The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  Annabel looked completely nonplussed. London was a world away from her bucolic bubble.

  BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE HAVE SAID TWO TRAINS ARE STUCK IN TUNNELS AT EDGWARE ROAD. IT IS NOT KNOWN IF THEY COLLIDED.

  ‘Cazzo…’ Olivia muttered to herself.

  ‘More snack!’ spat Bertie.

  For fuck’s sake.

  Flora’s cries came over the baby monitor next to the radio as Olivia hurried to finish Bertie’s eggs on toast.

  ‘There!’ she shoved the melamine plate onto the kitchen island. ‘Annabel you’re going to have to watch him, I need to get Flora, she’s woken up,’ Olivia said pointedly.

  WE’RE NOW HEARING REPORTS THAT A BUS HAS BEEN RIPPED APART IN AN EXPLOSION NEAR EUSTON STATION. ALL OF LONDON’S TRANSPORT IS DISABLED.

  ‘Euston?!’ Olivia went flying out of the room and up the stairs, where she grabbed Flora from her cot. ‘Shhh, shhh, hey baby, good sleep…?’ She had a horrid feeling in the pit of her stomach. Daniel had stayed on Euston Road last night.

  He didn’t answer.

  She hurried back downstairs, Flora swaddled in her Grobag.

  ‘Bertram, are you going to try some of this?’ Annabel asked with a distrustful snarl.

  The dumpy toddler with the red face waded over in his big boy pants and clambered up onto a stool. Annabel separated the food with a fork, cooling it with her downturned mouth.

  ‘Shhh, shhh, bellina…’ Olivia kissed Flora’s teething-pink cheeks. Flora looked at her cousin and pointed in recognition. ‘Burbee!’ she said.

  ‘Flora!’ he replied amiably, before crumpling up his face and spitting out his egg into a dribble down his T-shirt. ‘Yuk!’ he shouted, swiping the plate on the floor. Egg flew and melamine spun. Olivia bit her tongue and put on the TV.

  ‘Fireman Sam!’ shouted Bertie.

  Annabel didn’t acknowledge Flora had woken, nor did she look at her niece. Olivia did see her brush a bit of scrambled egg under the kitchen island with her foot though.

  Olivia turned on BBC One.

  THERE IS A SUGGESTION THAT THE EXPLOSION ON THE BUS HAS BEEN CAUSED BY A SUICIDE BOMBER. IF THAT’S CONFIRMED, THEN THAT WOULD BE THE FIRST TIME A SUICIDE BOMBER HAS STRUCK IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

  ‘Fireman Sam!’ protested Bertie, toddling over to the television and slamming his fist against the screen.

  ‘No!’ barked Olivia.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Annabel. Olivia didn’t know – or care – which of them she was talking to. All she could think about was Daniel. How she hadn’t heard from him.

  On the TV screen a map showed circles, where chaos was congregating; one was right on the area Daniel had spent the night.

  ‘Shit!’ Olivia said.

  Olivia thought about the terse word she’d ended their text exchange on last night. A sarcastic, ‘Thanks’. How she’d been annoyed that it was fine for him to go partying and leave her in the sticks. She was trying to grow a business and take care of their baby. Flora tangled her fingers in her mother’s hair and looked at the television too, entranced by sirens and bright lights and people running along London streets.

  ‘Why don’t you try a bit more, Bertie?’

  ‘Yuk! Don’t like it.’

  Olivia pressed her nose to Flora’s head and inhaled the sweet smell of her scalp as she swayed from side to side, her daughter on her hip. Her heart raced as she thought about Daniel, where he might be. And for the first time since she had known him – since she had seen him standing alone, looking out to the storm over the sea beyond the Otago Peninsula, she had a hideous realisation that the reliable man, the man she took for granted, the man who always came back to her, would one day not exist.

  Thirty-Nine

  February 2018

  Swiss Alps

  ‘THIS IS AMAZING!’ yelled Flora, in gay abandon as she sat between her dad’s legs.

  Udo had gone down first, clutching Sofia in the curved basin of his wiry arms, as he held the leather reins of the wooden sledge and led the way. Udo was a Tony-award winning showtunes songwriter and a demon on the slopes – and since he and Mimi had settled in the mountains to write, hike and ski together, he was a trusted pair of arms around Mimi’s goddaughter.

