by Susan Lewis
‘Fuck me!’ he yelled, hammering into her and pushing his fingers between her legs.
‘Oh God!’ she seethed. ‘Oh yes, yes, yes.’ Her eyes burned into his and a white heat seared through his loins. ‘Now!’ he shouted. ‘Come now! Now! Now!’ With every word his seed was bursting into her, and his fingers rubbed harder until he could feel her muscles tightening around him and her screams resounded round the room in a deafening echo.
It was another two hours before they finally uttered words unstressed with urgency. Madeleine was dressed by that time, and waiting for him in the sitting-room where only half an hour before he’d taken her over the chair. She leaned forward and took another peep at the cheque that was lying on their coffee-table box. As she did so, her heart was seized with a frenzied greed that fired through her body again and again until, unable to bear the assault any longer, she leapt up and went to stand at the window. She had him. He was hers now, and so was the seven hundred and fifty thousand smackeroos!
Her decision was made. She’d thought it over carefully, waiting for her sense of decency to prevail and smash her dream to smithereens. It hadn’t happened. In her mind the future had not yet taken on any definite shape – though geographically she moved with ease and splendour from continent to continent. It was only when she tried to sort out her exit from Bristol and her entry into this proposed new life that she became confused and agitated, and resentful. But beyond that she felt an exalted anticipation like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Because from now on it would be just the three of them. Paul and Madeleine, and Miss M. Deacon’s – Miss Marian Deacon’s – lottery win.
Paul was looking thoughtful as he came into the room. He walked over to his typewriter and wound in a sheet of paper. Then stepping back, he said: ‘It’s all yours. I take it you are going to leave her a note?’ he added, when all she did was look at him.
‘You’re the writer.’
‘You’re family.’
‘And you’re the one she’s in love with.’
He looked troubled, then sat down, covering his face with his hands.
‘What’s the matter?’ Madeleine asked nervously, when he’d remained like that for several minutes.
He looked up and she could see he was angry, but more than that, he was in pain. ‘For once, Madeleine, look beyond yourself,’ he cried. ‘Look at me! Can’t you see what this is doing to me? God, you’re so beautiful it’s tearing me apart. But don’t you understand how much I hate my weakness for you? How much I hate being unable to stop myself from wanting you? I don’t know what happened the moment I stepped into bed with you, but you’ve got me now, Madeleine. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?’
His words filled the air around her. She inhaled deeply, then held her breath as though absorbing them into herself. Expressing her beauty, his pain at her presence, his declaration that he was hers. ‘Yes, it’s what I wanted.’ She tried to disguise her triumph, but her voice shook with it. ‘And I want a whole lot more.’
‘I’m back,’ Marian called out. She closed the door behind her, put her bag on the floor and took off her coat. Then noticing that there weren’t any others on the rack, she felt a pang of disappointment that there was no one in to greet her.
She picked up her bag, took it into the bedroom, then walked into the sitting-room. She shivered. They must have been out all morning, because the chill in the room meant that the fire couldn’t have been on for some time. Then it occurred to her that the gas might have been cut off, and she crossed the room quickly to find out. At the turn of the switch the fire burst into life, and she smiled as her momentary panic subsided.
Turning back to the kitchen, she was just wondering what treats she could buy at the supermarket to surprise them when her eyes were drawn to the table. She frowned. There was something different about it. Then she realised what it was. It was empty. She pulled back the chair to see if Paul had packed his typewriter away somewhere. But why would he do that? she was asking herself as her eyes scanned the room.
Her heartbeat quickened and her hands started to shake as she realised that the pages of his new manuscript were missing too. Immediately, she turned to the shelf above the TV, and her heart almost stopped when she saw that his books were gone too. Despite the horrible dread that was drawing her back, she ran into the bedroom and pulled open the wardrobe door. The empty hangers clattered against one another in the draught.
