Dad looked up at his Charlotte, now Katya, and stared at her, not quite believing what I was saying.
Katya meanwhile hovered, smiling politely.
“Hello,” she said cautiously looking at me for guidance.
“Charlotte, our girl?” asked Dad again. “But where on earth has she been? How did you find her after all these years?” he said getting flustered.
“It’s okay Dad, just relax and we’ll explain.”
At that, Dad held out his arms and said softly: “Come to me Charlotte, come and let me hug you my girl,”
Katya moved forward cautiously, dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the old man’s body and rested her head on his sweater as if listening for his heart beat.
By now Dad’s face was wet with tears, as were mine and Marco’s. And then we noticed Mum watching her husband hug this girl and she too began to weep.
“Charlotte!” she said in her tiny bird voice. “Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte!” she finished and clapped her hands with delight.
Katya looked at her grandmother and pulled away from Dad and went over to hold Mum’s wrinkly old hands, just as I had done when I first met her.
“The curse of the Callaways!” she said, looking up at me and pointing at Mum’s distinctive mole on her ring finger. And then she too was bawling, tears streaming down her face at this sudden realisation that these two old people at the bottom of New Zealand in their slippers and smelling of mothballs were her own flesh and blood.
“Cup of tea over here?” interrupted a woman in an apron deftly wheeling a huge tea trolley laden with lamingtons and scones in our direction. She took one look at the group crying session and said, “Oh excuse me, I’m sorry for your loss,” wrongly assuming that someone had died, as I supposed often happened at the rest home.
“No, it’s fine,” I chirped, eager to break the silence and dying for a cup of tea from the huge pot on the trolley. I had always had a thing about tea made from those communal pots.
And so we sat with Mum and Dad, drinking tea, which was not, of course, to Katya’s taste, but she did take to the pink lamingtons, exclaiming that they were “divine”.
Marco and I slowly filled Dad in on our discovery of Charlotte in Paris, leaving out a few details, such as Jim Craig’s part in the drama and the fact that Charlotte was raised by a man to be his sex slave.
And we told him her new name. That she was now called Katya.
“Such a pretty name,” he said, already in love all over again with his precious granddaughter.
Mum, on hearing the name went completely off track and seemed to be under the impression that we were bringing Anna Karenina to visit her.
“She gets like that,” said Dad, stifling a laugh. “It can be very amusing, most of the time.”
We spent another hour making inquiries about their health and were relieved to find that they were both fighting fit, happy to be off the farm and in the care of the rest home, and the only concern was Mum’s obvious decline into senility.
When Mum fell asleep and we realised that Dad was clearly emotionally exhausted we left them with promises of more visits, more frequently. A promise I was going to try my hardest to keep.
As we drove away Katya announced that she was going to move down to the Catlins to be near them when all of this was over.
“I thought you said this place was awful,” reminded Marco.
“It is, but they are my grandparents. I’ve never had them before and I want to get to know them better before, well they, you know … die,” she said looking out the window as we drove up the coast.
“Katya, that is a lovely thought, really. But I don’t think you would last two days in Tirohanga, or even Queenstown. You may find it a little stifling and dull after the life you are used to,” I said.
I looked in the rear vision mirror and there I was staring straight back at me from the back seat. Another one of my looks I was beginning to recognise in my daughter. This one was called Determination.
“We’ll see,” she said signalling that the topic was now closed for discussion. Marco smiled and said quietly to himself: “The apple never falls far from the tree.”
33
When we got back to Auckland it was time for me to let Katya go for a few days to spend time with Lawrence. I had rung him with the news of her arrival as we were heading to the hotel from the safe house. He was the last person I felt like talking to but I knew that I had to be the one to tell him.
“Jane, I didn’t even know you were in town, what’s up?” he said breezily down the phone.
“Lawrence, I have some really great news for you, so I hope you are sitting down.”
“Jane, how can you have good news for me? You hate me. It’s not like you’re going to give me some money or leave me anything in your will. What’s going on?”
Katya was grinning her head off beside me in the car. Best I plunge into it straight away.
“We found Charlotte.”
Silence
“Lawrence? Are you there?”
More silence.
“Lawrence, did you hear what I said? We found her, she’s here with me now, sitting right next to me in the car.”
All I could hear on the other end of the phone was sobbing. A deep, guttural sob so full of pain my heart immediately went out to him, forgetting and forgiving everything he had done to me.
“How? What has happened? Where … when can I see her? Please let me know, I want to see her now,” he pleaded.
“Of course, Lawrence, there is so much to tell you, and she is such an amazing young girl. Shall we come to your house or do you want to meet us at the hotel. We’re on our way there now.”
Lawrence was thinking.
“No, don’t come here, you know what this town is like, it’ll be all over the papers by the morning,” he replied hastily.
Well there was a turn up for the books.
“I’ll meet you at the hotel. Shall we say half an hour?” he said, before remembering what we were talking about.
“Oh my fucking God, she is home!” he shouted. “Jane, we have our baby back.”
