Exposure (29 page)

Miraculously, Rosalind was defeated by this interruption, and after the wash was done, she talked only about Luke, who had come to stay that day and was terribly upset about a girlfriend.

On her few visits after that, before he was discharged, Alistair feigned sleep and listened to her sitting silently beside him for as long as he could. And when he woke, plainly too weak and confused to be interrogated, she seemed too preoccupied with their son to ask him questions anyway. She didn't stay long—she must hurry home, she said, she was desperately worried about poor Luke. When he looked back on it, he wondered if this wasn't her way of clinging on, too. They had always been accomplices in that sense.

But on the morning after she brought him home, to the newly laundered bed and the cut flowers on the dressing-table, there was no longer any way to avoid what had happened. The sun shone outside the bedroom window, a tray of toast and coffee sat beside him on the duvet and already the filthy papers were waiting in the shops.

Again, Alistair was sure it had not been Karen who had sold the story. It occurred to him that his faith in her might spring from the false intimacy, the false expectation of loyalty he had always thought would be created by casual sex, but this did not ring true. He remembered the tenderness with which she had said goodbye to him in the hotel bathroom, while she sang along to the TV. No, it had not been her, he thought—she was too good-natured. She laughed too naturally. It might have been many people: the indiscreet friend, one of the attackers or even one of the police. But not Karen. And, anyway, the long delay between their night together and Giorgiou hearing of it and the papers being alerted had a brutal clumsiness to it, which suggested a stranger's involvement. Had Karen felt guilt towards Giorgiou, or spite for Alistair, or even plain greed for a newspaper pay-off, she would have told her story immediately, a couple of months ago.

So, Rosalind had checked he had everything he needed and went out as usual for
The Times
at around nine. All that morning he lay ignorantly in their bedroom drifting in and out of sleep, distantly aware of ghostly doorbells and phones, of Rosalind's feet hurrying to answer them. He began to wonder who all her visitors were and why they did not come up to see him. Why did
she
not come up to see him? He put the breakfast tray on the floor and picked up a book.

At last, at around one thirty, he was actually hungry and thirsty and called out to her: 'Darling? Darling, I've finished my water, I'm afraid. I'm so sorry about this.' He was embarrassed to be so dependent on her.

He heard her feet coming slowly up the stairs and leant back on his pillows. Then he took in the white, pinched face in the doorway, the improbable coffee splash she had left unsponged on her shirt. 'Darling?'

'No,' she said.

She put the paper on the bed and left the room.

The
Sun
headline read:
'FAT CAT QC BEDS SEX-KITTEN WITNESS'
, and there was Karen, photographed by a battered front door, looking amazed, looking about fourteen.

His eyes skimmed the opening paragraph, picking out the phrases printed in bold,
'London's trendy Ridgeley Hotel', 'quaffing expensive champagne'
and then, further down,
'"She looked young enough to be his daughter," said barmaid Angela Jessop, 23.
'They had even interviewed the staff.

He put the paper down and laid his hands neatly at his sides.
'Rosalind?'
he shouted.
'Rosalind?'

But a few minutes later it was his son who came into the room.

It was the kind of summer's day that has Londoners staring up at the sky and speculating about the hole in the ozone layer. TV and radio voices carried through open windows, reciting weather statistics, saying 'heatwave' and 'global warming' and 'possible water shortages'. It was already stiflingly hot at ten to nine. There was primitive fear on the tube trains—of thirst, suffocation, fire—as they thundered through their network of underground tunnels.

As he dressed, Luke thought how glad he was not to be on the Piccadilly line on his way to work. He could imagine the smell of it. This was his second week off. He had told the office there had been a death in the family—which, of course, there had—but he knew they would all have seen the papers and assumed his father was the reason Luke had asked for compassionate leave. He imagined he was much talked about next to the big photocopier outside Sebastian's office. He really didn't care.

He went down the stairs for breakfast. On the way he heard his father moving around and felt glad that he and his mother would be alone for a bit. He knew his father hung around in the spare room long after he woke up. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard the sound of the toaster popping up.

