Summer Lies Bleeding (17 page)

Mark sits in a small café off Leicester Square, piling cubes of sugar into a pyramid. His large mug of tea sits by his elbow, steam seeps out of it into the air that is thick with the sound of plates clattering, orders being shouted, coffee machines whistling and the clunky footsteps of waitresses, diners and delivery men as they weave in and out of the tiny space.

He still can't quite believe that he has spoken to her, been near her, stood on the threshold of the restaurant. Standing next to her was the strangest experience, like being close to a famous landmark or statue. He knows almost everything there is to know about this woman and her life – her date of birth (10 October 1976), her Moroccan ancestry (father, Solly, born in Tangier, deceased), her career path (sous chef in Colette, Waterloo via The Green Room, Lavender Hill then Aquitane, Mayfair, before teaming up with Henry Walker to launch The Rose Garden), her wedding anniversary (21 December 2005), the birth date of her daughter, Cosima Rose Bailey (14 August
2006) … The data had flashed up before him like a great list as he stood there.

She was shorter than he imagined but prettier than in the photographs he had seen, and she smelled amazing – a musky, evening scent like violets. It reminded him of something he had liked as a child, powdery purple sweets his dad used to bring home from trips to Germany. Her voice was pure London, not plummy as he imagined Seb's to be, and it was husky and quiet, her words direct and clear. She had folded her arms across her chest as she spoke to him. Protectively? Defiantly? Mark wasn't sure but she was certainly confident despite her small stature.

He hadn't planned the encounter. He had actually seen today as a day of research, walking in and around Frith Street, finding his bearings, checking the back of the restaurant for fire exits, seeing what route he should take when he makes his entrance tomorrow night. But then curiosity had got the better of him when he saw her standing in the doorway taking delivery of some boxes of fruit. He watched her for a few moments from the other side of the street, watched as she signed the delivery note then bent down to lift up the large box. By the time she stood up he was there in front of her, a dark shadow in the glaring sunlight that shone so brightly in her eyes she had to squint.

She had gasped and almost dropped the boxes but Mark did nothing to reassure her, keeping his voice hard and direct
as he enquired after her husband. But then, possibly without realising it, she had given him what he wanted – a piece of information that meant he had something solid to prepare for, could spend the next twenty-four hours making sure he got it just right.

‘He'll be here tomorrow morning,' she had said. ‘He's going to be hanging pictures from around ten so you'll probably catch him then. Can I pass on a message?'

Mark had smiled; ecstatic to finally have a time and a date for his confrontation with the man who had ruined his life, but he had managed to keep his excitement contained as he shook his head at the attractive woman in front of him and told her there was no message. He had left her then, left her dragging the box of fruit into the restaurant, the precious restaurant built on the wreckage of dreams and lives, in this shithole wasteland where young girls can disappear like stray dogs or discarded potato peelings thrown out to rot in the putrid air.

He drains his cup of tea and throws a handful of change onto the table. Picking up his heavy black bag, he pulls it onto his back like a piece of armour and heads for the door. There is one more place to visit before he returns to his room.

*

Stella and Paula walk out of the clinic in silence, neither knowing quite what to say. Eventually, after they have crossed three intersections, wordlessly navigating the late-afternoon shoppers, Stella breaks the impasse.

‘Well, that seemed to go okay,' she says, her voice half-drowned out by the shrill beeping of a reversing delivery van.

Paula smiles but her shoulders are raised like a cat about to pounce and they carry on in a daze through the back streets, pretending to look in shop windows, going through the motions but something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

The scan had only taken a few minutes then she and Paula were led back to the consultancy room where Sarah discussed the results – ‘all looks healthy and normal' – and they were told that the most appropriate treatment plan for them would be donor insemination or IUI: INTRAUTRINE INSEMINATION as it read on the front of the booklet she handed them.

