The Silent Tide (37 page)

‘How much longer will you be here?’ she asked.

‘End of the month,’ he said, starting to play with an annoying clicking-ball toy he kept on his desk.

‘Well, I am sorry. I hope they have given you a good package.’

‘Not at all bad,’ he said. ‘Once I’d mentioned the magic word “lawyer”. I’ll be all right for a while. Take a bit of a holiday, perhaps.’ The balls clicked slower and she saw past his bravura to the fear underneath. He didn’t want her sympathy, however. ‘I’ll hook up with you later,’ he said, picking up his mobile, and she nodded and opened the door.

Something stayed her. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t you who sent me flowers on Valentine’s, was it?’

He smiled at her as he put the phone to his ear. ‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it?’

Back in her office she found that several of her authors had telephoned. She rang them back to assure them her job was safe, and then spoke to Joel.

‘Phew!’ he said, when she imparted the news. ‘I told you you’d be all right, but it’s a relief, isn’t it, to have it confirmed.’ They talked about meeting up, but both of them were busy for the next couple of days and Joel was going away on Friday for what he called a ‘writing week’.

‘A friend of mine has a cottage in Gloucestershire. They’ve got a cat that’s allergic to catteries, so the deal is I stay there while they’re away and feed the mog. There’s no Wi-Fi and the mobile signal’s pathetic so I can just concentrate on my writing.’ He told her he aimed to write two chapters and draft the final two in the time, which struck Emily as an impressive feat.

‘I’ll be home Sunday week,’ he went on. ‘Would you like to come over for supper when I’m back? Tuesday perhaps?’

‘Tuesday would be great,’ she said.

‘You have my address, don’t you? I’ll give you directions. It’s very easy.’

Emily had plenty to keep her mind off waiting for Joel’s return. Tobias delivered some revisions to his novel. There was an auction for a brilliant new memoir by a Korean-American writer which involved a great deal of discussion and re-jigging of balance sheets, and which in the end she acquired for Parchment in a rush of terrific excitement. Concentrating on this meant that more routine work stacked up and she had to work late to clear it.

For the moment there were no more mysterious packages.

Emily gazed about the huge open-plan loft, Joel’s home, admiring the high Victorian windows, the soaring peaked ceiling.

‘Unicorn House used to be a printworks,’ Joel explained as he splashed white wine into big goblets and handed her one. The wine was chilled, fruity and delicious, the glass so fine it rang when she knocked it accidentally with her nail. ‘It closed down a few years ago and they turned it into flats.’

‘That makes sense of the decorations on the staircase!’ she exclaimed. Bits of old metal font had been set in patterns on the walls of the entrance hall and all the way up the stairs to the second floor. ‘I wondered if it spelled out anything.’ She’d tried to make out words as she climbed, but decided it was random.

‘I suppose it would have been too complicated,’ he said, ‘but some quote about the passing of time might have been appropriate, don’t you think?’

‘Mmm,’ she said, sipping her wine. They were standing in the kitchen area, which took up half one end of the flat. Halogen light reflected off grey metal and granite. A narrow dining table and six high-backed chairs in pale ash filled the other half, then there was a lounge area delineated by a long L-shaped sofa. The walls were lined with bookshelves, rows and rows of them, filled with books, floor to ceiling. In a corner, against a partition wall, a workstation was built in.

‘And here’s my bedroom,’ he said, showing her a neat spartan room with a large geometric painting over a low white bed. For a moment his hand brushed her shoulder in a way that might or might not have been an accident. ‘Next door’s the bathroom,’ he said, moving on swiftly, ‘and this bedroom’s the spare.’

‘It’s all really beautiful,’ she sighed, as they returned to the kitchen. She loved the skylights with their sunscreen glass. As he stood at the stove, frying chicken, she perched on a bar stool, drinking her wine and watching the changing patterns of the evening light.

‘So how was Gloucestershire? Did the cat behave itself?’ She liked the way he looked tonight, in a soft linen shirt, half-covered by a butcher’s apron, his sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned arms. He couldn’t have been inside the cottage working all the time then.

‘I hardly saw the blessed thing,’ he said. ‘It ate the food I put out, unless it was some other beast that came through the cat flap every night. The writing went really well. I started work at eight every morning, kept going till lunch, walked a mile to the shop and back, then got in another couple of hours’ work after tea.’

