Conrad & Eleanor (30 page)

‘You all right?'

‘I am.'

‘OK. She's already four months along.'

‘Four months? But she's like a piece of string!'

‘I know. I know. She says food makes her feel sick. She hasn't told him because she's convinced he'll try to make her have an abortion, and she says she wants to have it.'

‘She can't even look after herself.'

‘That's true. But there's an argument which says that if she has someone else to look after, someone totally dependent on her… Maybe it will nudge her into being a bit more responsible.'

‘Like it has done so far.'

‘Look, El, I don't know the answer.'

‘What did you tell her?'

‘I said she must do what she thinks best. I said we'd give her all the help we can.'

Cara won't have any money. She won't have anywhere to live. Con's point about being responsible for a child is a good one, but not if Cara comes and lives here. Because the care of the child will simply fall on Con and Cara will continue to behave like a child herself. El restrains herself from saying this. There's time enough, and Con will see the sense of it. Better for them to pay Cara's rent on a place of her own.

‘Has she been to the doctor?'

‘Yes. And I've told her to make another appointment this week to get some dietary advice.'

‘And she's been living with that lout all this time? She's going to have to tell him.'

Con shakes his head. ‘She's staying at her friend Jenny's. She's been there since New Year apparently. She tells me – I don't know how true it is – she tells me that she's split up with him for good.'

‘Well. It would simplify matters, if it was true.'

‘Yes.'

They look at each other and El smiles wryly. Con grins back at her.

‘So. Grandparents, eh? When d'you reckon to start knitting?'

I
t is five
years later.

Conrad is looking after Cara's children, which he does two days a week: four-year-old Tilly and the baby, Lucas. After a fretful morning Lucas has fallen deeply asleep, and Tilly is happily lining up all her small farm animals, Playmobil figures and dinosaurs in ranks across the kitchen floor. The arrangement never reaches its end, because she continues to move different creatures from the back to the front, and to set others in pairs, instructing them in a half-whispered, sing-song voice as she does so; sometimes making a shift in direction, so that they must all be aligned facing the window, or the door; sometimes creating a carefully selected breakaway group, which is then rejoined by the entire contingent. She can be happy playing like this for hours. Con has tried listening in to her story but all he can glean are fragments: ‘You can come with me.' ‘No no, we're going this way.' ‘The cockadoo is being very naughty, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.' She doesn't like it if he sits and listens, so he gets on with cooking. El has said she'll be back to eat tonight, but she'll probably be late. He wants to feed Cara when she comes to collect the kids; he guesses that by the time she gets them home and into bed she's too tired to bother cooking for herself.

There has been talk for quite a while of Cara and the kids moving in with him and El, and he's hopeful it will happen. Less driving around for all of them, built-in babysitting and company for Cara, and the opportunity for him to exercise more control over what they all eat. Cara has ballooned and shrunk repeatedly since first getting pregnant, and at the moment she is nothing but skin and bones. There is part of his thinking which still classes plentiful eating with freedom from anxiety; it was hard not to think of Cara as more contented when she was plump: placid, maternal. Illogical, though, if she was comfort-eating. The plumpness was as much a sign of distress as is the skinniness. As he grates the parmesan he ponders the power of physical appearance to suggest personality and mood. And he thinks again of shape-shifting Maddy.

In the days after they returned home from Bologna, it became apparent to him that he would need to see Maddy, for precisely the same reason that a child needs to look under the bed where he thinks a wolf is hiding. He needed to stop her from being his nightmare. He let the idea gather force while he ticked off the other things he needed to do. Like giving in his notice at work. And, after he had actually left, and after long discussions with El, writing a letter to Carrington Bio-Life, copied to Corastra, saying that as a scientist whose animals had been kept at CBL, he had damning evidence of conditions in their monkey house. He listed the problems and requested a meeting to discuss changes they should implement. He indicated that if they did not reply within two weeks he would go to the inspectorate with an official complaint. El agreed that the anonymous release of his photos may not have had much effect, but with his name and his research experience behind it, and with a real rather than a vague threat, they might find him difficult to ignore. Their reply, with a meeting date, came within the week.

And at the meeting, the director of the animal facility greeted him with smooth assurance. There had been a change of regime; he was new in post, he had been appointed to ensure that Carrington Bio-Life's spotless record on animal welfare was maintained at all costs. He took Conrad's points extremely seriously, and he was very pleased to be able to tell him that all the deficiencies noted by Conrad had been remedied. Would Conrad like to accompany him on a tour of the facility?

