The Night Visitor

by Lucy Atkins

  ‘Vivian!’ Olivia was not going to allow her to get started on another one of her obsessions. This was just too much. She could not just show up like this. ‘We have to go now. We’ve got to get back up to the house for dinner.’

  ‘Oh yes. Goodness. Listen to me. Of course, you must go.’ Vivian waved a hand like a butler and said, with some formality, ‘Your lobster awaits.’

  The children stared.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it does.’ Olivia tucked her hair back. But she could not just go. She could not just walk away without referencing this bizarre intrusion. She made herself stay where she was. ‘I really didn’t expect to bump into you out here, Vivian, I have to say.’

  Vivian blinked. ‘What a coincidence, yes! But I must let you go, I don’t want to spoil your lobster.’ She took a step back.

  ‘Listen, I’m sure there’s enough for …’ Em looked from Olivia to Vivian.

  Olivia waved her keys then and started walking away. ‘Well! We need to go! Goodbye, Vivian. I hope you find lots of harlequins. Come on, kids. Time to go!’

  As they walked back to the car she could feel Vivian rooted beneath the plane trees by the fountain, watching them.

  ‘I don’t think finding lots of harlequin ladybirds is a good thing, Liv,’ said Emma, hurrying to catch up. ‘They’re the evil, invasive ones.’

  ‘What?’ Olivia felt queasy.

  ‘Never mind. Isn’t it a bit rude to just—’

  ‘It’s not, really, Em, no.’

  ‘But …’ Emma sounded confused and slightly upset now. She could never bear rudeness.

  ‘Em, listen, it’s fine, I promise.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m totally fine! I just didn’t expect to see Vivian here, that’s all. It’s unbelievably weird that she’s here.’

  ‘Well, it’s a small world.’

  Olivia beeped the car locks. ‘Not that small.’

  Olivia was not ready to discuss Vivian with Emma. It was too complicated to even begin to explain why it was so disturbing that Vivian had followed her here.

  ‘She seemed a bit uncomfortable,’ said Emma.

  ‘Vivian always looks uncomfortable.’

  ‘I felt kind of sorry for her, Liv. She might be glad of some company. Do you think she’s on her own here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably.’

  ‘You said she helped you with your book?’

  ‘She gave me permission to study the diary in the first place.’

  ‘Vivian’s Lady of the Manor?’

  ‘No! God no. Ileford’s owner, Lady Burley, is in a care home. Vivian’s … Well, I think she was originally hired as a sort of companion, private secretary type thing, then Lady Burley got sick and I suppose she took over more and more responsibilities. Now she’s kind of in charge of everything.’

  She opened the car door and a wave of heat rose from the driver’s seat. Her eyes felt strained. How could Vivian possibly be here? The encounter was beginning to feel chimeric. She could feel the sun burning into her face.

  ‘What is she do you think, early sixties?’ Emma opened the car door for Nura.

  ‘I have no idea. I’ve never asked her how old she is. We mainly talked about Annabel.’

  Olivia’s hands trembled on the steering wheel as she started the car. This was just so intrusive, aggressively so. She was never going to be able to relax now, knowing that Vivian was lurking around in the village. The air conditioning puffed hot air at their faces. Olivia slapped at the vents.

  ‘It’ll cool down in a moment,’ Em said, as if reassuring a child.

  They pulled out of the car park onto the square and drove past the hôtel de ville, round the bandstand and back down the main shopping street.

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt to invite her up for dinner, though, would it?’ Emma sounded earnest. ‘David has a lot of lobsters up there.’

  Olivia glanced in the rear-view mirror at Ben and Nura. They were both gazing out of their windows. She could not tell if they were listening. ‘Look, Em,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Vivian over the past year and a half and she’s … She can be difficult. I have no idea what she’s doing here, I really don’t, but I can’t have her up at the house, I just can’t.’

  ‘But it really could be a coincidence, you know. Encounters like this do happen. I once bumped into my brother at the top of the Eiffel Tower and neither of us had any idea the other was even in France. Life’s full of odd coincidences like this.’ Emma was looking over her shoulder, craning to see the square behind them. ‘Where do you think she went? She just vanished.’