‘So you did your chapters?’

‘I did,’ he said with a satisfied grin. ‘I’m on the home straight.’

‘Wow!’ She was genuinely impressed.

Just then, the doorbell rang and they both looked up. ‘Who’s that?’ Joel said as he went to open the door. A young woman with a swathe of glossy blonde hair caught up in a pretty comb stepped inside.

‘Hi, I’m Anna.’ Her light voice had a transatlantic twang. ‘Oh my God, you guys are cooking dinner. I’m so sorry but I need help really badly,’ she said to Joel, tweaking a stray piece of hair back into the comb. ‘I’ve just moved in and there’s something wrong with the faucet in the kitchen. It won’t turn off and there’s going to be a flood any moment.’

‘I can have a go,’ Joel said. ‘Do you mind, Emily?’

‘No, of course not,’ Emily replied. ‘Poor you, I hope he can fix it,’ she told Anna.

‘That’s so kind,’ Anna said. ‘But can you please hurry?’

‘Back in a minute,’ Joel told Emily, pulling the door to behind him.

Alone in the flat, Emily checked the chicken, which looked nearly done, and measured rice into water simmering in a saucepan. A green salad waited ready on the side. She took it across to the table, already laid. Then she wandered around the room, touching the books and examining some prints of contemporary architecture on the partition wall. It was odd that there were no photographs of family or friends, she thought, looking about, just one of Joel by himself in a graduation gown.

On a shelf near Joel’s workstation was a row of books
with Joel Richards
printed on the spines. She hadn’t known he’d written so many: there was the one about the Angry Young Men, several histories of big companies, one copy leather-bound. She recognised a tie-in book of a television series about Britain in wartime from a couple of years ago. There was no author’s name on this one so she picked it up and found
Joel Richards
on the title page inside. All this confirmed to her that Hugh Morton’s book was an important one for his career, definitely a step up from all these others. She felt she understood him more as a result. He was further ahead in his ambitions than Matthew. All Matthew had so far were some poems in anthologies. She knew he longed to have a collection published, but this would be a while off for him. She put the book back on the shelf. Joel was being a long time, she thought. Perhaps the flood was quite bad.

She came to his desk and leaned across it to read the labels of some box-files on a shelf above. MORTON, each one said in neat capitals, giving dates or a subject: CHILDHOOD, CORRESPONDENCE WITH K. AMIS, PHOTOGRAPHS, JAPAN.

When did Morton go to Japan? On the desk was an open laptop and a pile of notes in Joel’s neat handwriting. She was unable to stop herself reaching for them, but in so doing she accidentally jogged the laptop, causing the dark screen to brighten. She hadn’t known it was still switched on.

Amongst the array of icons on the computer’s desktop, one labelled
Morton Biography First Draft
caught her eye. It was very tempting to take a peek.

Just as she was moving the cursor towards it the flat door clicked open and she turned, caught in the act. But it must have been a draught, for there was no one there. Her relief was short-lived, for she heard voices on the stairwell, Joel’s low one and Anna’s high American drawl, and then approaching footsteps.

Quick as a wink she left the desk and by the time Joel walked in she was back at the stove, draining the rice.

‘Everything’s ready,’ she told him calmly.

‘Thanks,’ he said, slightly out of breath. ‘Mission accomplished. I’m sorry about the wait.’

She prodded the bits of chicken and said nothing.

‘The tap was just stiff, so I easily sorted that out, but Anna’s removal men had parked a chest of drawers in a stupid place so I had to shift that for her.’

‘I bet she was grateful.’ She suspected that it wouldn’t be the last time Anna would ask for help.

He came up close behind her now, so she felt the warmth of him – and her body was suddenly light, electric. There was a brief moment when she was sure he was going to touch her, and she was disappointed when he merely switched off the extractor fan, then moved past, opened a cupboard and reached for plates.

They sat opposite one another at the table and helped themselves to salad. He poured more wine and the tension she’d felt eased. Perhaps she’d imagined it. Joel talked about a new TV script he was being invited to write and Emily filled him in about the situation at work, and soon they began to play a game of looks and touches and gestures that needed no words. Beneath the table his foot brushed against her ankle. The food was delicious, though she didn’t eat much of it. There was something spicy in the chicken that made her lips feel hot and tender.

