Falling Off Air

by Catherine Sampson

  My dear Robin,

  I hesitate to approach you in person since an unfortunate misunderstanding with your sister earlier today.

  My heart began to pound and I glanced back at the top of the page. No address, but it was dated the day on which Paula Carmichael had fallen. The wrong address and redirection had taken nearly a week. I continued to read.

  I am afraid that because of her bad feelings towards me Tanya misinterpreted my visit. Please let me assure you that I have only the best of intentions. I just wish to make contact with the daughters I have never forgotten while I still can.

  If you would consider meeting me, I will be in the lobby of the Victoria and Albert Museum on Monday at 4. Perhaps we could have tea.

  I raised my head, but if you asked me what I was staring at I couldn't have said. We were pulling into Stockwell. The doors opened, people got out, people got in. Just as the doors were closing I pushed my way out and onto the platform, and stood there, reading to the end of the letter. When I had read it through once, right down to the signature, which read, “Your father, Gilbert,” I started at the top and read it again. I read and reread. At least three trains came and went. I was elbowed and kicked by the hordes rushing on and off. Then I stopped reading. I looked at my watch. It was three minutes past four.

  Chapter 9

  I tried all the same. And failed. By the time I walked into the great entrance hall of the V and A there was no man of any age or any description anywhere to be seen. Still, I hung around for half an hour, reluctant to admit defeat, clinging to the fantasy that he would appear, that I would know him, and that this part of my life, which had not been all right, would be in some way transformed.

  Afterward, when I gave up on him, I didn't want to talk to anyone about anything. My fathers letter and my subsequent failure to meet him had revived a lifetime of regret in me. All that evening I stayed at home with my children and left the telephone switched to the answering machine. A couple of times someone tried ringing but hung up when they got the machine. My mother left a message—Lorna had raved about the acupuncture. Patrick left a message—I'd left a baby bottle at their house, did I need it urgently? Suzette left a message—could I call her please?

  I tried not to dwell on my father, and instead took pleasure in the domestic chores that so often frustrated me. I washed my children and I hugged them tight and they laughed and prodded me, sticking little fingers up my nose, pulling my hair. We rolled and played and laughed, and I wondered then why I could not live like this for every minute of every day.

  Hannah had learned a whole new trick. She would push her little chair around, then abandon it for an instant, arms in the air, and do a little knee-bend and a kick before reaching for her support again. William, who rarely got up off his bottom, was a highly appreciative audience, applauding her and giggling wildly. It was the kind of moment that would have been good to share with someone.

  But not with D.C.I. Finney, who rang the doorbell in the middle of it. I still felt annoyed at him for making me feel ridiculous. My face must have fallen when I opened the door and found him waiting.

  “I rang you, but you didn't answer,” he said.

  “And it didn't occur to you that I might be out,” I replied. Or that I might not want to see anyone.

  “I've just been at the Carmichael house, your lights were on, and I could hear voices. Laughter actually. Either you were in or something very strange was going on.”

  “Elementary,” I conceded and let him in. “I'm afraid it's bath-time. Can we talk while I do that?”

  He didn't look happy about it and eyed Hannah and William with barely concealed distaste, but I stood my ground.

  “You can't just turn up on my doorstep at the children's bedtime and expect to conduct a formal interview.” It had been a long day, and my voice was irritated, ready for a fight.

  He grinned. It came out of nowhere, the same blast of sunlight that had dazed D.C. Mann. The smile created deep creases at the side of his mouth. He must have been smiling like that since he was a kid. Then, as before, the grin vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving just the shadow of good humor in his eyes. I stood stock still, transfixed. I had to tell myself to break the spell.

  “I'll just run the water,” I turned on my heel, “if you could keep an eye on them for a moment.”

  I hurried up the stairs two steps at a time to the bathroom, turned on the taps, squirted in a dash of bubble bath and allowed myself a couple of seconds with the mirror. The new haircut was holding up well to my neglect. I pushed the hair back behind one ear, examined my profile, and set off downstairs again.

  I'd been gone a little more than one minute, but the twins had left the sitting room and got to the bottom of the stairs, where they were both wailing an insistent “Mama, Mama, Mama,” and hurling themselves at Finney's legs. He was standing at the bottom of the staircase like a goalkeeper, trying to block their way up without actually bending to touch them, and looking down at them with near panic in his eyes.

  “Thank God,” he murmured as I reappeared.

  “There is a gate you could have closed,” I pointed out.

  I whisked the children away from his legs, one wriggling body under each arm. Finney followed me up to the bathroom, and stood well back while I stripped the children, removed nappies, wiped bottoms, and dunked them into the water.

  “Your choice of paint?” Finney asked. I glanced at the walls. Orange gloss, red trim. It had been like that when we moved in. I scarcely noticed it anymore.

  “Good warm colors,” I replied noncommittally.

  The children had calmed down now they were in the water. Hannah was using a flannel to clean the sides of the bath and William was sinking a plastic boat.

