The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  It wasn’t pain Olivia felt, not after the lightning bolt, but a dizziness that sent her spinning, and a tingling numbness in her face and down one side.

  ‘Just lean there, let it out. I’m going to pick up that glass on the floor or you’ll cut yourself.’

  Olivia stood on her tiptoes and clung to the sink.

  ‘That’s it, mind your toes…’

  Sofia came running in, alarmed by the sound of her mother’s echoed retching.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! What’s wrong?!’

  Sofia was bouncing at the door like an anxious puppy trying to catch a ball.

  ‘Are you OK?!’

  Olivia vomited her answer.

  ‘Oh Mummy!’ Sofia gasped.

  ‘She’s just a bit sick princess, she’ll be fine – go and get the dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the sink for me, will you? There’s a good girl.’

  Sofia lingered at the doorframe.

  ‘Oh Mummy, I don’t like it!’

  ‘Then go and get the dustpan and brush,’ Daniel said more sternly, torn between picking up the glass at Olivia’s feet and rubbing her back while she continued to vomit.

  ‘It’s OK my love, it’s OK.’

  ‘What… what about… packing?’ she cried through tears and bile.

  ‘Shhh, shhh, don’t worry, just get this out. Deep breaths.’

  ‘My head.’

  ‘You’re OK.’

  Flora marched into the bedroom with a scowl.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said, as if she were about to reprimand her parents.

  ‘It’s OK, your mother’s a bit poorly, she’ll be right in a second.’

  Over the basin, Olivia took deep breaths as the urge to vomit abated, the zoetrope in her head slowed down and her breathing started to regulate. As Daniel held her hair back and tucked it behind her ears, he thought of the flat in Lexington Street.

  ‘Shall I call a doctor?’ Daniel asked in a low whisper, into Olivia’s ringing ear.

  ‘No, no, no, it’s passing. And we need to get going.’

  ‘You can’t travel like this,’ Daniel urged.

  ‘Is your case packed, tesora?’ Olivia asked Flora in the mirror, wiping her face with the flannel. ‘We need to get to the airport.’

  ‘Don’t come in,’ Daniel advised, ‘there’s glass on the floor.’

  Flora clutched the door frame and stared at her mother’s reflection.

  ‘What’s wrong with your face?’ she asked.

  *

  ‘Right, drink the water or we lose it,’ Olivia instructed to the brood following her, as they all wheeled little cases through to security.

  Flora eyed her mother’s face suspiciously, checking to see if it was going back to normal as she insisted it was in the car on the way to the airport.

  ‘Are you sure you should be flying?’ Daniel whispered as the queue snaked at a pace around metal posts. A never-ending stream of tanned people clutching straw trilbies, artesania souvenirs and metal cases packed with records, slinked towards the X-ray machines in the departures hall. It seemed the whole world was leaving Ibiza on the last Monday in August, and suddenly Olivia couldn’t wait.

  Home.

  The Huf Haus. Its peace. Her studio. She had so much to be getting on with.

  ‘Yes!’ Olivia hissed, giving Daniel a look of don’t frighten the girls. ‘It passed. I’m fine.’

  Daniel shrugged and looked at his feet anxiously. He knew there wasn’t much point arguing with his wife when she was so certain of something. Flora begrudgingly took off her headphones and put them with her phone and bag in the tray, her little sister buzzing around her, seemingly having forgotten the little drama back at the villa. Sofia put her cuddly dog in another tray, kissed it and waved it goodbye, as Olivia slung her makeup in a clear bag next to it. Daniel pulled a tray out for his bag and laptop, and Flora threw a cherry lip balm from her pocket on top of it. As they walked through the metal archway Daniel winced. He so hoped that whatever it was that happened to Olivia back at the villa, whatever it was that made her temple sear, her head spin and her stomach pump itself, wouldn’t be triggered by machinery, beeping, X-rays and scans. He didn’t want the security guards to detect anything sinister in his wife, and was relieved when they all passed through with nothing more than a smile for Sofia.

  ‘Come on,’ Olivia beckoned through tense teeth. Daniel nodded back to keep the girls calm and appearances up. Flora willowy and gawkish. Sofia bouncing like a rubber ball. ‘Duty Free?’ Olivia said cheerily. ‘Come on, I’ll get you a treat.’