  Olivia kept her eyes fixed on the road.

  ‘It just feels mean not to ask her up though, Liv.’

  ‘Em, please! Can you just leave it? Please?’ It came out harsher than she intended.

  Emma knotted her hands on her lap and tucked her chin in.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. Em? I’m sorry. I’m just … Vivian is … I just need a break from her. That’s all. If she comes up to dinner, we’ll start talking about the book and …’

  ‘Oh. Right. No. Of course.’ Em gave a weak, high laugh. ‘God, don’t worry. I get it. It’s totally fine. It doesn’t matter. Let’s forget about Vivian.’

  When they got back to the house, David was chopping parsley and Chloe was whisking eggs at the stove next to him. She was barefoot in the cream halter-necked dress, which was crumpled now and a bit grubby, with her hair damp, knotted loosely at her neck. They looked relaxed and companionable but when they turned their faces were so tense and unhappy that Olivia felt sure that she had just interrupted an argument. Chloe gave a big, perky smile. ‘There you all are! How was the famous ice cream?’

  ‘Really good.’ Ben went over to his mother and sweetly put his arms around her waist.

  ‘I’m making omelette.’ Chloe hugged him with one arm and held up a whisk, which dripped egg onto the tiles. ‘For anyone who doesn’t want lobster. Do you like omelette, Nuri?’

  Nura clung to Em’s leg but didn’t reply.

  ‘Well, I don’t think she’s going to want to eat the lobster, are you, sweetie?’ Em said.

  ‘If you say things like that she’s never going to try anything new.’ Olivia dumped her bag on the floor and her keys on the countertop. The fury that she had managed to contain since they met Vivian was knocking at the inside of her skull.

  ‘Come on, Liv,’ Chloe said. ‘It’s fair enough if they don’t want to eat the lobster, after seeing them alive. You know?’

  ‘And I don’t believe in forcing a child to eat things that upset her,’ Emma said in a stiff and rather hurt voice.

  David chopped faster, keeping out of it, his tanned forearms tensed. Olivia realized that if she stayed in the kitchen any longer she was going to say something she would later regret. Chloe was still reproachful, but Emma’s face had closed tight.

  ‘Dammit. I forgot to buy the scissors in the village,’ she said. ‘I’ll go back.’

  ‘What? Don’t worry.’ David held up the chef’s knife. ‘I can use this.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll go back down, it’s OK. We need scissors anyway, we’re here ten more days. I want to get paracetamol, too, I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘I’ve got some in my …’ Chloe began, but Olivia grabbed her bag and keys and sped back through the house, ignoring everybody’s protests.

  She had to deal with Vivian. She had to go back down there and find out what she was playing at, coming here. If she didn’t confront her then Vivian’s presence in the village was going to poison this holiday. It could not possibly be a coincidence. This was too much. She paused at the front door and leaped clean over the gravestone. She could not bear her feet to touch it – it felt like a curse.

  Vivian

  South of France, Day Five

  After the encounter with Olivia and her friend I go straight back to the chambre d’hôte. I lock the bedroom door and sit on the hard single bed for quite a long time.

  I do shed
a tear, then, as the feelings rise up inside me: some old hurts, some new. The predominant emotions are shame and confusion. I no longer feel so sure that it was right to come to France. Perhaps I do not, after all, understand what has happened over the past eighteen months. Perhaps I have been deluding myself that we made a good team and even that we had become friends, of sorts.

  Our encounter did not follow the pattern I had expected or hoped for. Everything suddenly feels out of control and I am only certain of one thing: I have been brushed off.

  I can’t blame her for it. I must have looked such a mess in my shorts, sweating. My talk of harlequins and ghosts might also have seemed a little odd.

  I try to think logically about what else went wrong. Her red dress and black hair – the colours – made me think of a beautiful seven-spot ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata. Perhaps this unconscious association threw me off balance in some way, from the very start. I know I was tense and awkward.