  I heard it. I’m sure I heard it.

  Olivia wanted to shout ahead to Daniel, to see if he would look around and confirm Flora’s rare outburst of happiness and joy, but he was concentrating too hard on the bends of the snowy mountain path; trying to catch up with Udo and Sofia, who was shouting ‘WEEEEEE!’ all the way down. Mimi brought up the rear on her own wooden sledge, her singsong laugh the soundtrack to this frozen idyll.

  There was no one else on the mountain – the runs were closed at the end of a busy day. The chair and ski lifts had shut, and the only people heading down to the picture postcard town at the bottom were the six people on four sledges, weaving their way, with the odd stop to take in the view and nibble on the honey and almond chocolate Udo had packed.

  It had been an amazing few days. Olivia was right – they did need it, it did do them good, and although she wasn’t sure if Flora would have relaxed into her arms down the mountain the way she had her father’s, she knew the girls had loved their holiday. They had thrived, skiing under the Matterhorn’s majestic gaze, the girls going gung-ho down the mountains. Daniel had been more wary, more fearful of the splendour of his surroundings, but Udo and Mimi taught him to relax just enough to enjoy it.

  Olivia was struck by how hard she found skiing, how her coordination was sometimes a little bit off, how she kept misjudging turns and overshooting or falling over – she used to fly down the slopes of Cortina d’Ampezzo, winter after winter, with her father and mothers. Perhaps that was too long ago and she was too rusty, or motherhood had made her cautious and clumsy.

  She curved around a bend, hearing Mimi’s high laugh still echoing behind her, and saw that Udo and Sofia, Daniel and Flora had pulled up.

  Udo was lowering his palm gently as if to say shhhhhh and stop.

  Olivia slowed to a halt and tried to look at what the others had spied in a snow filled glade.

  ‘You see it?’ Daniel whispered excitedly.

  Olivia shook her head as she struggled to take off her mittens.

  ‘Over there!’ said Udo. His piercing blue eyes, bleached by the snow, were locked on the still figure of a deer that had looked up, startled and alert. ‘It’s a roe deer. The roebucks shed their antlers in November or December – if you look you can see new ones starting to form.’

  Mimi came sledging around the bend, her singing suddenly stopping when she saw Udo’s stance.

  She got off her sledge and quietly walked over; the crunch crunch crunch of the snow under her boots was a satisfying sound to everyone.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ she whispered, looking up at her friend.

  Olivia smiled back and put her arm around Flora – who didn’t even flinch.

  ‘Mummy, I love it!’ Sofia whispered, from her position next to Udo, trying not to jump up and down. ‘I wish we had deer as a pet.’

  ‘You pretty much do,’ Daniel whispered, referring to the muntjac that occasionally danced through their garden.

  As they watched the roe deer browse for berries and lichen in the snow, Olivia looked at her daughters and felt a strange concoction of bliss, gratitude and terror.

  *

  In a cosy wood-panelled restaurant back in the village, the Messina Bleekers, Mimi and Udo sat at a rectangular table, all eyes on the raclette in the middle. Heady wafts of cheese permeated the room, absorbed in the red curtains that looked like they might have been there in Whymper’s time. Half the diners ate in ski gear: fur-lined jackets slung on the back of chairs, ear mufflers pushed up into the hair above their ruddy cheeks; the other half wore evening wear. It was a bizarre mix, and a world away from Mimi’s Brixton, Milan or Melbourne. Olivia loved how contradictory the Swiss Alps were to where she imagined urbanite Mimi would end up – an Australian who loved the tropica
l heat, settling in the snowy mountains. Olivia loved how thoughtful Udo was compared to the long line of self-centred rock stars Mimi had dated – but how she was happier than she had ever seen her. How contentment oozed out of every bare and mountain-kissed pore.

  ‘Right, so you’re coming back then girls? You like skiing?’ Mimi asked, carving a sweaty slice from the raclette.

  ‘Try stopping them,’ Daniel said, winking at Flora.

  ‘You should come in the summer,’ Udo said enthusiastically, his black thermal vest clamped to his sinewy frame. ‘The walks we do up towards the Matterhorn and Jungfrau are simply the best.’

  Olivia pictured Udo and Mimi, rolling in fields of wildflowers, songsheets and notes fluttering around them as they sipped from pints of creamy Alpine milk, and smiled to herself.

