Exposure (64 page)

Suzannah's second husband's son, Jean-Pierre, had plainly landed a full centimetre behind Luke's footprints, but Sophie had denied the evidence of her eyes and said it was a draw. That afternoon Luke had refused to go swimming, as planned, with 'filthy cheats'. He had expected an apology, some kind of justice as a response to this enormous gesture. But Sophie, Jean-Pierre and Gabriel, the local boy they had befriended, had grabbed their towels and run off to the pool without him. In the full knowledge that he was by far the best swimmer anyway, Luke endured splashes and screams of laughter all afternoon while he studied the footprints and snapped dry twigs.

He hoped with all his heart that those photography books were still in the hall cupboard. It would be just like his mother to have packed them up cheerily and given them to a hospital or a charity shop.

He bit his lip as he appreciated, for the first time, the absence of that scrawny sister of his, with whom he had fought so passionately all his life. Really, where
was
she? He thought of all those interminable car journeys through France when they were children - the mutual eye-rolling at the vineyards and churches their father had got so worked up about; he remembered sharing headphones on the back seat as if the pop music was their only hope for salvation. They had communicated with each other in pinches

or by sticking out their tongues. She had always swapped her blackcurrant fruit gums for his lime ones and, though it had made him feel corrupt to accept them, he had done so none the less. He smiled at the memory of her bony legs kicking against his in the bath when she refused to have her hair washed. Half a life of constant proximity - and yet now she might be anywhere in the world.

Water buffaloes?
What did it all
mean?
And yet he knew exactly. All Sophie's fantasies had involved distant travel; each one had embodied her fervent belief that if only she could remind herself of the sheer size of the world, her problems would seem unimportant.

Suddenly Luke was afraid that his sister was wrong about this, that it was nothing more than a lovely idea. For the first time in his life, he did not think he would take pleasure in contradicting her. She was just plain horrible sometimes and she could be sarcastic and intellectually snobbish, but in spite of all this he knew he loved her and that she loved him just as much.

Poor Sophie—she had hardly been happy and it was not as if he had ever really tried to help or even to understand. He had just watched her getting skinnier and skinnier and told her no one would fancy her if she looked like that. It was terrible to think that he had not talked to her, never genuinely asked her about her life—not once! Somehow he had always been too tired or hung-over or stressed out. She was so dramatic, so loud. He had preferred to block his ears with TV if ever they were alone together, rather than listen to her piercing doubts about their parents' marriage, or her belief that she and Luke were incurably selfish, self-pitying children. She never let up!

And what of all those wounds she had inflicted on him, which he had so carefully enumerated, which he had tended in raptures of martyrdom and brought out to shock the crowd at Easter or Christmas or on their mother's birthday?

It seemed that, in spite of it all, love was going to persist. His attachment to Sophie was illogical but undeniable—almost as if it was hard-wired into his genes. Perhaps it was. This thought gave him a feeling of deep peace.

But how could the violent machinery of Luke's mind have accommodated peace for more than a second? It shattered there like spun glass and his head jerked round to the window again.

Had
there been someone in the garden a moment before? He walked over and put his face close enough to the windowpane to feel the coolness coming off the glass. The spiny tree tapped against it and starded him and, as if he had now woken by another vital degree, he unlocked the french windows and walked out across the lawn.

He could see from a distance that the annexe door was ajar. His immediate fear—horrible as it seemed to him straight afterwards—was that Goran and Mila had stolen everything and left. He knew then and there that, no matter what he had told himself when he longed for companions in his suffering, Goran and Mila's desperation was essentially foreign. They had nothing—and he could not even imagine what that would be like. He thought: I have let desperate strangers on to my family property. For a moment, he was appalled and tried to reassure himself that there was nothing of value in the annexe.

From the gap in the doorway he saw that Mila was sitting on the table by the window. Her back was to him and her heels banged the table leg with that brisk, military rhythm she sometimes clicked out with her tongue or tapped with her fingers. He studied her for a moment and then said her name quietly: 'Mila?'

