by Kim Wilkins
“Sure. That’s fine.”
He pulled into the driveway of a newish apartment complex, and parked around the back. He unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door, and Maisie followed suit.
“Um…you may as well wait here. I won’t be long,” he said.
“Oh. Okay.” Maisie stayed in her seat as he busied himself getting Tabby out of the back. She watched him disappear into the stairwell, then checked her appearance in the rear-vision mirror. She liked English daylight – it rendered her face in soft-focus.
After ten minutes she thought about going into the stairwell to call for him, realised she never would, and kept waiting. Why didn’t he want his friend to meet her? Was it really expedience, or was he embarrassed about her?
She still hadn’t decided when he emerged from the stairwell.
“Sorry it took so long,” he said.
“That’s fine.”
He was around the back again, grabbing their suitcases. “Come on,” he said, locking the doors. “Lock your side when you get out.”
She did as he said, took her suitcase from him, and followed him two blocks to the station. Her ears were aching with cold by the time they took refuge in the warm ticket office.
“Wait here,” he said, heading for the counter.
“Hang on, I’ll give you some money.”
“No. It’s my treat.”
“Sacha –”
“No, I promised you a trip to London. Call it a late Christmas present.”
She imagined she must be glowing with pleasure. “Okay.”
While Maisie hung out by the entrance, studying route maps and timetables, Sacha was engaged in some serious negotiation at the counter with the sales clerk. When he joined her, he brandished two tickets.
“The good news is, they still had tickets for the next train. It leaves in ten minutes.”
“Is there bad news?” she asked.
“The seats are in different carriages. Sorry.”
Her heart fell. “Different carriages?”
“Yeah. It was either that or wait an hour for the next train.”
“Oh. Well, I have a book to read.” This was a lie. She had been counting on a few hours of Sacha’s undivided attention.
“I might not have been good company anyway. I was planning on dozing most of the way.”
“Really, it’s okay.”
She spent the journey looking out the window, her daydreams repeatedly returning to Sacha in spite of a solemn promise to herself not to do so. It was hopeless – if he felt about her the way she felt about him, he would have booked the tickets for the following train and not told her there were others available. That’s the way she would have handled it. She banged her head lightly three times against the window and groaned. The woman sitting across from her observed her warily.
Maisie plunged a hand into her handbag and fished out her wallet. Flipped it open. Here was a picture of Adrian and herself, taken the previous year on their third anniversary. She studied his face – his adored face. He had pale brown hair and calm, grey eyes. A slightly crooked smile which he was embarrassed about. She closed her eyes and remembered the feeling of holding him in her arms. There was only 175 centimetres of him, but his body was well-muscled and warm, and he smelled like lemon and sunlight. Edible. Yes, she missed him. But not with a pain in her soul. She only got that pain when she thought about what she might miss out on by committing herself to him.
A young man in the seat behind her was listening to U2 on a Discman. She could make out a couple of verses of “Stay”, scratchy and deprived of their shape by the tiny headphones.
Opening her eyes, she turned back to the landscape speeding by outside. Life was like that: just speeding past, beautiful in places, inhospitable in others, but never able to be grasped, always in a state of transition. When was she going to be happy? When were things going to slow down enough for her to hold on to something wonderful, without being obsessed about how soon it would slip through her fingers? She thought about what Virgil had said to Georgette: I ache to live, and all I get is this. She felt like that too, sometimes, but upper middle-class girls from good homes could hardly compare themselves to starving poets who robbed graves for a living.
Still, she couldn’t help it if she felt that way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The train slid into King’s Cross station shortly after three forty-five. Maisie stepped out and waited anxiously on the platform. That would top it all off, if she couldn’t find Sacha. But she spotted him within seconds, waving over the heads of three portly ladies chatting excitedly between themselves. She set her case down and waited for him, the crowd separating around her. In a few steps he was with her. She had the distinct feeling he was going to hug her, but he pulled back at the last moment. The disappointment tugged sharply in her stomach.
“We have to take the tube to Goodge Street now,” he said, picking some fluff off the shoulder of his pullover.
“I’ll stay with you. I don’t know my way around at all.” Maisie pulled on her gloves against the cold.
“My dad lives near the British Museum.”
“Your dad? We’re going to stay with your dad?”
“It’s his house, but he won’t be there. Don’t worry.” They had emerged into some kind of concourse with people rushing in a hundred different directions. “Stay close,” he said, grabbing her hand. “I don’t want to lose you.”
He dragged her through the crowd, up and down stairs, down an escalator and onto a platform. A train came along in a matter of seconds, but after one stop they had to change to another line. Maisie was having serious suitcase anxiety. Sacha seemed happy to leave their cases near the door and sit down, but Maisie was terrified somebody would take off with her stuff.
Finally they arrived at the right station. It was so far underground they had to ride a lift back to the surface. They emerged a few moments later into freezing cold on Tottenham Court Road.
