‘Why aren’t you my mum?’ said Max. ‘You’re so much better at it than
Millicent
.’
Millicent’s smile was gone. Then it was back.
‘Max,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Just …’
‘It’s what you think too, Dad.’
Millicent’s smile was very broad now. ‘Good idea, honey. Would you
like
to be his mother, Arla?’
Arla’s own smile flickered out. She could feel the anger in her sister, but she didn’t yet know what Millicent knew. She looked at Millicent, then at me, then at Max. Then the California smile was back, warmer than ever. Breezes and cotton candy, bodies in the surf.
Millicent knows, Arla.
But Arla only smiled back at me.
‘Shh,’ said Max. ‘Listen.’
The timer on the toaster. Traffic and birds through the back door. Nothing more.
Max stood up, very deliberately, and went to the back door. He opened it wide, and went out into the garden. He came back, carrying one end of the stepladder, dragging the other across the lawn.
‘Max, the grass.’
‘You don’t care about the grass,’ he said.
He dragged the ladder into the kitchen and past the table, and out through the door into the front room.
‘Aren’t you going to help him, honey?’
‘He can do it,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he’s done it before.’
Whatever Millicent’s true reaction was, she quickly masked it behind a smile. But the anger behind the eyes was no longer there. There was something else. Fear, perhaps?
Sound of the ladder being dragged up the staircase, hard and metallic against the softness of the wood. Then everything was very still.
Part of me wanted to say, ‘Arla, Millicent knows.’ Someone was going to have to say those words, in one form or another, and soon. But it couldn’t be now.
I could hear Max’s bare feet on the stepladder. Then nothing. I thought for a moment about the loft, and wondered if I should tell him to be careful.
Only beams and plasterboard.
Then I could hear Max’s voice, speaking softly, then his feet on the stepladder again.
In the kitchen we made a play of shrugging at each other. Arla shrugged at Millicent. Millicent shrugged at me. I shrugged first at Arla, then at Millicent. Everyone smiled. Only Arla smiled with any warmth.
She knows, Arla.
Max was padding down the stairs. His voice was small, soothing, and coaxing: not words so much as sounds. I did not hear him cross the floor of the front room. He entered, carrying the cat. He put her down on the work surface and turned on the tap. She lapped at the water.
‘Dad shut her into the loft.’ The reproach in his voice, in his angry stare. The cat must have slipped up the ladder behind me when I had taken Millicent’s letters. I had closed the hatch and shut her in. She had been there for two days. Why had she not mewed, or scratched?
‘It’s OK now, Foxxa,’ he said. ‘It’s OK, girl.’
‘It’s good that your hearing is so sharp, Max,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, it is.’
Arla took Max to school.
I was almost relieved when Millicent stopped smiling. I tried to speak to her as she stood in the front room putting on her shoes, leaning against the banister for support. All she would tell me was that she was going ‘out, Alex. I have a
lot
of thinking to do.’ She flashed one last smile at me, then closed the door delicately behind her to emphasise her point.
The cat, however, was kind to me. She sat in my lap, washing herself, contented after water and food. She nuzzled against my hand, arched her back as I stroked her. Then she got off my lap, and sat down beside a piece of string that was lying on the floor. She stared at the piece of string, then stared at me, chirruping.
‘No, cat,’ I said.
She patted at the piece of string, then looked at me, eyes wide.
‘OK,’ I said.
I got up and picked up the piece of string; she leapt at the end of it, turned a backflip in the air as the tip flicked out of reach, her body level with my ribs. Flexion and torsion: first her chest, then her stomach. Now her front paws pointed downwards, now her rear paws. She landed almost without a sound; made herself low, ready for the next jump. I drew figures-of-eight in the air, and she turned backflip after backflip, supple and young in the sunlight, predator and imaginary prey. A tiny pool of undeserved calm; everything else was maelstrom.
‘No!’
Shouting in the street.
‘No, you can’t! It’s not yours to effing sell.’
It was very close. I went up the stairs and into Millicent’s office. I drew back the curtains. Arla had left the window open.
