There he did his best to shelter Belinda’s brittle enthusiasm for a move. Half an hour of looking over her shoulder while she displayed for him computer images of houses for sale, of places where they might live, was enough to leave him stupefied from the effort of appearing to show an optimistic interest. He apologised that the French lawyer was being so slow to process the paperwork necessary to sell Josette’s house, and pointed out the advantages of renting somewhere for six months so they could take their time finding what would suit them best. With cash in the bank, he urged her, they would be in a good position as buyers, and renting would give them the opportunity to see whether they liked living in the area she favoured. Belinda conceded, yet, when they received a good offer on their house, she hesitated, suddenly afraid of her own desire for change. With a show of cheerful resolve, he persuaded her to accept the offer, assuring her that he would take care of everything.
Belinda was grateful to leave all the necessary legalities to him, and his vigour in dealing with the banks, lawyers, utility companies and all the rest seemed to persuade her that he was re-discovering some confidence in life itself. Seeing how this pleased her, he reacted positively when she suggested they invite one or two friends for supper, readily agreed when she asked him to accompany her to a party for her elder sister in London, and willingly talked about where they might go on holiday in the spring. In bed one night after they had been out to the cinema together, she began to kiss and stroke him seductively. It had been some time since she had attempted love-making, and he had been thankful that, after repeated annulments, she seemed to have grown tolerant of his evasive tenderness. But now, unable to respond as she wished, he lifted her hand away, kissed her wrist and murmured, ‘Once we’ve left here, I promise, it’ll all be different.’
They agreed to rent a small flat in Hove for six months. They would be cramped for space, but it had a hypnotic view of the sea and, they decided, they might as well enjoy on a temporary basis something they could not afford as a permanent home; as it was, Patrick explained, the lease had to be in Belinda’s sole name because he could not demonstrate sufficient self-employed income for the current year. He told her not to worry; as soon as they had completed on the sale of their house, there would be plenty of capital in the bank to tide them over potential difficulties.
One task remained about which they did not speak: dismantling Daniel’s room and packing up his things before the move. When almost everything else had been done, and they were boxing up the contents of the airing cupboard on the landing, they found themselves standing together in the open doorway to his bedroom.
‘Shall we leave it ‘til the very last?’ suggested Belinda. ‘I don’t want to see it empty and bare any longer than I have to.’
Patrick nodded, and closed the door.
By tacit agreement, after a half-eaten lunch the day before the move, they made their way unwillingly upstairs. Patrick started with the newer toys and unread books, talismans that possessed the least connection with Daniel, while Belinda opened a drawer and began to take out his clothes, their smallness already alien and incomprehensible. Folding a favourite pair of pyjama leggings, the baggy cotton still holding the ghostly imprint of his knees, she started to cry. Patrick crawled across the space between them and took her in his arms. Holding tight to one another, they wept, barricading themselves inside a shelter of whatever items they could drag near to them.
After it was done, and the sealed boxes marked with Daniel’s name, they drank wine, exhausted, in the glare of a bare bulb, the kitchen light shade already packed away. Though neither spoke, they shared the bond of having accomplished their task. Patrick was impatient now for the morning. Belinda’s instinct to give up the house had been right, and he couldn’t wait for these final hours to pass. They switched off the lights and went up to bed. Their room, emptied of half its contents, was echoey and strange, already half-belonging to other people. Belinda lay on her side facing the window. Tucking himself around her from behind, Patrick lay watching for the last time the watermarks on the blind illuminated by the street lamps outside. He felt the full impact of their immediate predicament – rootless, exiled, adrift – and experienced a sense of respite, a prospect of safety. Belinda’s body lay heavy and still against him, and he felt the twitch of an erection against her warm skin. ‘You do know I love you?’ he murmured into her shoulder. ‘No matter what?’ She stirred slightly in response, and he kissed her shoulder. He began to stroke her arm and then caressed her breasts, but she failed to reach for him in return, nor did she twist around to face him.