She stepped back, her eyes wide with disbelief. Then a terrible buzzing started in her ears and her throat began to close in a dry, constricting knot. She stumbled into the bathroom; where he’d kept his razor and toothbrush there was nothing.
‘Paul,’ she breathed. She spun round, and as if she still couldn’t take it in, she went back to the sitting-room. She stood staring at the table, as if she could will the typewriter to return. Then she closed her eyes and covered them with her hands, and in the black depths she saw his face.
‘Paul,’ she whispered. ‘PAUL!’ Her scream unleashed the panic that was erupting inside her, and she fell to her knees, cradling her head in her arms as if to protect herself from the terrible pain. ‘No!’ she sobbed. ‘Please God, no!’
Her shoulders slumped against the sofa, and when she looked up her face was ashen and her eyes were wide, dry circles. She gazed at the cushions, at the carpet, at the fire, at the blank TV screen. Then she heard him laughing, and quickly turned to look down the hall. In the dim light there was a line of sunshine that broke from the bedroom door. Nothing moved. Then her chest started to heave, and a searing pain engulfed her. She clasped her hands to her head as the buzzing started again. ‘No, no, it can’t be true. It can’t be true,’ she cried. ‘Maddy! Oh Maddy, where are you?’
Hour after hour passed, and still she sat on the floor, waiting. From time to time a tear trickled down her face, but it hurt too much to cry. It was past midnight by the time she dragged herself to her feet. She walked to the window. The night sky was black and empty. She stood looking into it, willing herself to move, but she was afraid. Afraid to think, afraid to feel, afraid to know.
In the end she made herself do it. As if in a trance, she walked into the bedroom. She turned on the light and blinked as the glare stung her eyes. Then carefully she moved to the wardrobe and opened the other door. And then she knew the whole, terrible truth.
For two whole days and nights she neither ate nor slept. She simply sat on the edge of her bed, hardly able to move. Whenever she did, the pain gripped her with such pure, stark intensity that she wanted only to die. Any movement outside took her eyes to the door, but no one came. She searched the flat for a note but found nothing. No letter arrived either.
On the third day she washed and dressed and went to pay the telephone bill. Again she waited, but nobody rang. She went to the library, called the strip-o-gram agency, even went to the Chateau Wine Bar. No one had seen them, no one could help.
As she walked back to Clifton she passed the museum. She stood outside for over an hour, closing her eyes as she willed time to turn back. But when she opened them again she recoiled from the life that continued around her, and her heart was like an organ of torture pumping loneliness through her veins.
She went to the bank and paid off the debts. She went to the supermarket and bought a can of beans and some bread. She went to the newsagent’s, picked up her football coupons and the Independent.
Some days she went to work, and afterwards she walked round for hours, afraid to go back to the cold and the emptiness of the flat. Eventually the money her mother had given her started to run out and she knew she had to pull herself together.
She met Janey in the Chateau. Jackie and Sharon introduced her – Janey was desperate for somewhere to live.
‘It might help to have someone around,’ Jackie said kindly. ‘Why not let her stay for a while?’
‘Are you sure you don’t know where Maddy is?’ Marian asked.
Jackie shook her head, then found she had to swallow a lump in her t
hroat. She had never seen such torment in a person’s eyes.
As Marian walked out of the wine bar with Janey, Sharon turned to Jackie. ‘Do you think she’ll ever get over it?’
‘I don’t know. But what I do know is, we should keep an eye on her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think she might do something you and I would bitterly regret.’
‘What do you mean?’
As she answered, Jackie looked Sharon straight in the eye. ‘They were her whole life, Sharon, and if they don’t come back, I think she’ll kill herself.’
Marian led Janey into the sitting-room as Janey dug into her voluminous canvas bag and pulled out a purse. ‘Two hundred pounds for the deposit? Is that right?’
Marian nodded. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she offered.
‘Sure, why not? I’ll make it if you like. Got to keep in with my new flat mate, eh?’
