Every Contact Leaves A Trace (9 page)

When Richard reappeared and announced he was taking me out for a walk Lucinda went to lie down, having told me not to worry, I wouldn’t be on my own for a single second now that they were there. That evening, after the three of us had finished our room-service dinner and they’d left me to myself, I saw that Richard had forgotten his newspaper. I picked it up intending to go after them and give it back to him but then I noticed there was a book underneath it,
On Death and Dying
, or
On Grief and Grieving
, or something like that, and I realised they’d done it deliberately. They stayed in the hotel with me until I went back to London the following Tuesday and I was glad of it, although I have yet to read their book.

And then there was Evie. Not having managed to get hold of her on the Thursday night when I’d called her from the police station, I’d been allowed to try her again as soon as I’d woken the following morning. When she answered her mobile it turned out she was in Oxford already. ‘Just for the weekend,’ she said. ‘Fundraiser at the Ashmolean. Terrible bore. Godawful guests. Godawful wine. There we are.’ And then she surprised me by saying that Rachel had known this. They’d talked on Thursday morning and discovered the coincidence. She’d even invited us for cocktails at Browns before our dinner at Worcester that evening, but Rachel had left a message saying she’d checked with me and I didn’t want to. ‘How is she anyway? She sounded in an awful mood when she rang yesterday. Will you have tea with me today do you think? Is that why you’re calling? You don’t both have to come you know.’

And then I told her. She said nothing, nothing at all. I listened to her silence for a time and then I said that when it came to my release I would need her to bring me some clothes and some shoes, and I listed for her all of the things she would have to do. She still hadn’t spoken by the time I said goodbye, and I put down the phone without being entirely sure whether she was still there. She had appeared at the police station later on though, almost as soon as I’d been told I was to be released on bail. I hadn’t expected her to do as other people might have, to come forward and embrace me or even to take my hand in hers, but I suppose I had thought she would at least look at me. Instead, when the door was closed behind her she stayed where she was and fumbled for something in her handbag before checking, two or three times, the contents of the holdall she had placed on the floor. It wasn’t until after all of this, and after she’d taken her phone from her jacket pocket and put it back again, that she looked across at me sitting on the other side of the room watching her. At first I could detect nothing in her face that could tell me what she might be feeling, nothing at all. But then she took off her sunglasses and I could see the redness around her eyes and I noticed the muscles in her cheeks moving as she clenched and unclenched her jaw. She pushed the holdall across the floor towards me. ‘The clothes you asked for.’ I opened my mouth to speak but she raised her hands up in front of her chest, palms outward. ‘I’m not sure we should talk at this stage, Alex. It’s just too complicated isn’t it? You can be in touch by email, I think that’s best for now,’ and she walked away and left me there.

I put on the clothes she’d brought me and I signed the forms I had to sign before leaving the station by a back entrance and being driven back to the hotel in an unmarked car. When I let myself into our room I could see straight away that it had been searched by the police; the wardrobe door was wide open and some of our things were missing, just as they had warned me they would be. I sat down on the bed. The card that would have been put there while we were having dinner with Harry lay still on one of the pillows, telling us that the forecast was for sun and reminding us the hotel could provide
bicycles
and a picnic, or book us a punt if we wanted one. I picked it up and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I took the holdall Evie had given me and held it upside down to see if she had put anything else in it apart from the clothes. A single A4 envelope fell on to the bed beside me. Inside was a note from Evie and some photographs and a smaller envelope, addressed in Rachel’s writing to her godmother. I put the photographs on one side and picked up the note.

Alex, I’m writing this because I know we shan’t really talk when we meet. You’ll be tired and I don’t suppose I shall feel like it anyway. You know I’ve never liked you – didn’t think Rachel should have married you, couldn’t believe it that night when I found out she was going to. And I know you don’t care for me either. But Rachel loved you, and I want you to be in no doubt about that. She loved you very much, in fact, and I’m giving you the letter she sent me last year after your wedding in case you should ever come to question her. And I thought you might like to have the photos. Sorry I never got round to giving you them before now. There will be plenty to arrange between the two of us but I’d rather we kept to email for now. I’m sure we’ll speak before too long but I simply can’t face it at the moment
.