And then I handed over the phone to his daughter whose first words were:
“Is that you, Daddy?”
Half an hour later Lawrence knocked on our door and walked in, an obviously changed man. Gone were the bravado, the swagger and the ego. Instead lurching into the room to claim his daughter was a still handsome man, but a man who had been chipped away at by a few of life’s blunter chisels.
“There you are,” he said, walking towards Katya and holding his arms out. As she ran into them I was surprised and a little bit jealous. This reunion was nothing like the tense discussions she and I had in L’Hôtel just a few days ago.
It was perhaps a testament to those early days the two had spent entirely in each other’s company while I was out being Queen of the Women’s Magazines. A bond that was so strong, 15 years could not break it.
“Wow, you seem so familiar to me,” said Katya. “It’s like you’re my brother or something, I can’t explain it,” she continued, not letting go of his hand.
She introduced him to Ola who was now looking much perkier and I could tell already had a soft spot for him, and then filled him in on the drama of the past few days.
“Jane, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me as soon as this happened in Paris?” he said looking at me with deep hurt. “I was just a phone call away.”
“I know, Lawrence, and I’m sorry, but to be honest with everything as it was I just didn’t think about it until we got back, we just wanted to keep everyone safe and get back here as fast as we could while the police sorted everything out,” I lied.
“And she said you couldn’t be trusted not to blurt it all out in the media,” added Katya helpfully.
“Ah, that,” said Lawrence looking across the room at me. “Jane, I am so sorry about the way I acted all those years ago. I was a fool, a damn stupid fool who should have k
nown better,” he said.
“You caused her so much pain,” said Marco abruptly. “Have you any idea how hurt she was left alone in Venice, the only one who believed that Charlotte would one day turn up while you high tailed it back home to your precious career!”
“Marco, I know,” he said. “Since we last all got together I have found new meaning. I am a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
We all looked at Lawrence, confused.
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” he continued. “He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul … ”
Christ, that’s just what we need, I thought. A bloody born-again Christian.
“Okay, Lawrence, we get it. You’ve found God,” I interrupted rather impatiently.
“He has helped me find my way, and together we walk in the knowledge that through me, he can do good work.”
And with that he held his hands together, bowed his head and said “Praise the Lord.”
Marco and I exchanged looks and then Katya launched into a long-winded account of our dual visits to Saint Eustache before we met each other again and my obsession with the Madonna in the churches in Venice.
“Ah, so I see we have all been touched by the Lord,” said Lawrence knowingly.
“Whatever, Lawrence,” I said realising that through God he had found a new form of narcissism.
I left him to get to know his daughter, who was already laughing and joking with him as if they were old friends. I guessed she was used to being adored by Nikolai all her life and in Lawrence she had found a similar level of adoration.
Now they were spending the week together and the five of us, Ola, Katya, Marco, Lawrence and I had agreed on a media plan. It was only a matter of time before someone would see the two of them together and the news of Charlotte’s return would be splashed across the radio, papers and television and possibly worldwide.
Lawrence and Charlotte would do one story for Fabulous Day which rather incredibly was still being run by Lawrence’s ex Shonagh Simmons. We figured its readers at least deserved the happy ending and the high circulation would do the job of getting the story out there. And they would do one TV interview and one newspaper interview and then we would let it die.
“But we can’t tell them the whole story,” said Lawrence showing his new propensity for thinking. “We need to agree on what we will and won’t say.”
“Just gloss over the Nikolai stuff and don’t mention the prostitute stuff,” I advised.
“Courtesan!” sniped Katya. “Dad understands, why can’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Perhaps when you start calling me Mum instead of Jane I might come around,” I joked before leaving them to their precious time together.
Meanwhile Marco and I had some planning to do. Our lives had been put in limbo since we found Charlotte, and we had to sort out what to do next. I was expected back at work in Venice, Marco had another project beginning in a couple of days and the police were advising Katya and Ola to lie low here in New Zealand indefinitely while they continued tying up loose ends overseas.
We went out for lunch on Ponsonby Rd at my favourite restaurant, Biba, where I used to meet Lawrence and Charlotte after work, when she was a baby. We sipped a French chablis the maitre’ d always used to keep out the back for me and surprised me by revealing that he had kept a few bottles in case I ever came back.
“This place always makes me feel a little like I’m back in Venice,” said Marco wistfully. “The food is as near to real Italian as you can get down here,” he continued, savouring a bite of buffalo mozzarella.
“You’re homesick aren’t you darling?” I said, realising that he had put his life and needs on hold for me and Charlotte.
“Just a little bit,” he said reluctantly.
“Thank you for being such an amazing man these past few days. I could not have got through it without you. None of it, not just this, but all those years wondering. The depression, the madness, all that business with Agapeto.”
“You are welcome, Jane, you are the love of my life, I would do anything for you, even all this all over again if you asked me to. But perhaps I need to go back for now. You will have plenty to occupy yourself with for a week or two, and then perhaps you can join me, and maybe bring Katya too if the police allow.”