  ‘Oh, can we Mamma?’ begged Sofia. Flora suppressed a hopeful and shy smile.

  ‘Well, maybe we can come when your dad’s in Russia huh?’

  Daniel looked a little disappointed, but agreed it was a good idea.

  ‘Yesssss!’ Sofia screwed her little hand into a fist and punched the air.

  ‘Oh you must!’ assured Mimi, pulling Sofia into her. ‘You girls could even come on your own while your dad’s at the World Cup. Give Mummy a little break.’

  ‘We’ll sort something!’ Olivia said breezily, as she tied her hair up off her face. It was all getting a bit toasty inside the restaurant – raclettes and fondue pots were causing the windows to steam up. ‘But this first…’

  Olivia raised her glass of sparkling water. She was always the first to raise her glass, whichever coffee shop, restaurant or dining table she sat at. Brain cancer hadn’t quashed her love of a toast. ‘Thanks so much for having us. Udo, you’re a hero – Mimi, I love you and I miss you.’

  Mimi smiled, her sparkling eyes welling up.

  ‘Yes thanks guys, it was just what the doctor ordered,’ Daniel added, not meaning to be literal. ‘It’s been amazing.’

  Sofia and Flora thrust their glasses of orange juice and lemonade into the centre, Udo, Mimi and Daniel their white wines. As glasses chinked and hands felt fiery over the raclette, Daniel’s blissful world suddenly turned grey. He couldn’t help noticing the stem of Olivia’s glass, shaking in her hand, and with it brought a rattling realisation and a sick feeling of dread.

  He’d noticed it when she struggled to do up the clip on her ski helmet on day one; he’d noticed when she was getting a biscuit out of a packet for Sofia yesterday; he’d noticed when she struggled with the simple coordination required for taking off her mittens as they sledged. And he noticed it now, in the cosy cocoon of the restaurant, as joyful cheers and splatters of drink cooled hot hands and swelled hearts.

  Cancer-free, he thought, as he pictured the serene face of Dr Okereke as she said it. For now.

  ‘Cheers!’ the girls laughed, one more loudly than the other.

  ‘Saluti!’ Olivia said.

  ‘Prost!’ Udo nodded.

  And Mimi didn’t say anything. Words failed her. As she looked across the table at Daniel and their eyes met, they both knew they were struck by the same terrible fear.

  Forty

  December 2006

  Cambridgeshire, England

  Olivia put a fresh coffee on the workbench, rolled up her sleeves, and looked around the studio. The white tongue and groove walls were pinned with designs, fabric swatches, measurements, collection sheets and numbers. A large slate board had a list of deadlines in order. ‘Brief’. ‘Sample due’. ‘Fits’. ‘Red seal’. ‘Approved’. ‘Shipped’. Another wall was entirely covered in magazine tears and pages photocopied from books, the early inspiration for a second collection, if this first one takes off. A rail of luminescent samples in shades of rose, cream and nude lit up the darker wall. A bench in the middle was covered in rolls of fabric, a sewing machine, a laptop and lamps. Headless mannequins and dressmaker’s dummies, in varying states of undress and amputation, lingered happily around the studio. One wore a white toile template, another just a skirt. Olivia’s favourite mannequin, which she named Giulia and occasionally spoke to because Giulia had a head, wore Olivia’s wedding dress. Her first Olivia Messina London creation.

  So much to do!

  Olivia had just done the frenetic drive and drop-off of Flora at nursery and felt so excited by what was in front of her, what was to come. She inhaled the aroma of coffee while she waited for it to cool, and put a scratched copy of INXS’ Kick into the paint-splattered CD player, speckled from past experiments with fabric dyes.

  When they bought the Huf Haus, Olivia knew she wanted to turn the garden studio into a workshop, but assumed it would be for sideline projects or clothes for her baby. But a serendipitous encounter with Vaani Bhalla at the V&A got Olivia thinking, and took her down a different path.

  While she was on maternity leave, in Flora’s first year, she revisited her sketch books from Milan and felt all the emotions again of that time spent at home. Struggling with shunning going out. Ashamed of how few un-adjusted, raw and true memories she had of her life in London; of her life before that. She hated her designs from that period – they felt dark and dated – but they gave her the impetus to start again. Draw through fresher, sober eyes. As a romantic. As a mother. Dresses that would have meaning to the women wearing them.