Evie
.

I put all the things she had given me away in my case and I drew a bath and lay in it for hours. I ran it a little too hot so that it hurt when I got in, and I lowered my head under the water and up again. I felt my face burning and I shut my eyes and pretended I was dreaming everything that had happened; that none of it was real. I lay there until I realised I had fallen asleep and the water was completely cold. I don’t think I did anything else that night other than phone Richard and ask him to speak to my senior partner for me. And then I ordered room service and climbed afterwards into bed.

The next few days merged into one; Richard took me on walks and Lucinda sat with me in my room, each of them taking it in turns to go with me to see the people I had to see and Lucinda starting a file of all the things I would have to deal with, collecting phone
numbers
and addresses and making lists. I overheard her saying to Richard at breakfast on the Tuesday morning, when she thought I was still at the bar ordering more coffee, ‘Do you know darling I haven’t done anything like this since the wedding, isn’t that amazing! I think I’m quite good at it really, don’t you?’ And she was right, she was good at it, so good in fact that by lunchtime that day it had become apparent I could achieve nothing by staying in Oxford any longer, and I said goodbye and left.

I thought about Evie as I drove. Until the moment when she had taken off her sunglasses and I had seen her eyes, she had looked that day as she always did. As far as I could recall, I had seen her without those glasses only once or twice in all the time that I had known her. They always struck me as being a little too large for her face, which is small and clipped somehow; her hair cropped short at the back, her chin pointed and much of her forehead hidden by a fringe cut in a sharp diagonal so that it covers the upper part of her right cheek as well. That she had chosen to wear red that day seemed almost inappropriate at the time, given the reason for our meeting, but that also was something she always did.

I asked Rachel about this once, Evie’s choice of colour, and about whether it was the same jacket each time or whether she’d had several made to an identical design: cut from a blooded silk that looked thick and quilted and was traced about with some kind of an oriental pattern, they hung stiffly from her shoulders and almost hovered about her body so that I was never quite sure of the size of her torso; of whether she was squat or slight above her waist and tiny legs. This was something I could have ascertained were I ever to have held her in any kind of embrace, even for a moment. The sleeves of the jackets were shaped so that they were far wider at the bottom than they were at the shoulder, the material folded back to form oversized cuffs sitting only a couple of inches below her elbows and allowing for her wrists and forearms to emerge bird-like and wiry. These little arms of hers suggest to me each time I see them that the frame lying beneath her jackets is a diminutive one, but I cannot be certain of this.

Rachel ignored my question about Evie’s jackets. She laughed at me and said she didn’t know why I was so interested and then she changed the subject. Talking about her godmother was something she did only when I pushed her to, and even then reluctantly. ‘I suppose you’d better meet her at some point,’ she’d said to me in bed one morning when we were talking about who to invite to our wedding. In the end we both agreed we’d rather not invite anyone at all, but that since we had to have witnesses, Richard and Lucinda would do as well as anyone else. And then I said, at the same time as running my hand up and down her back again and again so softly that I wasn’t sure whether I was actually touching her, ‘Don’t you think Evie should come?’ ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Can you do it a bit harder? And a bit lower down?’ ‘Answer my question,’ I said. ‘You’re not going to distract me from the fact that you haven’t.’ ‘What question?’ she said, taking my hand and pulling it across herself and putting it between her legs. ‘Evie. Shoot. Tell me why on earth you wouldn’t want her to come to your own wedding.’ But then she did distract me and it wasn’t until later on that she said, ‘I suppose you’d better meet her,’ by which time I’d forgotten who she was talking about and said so. ‘Evie,’ she said. ‘Evie bloody Evie. Dinner or something. But can we invite Richard and Lucinda as well? That should lessen the impact a little.’