In the middle of the following morning, Belinda called the removal men into the kitchen for mugs of tea. Patrick dodged past them in the hallway and went outside, his feet crunching on the gravel. Rain drizzled in a fine mist, muting the usual background sounds of traffic and calling seagulls. He glanced into the van where their furniture and other belongings, draped in grey felt blankets, were securely piled in unlikely juxtapositions. Their solicitor had already called to confirm that the buyers’ funds had been received and forwarded to their joint bank account. Everything was in order. He went back into the hall and stood listening for a moment to the men’s banter in the kitchen, before picking up the rucksack into which he had placed various documents and other chosen items for safekeeping. Plucking his waterproof jacket from its hook, he went out the door and walked away.
PART FOUR
London 2011
I
‘You’ll never guess who I ran into today,’ said Leonie, as she placed two glasses of wine on the table and sat down beside Stella. They were in the paved garden of a pleasant pub around the corner from Stella’s north London flat, where Leonie had also been living for the past few months.
‘Who?’ Stella asked. ‘Cheers.’
Out of ancient habit, Leonie clinked her glass against Stella’s. ‘Greg.’
‘Gosh, I haven’t thought about him in a long while! How is he?’
‘Rather spruce. Lost a bit of weight. Looked well.’
Stella gave a teasing look. ‘And?’
‘And he was holding hands with a sweet-looking woman wearing an engagement ring.’
‘How did that feel?’
‘Fine, actually. I’m glad for him. And it helps in a way, seeing him back to his old self, the Greg I once cared about.’
‘No regrets?’
‘No. Pang of envy, maybe, that he’s found someone, but no regrets. We weren’t right for each other.’
Stella raised her eyebrows but, when Leonie failed to notice, apprehensively watched her stare into her wine. ‘How would you feel if you bumped into Patrice like that?’ she asked carefully.
Leonie’s surprise was not at hearing Patrice’s name, but that her friend had so accurately read her mind. She laughed a little shakily. ‘Okay, I hope.’
‘Really?’
‘I think so.’ She glanced sideways at Stella. ‘Why?’
Stella gave in reluctantly to Leonie’s shrewd look. ‘I suspect he may be in London.’
Leonie flushed, and then went icy cold.
Stella leant over and rubbed her arm. ‘I’m sorry, Lennie. I couldn’t decide whether to tell you or not.’
‘You’ve seen him?’ Leonie could already sense the monsters mustering around her head, forcing her to inhale the stale air whipped up by the beat of their nasty little wings, driving out all the sweet, sensible progress she had made these past months.
‘No,’ said Stella. ‘It was someone at work. Courtney. She goes to some holistic spa in Islington, for Reiki or Shiatsu or whatever, and was praising the homeopath there.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the kind of place Patrice would work,’ said Leonie breathlessly.
‘Calls himself Patrick now. Patrick Hinde. Courtney said he was tall, good-looking. Can only be him, don’t you think?’
Leonie nodded, misery fighting excitement as her heart juddered sickeningly against her ribcage.
‘I wouldn’t have said any
thing, except that Islington’s so close. What if you did literally run into him?’
‘Oh, God, why can’t it all just go away!’
‘I’ll drink to that. Here, knock it back.’ Stella pushed Leonie’s wine glass closer, raising her own: ‘Here’s to kind, honest men.’
Leonie drank obediently, gazing distractedly around the cluster of tables as if some unexpected miracle might burst forth from among the early-evening drinkers to clear the static in her head.
‘What else did Courtney say?’
‘Nothing. Only how helpful he was. But then she’s always raving about some new therapist she’s discovered.’
‘What’s the place called?’
‘Don’t know – and I’m not going to ask.’ Stella spoke sternly, though she regarded her friend with concern. ‘Please tell me you won’t go tracking him down?’
Leonie forced a smile and shook her head.
‘You’ve been so much better lately,’ Stella went on. ‘It won’t do you any good to see him again.’