'Morning, darling. Did you sleep?' Rosalind said.

'Nope. Did you?'

'A little. A few hours. Oh, the pair of us.' She shook her head and put out toast and marmalade and coffee. 'I'm afraid I dropped the eggs, Luke. All six of them broke, would you believe it?'

'Oh, Mum.' Luke rubbed her arm.

'But there's cereal, too. And my yoghurt—not that anyone else likes it. Look, is that going to be enough for you?'

'Mum, you must stop worrying and look after yourself. You do need to, after ... everything.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I know.' She looked desolate for a moment and Luke was sorry he had even referred to it. She seemed to hold herself together so long as no one mentioned that anything was wrong. He understood this because they were essentially similar. When things had fallen apart with Arianne he noticed that he himself had developed what Sophie referred to as their mother's 'first-lady' smile. It was a relentless kind of smile, used to ward off bad spirits. Rosalind did it at him over her coffee cup and he wondered how she would cope while he and his father were away for the day in Dover.

The plan was to go and look at the house with the surveyor and put it on the market. They were also going to pack up the rest of the clothes and funny ornaments and old bits of furniture. Luke felt no connection with the idea that he had had a grandmother—or had always had a grandmother—whom he had never met. It was as if no one had owned that litde house and those possessions: they had fallen out of the sky with an incalculable significance, like a doll found in a bush where a plane once crashed.

As for the other issue, what his father had done with that slutty-looking girl, it was incomprehensible and too psychologically threatening to contemplate. Luke simply couldn't stand any more disillusionment just now. Instead he worked himself up into a deep resentment of his sister, who had not been round once since the story came out in the papers. Resentment was a welcome relief from humiliation and it was not without its sensual qualities.

'Have you spoken to Sophie?' he asked.

'I called her this morning.'

'Right. So when's she coming over?'

'She's not.'

Luke's face reddened. 'What?'

'She isn't planning to come over just yet, darling.'

'She's not coming over.'

'No, Luke.'

'Why? Why not?'

'She just won't, darling. She says she can't face seeing him.'

Luke felt intensely angry with Sophie. Couldn't she tell their mother needed them at the moment? Was he the only one with any sense of family responsibility?
He
didn't exactly want to spend time with his father himself, but he was doing it, wasn't he? Because that was real life, that was being an adult, both of which were things Sophie didn't understand—for all her brilliant exam results.

Sitting at the breakfast table with his fist clenched, Luke entirely forgot that he had been brought home by his mother for his own sake and all but carried up the stairs like a child asleep after a long bout of tears.

'What about seeing you, though?' he said. 'That's my whole point, Mum. That's what this is all about.'

'She just can't face it all yet. Luke, it was terribly embarrassing for her at work.'

'Uh-huh.'

The
Telegraph
had covered the story, like all the other papers. Sophie had watched colleagues file copy about her own father. It wasn't that Luke didn't sympathize: it was just that they were always making allowances for Sophie's greater sensitivity. She always got away with looking after herself—because she was so very
sensitive.

'She's very sensitive, darling,' Rosalind said. 'You know that.'

Yes, he knew that. Any minute she might cut up her arms with a razor blade so you saw the scars when she reached out for her cup, or she might turn up on the doorstep weighing five and a half stone, shaking and crying. He knew all about it. He wanted to bring the subject back to himself. As usual, he felt he was doing the dutiful, boring stuff while everyone worried about his sister's feelings.

He really didn't want to drive his father to Dover. He had already done the journey once a couple of days ago and that had been awkward enough. Apart from the fact that the idea felt unreal, distasteful—even sinister, like everything connected with his father at the moment—the truth was, he did not want to give up another whole day that he might have spent lying on his bed, thinking about Arianne. He was also terrified that Alistair might attempt to explain himself—although there was no precedent for any kind of personal discussion in their relationship. But Luke had noticed a kind of mellowing in Alistair since they first visited Dover. There was something approaching sentimentality in his eyes and, instinctively, Luke thought it might go with making confessions.

