This Must Be the Place (25 page)

‘You weren’t,’ Daniel muttered.

‘I wasn’t what?’

‘Wrong about me. Not then, not that day.’

She let out a small scoffing noise and turned away. Daniel lowered himself to a rock and, just as Todd knew he would, got out his tin and papers and began rolling himself a cigarette. His movements were deliberate, careful, but his hands, distributing the tufts of tobacco, were shaking.

It was only when he put the cigarette into his mouth that he spoke: ‘I’m flying back to New York tomorrow.’

‘I heard,’ Nicola said, smoothing back her hair. She bent at the knees and selected a pebble from the ground. ‘I’m really sorry about your mother.’ She weighed it in her hands, then tossed it towards the loch.

There was a moment’s silence, then a splash, out on the water. It made Daniel turn his head.

‘Are you coming back?’ she asked, searching for another pebble.

‘Of course,’ Daniel said quickly. ‘In a month or so. Maybe two.’

She must have picked up a handful of stones because Todd could hear her sifting them in her palm. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘perhaps I’ll see you then.’

‘You certainly will.’ Daniel stood. He came over to her, put one arm around her, then the other and this time she didn’t pull away. ‘And while I’m gone,’ he said, ‘I want you to get well. OK? No more of this demon.’ He seized her face between his hands, forcing her to look up at him and Todd thought that perhaps he should go now, that perhaps he’d seen enough. ‘OK?’ Daniel said again. ‘You have to start feeding yourself, Nic. It’s as simple as that.’

Nicola nodded, whispering something, and the two of them were pressing their foreheads together and Todd was backing away, crouching low so they wouldn’t see him, so they wouldn’t be disturbed, but a branch or reed or something must have caught his ankle because one moment he was upright and the next he was on his side, winded, lungs empty, and Nicola’s voice was its usual sarcastic rasp, saying, ‘Spying again, are we, Mr Denham?’

There are people here in the forest Todd doesn’t know. Two blokes, who said they worked with the groom, a girl with pale hair, who spoke in an accent like Daniel’s. Todd had mentioned this to Daniel and he had rolled his eyes. She’s Canadian, he’d said, as if it ought to have been obvious. There were a few wanderers-in from the wedding party, which was still going on back near the house, in a large tent with blue fairy-lights and a band playing hits from twenty years ago. Todd and Daniel had been back several times to get supplies and the bride was dancing in her stockinged feet on a near-empty dance-floor, arms in the air, eyes shut, hair fallen to her shoulders.

There had been a moment when Todd thought the Canadian girl with the slight lisp might like him. She had sat on a log with him and they had passed a joint between them and she had told him that her ancestors had emigrated from a valley like this, somewhere in Scotland, six generations ago.

So it had seemed possible that she was interested in him. But then Daniel had come crashing through the trees with more firewood in his arms and thrown it in one go onto the fire, making sparks and glowing smuts float up to mix with the leaves. Then he had reached over and changed the track on the ghetto-blaster and the girl with the ancestors had got up to dance in the kiln-like glow and then, after a while, Daniel had said he was going to look for more wood and the girl had stopped dancing. She’d said could she go with him but Nicola had been there and she had stood up quickly, followed Daniel into the trees, and the Canadian girl had sat down again on the log.

Todd and Daniel had a room in a B-and-B that Suki had booked for them: Todd knew this. But somehow it seemed foolish to leave the fire. It made no sense, especially as the sky above the tangle of branches was beginning to drain of its dark and drop a moist, greyish film into the forest. It made no sense at all. What made sense was this: to lie down on the spread of pine needles, next to the fire, as close as you could. There were so many pine needles. Thousands, millions of the things, all exactly the same. Laid across and underneath and on top of each other, forming the most comfortable surface ever. It seemed miraculous to Todd, their similarity, their uniformity. He said this to Daniel, who was lying on the other side of the scarlet embers: Isn’t it amazing?

Yeah, Daniel replied, with a yawn. Oh, yeah.

There arrived an interlude. Todd could see the pine needles near his head and then it seemed he was back in his childhood bedroom, only it wasn’t the same. One of the walls was made up of thick bushes that pressed in on his bed, on his eiderdown. Somehow he knew his brother was on the other side of the bushes but he couldn’t get to him, couldn’t reach him, because the bushes were so sharp, so spiked.