  “Have you given any more thought to why you were in Paula Carmichael's diaries?” Finney asked.

  “I think,” I said, “that we may have had a mutual friend. It's the only explanation I can come up with.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “That would be someone I'm going to speak to in the next couple of days.” I was watching Hannah and William, but I could see Finney's face in the mirror, gray against the orange wall. “I'll find out whether that's the link or not. Then I'll let you know.”

  Finney was quiet for a moment. He must have known that I was warning him off.

  “The diary's a problem for me,” he told me. “Anything I can't explain I have to dig into, that's my job, and so far I can't explain the diary, which means it's a problem for you too.”

  I mulled over what he had said in silence. It could have been an apology, and it could equally well have been a threat. Or perhaps some kind of one-man good-cop-bad-cop routine. He was watching the children, but distractedly, as though his mind were somewhere else. Belatedly I realized William had got hold of a bottle of shampoo and had already squirted liberal amounts into the water.

  “I need to ask you a few questions,” he said, “but they mustn't go anywhere else. I mean it.”

  I turned toward him.

  “You mean don't broadcast them.”

  “Right. This is all secondhand, and …” He sighed. “Well, Richard Carmichael says that Kyle, the son who was home, saw a visitor—someone who'd called before, and who she'd argued with—on the evening of her death.”

  I frowned.

  “You mean Kyle saw someone inside the house with his mother?”

  Finney grimaced. I stared at him.

  “Well did he or didn't he?”

  “Carmichael won't let us speak to the boy at the moment. Says he's too upset. So, like I said, so far it's all secondhand.”

  We exchanged a look that was, for the first time, the look of colleagues. Journalists and detectives both know what secondhand information is worth.

  “I know you've already told us that you saw no one on the night of Paula Carmichael's death,” Finney returned to his halfhearted attempt at interrogation, “and I'm assuming that's still the case.”

  “Ye
s, I still saw no one.”

  “Right. But you obviously spend a lot of time at home, and you look out of the window regularly, and you live opposite, and I'm asking whether you saw anyone visit the house in the few days before her death.”

  “I do not spend my life looking out of the window,” I laughed in disbelief.

  “I wasn't implying …”

  “No, I saw no one.” I was still smiling at Finney treating me like a little old lady. “But there could have been whole armies visiting her house, for all I know.”

  “Okay, okay,” Finney held up his hand in defeat, “I get the message.”

  We stood, not speaking, for a moment.

  “Those voices you thought you heard, around the time Paula fell,” he ventured. I knew what was coming.

  “I can't help you. I'm sorry. I have no idea what I heard or what I didn't. Has anyone else mentioned hearing anything?”

  Finney pulled a face.

  “Nothing conclusive. One or two people say they may have heard something just before she fell, but it could just be the power of suggestion. Everyone had heard the shouting earlier in the evening, they may've been expecting to hear a second installment.”

  “What about the devoted couple who were yelling at each other earlier? If you found them, you could ask them whether they resumed their argument later.”

  “Number twenty-nine,” he said. “By their account, by the time Paula fell they were tucked up in bed.”

  “Really? In the same bed?”

  Finney pulled a face.

  “Whatever turns them on,” he said, “but I wouldn't put money on their golden wedding anniversary.”

  We fell silent for a moment.

  “How are Richard Carmichael's finances?” I asked.

  “Why?” Finney sounded defensive, but then perhaps he was regretting talking so openly with me about the progress of the investigation.

  “I don't look out of the window much, but I do read the papers.”

  “I believe the newspapers have reported that his wife's death might get him out of some financial trouble,” he said, “but that the insurance policy doesn't cover suicide.”

  I looked questioningly at him, and he nodded.

  “But when he spoke the day after her death he was clearly implying that she'd been hounded to suicide,” I continued.

  “He won't be the last person who's ever done a U-turn when it suited him.”

  “That was just because the Corporation threatened to sue him. Do you mean he's really saying it wasn't suicide?”

  Finney raised an eyebrow and pulled a face.

  “A man's allowed to change his mind,” he said.

  “So he is.” I thought for a minute. “But has he found anyone else to blame?”

  “I believe he asked you whether you'd seen anyone at the scene.”

  I nodded. “And I told him the same as I told everyone else.”

  “Well now he's somehow got hold of your suggestion that you might have heard voices, and he's very enthusiastic about that.” Finney sounded resigned. I had the distinct impression he would rather I had kept my imaginings to myself. “Especially combined with this mysterious visitor the son's come up with.”

  “Of course.” I could hardly change my story just because it wasn't convenient for Finney.

  “Well,” Finney had been leaning in the doorway, but now he glanced at his watch and straightened up, “I'd better be off. I'll see myself out.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I'm sorry I can't be more help.”

  He shrugged.

  “Don't forget I need to know how you got into that diary.” He turned toward the stairs. I watched as his shoulders receded. As he reached for the front door, the bell rang. Finney opened it. I couldn't see who it was, but I heard a male voice.

