A Heart Bent Out of Shape (12 page)

‘It was an accident,’ she said, in the end, mostly addressing the cloth. ‘The stupidest kind, the worst kind, the most ridiculous kind. She fell over on the ice, and hit her head. That’s all. None of us even knew, until the next day. Yesterday. I only knew yesterday.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and the unexpected strength of feeling underlying his words took hold of her and held her for a moment.

‘How can someone be here one minute and gone the next?’ she said. ‘I keep expecting her to knock at my door, or to come bursting into the room. People aren’t supposed to just stop like that. It’s not like she was ill, or old . . .’ Her voice cracked. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean just because you’re old . . .’

Hugo shook his head and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. Hadley pressed her fingers to her temples. The headache that she’d had for the last two days seemed to lift slightly. She rubbed her eyes.

‘It was my birthday,’ she said. ‘We were supposed to all be going out but she was late. She’s never late. When she called she was just so . . . I don’t know. She made me really cross and I told her that. I never do that, I never find the exact set of words, the words you know will really hurt someone. But this time I actually spoke my mind and now I regret it more than anything. The last thing I said to her was really awful. And I can’t do a thing to change that. It’s so stupid, because even though I meant it, even though it was true, there were so many brilliant things I could have said instead, and all of them were true as well. You’d think that nothing could be worse than her being gone. But this is worse. And I know that’s selfish, but I can’t do anything about it. You don’t know what to say, do you? It’s okay. There’s nothing you could say that would make me feel better. You don’t have to try.’

He smiled quietly, and it was like a small break in the clouds.

‘You haven’t said any of that out loud before, have you?’ he said.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because you don’t know what to think. No one ever does.’

‘I do. I know exactly what to think. It’s all a huge waste of time. It doesn’t matter what we do, or how we do it, because it can all end just like
that
.’ She clicked her fingers and fumbled it. ‘You think Kristina knew what was coming? Even as she slipped, even as she saw the ground rise to meet her? Maybe she just thought,
Oh, I’m going to get my coat wet
, or,
Shit, this is going to hurt a little bit
, but never, never would she have thought,
Everything’s about to stop. For ever
.’

‘There’s grace in that, somehow.’

‘Grace? There’s no grace. It’s chaotic and hopeless, that’s what it is.’

‘It’s not entirely hopeless,’ Hugo said. ‘All we can ask from this life is that there is someone who misses us when we’re gone. You miss her, Hadley. She was beloved.’

They sat opposite one another, neither one speaking for a few minutes. Hugo’s hands stayed folded in his lap and Hadley squeezed the stem of the cognac glass with her fingers. Her eyes pooled as she turned her head to the window. The lake looked full and fit to burst. For the first time since she had found out, Hadley was perfectly still. Her breath came evenly.

‘I’m not the only one to miss her,’ said Hadley. ‘She had a boyfriend. Jacques. I don’t know how to find him. I don’t know if he even knows what happened to her.’

‘You never met him?’

‘It was complicated. He was . . . married. Separated, apparently, but still married. And Kristina felt strange about it, guilty, I think. She kept him as a mystery. I can’t stop thinking about him. How could he know? There’s no one who could tell him.’

‘Only you, perhaps.’

‘I know. I keep thinking that maybe I should try and find him. Is that stupid?’

‘No, it’s not stupid.’

‘But I don’t know anything about him. Only that he’s called Jacques.’

‘That’s something.’

‘He lives in Geneva,’ she said.

‘There you are.’

‘I think he had a fancy job. Or maybe that’s just how I imagined it.’

‘There are always ways to find people, Hadley.’

‘I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin,’ she said, ‘and anyway, I don’t think I’m going to stay. I don’t think I
can
stay.’

‘You can’t be thinking of leaving?’

Hadley shrugged. ‘Maybe. I think so. We did everything together, Hugo. Nothing here feels right any more.’

‘And you think it’ll be so much better if you go home to England?’

‘Not better, but . . . Lausanne’s not the same. Nothing’s the same.’

Hugo’s eyes widened, as if Hadley had said something truly startling.

‘It’d be a terrible shame to throw it all away. To waste two lives,’ he said.

‘It wouldn’t be a waste,’ said Hadley, without conviction, ‘it’d be my old life back again, that’s all. I’d just carry on.’

‘But you’d still be without her. And you’d be without all this too.’ Hugo swept his arm. ‘You’d be bereft, in every sense.’

‘It used to be so perfect here, Hugo. It still is, on the outside. Maybe that’s half the trouble.’

‘Ah. Of course you think that. It’s far too beautiful a place for sadness, yes?’

‘I was so happy here, now I don’t know if I can be. That’s all.’