She turned round a little way and smiled.

He pushed the door open and glanced round the room. Nothing had been stolen; everything was as he had last seen it. And yet he was aware that something was wrong, that something had taken place.

'Mila? Where is Goran?' he said.

She did not answer him and, after a second or two, he walked over to the table. The light from the window illuminated her face and as he saw it, front on, he gasped. The right cheek and eye were deep red and swelling. He said, 'Your face!' Then he realized he was standing on something strange and sticky. When he looked down at the floor he saw that he was treading on the remains of the Serbian cake. The plate was broken beneath it. He looked up at her and again he said, 'Your face!'

Mila shrugged. 'Is nothing pain for me. I tell to him this but is hit only one time.'

'Who? Who hit you?' Luke said, in increasing panic. 'Mila, he didn't do this to you. Not
Goran.
I don't believe he did this to you.'

She shrugged. 'Is the cake.'

Luke saw no meaning in this ominous riddle.'
What?'
he said.

As if she was recounting a funny anecdote, Mila laughed and said, 'He say to me, "
Mila! You do not eat half cake!"'
She held up her hands in conclusive surrender.

'What? I don't understand,' Luke said, understanding only too well.

'He is
look
and
look
at this cake,' Mila said, 'and he is say to me,"
I know you!
" And it is right, Luke, because Goran he know me from I am thirteen. Always I eat
only little.'
She repeated her impression, deepening her voice and wagging her finger like a schoolmaster.
'"Mila! You do not eat half cake!"'

She thought for a moment and touched her face. Then she glanced up at Luke and smiled shyly. 'You know it is go this red? It is go and then I am nice again?"'

He stared back at her in amazement.

'Is ugly today but I am nice again,' she insisted.Then she screwed her eyes shut and clenched her fists and said, 'You believe I am think hard maybe is go quick?'

Luke's voice was almost a whisper: 'Mila, where is Goran?'

Beside her was a Kwik-Kabs card. A few seconds passed until she opened her eyes and noticed him staring at it. She said, 'Yes. Is give to me this for maybe I need some money. Goran is not work Kwik-Kabs now.'

'Why? What happened?' Immediately Luke thought of the gun. Of course: Goran had been sacked, arrested even, in connection with the gun. The police would now come for him.

'Is nothing what is bad. Is only for work in kitchen of hotel now because is shift of day time so is
like me.'
She shook her head at the foolishness of this. 'Is
present
for me. But now is not.
Now
he do not want I know where he is live. He says he go like is dead it is better. He tell to me he is put money with friend in Kwik-Kabs. Is Kurd man also drive cab. He say it is "Mila bank".' She laughed sarcastically. 'Dead man is put money in there for I can buy passport.'

She narrowed her eyes. 'But I tell to him I
do not want money of dead man!

Luke remembered Goran's plan to buy a National Insurance number and passport and—fake phone bills, was it? He was going to open a bank account in his newly adopted name, using the documents as proof. He would be in possession of some or possibly all of them by now and the job in the kitchen was probably 'legal'. He and Mila had been planning to get her documents after his, because this was the way his mind had organized their future: with him as the provider. Luke had the impression that the whole plan to come to England had been Goran's. Where on earth would Mila go now? In spite of all she had seen in Kosovo, she was innocent of the ways of a large city like London. She had been amazed by a car slowing down as she came home from work, an electric window lowering, a male voice:
How much?
She had wanted Goran and Luke to explain: what had he thought she was selling?

But she could not stay in the annexe any longer. That would be impossible after what had happened. Surely Goran had not just gone - as if, in Mila's words, he was 'dead'? Luke told himself he must be jumping to conclusions. They had argued, certainly, but surely Mila would have explained the half-eaten cake in some innocent way. Surely this would have been her instinct.

'I don't understand. What did you
say
to him, Mila?'

She looked away. 'I tell to him all, Luke.'

He stared at her, feeling fear and rage. 'What
all?'
he said.