‘No. But somehow I imagined he’d be lost somewhere in France. I never pictured him here in London. Not for a moment. And now it’s so strange, knowing he’s a mile or so down the road.’
‘Don’t, Lennie. Let it go.’
‘I will. Promise. I need time to get used to the idea, that’s all. Another drink?’
‘Good idea. My turn.’
While Stella went inside to the bar, Leonie tried to shake off the dread that gripped her. Her worst fear, until she had read the brief report of the inquest into Daniel Hinde’s death, had always been that she had driven Patrice away. But the discovery of his tragic secret had enabled her to convince herself that he had fled not from her but from his own demons, allowed her to believe that she had not been entirely deceived in his integrity. Leaving no clue as to his whereabouts, he had gradually almost ceased to be real flesh and blood.
But, from now on, every time she went through a shop doorway, he might have slipped by and out of sight only a second before. In a darkened cinema, he might be seated two rows behind. Every street corner she turned, every Tube or bus she travelled on, she could be breathing his air, and he hers, without ever being aware. But there also lurked a more intolerable notion: what if he had seen her, and chose to let her walk on by with no greeting?
Stella came back with replenished glasses. ‘Okay?’ she asked, studying Leonie’s expression.
‘Fine.’ Leonie smiled confidently, while her heart sank at the utter certainty of how incapable she was of outpacing this unbearable jangling alertness to his proximity. Whether he ever thought of her or not, she was his captive.
*
It took Leonie only three calls to discover at which holistic centre in Islington Patrick Hinde was the resident homeopath. Accepting there was no other escape from Stella’s information, she asked the receptionist for the times of his last appointments, and was also told which evenings the Angel Sanctuary stayed open late.
A few days later, having calculated when he was likely to leave at the end of the day, she hovered on the pavement opposite. It was almost midsummer and the streets were busy with people making the most of the light evenings. Exactly as she had planned, she watched him come out, an achingly recognisable figure in his usual black jeans and jacket. He appeared unchanged, seemed relaxed and at ease, and she drank in his familiar stride as he loped off towards Highbury. Had she expected him to appear harried, guilt snapping at his heels? She couldn’t work out what she felt, what she ought to feel. Anger, desire, fury, hatred and pity were all mixed up in the tightness in her chest. What she wanted was for him to turn instinctively, notice her, then cross the road to where she was waiting, eager to say the welcoming words that would make her whole again. She stood immobile, unable to gather her wits enough to negotiate the traffic and catch up with him. He walked on, and was lost to sight behind a wall of buses and cars.
On Friday evening, two days later, she watched again for him to appear; it was fear of her own obsession, of turning into a stalker, that propelled her swiftly across the road the instant she spotted him. She hurried up behind him.
‘Patrice.’
He turned, ready with a pleasant, meaningless expression; clearly he had not recognised her voice, and, to her distress, it took him a moment or so to place her.
‘Leonie!’ He looked beyond her, over her shoulder, up and down the street, as if she might not have come alone. ‘What are you doing here?’
Afraid of being tongue-tied, she had rehearsed precisely what to say, deciding after much reflection that she could not bear the dishonesty of pretending to him that the encounter was accidental.
‘I’m a Londoner, remember! And I heard this was where you were working now.’
‘What a coincidence. Are you over on holiday?’ he asked with devastating politeness.
‘I left France. For the time being, anyway.’ She lifted her chin. ‘And you?’
He flushed, his lips drew tight and he stared down at the pavement.
‘How about a drink?’ It was a suggestion she had also carefully prepared. ‘There’s a bar up the road.’
For an awful moment she feared he was going to refuse, but, flicking his gaze up and down the street once more, he agreed. ‘I’d prefer a coffee, though, if you don’t mind?’
‘Of course not. Whatever.’