Marian stared at her. For a fleeting second she thought she saw Madeleine’s face, but then it was Janey again. ‘I’ll do it,’ she mumbled. And as she walked into the kitchen and put on the kettle, tears swelled in her eyes. She could hear Janey moving about in the next room, and suddenly she had to grip the edge of the sink as her shoulders started to heave and her breath shortened. It was as if a great hand was pushing her heart into her throat. ‘Please God, don’t let me break down,’ she whispered.
‘Did you say something?’ Janey said, fiddling with her portable stereo as she came into the kitchen.
Marian turned away quickly, shaking her head. ‘Do you like sugar?’ she sniffed.
‘No. But I like music. What about you, Marian? Do you like music?’ And suddenly the whole flat was alive with it.
– 6 –
It was seven fifteen in the morning. Matthew Cornwall flung back the bedclothes, kicked his shoes out of the way and slammed the window shut. Being a man of newly acquired privacy, which in turn had brought newly acquired habits, he was even angrier than he might have been. These days, when he wasn’t filming, he liked to ease himself into the day at a leisurely pace. What he liked even more was to have his bedroom window open – a luxury that had been denied him throughout the years of his marriage. As it was he had been kept awake for hour after hour by what seemed to be a recurring nightmare in his life – music throbbing through the walls of his room, thudding into his brain until he was drum-beaten to a state of near-catatonia. The only difference now was that the noise was coming from the flat upstairs instead of the bedroom next door. Hadn’t he lived with din for the best part of twenty years? Hadn’t he had life’s share of other people’s obtrusiveness? He hated people, really hated them. At least, this morning he did, so it wasn’t any wonder that, unrested as he was, and with a temper simmering just below exploding point, he should slam the window as hard as he could in the hope that it would release some of his fury.
The panes of glass trembled in their frames and he waited to see if any would break. Then, half-grinning at the futility of his gesture, he turned back into the room. He winced. It was like an ice-cream parlour – everything covered in a froth of pink and white lace. The curtains were tied back with huge satin bows, and everything was done in the reverse-match style created by Laura Ashley. The duvet matched the curtains, so did the wallpaper, so did the panels in the wardrobe doors, the lampshade and the picture frames. On the dressing table his watch and loose change looked decidedly uncomfortable amongst the perfume bottles and cottonwool puffs; even more out of place in this sea of femininity was his own naked male body. Still, he shouldn’t grumble. It was good of whatever-her-name-was to lend him her flat while she was in Hungary filming.
He’d been there for just over two months now, but still he couldn’t get used to being alone. Not that he didn’t like it. In fact, if it wasn’t for the inconsideration of his neighbours upstairs, he would have taken great delight in imagining he was the only person alive on the planet – for a few hours in the day, anyway.
The need for solitude was the result of a marriage that had been loud, obstructive, and eventually an almost constant irritant. ‘That’s what it’s like, being married,’ his brother had informed him laughingly, and Matthew could picture now the rippling splendour of his brother’s belly filled out over the years by his own raucous wife.
He still wasn’t sure exactly when Kathleen had turned into the insufferable person she now was, or indeed whether it was he who had made her like that. All he knew was that one day he had realised that he couldn’t stand her any longer. Her strident cockney voice seemed to scratch at the very fibres of his brain. He didn’t recall it being like that when they got married – but he didn’t recall much of those days. He did remember that he had wanted to be a musician, and that at nineteen he had been on the brink of signing a big record deal that would take him to Germany for a year. Then Kathleen had become pregnant, and before he knew what was happening the wedding was arranged, he was at the altar, and away on a honeymoon in Spain. Goodbye to Germany and goodbye to the record deal. At least that was one thing he didn’t regret; if he’d become a musician he might never have become a director.
