Falling Off Air (13 page)

“I know you've already told us that you saw no one on the night of Paula Carmichael's death,” Finney returned to his halfhearted
attempt at interrogation, “and I'm assuming that's still the case.”

“Yes, I still saw no one.”

“Right. But you obviously spend a lot of time at home, and you look out of the window regularly, and you live opposite, and
I'm asking whether you saw anyone visit the house in the few days before her death.”

“I do not spend my life looking out of the window,” I laughed in disbelief.

“I wasn't implying …”

“No, I saw no one.” I was still smiling at Finney treating me like a little old lady. “But there could have been whole armies
visiting her house, for all I know.”

“Okay, okay,” Finney held up his hand in defeat, “I get the message.”

We stood, not speaking, for a moment.

“Those voices you thought you heard, around the time Paula fell,” he ventured. I knew what was coming.

“I can't help you. I'm sorry. I have no idea what I heard or what I didn't. Has anyone else mentioned hearing anything?”

Finney pulled a face.

“Nothing conclusive. One or two people say they may have heard something just before she fell, but it could just be the power
of suggestion. Everyone had heard the shouting earlier in the evening, they may've been expecting to hear a second installment.”

“What about the devoted couple who were yelling at each other earlier? If you found them, you could ask them whether they
resumed their argument later.”

“Number twenty-nine,” he said. “By their account, by the time Paula fell they were tucked up in bed.”

“Really? In the same bed?”

Finney pulled a face.

“Whatever turns them on,” he said, “but I wouldn't put money on their golden wedding anniversary.”

We fell silent for a moment.

“How are Richard Carmichael's finances?” I asked.

“Why?” Finney sounded defensive, but then perhaps he was regretting talking so openly with me about the progress of the investigation.

“I don't look out of the window much, but I do read the papers.”

“I believe the newspapers have reported that his wife's death might get him out of some financial trouble,” he said, “but
that the insurance policy doesn't cover suicide.”

I looked questioningly at him, and he nodded.

“But when he spoke the day after her death he was clearly implying that she'd been hounded to suicide,” I continued.

“He won't be the last person who's ever done a U-turn when it suited him.”

“That was just because the Corporation threatened to sue him. Do you mean he's really saying it wasn't suicide?”

Finney raised an eyebrow and pulled a face.

“A man's allowed to change his mind,” he said.

“So he is.” I thought for a minute. “But has he found anyone else to blame?”

“I believe he asked you whether you'd seen anyone at the scene.”

I nodded. “And I told him the same as I told everyone else.”

“Well now he's somehow got hold of your suggestion that you might have heard voices, and he's very enthusiastic about that.”
Finney sounded resigned. I had the distinct impression he would rather I had kept my imaginings to myself. “Especially combined
with this mysterious visitor the son's come up with.”

“Of course.” I could hardly change my story just because it wasn't convenient for Finney.

“Well,” Finney had been leaning in the doorway, but now he glanced at his watch and straightened up, “I'd better be off. I'll
see myself out.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'm sorry I can't be more help.”

He shrugged.

“Don't forget I need to know how you got into that diary.” He turned toward the stairs. I watched as his shoulders receded.
As he reached for the front door, the bell rang. Finney opened it. I couldn't see who it was, but I heard a male voice.

“There's a Dan Stein here,” Finney called up to me.

I leaned out into the hallway, peered down the stairs, and Dan Stein poked his head around the door.

“Hello?” He looked flustered, but then he probably hadn't expected Finney.

“Hi.” I hoped he wasn't having second thoughts about the antique table. My visitor glanced around him in confusion, trying
to trace my voice, and Finney pointed up the stairs toward me.

“Ah!” Dan Stein looked relieved. “Um, I was wondering whether you wanted to go out for a drink,” he said awkwardly. Finney
was still standing there, holding the door open for Stein and listening to the exchange.

“I'm afraid I'm a bit tied up,” I said apologetically, feeling like an idiot, my cheeks burning. “The children are in the
bath.”