  She was also with her friend, which was exactly what I hadn’t wanted. I had always pictured her alone when we met and I was not expecting to have to deal with a curious, strawberry-haired friend and two shy children, staring up at me with their big, sheep-like eyes.

  My throat felt very dry as I crossed the square towards them, my palms were sticky by the time I got to their bench. They were all staring. Olivia’s expression was the most off-putting though. Her eyes were inflated and her mouth was in a sort of spasm. ‘Vivian?’

  I tried to sound surprised to see her but it was disconcerting because she did not smile, she just said, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ The two scarlet spots that appeared on her cheeks matched the colour of her dress almost exactly.

  I could tell that I embarrassed her. I had not thought about this before, but she might not have told anyone very much about the work I’d done on Annabel. I know she has told David about me but perhaps nobody else even knows that I exist. It might be awkward for her to have to explain me to her friends. They were all staring up at me as if I were a giant curiosity, a biological novelty transplanted to this French square in order to startle and disconcert them.

  I saw them take in my grubby shirt and legs, my walking boots and woollen socks. I was afraid that I might smell, too, but fortunately Olivia did not attempt to kiss me. I should have taken a shower before I came down to the cafe, but I was later than planned because of my knee and I’d been keen to go and sit where I had a good view of the square.

  This had become my routine. For three afternoons in a row I’d gone to the cafe at 5 p.m. after dumping my things back at the chambre d’hôte and taking a shower. I didn’t want to miss her if she came to the village in the early evening. But standing in the square I felt myself grow larger, hotter, dustier and more distasteful beneath her gaze. I wondered how she could bear to even look at me, how she could bear the sight.

  It is possible that I talked too much about harlequins, though I did try to show an interest in the limp children and their gravestone ghost. At one point the friend – who seemed kind, if rather nervy – was going to invite me up to the house for lobster but Olivia couldn’t get away fast enough. It was only 6.30 p.m. I know they won’t eat until at least seven thirty or eight o’clock, but Olivia insisted that they must go.

  As they crossed the square away from me I was filled with shame, both for myself and perhaps a little bit for Olivia. She surely did not need to be so rude.

  It takes a while to get my emotions under control but eventually I manage it. I get up off the bed. It is too early to sleep and I cannot sit alone in this room all evening. I will only torment myself thinking about the things I should have said.

  I do shower then, and comb my hair and brush my teeth, put on clean slacks and the new M&S linen shirt, and make my way back down to the Café de Paris. I will have another glass of wine to steady my nerves and perhaps a petit café. I will collect myself and work out what to do now.

  I am relieved to see that my table is free. I order a glass of vin rouge from the same disinterested waiter, who must recognize me but shows no sign of it. A middle-aged couple, probably English, are at the table next to me and they stare as I sit down, as if I am the entertainment and they are sceptical about my value. There is a raucous extended French family taking up three tables behind them. Small dogs and small children abound.

  I clasp my hands in my lap and, to distract myself from the noise and thoughts, I think about the Devil’s coach horse, which emits a foul odour as a defence. She is an insignificant-looking black beetle with short elytra, her body is covered in tiny black hairs and she can be vicious. She raises her tail like a scorpion and opens her jaws. I had a nip from a Devil’s coach horse once and it was really quite painful. The folklore has it that if she points her tail at you, you are cursed.

  I drink the wine almost in one gulp, then call the waiter back and order another. This time his eyebrow does give a twitch. As a habitual teetotaller I probably do not have the tolerance for this much wine but right now I do not care. I have seen the dark side of alcohol, with my father and with one or two colleagues over the years, and I know that I should have a petit café instead, but I am not yet fully in control of my emotions.

  Olivia was obviously thrown by my sudden and unexpected appearance. She knows, of course, that I have come here to find her; it was ludicrous to pretend that this might be a coincidence.

  If I am going to repair this situation I am going to have to find her again and talk to her properly about my idea. I am going to have to make her listen to me now. I need to show her that I’m not trying to muscle in on her holiday, I am merely impatient to get started on our new book. As soon as she gives me the go ahead on that, I will leave.