  As her maternity leave came to an end, Olivia didn’t want to put Flora in full-time nursery; she didn’t want to ask her in-laws to look after Flora as well as Bertie. She wanted to be with her daughter. To create around her daughter. To believe Vaani’s vision, that the Olivia Messina label could be something. It could offer women elegant, ethereal and affordable occasionwear that would make them feel as happy as Olivia did in her wedding dress.

  Olivia put Flora in nursery two days a week as the Skype calls with Vaani and the meetings with investors, suppliers, retailers and tastemakers became more regular in London. Vaani registered the company to her address in Belsize Park, and the day after the London bombings, Olivia Messina London secured a £150,000 investment from one of Vaani’s fashion finance contacts through Drapers.

  Through her work at East of Eden, Olivia had learned enough about what happens after the drawings. She learned how to cost garments, how the supply chain worked – and how to change the elements that weren’t working. She learned how to merchandise a collection and ensure it was stocked in the Carnaby Street store, as well as the department stores who were increasingly taking it on – and she knew how to harness those good relationships with her honesty, her laugh and her charm.

  As the investment came in, and Olivia’s second baby grew, she finished the designs for a twenty-five-piece launch collection and engineered the patterns. Vaani had been to-ing and fro-ing between London and India, where the intricate threadwork, embellishment and embroidery was to be executed in a small studio in Maheshwar. Olivia had the creative ideas; Vaani the business sense and understanding of margins to make those ideas commercial. To make A Midsummer Night’s Dreamy sell.

  They planned to start small. Vaani secured a three-month pop-up in Selfridges, and hoped the department store chains and new etailers would take notice and fall for Olivia’s whimsical, affordable, cool event dresses that looked like high-end ateliers had made them.

  While the first collection was being made, Olivia started working on the next.

  ‘If these sell like I think they will, we can’t take our eyes off the ball,’ heeded Vaani. ‘So many people are asking me about this…’

  When Flora was at nursery or in her bed, Olivia was in the garden, cranking up the music and talking to Giulia while she sketched, made toiles, prototypes and designs.

  *

  As she surveyed her studio, Olivia took in the soft colours that had started to emerge. Her second collection was feeling more botanical – pale greens and dusky pinks were creeping in like ivy, with subtle botanical embroidery, metallic threadwork and hand-dyed pressed petals on bodices and hems. Perhaps this was a by-product of being
in bloom. Phoebe had always said pregnancies were her most creative periods.

  ‘Tutti bene, Giulia?’ Olivia asked, as she took a sip of coffee. Giulia didn’t answer, and Olivia smiled, as she sat down at her workbench, her bump heaving between her legs. She looked through Polaroids of the final twenty-five chosen pieces on models, shot for their first ever lookbook, and felt pure excitement. Soon these pieces would be with the retailers, she would have a new business and a new baby. She felt on the edge of an exciting precipice as she drank her coffee and thought about everything she had to do before her son arrived: check that the collection had been put on the boat. Research tulle suppliers to improve their margins. Look at the CVs Vaani had sent her for the merchandiser they were recruiting. Develop the dimensions and drawings for the second collection; start to think about a third. Get all of Flora’s baby clothes out of storage.

  She put the photos to one side as she looked at her laptop and listened to the agony and optimism in Michael Hutchence’s voice.

  Kick.

  And Olivia had the sudden and horrific realisation, that she hadn’t felt her baby kick for hours.

  Forty-One

  May 2018

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘Right, are you sitting down?’ The precise and perfunctory voice of Vaani on the other end of the phone had more than a hint of excitement in it, and Olivia was intrigued.

  ‘Well no, I’m walking down the high street, just picking up school shoes for Flora.’

  ‘Urgh, how ghastly.’

  Vaani hadn’t ever had children, but she had enough nieces and nephews to know that school shoes might just be the most dreadful insult to fashion on the planet.

  ‘I know, I know,’ groaned Olivia. ‘They’re vile. And I have to pay fifty quid for the pleasure, but I couldn’t bind her into the old ones for another two months, she’s a size seven now like me.’

  ‘Oh, you should have sent her to school in your D&G flats. Those rubberized rivets would fend off the Mean Girls.’