Summer Lies Bleeding (5 page)

But as she begins to read she feels herself slow down, feels a warm surge of contentment rise from the pit of her stomach; she is back on familiar terrain:

‘… a rattle of cart-wheel; then a chorus of voices singing – country people going home. This is England, Eleanor thought to herself …'

Stella closes her eyes, allowing the words to whisper into her consciousness; to unravel themselves inside her head like coils of twisted, golden silk. She sees tall, sensible Eleanor sitting out on a terrace at twilight, with bats circling above her head. She sees the Pargiter family rising and falling through the decades like swimmers battling the waves. She takes a deep breath, opens her eyes and looks out of the window.

‘You can do this, Stella,' she whispers. ‘You're better now.'

It is getting dark, prematurely so for this time of year, she thinks. Yet, late August always does this, tricks you into thinking that it is autumn already, wraps a deep cloak of purple around the closing days of summer as if preparing itself for cold and decay.

Stella closes her book and as she places it into her bag she
feels her phone vibrate in the inside pocket: probably Paula checking on the herbs. She takes the phone and as she sees the name, her cheeks redden.

All set for Wednesday. How does 2 p.m. sound? Dylan.

Stella takes another sip of coffee, still holding the phone in her hand; the open message blinking its unanswered question at her like a warning light.

Paula will be at the Chelsea Physic Garden on Wednesday; she will be lost in her own world among the herbs. Stella had told her she was going to spend the day at the London Library working on the final chapter of her thesis. Phones have to be switched off in the library; as far as Paula is concerned Stella will have stepped out of time for a couple of hours. She won't suspect a thing.

Yet still this guilt; this feeling that she is betraying her love, that she is being selfish; following her own interests instead of the collective plans that Paula has meticulously set out for them.

The phone's screen has gone dark, taking the message and all its connotations away into the ether. She will answer it later; when she gets to the hotel. But for now she is happy to stay here; floating in between two worlds, neither in Exeter nor London, but simply inhabiting this moment.

‘This is England.' The line from
The Years
rattles round her head. She is disconnected from it all: from Exeter, from London, from England. They say it is Midsummer Eve when the
veil between worlds is at its thinnest, but for Stella it is this time of year – the last days of summer, the melancholy drift towards September, to the harvests and clean, empty exercise books – that seems to allow her a glimpse into the next world. The weather changes sometime around now, and then stays in a sort of greyish no-man's land, trapped between one season and the next. Stella always feels raw in this period, exposed, like she is walking barefoot along a slippery log. Underneath, the water is dark, deep and unknowable and she feels like any moment she could fall in; so she waits, her foot dangling over the edge of the log, unable to let go.

She winces as she drains her cup of coffee which is now ice-cold and grainy. She can't put it off any longer; her moment of solitude is coming to an end. Contentment is so fleeting she thinks, as she puts
The Years
back into her handbag, it can be shattered in a heartbeat, like a fragile piece of glass.

As she walks out of the café towards the escalator, she feels her phone vibrate again and her throat closes up as she rummages in her bag. Taking the phone in her hand she watches as the familiar name flashes on and off. She will not answer it. She will allow herself one more hour of solitude before her head is filled again with all things ‘Paula'.

She descends the escalator and steps through the automatic doors into the warm air. She looks up at the sky. It's a perfect late-afternoon light, and the thin sliver of a crescent moon is just visible above the trees that surround the car park. Everything
will be okay, she tells herself, repeating Paula's mantra, and as she walks over towards her car, she almost believes that it will.

Kerstin stands at the traffic lights on Piccadilly and waits for the green man to appear, waits to remove the dark stain of the damaged purse from her bag.

As she stands she counts. She has been counting since she fled Cal and the office; she counted as she ran down the stairs, as she hurried through reception, out of the revolving doors and onto St James's Street. ‘Six hundred and fifty-three,' she mutters to herself as the lights change and she rushes into the busy road, towards Bond Street and redemption.