‘I suppose you think Lausanne is a city full of golden people? A blessed place,
n’est-ce pas
? But Hadley, you think no one cries among the fountains? You think that no one wakes up and stares out at that endless lake, those heaven-reaching mountains, and doesn’t still feel that their life amounts to nothing? You think just because people are neat as clockwork and as smart as the shine on their shoes that they don’t feel the same pain that you do?’

‘I’m not that naïve,’ said Hadley, ‘whatever you may think.’

‘And I’m not so very experienced,’ said Hugo, ‘whatever I may say. You’re feeling, Hadley, that’s all. You’re feeling. And you’re living. You’re too young to know it but not everyone does that. It’s possible, in fact, to pass almost an entire life without doing too much of either. One day, you’ll be glad. You don’t want to get to my age only to look back and realise that you were too late for life. But I’m not worried about you, not like that. You’re not really the running away type, are you? No, not you. You’re more stay and fight.’

‘Stay and fight? Fight what? There’s nothing.’

‘There’s everything.’ Hadley met Hugo’s eyes and they were shining with black intensity. He tapped his hand over his heart. Just twice; one-two.

Hadley glanced away. She thought of Kristina telling her ‘
il faut profiter
’. She looked back at Hugo. He spoke again.

‘What about this Jacques? What of him? I think it’s a noble idea to try and seek him out.’

‘I feel like it’s something I could do,’ said Hadley, quietly. ‘If I stayed, that is.’

‘Yes, you could.’

‘Maybe then I’d see if I still wanted to leave. After I’d found him.’

Hugo nodded. ‘A plan, then. A fine plan.’

He took her hand very lightly between his own. His palms were warm and paper-dry.

‘You know where I am, if you need help, all you have to do is ask. The bar, the chocolate shop, the café . . .’ he smiled and her cheeks tightened. ‘All of the finest places,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Hugo. And for the drink.’

‘You’re going now?’

She slipped her hand free and stood up. She noticed he stayed just as he was, his hands half cupped, as though he’d let a small bird fly from them.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘But you’ll come back?’

‘I’ll leave the handkerchief at the front desk.’

‘Only if I’m not here.’

‘Yes.’

‘But then I often am. My sincere condolences,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if that came across strongly enough before and I’m sorry for that. I’m not very good at some things. I’ve been told that before, but I don’t think I cared about the truth too much then. It seems to matter more, as one gets older. Isn’t that strange? You’d think it would be the reverse.’

‘I want Jacques to know the truth,’ said Hadley, with resolution, ‘I do.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘That Kristina died. And she loved him. What else is there?’

The smallest, saddest smile tipped the corner of his lip.

‘I would say that’s enough,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t you?’

Hadley fastened all the buttons on her coat, one by one, slowly, and then pulled on her gloves. Hugo was watching her, as if waiting for her to say one more thing. So she did.

‘I keep replaying the last conversation we had, and she was upset, I mean, more than usually upset. I didn’t really let her get a word in edgeways, I was too cross, but . . . maybe something wasn’t right.’

‘A fight between lovers?’

‘And she was late. She was never late for anything.’

‘Sometimes things just go wrong, Hadley, that’s what people will tell you. Friends let each other down. Dreadful accidents happen. It’s the way of the world, and there’s no other explanation for it.’

‘I know that,’ she said.

‘Do you? I’m not sure if I buy it myself, not completely. It might be the common consensus, but then I’ve never been much of a believer in common. There is
always
an explanation, Hadley; a pattern of events, cause and effect. Something can seem un-piece-able, but we can always put it together in the end, if that’s what we want to do. And maybe it’ll only tell us what we already know – a random sequence, the worst stroke of luck – but that in itself is an explanation,
n’est-ce pas
? We figure a beginning, and an end, and then we can understand. For all of its senselessness, the world makes sense, and we can live with it.’

Hugo’s voice had lost its usual slow cadence; its formal parlour beats were replaced with a rapid, fervent tone. His hands cut the air as he spoke. He appeared, in that moment, very much younger.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, aware of her stare, ‘I like to make a puzzle out of a thing. Once upon a time it was my job. Now it’s just bad manners.’

‘No,’ said Hadley, ‘you’re right. She was my friend. My dear, dear friend. So it’s up to me to ask the questions that other people won’t, isn’t it? And it’s up to me to find Jacques.’

She lifted her hand in farewell and from his sitting position he stooped a half sort of bow.

‘Oh, and what did you mean when you said “your job”?’

‘I was a writer, once.’

‘And you’re not any more?’

