Strangers on a Bridge

by Louise Mangos

  ‘Gerry, I need one thing. Just give me some time. A week or two to try and sort out my life again. I need a bit of distance to think. I don’t want you to remind me of your father every time I see you. Do you understand that? Can you give me that space?’

  He gathered himself, perhaps realising his own needs had triggered unpleasant memories for me. This had apparently not been his intention. He put his hand to his temple, mouth slightly open.

  ‘Of course I can, Alice. I’m not going to start following you around like my father did. Please remember one thing. I am not my father. I am not like him at all. I do not want to be like him. I’m not that kind of person. I’m sorry… I should not have asked.’

  He was so adamant, it was as though he was repeating a mantra to convince himself he would never become his father.

  He dug into his pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper.

  ‘And here is my mobile number, should you feel like calling about anything.’

  He saw me pale with the unspoken obligation. I didn’t want to take the paper from him. It was as though he had been prepared to give me the number before he even knocked at my door. Perhaps he would have left it in our mailbox if I hadn’t been home. Most likely he simply wanted to talk about what had happened. And part of me thought perhaps I could assuage his guilt, in turn assuaging my own.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m just saying here is my number in case… You know, you have been through a lot as well with this whole thing with my father. I don’t know. I realise you would probably want to move on from it all. I have not forgotten that you came to seek my help some months ago, and I turned you away. It means you have the option.’

  That’s something Simon might have said. Keep all your options open. He often mentioned it if I was wondering whether to take a rain jacket on a hike. I asked myself what options Gerry thought I had.

  Feeling a little wary, I stood and led the way down the hallway to the door. As we shook hands, I smiled uncertainly. His palm was warm and dry, a strong handshake not unlike that of his father. Closing the door as he retreated down the stairway, my smile dropped away and I slapped my thigh.

  What was I thinking, allowing this person to maybe contact me in the future? I wanted nothing more than to forget Manfred had ever existed. I put my hand to the back of my neck, massaging a tension I hadn’t realised was there, and wiped dampness away with my palm. I stood for a few moments in the dimness, staring at the closed door, then turned to walk down the hallway to the kitchen. I screwed up the paper with his phone number and threw it into the recycling bag.

  Through the window, I watched him walk down the road to the village. He pulled up the padded collar of his ski jacket and hunched into its warmth, as giant, fluffy snowflakes began falling thickly but silently past the windowpane, eventually obscuring my view.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Apart from during the family holiday in autumn, Simon and I hadn’t been on a date together for over a year. His company was throwing an extravagant evening out in Zürich for the management team, a thank you for the multimillion-dollar oil deal recently signed and sealed after many months of negotiation with an unpredictable Russian conglomerate.

  We were to attend a private performance of La Bohème at the Opernhaus, followed by a gourmet dinner above the city at the Dolder Grand Hotel.

  I stood at the bathroom mirror, the bright neon light revealing fine creases of stress on my face that weren’t there last spring. Patting my skin with face powder, I swept a layer of mascara onto my lashes, and pressed my lips together before pouting and grimacing with the unfamiliar taste of lipstick. My unruly curly hair was scraped back into a pleat and I tucked in a few wild strands, securing them with extra hairpins.

  ‘Could you help me with my necklace?’

  I held up a chain with an amethyst pendant as Simon came into the bathroom, fiddling with a cufflink. He secured the tiny clasp at the back of my neck, and gently pressed his mouth to the curve leading to my shoulder.

  ‘We brush up quite well for a couple of athletes creaking into middle age,’ he said. ‘You’re still a beautiful woman, Al.’

  I felt a thrill, the one that had made me yearn for him all those years ago. Warmth spread through my belly and I smiled at him in the mirror. We hadn’t been like this together for months.

  ‘Shame we don’t have a little extra time… But I wouldn’t want to crease your dress or muss up your hair-do,’ he said with a playful grin.