The pavement beneath her feet sparkles like a thousand diamonds have been compressed into the granite. All the money of the city, all the bonuses and trust funds; all the savings and bribes, all the invisible credit, pours into this place like a hundred rivers running into the sea. It's what keeps the windows gleaming, the flags flying, the goods shining like the specks on the pavement. This is London's great pleasure-dome; an adult fairy-land where magic and illusion are attainable – at a price.

But Kerstin doesn't see the diamonds on the street, she doesn't look up to swoon at the flags and the handbags and the silk scarves fluttering in the windows like exotic birds. She cannot be distracted by any of it. She must keep counting until she gets to her golden number, the number of truth and light, then everything will be all right. When she gets to eleven hundred and nine – her birthday, the eleventh day of the ninth month, order and perfection, order and perfection – when she gets to that number then she will stop.

Nine hundred and twenty.

The intensity of the counting makes her feel dizzy as she strides down Bond Street, staring straight ahead. Orange spots dance in front of her eyes manically, like the prelude to a bout of travel sickness. But she must keep counting.

Nine hundred and fifty-two.

She weaves in and out of rambling window-shoppers like a sleek car navigating its way into the fast lane of the motorway. She must keep going for if she slows down, if she slackens her pace, she will be crushed.

Nine hundred and eighty-four.

Thoughts roll around inside her head like tiny ball-bearings. The ripped purse; the report; Dominic Stratton's last terse email. One thousand and six. It's all punishment, she tells herself, well deserved punishment for her shoddiness; her lack of control. One thousand and twenty-three. When she lets things slip, when she loses her faith in numbers, it all falls apart.

Boom!

A loud bang reverberates through the street. She jumps with the shock and the counting pauses; the number one thousand and twenty-four balances precariously on the tip of her tongue like a word she can't quite place. There's a second bang – a hard, heavy thud, a sonic boom it seems like to Kerstin's frazzled senses and she turns to see a man walking away from the back of a truck, his arms laden with boxes. It's fine, she tells herself, it was just a door slamming. But the noise has stalled her, it has taken her thoughts away from counting and led her back eight years; to the explosion outside the pizza shop in Cologne that fine June day in 2004.

She was a student, twenty-two, happy and hungover, making her way home from an all-night party. It happened so quickly, she could count it in the steps she took; one, two, three across the street then suddenly an apocalyptic smash and behind her, carnage and blood, nails embedded in flesh and the grisly smell of burning body, like bacon sizzling in a pan, and that man's face; the one that returns to her night after night. He had greeted her like a friend, just moments before it happened, smiling as he raised a cigarette to his mouth. One, two, three, and it could have been her lying there mangled and bloodied, eyes raised to the sky, asking why.

She gathers herself and scoops up the numbers like a mother calling for her children. One thousand and twenty-five. The delivery man deposits his boxes, the noise dissolves into
the sharp, late afternoon air and Kerstin walks on, her heart thudding against her chest. One thousand and twenty-seven.

She wants to shout the numbers out loud; release them from the confines of her head; spill them out onto the pavement like loose change. A blonde, middle-aged woman in a floor-length camel coat and large, black sunglasses smiles at her as she passes. But the woman is smiling at the illusion: the smart, attractive young woman in an expensive, black trouser suit and neat, shoulder-length hair the colour of milky tea, walking along Bond Street in search of a purse. That is what the woman sees. Kerstin wants to scream at her, wants to show her the contents of her harried brain. If she could, she would throw the numbers at her, thrust them into her arms like an unwanted parcel. Then she would be free, she could walk happily through Mayfair, breathe in the late summer air and discover what it feels like to be normal.

One thousand and forty.

She strides along the street, on and on, leaving behind the Edwardian splendour of Old Bond Street and crossing onto the fashionable minimalist strip of New Bond Street with its black-and-white awnings and immaculately polished shop windows that bat the rays of the sun away like unwelcome customers.

