I took the hankie and dabbed at my eyes.
‘That’s it. Good girl. And it’s going to be all right. It really is.’
I handed him back his hankie. ‘At first I just felt this huge relief. We’d been silly schoolgirls doing what silly schoolgirls do. I shouldn’t have chickened out, that’s true, but Rose could have come with me. She chose to stay. And she hadn’t called out to me for help. Then I remembered: Uncle Ian is dead. He’ll never know now.’
I looked out across the roof. The light from the street lamps didn’t reach that far up but there were plenty of stars in the sky and a diffident moon hanging back behind a large yew.
I went on speaking. ‘And it hit me that the truth was worse, much worse. Someone did that to Rose deliberately, with malice, with hatred. In an accident there’s no malice, no bad intent. But here, there was evil.’ I slapped my hands over my eyes as if I could shut out the image of Rose, frightened, fighting for her life while that girl, a girl whose face I could barely picture, whose voice I couldn’t remember, had stood there, watching.
‘Time to get down from here.’ Jacob Bauer’s voice brought me back. ‘We can make a nice hot drink and then we can talk, all night if you like. It’s much easier to make sense of things when you’re not in imminent danger of toppling off a roof.’ When I didn’t move he said, ‘Annie will wonder where I am. I really don’t like leaving her on her own. I know I’m only a roof away but still . . .’
I looked up. ‘Annie’s alone? Where’s Sheila?’
‘Visiting her sister.’
‘Goodness. Right. Well, then, you must go back home immediately. I mean, think if she wakes up and finds you gone. She might have woken already.’ I grabbed his arm and shook it. ‘She might be out, on the streets, looking for you.’
‘I locked her in.’
I was surprised at him. ‘You really must go and check on her.’
He scrabbled to his feet. He wasn’t terribly agile. ‘Here.’ He held out his hand. ‘I will, when you come down with me.’
I shook my head. ‘Please go.’ I waved in the direction of the sky. ‘It’s pretty up here.’
Jacob Bauer sat down again.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘And don’t say, “sitting down”.’
‘I wasn’t going to. That would be to insult your intelligence.’
‘So what are you doing?’
‘Sitting down?’
‘This isn’t funny. Nothing is funny. And your little girl being home alone in the middle of the night isn’t funny either.’
‘I can see her window from here.’
‘But you can’t see or hear her. To be honest I think you’re being irresponsible.’
He sighed and pushed his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know what choice you’re giving me. I mean, I leave to go and look after my daughter and you throw yourself off the roof. Or I stay with you . . .’
I heaved myself to my feet, heavy as an old woman. ‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘Very clever. Very physchologically something or another.’
‘You’re coming down?’
‘You haven’t given me any choice, have you?’
Jacob Bauer insisted that I come with him to Number 12. ‘I won’t leave you on your own, it’s as simple as that.’
I told him to wait while I went out into the studio. ‘I’m just getting something.’
I returned, holding a box with the restored Willow Pattern jug. He didn’t ask any questions, which I appreciated, but simply offered to carry the box for me. As my front door shut behind me we walked out into the silent square that was doubly lit, by the stars and by the street lamps.
‘You look pale,’ I said.
‘So do you,’ he said.
Having made me sit down at the table, he moved around the industrial-looking kitchen, that was all black granite and stainless steel, making tea. He used loose leaves and warmed the pot.
‘Shouldn’t you check on Annie?’
He placed the pot and two mugs on the table and sat down opposite me. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘I thought you were such a good father.’
‘I am. Now tell me everything. Slowly. And in some kind of order.’ His heavy stubble showed up black against his pale skin and his kind eyes were tired, but he managed a small smile. And I wanted to tell him yet I hesitated. It was as if I needed to keep it all away from him the way you keep dirt away from a clean white sheet.
I was still thinking about what to say when the kitchen door was flung open and Sheila appeared, standing in the doorway, wrapped in a kimono the colours of a gas flame.
‘What on earth?’ she said.
‘Sheila, did we wake you?’ Jacob got to his feet. ‘I am sorry. I would offer you a cup of tea but I know you’ll be keen to get back to bed.’
I stared at him. ‘But you said she was away? You . . .’ He hushed me with a glance.