Part of her wasn’t sure about Joel; he didn’t reveal much about himself, but she did find him madly attractive, so perhaps everything would work out. She had to get over Matthew, she couldn’t stay on her own for ever. And no one at work need know about it. The thought of secrecy was exciting.

‘Shall we have pud later?’ he said, clearing the plates. ‘It’s just something from the chill counter.’

‘You mean you haven’t been slaving away to make it from scratch?’

‘No, should I have done?’ He came back to the table, his brow wrinkled.

‘It was only a joke, really,’ she said hastily. ‘Later would be lovely.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been focusing on other things. All the writing and not speaking to anyone for a week, it does your head in.’ He rubbed his face. ‘Shall we go and sit more comfortably? I’ve got some photographs to show you for the book.’

They took the wine over to the sofa. Joel switched on a lamp and fetched a box-file from the shelf above the workstation. Sitting beside her, he set it on the coffee table in front of them and opened it. It was half-full of photographs, some loose, others in plastic wallets or envelopes.

‘These are the ones I’d really like to use,’ he said, drawing out a plastic wallet. A lot are Jacqueline’s, but not all. You know this one, of course.’

He was sitting very close now and their fingers touched as she took the photograph from him. It was a smaller version of the family portrait that was on the wall of Jacqueline’s drawing room.

‘They look like a perfect family, don’t they?’ she said, studying it once again.

‘Textbook,’ Joel agreed. ‘Here’s the war hero.’ It was one of Hugh Morton as a very young man in a pilot’s jacket. Others included a snapshot of a baby in a huge old-fashioned pram – Hugh again – then a few of him in middle age. In one he wore a corduroy jacket and a shirt with wide lapels and was giving a speech at a microphone. ‘The British Council trip to Japan in seventy-five,’ Joel explained. Another was a still from an interview on a well-known chat show in the 1980s. There were several prints featuring Jacqueline: one in an evening dress, one in headscarf and dark glasses on a café terrace, snowcapped mountains rising behind. Emily examined for some moments a studio portrait of Jacqueline as a girl of about twenty. She was pleasant in appearance, but her clothes were staid, and there was something stiff and undeveloped about her. Who would have predicted that she would turn into the blooming wife and mother of the family group portrait?

‘That’s it, really, I think,’ Joel said, checking the other packets in the box.

‘None of Isabel?’ Emily asked. ‘You will use the wedding photo, won’t you?’

‘If I can persuade Jacqueline. I did mean to show you this other one.’ From a small brown envelope he brought out a black and white print. He turned it over to check the writing on the back, then held it between them. ‘An office party, I reckon.’ He pointed to a very young woman at the edge of the photograph . Emily took it from him and angled it towards the light.

It must have been from around 1950, judging by the clothes and the hair. Isabel’s mouth was partly obscured by the glass she held, but the eyes were large and lively. She was quite small in stature, Emily saw, and very stylish, with fine features. Her hair waved vibrantly around her heart-shaped face. Next to her, unmistakably, was Hugh, saturnine, smiling secretly. On her other side was a man with fair hair and an intelligent, boyish face. ‘That’s Hugh’s publisher, Stephen McKinnon,’ Joel told her. ‘This here . . .’. The third man in the picture had a clever, foreign -looking face, Eastern European, possibly. He was speaking in an animated fashion to an older woman with a double chin . ‘Alexander Berec. He was a poet. And that, I believe, is Trudy Symmonds, who worked for McKinnon.’

It was amazing to see all these people she’d read about. Emily stared again at Isabel. She thought how pretty she looked, interested and vivacious. Here was a young woman confident about who she was and what she did. She looked completely at home amidst these literary people.

‘It’s the only photograph of Isabel that Jacqueline has given me, so we’d better put it in. And apart from that wedding photo you found, it’s all I have.’

‘What about Isabel’s birth family? Would they have some?’

‘Of the twin brothers, one is dead and I haven’t been able to trace the other,’ Joel said. ‘Her sister, Lydia, would have been too young to remember her, so I haven’t tried to find her.’ He set about replacing the photographs in the box and shut the lid. ‘Don’t forget there was a shortage of film then , and it would have been expensive.’