“This way,” he said, leading her out across the road even though cars were zooming all around them. She clung to his hand and braced herself, but nothing hit them. It was growing dark by now, a freezing drizzle descended and car tyres hissed urgently along the slick street. Sacha took her down a side road, then off into another. Her shoulder was starting to ache from carrying her case, but if she swapped arms she’d have to let go of his hand. Luckily, they soon stopped outside the faux-Georgian facade of a block of modern apartments.
“There’s a great bookshop two streets over,” Sacha was saying as he entered a security code and waited for the door to unlock. There was a popping noise and the door swung inwards. Sacha led her into the warm foyer and kicked the door closed behind them. “I’ll take you there tomorrow.”
“I’d love that.”
“And it’s walking distance to Leicester Square, the British Museum, Soho – plenty of good coffee shops in Soho.”
“Uh-huh.” She was barely listening. A giant chandelier hung above them; terracotta and bluestone tiled the floor; the stairs wore a thick cream carpet. This was opulence as she had rarely seen it, and it was right in the heart of London. Was his dad a millionaire?
Up two flights of stairs, and then Sacha fitted a key in the lock of a heavy, polished wooden door. “Here we are,” he said. Within moments they were standing in a fabulously appointed lounge room: leather lounge suite, sunken television viewing area, tasteful lighting, glossy upright piano, mahogany furniture, designer coordinated turquoise and cream walls, and turquoise and cream curtains.
Maisie couldn’t hold back any longer. “Is your dad royalty or something?”
“Sorry?”
“How can he afford this place?”
Sacha went to the drapes and pulled them open. “Come and see the garden.”
She joined him at the window. Two storeys below them was a perfect courtyard garden, illuminated by an outdoor light.
“My dad comes from old money,” Sacha said. “Plus he’s a professor of anthropol
ogy at University College. But I think a trust fund bought this place.”
“Where is he at the moment?”
“On Grand Canary. With his wife, who is three years younger than me. They have two little boys. One’s three and one’s still a baby.” He turned to her and smiled wryly. “There goes my inheritance.”
“Does it bother you that he lives like this and you work in a bakery?”
Sacha shook his head. “No. He’d give me money if I asked for it. But I don’t want to ask for it. We don’t get along.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I have very little respect for him. He and my mother were never married, you know. And I’m sure you can figure out how an anthropologist and a gypsy got together.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
“He was studying her family. She was seventeen, he was thirty. Nine months after his survey was completed, I came along.”
“So you never lived as a family? Together?”
“No. He didn’t even know about me until I was ten. He sent me loads of expensive toys every Christmas thereafter, tried to put me in a good school, paid my rent for two years while I lived in London.”
“But you never formed a bond?”
Sacha laughed. “No. And not for his want of trying. He always phones when he’s going away, tells me I can come and use the place. So I come. I invite friends, I eat all his food, I push his phone bill sky high – which reminds me, if you want to call Australia, please do – and I always leave dirty dishes in the sink. And he keeps on inviting me.” He drew the curtains closed once more and led her away from the window. “Come on, I’ll show you your bedroom.”
He gave her the master bedroom, which had its own en suite. She caught sight of herself in the mirrored wardrobe door as she dumped her suitcase on the bed. A mess.
“I might unpack my things and have a shower,” she said, her hands going self-consciously to her hair. “I feel all grimy from travelling.”
“Sure. Use a lot of hot water. I’ll organise some dinner.”
“Great.”
He left, closing the door behind him. A long, steamy shower should clear her head.
She took her time getting dressed again, brushing her hair and applying the tiniest bit of mascara. Just the right amount to enjoy dinner alone with Sacha in a fancy apartment in London.
When she emerged from her bedroom, Sacha was kneeling in front of the stereo flicking through a CD rack.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking for some music to put on.”
She joined him, glancing at the CDs. Mostly syrupy, middle-of-the-road collections of love songs.
“Slim pickings,” she said.
“These are mostly Claire’s.”
“Claire?”
“Dad’s wife. My twenty-six-year-old stepmother. Hey, why don’t you provide the music?”
“Me? What with?”
He leaned back on his haunches and pointed at the piano. “You can play, can’t you?”
“Yes, but not well.”
“Go on.”
She stood and moved to the piano. Playing music in front of somebody, even Sacha, could never make her uncomfortable. She’d been born into it.
“Okay, you asked for it.”
She flipped the lid up and did a quick scale to get a feel for the keyboard. Then launched into one of her old exam pieces, a Bach prelude which was fast and fun to play. When she finished she looked up.
“You play beautifully,” he said.
“No, I play adequately. You should hear my mother play. It would tear your heart out.”
“Are you better at cello?”
“A little. I mean, yes, of course I’m good at it. I do it for a living. But I’m never going to be a principal player, or a solo artist. My parents are really disappointed in me, though they’d never admit it. I’m sure they would have preferred to have a child prodigy. After all they gave up for me.” She picked out a little melody on the keys, watching her own fingers as though they didn’t belong to her. There was a long silence. Eventually Maisie filled it. “I just have no real passion for it.” She looked up. He was watching her, listening.