Sheila took a step inside. ‘I might as well stay up. I’ll never get back to sleep now. It’s almost morning, after all.’ She gave me an accusing look as if it were my fault another day was dawning.
‘Try,’ Jacob Bauer said. Something in his expression must have made her realise it would be useless to argue. She wrapped herself close in her kimono and umbrage and stomped off out of the door. We could hear her angry steps moving up the stairs and along the landing above our heads.
Then I said again, ‘You told me Sheila was away. I only came down because I thought you’d left Annie on her own.’
He grinned at me. ‘Clever, eh?’
I got to my feet. His hand shot out and took mine. ‘You’re not going to go back up on that roof, are you?’ He let go again. ‘It would be rather silly, don’t you think?’
I pulled a face and sat down. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be.’
‘Good.’ He smiled and the relief in his eyes made me smile too. ‘Now tell me the whole thing from the beginning. You’ll find I’m a much better listener when I’m not in fear of my life. And you never know, I might be able to help. Not many people know this but I almost chose psychiatry as a speciality.’
‘Almost.’
‘Absolutely almost.’ He put his hand on mine. ‘Now tell me.’
I took a deep breath. ‘It all began at school when this new girl, Sandra, joined the lower sixth . . .’
Epilogue
My life had been like the shadow of the one I was meant to have lived. I suppose that was what Uncle Ian had been trying to tell me. It had been a life of ‘if onlys’ and ‘what ifs?’ Of trying not to take too much because I deserved nothing.
Having found out what really happened to Rose, I could have added a hundred new what ifs and a hundred more if onlys. If only I had seen how mixed up and unhappy that new girl was. If only I had taken her feelings for Portia’s brother seriously. What if I had bothered more, tried harder, been less self-absorbed. What if I hadn’t persuaded her to go to that dance? What if I hadn’t altered her dress?
Jacob Bauer said that none of us knew what misery we might inadvertently have caused. It was just the way life worked. Everything was connected.
He said, ‘You step on to a pedestrian crossing, causing a car to slow down and stop. The tiny delay makes it get on the motorway a fraction of a moment later than it would otherwise have done but just at the moment a lorry pulls out without signalling, causing a crash. Is that your fault?
‘You get the last pint of milk in the store, which forces another guy to go somewhere else for milk, which in turn makes him late to pick up his girlfriend, who ends up accepting a lift from a stranger. Is that your fault, because you bought some milk? And how do you think it works for Gabriel and me? We do our best but there are times when we get it wrong when treating a patient. So what should we all do about it? Lock ourselves away in a small attic room and do nothing for fear that our butterfly wings beating may cause an earthquake in China?’
A young girl had died and all that she might have been was left undiscovered and all that she might have done was left
undone. That was the tragedy of Rose and the tragedy of every life cut short.
The rest; well, it should be silence.
Yet mercifully for me, it was not. Because finally, and with a little help from my neighbours, I had begun to look around me and to ask, not ‘What if,’ but ‘What now?’
Acknowledgements
A huge thank you to Victoria Oakley and her team at the V&A for taking the time and trouble to show me around the wondrous Ceramic Conservation Department and for being so patient in answering my endless questions and also to Alex Patchett-Joyce for all her advice about ceramic restoration. Any mistakes on the subject are entirely my own.
As always I want to thank my editor Alexandra Pringle who never stops caring and everyone at Bloomsbury, especially Alexa von Hirschberg.
Thank you also to Georgia Garrett and Linda Shaughnessy at A.P. Watt.
I also had excellent support and advice from Jeremy Cobbold and Michael Patchett-Joyce.
Finally, huge thanks to Harriet Cobbold Hielte without whose brilliant advice, help and support I don’t like to write anything much other than a shopping list.
A Note on the Author
Marika Cobbold was born in Sweden and is the author of six previous novels: Guppies for Tea, selected for the WH Smith First Novels Promotion and shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; The Purveyor of Enchantment; A Rival Creation; Frozen Music; Shooting Butterflies; and most recently Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers. She lives in London.
By the Same Author
Guppies for Tea
A Rival Creation
The Purveyor of Enchantment
Frozen Music
Shooting Butterflies
Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers
First published in Great Britain 2011
Copyright © Marika Cobbold 2011
This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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