Prepared to be stubborn, she remained seated.
‘I turned out not to be who you thought I was. I wouldn’t blame you for hating me, but I swear I never lied to you,’ Patrick repeated, and Leonie wondered whether this frail self-defence were all that truly mattered to him, whether he cared for her at all. ‘Do you need anything?’ he asked suddenly, sitting down again. ‘Money, or something? I’ll help in any way I can, if that’s what it is.’
But for the transparency of his desire to make practical amends, she would have been insulted. ‘No,’ she said, getting to her feet in turn. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Look, I really do have to go. It’s a charity thing I’m involved in. But give me your number, and I’ll call.’ He took a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. ‘Then we can talk properly.’
Leonie obediently dictated her number, then lingered beside him at the counter as he paid for their coffees. She had a sudden longing to lean in against his shoulder, for everything to be simple.
Out on the pavement, the sky had turned a dark, rich blue, and the crowded street sparkled with lights from passing cars and buses and from the local shops and restaurants. As Patrick bent to kiss her, she offered her cheek, but instead he touched his lips to hers. ‘Bye for now,’ he said. She was still his captive.
*
Patrick had walked half-way home to Stoke Newington before his head cleared enough for him to consider Leonie’s unheralded appearance. He realised with some surprise that he had barely entertained a single thought of her during the past months. He was embarrassed that she had tracked him down to the Angel Sanctuary. His role there was belittling, and he disliked being identified with such a frivolous place, but with very few contacts in London he had needed the work and a colleague had tipped him off about it. He intended to use it to build up a clientèle before opening a practice of his own again.
He recognised how shallow it was to be vain about his professional image, but sometimes his work seemed like the only honourable achievement in his life; he needed it in order to look himself squarely in the eye, and often worried what would happen to him if, as he increasingly feared, his daily interactions with patients were to become sterile and meaningless.
He didn’t want Leonie to think of him like that, or to imagine that their time together had been inconsequential. Last year in France he had savoured the image of himself reflected in her eyes; it had given him an essential shot of courage, something he’d desperately needed to dare to live again.
Too late to cut through the park, he skirted its perimeter, reflecting on the muddle in which he had left Riberac. He knew he was solely to blame. He should have handled things differently. But he couldn’t have stayed to watch Leonie’s pregnancy progress without telling her about Daniel, and it had been impossible to reveal the truth. So he had taken the only route left open to him. Several times, he had begun a second letter to her, but had always given up, never sure what to say. It had been a shock to discover her waiting for him tonight, but he realised he was glad to have been found. While he had expected a blaze of recrimination right there in the street, it was clear she had recovered from the shameful way in which he had fled. It was a relief to see that she had been so resilient, that he had evidently caused no lasting harm.
He was late, and Rob was waiting outside his flat, lounging against the gatepost in the soft dusk light, intent on the music on his iPod. His precious bike was chained up nearby. The boy – Rob was twenty, but Patrick couldn’t help thinking of him as a boy – removed the earpiece when finally he noticed Patrick, raised a languid hand in greeting, and followed him obligingly indoors.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ said Patrick, turning on the lights.
‘No problem. I was late anyway.’ Rob smiled his winning smile, making Patrick laugh.
‘That’s all right then.’
‘Mum says hi.’
Patrick nodded.
‘Did you check out those steel frames?’
‘Yes. Impressive, but I’m not spending that much on a bike.’
Rob grinned. ‘You’ll come round to it.’ He opened the fridge in the room that served Patrick as both kitchen and living room and surveyed the contents.
‘Hungry?’ asked Patrick, not minding the way the boy assumed he could make himself at home. ‘There’s some soup I made yesterday.’
‘Great, thanks. If you’re sure you’ve got enough.’
As Patrick removed the pan from the fridge and set it to heat up on the stove, Rob went unthinkingly to the cutlery drawer and laid the table. Patrick reflected again on how well Vicki had brought up her son; despite his ragged art-student clothes and pierced eyebrow, she had taught him wonderfully old-fashioned good manners. When the soup was hot, Patrick poured it into two bowls and put them on the table along with bread and cheese. Saying ‘Cheers’, Rob pulled closer the morning’s discarded newspaper, picked up his spoon and started to devour the food while simultaneously flicking through the pages. As Patrick ate his own meal, enjoying the easy silence, he observed the boy’s appetite, the unself-conscious way he laughed or frowned to himself at items in the paper.
Rob’s vitality led Patrick’s thoughts back to Leonie. When they first met she, too, had this same engaging robustness; she had breathed new life into him after those terrible years of stagnation. He had tried to resist her, battling his sense of unworthiness, his fear of self-exposure, but the moment he had sensed her desire for him, he was overcome. He had trusted her, and his lonely body had chosen life. He looked back on his first years in France with real dread, amazed that he had ever survived such isolation, and certain he never could again.
He admitted to himself that he was still dangerously attracted to Leonie, perhaps even more so now that her youthful glow had been tempered by an appealing air of fragility. While it eased things to see her so well, it was completely out of the question to allow himself to become involved with her again, though eventually he probably ought to give her a call. She might well choose to tell him to get lost, but he owed her at least the opportunity to talk things over further, if she so wished.
