We Own the Sky

by Luke Allnutt

  5

  The hall is dark apart from a spotlight on Anna. I am standing at the back of a conference room in a smart Mayfair hotel, cloistered by thick walnut doors. The people watching are sitting, straight-backed without moving, shadows in suits and patent shoes. Only Anna’s face is visible. She is too far away, but her head is blown up on a big screen. She looks confident, austere, her hair tightly swept back off her face.

  I think about the last few weeks we spent together. Drinking vodka behind drawn curtains; the smell of bleach; the washing machine on an endless cycle; Anna whispering to her mother in another room.

  I listen, move a little closer to the stage. Anna is talking about “ethical accounting.” After Enron, a need for the profession to regain the public’s trust. That meant more than codifying good practices, she says, pulling up another slide. It was about bringing back the original—and now unfashionable—underpinnings of good, solid accounting.

  The audience is clapping and Anna walks to the side of the stage, shaking hands with someone in the wings. The lights have now been turned on and the accountants start filing out, carrying folders of materials, their name badges on lanyards around their necks.

  Anna is still speaking to people by the stage, and I watch as she kisses a smartly dressed older woman on the cheek. Slowly, they start to walk out, close but not touching. As she sees me, she makes her excuses and walks to where I am standing.

  “Hello,” she says. She does not smile but she does not frown. Something in between.

  “Hi,” I say, and I blush, and it is as if we are meeting for the first time. What is remarkable—so striking that I have to take a second furtive look—is to see how little she has changed, how beautiful she still is.

  “You look very well,” she says.

  “So do you,” I say, and I want to hug her but I don’t, and keep my hands down by my side.

  As we walk out toward the lobby, I steal a few looks at her again. Her hair is longer than I remember and she is a little thinner, toned, I assume from all the marathon running.

  “Would you mind giving me fifteen minutes to say hello to a few people, and I’ll meet you back here? Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” I say. “Are you sure that’s enough time? I don’t mind waiting longer.”

  “Have you been to an accountancy convention before, Rob?”

  “No.”

  “I have,” she says without smiling. “I’ll meet you in fifteen.”

  I wait in the lobby, my hands clammy with sweat. After exactly fifteen minutes, Anna appears in her coat, carrying a laptop bag over her shoulder.

  “I’m ready. Are you hungry?”

  “I am a bit.”

  “There’s a decent Thai place around the corner. Fancy it?”

  “Sounds great.”

  For a few moments, we walk in silence. It is like the first time we met, at Lola’s party in Cambridge, and how I was so desperately trying to think of something to say. “So how was the conference?”

  “Oh, you know. Has to be done.”

  “Are you working here in London now?”

  “Mostly. I’m just consulting. And you? Are you still living down in Cornwall?”

  “Yes,” I say, and we walk on in silence because, now, suddenly, I don’t know what to say.

  The restaurant is the sort of place we would have come to in our London lives, the type of light, finicky food we both used to like. We sit in a corner booth on austere wooden benches, the walls hemming us in like a crypt.

  “It’s strange to see you after all this time,” Anna says. “I feel a bit nervous to be honest.”

  “Yeah, me too. Sorry, I’m being a bit of a freak. It is nice to see you, though.”

  “It is,” Anna says. She smiles but it is a sad smile, and I don’t know what it means. She looks down at her menu. “So are you ready to order?”

  “Sure,” I say, although I have barely looked. As I choose my food, I glance at her hands and notice that she is not wearing a wedding ring.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know it was me,” she says after the waiter takes our order.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Chatting on Hope’s Place.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I had no idea to be honest.”

  “Really?” Anna says, because she had always loved parlor games, charades. “I was convinced you would guess, especially after I mentioned the goggles in the bath.”

  “No, not at all. I really didn’t. If you hadn’t given yourself away, I wouldn’t have known. Although, when I thought about it afterward, the name of your daughter, Lucy, did make sense.”

  Lucy, the name Anna had given to the second child we had lost.

  The waiter puts down our drinks. A glass of wine for Anna, a water for me.

  “I’m really glad you’re not drinking anymore,” Anna says after the waiter left.

  “So am I,” I say, but it stings a little. The drunk who doesn’t like being told they are a drunk. There is a silence, a familiar silence. The silence across the kitchen table after Jack had gone.

  “So,” I say, taking a drink of my sparkling water and daring to look her in the eyes for the first time. “I know I’ve said it before, but I wanted to say sorry in person. I said some unforgivable things to you, about Jack, about the treatment in Prague. Unforgivable. I just lost it, with the booze, with everything. I know that’s no excuse and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I do want to apologize. I really am so, so sorry...”

  Anna pauses and then lets out a deep breath, as if she has been holding it in. “Thank you, Rob. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.” Her tone was formal, still a little cold. “So, yes, I accept your apology.”

  “Thank you. That’s very generous of you. Really.”

  Anna shrugged. “Life’s too short, right? We know that better than anyone.”

  The appetizers arrive. Little spring rolls with whiskers of carrots protruding at the ends. Anna looks down at her plate, as if she is deciding whether to start.