  If I go up to the holiday house she will be even more put out, but I cannot just sit and wait here in the hope that I might see her again. It could take days before she comes back. Or I might miss her entirely. That would be disastrous. I must have looked very odd, limping across the square in my dusty clothes, expecting a fond greeting, expecting to be invited up for a lobster supper. I must have seemed such a pushy and ungainly figure, an embarrassment.

  I can see now that the idea that she might be happy to see me, once she got over the surprise, was a fantasy born of too many days alone in Ileford. I should probably have waited in Sussex, then picked the right moment when she got home from holiday and was more relaxed and open to new ideas.

  I have, I realize, neglected to see this situation from her perspective. This is a failing of mine. My overwhelming need for certainty – coupled with this anxiety about the future – has blinded me to social niceties.

  I have also, somehow, allowed myself to believe that we had become friends. I can see now that this was naive too. I am not, nor ever shall be, Olivia’s friend. She has offered me kindness and confidences but only in order to get what she needs out of me: loyalty, devotion, thoroughness and discretion. It was a working relationship, nothing more. As her husband put it so eloquently, I was her ‘faithful helper’. She merely did what it took to keep me on track.

  I will never be invited to her house in west London or introduced to her circle of friends. She does not want me up on that terrace. Not that I would want to be up there with them all anyway. What would I talk about with those people? Her life is very different from mine and small talk has certainly never been my forte.

  I feel as if someone has punched my shell, now, bringing me to my senses. To Olivia I am the hired help. And now that Annabel is done, she has no use for me any more.

  But of course, she is wrong about that. She does still need me. She needs my silence. She just doesn’t know it yet.

  I decide that I will not stay here. I will go back to England, I will leave first thing tomorrow. I have been exposed and humiliated. I should never have come.

  I imagine her sitting up on that glorious terrace, high in the hills as the sky melts into pinks and rich pigeon greys. She will be nursing a glass of Luberon rosé, surveying the valley and the dist
ant rooftops and saying to her friends, ‘What on earth does she think she’s doing here?’

  These dark thoughts run through my head as I finish another glass of harsh vin rouge. I can feel it all closing in on me, the bitterness and despair. My old self is rising up again, unstoppable.

  And that’s when I see her.

  She is striding towards me under the plane trees in that same red dress. Her hair looks more dishevelled now, her Greek-style sandals slap on the stones and her jaw is set. She is coming right at me, looking right at me, but there is no sign of greeting this time, not a wave or a hello. Not even the smallest smile.

  Olivia

  South of France, Day Five

  They were all out on the terrace later that evening as the sun lowered itself behind the hills. David was cracking open the lobster shells with the chef’s knife, but Olivia wasn’t hungry. It was taking all her energy just to look calm. She was still shaken; angry not just with Vivian, now, but with herself. Above all with herself.

  It had all got so out of control.

  ‘What sort of town doesn’t sell scissors?’ Al stretched out his chunky, rugby player’s legs, which were already quite tanned, the dense hairs bleached by the sun.

  ‘You took a while down there,’ Chloe said. ‘Did you go for a sneaky cocktail?’

  Olivia tried to look normal and laugh. She shook her head and refilled her wine glass, as she’d downed the first one in just a few gulps. There was no way she was getting into what had happened in the village, why she had taken so long, or why she had come back up to the house without scissors.

  ‘You didn’t see Vivian again down there, did you?’ Emma reached for the water jug.

  Olivia put a black olive in her mouth and felt the gritty flecks of thyme on her teeth and tongue. She thought she might choke if she tried to swallow.

  Chloe said, ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman who owns Liv’s Victorian diary – we bumped into her in the village. Amazingly, she’s on holiday here too.’

  ‘What – no – Vivian Tester?’ David cracked into a lobster with the back of the chef’s knife. ‘Your faithful helper? Old Baz? She’s here – in the village?’ He wrenched the lobster shell open, prized out a hunk of pink flesh and put it on Jess’s plate.