‘I met with her yesterday. Out of home. As I was told,’ I said.
‘Oh brilliant. And how did that go?’
Her tone was wrong. Too chatty. A lack of care or format. Not the pitch of a public servant.
‘Sorry. Who am I speaking to?’ I asked.
‘My apologies. Did I not say? It’s Vicky. Vicky Bernard.’
‘Yes, but who are you? Are you with the police?’
‘The police? Oh no. Not at all. Nothing like that.’
As if this would be good news.
‘What are you then, Vicky?’ I asked, trying to blunt my tone.
‘Well. I work for the Daily Mail and my area is really human-interest stories, you know, the nice ones. The sort that make people feel good –’
I held the phone away from me, fighting the urge to drop it. A volt of panic, my system reeling in its wake. When I brought the handset back to my face there was silence.
‘Margaret? Can you hear me? Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She tried a new approach.
‘Has there been a mistake? Were you expecting someone else?’
‘Yes.’
‘My apologies for that. A call about Anja, was it though? I thought I heard you say?’
‘Look. I don’t really want to talk to the press. I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ I said.
‘I understand exactly what you’re saying. I do. Thing is, there’s a story here.’
‘What do you mean?’
My big toe gouged a line in the tread of the carpet. A childhood habit. The nail was weak from it.
‘Well, Margaret, our readers love a have-a-go hero, you know, the average citizen who steps up to help, and so on.’
‘That’s not how it was.’
‘OK. Fine,’ she answered as if I had agreed to something. ‘Well, maybe you could tell me what did happen, in your own words?’
‘It’s not that. I don’t want to be involved.’
‘Yeah. It’s a bit of a tricky one, that, to be honest, because it’s out there now. I don’t think you can stop it really. These stories take on a life of their own. Not all of them, but some. It’s hard to predict which. Some just. Catch fire. So to speak.’
She stopped to let this idea settle.
‘I mean the good thing is that you will come out of it really really well. What you did is amazing. That’s what we want our readers to hear. An uplifting story among all the doom and gloom.’
I said nothing.
‘Tell you what. Why don’t you have a think? One thing I would say, though, is do expect others to call. It is a definite possibility. But I can help you manage all of that, if you like, so it doesn’t get too hectic. If you and I choose to work together that is. It’s up to you. Completely.’
She spoke again into the silence.
‘Especially if there’s a way to build on things, you know, grow the story. If you were to be meeting with Anja again, for example, and I could maybe be there? Or.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘Goodbye’, and pressed end.
It rang again a second later as I stood in the hall. I heard my own dour recording, the beeps, and waited for her voice. But it wasn’t a message, it was an SMS. She had texted me her number.
I googled her. Vicky Bernard. The right one first time. Mail Online – a page-worth of clicks. She was prolific, and something of a generalist. Nothing of interest or merit and never more than a paragraph or two. Either a junior or a failure.
I typed in ‘have-a-go hero’. Predictable tales on local stages. Each with its quote from the ordinary citizen compelled to act – banal and fake-modest to a man. None had mushroomed beyond the initial telling.
And next my own name. The most searched Margaret Benson was a Victorian, an author and an amateur Egyptologist. Next came Steven Benson, who murdered his mother – a tobacco heiress – and brother, with a bomb under the car. Then an academic, a feminist and an archbishop’s wife. Pages deep I found the Metro article. Nothing more.
I took a breath. Made a coffee. Stood out at the end of the garden and looked back at the blank face of my house. The dog dug a hole in the flowerbed, his paws rhythmed and mechanical, displacing the mud into two shallow slopes underneath him.
My heart, every now and again, gave a feeble rat a tat tat but I breathed into it, as I have learnt to do. This does not have to be a catastrophe. Nothing has changed.
I went inside and texted Vicky Bernard. Told her that I would not help. I have weathered worse.
Later though, at night, the telephone rang once more. I stood over it, electrified; snatched a table edge for balance, but there was nothing.