  “I won’t lie to you, it hurt me a lot, when you said those things,” Anna says. “About the clinic, about how we could have saved Jack and...” She stops herself and then wipes her mouth with her napkin. “Anyway, sorry, we don’t need to go over all that again. I certainly didn’t come here to berate you.”

  In recent weeks, more details have emerged about the clinic. Relatives and parents of former patients have come forward, many of them seeking compensation. A former nurse went to the media and revealed details about what the staff called “dosing up.” They would give patients small quantities of morphine and steroids to simulate a clinical response to the immuno-engineering. I remember all the drugs Dr. Sladkovsky gave Jack—the little pots he used to bring, the pills I saw him slipping on Jack’s tongue.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it,” I say, “that after all the horrible things I used to say to you about the clinic and how it could have saved Jack and then, in the end, it was probably me...” I swallowed, my voice trailing off.

  “Probably you what?”

  “Well, that maybe it damaged him, that perhaps I cut his life short by taking him to Prague...”

  Anna fiddles with her napkin ring and takes a sip of her wine. She looks at me, and I feel for a moment like one of her clients receiving counsel. “I do understand why you think like that,” she says, “but you shouldn’t. Really, don’t do it to yourself.”

  “Why not?” I say. “With what we’ve learned about the clinic. It’s more than possible.”

  Anna shakes her head and puts down her fork. “I have spent so much time over the last few years beating myself up, about what we could have done with Jack, whether you were right about Sladkovsky, whether we should have gone for treatment abroad, in Germany, or pushed more on that Marsden trial. But for what? Jack was dying, Rob. He would have
died, no matter what we had done. The best specialists in the world told us that. Sladkovsky’s or no Sladkovsky’s, Jack didn’t have a chance.”

  I swallow, drink some water, pick at a spring roll.

  “The funny thing,” Anna says, and I think I see the slightest hint of a smile, “is that Jack actually quite enjoyed the trip to Prague, being at the airport, on the plane.”

  I smile, remembering his little backpack and how it was too big for him but he insisted on carrying it. “He did, didn’t he. He did always love going on the plane.”

  “Do you remember Crete? When they let him sit in the cockpit before takeoff?”

  “I do. He absolutely loved it.”

  Anna is about to say something when the waiter arrives with the main courses. Little prawn sliders with coriander and tarragon. Cuts of beef bathed in chili. A laboriously arranged and dressed papaya salad. Anna is quiet, almost as if she thought she had said too much.

  “Can I ask you?” I say, as we begin to eat. “Why did you get back in touch, on Hope’s Place?”

  Anna takes a bite of her crab cake, diligently chews and swallows, and then wipes her mouth. “Well, at first, I was just a bit worried about you. I didn’t want you to kill yourself.” She stops, puts down her fork, her brow furrowing as it would when she was perturbed by a crossword clue. “But it’s a bit more complicated than that. If you must know, I think a part of me was hoping you would start talking badly about your wife, or ex-wife, or whatever I am. And then, for once and for all, I would know how horrible you really were and I could stop thinking about you.”

  Anna smiles and takes a deep sip of her wine and, for a moment, it is as if we have gone back in time, a cavernous Cambridge restaurant, our lives stretching out before us. “God, Lola would kill me now,” Anna says, chuckling to herself. “She always says I’m far too honest... Anyway, my master plan didn’t work, that was the problem. Because you didn’t say anything bad about me in your messages. You only said nice things, and you seemed so genuinely sorry.

  “It was more than that, though. I loved talking to you on Hope’s Place. The way you wrote, how you explained things, talked about your feelings. Your messages really helped me. And it was what I had always loved about you, how we used to talk for hours, in bed, late into the night. Just the two of us. So...as I said, my plan didn’t work, and I suppose that’s why I’m here.”

  I dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from crying. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry I was horrible to you. It was disgusting what I did to you.”

  “Oh, Rob,” Anna says. “You don’t need to keep saying sorry. I do understand, you know.”

  “But I want to,” I say, the tears welling behind my eyes. “I just...I feel I owe it to you.”

  Anna looks at me sternly. “If you say sorry one more time, I will walk out and leave you here with the bill.”

  I let out a little laugh. “Thank you,” I say, “for being so nice. I don’t deserve it.”

  “No, you don’t.” She gives me another stern look that turns into a smile and we sit, taking a breath, sipping our drinks.

  “Can I ask,” Anna says, breaking the silence, “how much do you remember about what happened? After Jack died, I mean.”

  “Not much,” I say, a pang of shame that she is asking, the fear that I will hear more about the things I did. “It’s a bit blurry, to be honest, just bits and pieces.”

  “Did you know that every night after Jack died, I set my alarm for midnight or one o’clock and got up to check on you?”

  I didn’t say anything, couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Every night I thought you might die, choke on your own vomit or something.” She stops, evaluates the expression on my face. “I’m not saying it to shame you. That’s what you always thought. No, you were ill, Rob. You had a breakdown, and I just didn’t know what to do. I tried to get you help, a place in a rehab clinic, but you refused.

