Postcards From Berlin (20 page)

When I go back inside, my feet are completely wet, as though I have walked through water, leaving perfect prints on the kitchen
tiles. The blue air is inside me, like something I’ve drunk in, and my heartbeat is slow and gentle, and I know what I will
do.

H
E’S SHORTER THAN I REMEMBER
, and he’s wearing jeans and a loose white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he has a sandwich on a plate in his hand.
His gray eyes widen as he sees me standing there on his doorstep.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He shakes his head. “It’s lovely to see you,” he says.

Jamie’s schoolbag and Spider-Man lunch box are flung down on the wooden floor of the hall. From the front room, I can hear
Neighbours
, which Sinead and Daisy too will be watching now. He steps aside to usher me in.

“You didn’t bring Daisy.”

“No.” I don’t tell him the reason — that I didn’t tell the girls I was coming here, that I didn’t want Richard to know. Maybe
he guesses this; he doesn’t press it.

“You could go into the back,” he says. “I was just taking this to Jamie.” He indicates the sandwich.

The back room is uncluttered, almost bare: white walls, stripped floors, just a table and chairs and a sofa, and a bookcase
that is full of books about globalization. I wonder briefly how different I would be if I lived in a room like this one, a
simple room with white light pouring in. The mantelpiece is empty except for a postcard that says, “It is the word that is
the bridge to cross to the other side.” There are photographs on the walls: big black-and-white pictures of Jamie at a playground,
a picture of Fergal with a woman who presumably must be his ex-wife — svelte and dark, her head close to his — in a garden
somewhere, Fergal in a flak jacket in front of a burned-out house that’s stark against a summer-blue sky.

“I like the room,” I say as he comes in.

“I didn’t do it myself,” he says. “It was like this when I bought it. But it seemed just right for me. I like to travel light
— I’m not very domestic, really.”

I point to the photograph where he’s wearing the black jacket. “You’ve done some interesting things.”

“I used to be into all this gung-ho stuff,” he says. “But not since Jamie came to live with me. It wasn’t possible anymore.
Though to be honest, I didn’t want to anyway.”

“I think that having children can make you more afraid.”

“Yes,” he says.

We stand there for a moment, not knowing what to do.

“Why don’t you sit down?” he says.

I sit on the sofa. He looks down at me with steady eyes, and my body feels big and ungainly, and I don’t know why I’ve come.

“I’ll get you a drink,” he says. “Would you like that?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He goes to the kitchen, comes back with two glasses and a bottle of wine from the fridge with a sweat of cold on it.

“It’s rather rough,” he says as he hands me my glass, his fingers brushing mine. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have got
something better.”

I drink gratefully. “It’s good,” I tell him.

He’s standing there with his glass in his hand. I sense his awkwardness. He’s very direct, but he isn’t smooth like Richard.
He’s no good at glossing over the gaps in conversations: He isn’t the kind of man who’d open doors for you or slickly end
up at your elbow on the outside of the pavement. The silence stretches on, and I’m desperate to break it.

“It’s a weird feeling. That you know so much about me.” And immediately I wish I hadn’t said that: It’s too close, too confessional.
Heat washes over my skin.

His eyes don’t leave me.

“Well, I don’t, of course,” he says. “I saw a photo of you, that was all. When I was doing a piece on The Poplars, during
the inquiry.”

“But that was years ago.”

“Yes. It was one of my first pieces. It got to me, the whole story, the way you were silenced.”

“I still don’t see you how could recognize me.”

“There were these photos: you and some of the other kids in this big empty room — it looked so bleak somehow — and one that
was just you, smiling for England,” he says.

I remember the photo that Lesley took, for the advertisement in the
Evening Standard
.

“I can’t have been more than fourteen,” I say.

“No,” he says, “but your smile was just the same.”

I feel myself flush again: I turn away a little.

“And Aimee?” I say. “You told me you met her?”

He nods. “She’s got a little boy. She works in a dry cleaner’s in Peckham.”

“And she’s really OK?”

“I only met her once. She was keen to talk,” he says.

“Maybe I should go and see her,” I say uncertainly. “It’s just so hard to imagine.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Well, that’s up to you — I mean, I can give you her number.”

I sense that he wants to dissuade me. And he’s right, maybe. I think of how it would be if I went to see her now: how everything
that joined us once has gone.