  “There's a Dan Stein here,” Finney called up to me.

  I leaned out into the hallway, peered down the stairs, and Dan Stein poked his head around the door.

  “Hello?” He looked flustered, but then he probably hadn't expected Finney.

  “Hi.” I hoped he wasn't having second thoughts about the antique table. My visitor glanced around him in confusion, trying to trace my voice, and Finney pointed up the stairs toward me.

  “Ah!” Dan Stein looked relieved. “Um, I was wondering whether you wanted to go out for a drink,” he said awkwardly. Finney was still standing there, holding the door open for Stein and listening to the exchange.

  “I'm afraid I'm a bit tied up,” I said apologetically, feeling like an idiot, my cheeks burning. “The children are in the bath.”

  “Ah, well …”

  He carried on standing there, apparently with no intention of leaving.

  “Um, would you like a coffee?” I offered reluctantly. “I can be down in a moment if you don't mind … you could just wait for me in the sitting room.”

  I expected a retreat at that point but instead he just said, “Okay, take your time,” and strolled past Finney. Dan vanished into the sitting room. Finney looked up at me. I couldn't read his face.

  “I guess the rest of us had better stand in line,” he said. Then he was gone. I went back to the bathroom and stared down at the children, seeing nothing.

  “What is wrong with you?” I hissed at myself.

  I ran the conversation with Finney through my mind, angry that I had let my defenses down. The whole situation, him standing there in the bathroom while I bathed the children, the two of us chatting almost like friends, everything had been too easy. Which could only mean that Finney knew he had disarmed me and was making use of it. I groaned in embarrassment. Then I remembered that Dan was downstairs waiting for me, and I groaned again.

  I had no energy for small talk but Dan seemed instinctively to know that. In fact, when I appeared with two naked babies, two nappies held under my arm, and two sleepsuits slung over my shoulder to dress them, he seemed to take the whole situation on board in an instant and to know what I needed. He asked nothing of me. I just sat back and smiled, my feet curled under me, as he bounced and swung Hannah and William in turn until they were two little balls of writhing flesh, giggling hysterically.

  “Sorry,” he said ruefully, as Hannah shrieked in pleasure, “the only thing I know how to do with babies is chuck them around. I suppose you wanted them calming down for bed.”

  I shook my head.

  “It's fine. They'll be worn out.”

  He didn't really know what to do with nappies, but he took a good stab at it and had the children—and me—laughing along the way.

  When they started to cry from sheer exhaustion I took them up to bed while Dan sat back with a newspaper.

  “I'm sorry,” I said when I reappeared, “I never got you that coffee.”

  Dan put the newspaper down and smiled at me.

  “You know,” he said, “if you've got a beer I'd as soon take that.”

  We both had a beer, and as we sat and chatted it occurred to me that this was something I hadn't done for ages. Because of time and circumstance, my friends had been whittled down to my closest circle and I didn't go to pubs or clubs to meet new men. This was really very pleasant. It was aesthetically pleasing to have Dan sitting there in my front room, although his office suit and tie jarred a little. We were unencumbered by the past, and it was comforting not to be alone. He examined all my photographs as well as all the books on my shelves. He asked about my friends and my life, and I told him about the strange path I'd traveled in the couple of years that I now thought of as the run-up to Paula Carmichael's death.

  “Did you know her?” I asked him.

  “Only to say hi to,” he said. “We used to get each other's mail sometimes, so I'd drop it round. I never got to know her.”

  He told me that he was a personnel manager for a major financial institution, and I knew immediately that he was good at it, that he would listen and sympathize and advise.

  Eventually he stood and stretched and said he had better get going.

  “Do
you mind if I drop by again sometime?” he asked.

  “I'd like that,” I told him.

  He left at nine forty-five, and I decided to ring Suzette back—if I was going to work with her, I didn't want her to think I was difficult to pin down. I thought maybe she had managed to come up with a ballpark figure for my salary. God knows I wouldn't make a fortune at the Corporation. What I needed was a regular income, not a huge one—but money, it emerged, was precisely the problem.

  “Robbie, I'm sorry, I've screwed up.” Suzette sounded anxious and miserable. “I came back here this afternoon to look at the books again, but I keep coming back to the same thing. I don't want to mess you around. I mean I know your situation, so I'm going to be straight with you. You cannot afford to work here, because I cannot afford to pay you.”

  “You can't afford to pay me,” I echoed.

  “I mean I can't afford to pay you enough. It's all right for me, I'm on my own, but I can't do that to you. I feel bad enough … I want to do things properly, I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want you to hate me, and …” She drew a shuddering breath and seemed to have trouble controlling herself. “Believe me, you would grow to hate me.”

  “Suze, I'd never—” but she cut me off.

  “I don't know what I was thinking. I just wanted so much to have you with me—but this is what grown-up people do, isn't it? They make the right decision in the first place, they don't dig themselves into a hole they can't get out of …”