  “So that was that. I didn’t know what to do, so, like you, I just withdrew into my own little world, as well. I worked long hours, I read my books, all my silly crime novels. And then when you started drinking even more, the arguments started, about every little thing—Sladkovsky’s clinic, how I was always so cold, Jack’s room. God, we spent so long talking about the room. You accusing me of clearing everything out. I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

  I am confused and don’t know what to say. I remember the boxes and bags, stacked up in the hall. “I thought we did clean it out.”

  “Rob,” she says firmly, leaning forward across the table, “we didn’t. We just didn’t. One day, I took a couple of things out because I couldn’t look at them anymore, and you started a huge argument with me and had it in your head that I was throwing things away. But I wasn’t, I just wasn’t. All those boxes and bags, they were mine. That was mine, the stuff I was taking to Lola’s. I still have all of Jack’s things, Rob. They’re in my attic in Gerrards Cross.”

  I try to think back, to find a foothold somewhere, but I am slipping, losing my grip. She touches my arm across the table.

  “Rob, I’m not saying this to hurt you or make you feel ashamed, but you were so drunk you couldn’t even remember your own name. You didn’t know what day it was. You couldn’t remember the reason you walked into a room half the time.”

  I think Anna is about to cry. I can tell from the minute quiver of her cheek, the way she bites her lip, but she stops herself, steels herself.

  “I hated seeing that. The man I loved, just destroying himself. I wanted to help you because I knew this wasn’t the real you, and I felt like I owed you...”

  “Why on earth would you owe me?”

  Anna looks at me, intently, as if this is something she has thought about and wanted to say for a long time. “Do you remember Jack’s Zoo? How you were the zookeeper and he was the boss, the zoo’s owner, and he would always tell you what to do.”

  Jack’s Zoo. We played that game for hours in his bed, making enclosures for the animals among the pillows and duvet, lining up Tiger, Monkey, and Ellie Elephant. And Jack, as the boss, would tell me which animals to feed, and then he would go to each one, asking them if they had enough food and inspecting their bottoms to see if they were clean.

  “Yeah, I do,” I say, smiling, and I remember the way Jack shouted “Zoo open!”, his bedroom blinds casting warming licks of sunshine onto the floor. “He was so funny. So particular about certain things. The zoo had to be on the bed except...”

  “The lion’s cages,” Anna says, finishing my sentence.

  “Yes, exactly. For some reason, with the lions he felt it was okay to move the zoo onto the floor. With the two pillows for their cages.”

  Anna takes out a tissue from her bag and wipes her eyes. I still don’t understand why she is telling me all this. Why would she feel that she owed me?

  “He was always so happy with that game,” I say, “he could play it for hours.”

  “And do you remember bath time? After he was dry and he was in his pajamas, and then you would hide. And he would come and look for you, and then you would jump out and Jack just thought it was the funniest thing and wanted to do it again and again. You two could play for hours like that.”

  Anna’s face drops, and she looks sullenly down at the table. “I know that was never my strong point,” she says. “I’ve never been particularly good at being silly. Even as a child, playing games, rolling around on the floor—it just doesn’t come naturally to me. And this, Rob, all this is why I felt I owed you, because you were so good at that. You made Jack’s life so wonderful. You made our home such a happy place for him, so alive with fun and laughter and joy—so much joy. God, all the games you invented—the dressing up, the rocket ships, the superhero stories, playing with your bloody helicopters in the back garden.

  “Or when you played crocodiles with him and he was on the bed thr
owing pillows and teddies down at you on the floor. I tried it with him once and managed about ten minutes before my knees started to hurt, but you would keep going for hours. I just couldn’t do that, not in the same way. And I’m so ashamed of that and wish I wasn’t like that. But you, Rob—you made him smile hundreds of times every single day, every single minute. Jack just adored you, and you made his life so special, much more than I ever could have done. He was the happiest little boy right up until the end, and that was because of you, Rob, and I will never, ever forget that...”

  Anna stops speaking and looks at me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to make you cry.”

  I look down and realize that I am weeping, tears splashing onto my plate. Anna hands me one of her tissues from her handbag and gives me a moment to dry my eyes, to catch my breath.

  “I still think about him every day,” she says. “Where he might be, what he might be doing if he was still here...”

  “He’d probably be in his room, wouldn’t he?” I say. “Reading his books, or playing with his toys.”

  Anna smiles sadly. “I feel guilty whenever I hear about these kids with terminal cancer going to Disneyland or meeting celebrities,” she says. “Or their parents organizing one of those flash-mob dances. I always think of Jack, sitting in his bedroom for his last few months, humming songs to himself.”

  “But, as you said, he was happy,” I say. “I remember you saying in one of your messages how you were worried that you weren’t a good enough mom, that you didn’t care enough. Well, you know that’s absolutely rubbish. You were a wonderful mom to him, Anna. You really were. Do you remember the birthday party and the Spider-Man cake you were up half the night making? He loved it so much. He was so happy that day.”

  “Yes, he did,” Anna says sadly. “He was.” She looks down at her empty plate. “Shall we get dessert?” she says, as if she wants to change the subject. She is distant again, as if she feels that she has opened herself up too much and must take a step back.