“What did you say about me? Was she angry with me?”

“Angry? Why would she be?”

“I thought she might be.”

He shakes his head. “She said you were the clever one; she always thought you’d make it.”

I wonder what that means, to make it, and whether it’s true of me.

He turns from me, opens a window onto the back garden. It’s a nondescript garden: a motorbike, a climbing frame, a patch of
grass worn down from football games, a prunus with pink extravagant blossom and dark leaves the color of scorched paper. Warm
air comes into the room, with a smell of the changing earth.

“That isn’t the only reason I came,” I say. “There’s something else — I needed to talk to somebody.”

“Daisy?”

My heart has started to pound. “Something’s happened.…” The words clog up my throat.

“Catriona, what is it?” he says. There’s a sudden urgency in his voice, responding perhaps to the fear in mine. “What are
they saying?”

Suddenly, in this simple bright room, the whole thing seems preposterous; I scarcely believe it myself. I think he’ll shrug
it off — or say, like Richard, You’re exaggerating; it’ll all blow over.… I take a deep breath.

“They think it’s my fault — that I’m making her ill.”

“They’re saying
what?
”

“That it’s my fault: that it’s this syndrome.”

His face changes. He’s sharp, alert. He stares at me.

“Munchausen’s?”

I nod.

“Jesus.”

“I love her so much. How could I possibly hurt her?”

He makes a brief little gesture, waving my protestation aside.

“I don’t believe this,” he says.

“I’ve seen the letter.”

“Jesus,” he says again.

He’s silent for a moment. He pulls up a dining chair and sits down in front of me, his steady gaze on me.

“Catriona, this is a criminal allegation,” he says. His voice has changed, he’s so quiet, serious. “When a doctor says this,
he isn’t talking medicine anymore, he’s talking crime. You need a lawyer. Now.”

This shakes me.

“How can I possibly get a lawyer?”

“I could find you someone,” he says.

“But Richard would never agree. Richard thinks we should just go along with what they’re saying — not make a fuss. That we
shouldn’t rock the boat, that they all know what they’re doing. He’d be appalled if I suggested seeing a lawyer.”

“Go on your own, then,” he says.

“How can I? I’m totally dependent. I’ve no money of my own, no training: I’ve got three GCSEs — I mean, I have nothing that’s
just mine.…”

My voice is small. I feel a kind of shame at this recital of my deficiencies — that I am so dependent, like a child.

“At the very least,” he says, “you must get another doctor.” He’s talking fast, and his urgency frightens me. “You have an
absolute right to a second opinion. If they really believe this, they could take Daisy away. They don’t have to be certain.”

“I don’t know anyone to go to.” I think how feeble he must think me — that to everything he suggests I say that I can’t do
it. “I’ve asked my GP; she couldn’t suggest anyone.”

“That’s crap,” he says. “Listen. There’s a woman I know who’s on the Health Authority — a local councillor, Thelma. She knows
lots of medics. I’ll get you a name.”

“But how can I do that if Richard doesn’t want to?”

“You’ve got to make him see.”

I shake my head a little, thinking of Richard. There’s silence between us for a moment. The lazy, easy sounds of spring evenings
float in through the window — children calling in the wide back gardens, the leisurely clatter of horses being ridden down
the road.

“Why doesn’t he understand?” I’m talking half to myself now. “Why does he seem to believe what these doctors are saying?”

“How should I know?” He’s looking out at the garden, looking away from me. “I’m possibly the very last person you should talk
to about Richard.”

It’s because of the warmth behind his words, perhaps, but tears of self-pity start to well up in me. I swallow them down.

“I feel so helpless,” I tell him.

“Yes. I know. But you’re not.”

He comes and sits beside me on the sofa. He puts out a hand and briefly touches my wrist. I look at his hand on mine. I see
how worn his fingernails are, and the tracery of blue veins inside his arm. “I think you’re also strong.”

I shake my head. “I don’t feel it.”

“Aimee told me some of it,” he says. “About what you all went through. If you can come through that, you can come through
anything.”

We’re too close; I don’t look at him.

“I don’t think it works like that,” I tell him. “I don’t think awful things make you stronger.”