  With his hands on my hips we gazed at each other a moment longer, smiling shyly like a couple of lovestruck teenagers. Our history had held us together after almost a year of hell. A year of constant anxiety and uncertainty. We would rebuild what had crumbled over the next weeks. My eyes misted with gratitude that we hadn’t lost the spark. Simon’s hands fell away and he went back to the bedroom to fetch his tie.

  I stayed in the bathroom a moment longer, staring at my face in the mirror. The make-up did make me look younger. I turned my head from side to side, my earrings catching the light with a spark. I supposed I was still quite attractive, once the faint, spider-thread lines had been covered with a little concealer. I might even have passed for someone five or six years younger.

  I wondered how old Gerry thought I was. My brows creased. I felt instantly guilty, allowing someone other than the man who had just placed his hands on my hips to slip into my mind. I smoothed my skirt.

  We sat in the darkened theatre with stage lights glistening in our eyes. I felt as though the performers were watching us instead of the other way round. I guessed that’s what came from having been observed for so long.

  We were a group of thirty or so, clustered several rows back from the stage, the rest of the theatre a gaping universe of shadows and empty seats in the darkness. At some point during the evening, I had the uncomfortable feeling I was being watched. I looked over my shoulder to the darkness at the back of the theatre, then to my side as Simon caught my eye, and smiled reassuringly as he put a hand on my arm.

  I brushed off my anxiety as a feeling I had grown used to over the past year. I figured it must be a combination of the novelty of a night out with a group of Simon’s unfamiliar office colleagues, along with the eerie feeling the half-empty opera house evoked. But the sensation still lay like a stone in the pit of my stomach.

  The private performance was in reality a dress rehearsal for the month-long production that would open to the public the following night in the Opernhaus. We’d been forewarned that one of the sopranos had contracted a cold, and sure enough, halfway through Musetta’s Waltz in Act Two, her piercing voice cracked, and a coughing fit stopped her in the middle of the piece. The orchestra stumbled to a halt, their strings tripping over each other in their haste to silence, and the understudy had to be called before the performance could recommence.

  The audience shuffled in their seats in embarrassment for the performers, and we all agreed how lucky it was for them that this happened at the dress rehearsal, making excuses for our presence. But the incident gelled the audience, a group of relative strangers, work colleagues and their partners who barely knew each other, and the anxiety I’d initially felt immediately dissipated.

  After losing count of the glasses of champagne, we went on to enjoy a five-course gourmet meal at the restaurant. We were high on this rare social occasion, alcohol fogging our reality. Spilling into our pre-ordered taxi at the end of the evening, we snuggled like two young lovers in the back of the car while our chauffeur drove us home to an empty apartment. The boys had been farmed off to friends for the evening, allowing us the luxury of being alone for the whole night.

  As we stepped through the door, Simon gently pulled one end of the shawl I was wearing and spun me around to face him in the hallway. He gathered me close, and kissed me deeply, the taste of a vintage Bordeaux on his mouth. I put my arms around his neck, and we waltzed comically into the living room where Simon closed the curtains with flourish. He lit two candles on the bookshelf, bathing the room in a cos
y, sensual light, and pushed me gently back onto the sofa.

  He knelt down to remove my shoes, and laid his head briefly on my lap, gently hugging my legs. He lifted my skirt, pulled my tights and knickers together down past my knees, and smoothed his palms down the inside of my thighs. The fervour in his eyes set me on fire and I knew we should satisfy this rare passion now, or it might never happen again. I began unbuttoning his trousers and tugged at his zip, the top halves of our bodies still fully clothed.

  I turned to push him down onto the couch and he reached up to bury his hands in my hair, my French pleat long ago wild around my face. I straddled Simon, his hardness finding its own way into the familiarity of me, and we pressed into each other with a kind of desperation. One of his hands squeezed my breast, frustratingly constricted under the silk bodice of my evening dress.

  ‘It’s time to let go, Alice.’ His voice was almost a shout, then cracked with hoarseness, his whole body on the verge of release.