  *

  Flora’s frown unravelled as they weaved through makeup and perfume.

  ‘Oh Mamma, there’s this really cool Urban Decay palette…’ she enthused quietly. Sofia ran over to a shelf full of teddy bears with the Spanish flag on their tummies and deliberated between one of those and a keepsake tin of M&Ms.

  ‘I’ll go get us a seat, yeah?’ Daniel looked at Olivia nervously. ‘I need to get online. Check the site.’

  ‘Sure.’

  While Daniel paused at the electricals, Olivia studied the wall of glass bottles in front of her. She fancied a change to go with her feeling of newness, her new ideas. Her usual purple fig parfum from Liberty was feeling a little tired against her summer skin, so she perused the cornucopia of potions in front of her, hoping to find something that would help ignite her inspiration. Something curative.

  She picked up a large square bottle, knowing she wasn’t even going to buy it, mainly to make it look she was doing something normal, to ease the girls, as she thought of her dressing table in the light-flooded bedroom back home.

  Get me home.

  ‘Mamma, this is it!’ Flora always called Olivia mamma when she wanted something. ‘There are tons of colours I would wear. Look, browns, greens, even a cool orange one, the one I tried from Amelie’s palette and you said it looked nice? Amelie got it for…’

  The name Amelie echoed in Olivia’s ears as the lightning struck her temple again and her head felt like it was on fire. She let out a pained yelp as a cold sweat bubbled over her skin like a clammy mask and she hit the floor at the same time as the perfume bottle smashed against it.

  Nine

  September 1996

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘Look, I can come back another time if it isn’t good… if there’s been some kind of mix-up.’

  Daniel sat on the stiff little sofa for two, right in front of the welcome desk in the cramped loft office with a low ceiling. It was the top floor of a 1980s building that also housed a doctor’s surgery and a stationery supplies company (handy for when the Elmworth Echo staff needed hole punchers and pens). Daniel knew he was so close to the young receptionist who had introduced himself as Lee, that Lee could probably see inside Daniel’s ear canal if he wanted to. Not that he would – he was looking at the big screen of his computer, waiting for the dial-up to resume.

  ‘No, you’re all right, I’m still trying to get hold of her,’ Lee said calmly, phone wedged under his chin. ‘I’m sure she won’t be long…’

  Lee must have been around the same age as Daniel, but had a quiet sensibility and wore a neat sweater that made him look older than his years. Perhaps he’d just been working there for a long time and wasn’t fresh from adventure as Daniel was.

  ‘Blimming thing…’ Lee muttered, rolling his eyes at Daniel as he clicked a mouse with his free hand. The black curly phone cable knocked over the pen pot on his desk (also from the stationery supplier downstairs) and Lee rolled his eyes again as he propped it back up. Daniel knew Lee was trying to make him feel at ease; that his boss keeping people waiting might be a common occurrence. But surely not a new member of staff on day one.

  That’s if the job was secure. Viv Hart hadn’t sent that contract in the post but she did confirm in an email to Daniel that he was to come in on Monday the 9th of September and they could sort all that out then. Lee shook the mouse again, embarrassed more than anything.

&n
bsp; ‘Well, she’s not answering at home. Sometimes she does work from home. And maybe she’s not getting her emails. The internet might be down. I’ll reset the box.’ Lee hung up the phone and untangled the cable. ‘I suppose she might be at the gym…’

  Gym?

  Lee got up, straightened his slacks, and walked to the back of the office, to a towering stack of boxes and cables.

  ‘I’m just restarting the internet!’ he announced in a polite and monotonous voice to a groan from both the sales and the editorial sides of the Elmworth Echo.

  ‘Urgh!’ snapped a blond man at the back of the office as he stared at his screen and tried not to look at Daniel, twiddling his thumbs on the sofa.