After the consultation they were taken to yet another room to meet a specialist fertility nurse who talked them through their treatment plan. Yet through it all, Paula looked like she was only half-present, like she was floating above the scene looking down onto the square room; at Stella sitting in the chair nodding her head and asking intermittent questions; at the nurse gesticulating with her flabby white arm and ticking boxes on the sheet of paper in front of her. When they finally emerged into the cool air of the street, Stella had touched Paula's hand and it was like ice; it was as though the happy, excited woman who had entered the clinic had been left behind; sucked into a strange portal, a land of probes and forms and smiling babies.

They head onto Bond Street and a sleek black Bentley pulls up outside a gold shuttered store. Stella shakes her head as the black-hatted driver gets out and opens the back door of the car. Some things never change, she thinks, as they cross the road towards Green Park. Leaders come and go, fashions change, great people live and die, the world turns and still there are Bentleys on Bond Street. And very likely when the end comes, when these streets are swallowed up, release their secrets, their jewels and sparkle, and revert back to marshy bogland, there will still be Bentleys on Bond Street.

‘Shall we go and get something to eat?' Stella's voice trails across the noise of the traffic as they stand on Piccadilly waiting to cross. ‘It would just be nice to sit down and have a chat, go through all this.' She waves the thick wedge of forms and booklets in front of her.

Paula looks at her watch. ‘It's almost three,' she says. ‘I hadn't realised it was so late.'

‘Almost rush hour,' says Stella, as a wave of people come towards them. ‘So, where shall we go?'

‘Anywhere,' says Paula, pulling her hands through her hair, as she always does when she is apprehensive.

Stella looks up the street: Hyde Park to the right, Soho to the left. She is not ready to go back to Soho, not yet, and not with Paula in this strange mood.

‘I know,' she says, trying to sound bright and jolly. ‘We'll
go to the café in St James's Park. It will be nice, we can watch the herons.'

She takes Paula's arm and as they cross the road a great gust of wind whipped up by the traffic blows into their faces. It feels so good after the stale heat of the clinic and as Stella looks up the street she catches a glimpse of the neon lights of Piccadilly Circus flashing on and off and a flutter of excitement catches in her stomach as they reach the other side and head for St James's.

*

Mark clutches a limp bunch of lilies in his hand as he stands waiting to cross the northern end of Oxford Street. He clears his throat but his chest remains tight, the fumes from the traffic are making him wheeze but his inhaler is in the front of the rucksack and he can't get to it easily with his arms full of flowers and the dead weight of his black bag.

The lights change and he steps out into the road. It is all so ordinary, so blank, with its McDonalds over there on the corner, its Caffè Nero, its cheap sportswear shops, somehow he was imagining a much darker place but he knows there is still a little way to go. A few metres, one foot in front of the other and he will be there, he will see what she saw.

He turns onto Hanway Street, a narrow little lane that curves into a crescent as he walks along. It's little more than an alley-way, a short-cut, he thinks as he walks past a Spanish bar and a tatty-looking shop selling second-hand records. The
street is claustrophobic and cramped and the crumbling Georgian buildings lean inwards, like they are bearing down on him, imploring him to listen to their secrets.

What was she doing here, he asks himself as he follows the road toward its final destination. His little sister, the baby of the family, the one he promised his dad he would look after, had spent her final moments in this rotten place, this forgotten sorry excuse for a street and he had not been there to save her. Why hadn't she phoned him, earlier in the night, after the party? If she had phoned him he would have helped, he would have told her what to do. His feet feel as heavy as his lungs as the street curves to the left; the air suddenly feels thin and icy cold despite the warmth of the day.

Hanway Place. Such a pretty name, it sounds like the home of an Edwardian novelist. He feels like there should be window boxes full of flowers and a horse-drawn carriage making its way down the road but instead there is just an empty side street dotted with black bollards and a glass-fronted restaurant whose name Mark can't read. He walks a couple of steps past the restaurant and there it is: a tiny deserted strip of concrete and brick, dark, airless and piled with boxes of food waste and bulging black bags.