12
Anja came round. She had read my telephone number upside-down on her case notes and remembered it. A resourceful girl. Her text the purest surprise.
I bought lunch for us at the deli. I’d never been in there before; the place was like a gallery. All white with huge bowls of oil-slicked produce on staggered pedestals, the ingredients written on card, in ink, balanced up against each dish. One had suffered a spillage, its words obscured by a spreading orange stain.
I ladled what I wanted into white waxy boxes, taking turns with the other clientele. I chose squash, pancetta and sage, dressed with a hazelnut pesto. Bocconcini, zucchini, roasted chilli and mint. A puy lentil and spinach soup and a huge airy loaf with green olives and whole sea-salt crystals studding the top – it was all I could do not to grab a fist of it then and there. A bottle of white burgundy slippery from the fridge. I resisted the brownies and some immense meringues.
There was low-volume opera to be aware of, and a slim handsome boy – an American, I think – in a shirt and clean waist apron who took the money. I paid him an amount that seemed fair at the time, and carried the food through the streets in two brown-paper bags; my secret, save for the discreetest stamp of a logo that you had to know to look for. My purchases made me happy and I longed to be home to see them again.
When I got in, I pulled out the table in the garden room, wished that I’d bought flowers – there was nothing outside to pick – and arranged everything in a fat wedge of chilly lunchtime sun.
She arrived with a hug and a box of fudge from the Tower of London.
‘It’s so kind of you to invite me into your home. I’m very glad to be here,’ she said.
‘I’m pleased to see you too,’ I replied.
She pushed off her shoes, old white trainers, and set them together by the door. She took a pair of slippers from her bag.
‘This is a lovely house,’ she said, before she’d seen it. Buster came nosing along and she knelt and ran the back of her hands down the velvet of his ears.
‘You like dogs?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course. But I never had one. What’s his name?’
‘Buster.’
‘Hello, Buster.’ He sat and held up a paw. A stupid trick.
‘Pleased to meet you, Buster. You trained him well!’
‘Come through, come through,’ I said.
Anja sighed when she saw the food and I wondered for a second if it was too much.
‘So, how are things?’ Innocent enough, I’d thought, until I heard myself say it.
‘Good. Good. I have a friend now, Eleni, she shares my room and we have fun. She’s from Albania also.’
She sat with a leg tucked under her, precise as a cat.
‘Ah. Albania. I’ve never been there,’ I said pointlessly.
‘No,’ she said. ‘There are beautiful bits. And quite a lot of tourists now.’
‘Yes, I’m sure. I’ve just never. Is there walking? I like to walk.’
‘Of course! Have you heard of the Accursed Mountains?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘The tourists visit all the time! I can tell you how they got their name, if you like?’
‘Yes please. I’d love to hear.’
‘There were two brothers hunting and they found a fairy, a beautiful fairy.
’
She told the story as if I were a child. Slow. Wide-eyed.
‘They are both in love with her and they want her to choose. They ask who she prefers but she is clever and she says you, for being so brave and you, for being so handsome.’
She jabbed her finger at two imaginary men.
‘Oh, right,’ I said.
‘But you know what happens next?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said, though I guessed it would not be good.
‘Well, the brave one kills the handsome one and then takes the fairy home to meet his mother. But the mother is so angry that she curses the fairy and the mountains for ever. Right to this very day.’
She let out a hoot.
‘Not such a happy ending, right?’
I cast around for a suitable response.
‘No. I suppose not. I’ll have to take a look next time I’m thinking about a holiday. Shall we eat?’
She peered carefully at her food, moving it around the plate with a fork.
‘This is delicious. It’s not British though, I think?’
‘No. No. It’s. I’m not sure actually. This one is sort of Mediterranean. In influence. And this. It’s autumny. Pumpkin. You can grow it here, not that I do. And sage. There’s a bush of that in the garden, though it’s dead at the moment.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s so good. Better than fish and chips!’
‘It is. Have some more.’
She served herself.