“Ah, well …”

He carried on standing there, apparently with no intention of leaving.

“Um, would you like a coffee?” I offered reluctantly. “I can be down in a moment if you don't mind … you could just wait for
me in the sitting room.”

I expected a retreat at that point but instead he just said, “Okay, take your time,” and strolled past Finney. Dan vanished
into the sitting room. Finney looked up at me. I couldn't read his face.

“I guess the rest of us had better stand in line,” he said. Then he was gone. I went back to the bathroom and stared down
at the children, seeing nothing.

“What is wrong with you?” I hissed at myself.

I ran the conversation with Finney through my mind, angry that I had let my defenses down. The whole situation, him standing
there in the bathroom while I bathed the children, the two of us chatting almost like friends, everything had been too easy.
Which could only mean that Finney knew he had disarmed me and was making use of it. I groaned in embarrassment. Then I remembered
that Dan was downstairs waiting for me, and I groaned again.

I had no energy for small talk but Dan seemed instinctively to know that. In fact, when I appeared with two naked babies,
two nappies held under my arm, and two sleepsuits slung over my shoulder to dress them, he seemed to take the whole situation
on board in an instant and to know what I needed. He asked nothing of me. I just sat back and smiled, my feet curled under
me, as he bounced and swung Hannah and William in turn until they were two little balls of writhing flesh, giggling hysterically.

“Sorry,” he said ruefully, as Hannah shrieked in pleasure, “the only thing I know how to do with babies is chuck them around.
I suppose you wanted them calming down for bed.”

I shook my head.

“It's fine. They'll be worn out.”

He didn't really know what to do with nappies, but he took a good stab at it and had the children—and me—laughing along the
way.

When they started to cry from sheer exhaustion I took them up to bed while Dan sat back with a newspaper.

“I'm sorry,” I said when I reappeared, “I never got you that coffee.”

Dan put the newspaper down and smiled at me.

“You know,” he said, “if you've got a beer I'd as soon take that.”

We both had a beer, and as we sat and chatted it occurred to me that this was something I hadn't done for ages. Because of
time and circumstance, my friends had been whittled down to my closest circle and I didn't go to pubs or clubs to meet new
men. This was really very pleasant. It was aesthetically pleasing to have Dan sitting there in my front room, although his
office suit and tie jarred a little. We were unencumbered by the past, and it was comforting not to be alone. He examined
all my photographs as well as all the books on my shelves. He asked about my friends and my life, and I told him about the
strange path I'd traveled in the couple of years that I now thought of as the run-up to Paula Carmichael's death.

“Did you know her?” I asked him.

“Only to say hi to,” he said. “We used to get each other's mail sometimes, so I'd drop it round. I never got to know her.”

He told me that he was a personnel manager for a major financial institution, and I knew immediately that he was good at it,
that he would listen and sympathize and advise.

Eventually he stood and stretched and said he had better get going.

“Do you mind if I drop by again sometime?” he asked.

“I'd like that,” I told him.

He left at nine forty-five, and I decided to ring Suzette back—if I was going to work with her, I didn't want her to think
I was difficult to pin down. I thought maybe she had managed to come up with a ballpark figure for my salary. God knows I
wouldn't make a fortune at the Corporation. What I needed was a regular income, not a huge one—but money, it emerged, was
precisely the problem.

“Robbie, I'm sorry, I've screwed up.” Suzette sounded anxious and miserable. “I came back here this afternoon to look at the
books again, but I keep coming back to the same thing. I don't want to mess you around. I mean I know your situation, so I'm
going to be straight with you. You cannot afford to work here, because I cannot afford to pay you.”

“You can't afford to pay me,” I echoed.

“I mean I can't afford to pay you enough. It's all right for me, I'm on my own, but I can't do that to you. I feel bad enough
… I want to do things properly, I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want you to hate me, and …” She drew a shuddering breath
and seemed to have trouble controlling herself. “Believe me, you would grow to hate me.”

“Suze, I'd never—” but she cut me off.