In miserable silence Leonie walked beside him a hundred yards or so along to an Italian café, where they sat inside at a small table beside the window. A girl sallied out from behind the counter to take their order. Leonie took the opportunity to glance covertly at Patrice – Patrick, she corrected herself. This was her first chance to observe him since learning what had happened to his son, and it was as though the face she had loved and memorised so minutely was now overlaid by the shadow of his dreadful past. Her anger melted into compassion. Yet she also realised how the shadow had always been there – in the guardedness, the hesitation, the soreness she’d glimpsed in the set of his features – but he had always directed her away from any intimation that might have deciphered it, sent her off chasing after imaginary hares instead. Had that misdirection been instinctive, she wondered? Or calculating.
As soon as the waitress was busy with the espresso machine behind the counter, Patrick took a deep breath. ‘I expect you’re here to ask why I haven’t been in touch.’ He regarded her warily.
‘I thought you might want to know how I am.’ Involuntarily, Leonie glanced down at her flat stomach. When she looked back at him, he seemed confused. ‘I’m no longer pregnant,’ she said. ‘That’s what I came to tell you.’
Patrick exhaled. ‘But you were?’ he blurted out.
‘Yes.’ Her guts churned: had he imagined her a liar?
‘I thought maybe you’d had it already.’
‘I lost it. Otherwise I’d have been as big as a house by now. But I didn’t want you thinking you were about to be a father when that’s no longer going to happen.’
‘You decided not to go ahead?’ he asked with a mixture of concern and suspicion.
‘No. I had a miscarriage.’ Saying the word still made her want to cry. ‘Back in January. Early miscarriages are quite common, apparently.’
He nodded, staring inward as if untying some internal knot. ‘I’m glad you didn’t end it,’ he said. Leonie couldn’t tell whether his relief was for her or himself.
She regarded him as steadily as she could manage. ‘I really wanted this baby. Losing it was horrible. It hurt. And I was on my own.’
Patrick kept nodding until reprieved by the waitress bringing their coffees. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, once she had gone. ‘But you’re all right now?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Gaby’s been wonderful. And Stella.’
‘Good. I’m glad. You’ve a lot of strength. I always admired you for that.’
Leonie was stung by how easily he dismissed her empty sadness, how readily he imagined that she lacked the imagination to suffer. He must have seen her feelings i
n her expression, for he reached out to take her hand where it rested on the table beside her foaming cappuccino.
‘I never lied,’ he said. ‘You must believe that.’
‘But you stayed silent,’ she answered. ‘About a lot of things.’
‘You must think very little of me,’ he responded, stroking her fingers with his thumb. And I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I never lied to you.’ His skin was warm and dry. ‘I do care about you, you know.’
Confused and smarting from disappointment, Leonie withdrew her hand.
‘I had to go when I did,’ he went on insistently. ‘You were better off without me. I never meant to hurt you, I just collapsed. I don’t know why.’
‘I do,’ she said softly, but he appeared not to hear, not to conceive of a world where his secret might be known.
‘And see,’ he went on, ‘here you are, safe and sound!’ Leonie wondered whether his expression was an appeal for rescue. ‘You are fine now, aren’t you?’ He reached for her hand again, and she let him take it.
‘I guess so, more or less – but I wasn’t.’ She raised her chin again defiantly, determined not to be his fool. ‘That’s why I left France. Stella took me in. I’ve had one or two small commissions from translation agencies, but finding a proper job has been really hard.’ She could see he wasn’t listening, but she wanted him to fully appreciate her predicament. ‘To pay the rent, I work part-time for a posh estate agency that needs my language skills.’
‘Good. I mean it’s good you’ve found something.’ He let go of her hand to glance at his watch. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I have to be somewhere. Give me your number, and we’ll meet up properly. Go out somewhere and have some fun.’
He smiled at her kindly. When she did not respond, he seemed to scan her face as if searching for resolution; or maybe, she thought with a certain bitterness, for permission to disappear and leave all this behind. ‘I appreciate your coming to find me,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you told me what happened, and I’m so sorry you’ve had a hard time. It’s good that you’re okay.’ He pushed his chair back and stood up.
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