  I smiled, wondering if the neighbours could hear us, and leaned towards him, my hair whispering against his chest. He was close to losing control, and to keep me with him, pressed his fingers against me where our bodies joined, triggering the powerful climax I had been craving.

  It had been months, so long. The power of sensations long forgotten brought tears to my eyes, either because of the months of missed opportunity or gratefulness for this moment. I laid my cheek against his chest as our breathing calmed.

  Simon blew a lock of my hair out of his face and shifted slightly. I didn’t know how many minutes we’d been lying there. I might even have fallen asleep, my ear pressed to his steadily slowing heartbeat. I was spent, suddenly exhausted. I felt Simon’s hand shift from under us, his knuckles moving across the front of one of my legs as he grabbed at something under his back. I knelt upright as he held up the object he was lying on.

  It was Gerry’s plaited leather bracelet. My heart missed a beat.

  ‘Yours?’ Simon asked nonchalantly.

  The leather friendship band hung from his outstretched index finger.

  ‘No… It must belong to one of the boys,’ I replied without hesitation.

  It was so much easier than telling him Gerry had been in our home. I didn’t want to risk his fury at finding out a stranger had been inside our house again, albeit under innocent circumstances.

  Simon narrowed his eyes and looked at the bracelet sceptically. I forced a smile and plucked it from his hands. As I leaned in to kiss him, I lobbed it gently across the room, and it landed on the bookshelf out of his sight. But it burned there in my peripheral vision.

  ‘Maybe Leon has a girlfriend,’ I said jovially. ‘It looks like one of those friendship bands all the kids are wearing at the moment. Perhaps he takes after his dad, and can’t leave the ladies alone.’

  I laughed, attempting to tease, and pulled up Simon’s shirt to tickle him lightly on his stomach, making him laugh and squirm.

  As I tidied the cushions on the sofa and turned out the lights on our way to bed, I slid the bracelet off the shelf, folded it into my hand and tucked it into my handbag on the bench in the hallway. It continued to burn a hole there instead.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The police called again while I was shopping at the Co-op. As I was carefully selecting Braeburns from the apple boxes, I answered my mobile without checking. Only a handful of people had my number – Simon, the school, Kathy and a few women from the Chat Club. Manfred had it too, when he was alive. He would be the only person I truly didn’t want to talk to. Since I knew he was dead, he wouldn’t be calling me. I’d begun answering again without looking at the screen. But I’d forgotten I’d also given it to the police, and the unfamiliar Swiss German voice immediately made me nervous.

  It was unclear whether my presence at the station in Zug was absolutely required, but I obliged as soon as possible, and arranged a time the following day, before weighing my apples and sticking the price tag on the bag.

  I felt self-conscious speaking on my mobile in the small village shop in English, and left without buying half the things on my list.

  This time I talked to someone who introduced himself as Rudolf Meier – a police psychologist. He wasn’t wearing a nametag or a uniform, and I sighed with the irritation of having to go through all the details again.

  ‘I’m sorry you have had to come to Zug again, Frau Reed. We were hoping to visit you at home, but thought perhaps it was easier for you to talk somewhere neutral without the possibility of your children interrupting the… interview.’

  For a moment I thought he was going to say ‘interrogation’ and my mouth turned briefly upwards in a saccharine smile. Herr Meier continued.

  ‘Now you have had time to digest the news and your conversations with Herren Schmid and Müller, we are wondering whether you have had any further reactions, emotionally, to the news that Herr Guggenbuhl has… passed away.’

  I thought this was a delicate way of putting it, for someone for whom English was not his first language. He made it sound like Manfred died of old age after a long illness. I wondered what he was digging for. Were they being overly nosy, or was I simply being overly suspicious? For a police force that had paid no attention to Manfred when he was alive, they were certainly giving him a lot of airing now he was dead. The room seemed suddenly stuffy and I reached for the plastic cup left for me on the edge of Herr Meier’s desk. The water tasted metallic.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand your concern, or why I’m here, Herr Meier.’