Rob folded the newspaper and laid down his spoon. ‘So are you really going to ride fifty-four miles on that old bone-shaker?’
Patrick was amused. ‘I’ve managed okay in the past.’
‘But if you got a steel frame, it’d be worth getting better gears. The technology’s beautiful. You’d love it!’
‘Thanks, but it’s not a race. I just have to cover the miles. How’s your recruitment coming along?’
‘Lots of people at uni have signed up to ride, but it’s no good if they don’t get enough sponsors. How are you doing?’
‘Only one or two, so far, I’m afraid. I’m not gregarious enough. But one client is down for fifty pence per mile.’
‘Not bad. Most of mine are, like, five pence.’ Rob got to his feet. ‘Give me your application form, then, and I’ll add it to the bunch.’
‘Thanks.’
While Patrick searched out the form, Rob cleared the table, stacking the dishes by the sink. ‘Want me to wash up before I go?’
‘No, leave it. It’s fine.’
Rob hesitated, as if unwilling to forgo the ritual. ‘Well, thanks for feeding me. See ya.’ The boy let himself out. He was like a cat, Patrick decided – amused – as the front door banged shut behind him; a creature that reserved the right to be nurtured whenever and by whomever took his fancy. Such compartmentalised promiscuity seemed to Patrick to contain a restful quality which he coveted for himself.
Leonie crept into the flat like a thief. She was not ready to confess to Stella how she had bearded Patrick, yet felt bad about her clear intention to lie. She was no good at deception and was sure to be caught out. She hugged to herself the bigger secret of his kiss. She had worked hard, with Stella’s help, to put behind her all those sleepless nights during which she had flayed herself for being blind, clumsy, stupid, unlovable, when she yearned for confirmation that he had loved her. The
touch of his lips tonight had transformed the past, assuaging all the horrible stored pain and filling her with elation that she had not been to blame for her abandonment. She was sure Stella would understand how wonderful it felt to be released from months of self-hatred but, for now, she was desperate to guard the sensation, to keep it private and pristine.
‘You seem different,’ observed Stella when Leonie appeared for breakfast the next morning. Stella, in her dressing grown, was reading the Saturday papers, which an admiring downstairs neighbour insisted on delivering.
Leonie had showered and thrown on sweatpants and an old tee-shirt. She placed her mobile on the counter as discreetly as possible, before opening the fridge. ‘I’ll go out for more milk later,’ she offered. But Stella had clocked both the phone and Leonie’s self-conscious manner. With a slight raise of an eyebrow, she returned to the article she was reading. Leonie, contrarily, was disappointed not to be pursued for information. As she rinsed out the teapot and waited for the kettle to boil, she tried phrasing a confession, but each attempt confirmed that Stella could only condemn her action. Of course seeing Patrick again had been a huge mistake, but it had been inconceivable not to.
She made toast then sat down with her mug of tea. Stella appeared to be reading, but there was something ominous in the hunch of her shoulders.
‘Do you think,’ Leonie began in a deliberately vague tone, ‘that if people around Patrick had known about what happened to his son, he would have behaved differently?’
Stella’s head jerked up. ‘He’s not Patrice any more, then?’
‘You said he was Patrick now,’ stumbled Leonie.
‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’
‘I wanted to tell him I’m not having his child,’ she defended herself. ‘It seemed only fair.’
‘Fair?’ Stella made a huge effort. ‘Okay, so how did he react?’
‘He was relieved I was okay.’ Leonie told herself it was mere pride that made her withhold the full story of how lightly he had dismissed her ordeal, but she didn’t dare meet Stella’s eye.
‘And that’s it? You won’t see him again?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I won’t have him here. I’m not going to watch it happen all over again.’
‘It won’t.’
Stella’s chair shrieked against the tiled floor as she stood up. ‘Then why are you waiting for him to ring?’ She seized Leonie’s phone from the counter and slapped it down in front of her. ‘Why even consider seeing him a second time?’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Jesus, Lennie, you were suicidal after you lost the baby. And even before that, at Christmas, too, when he’d buggered off. Face facts! This is the man who walked out on you without a word, who stuck his baby in a car and left him to die.’
‘Not deliberately!’
‘Oh no? How can you possibly be sure?’
‘Because I know him!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
Leonie clenched the hot mug between her hands, refusing to raise her head. Stella stood her ground, frowning down at her. ‘I’m sorry, Lennie,’ she said at last, a little more calmly. ‘But I can’t go through it all again. I realise it’s not about me, shouldn’t be about me, but the fact is that I sacrificed all this year’s holiday time because that selfish shit wasn’t there for you. You’re truly welcome to all I’ve got to give, you know that, but I don’t want Patrice, or Patrick, or whatever he calls himself, back in my life. He’s bad news and always will be.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I do appreciate how much you’ve done for me.’ Leonie made mewling sounds in an effort not to cry.
Stella took pity, and pulled up a chair beside her, rubbing her shoulder. ‘It’s okay. Really. I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I’m just so angry at him.’