One thousand and fifty-three.

Once, numbers had been her weapons; she could control them, distort them; manipulate them into things of beauty. ‘Mathematics,' her father had told her, ‘is the elixir of life.
Once you crack its code, you hold the secrets of the universe inside your head. Numbers are the only things you can trust in this life, Kerstin; they will keep you sane.'

One thousand and ninety-five.

Something brushes against her face and she looks up. One thousand, one hundred and three. It has just begun to rain, though the sky above New Bond Street is still blue and the sun is shining. This is a light, almost invisible rain. It isn't settling anywhere and when it comes into contact with the pavement it seems to leave no mark, just disappears into the granite like a secret teardrop.

One thousand, one hundred and nine. Kerstin stops walking and nods her head once, twice, three times. This is her signal that the counting is done, the glorious number has been reached. Now, all she needs to do is replace the purse and everything will be fine, nothing bad will happen to her. The numbers have saved her, like her father told her they would.

She looks at the place she has stopped outside. It is a double-fronted glass building; plain with no elaborate awnings. The glass windows are bare but the door, shaped like a rectangular lego piece, is painted gold. Kerstin steps towards the window. There is a row of pink handbag-shaped tissue paper parcels pressed against the glass and behind them a little pyramid of leather purses of all shapes and colours: red, purple, green and grey. Grey! It is the perfect replacement, thinks Kerstin, the perfect shade. She can buy it, dispose of the ripped one
and it will be like nothing ever happened. As she pushes the gold door open, the maroon flag above it flutters with the back draft. A gold woodcut drawing of a tree looms above the name which is displayed in simple gold, block lettering: MULBERRY.

The first thing she sees as she enters the shop is a large circular gold cage standing in the middle of the room surrounded by mannequins in hot pants, patterned shift dresses and leather jackets, all holding a Mulberry bag. It looks like the cages used by cruel circus ringmasters to keep lions in, to taunt them with scraps of meat in exchange for performing tricks.

The shop, though rectangular in structure, gives the impression of curvature. Every surface is elongated, from the curvy display cabinets to the crescent moon shelves and they all seem to bend inward so that as Kerstin walks through it feels as though she is being led deeper and deeper into the centre of a great, complex puzzle.

She makes her way towards the back of the shop where she can see a long, oval, glass-topped counter. There is a sales assistant standing behind it, staring into space. Her expression is similar to the soldiers that stand guard outside Buckingham Palace, only instead of a busby she has a helmet of glossy, chestnut-coloured hair framing her immaculately made-up face.

She tilts her head slightly as Kerstin approaches, but otherwise her pose remains rigid and unmoving. When Kerstin reaches the counter, the woman opens her mouth, preparing
to begin the long scripted dialogue that will start with ‘Can I help you?' and end with a sale, but before she has the chance Kerstin speaks.

‘I need a purse,' she demands, her German accent sounding more pronounced than usual, as it always does when she has been counting.

The sales assistant seems taken aback by this bluntness and the familiar, over-rehearsed lines desert her.

‘A purse?' she replies. There is a sharp South African lilt to her voice and it seems as if she is trying to match Kerstin's terseness.

Kerstin is fiddling with the zip on her bag, trying to dislodge the ripped purse from the front pocket without having to make too much contact with it. She doesn't look up as she answers.

‘Yes, a purse. I would like the grey one over there in the window. Could you get it for me? I'm afraid I'm in a bit of a hurry.'

The woman raises an eyebrow and languidly moves around to the front of the counter. She is very tall – five feet eleven at least – and her height is exacerbated by the vertiginous heels she is wearing. She brushes her hand through her hair and as she does so a trio of thin gold bracelets ripple down her arm like snakes.

‘The grey one,' she repeats, looking into the middle distance as though trying to solve a difficult algebra equation.