“I don't know what I was thinking. I just wanted so much to have you with me—but this is what grown-up people do, isn't it?
They make the right decision in the first place, they don't dig themselves into a hole they can't get out of …”

“Look, Suze, I'd rather know now. Don't beat yourself up over it.”

“I just wish I could have you working with me.” Suzette was disarmingly sweet about it. Indeed I was surprised how upset she
seemed, on the edge of tears. “You keep me sane, Robbie.”

It was a sad phone call, but it seemed to confirm our friendship in some strange way, and when it was over I felt resigned.
One door closed, another was creaking ominously open. It was already ten, but if I didn't do it now I would chicken out. I
called Maeve. I tried home, but she wasn't there, so I tried her mobile. It turned out she was still in the office. I told
her I'd take her job.

“That's really great news, Robin,” she told me. “You're not going to regret it.”

I knew I would.

We settled on Wednesday as a first day at work, which gave me exactly a day to sort out child care. Maybe in time I could
wangle a place in the Corporation nursery, but for the moment it would have to be the redoubtable—not to mention expensive—Erica.

“There's just one thing,” Maeve was still talking. “This thing with Adam Wills, it's not going to happen again is it? I mean
frankly it's already an embarrassment.”

“No, Maeve,” I said, my heart heavy, “it's not going to happen again.”

S
O how did he ask you for money?” The next day I still couldn't get my father out of my head, and I was questioning Tanya closely.

She looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. At her elbow was a home improvement magazine and it was open at a double-page
picture of a model kitchen, everything about it glossy and bright, a pot of tulips on the polished marble, a puppy capering
in the sunlight on the Italian-tiled floor. I knew Tanya fantasized about a kitchen like that, and I knew she couldn't afford
it.

I sipped my coffee. It was the first time I'd had instant coffee at Tanya's house. This was serious belt-tightening. Today
the children had been offered generic economy digestives in a plain white wrapper.

“You think I made it up?” she asked.

The three girls were at school. Patrick was doing the washing up and making sure that my two were happy while I talked to
Tanya. He had given them saucepans to bash with wooden spoons and a bowl of water with soapsuds to whisk, and they were making
a noisy and delighted mess on the linoleum floor.

“Well, did he look hard up?”

“Appearances are deceptive, my dear,” she said wryly, holding out her polished nails for my inspection. “I had a manicure,
but it doesn't mean I paid for it. It just means Patrick's pretty handy with the nail file.”

At which Patrick turned and took a bow.

Tanya rolled her eyes and I smiled thinly at him. I knew he could feel the tension between Tanya and myself as we discussed
our father, and I knew he was trying to break it.

“He looked clean and tidy, if that's what you mean,” Tanya said. “He was wearing a raincoat.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“I did once he'd said who he was. He looked like that photo, the one in the drawer, you know the one I mean? He was older
and grayer, but it was him I'm sure. Same face.”

The photograph. The only surviving photograph of my father. God knows what my mother had done with the rest—burned them probably.
This one had been of our father lolling on the beach and grinning into the camera, with the three of us clambering all over
him. He looked tall and gawky, with a clear bright smile and oiled hair. It had been kept in a drawer in my mother's bedroom,
and was only brought out when my mother deemed it necessary. “Necessary” usually meant that a school friend had been teasing
one or other of us about not having a father. The photograph would be produced as proof to quash the friend's scurrilous allegations.
Sometimes I invented a playground feud just so I could see it.

Tanya was two years old when our father left, hardly more than a baby. You might have thought they would have done some bonding
by that point, but there wasn't a trace of it left now. Over the years we'd had variations on this argument a million times.
Was the mysterious Gilbert Ballantyne really a crook, or was that just an invention of our mother? Was he dead? If not where
was he? And, most important, what would we do if he came looking for us?

Tanya was the most fiercely protective of Ma. She had also had the toughest time at school and had hated not having a father.
Her position never wavered. She would have nothing to do with him. I had always been more ambivalent. Lorna, I realized now,
had consistently been uncharacteristically silent on the matter.