He puts his own black bag down at his feet and takes the rucksack from his back, and as he does so his heart begins to pound inside his chest, the familiar pulse-like sensation rises in his throat as he tries to get his breath. He gulps at the stale
air like a drowning man. The inhaler, he needs the inhaler, but the attack is so strong he can't bend down to retrieve it from his bag. His body feels like it's breaking down as he drops the lilies to the floor and clutches at his chest, trying to massage his lungs back to life. But inside his head, his voice is screaming out at him, trying to make itself heard above the desperate gasps for breath. The inhaler, get the inhaler. He falls to his knees and wrestles the bag with one arm, ripping through canvas and metal until he feels the reassuring hard plastic between his fingers. With shaking hands he brings the inhaler to his mouth. He sucks a huge mouthful but it's not enough, another, still no relief, a third and he feels his lungs loosen, a fourth and he slumps down onto the hard cobbled ground and feels himself coming back. In and out, in and out, his breathing slowly returns to normal.

After a couple of moments, he stands up and goes to pick up his bags, his eyes stinging with tears and grit, and he sees that his hands are stained with the pollen from the lilies that he had been clutching so tightly. He sees the discarded bunch of flowers lying among the bin bags and he lets out a howl, a cry so raw it seems to come from somewhere outside of his body.

‘Zoe,' he screams, and his voice echoes against the grimy brick walls of the alley. The shout seems to open up his lungs and he launches himself at the bags and starts kicking them, smashing them open with his feet until there is just a mulch of tins and cardboard and rotten food spread out along the
ground. He keeps kicking and kicking until every bag is split, until every ounce of anger and grief and bitterness oozes out from him like the slime seeping from the decaying rubbish.

Scraping his shoes against the ground, he picks up his bags and takes one last look at this bleak, filthy place. The rubbish is piled up against the wall and in the dim light it looks like a mound of earth atop a grave, with empty crisp packets and congealed Chinese spare-ribs in place of soil. As he turns to leave, he notices movement among the mess. A rat scurries across the top of it and begins to feast on a piece of food, pulling and pulling to release it from the sticky waste until it loosens and brings with it a sodden, grey lily petal.

Kerstin turns the dial on the washing machine to sixty and with a thud the machine stammers into life. She watches as the grey blouse spins round and round behind the thick clear glass.

This is the second wash. Five more to go. Seven washes will be enough to satisfy Kerstin that nothing of the picture will remain on the blouse; not a trace of its oily residue; not an atom or a speck. The washing powder will expunge the stains, the rank breath that has seeped from the print and worked its way into the fibres of her top.

The laundry room is silent but for the gentle clicking of the machine as it kneads the blouse into a sopping, soapy dough. There are three washing machines lined up in a row underneath a long, bare window. One of the machines is unused, the second, by the door, is Clarissa's. She has the machine open and Kerstin can see a flash of pink inside: a crumpled cotton handkerchief? A pair of old woman's knickers? Who knows,
and Kerstin will not be investigating. On the shelf above the machine is a large oilcloth bag decorated in a red-and-gold print. Bottles of laundry detergent and fabric softener poke out of the top of the bag and Kerstin notices that the lid of one container is congealed with old crusted blue liquid. It makes her feel uneasy just looking at it, knowing it is there, so she turns away and starts preparing a batch of detergent for the third wash.

Kerstin's washing paraphernalia is lined up in a neat row on the shelf above her washing machine – hers is by the wall, far enough away from Clarissa's to remain untainted by the forgotten pink underwear and the congealed blue liquid.

She leans across the machine and picks up a large metal measuring jug from the shelf. Then, opening up the industrial-size box, she dips the jug into the snowy white powder. As she does so she thinks of the experiment that had ignited global interest in her father's thesis: the Avalanche game. Back in the eighties, a group of theoretical physicists had conducted an experiment – or played a game, as they liked to describe it – where they sprinkled grains of sand onto a table one at a time and monitored how the grains piled up. As the pile grew it became steeper and the sand started to slide downwards, sparking little avalanches. As more sand was added the pile rose and fell; instead of growing in a linear movement, it fluctuated. She had read about this experiment during her time at the University of Cologne where she was studying for a degree
in Pure Mathematics and was about to embark on a career in finance. It fascinated her, the avalanche; the grains of sand seemed to represent the fluctuations of the money market, rising and falling, plateauing and collapsing, with more money being added somewhere in the world every second of the day, piling up and falling down.