Someone was swearing. This became clear to Todd. Someone was stumbling about near his head with heavy feet, picking things up and swearing.

‘What?’ Todd mumbled, keeping his eyes closed. It seemed only minutes since they’d gone to sleep, seconds perhaps, but he could tell that the fire was out, that it was early morning. Somewhere above them, birds were screeching in horrible unison, an orchestra of mistuned violins.

‘My flight,’ Daniel was saying hoarsely, off to the left, ‘my fucking flight.’

Todd sat up. He was instantly awake. His head felt ringingly empty: it was clear to him what he had to do. He had to get Daniel to the airport. He had to get Daniel to his flight.

Daniel was leaning with one hand against a tree, yanking on his shoe. He was dressed – that was something. Mud-stained trousers, a torn jacket, hair hanging in his eyes.

‘It’s OK,’ Todd got to his feet, the axis of the ground tipping only for a minute. ‘It’s OK.’ He looked at his watch. He tapped it. He held it to his ear. There was an answering, reassuring click-click of mechanical motion. ‘We’ve got time.’

‘We have?’

‘Yeah.’

Todd grabbed his jacket off the ground, where he had apparently been lying on it. ‘We need to get to the B-and-B, get the car and drive to the airport.’

‘OK.’

‘It’ll take us … I don’t know … an hour. At most.’

‘Right.’ Daniel seized him by both arms, pulled him close. ‘Slap me.’

‘What?’

‘I said, slap me.’

Todd looked into his face. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ Daniel rubbed at his bloodshot eyes, eased open his jaw, once, twice. ‘Go for it.’

Todd slapped him with one hand, then the other.

‘Thanks,’ Daniel said, shaking his head.

‘So,’ Todd began, ‘we really could—’

‘Oh, man,’ Daniel said. He was looking past him at something.

‘What?’ Todd turned.

Nicola Janks was lying on the ground, near to where the fire had been.

Todd and Daniel regarded her. She was on her side, legs tucked up, feet bare. Her lips – pale without their customary red stain – were slightly parted, her eyes shut tight.

‘Is she sleeping?’ Daniel whispered.

Todd put his head on one side. He considered her one way, he considered her the other. ‘Looks like it.’

‘Should we wake her?’

Todd looked at his watch. He went over to her. He tapped her ankle with his toe. Nothing. He tapped her again. He looked at his watch. He looked up at his friend. Daniel looked back at him, his face blank. He seemed to be waiting for Todd to speak. A long moment passed.

‘Is she OK?’ Daniel said.

Todd bent over her. He touched her arm. Her skin was cool as marble.

‘Did you give her anything?’ Todd asked, as he leant over her face.

‘No,’ Daniel said, quickly. ‘I don’t think so. Unless …’

Todd could see, in the morning light, that the roots of her hair were brown. A nondescript dun colour. So the raven sheen was all a construct, he thought. He could also see that Nicola Janks was so thin you could see each bone of her frame: the ulna and the radius of the arm – the terms reached him from a distant biology lesson – meeting the humerus with aligned precision.

‘Unless what?’

‘I might … She might have had some of that …’

‘Coke?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You gave her coke?’ Todd hissed, gesturing at her emaciated form. ‘In this state?’

Daniel looked stricken. ‘I … don’t know. I might have. I … I don’t really remember.’

‘Jesus, Daniel. Where did you get it, anyway?’

‘This … guy. At the bar.’

Todd sat back on his heels. He thought about Daniel’s plane. He imagined it waiting on the tarmac at the airport. Perhaps it was being cleaned right now, a team of women in overalls entering its aisles and rows, armed with sprays and cloths and wipes. He thought about Daniel’s mother, about the oxygen tanks and lowered blinds.

He picked up Nicola’s wrist in his fingers and waited.

The forest inhaled, breeze sifting through the trees, a shower of needles falling some way off, behind them.

‘She’s fine,’ Todd said, dropping her arm. ‘I can feel her pulse. She’s just sleeping. Look, why don’t you go to the B-and-B, wake Suki and get her to drive you to the airport?’

Daniel thought about this, shifting from foot to foot. ‘I don’t know.’ He scratched the back of his head.

‘Go,’ Todd said. ‘I mean it. I’ll take care of this. Of her. I’ll explain the whole thing. But just go. You’ll miss your flight. Off you go.’

Daniel looked away from him, through the trees, towards the light.