  Daniel felt self-conscious being left waiting. He had never been late for an interview or a meeting or a day’s work in his life. When he did work experience in his dad’s bank; when he sat at the checkout next to Matt at Safeway; when he’d worked in the Co-op at uni; when he pulled pints at the Red Hart; when he’d done his placement on The News in Portsmouth. He was always punctual, diligent and respectful. He always took the role seriously, whether he was swiping tins of beans or reporting on house fires in Southsea. He couldn’t believe that now he was here, to start his first Proper Job with a post-grad degree in journalism, his new boss seemed to have forgotten about his existence.

  They’d had a good meeting at the start of summer. Daniel had called the editor of the Elmworth Echo speculatively. First stop: local paper. It’s what all his lecturers had said when doling out career advice. That and always be willing to make the tea. Daniel had remembered his tutor’s advice and called Viv Hart to try his luck. He couldn’t believe it when the quiet male receptionist put him straight through to the editor.

  He thought their chat had gone well: she liked the fact he was local, he had grown up in the town. She even seemed to like the fact he was about to go travelling for the summer – more so when he said he was going on his own. And Viv arranged to meet Daniel at the new Café Rouge on the high street the day before his flight, where she flipped through his portfolio and quizzed him on his parents, his upbringing, and how well he knew the community. When Viv said she’d like to get Daniel in when he got back in September, he thought he was being offered a job. Except maybe he wasn’t. Or maybe she had and changed her mind. She had definitely said come in on the 9th of September on an email he picked up in an internet cafe in the Cook Islands. And here he was, in the suit he wore to his grandad’s funeral, portfolio propped between his legs, just in case Viv had wanted to see it again. Except she had clearly forgotten the whole thing.

  The blond man’s head kept bobbing to look over his screen like an inquisitive marmoset; he couldn’t keep his nosiness in check, so he got up and walked with Lee, back to the reception desk.

  ‘Hi,’ he nodded.

  ‘Hello,’ Daniel said back.

  The blond man had a large forehead and piercing, blue, far-apart eyes that made him look like a cross between Bing Crosby and a Disney baby. He was even wearing sailor-boy stripes.

  ‘She not about?’ he said in a loud, Welsh voice, mortified for the nervous-looking graduate sitting awkwardly on the sofa. Daniel looked up and smiled. Lee looked tense.

  ‘No, I tried…’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ the sailor boy said behind clenched teeth.

  He looked to Daniel, who was rubbing his clammy palms together. Daniel couldn’t take the embarrassment anymore.

  ‘Shall I just go?’ he asked in polite defeat. He’d been waiting for over an hour.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the Welshman matter-of-factly. He was clearly as mortified as Daniel was. He extended a hand. ‘I’m Jim. Jim Beck.’

  ‘Hi Jim,’ Daniel said, standing slightly as he shook his hand before sitting back down, not sure whether to get up and go. ‘Daniel Bleeker.’

  ‘Do you want a glass of water or something Daniel Bleeker? Perhaps a gin?’ Jim Beck let out a booming laugh that made Daniel smile and lifted the tension. Jim couldn’t have been that much older than Daniel either. Late twenties perhaps with that baby face. His hair was blond and slicked up like a matinee idol, the whites around his blue eyes dazzled despite the exasperation he showed, as if he was in a constant battle with a boss who might have done this before.

  A woman with crisp blonde curls and a pencil skirt too tight for the bottom it restrained walked past the desk. Daniel had seen her passing several times already, going to and from the kitchen.

  ‘Is she not about?’ said the woman, with an air of disapproval and authority, as if she were the only person allowed to say it out loud. ‘Honestly. Get the poor boy some water, will you Lee. And something to read.’ She gestured to Daniel with a tanned hand and nails painted a shade of coral.

  Jim gave an apologetic smile while Lee headed to the little kitchen by the lifts.

  ‘Jim, I’m just off to meet JP from Autoglint about next year’s rates. Tell Viv I’ll be back for our midday classifieds update. If she—’

  As the woman swiped a slick of fuchsia lip gloss from a fruity smelling tube across her lips, the boss walked in. She had short silver hair, big white teeth and she was eating a crunchy green apple.

  ‘Hello, hiiiiiiii,’ she said, sliding the pack down from her back, to the assembled group at the entrance.

  Lee returned with a glass of water and the woman with the tight curls nodded to everyone and left.