There was a man, angry, outside the neighbour’s house. That much I had understood from the shouting. He was tall, bearded, with short black hair and dark olive skin. His light-grey suit looked expensive and cool. He kept walking away, hands folded tight into his chest; then he would turn, throwing out his arms as if pleading, and walking back towards the open door. I could not see who was on the other side of the door, but I could hear a female voice that I did not know urging him to be calm.
‘Jesus,’ I heard the man shout. ‘Tell me this isn’t true!’
The man did not look dangerous. As I stood and wondered whether to intervene, Mr Ashani came out into the street, walked purposefully past our house and over to Bryce’s front door.
‘All right, my dear?’ I heard him say to the woman who stood hidden there. He took the man by the arm. ‘This lady is not the source of your troubles, sir. She is here at my request.’
‘You brought in an effing estate agent? Effing unbelievable.’
Mr Ashani released the man’s arm. ‘I am the owner. Perhaps you wish to address yourself to me?’ Mr Ashani led the man across the street and away from the argument. I heard Bryce’s door close.
From this angle I could see the man’s features better. Indian, I thought. Handsome. Tall. Thin. Mid-thirties. I saw Mr Ashani and the man pointing over at our house, and wondered whether they could see me in the upstairs window. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t watching and listening.
I went to check my appearance in the bathroom. I looked tired, and my hair was a mess. I splashed water on to my face; I tried to do something about my hair; I went down the stairs and out into the street. The man was on his way, was about to disappear round the corner. I would have caught up with him if I wanted to; instead I hung back.
A hand on my arm. ‘That poor girl,’ said Mr Ashani. ‘He wanted to give her a piece of his mind! When it is
I
who own the house; yet he did not dare to shout at
me
. He simply made his excuses and left, like a coward. Tell me, Alex, sir, do I inspire fear in
you
? Do I ever make
you
uneasy?’
‘Who was that?’
Mr Ashani reached into his cream slacks and produced a crisp business card, which he handed to me.
Mann and Bryce
Architectural Project Management
There was a telephone number on it. Nothing more.
‘You may keep the card.’
Mr Ashani went into his house. I stood for a while, blinking into the sunlight and the dust, then went back into mine. Then a thought occurred to me. I went outside and rang Mr Ashani’s bell.
‘Emmanuel,’ I said when he answered, ‘Emmanuel, have the police told you you can sell that house?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘but they have yet to tell me that I may not.’
By early afternoon I was sitting in the office of Ravinder S. Mann, architect. He was having, he said, a new sign delivered. The old one was still on the door; the old one still said Mann and Bryce.
The table in the boardroom was white. Everything was streamlined; everything looked new. There were eight white chairs, two red chairs; two purple chairs. I sat in one of the red chairs. Ravinder Mann (‘Call me Ravi, Alex’) sat in one of the white chairs in his cool grey woollen suit, looking detached and handsome, fingertips pressed lightly together. There were five books in the large bookshelf. One was grey; one was pink; three were black.
He seemed at first to think I was there on business. An assistant brought pastries and an assortment of teas. Out of the window was a garden of raked white gravel. I thought of Bryce’s house, and wondered whether it was Bryce who had designed the office.
‘So,’ he said, ‘personal recommendation, right?’
Expensively educated, I thought. Something about his bearing, his manner, his diction. That thing Oxford people often do: trying to convince you that they’re less posh than they are.
‘I lived next door to Bryce,’ I said. ‘I mean, I still live there.’
A look of intense grief passed across his face, and immediately I felt like an idiot for judging him.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said.
‘Not a personal recommendation, then,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘You’re Alex.’ It wasn’t a question. He knew who I was.
‘I’m Alex. Yeah.’
‘I wish I knew what to say. I’m so sorry …’ he said.
That your friend seduced my wife.
‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ I said.
He made to pour the tea. His hand shook, and he spilled quite a lot of it over the surface of the boardroom table. We sat looking at the puddle as it spread slowly outwards, enveloping the bottoms of the cups. Perfectly level, I thought.
Architects
.
‘Alex,’ he said, ‘shall we go to the pub instead?’
I looked back at the pooling tea as it inched towards the edge of the table.