Leonie nodded miserably. Stella fetched some kitchen roll for her to blow her nose. ‘We’ve been over this a million times. You have to have the courage to face up to the fact that you made a mistake with Patrice,’ said Stella. ‘It doesn’t matter, we all do it. But he’s never going to be the man you hoped he was. You have to move on. Change. Don’t get hooked back in, or you won’t survive.’
Leonie nodded again, trying to breathe normally. ‘Do you seriously believe he was to blame for his son’s death?’
‘What did he say?’
Leonie busied herself with the kitchen roll.
‘You didn’t ask him about it?’ Stella was incredulous.
Leonie defended herself. ‘We were in a small café. It was hardly the right time or place.’
Stella sat back, exasperated. ‘Answer me this: if you’d been told before you met him what he did to his son, would you ever have dreamt of getting involved with him?’
Leonie shrugged. ‘I’d’ve felt sorry for him.’
‘Honestly?’
‘It was an accident.’
‘An accident happens in a split second. He left that poor kid for hours. The whole day, Lennie. How does any sane, normal parent forget his child for an entire day? What kind of forgetting is that?’
‘If it was deliberate neglect, he’d have gone to prison.’
‘How do you know he didn’t?’
‘The inquest report in the paper said it was a tragic accident.’
‘It’s still macabre. There has to be more to it,’ insisted Stella.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Resentment. Some passive-aggressive controlling thing against his wife. Catastrophic thinking. Like those fathers who kill the whole family rather than lose custody.’
‘Patrice isn’t like that.’
‘No? How can you be sure? I’d like to hear his wife’s side of it!’
Leonie had no response.
‘Look what he did to you! His disappearing act was pretty passive-aggressive. Certainly wasn’t normal.’
‘But it did make sense once I found out what had happened, how he’d feel about being a father again. Imagine what it must have been like for him, when I told him I was pregnant!’
‘Frankly I was rather too busy witnessing what the consequences were for you! And asking myself, if he hadn’t upset you so much, whether maybe you wouldn’t have lost the baby. I’m sorry, Lennie, but his selfishness runs pretty damn deep.‘ Stella rose to her feet and began shakily clearing the table. She dumped the plates and mugs in the sink and rested her hands on its rim, bowing her head. ‘Why defend him?’
‘Because I have some sympathy with what it’s like to lose a child,’ said Leonie quietly. ‘So I do see why he couldn’t bear to stay, couldn’t face having another child.’
Stella turned back to her, clear-eyed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If that was the reason he left, then face up to telling you the truth. Don’t just vanish.’
Certain that Stella had only her best interests at heart, Leonie tried to account to herself for why she defended Patrick. She had sensed from the very beginning how wounded he was, how his reactions were those of someone badly damaged, but she hadn’t cared. Had that been stupid? Or was that what love was about? She needed to know, once they had spoken and the tragedy of his son’s death no longer lay between them, whether their connection was as strong as she hoped. She still believed in him, in his essential goodness and desire to heal. After his kiss, she would be mad to walk away before she was sure of what she was discarding. She recalled how well and happy Greg had looked beside the woman he was about to marry, how altered from the pasty, resentful man she had left. It was possible to be transformed, and much as she loved and trusted Stella she owed herself a chance at that kind of love.
She concealed her silent mobile in loose pockets where she could feel it vibrate. Patrick had not offered her his number, nor mentioned where he lived, but she could always find him again at the Angel Sanctuary. Pushing away the silly fear that he would flee from her a second time, she allowed herself to rehearse the conversation they would have about his son, to anticipate his relief at no longer having to l
ive alone with such guilt and grief. Stella was right: however carelessly she had sprung on him the news of her pregnancy, he should have told her the truth. Or, after his first panic, at least come looking for her again to make sure she was all right.
And yet, while Leonie could hardly blame Stella for condemning him, she was not wholly convinced it was cowardly to seek to avoid contaminating others with the unthinkable manner of his son’s death. Why should he have burdened her with such knowledge? Yet, equally, why should his need to protect himself from exposure bar him from closeness and intimacy? Would Stella honestly wish to shun him, deny that he deserved a second chance, and expect him to lock himself away from all human contact?
These were questions Leonie had asked herself many times. She possessed remarkably few concrete facts about his former life, and nothing beyond the barest circumstances of his son’s death, but, now that she knew the worst and could release him from the past, he would be free to tell her everything.
Her mobile rang the following week while she was showing a wealthy couple from Mauritius around a flat in St John’s Wood. She took the phone from her bag. Not recognising the number, her heart leapt at the thought that it might be Patrick. She excused herself and went swiftly out to the hallway to take the call in private, leaving the clients to discuss the size of the bedrooms.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, it’s me, Patrick. Patrick Hinde.’
Leonie felt a rush of sweetness at his notion that she wouldn’t have recognised his name or voice. ‘Hello!’
‘How are you?’
She laughed. ‘I’m fine. How are you?’
‘I thought we could meet for a drink. If you’d like to.’
‘I think I would, yes.’
‘There’s a pub on the corner of Primrose Hill, The Queens. See you there tomorrow? At seven?’
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