‘And are they being helpful? The people where you are staying?’
It wasn’t that I meant to pry.
‘Yes. Yes. There is a chance that I will be able to stay. Because of Goran. He is in trouble now, and it is my fault. It might be dangerous for me at home.’
‘Of course. Yes. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘At least I have no sisters.’
‘Do you not? No. Well.’
‘It is just me. And my parents. But I cannot worry for them. I have my own concerns. I can tell you my secret. I am pregnant.’
She touched her belly in the usual way.
‘Oh. Wow.’
Her face took on a shuttered happiness.
‘Congratulations. My goodness. Have you been able to tell your family?’
‘No. But that is OK. I will not take my baby back. At this time they tell me not to worry. It is a period of. Recovery and reflection.’
She spoke these words as if I would recognise them. I indicated that I did.
‘So this’, she opened her hands above the table, ‘will help me grow a nice healthy baby.’
She gave herself a blessing in her own language.
‘Thank you, Maggie. But no more wine for me.’
She put her hand over her glass.
‘Of course not, no. Here, have something else. There’s one more spoonful. It’ll only spoil.’
‘Thank you but no more! I’ve had so much! Now I am ready to clean. Like we agreed.’
‘What? No. Not if you’re.’
‘It’s fine. I am strong. I must work and save money for our future. You understand?’
She gave off an elation that crept into me as I looked at her, shiny-eyed, almost hysterical.
‘Yes, I do. Just take. Don’t overdo it.’
‘Of course. I’ll start with this.’
She carried all the plates through to the kitchen in one go, balanced up an arm like she’d done it before. I followed behind with the half-done bottle.
‘Let’s see,’ she said and crouched before the cupboard under the sink.
‘We need more stuff, Maggie. And a box to carry it in.’
‘Yes. Just tell me what. Write it down. I’ll get it for next time. Or I could give you the money. If you think that’s better.’
There was a tattoo, rather large, spread the width of her back, the top of it showing above her jeans. A circular symbol, with lines curving out to form wings. Popular, of the type I saw often in the streets of north-west London, and on girls of every sort, though the inking on Anja was not sharp; it had bled into her skin.
She seemed strong and capable, knees splayed above my floor in those tight cheap clothes; uncomfortable, surely, to clean in. She looked back.
‘It’s OK, Maggie. I’m fine. Do your thing.’
I drank down a glass of water and went for the dog.
It was an unusual time for me to be out, half past two, but I was glad for the solitude. There was the usual group of self-conscious young men, larking about and occupying too much space with their cartoon postures and exaggerated calls. No threat, to me at least. A couple of those ridiculous joggers with prams. Fewer children today. Some unfamiliar dogs. The wine was throbbing a beat in my head so I took off my hat. It wasn’t cold yet, but the wind came in blusters and made my nose run. Buster tugged when he saw a squirrel, and ignored me when I pulled. I wondered how long Anja would be and when I should go back and felt briefly the stupidity of leaving an unknown and possibly desperate girl in my house.
Poor Anja, who has no one else to share the fact of her baby with. My own mother had guessed and told my aunts by the time I got to them. When I sat down, a cup balanced on my trembling legs, I saw straight away that they knew. Bouncing around with their silly looks and suppressed grins, as if it were they who had something for me.
‘I was right!’ she shrieked before I’d even finished. ‘Your nose has changed! That’s what gave you away! It’ll be a girl, I’ll bet.’
Her sisters congratulated her.
It was, of course.
They kept me close for those months and everyone else at arm’s length. I felt a child again, fed by my mother with familiar dishes that she fetched up on the train. They made sure I was warm, too warm, with knitted blankets brought from home in those huge zip-up laundry bags, another layer pressed upon me. I slept a lot, and grew fat of course, but it didn’t help. She came too early, by six weeks, though soon caught up.
And telling your man. Such a loaded, unpredictable moment. You throw a man’s idea of you up in the air when you tell him you are pregnant, even if you planned it. You see how it has landed by the look on his face.
