long?’
He looked at me for the first time and I felt myself shrivel with humility beneath his gaze.
‘How long had you two been …?’
‘Stephen …’
‘I’m so sorry. Have I offended your sensibilities?’
‘Listen, Stephen. It wasn’t like that. And it didn’t start … I mean, we didn’t start … well, not until quite recently.’
‘When?’
Whatever I said would have precipitated the response I got. I felt something inside me implode, softly.
‘In Normandy.’
‘In Normandy? Are you serious? That’s not possible. While we were all under the same roof?’
‘I’m not going to go into the details, Stephen. What’s the point? I’m sorry that it had to happen, and I never wanted it to go this far. You’ve got to believe that. If I could take it all back, I would.’
‘Why did it “have to happen”, Anna? That’s where you’ve got it wrong. Shall I explain to you how most people live their lives? They see things that they want, all the time, and they accept that they can’t always have them. Only you don’t have that reflex, do you? And the funny thing is that from the moment I met you, I was aware of that, only it didn’t matter to me, because I never thought that side of you would touch either Beth or me. Do you know how she found out?’
I nodded.
‘Well?’
‘I have a fair idea. But does it really matter now, Stephen?’
‘You were just what she needed right now – some careless little girl to take away the only thing making her happy.’
‘You make it sound like it was all me, Stephen. Christian wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming. And she has plenty of things in her life: he … he’s nothing.’
‘I don’t doubt that, although I’m surprised to hear you say it. But I don’t give a damn about him. Some dead-beat French guy who should have worshipped the ground she walked on? No, I never held out much faith in him, but for some reason she loved him. Oh, and don’t be so arrogant as to think that she would do anything to herself’ – he threw his head back and laughed: a mi
rthless, black laugh – ‘because of a selfish child.’
I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this.
‘So where is she then, Stephen?’
He shook his head, unable to maintain the pitch of his anger.
‘I don’t know. Her father now can’t even remember when he last spoke to her on the phone, let alone that whole business about her saying she was coming to see him. Meanwhile Ruth swears blind she’s heard nothing from her for two weeks, but for all I know she’s just protecting her.’
A jogger with bare legs ran past, spraying damp earth behind him. Neither of us spoke as the susurration of his nylon shorts retreated into the distance.
‘But you know her better than anyone. You must have an idea of how she would react to … well, to something like this? Where might she go?’
‘If I knew that I’d be there now. I’ve already spoken to the police today and they’ve promised to keep us – me – informed.’
‘But Stephen, we need to forget about all the other stuff now, and concentrate on finding her. I know I’ve been a terrible friend, no,’ I shook my head, ‘worse. But I do love her and I want to help. You will tell me, if you hear anything, won’t you?’
‘Why should I when all of this is because of you? Do you really think that you’re the kind of person Beth needs in her life? I don’t think so.’
I reeled at the harshness of his words. There had to be some way of redeeming myself, some explanation I could give for the way I had behaved, some lie that would make it all go away, and yet I couldn’t find one.
Placing one palm on his knee and the other on the chipped green bench, Stephen pushed himself up, looking for a second like an elderly man, and walked off.