‘Go,’ Todd said again. ‘Run. I’ll see you when you get back.’

Something Only He Can See

Lucas
,
Cumbria, 1995

L
ucas moves by instinct through his dark garden. If he thinks about it, he will stumble, but if he lets his muscle-memory guide him, he will be fine. He rounds the patio, makes his way past the rockery and comes upon the black mass of the big evergreen tree sooner than he’d expected. He slides in behind it, to a space between its fronded branches and the wall. He places the walkie-talkie telephone receiver, brought with him so Maeve doesn’t have to get up from the sofa to answer it, in his coat pocket.

Only then does he light his cigarette.

He doesn’t want Maeve to spot the orange glow through the dark. Nicotine is known to inhibit sperm motility or give it two heads or make it go round in circles or something like that. He doesn’t remember, even though she’s told him countless times. It’s just one cigarette, he tells her inside his head. It can’t possibly zap all his spermatozoa. Can it?

He shivers inside his all-weather down coat and draws on the spunk-mutating cigarette, eyeing the neighbours’ house, a slate-covered villa, like theirs. It’s a second-home, of course, as most in the village are, lit up only at weekends. This lot come from London, where the dad works as a banker, and have four children. A shocking, unjust number, really, when you think about it. The mother just seems to pop them out, one after another, her stomach permanently inflated, her breasts constantly being heaved out of her garments in the back garden for some infant or other to nourish itself. Lucas can’t look any more; Maeve avoids the garden at weekends.

He and Maeve have lived here for five years, since giving up their jobs as social workers in Manchester and downshifting to this Cumbrian village, starting a business taking schoolkids on outward-bound adventures. From their back windows, you can see green fields and hills bisected by rivers and a white waterfall. Maeve takes the little children on nature walks, sketching or dam-building; he leads the older ones up Helvellyn or instructs them on how to build a shelter in the wild.

Real children fill their days, he thinks, as he takes another drag, and would-be, wished-for, imagined children fill their evenings, their weekends, their nights.

He is just leaning sideways to get a better view of the neighbours’ pantry, where the eldest child – a pale, almost wordless boy of around ten – is standing on a ladder, hand deep in a canister of what is possibly raisins or chocolate drops, when the phone rings. His sister – it has to be. He knew she would call tonight.

‘Is that you?’ he says, putting it to his ear.

‘It is indeed,’ Claudette’s voice replies. ‘I see your phone manner hasn’t improved.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘It hasn’t. What in God’s name do you want?’

She laughs, as he knew she would. ‘I want to know about today. How did it go?’

Lucas inhales deeply on the cigarette and considers how to answer this. Should he say that he and Maeve waited for a whole agonising hour in the embryo transfer room, which had no windows and very little light, save for a cone cast by a lamp on the doctor’s table? Maeve on the bed, covered with an insufficient blanket – Lucas could see her shivering with the cold or the anticipation or perhaps both – and the doctor holding up an X-ray to the light. Lucas exhales his smoke into the chill Cumbrian night air. How to distil the magnitude of what happened today into the smallness of a reply?

‘Well,’ he flicks away his ash, ‘it went. We had two embryos put back.’

‘Oh.’ She lets out a sigh. ‘Good.’

‘We saw them.’

‘You saw what?’

‘The embryos.’

‘Really?’

‘They showed them to us on this screen up near the ceiling.’

Back-lit in green, the embryos had hovered above them, like notions, like deities: vast, beautiful, terrifying. Geometric in structure, they were like a proliferation of soap bubbles or the huge, heavy blooms of flowers. Lucas had wanted to shout, oh, and, hello, and, there you are. He thought they were the most exquisite things he had ever seen. Maeve’s hand held his in a fierce, cold grip. He had wanted to shut his eyes in a final, desperate wish but dared not tear his gaze from that screen, from those illuminated sea-creatures floating in their aquatic dish. Please, he said to them, please, please.

‘One of them,’ he says to Claudette, ‘we were assured, was of top, sure-to-be-a-winner quality.’

‘Thank God. That’s great. I’ve got all my fingers crossed for you.’

‘That doesn’t sound entirely comfortable.’

‘I don’t care. This has to be your time, it just has to be.’

He presses his back into the wall of the shed. ‘Let’s hope.’

She shifts position or someone near her says something.

‘Where are you?’ he asks.