  ‘We wanted to make sure there had been no repercussions from his death. For you and your family. It is not always easy to learn of the untimely death of someone you have… who has been a part of your life for so long.’

  I wished I knew how they expected me to react. He spoke as though I’d lost a beloved relative.

  ‘How is your son?’ he asked.

  I stared at the psychologist. He shifted in his seat when I didn’t answer.

  ‘We were led to believe he had also been… affected by Herr Guggenbuhl. It is our duty to make sure that he does not require, how do you say, counselling. We ask you first to see if you think this would be the case.’

  Something dark and slippery uncoiled within me, and before I could hold my tongue, I grabbed the seat of my chair and leaned towards my interviewer across his desk.

  ‘Well, this is a fine time to be offering your damn help! After all those months of my family being persecuted! Why the fuck didn’t you do something about it six months ago, when that man needed help, was obviously begging for it? Did you think you could save yourselves the hassle and have me do your dirty work for you? Or did you think if the pathetic little foreigner would just go away, then Manfred Guggenbuhl’s problems would just go away too, and you wouldn’t have an issue to deal with? Well, if I hadn’t talked him off that damned bridge in the first place, you would have been dealing with a dead body much earlier in the year. Isn’t it time you just left us alone? This whole thing disgusts me… You’re more concerned with a fucking dead corpse than a human cry for help.’

  My hand grabbed my mouth to stop myself, as if two parts of my body were fighting the reaction. Blood rushed to my face, and anger smarted my eyes.

  Herr Meier leaned back, shocked by my outburst. It had been a long time since anyone had heard me speak like that, even my family and friends. I winced, put my head on one side and rubbed one eyebrow with the palm of my hand. Spinning shards of light kaleidoscoped before my eyes. The policeman’s desk appeared to float, and the pens, paperclips and his coffee mug faded out and reappeared before me.

  The last thing I should have done was lose control, draw attention to myself. The police knew Oliver had been followed home from school. It was me who had told them in the first place. I had been furious it wasn’t until the school themselves made a complaint about Manfred that the police promised to patrol the village.

  But what I hadn’t told them was what that monster did to Oliver only hours before his
death. My blood still boiled thinking about it. Thinking this could all have been avoided if the police had taken action earlier.

  But I couldn’t say anything more, in case coincidence and suspicion were to combine in the story they were now trying to piece together.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  ‘I’m doing my PhD at the ETH,’ Gerry said.

  I frowned.

  ‘In biotechnology. It’s the university, here in Zürich – just up the hill there, in fact.’

  He pointed with his chin past the twin towers of the city’s iconic Grossmünster church.

  ‘Well, the main building is up there, but most of my lab work is done in Hönggerberg, a little further to the west.’

  I still wasn’t sure what my motivation had been for calling Gerry. I repeatedly saw the soft-plaited leather band in the inside pocket of my handbag where I kept my mobile phone. I occasionally pulled it out and held it in my hand, rubbing my thumb along the tightly woven suede to the brass stud at one end. I wondered if a girl had given it to him. He might have been sad to have lost it.

  Gerry’s mobile phone number took some time to find in the bag of paper destined for the recycling centre. I knew his family home number from researching their address some months before. But now I wouldn’t dare call his home in Aargau where I knew he spent some of his weekends. His mother might answer. I should avoid talking to her at all costs.

  Once I admitted I wanted to call Gerry, I panicked when I couldn’t find the number, and tipped the recycling bag out onto the floor, spreading newspapers, magazines and various abandoned homework attempts across the kitchen tiles. The screwed-up scrap of paper was caught between the pages of a furniture catalogue. The fact that I had found it generated warm satisfaction. Like solving a child’s puzzle. I laughed to myself. Not that I was really worried about losing Gerry’s number. I didn’t have to call him. I simply wanted some closure.