Harm's Way (25 page)

Every morning, when I walked into the museum, the world instantly felt calmer. Here was a place where loud voices, dramatic gestures and violent emotions were stifled. Simply to take my place on that wooden chair, surrounded by the past and its sublimated emotions, restored some of my sangfroid. A brittle cough made me jump: for once those whispering slippers had failed to announce her arrival.

‘
Ça va?
' She'd crept up on me, shattering the first steady heartbeat I had experienced that day. ‘Oh Anna. You look terrible. Have you slept at all?'

I shook my head, willing her away. ‘I'll be fine. It's quiet today, and I'd rather be here than at home, waiting by the
phone. By the way,' I watched her brighten as she anticipated the favour I would ask, thinking with grim amusement that it was all coming together nicely for her, ‘I gave Stephen your mobile number. I hope that's all right. It's just that I left mine at home, and he promised he'd call when he gets back from Ireland later today.'

‘Of course that's fine. I'll let you know the second he calls.'

But he didn't call that morning, or that afternoon, and the fear that he had found Beth in Ireland and that she had told him everything dominated my thoughts. For some reason the idea of Stephen finding out was almost as horrifying to me as the knowledge that Beth already had. I had twice fought the urge to go and find Isabelle, and twice succumbed, only to be greeted with the same doleful smile and shaking head: Stephen still hadn't called.

I stayed at the museum as late as I could that night, desperate to avoid Christian. I needn't have bothered; he didn't come home. At a quarter to one Stephen woke me up. He was back at the flat, but his voice sounded tinny, as though he were still in Ireland.

‘When did you get back?'

‘This afternoon.'

‘And you didn't call me? How was it? Did you find her?'

There was a pause, as though this last question – the only question I was ever going to ask – had come as a surprise.

‘No. Can you get out of work tomorrow morning? I need to see you.'

He delivered the phrase in a businesslike manner. My instincts told me that he had found Beth, and that she had told him everything.

*    *    *

‘Christian.'

I'd awoken the next morning to the sound of his key in the lock. Now he was perched on the edge of the mattress, fiddling with the remote control, the thinning grey fabric of his T-shirt stretched tight across his shoulderblades.

‘Christian.'

He was constantly fixing things: playing with electric cables, changing fuses or mending the stove. Anything to avoid looking at me.

‘Yes?'

He didn't turn, so I spoke to the neck that no longer aroused me and its ladder of golden hairs.

‘Stephen rang last night. I think he might know, but I'm not sure. Maybe he's just tired from the trip. Anyway, he definitely sounded weird.'

There was a pause, and the click of a fitting being slid into place, before he replied. ‘Does that surprise you?'

A pause. ‘Why are you making everything sound as though it's my fault?' I knew, as I said this, the conversation that would ensue. But I refused to bear the burden alone.

‘I don't know.' He turned to face me. ‘Nothing's ever your fault, is it? But you're right: it's also my fault for not avoiding you, for giving in to you. Remember that day on the beach when you thought I was asleep? That was you, Anna. That was you starting this.'

I sat down gracelessly, terrified that I had guessed what he would say next. ‘I'm not coming with you, Anna, to meet Stephen. Because if you're right, and Beth has told him, then me being there will only make things worse. Stephen has never liked me. How could he? He had Beth all to himself before I came along.'

‘I can't do this on my own, Christian.'

‘Yes, you can. You don't need anyone.'

In one last-ditch attempt to convince him I leant towards his face with a smile, and tried to kiss him. But he saw only the desperation in that smile. Catching my chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger, holding me up before him like a piece of fruit on a market stall, lingering over the lips and then moving up, with an expression of distaste, to the eyes, he pushed me away.

‘No, Anna.'

‘You're a coward.'

His head was once again hunched over the remote control.

‘So are you.'

Stephen was already sitting on a bench by the curved stone balustrades overlooking the Palais du Luxembourg ten minutes before we were due to meet. I too had arrived early and spotted him at once, recognising the blond muss of his hair through the trees, rendered unseasonably leafless by that vicious summer.

My heart had sunk when he'd suggested we meet there: it was the backdrop to my happiest days in Paris. Instead of going straight over to Stephen, I watched him staring up into the low sky, a jigsaw puzzle of grey with one piece missing where clear blue shone through. He checked his watch, and I tried, from that gesture, and from the fact that his back was not resting against the slated spine of the bench but anxiously bent forward, to decipher whether he knew. I began my approach, with a half-smile neither too brash nor too culpable. It soon faded.

‘How was Ireland? You look exhausted. Did you find anything out?'

I was aware only that I had to keep talking.

‘No. No, I didn't. And when I got back last night, I tried to call you on that number you gave me.'

The events of the past few days had blurred my memory, and for a moment I couldn't remember which number he was talking about.

‘I got hold of Isabelle, who told me to come over; that you'd be back at any minute. So I took a taxi round there.'

He hadn't looked at me once, still gazing upwards, as though trying to establish whether it might rain, and I looked at the blue wrist lying upturned in his lap, wondering at Isabelle's extraordinary manoeuvres.

‘And I waited, and waited. But you weren't there. Which makes sense, considering you don't live there and you never have done.'

‘Stephen, you know that Isabelle's a little …'

‘So there I am, in this flat (which, by the way, is nowhere near where you said it was) talking to Isabelle, when she takes a deep breath and says she has something to tell me.'

It was pointless to try to interrupt. I could tell that he had written out the script in his head and would not stop until he had recited it all.

‘And she starts this long, convoluted story, and at first I can't understand what she's telling me, and then I realise that she is only repeating things you've told her. And that it's all true. So I stop interrupting and let her finish, and at the end, she tells me that she's sorry to have to be the one to tell me, and, like a school teacher, asks me if I have any questions. And I do have one, as it happens, but it turns out that it's the only question she doesn't really know the answer to.'