Hugo shook his head, and the weight of years appeared to return. His forehead creased into a frown. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not any more.’

thirteen

Walking home from Ouchy it was
eerily quiet. It was
a
time of day that she had never paid particular attention to before; just before twilight, when lamps were clicking on in the cocoons of people’s homes, and the outside world seemed as if it were closing down. Hadley felt a dull ache settle in her chest. It was an uneasy, flattening feeling, and she realised it was loneliness. She had never been lonely in Lausanne before.

The walk was long and uphill and slippery in places, but she couldn’t take the bus, not with the dreary yellow of the interior light, the windows throwing back her sad reflection, people getting on and getting off, with purpose and direction and homes to go to. She walked through the chill and emptying streets with her head down and her hands thrust deep into her pockets. Not so long ago she would have found the same walk romantic, her and Kristina’s laughter echoing off the shuttered buildings, the silver pools of streetlight, an American stranger stepping from the darkness. Now, loneliness persisted, and Lausanne wore a Sunday evening gloom that felt like it would never end.

When Hadley returned to Les Ormes it was humming with other people’s conviviality. Tinny music and overlapping chatter rang from the kitchens, and there was the boom of an action movie coming from the television room. The corridors held the wafts of dinners, a vaguely spicy hum, and two girls that Hadley didn’t recognise sat curled in the battered armchairs in the lobby, their noses pushed close as they whispered together. They screeched with laughter as she passed, and a nip of anger caught her.

Had there been no announcement? No official message, ringing down the halls? She had imagined a wreath at Kristina’s door, or perhaps a photo of her pinned to the noticeboard in the hall – one of those pictures you saw flashed on television screens or in the pages of newspapers – people smiling their last smiles. Or maybe a poem, copied painstakingly in scratchy, trying-to-be-neat handwriting, by one of the Romantics, Christina Rossetti, perhaps. People would pause as they hurried to the laundry room or the kitchen, dropping an odd sock as they read about Kristina’s passing, later shedding a tear as they stared at the bank of washing machines, watching their load turn and turn. There would be a collective mourning, told in no more than a shared and sorry smile, as everyone’s lives shifted a little, to take on the sad fact of Kristina. But two days had passed and none of this had happened. At Les Ormes, everything was as usual. Perhaps it should have been her job to do those things: to print the photograph, choose the flowers, copy the poem. It should have been Hadley who rallied people in the grief that they didn’t know was theirs to feel. But she hadn’t. She didn’t want to think of marker pens and sticky tape and hunting for the words to talk about her friend in the past tense. Finding Jacques, understanding how Kristina’s last hours were spent, that was a different kind of commemoration. Hugo was right, you couldn’t just let things lie. You had to question, and you had to try and understand. A sudden slip might be the cruellest luck, but there was a
before
, and now there was an
after
; and maybe she was it.

‘You should have come with us, Hadley, it was good to get away,’ said Jenny.

Chase had poured them all glasses of supermarket wine; the kind that was found on the bottom shelf in plastic bottles. It was vinegar-sharp and her eyes stung as she drank it.

‘We found this really pretty spot along the lake and drank hot cider, sitting outside. We just forgot everything, for the whole day. It really helped,’ she said.

‘Bruno and Loretta were daring each other to go in the water, which was ridiculous as it was practically frozen at the edges. In the end Loretta took off her shoe and dipped her toe in, scaring a swan in basically the same moment, so the drinks were on Bruno. For a change.’

Chase laughed, and pushed his hair back from his face. It had grown long in the few weeks that they had been in Lausanne. It was almost the same length as Jenny’s, and the same colour, a watery sort of blond.

Bruno grabbed the plastic bottle from the table and read the label, disdainfully.

‘I clearly should have brought some home with us, this stuff is undrinkable,’ he announced with relish.

‘We could go to Café Clio?’ said Loretta. ‘I feel like dancing, doesn’t anyone else? It’s what we all need.’ She curled her fingers around Bruno’s hands, prising them away from the bottle, setting one on either hip. She made as if to perform a feeble sort of lap dance, then peeled away, giggling into her sleeve. Jenny joined in good-naturedly.

Hadley was drinking her wine from a chipped blue mug, and she pushed it away from her. It spun across the table with unexpected force, and fell on its side with a crack. Everyone looked at her.

‘I just don’t understand what you’re all trying to forget,’ she said. ‘That she ever existed? That we had the inconvenience of being made to feel sad?’

‘Hadley, you know it’s not like that,’ Jenny said, ‘but what else can we do?’

‘I don’t think anyone’s trying very hard to do anything,’ Hadley said.

‘Listen, Hadley, we didn’t really know her,’ Chase said. ‘It was different with you guys, but for us that’s how it was. It’s no less sad, no less tragic, but we can’t all drag it out, pretending that we were such great friends when we all know that we weren’t. I think that would actually be self-indulgent.’