My husband was thrilled, genuinely. I think he thought it would make me more recognisable. Easier to know. We had the idea that the future came into view that day, though that kind of thinking is always mistaken.
But it can be done alone, if it has to. For Anja, motherhood had already begun. I believe that something starts between a woman and her child at the very moment that she finds she is expecting. Whatever there is inside you, it passes on. Your baby grows in it for months, some sort of pre-knowledge. She sees you before your eyes have met, and it is nothing that you can control.
Anja was working on her hands and knees at that moment, scrubbing my dirt clean for her unborn baby. Hers would be a lucky child.
13
Paul starts late on Mondays and picks up the trail around half past ten. Maureen is out every day, come rain or shine, and if she wants company, waits for him at Harvist Road, a spot before eleven. I found her there in sloping Uggs, her head under a beanie meant for someone younger and packed out with hair. Craggy, perhaps, but what I still knew as handsome. She raised a stumpy hand at me. Then the dogs saw Paul’s, and off we went.
A pastel day, the sky blues and pinks with low woolly clouds obscuring the view and making it all feel old-fashioned. Real heat in the sun, the warmth pressing down on my skin; a sensation so acute it felt improper.
Peter’s not good at the moment, Paul told us. Sad, he said, but not a heavy sad, more fearful. Always alert. They’ve been here before. This part can last for weeks, in ebb and flow. You wouldn’t know it if you saw him. A collapse will come although it could be months away; that’s the pattern, and then the slow road back.
‘It’s tiring,’ he said. ‘The dogs can feel it.’
He clicked his tongue and they were at his side, bristly and bouncy and hollow-boned. Ginger and white, one with a black splat on her chest. Sisters, whi
ch wasn’t supposed to work, but in this case did. They each took a treat with careful teeth. Maureen put her arm through his.
‘It’s hard, love.’
‘It is what it is,’ Paul said.
I considered this alongside what I’d seen of the man. He had an indoors look, Peter, always covered up. A person who felt the cold. Long sleeves and trousers, a high-buttoned shirt or roll-neck. I had thought he had psoriasis, or a scar – something to hide – until I noticed a photo in their kitchen, a holiday snap on a foreign beach and saw that his body was blemish-free and strong; beautiful even. I was shocked, at my own suppositions and how far they’d taken me.
Peter is a watcher. He doesn’t reveal as much as Paul, who simply speaks as he thinks, but we pause for Peter and his ideas. When he laughs, it is absolute and everyone is thrilled.
I thought of him as Paul spoke, and wished that he was here, though he only walked at the weekend. Neither man worked in an office (I refused to call them ‘the boys’, as Maureen did) but they had agreed to keep their 9-to-5 lives apart, save a shared lunch break, something home-made around the table. A decision made up front when Peter left his architecture practice, for the good of their relationship; their god, a thing of itself, to be cared for, like the dogs.
‘It’s the dread. The fear of it. But this is the third time now. It’s part of our life. I honestly think that’s better?’
The lift at the end of Paul’s sentence that made everything sound like a question. Always seeking assurances, Paul.
‘Now we can be prepared. Have a plan.’
‘You’ll get through it,’ said Maureen.
‘We will.’
We passed Pets’ Corner, and Sammy, Maureen’s dog – shaggy, huge, a terror to keep clean – raised her head at the squeaks, or perhaps the smells. A group of uniformed children waited at the entrance, their cries like birds. Clouds rushed us, and the wind picked up a handful of crisped leaves and threw them at the dogs. The beginnings of autumn, though we were not there yet.
Quiet is fine, as a rule, on our walks, but this time it began to feel like an issue. I waited for Maureen to speak, to offer up some misery of her own. She talked to us, now and again, about her daughters and her son. Long gone. Disappointments, all of them, but only because they hadn’t come to need her enough. Nothing new or ongoing such as Paul could offer. Old hardships that had scabbed over, though she has the tendency to pick.
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