‘What about this?’
‘Screw it,’ he said. ‘It’s all screwed, anyway.’
We spent the first pint talking about football. We both had our reasons for hating it. He had been an overweight child. At school he had worn glasses and an eye patch; his mother had written notes to his teachers excusing him from gym. Hard to imagine now that no one wanted him on their team.
At my school, I told him, football was Hibs or Hearts, Fenian or Protestant, knife fights down the Grassmarket on a Friday night.
‘Scourge of religion,’ he said with a wry smile, rubbing his beard.
‘You’re …’
‘A Sikh,’ he said.
‘Practising?’
‘Ish.’
He told me again how sorry he was about what Bryce had done. It wasn’t like him, he wanted me to know. He was a good man at heart. The old Bryce would have been appalled at what the new Bryce had done. He was sure of it.
‘You don’t have to apologise for your friend.’
‘You think you know someone,’ he said. ‘But you don’t. You don’t know them at all.’
He said nothing when I handed him his second beer. I asked him if he was OK.
‘He was clever,’ he said. ‘He didn’t empty the client account, so I didn’t know. Everything else, though. Everything else he screwed.’
I took a long swig of beer, waited for him to continue.
He looked up, and the edges of his mouth tightened. ‘I don’t even know how much is missing. He dismissed the bookkeeper. All I know is, we’re effing screwed. Well, he’s dead.
I’m
screwed. Cheers.’
He tapped his glass against mine, a little too hard.
‘Cheers,’ I said, reflexively.
‘What am I going to do, Alex?’
In other circumstances I would have liked the man. In other circumstances we could have been friends, I thought.
‘Do you want me to tell you what he was doing, Alex?’
‘OK.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘that’s just my way of telling you I’m
going
to tell you what he was doing. Because I have to tell you; because I’m scared to tell my wife, and I have to tell
someone
. You look like a good guy.’
‘OK …’
‘Three of our clients have now told me he asked for payment in cash. The wonder is that any of them would do it because they’re none of them fools, but yes, they paid him in cash, because he was a persuasive little beggar, and they did.’
I thought sadly about Millicent; he had certainly persuaded her. ‘A scaffolder came to our door,’ I said. ‘Bryce gave him our address.’
‘Oh, Lord, no,’ he said.
‘He was trading from our address,’ I said. ‘Although I don’t think he was ever in our house. Sorry. I’m not trying to make things worse.’
‘No, I need to know,’ he said. ‘How much this time?’
‘Twenty-three thousand? Twenty-four?’
‘Do you have any idea how long it takes before a creditor comes knocking at your door, Alex?’ I made to speak, but he carried on. ‘Again, I’m going to tell you. In my line of work, four or five months. Minimum. They know how long it takes to get paid, and they trust us, because they know it takes
us
time to get paid by our creditors, and because this business is founded on trust. And now we’ve effed that trust, haven’t we? Or at least, Bryce has. I’m finished.’
There was despair in him now.
‘I heard you outside Bryce’s house,’ I said. ‘Saw you.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes, I shouldn’t have shouted at her. Not her fault. Not her fault at all.’ He looked at me pleadingly, pulled at my sleeve, as if there was something I could do to help him. ‘I thought at least I might have some sort of claim against the estate. That was my last hope. And I’m ashamed of it, but I thought he owed me that, at least. And then I find out there’s no effing house to sell, and I am completely – not to say utterly – effed.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I offered to go to the bar again.
‘I’ll send the girl some flowers,’ he said, ‘while I still have a bank account.’
‘Have you told the police?’ I asked.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Do you think I should? I mean, I know I should. I will, I promise. I will.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Do you know the weird thing?’ he said. ‘Do you know what the absolute weirdest thing is? Do you, Alex? The weirdest thing is, is that … is that … is that everything’s still how it was. It’s like, there’s this massive cliff of ice at the end of a glacier. I mean, I’m standing here in a boat on the ocean just in front of it and it’s got to fall, yes, but nothing has come crashing down yet, and it all still looks perfect. I know it will start to break up. It has to. But it hasn’t yet. Everything still looks as if it could remain intact.’