And so we did. Our engagement celebration, such as it was, took place a couple of weeks later. It was left to me to make the call to invite Evie, Rachel finding a seemingly endless list of reasons not to do it herself. The phone rang and rang, so that by the time it was finally answered I had become mesmerised by the sound of it and had to remind myself who I’d wanted to speak to. Just as soon as it had been picked up, the connection was cut and I was left listening to the dialling tone. I rang back straight away and this time I got through immediately. A woman’s voice said only ‘Yes,’ without even so much as an inflection suggesting that a response might be welcomed. I told Rachel about this when I got in that evening and she said it was nothing to do with the fact that I had let it ring and ring the time before; it was just the way Evie answered the phone.

‘I suppose so,’ she’d said when I told her we wanted to take her out for a meal. ‘I mean yes, of course Alex, of course. You could have given me a little more notice, that’s all. I’m so sorry I really have to go now I’m working. If you ring again and I don’t pick up, don’t ring back will you? It either means I’m out or I don’t want to talk to anyone. Alright?’ ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Evie. I look forward to meeting you.’ ‘Yes,’ she said again, as bluntly as before, and then she hung up before I could tell her where or when, or even why it was that we were meeting, so I asked Rachel that evening if she could email her.

As it turned out, Rachel made no mention to Evie of what it was that we were celebrating. She said to me some time later on, after the dinner was over, that it was something she hadn’t wanted to put in an email, and when she’d called to try to talk about it, Evie had said she was busy, couldn’t it wait, whatever it was, and did it really matter why we were meeting she’d said she’d be there and she would. She was the last to arrive at the restaurant. By the time she walked in, half an hour or more after everyone else, Rachel had become quite agitated, checking her phone for messages every few minutes and looking over to the door whenever someone arrived. When I asked her what was the matter she spoke to me quite unkindly, the first time she’d ever done so. ‘We should never have invited her should we? It’s just so bloody rude, don’t you think? And don’t tell me she’s been held up.’ ‘Rachel,’ I said, but she carried on. ‘You always make excuses for people don’t you? Always want to see their good side. Well you know what Alex, some people just don’t have a good side.’ ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s OK,’ and I put my hands over hers. She pulled away from me and turned to speak to Lucinda so I went to look for Richard, who’d got up and left as soon as Rachel had started to snap at me. I found him standing on the balcony smoking a cigar, and felt suddenly that the evening was beginning to unravel before it had even begun. ‘Still a bit of a crazy tern, eh?’ he said to me, clapping me on the back. ‘Rachel Cardanine,’ he carried on, nodding his head and turning his mouth into the upside down ‘U’ shape he used when he wanted to look serious. I thought
he
was about to say something else, but instead he only held his breath for a moment, and then he laughed and clapped me on the back again, and we started to talk about the wine list and what we should move on to after the champagne. As we went back to our table a woman walked into the restaurant. The instant I saw her I knew it was Evie. Rachel, to my surprise, got up from her seat and almost ran towards her and embraced her. The strange thing was that as they held one another, which they did for slightly longer than one might have expected them to, I had a sense for an instant that the woman I was looking at could have been Rachel, twenty years on. And then Evie detached herself and made a fuss about her coat and whether it would be hung properly, in a closet, and didn’t they have such a thing as a coat hanger, and the idea seemed suddenly ridiculous. Apart from the slightness of their build, and the colour of their hair, they were entirely unalike.

The evening was, for the most part, uneventful. Lucinda and Richard spoke of the house they were hoping to buy, and of their honeymoon and how the other couples in the safari lodge had been awful, really dreadful, but that there was no other way to have done it really, and that at least they’d had their own beach on Zanzibar so they’d been able to have some time to themselves. Lucinda and Rachel exchanged news of old school friends, Rachel masking her indifference, I thought, with considerable skill and Richard going outside again at that point, saying he had to join a conference call from the US.