“Marco, I don’t think I can do that,” I said taking a long swig of wine.
He looked up at me, as if he knew what was coming.
“Don’t say it, Jane,” he said looking at me with his gorgeous blue eyes.
“I can’t leave her on her own. Not now, not ever. She may have to stay here for six months or longer depending on what happens. I have 15 years to make up for. I will have to resign from my job, I will never leave Katya,” I said, realising what I was doing.
“Are you telling me you don’t want to be with me anymore?” he said incredulous. “Jane, we have the most amazing relationship of anyone I know. Look at us, we’re as perfect as you can get. Don’t do this,” he pleaded.
“Marco, you are my heart, my love, my only partner. But from now on Katya has to come first for me, and if that means being away from you, for however long, then that is what that means and I have to learn to live with that.”
“Have you asked Katya how she feels about this?” he said a little terse. “Are you sure she wants her mother hanging off her every word and trailing her every move? She already has Ola for that.”
“Marco don’t do that. I know this hurts but I’m not saying it is over. All I’m asking for is time. Time to get to know her, to be her mother, to help her adjust. To make up for those years when I wasn’t there, even before she was taken. You can see what a bond she has with Lawrence, I want that too and she is the only child I will ever have.
“You and I have the rest of our lives to look forward to. Please just be patient.”
“So what you are saying is that when I get on that plane back to Venice I may not see you for … how long, Jane? Are you going to do me the courtesy of setting an ETA for your return to my life?”
“Marco, stop it. I will come back, that’s all you need to know.”
“No it’s not all I need to know, Jane. I deserve better than that and you know it. But I can see you have made up your mind, and I can also see that I have served my purpose for you over the years. Someone to hold you together, and now you don’t need that, now you have your precious daughter back.”
And with that he threw down his napkin, pushed out his chair and stormed off.
“Marco, don’t!” I yelled after him. “Come back!”
But he was gone, whisked off in a taxi without turning back.
“Oooh temper temper!” said Jay the waiter, rushing up to find out all the gossip.
“You okay, darling?”
I wasn’t. Hopping in a cab was the best man in the world, a saint among men, the perfect partner for me, and I had just hurt him deeply. And I might just have lost him.
What will Daisy say? I thought to myself as I drove to the airport the next day to pick her up off her flight from Sydney. She had wisely stayed away for the first week to let me have time with Katya but was busting to get out here and see her for herself. I hadn’t heard a word from Marco since our lunch and returned to the hotel room to find all his belongings gone, presumably with him on a plane to Venice. He wasn’t answering calls. “Darling heart,” screeched Daisy as she ran into my arms in the arrivals hall. I was not at all prepared for what I was seeing.
“Daisy, what is that?” I said pointing at her normally trim stomach which was not doing a very good impression of hiding a bun in the oven.
“Oh yeah, I kind of forgot to tell you about that, it’s a girl I think and I’m going to call her Daffodil!” she beamed at me.
“Wow, that’s, well, that’s wonderful news … at your age and everything,” I blabbed on.
“Oh nonsense Jane, I’ll be fine, everyone’s having
babies later these days,” she said grabbing her Indian cotton slouch bag off the carousel with surprising agility.
“Here let me,” I said as I grabbed her bag off her.
“But enough about me, what about the wonderful Charlotte, what about this wonderful miracle which has occurred! Looks like that Madonna was watching out for you after all,” she grinned from ear to ear.
“It’s been fabulous, Daisy, I can’t wait for you to meet her, and her name is Katya by the way. She gets very grumpy if you call her Charlotte.”
“Oh I see, bit of her mother’s attitude then,” she smiled as we got into the car.
On the drive back to the hotel Daisy filled me in on the absent father of her baby, an expert on the power of crystals, who she met while researching an article on amethysts. It was one night and he had since moved to Cairns and Daisy just hadn’t got around to telling him about her pregnancy.
“I just don’t care, Jane,” she said. “He’s nobody and I couldn’t bear to have to share my little girl with him. Yuck!”
“You should probably call her Amethyst though,” I chuckled, wondering what weird new age birthing technique Daisy would be employing in three months.
“You must come to the birth if you can,” said Daisy. “I’ll give you plenty of notice and you can hop on a plane.”
“Sure Daisy, sure. You have obviously never had a baby before.”
And then she leaned over and felt my pulse.
“What are you doing,” I exclaimed, shaking my wrist away.
“Something’s wrong, I can sense it. Your energy is all out of kilter, and that’s not right. You should be bubbling and balanced with this good news in your life. What’s happened?” she demanded. “Tell Daisy.”
And out it came. The fact that Marco had left me, possibly for good. The fact that my daughter got on with her father better than me, probably because of my neglect in those early days when I was a bitch career woman and the strong bonding she had with him. The fact that I found her difficult and spoilt. And the fact that this whole mess happened because of me.
The Road from Midnight Page 26