  ‘Oh Viv, I’m not sure if you got my messages…’

  Lee motioned to Daniel, sitting back on the sofa, feeling like a lemon.

  ‘No I haven’t yet.’ Viv looked down at Daniel and gave a hearty, puzzled smile.

  ‘Oh, this is Daniel Bleeker, he’s here about the junior news reporter job.’

  Daniel had the weird sensation that he was at an interview, not here for his first day, and he was confused by the vagueness of it all. He looked up at the editor, her smile was perplexed and icy. He wanted to say, ‘June. Café Rouge. You offered me a job?’ But didn’t. He was hopeful that this was the part when Viv Hart might look aghast, that she might feel terrible about having forgotten an appointment almost ninety minutes ago. That she would feel so terrible, she would give him another £5,000 on top of the £16,000 she’d mentioned when they met.

  We agreed a salary, I must be starting.

  But she didn’t send that contract.

  Or maybe it was just a chat.

  Viv looked down at Daniel, nervous and sweaty in a suit full of sad memories, and gave him a look as if she were trying to place him, as if he had arrived early and she needed just a minute.

  Daniel was too needy to protest.

  Viv took another bite of her apple and nodded with a full mouth.

  ‘Yes, hiiiiiii…’

  Daniel didn’t know whether she remembered him or not. Whether to stand up or stay seated. Then a flash changed her expression as she remembered something.

  ‘Oh Jim, there’s an ambulance outside Woolworths, do you want to see if there’s a story there? I’m thinking the cover could do with something more dramatic and gory than the darned Town Hall development…’

  Jim raised an eyebrow, his face eager and hopeful.

  ‘Did it look bloody?’ he asked keenly.

  Viv didn’t answer while Jim grabbed his Harrington jacket from the back of his chair, slid his Dictaphone in his pocket and picked up his pen and notepad.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, giving Daniel a broad smile as he headed out, skipping like Dexter Haven in High Society. Daniel envisaged Jim sliding down the stair rail and swinging around a lamppost on his way out and smiled to himself for the first time that day.

  ‘Do you want to come this way?’ Viv asked, although it wasn’t really a question. ‘Lee, we’ll take the meeting room.’

  And as Daniel stood up and picked up his bag and portfolio, as he followed Viv while she took another noisy bite of her apple, Daniel wished he could rewind, to that precipice on the Otago Peninsula, and have that night all over again.


  Ten

  August 2017

  Ibiza, Spain

  ‘Daddy! Daddy! What’s wrong with her?’

  Sofia threw herself onto the floor next to her mother, not minding the wetness oozing out of the smashed perfume bottle, or the broken glass and plastic that dotted the puddle.

  Daniel ran over as fast as he could, from electricals through watches to fragrances, to see a commotion he already had a sinking feeling, he already knew, was to do with his wife. Olivia was lying on her back, her body twisted, her face and arm twitching.

  ‘Liv!’ he cried, as he crouched down and carefully felt her head, to see if that too had smashed on impact, but he couldn’t feel any wetness behind her hair, there wasn’t a stream of blood snaking out. Just the sickly sweetness of a flinching body doused in top notes of bergamot and orange.

  A member of security came rushing over, his lanyard hitting seven-year-old Sofia in the face.

  ‘Qué pasó?’ he said, in a gruff voice.

  ‘Ambulance, my wife needs an ambulance!’ Daniel shouted, knowing they wouldn’t be flying anywhere today; his panic was further compounded by what had happened back at the villa.

  ‘Get up, Mum,’ Flora quietly said to herself, exasperation in her voice. Until she realised her mother wasn’t doing this to be funny, or to get a reaction from her, or to embarrass her. She had collapsed on the floor involuntarily and was clearly in pain.

  A woman in a Duty-Free uniform and neckerchief spoke into her walkie talkie. From Daniel’s basic understanding of Italian he could work out some of her Spanish.

  Ayuda.

  Ambulancia.

  Urgencia.

  The woman, crouched and cramped, turned to Daniel.

  ‘Wha fli jew on, sir?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Fli?’

  ‘Oh, Stansted. The 1420. EasyJet.’

  The woman spoke into her walkie talkie.