Grimly, Con agreed, and naturally all was as the director said. Given that the animals were there as subjects of research, conditions were acceptable. Con was sickened by the sight of them but there were no obviously moribund animals being kept alive. The cages were clean, they all had water, their charts were scrupulously detailed and up to date. The director thanked him warmly for his interest and invited him to return whenever he liked. Con was shaking by the time he left, but it was over. He had done his best, and now he could try to forget it.

In all this time Maddy, the threat of Maddy, lurked in his and El's minds. She had sent two further emails since his return, from a MAD2 email address: the first,
Nice try, Houdini
, had badly unnerved him because he wasn't aware of having escaped anything. What trap had he blindly side-stepped? He reviewed his recent movements, imagining her watching from the shadows. The second read:
I know what you're going to do before you even think of it. Don't imagine I've forgotten you.
He guessed she had found out that he had left his job. El still thought he should go to the police. She called Mad a stalker.

One morning he emailed her simply requesting a meeting, stating a safe time and place: a Costa coffee shop in the centre of Manchester at 2pm on a Tuesday. He and El deliberated whether El should be there too, sitting discreetly at another table, keeping an eye on things. But in a public place, it seemed like overkill. Maddy emailed back succinctly:
OK
.

In the café, Conrad spotted her before she saw him. She was wearing jeans and a black T shirt, with a scuffed leather bomber jacket. She looked hard and lean and dangerous, the very opposite of that mousy librarian he had met at first. Every time he saw her she seemed to adopt a different style. She pulled out the chair and slumped down opposite him without giving any sign of recognition. ‘You haven't got a drink,' he said, despising himself for the thought that he might go and buy her one.

‘That's because I don't want a drink.'

‘OK. I'm here to tell you this has to stop.'

‘What?'

‘You. Following me. Threatening me.'

She laughed. ‘You did an ace disappearing act in Munich. Like a secret agent.'

‘I knew you were in Munich.'

‘I might have been.'

‘Look, Maddy, I am doing what you want, OK? I have resigned my job, I am no longer working with animals, and I am advising CBL on how to improve conditions in their research facility.'

She shook her head. ‘You give an inch and pretend it's a mile. You need to talk to all the other scientists whose animals are there, you need to persuade them all that their work is cruel and evil, and you need to get the place closed down.'

Conrad took a mouthful of coffee. It was good and strong and he realised he was enjoying it. He was back in a world where the taste of coffee could be enjoyed. She was not part of that world. ‘That won't happen,' he told her. ‘Animal research is vital. I am prepared to work for better conditions for the animals but nothing else. There's no way that place will close down.'

Maddy suddenly leant forward over the table, bringing her face close to his. ‘I went to prison because of you. I went to prison because you're such a wishy-washy, two-faced bastard. Have you ever been to prison? D'you know how shit it is? When they take away your clothes, and put you in a stinking little cage and shove disgusting slop at you three times a day – like they do to your animals in their lock-up?' Her voice was low but piercing. Con was aware of glances from other tables. He forced himself to keep his own voice light and conversational.

‘You're mistaken, Maddy. I had nothing to do with that.'

‘Oh yes you did. You wouldn't do what needed doing, you wouldn't denounce CBL, you wouldn't identify yourself, so I was forced into reprisals against your fellow torturers. I had to take the fight to them.'

‘Forced? Who forced you?'

‘If you care about something – hah, you don't even know what that means. If you
cared
about the animals, you would do everything in your power to save them. You would plot, you would fight, you would risk your own safety, you would do
anything
.'

‘Paint slogans on cars, and put sanitary towels through letterboxes?'

‘Anything. Anything for the cause.'

‘I don't see how that helps your cause.'

‘That's because you've got no fucking imagination. Don't you think those little men might be scared? Don't you think they might be worrying, oh dear today it's my car but tomorrow it might be me? Maybe I should change my job? Don't I know that the only reason you're conceding anything at all is because I finally got you good and frightened?'

For a moment Con quailed, feeling the power of her logic. No, he told himself. Don't let her do this again. ‘You don't know anything about me. I'm not frightened of you because there's nothing you can do to harm me. I've told my wife all about you. After I left Munich I went missing for a few days and the police were involved in finding me. They are still expecting a full account of what happened, and if you threaten me again – if you so much as look at me again – I shall give them your name.'

‘Hah!' she snorted contemptuously.

‘And your aliases, and your criminal record, and I will press charges.'

‘What charges?'

‘Stalking. Threatening behaviour. I've got all your emails.'