When Luke thought about what this conversation might sound like, he was aware that he had never before rehearsed dialogue in his mind in which he heard the other person speak and then struggled to breathe, let alone to do an impression of his own voice. 'Mum, do you really think I should go to Dover with Dad? I mean, is it strictly necessary?' he said.

Rosalind furrowed her brow, 'Luke, you've got to. You've just got to. He can't drive all that way with his leg.'

'I know that. I just don't understand why he can't just send people in or whatever. Why does he have to go himself?'

'Because it was his mother, Luke. They're her things—and that was his childhood home. Anyway, the house has to go on the market and it belongs to Dad now. You have to deal with that kind of thing in person. You just have to. You and Sophie always have this idea about
sending
people. Where does it come from? What
people?'

Rosalind looked at her son and wondered frantically for a moment if she had done everything wrong—not only marriage, but Luke and Sophie too. Were they spoilt and irresponsible? Was that why Sophie couldn't find a husband, why Luke went to pieces like this and showed off about his salary all the time?

'Removal people, Mum, that's all. Look, it just feels so weird, is all I'm saying—doing him a favour.'

'I know, I know,' she said, softening with compassion again as she watched her son's hurt face. 'My poor darling. But, Luke, it's you or me driving him. That's what it comes down to.'

'God, hasn't he got any friends?'

'Not at the moment, no.'

'No, I suppose not.' He put his hand over hers and felt a rush of love and protectiveness and pride that he was such a good son. She looked gratefully at him and then she heard Alistair limping and tapping his stick down the stairs, and flashed her eyes. 'He's coming.'

Rosalind behaved as if her husband was literally dangerous, yet he couldn't have seemed more cowed as he came lumbering in. He attempted to grin casually—a sort of prolonged wince—and then he drummed his fingers on the sideboard in a bright litde flourish: it betrayed his heartbeat. 'Morning, darling,' he said, unable to meet her eyes.

Rosalind took her full coffee cup over to the sink, tipped out the contents and washed it. 'Good morning.'

They listened to the fridge humming.

'Goodness, ten fifteen already,' Alistair said. 'Well, shall we head off soonish, Luke?'

'What? Right now?'

'Twenty minutes or so. That's my thinking.'

'Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Dad?'

Alistair glanced at Rosalind's back. 'No, I don't think so. Better just get on. That's my thinking.' He stood still.

'OK,' Luke said. 'Well, I'll just eat this toast, then, if that's OK, and then we'll go.'

'Good, good. That sounds good. Right.'

He walked rather formally into the hall, and after a moment, Rosalind shouted, 'I've put some trunks out, Alistair.' She paused, then began again more quietly, 'Luke and Sophie's old school trunks? They're on the landing. I thought they might be useful for packing things up in.'

Alistair hurried back into the room. 'That was—that was very thoughtful of you, darling.'

'It was nothing,' she said, turning away again.

 

By eleven, they were on the road, heading for Dover. Luke had not driven his father anywhere before these trips to Dover and he found himself conscientiously checking the mirror and moving his hands on the wheel like a new driver, seeking Alistair's approval.

But Alistair didn't notice any of it—he couldn't have cared less about his son's driving: he was filling his lungs with delicious air. As they set off, he felt himself rise, kicking, up to the bright surface. He inhaled deeply. He felt so relieved that he smiled — and immediately hoped his son had not seen. Luke had caught him laughing at a silly item on the news the day before and for a few seconds had seemed to regard his father with open horror before informing him that supper was ready. Alistair could see that it was in very poor taste to smile.

But the fact remained: today was a beautiful day — and the smile came back. Since the hurdle of the first visit to Dover had been cleared and a few days had passed with no mention of his name in the papers, he felt increasingly detached from the circumstances of his life. He felt OK, so long as Rosalind wasn't there, so long as he couldn't see his wife's face. He was aware that this was emotionally crass, but there it was. Perhaps he was having some kind of a breakdown and the memory of these false calms would later serve to emphasize the storm.