‘What's that?' I asked flatly.

‘How long?'

He looked at me for the first time and I felt myself shrivel with humility beneath his gaze.

‘How long had you two been …?'

‘Stephen …'

‘I'm so sorry. Have I offended your sensibilities?'

‘Listen, Stephen. It wasn't like that. And it didn't start … I mean, we didn't start … well, not until quite recently.'

‘When?'

Whatever I said would have precipitated the response I got. I felt something inside me implode, softly.

‘In Normandy.'

‘In Normandy? Are you serious? That's not possible. While we were all under the same roof?'

‘I'm not going to go into the details, Stephen. What's the point? I'm sorry that it had to happen, and I never wanted it to go this far. You've got to believe that. If I could take it all back, I would.'

‘Why did it “have to happen”, Anna? That's where you've got it wrong. Shall I explain to you how most people live their lives? They see things that they want, all the time, and they accept that they can't always have them. Only you don't have that reflex, do you? And the funny thing is that from the moment I met you, I was aware of that, only it didn't matter to me, because I never thought that side of you would touch either Beth or me. Do you know how she found out?'

I nodded.

‘Well?'

‘I have a fair idea. But does it really matter now, Stephen?'

‘You were just what she needed right now – some careless little girl to take away the only thing making her happy.'

‘You make it sound like it was all me, Stephen. Christian wasn't exactly kicking and screaming. And she has plenty of things in her life: he … he's nothing.'

‘I don't doubt that, although I'm surprised to hear you say it. But I don't give a damn about him. Some dead-beat French guy who should have worshipped the ground she walked on? No, I never held out much faith in him, but for some reason she loved him. Oh, and don't be so arrogant as
to think that she would do anything to herself' – he threw his head back and laughed: a mirthless, black laugh – ‘because of a selfish child.'

I wasn't sure what I had expected, but it wasn't this.

‘So where is she then, Stephen?'

He shook his head, unable to maintain the pitch of his anger.

‘I don't know. Her father now can't even remember when he last spoke to her on the phone, let alone that whole business about her saying she was coming to see him. Meanwhile Ruth swears blind she's heard nothing from her for two weeks, but for all I know she's just protecting her.'

A jogger with bare legs ran past, spraying damp earth behind him. Neither of us spoke as the susurration of his nylon shorts retreated into the distance.

‘But you know her better than anyone. You must have an idea of how she would react to … well, to something like this? Where might she go?'

‘If I knew that I'd be there now. I've already spoken to the police today and they've promised to keep us – me – informed.'

‘But Stephen, we need to forget about all the other stuff now, and concentrate on finding her. I know I've been a terrible friend, no,' I shook my head, ‘worse. But I do love her and I want to help. You will tell me, if you hear anything, won't you?'

‘Why should I when all of this is because of you? Do you really think that you're the kind of person Beth needs in her life? I don't think so.'

I reeled at the harshness of his words. There had to be some way of redeeming myself, some explanation I could give for
the way I had behaved, some lie that would make it all go away, and yet I couldn't find one.

Placing one palm on his knee and the other on the chipped green bench, Stephen pushed himself up, looking for a second like an elderly man, and walked off.

I can bring him around. And then together we'll find Beth, and I'll get everything back the way it was before
. These were my thoughts as, smiling but with tears in my eyes, I found myself wandering the back streets of the Latin Quarter an hour later, with no sense of where I was going. One thing I was sure of: I was not ready to go back to the damp, suffocating confines of Christian's flat. I blamed him for all of it. If he had not shown himself to be so weak a covert flirtation might have been our only crime. As I pictured him now, coming up behind me in Pierre's bathroom, I felt almost affronted by his aggression, and amazed at myself for giving in so readily. In the narrow street I walked down, where the cars were lined bumper to bumper, a dusty Fiat bore the daubed inscription, ‘
Je t'aime Nathalie'
across its rear window. I wondered whether Nathalie knew about it, whether it meant anything at all, and every question brought me back to Beth.

‘But we're short-staffed at the moment, Anna. Is there any way you can come in later on?'

I had called in sick the day Stephen had confronted me, and Céline's response was typically ungracious when I called in sick again the next morning. But I wasn't lying. I did feel sick, sick at the idea of the man I had just spent the night with, the same man I could now hear brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

The previous night had been the first platonic one for us, and I still wasn't sure whether I felt relief or a terminal sense of disappointment. I had watched him getting into bed, intrigued by the lack of desire I felt for that body. But the fear, before he walked through the door at a quarter past midnight, that he might not come home at all, had reminded me that I needed him, that what we had done was forcing us, for the moment at least, to stay together.

That day I was unable to leave the flat. Stephen hadn't rung: I hadn't expected he would. At midday I had made myself a cup of coffee and, with my knees pulled into my chest, sat at the kitchen window watching the empty flat across the road. I didn't cry; I wasn't the self-pitying kind. And who would I be crying for? I believed Stephen when he said that Beth would be fine, because it suited me not to believe anything worse. One thing bothered me: I didn't see how she could have escaped the searches Stephen had informed me of, which now involved the Irish police. Perhaps she knew that by disappearing it would bring this punishment on my head.

I could not distinguish one day from another over the fortnight that followed. The rain fell incessantly. The first few mornings I rang the museum to explain that my stomach bug showed no signs of abating. Then I stopped calling altogether, feeling no surprise when, finally, a message from Céline on my answerphone informed me that my services were no longer required.

There was only one thing left to do. Sitting in a deserted Chinese restaurant near the flat, I dialled my parents' number.
When my mother unexpectedly answered, a wave of love nearly took my breath away.

‘Hello?'

‘Mum, it's me.'

‘Hello, darling, how is everything?'