‘You're a dick.'

Conrad took a mouthful of coffee and set the cup carefully down. She watched him for a while then leant over deliberately and grabbed his half-full cup from its saucer. She raised it to her lips and he thought she was going to drink, but she spat into the cup.

‘You won't know what's hit you,' she said.

‘Maybe not, but you will be prime suspect. As I said, my wife has all the details.' The skin on her fingers, clenched around his cup, was rough and chapped. He imagined her scrubbing herself, trying to get rid of the red paint she had used to daub the cars. Suddenly she seemed to him like an angry kid – defiant, hostile, knowing she was cornered. ‘You have to promise never to contact me again. Not to email me or threaten me or follow me. You have to leave me alone.'

‘Or what?' she jeered. ‘Or Mr Plod will lock me up again?'

‘Yes,' he said simply. There was a brief silence. ‘And you know you don't like it,' he added.

‘You are a pathetic wanker,' she said, setting down his cup.

‘Fine. Just promise.'

‘Promise? You think I'll keep a
promise
, scout's honour?'

‘Promise.'

She was defeated. He knew that. It seemed to him he had known it from the moment she threw herself into the chair opposite him. What did she have? Nothing. All the power was with him. She pushed back her chair abruptly.

‘You need to promise, Maddy, or I'm talking to the police.'

‘Oh mister wank-face, yes sir, I pwomise!' She sang it out loudly enough for all the heads in the café to turn, and then she was gone, slamming out of the place at full speed. A few people caught Con's eye and shook their heads or raised their eyebrows, indicating sympathy. He nodded at them and went to get himself a fresh cup of coffee. Which he would enjoy from start to finish.

And Maddy had never contacted him again after that; her name never cropped up, she disappeared from view. It seemed as if El continued to worry about her long after she had receded from Con's thoughts – sometimes he would be surprised by El wondering what had happened to her or who she was tormenting now. With distance Con could see that Maddy had done him no physical harm. She had committed no real crime.

And now – with Cara's two kids to deal with, and the allotment he shares with Paul, and films to watch with Dan, and the usual shopping and cooking and cleaning at home – that whole crisis of five years ago seems both distant and unreal, as if it happened to someone else, some other, febrile, neurotic Conrad. His flight and El's pursuit of him were enough to shock both of them into temporary good behaviour; into a period of talking, of honesty, of consideration, of nostalgic love. But this phase did not last long. How could it? he reasons with himself. Their lives are too similar to what they were before. El is still following her career, her department is having astonishing success with stem cells, they are attracting major funding, they are in the news. She is sought after, as a conference speaker, as a Ph.D. supervisor, as a research partner, and to sit on policy, prize-giving and funding bodies. If she agreed to all the requests, she would spend half the year overseas. There is no reason for her to give it up; she loves it and she thrives on it. So of course Con is house-husband; of course he eats at home, alone, while she attends glittering dinners; of course he deals with the crises in the lives of their offspring; of course the novelty of his bid for escape wears off. They are what they are, living the life they have always lived together – why should his running away for a few days have any lasting effect on that?

He sometimes wonders how they would have fared in their marriage if El had been the man and he the woman. He guesses it would have made it easier for him to accept his role. The sexism of that thought makes him guilty. By and large they get on. Sometimes they talk, but mostly they simply co-exist, in relatively harmonious parallel lives. She told him the affair with Louis was over and he believes her. They make love together occasionally, rather awkwardly, and both with a sense that this is not quite how they want it to be. At times he tells himself it is a simple question of age, and at other times that they have lived too long together, and known each other too well. He couldn't say if he loves El. But he is her husband.

Eleanor comes home at 8 that evening to find Cara and the children still there, and her dinner in the oven. The house is a tip and she realises again how much she doesn't want Cara to move back. But it isn't fair of her. Conrad is the one who helps Cara with the children, and it is only right that the decision should be his. Cara and the children are company for him and give him a role. If he's happy to have them underfoot all day then that is up to him. She thinks of the times she has come home to find the house quiet and tidy, and him waiting to serve up dinner for two; when they have sat like civilised adults discussing the minutiae of her research, or his gardening, or the next holiday they are planning, or Megan's latest success in the theatre, and then moved to the comfy chairs in the sitting room and buried themselves happily in their respective books. She thinks of the calm mutual contentment of their evenings alone together, which will be disrupted by Cara's dramas, and by children playing up and trying to delay their bedtimes, and by all the mess and muddle of family life. Why isn't she ever enough for Conrad on her own?