“But you’ve made it through,” he says. “When I look at you, I see this poised woman with this perfect house, this perfect
lifestyle — but someone who knows about the other side too. Someone who’s survived … Catriona, you’ve got to fight this.”

“But how can I? How can I if Richard won’t? Because everything I do will be held against me. They’re watching me now — just
watching to see if I put a foot wrong, if I give them any little clue. I know they’re watching me. And Dr. McGuire — I feel
he hates me. I can’t fight him.”

“I don’t think you have a choice,” he says.

“But the way he looks at me — it’s like I appall him somehow.…”

“No,” he says. “It’s nothing to do with that.” He gets up abruptly. “Dr. McGuire,” he says. “I’ve heard about Dr. McGuire.”

He’s looking out of the window, his back to me.

“There was a case up at the hospital,” he says. “Several years ago now. Dr. McGuire was involved. Nice couple; Mum had been
a nurse; stable, ordinary family. Thelma told me; she had a contact on the pediatric ward. First kid died of a cot death.
Terrible thing, everyone was very sympathetic, big funeral, lots of white flowers. Mum had another baby. Second kid died,
just like the first. Tragic coincidence. A year or two later, Mum had a third child — had a monitor to check on the baby’s
breathing, loved him to bits, everyone was very happy for her. But the baby wasn’t thriving and the GP was worried, made a
fuss — and, rather against Dr. McGuire’s wishes, mother and baby were admitted to a covert-surveillance unit in Birmingham.
They got her on video, trying to suffocate the baby.” He’s staring into the garden. “They’re pretty bloody wary up there now,”
he says.

I sit there, thinking about all this: I don’t know what to say.

“I don’t know if that helps at all,” he says then.

“Yes. Maybe.”

We’re silent for a moment: I feel his eyes on me.

From the front room, I hear the music at the end of
Neighbours
.

“I’ve got to go,” I tell him.

“Yes,” he says. “But I’d like you to come again. You could show me some of your artwork. I’d like that.”

“Yes. I will.”

I get up. Our eyes are just on a level.

“You don’t believe it,” I say. “That it
is
my fault. Everyone else seems to suspect me, but you don’t.”

“For goodness’ sake,” he says.

I go into the hall. He follows me. We’re standing there and neither of us has opened the door.

I turn toward him. I’m going to say thanks for the drink and for listening to me. We’re looking at each other: We can’t look
away.

“Catriona.” The way he says it, it’s like he touches me, like warm fingertips sliding across my skin. “I’ve wanted so much
to see you. There are things I’ve wanted to say to you. That I probably shouldn’t anyway, but I wanted to. And now I can’t,”
he says.

My skin is hot.

“That’s the very last thing you need,” he says, “the stuff I was going to say.”

I shake my head a little.

He looks at me like a question, and reaches out and puts his arms around me. He holds me lightly for a moment, carefully,
as though I am fragile. I rest my head on his shoulder. Then I turn and go without looking at him.

N
ICKY RINGS
, wanting to know how Daisy is and whether I’m going to the
Sound of Music karaoke
. She asks what we thought of Helmut Wolf’s diet. I confess, rather ashamed, that we tried but had to give up. She says, Well,
maybe it wasn’t right for Daisy; she has someone else to recommend, a cranial osteopath with amazing healing hands. I feel
a surge of hope — as I always do when someone is suggested. I write his name in my address book.

Every night I wake and lie there for hours, hearing Richard’s breathing and the barking of the foxes, my worries growing in
the night, feeding on darkness and sleeplessness. I make endless lists in my mind, conjure up new and intricate theories,
things to try. I wonder whether Daisy is allergic to household chemicals: I buy ecological washing-up liquid and clean the
kitchen with bicarbonate of soda. In the dentist’s waiting room I read a magazine article about house-dust mites and how our
bedding is full of their toxic excrement: I send off for a dustmite-proof covers for Daisy’s duvet and mattress. I order a
weekly delivery of organic vegetables. They have lots of leaves, and the carrots still have their feathering of green, and
they come in a string bag and leave rich trails of soil. When I cut into the carrots they give out a sweet scent: This fills
me with a warm, earth-motherly feeling, as though I am a country housewife presiding over an Aga and hens and hollyhocks.
Richard and Sinead and I all enjoy the vegetables. Daisy eats just the potatoes.