Dancing in the Dark (12 page)

‘Zen is good,' I say. ‘And of course your silver birch would fit in well.'

‘I'm into meditation at the moment,' Regis says. ‘And your girl suggested making the whole thing much more elemental, black slate chips, white rocks, a little waterfall type thing, very minimalist and peaceful, and God knows I need some peace at the moment, clients getting up my nose, changing their minds about the slightest thing, after I've put in hours of work.'

‘I know
exactly
how you must feel.' I roll my eyes. ‘We could use bamboo, a few water plants. It will definitely be peaceful.' And much easier to design. I think of the hours I've already spent on her behalf and shrug. Mind-changing doesn't come cheap, but that's her problem, not mine.

‘Also, I just bought these three absolutely fabulous urns which would look marvellous here and there, shame to waste them, don't you think?'

‘These are Zen urns?'

‘Not exactly, but you could incorporate them, I should imagine, very tasteful with sort of bulrushes or an orchid growing in them or what's that stuff that koala bears like?'

‘Eucalyptus?'

‘No, it's not koalas, it's pandas and they eat bamboo, which is very Japanesey, isn't it?'

‘Pandas? You're losing me, Regis.'

‘I
think
it's pandas,' she says doubtfully.

‘You're going to have to make up your mind,' I say. ‘I've already spent more than enough time on your project, and my construction team's been standing by to get started for over two weeks now. I'll have one more discussion with you, but this really will have to be the final meeting. Otherwise you'll need to find another designer.'

Whereas what
I
need is to pin my mother down, hold her while she wriggles and squirms, demand the answer to questions I should have asked years ago. I may not like them, but at least I'll know. That's what I tell myself. But it won't be that simple. All my life she has managed to hide the truth. I sense that she won't easily relinquish it now.

Marnie duly arrives and finds me staring at nothing. I haven't seen her since my return from the States as she's been away, guiding her eldest daughter through her first pregnancy. ‘What's happened?' she says, frowning at me.

‘Nothing much.' Only my whole life.

‘Something has.'

I shrug.

She brings me a mug of coffee. Proper coffee, continental roast, fresh-ground, dripped through a filter. ‘Is it something you can talk about?' she asks.

‘I'm tired,' I say briefly. Since Caro's party, I've scarcely slept; this morning I was up at first light, working in the garden, trying not to think about Bellamy's bombshell, wondering what might have happened if the weather hadn't broken that particular afternoon, if Mrs Crawfurd had telephoned before her visit, if the reception area hadn't been out of service. If it hadn't rained, Liz Crawfurd would have stayed out in the garden and never seen the picture of my father. And that might have been the end of it. Nothing would have changed. But it
did
rain, and because of that, Mrs Crawfurd
did
see the painting. And after that, it was too late to halt the unfolding of events.

‘By the way, there's a new addition to the staff,' I say. ‘She's got blue hair.'

‘That's always useful.'

I explain about Trina.

‘So, how did your trip to the States go?' she says, when I've finished.

With an effort I shake off my depression and outline the details of my visit. It seems like a lifetime ago, instead of two or three weeks. I saw two clients in Connecticut, two in Maine, one in Vermont, all of them with expensive friends who are dying to have me design gardens for them, too. On top of that, Bruno Vitti, owner of a string of fancy New York florist shops, invited me out to lunch to talk about the possibility of franchising my Decorations, for what sounds like an exorbitant amount of money. ‘Sounds promising, don't you think?' I say, when I've finished.

‘Yes . . . except that you're not in a position to take on any more commissions.'

‘I know we're full but—'

‘Full? We're absolutely chocker.'

‘I could squeeze the schedules a little.'

Marnie shakes her head. ‘They're already bursting at the seams.'

‘There's always a bit of give, if we look for it.'

‘Can't be done, Theo. You're cramming in far too much.' Marnie often acts as though I'm one of her children, especially when it comes to handing out unasked-for advice. ‘You're not a Superwoman.'