That was almost twenty years ago. He’d only stayed with her as long as he had because of the children, and because, for a man as busy and ambitious as he was, it was easier to give in to Kathleen than to fight her. He’d had affairs along the way, but Kathleen’s method of dealing with them – the ones she’d found out about – was too excruciating to think about now. And then the day dawned when he realised that the children he’d always adored had become raving monsters. No one in the house spoke any more; everyone yelled and screamed, laughed and sang and cried at full volume. Tuneless pop records, TV sets, motorbikes and exhaust-free cars – all introduced by the screeching imbeciles that his children and his children’s friends had become, and indulged by his shrill, maternal, Hoover-brandishing wife – had forced him to admit to a rabid dislike of his own family.
He’d left six months ago, just before his thirty-ninth birthday. He had been shooting a film in London at the time, not far from the marital home. Kathleen paid no heed to the fact that he’d gone, and continued to turn up on set – with her mother – bringing flasks of hot soup and the latest family tittle-tattle. They were an embarrassment that made his toes curl. What he never understood was the way the other people on the set, cast and crew alike, had done everything they could to make them feel welcome.
Stupid of him, of course, not to have understood. He was the director, and though a director’s lot could be an enviable one at times, it did have its drawbacks – like being surrounded, imprisoned even, by sycophancy.
Cynical, cynical.
He laughed, and rubbing his hand over a dark face that was becoming even more handsome with age, he walked into the bathroom. He wasn’t really cynical, he was just tired. And today he was going to have one of the trickiest meetings he’d had in a long time.
Another of the drawbacks in being a director – it was the producer who held the real power, not to mention the purse-strings. And this producer, the one who was coming to Bristol especially to see him while he was down here shooting a feature film for Channel Four, was someone who was very definitely going to make him sing for his supper. However, for this particular supper he’d do a lot more than sing. Just as well, because there was no doubt in his mind that Stephanie Ryder – the producer who owned the rights to Disappearance – would have every intention of making him sing, dance, cartwheel or anything else that took her fancy. He wondered idly if one of her conditions would be that he take her to bed again. But no, that wasn’t Stephanie’s style.
The phone brought him dripping out of the shower.
‘Matthew? Are you there?’
‘No Woody, I’m in Wazoo Wazoo land.’
‘Great! When will you be getting back? I’ll get someone to meet the balloon.’
‘This repartee can’t even begin to be described as witty, so get on with it, Woody.’
‘It’s a problem. One that only y
ou can sort, guvnor. It’s . . .’
‘Sandy. Yes, what is it now?’
‘You mean, you can’t guess?’
‘I mean, I can guess, I just have this vague hope it might not be motivation for once.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re right. Can you come over?’
Matthew turned his wrist to look at the watch he wasn’t wearing.
‘It’s seven forty-five,’ Woody supplied, ‘and you’ve just got out of the shower to answer this call, and you’re wondering if you can get here before you go to your meet at the Hilton?’
‘Well, smart ass, can I?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you asking?’
‘’Cos I said I would, and I’d be failing in my duties if I didn’t report to the director every whim of our star.’
‘Which means, if I don’t get there she’s threatening to hit the bottle? Shit, why are they all the same?’
‘You got it.’
‘Tell her I said Cheers.’
There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. ‘You mean that?’
‘I mean that. It’s her ugly mug we’re putting up there on the screen, and if she can’t take responsibility for it I don’t see why we damned well should.’
‘And Stephanie Ryder’s got you into a lick.’
‘And you’re a pain in the ass. Tell Sandy I’ll be there in time to take her to lunch. Get Jan to book a table at Harvey’s, and Christ, aren’t we all enjoying our day off?’
‘Richard Collins flies into Lulsgate at midday, will he be joining you for lunch too?’
‘If you were as smart as you like to think you are, you wouldn’t have to ask that question. Book us a private room at the Holiday Inn for three o’clock. Until then, keep him out of my way. Fix an air traffic controllers’ strike, or something.’
‘The air traffic controllers I can handle, the room may take a little more time.’
At that moment the music upstairs started to blare again. Matthew yelled, ‘Just keep him away from me ’til three, that’s all I ask. Jesus! Two producers in one day I could do without.’