“What do you have a passion for?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m empty at the core.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She shrugged. “I want to have a passion for something. Maybe this psychic stuff will work out for me. I could be passionate about that, I’m sure.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but at the same moment the doorbell rang. “Hang on,” he said, going to the door. He pressed the security buzzer to let whoever it was into the building. “That’ll be our dinner,” he said.
“Great.”
“I should warn you, a couple of my friends will be coming with it.”
“Oh?”
“I called Shaun and Curtis while you were in the shower and told them to bring a couple of pizzas over. Hope you don’t mind.”
Mind? Why should she mind? Just because she felt she was finally talking to him, and now the house would be full of a familiarity that she wouldn’t be a part of…
Sacha opened the door and a few seconds later two men around his age burst in with loud greetings and pizza cartons.
Maisie was introduced as a “friend from Australia”. She couldn’t figure out if that bothered her or not. Shaun was tall and bespectacled, with fine white hair razor-cut close to his scalp. Curtis was a curly-haired bear with a stupid grin.
Sacha pulled out a couple of bottles of wine, and the four of them enjoyed a feast on the lounge room floor, accompanied by much raucous laughter and reminiscing about past girlfriends, school mates, and teenage misdeeds. Maisie was excluded from most of it. She smiled in all the right places, answered all the dumb, jokey questions about Australia (no, she did not have a pet kangaroo; no, dingoes rarely take babies; no, Ramsay Street is not a real place), and generally managed to be sociable. When it grew late and it looked like Curtis and Shaun weren’t going anywhere, Sacha told them they could sleep on the floor and brought them blankets and pillows. Eternally grateful for her own bathroom and a door with a lock on it, Maisie wished them all goodnight and went to bed to sulk.
“No lights on at Sybill’s house, Reverend,” Tony Blake said over the phone.
Reverend Fowler sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. He was an early riser, so he was often in bed and fast asleep by eight-thirty. Nobody ever understood this, and sometimes unapologetic callers would ring as late as ten o’clock. “Is that right?”
“I went up and shone my torch in a couple of windows. Kitchen, laundry. Not a sign of life. Not even the cat.”
“She’s gone away before and come back,” the Reverend replied.
“But she did say she’d leave after Christmas.”
“That’s right.”
“We need to do something, this time,” Tony said. “We need to get in touch with the family and offer to buy the cottage. That way we can bulldoze it if we want.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“You know I’m right. Do you still have the contact number for the solicitor in York?”
The Reverend yawned. “Yes. Yes I do. I’ll call him on Monday, make an offer on the place.”
“I’m sure it would be for the best. No more new people, Reverend. It’s too much trouble.”
“Of course, Tony. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“Goodnight, Reverend.”
The Reverend replaced the receiver and rearranged himself under the covers. He was still freezing, could feel his toes like ice in his bedsocks. Perhaps he should have run away to Australia with the girl – warm oceans and sunny parks. If it were warm he could relax, he wouldn’t have to keep his shoulders hunched so tight against the cold. Maybe he would get there some day. Maybe there would be a time when he was too old to be useful any more, and he could spend his last days in the sun. Thinking about his salvation.
> “What are your New Year’s resolutions, Maisie?”
Maisie looked up from her drink despondently. Curtis and Shaun had simply refused to go home. Even worse, Curtis now appeared to have developed a crush on her. The two of them were squeezed into an Irish club in Fitzrovia. A man was smoking a cigar practically in her ear. She couldn’t breathe, and Shaun and Sacha had disappeared to buy cigarettes nearly an hour ago. Given that midnight was only twenty minutes away, she was understandably pissed off.
“I have none,” she muttered.
“So you’re perfect already?”
Ha ha. You’re so funny. “I just don’t believe in them.”
“My New Year’s resolution is to travel. Maybe I should come to Australia. What do you think?”
“I think I need another drink.”
“I’ll get it for you.” He was off to the bar before she could protest. She turned to peer out the front window. Where the hell was Sacha? Why had he stranded her in this awful place – the Riverdance soundtrack had been on a loop since ten-thirty – with his awful friend and an awful feeling that he didn’t have the slightest care for her comfort or happiness? In her imagination, this evening had been so different. It had been dinner for two someplace nice, a stroll through the streets, Trafalgar Square at midnight, and a kiss. And, goddammit, that would be the only kind of kiss she was allowed because it was sanctioned by the clock ticking over into the New Year, which only happened one second a year. One second in the year, and he wasn’t even going to be there. Fuck him. Fuck them all.
“Here’s your drink.” Curtis was back.
“Thanks,” she said, not meaning it.
“Nearly midnight.”
“Where the hell is Sacha?”
“They’ll be back, don’t worry.” He took a swig of his beer and smiled. “Don’t you trust me?”
“What?”
“You’re awfully keen for Sacha to be back.”
She shook her head, sipped her drink. “I don’t know you that well. I’d just prefer it if he were here.”
“I’m pretty nice once you get to know me.”