‘No, but . . .' I hate to think of new business getting away from me.

‘You've got the same problem as most successful one-person businesses, which boils down to the fact that however efficient and energetic you are, there's a limit to how much work you can handle on your own. If you want to expand, you absolutely have to find a partner to share the load. You're starting to look like some kind of zombie. You have to accept that you're already doing as much as you possibly can.'

‘Yes, but—'

‘Take on any more projects, and your standards are going to fall, the clients will go elsewhere, the whole thing's going to collapse on top of you, and you'll be found gibbering under the wreckage, in the middle of a full-blown nervous breakdown.'

I feel as though I'm halfway there already. ‘Thank you for making it so clear.'

‘A like-minded person, that's what you need.'

‘Is there such a thing? I'd feel really sorry for anyone with a mind like mine.'

‘It's just a question of finding him – or her. Doesn't matter which. Him, probably, because in my experience, hims usually have more money to invest. What is it they call a backer in the theatre? An angel? You need an angel.'

‘It's a pleasing thought.' I see Fergus Costello, rising from a blue Aegean sea, wings white against the sun. ‘But until he – or she – flies in, I dare not turn anything down.'

‘Dare? Of course you dare.' Marnie takes off her glasses and massages the bridge of her nose. ‘Not that you need to expand, in my opinion. You're doing extremely well as it is, and the one thing you shouldn't do at this stage is risk losing the personal service which made you so successful in the first place.'

‘I still can't afford to turn clients away.'

‘Of course you can.' She taps the ledger on the desk. ‘I was just checking the figures for last year.'

‘I
can't
, Marnie.'

She opens the ledger. ‘Have a look yourself, if you don't believe me.'

‘Just because we had one good year doesn't mean that we'll have another.'
Just because I have no father doesn't mean he doesn't exist
. . .

‘Don't be ridiculous. You've had three good years and there's another one already shaping up.'

She doesn't understand. ‘I may be flavour of the month at the moment,' I say, ‘but who knows how long that'll continue?'

She laughs. ‘What are you
talking
about? You're booked up for—'

And suddenly, frighteningly, I lose it. I bang my fist down on the desk. Although Marnie recoils, it doesn't stop me. Distress and anger flare crimson inside me, burning up through my gut and exiting from my mouth in furious words. ‘Why do you always
argue
with me! What do you know about it anyway?'

‘I know enough.'

She's never seen me like this.
I've
never seen me like this. I don't shout. I don't do angry. And here I am pounding the desk again, glaring, yelling. ‘I'm not in a position to turn business down,' I shout.

‘I've been doing the books for the past three years,' she says steadily. ‘You own this place outright, plus the flat in London. You have no outstanding debts. People are queuing up for your services. You're doing
OK
, Theo, trust me.'

‘It only takes a downturn in the economy.' I'm speaking too loudly. ‘One more disaster on the stock exchange, and those orders could be cancelled faster than you can say bankruptcy.'

I see my house sold, the flat gone to pay my debts, myself reduced to some ugly little bedsit, everything I've worked so hard for gone up in smoke, my acre of garden reduced to a single plant pot on the window sill. I see a blank where my father used to be. And, in the distance, I see my mother's unforgiven ten-year absence, which I've never questioned, nor she explained.

I'm shaking. ‘Taking on someone else will be expensive, and not even necessarily an improvement. I just can't take the risk.'

She's pushed her chair back from her desk, as far away from me as she can get.

‘Calm down, Theo,' she says. ‘Just calm down.'

Trembling, I turn away, put my hand to my mouth. All these years, I've been building myself a bulwark against the black spaces in my past, and I cannot jeopardize that. Yet if I'm honest with myself, I know that my present rage has nothing to do with my economic position.

Anger leaks from me as though someone just pulled out the plug. I draw in a couple of deep breaths. ‘I'm sorry,' I say. ‘I don't know what got into me.'

‘You're tired,' she says.

‘Wrong time of the month, too.'