‘Self-indulgent?’ Hadley said, in a voice that was spiked and hard and didn’t feel very much like hers.

‘Hadley,’ pleaded Jenny, ‘Chase doesn’t mean it like that, you know he doesn’t.’

Chase stood up, and she felt his hand on her arm. He dragged her into a quick embrace.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, stiffly, ‘Jenny’s right, it’s just that none of us really know how to be right now.’

He sat down again and she saw Jenny squeeze his knee, her face shining with sympathy. Beneath the table she saw their fingers twine.

‘Come dancing, Hadley,’ said Loretta, her sing-song voice taking on a cajoling note, ‘because it’s about feeling better, right now, really it is. And Kristina would agree. I know she would. She always liked a good time, didn’t she?’

Their attempts at levity were unbearable. Hadley thought of Chase and Jenny’s hands finding one another beneath the table, and how long it had been since she’d heard Jenny mention her boyfriend at home. Just as with Bruno and Loretta, their togetherness seemed to promote a lighter mood; as if they wanted everyone to be as happy as they were, despite all obstacles. There was something so wrong in these obvious displays of pleasure, even if they were as passing as a wartime waltz. Hadley stood up to go. She started to say something then stopped. She began again.

‘I want to try and find Kristina’s boyfriend,’ she said.

‘The boyfriend she didn’t want any of us to know about?’ said Jenny.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Hadley in quick defence. ‘She had her reasons.’

‘What do you mean “try and find”?’ said Chase. ‘Don’t you know how to reach him?’

‘I don’t even know his full name.’

‘Does he even exist?’ said Bruno. ‘Girls make things up all the time.’

Loretta gave a small cry of protest and the two quarrelled the point between kisses.

‘It was in the local newspaper,’ said Chase, ‘I saw it. No picture, but an article, just a snippet really. Maybe he saw it. Maybe he already knows.’

‘I’m surprised there was no picture,’ said Jenny, ‘I really am. Normally when someone’s so pretty they put a huge great picture of them, as though that makes it even more of a tragedy.’

Hadley stared at her. She felt her cheeks reddening with anger. Chase took her arm and she saw Jenny’s face splinter with surprise.

‘Do you even know where to start looking?’ he said gently.

‘Not yet,’ said Hadley, ‘but I’ll figure it out. I want to know what happened that night, Chase. When we were laughing and drinking and carrying on without her, I need to know what happened.’

He looked at her as though he was about to say something, his lip curling in what seemed like disagreement, but he thought better of it. He shrugged.

‘I guess it feels good to try and do something, right?’

She nodded. ‘Someone else said that. Stay and fight.’

She felt the stares of the others, so she left them then, not caring that as she banged the door she heard their voices rise up behind her. A little later she heard them all leave. Soon they would be tripping through the still-snowy streets, merry and careless. In her room, Hadley changed into her pyjamas early, and sat cross-legged on her bed, her pillows pulled askew. It was easy for the others to keep their distance; Chase was right, they weren’t connected to Kristina in the way that she was. It hadn’t been their party she had been late for, their frustrated words spurring her to hurry with abandon, without a care for blinding blizzards or icy patches. Nor had they seen the unperfected version of Kristina; in her
Pierrot
nightshirt with the ends of her hair splintering loose, how her cheeks grew pink-spotted when she got angry or upset or guilty as she talked about Jacques. They were already moving on, she could see it, and she knew that for them, Kristina would soon be no more than a gasp-drawing anecdote they would recount when they were home for the Christmas break; a cautionary tale that even in a place as perfect as Lausanne there was tragedy.

She stood up and went over to the window. The gloom of her unlit room fell behind her and the city sparkled as it always had: relentlessly optimistic, ceaselessly beautiful, and pricked with thousands of tiny lights. Perhaps it was full of aching hearts; maybe it was, as Hugo said, just like anywhere else, after all. She thought of Hugo sitting in a room somewhere, hunched over his typewriter, staring into a blank page. The writer who didn’t write. What would have happened if she hadn’t talked to him today? Would she be packing clothes into her suitcase, unsticking the postcards from her wall? She was grateful to him, this person she hardly knew. She laid the flat of her hand on the cold windowpane. Somewhere, too, beyond the rooftops and further down the lake, was Jacques. Perhaps, without even realising it, he was waiting for her to find him. Maybe she would just stay long enough to do that. She moved her hand from the glass and touched her cheek with her fingers; they were ice-tipped and she shivered all the way to her toes. She yanked the blinds down on the city and turned back to the darkness.