‘Yes,' says Kerstin, who has now managed to extricate the
damaged purse from the bag. She holds it between finger and thumb like a dirty rag ‘It's in the window next to the pink handbags, I mean the tissue-paper handbags.'

‘Ohhh,' says the woman, clasping her hands together as though in prayer. ‘You mean the Continental wallets. Grey? That will be Parisian Dove.'

Kerstin nods her head, assuming that this is the one. After all, doves are grey sometimes aren't they? ‘Yes,' she says. ‘The Parisian Dove. I would like the Parisian Dove.'

‘Of course,' says the woman, slowly. She smiles weakly at Kerstin then disappears into the curved maze of the shop-floor.

Kerstin taps her fingers on the glass counter as she waits. Then she stops herself. Tapping always makes her want to count and she mustn't count in here, otherwise she will never get out. Instead she looks at the pretty display cabinet next to the counter. It is filled with tiny leather key-rings and credit card holders. Kerstin smiles to herself. This will be the perfect purse, she tells herself. She likes this shop. She likes the bare wood and glass and gold, the simple decadence of it. It reminds her of the shops her mother used to frequent in Cologne. There was something so ordered and elegant about those places where all of the products were displayed discreetly on beautiful, square white tables; not like the department stores in London with their garish, fluorescent lights and messy piles of clothes loaded onto flimsy shelves. Those places unsettle her, the untidiness makes her feel unclean; makes her want
to count and never stop. The memory of shopping in Cologne takes her back twenty-five years, a little girl following her beautiful mother as she picks up various scarves, blouses and perfumes. She remembers thinking that those airy palaces of light and wood were what money must look like.

‘Is this the one?' She looks up and the image of Cologne breaks up like a shattered mirror. The woman has returned with the purse; a long, stippled leather wedge with a small, gold plaque in the centre.

‘Yes,' replies Kerstin. ‘That's the one.' The woman nods and takes the purse round to the other side of the counter.

Kerstin looks at her watch: 5 p.m. Her mouth goes dry. How is it so late? She must get back to the office; she must get on with the report. She pulls her credit card out of the ripped purse with the edges of her fingers, and puts it down on the counter.

The woman is carefully laying a sheet of silvery embossed tissue paper out in front of her.

‘No, no,' says Kerstin. ‘I don't want it wrapped thank you. I'll take it as it is.'

‘You don't want it wrapped?' The woman looks appalled.

‘No, I don't,' says Kerstin. ‘If you could just put my card through now please. I'm in a great rush.'

The woman pauses, her hand lies flat on the tissue paper, as though not sure what to do next. This just doesn't happen in Mulberry. Customers always want their purchases wrapping
in beautiful tissue paper and they always want to walk out holding the iconic carrier bag.

After a moment she moves the tissue paper aside and picks up the purse. Looking at the price tag, she types in a series of numbers on the till.

‘That will be £275, please,' she says not looking up.

Kerstin pushes the credit card across the counter. The woman takes it and is about to slot it into the card machine when she stops.

‘Would you like to be added to our mailing list?' she says, her voice deadpan as she reclaims her rehearsed lines. ‘It just takes a couple of minutes to fill in your contact details and then we can let you know the latest news.'

Kerstin is becoming increasingly agitated. It feels like the tainted purse and the time ticking on her watch are burning into her skin like acid as she stands waiting.

‘No, thank you, I would not. I just want to buy this purse,' she says in a loud, firm voice.

‘Right,' says the woman, with equal firmness and she places the credit card into the slot. ‘If you could just type in your pin number.' She holds the machine towards Kerstin.

Kerstin looks at the buttons on the machine and for a moment she thinks she can see the sweat from the woman's fingers glistening on the numbers. She cannot touch it; she cannot taint herself any further.

‘Would you mind putting it down on the counter?' she asks
the woman. The assistant frowns and makes a clicking noise with her tongue as she puts the machine down.

‘Thank you,' says Kerstin, as she pulls the sleeve of her silk blouse over her index finger and gently taps in the pin number.