But we both know it's something worse than that. For a moment we drink coffee in silence, then she says, as though nothing has happened, ‘You saw your messages.'

‘Yes. I've already dealt with wretched Regis Harcourt. She doesn't seem to have the slightest idea that I've had Bob on stand-by for weeks, waiting to go in.'

‘That's another thing: his back problems.'

‘I already met Harry, his son. He seems pretty competent.' There's a tremor running down my legs, a tremble at my wrists. I am embarrassed by my outburst.

Marnie raises her eyebrows at me. One of the reasons I'd hired her in the first place was her eyebrows. Sleek, narrow, rounded as crescent moons: I covet them. My own are of the thick untrained sort that you could weave horseblankets out of, were you inclined that way. Over the years I must have pulled enough hair out of them to fill two cushions, and they
still
look a mess. Marnie swears that she's never plucked in her life, but I have my doubts. She gathers papers into a pile, opens desk drawers and closes them again. She doesn't look at me.

‘Marnie,' I say.

‘What?'

‘I'm really sorry.'

She stands for a moment with files clutched against her chest, avoiding my eyes. Then she sighs. ‘That's OK,' she says. ‘I once had a boss who threw a glass ashtray at me.'

‘Did he hit you?'

‘No. I just caught it and threw it back.'

‘Did you hit him?'

‘Unfortunately, yes. He had to have three stitches.'

We both laugh, but I sense that our relationship has undergone a subtle change. I suspect that it's not for the better.

What makes it all so much worse is that, suddenly, I don't really care whether the business expands or folds. I'm full of emptiness. If I'm not the person I believed I was, then who am I? Everything else seems completely irrelevant.

When Marnie has left, I stand in front of the painting which is not of my father. ‘Where are you?' I ask aloud. ‘Who are you?'

And then I think,
If Luna's lied about so much else, maybe she's lied about the most important thing of all.

T
rina arrives the next morning, still blue-haired, still dressed in her widow's weeds. ‘I've been working on that assignment you gave me,' she says, putting a folder down in front of me.

‘Assignment? What did I . . .?'

‘You know . . . the girl in the wheelchair.'

‘Holly Crawfurd, yes.'

‘I'll show you, if you like.' She pushes the folder across the desk and leaves the room with a hopeful glance at me over her shoulder. I open it, glance through the sketches it contains.

After a while, she appears with a cup of instant coffee and puts it in front of me. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I raise it to my lips, trying not to grimace.

Super-casual, she says, ‘What do you think?'

‘I think your ideas are very good. You'll have to redo your drawings, of course.'

‘I already
did
,' she says indignantly.

‘You'll have to do them again. These aren't nearly neat and clear enough.' I can see she is longing for more from me, but I'm too distressed to offer it. In fact, looking at anything, having to take decisions, talk to potential customers, even confronting Trina about her hair, is suddenly more than I can cope with.

‘I'm off to London this afternoon,' I say. ‘I'll be staying overnight. Since my secretary won't be coming in tomorrow, you'll have to be in charge of the office.'

‘Dunno what I'm going to do, stuck in here all day,' she grumbles.

‘You can answer the phone, rework these sketches you've done. They're good but they're still very rough.' I gesture at the filing cabinet in one corner. ‘Have a look at some of my preliminary plans – filed under P for Plans, in case you're wondering – and see how I do it.'

‘Don't know if I'm up to it.'

‘Of course you are. I'll help you when I get back, if you have any problems. I told you already, these are good.'

‘You mean it?'

‘Yes. I like the way you've designed all these stone alcoves under the raised beds, so she has room to slide her chair right underneath. I know it's only for a tabletop, rather than a real garden design, but you've really thought about what it's like to be confined to a wheelchair. And this summer house with a piano in it . . . where did that come from?'

‘You told me to ring up the Crawfurds and find out what her interests were, so I did, and they said she plays the piano. They also said she used to be into embroidery, and the other day, I saw this little sewing table in a doll's house shop, with, like, tiny scissors and reels of cotton in it. I thought that might be fun.'