'I tell to him what is happen in late night is so beautiful for us.' She lowered her eyes. 'I know is wrong for God but is beautiful for us. And I tell to him I love you now.'

When she returned her eyes to him, it was as if having said these precious words had only increased their truth. She loved him. In a mist of happiness, she listened to Luke telling her he must go out for a bit and sighed tenderly at the thought of his gracious life. 'Yes, Luke. You must go again in your house.'

He nodded at her and said yes.

Mila shivered and drew her knees up to her chest. 'Luke, I ask question? You say I am bad this? I think I do not clean in Tessa Campbell-Sutcliffe apartment today. I tell to you is
million
and
million
clothes for iron and all time she shout to me.' Mila did a high-pitched, rasping voice:' "Be
care
ful. Is
cou-ture.
You
know
what this
mean?
" I think is better Hugo Johnson but is tomorrow. Today is tired for Tessa Campbell-Sutcliffe. You think I am bad this?'

'No,' Luke told her.
'No.'

Dear, good Luke, she thought.
Ljubavi
—my love. He wouldn't hear of her working!

He watched her getting into the little camp bed and she watched him, taking in the light gold hair and the most beautiful grey eyes she had ever seen. Her love for him mingled with her slight concussion. After a while she became aware that his whole face had gone pale, even his mouth. He was plainly terrified with concern for her. She couldn't bear to see it—he ought not to feel a moment's worry! Her face was painful, but she forced a huge smile across it. 'Ah, Luke,' she sighed, 'you know I am happy and I lie in this bed and it is beautiful. Is not pain. You know this? You know this, Luke?'

'Yes,' he said, hurrying towards the door.

'I am sleep and is
not pain,'
she called after him.

'No,' he said. He shut the door behind him.

Is it possible to desire physical punishment as much as physical pleasure? As fervently as he had ever longed to make love to Arianne, Luke now wanted Goran to punch him, to break his nose and his ribs. Could he go and see Goran and tell him it had all been his fault, that he had seduced Mila and that she was so upset she was gibbering? Would this matter? Surely his being brave enough to own up, his being sorry, would count for something?

He remembered Goran laughing at him for saying he would forgive Arianne and take her back so long as she was 'really sorry'. Luke pictured the sardonic face, the cheeks contorted by the chewing of a hunk of cheese. Then, with a wince, he remembered how Goran had raised Mila's hand and pointed the fingers at him, as if they were the barrel of a gun. 'I kill you,' he said, 'and now I am "
really sorry"?'

Goran's mind did not make an ideal out of justice, or out of anything, really. He just had his tight-lipped nod of respect for survival against the odds, for adaptation. Luke had wondered what it would be like to see things in this way—as if human beings didn't
mean
any more than cows or bats or other things that ate and reproduced. He had been stunned by the vehemence with which Goran held his stark principles: expecting no heaven, no long-awaited explanation, no acknowledgement, just that the dark would come at the end of the day.

And yet, on the afternoon they met, on their drive from Dover to London together, Goran had countered the vast embarrassment of all Luke's riches, with the words, 'I am lucky, too. I have Mila.'

He might have lashed out at Mila for hurting him, swiping at her like one of the struggling animals in his vision of the world, but what of the tenderly named 'Mila Bank'? The contradiction was heartbreaking.

Slowly, Luke forced himself to accept that there was no point in going over these thoughts because they only added to the desire for punishment and it might take months to seek out Goran. After all, who knew where he was? He had told Mila he did not want to be found. Undoubtedly the Kurdish friend at Kwik-Kabs would have been told to say he knew nothing. Goran had disappeared without a trace, without a single record of his presence in the country. His new job might be in any one of hundreds of hotels in London and he might have left the city. He even had a new name! Perhaps a message could be sent to him one way or another, through the friend, but it would all take time.

For now, when it was so urgently needed, there would be no conclusive punch. Instead there was a pale blue sky and a breeze and birds twittering in the chestnut tree. It was a beautiful, English autumn morning with the scent of bonfires in the air. Luke gazed up at the elegant white house and suddenly he wanted to smash it down.