Into this maelstrom her mathematical reason would introduce some element, no matter how small, of order, she had told herself as she sat outside the Cologne office of Sircher Capital waiting to go in to be interviewed for a job as a junior research analyst. She would highlight patterns, rip through financial forecasts, compute profits and losses, reconcile and assimilate until out of a chaotic flurry of information, order and reason would emerge. It was what she had loved as a child, sitting on the floor separating her building blocks into neat piles in order of colour, size and shape; from building blocks to equations to numerical theory, all the way to the heady world of corporate finance where she would come into her own.

Detailed reports were presented each week; meetings were attended in New York and London, Tokyo and Paris. She was regarded as a high achiever, a financial whizz with a computer-fast brain, the perfect candidate to take on the role of Research Analyst at the newly opened London office of Sircher Capital and for a year she was just that.

She places the jug of powder onto the top of the machine and watches as the gentle vibrations cause the powder to
ripple ever so slightly; the tiniest fraction of movement. Like the grain of sand, it takes just one tiny, microscopic element to be added to an unsteady structure and the whole thing will come tumbling down.

The machine builds to its frenetic spin cycle and Kerstin crouches poised by the machine door, ready to open it at the first click, to grab the blouse and start all over again. She starts to count: one, two, three, four … the machine whines agonisingly as though pushing itself to its limits … five, six, seven, eight … Kerstin hears a creak, a tapping from behind, it might be rain, who knows, she carries on counting … nine, ten, elev—

‘Oh, it's you!'

The voice is unexpected, it slices through Kerstin's counting like a blade through skin and she loses her balance and tumbles backwards, landing with her arms stretched out behind her. The machine clatters to its climax with a whirr of grinding noise as she picks herself up and sees a familiar figure standing in the doorway.

‘Clarissa,' she half-whispers. ‘What are you doing here? You gave me a shock.'

‘I could ask you the same question, my dear,' says the old lady, edging further into the strip-lit gloom. ‘I heard noises down here. Thought it was an intruder. Why are you washing at this time of day? Shouldn't you be at work?'

‘I came home early,' says Kerstin, picking herself up. ‘Thought I'd get some washing done.' She counts to seven
and back in her head; warding off whatever dirt may have contaminated her hands from the floor.

‘It's a travesty, a cultured, clever girl like you having to do her own washing as well as a job.'

Clarissa leans across the machines and her arm touches the edge of Kerstin's metal jug.

‘Of course, in my day we had servants to attend to that sort of thing, laundry maids we called them. Red-faced creatures sent down from the North or the West Country, oh they were ghastly. We had a particularly rough one, Hattie they called her, well us children had lots of fun with that name … Fatty Hattie we called her. “Has Fatty Hattie ironed the sheets yet?” Mother would scold us but she must have had a quiet giggle to herself all the same. My mother never washed a sheet in her life – she had the most beautiful hands, pale and soft as butter. You see back then the world knew where it was, people knew their place, people like Fatty Hattie and Edie the cook, Bruton the butler, they knew what they were sent to this earth to do and they didn't question it. They wouldn't have dreamed of questioning it. Now you see, it all started with the unions, that's when this country started on the path to destruction, giving the labouring classes a voice, a vote, preposterous. And now you have these dark-skinned thugs rioting, I saw it on the television, great mobs of them smashing windows and grabbing clothes and shoes. Monstrous, but that's where the unions have got us to … in my mother's day it was simple.
She campaigned for votes for women, ladies, daughters of educated men. Labour tried to convince the suffs that they should support them in their crazy bill for Universal Suffrage and I remember Mummy and Daddy saying – down that road is the way to ruination, giving the great unwashed the vote is tantamount to legislating anarchy. That's why you have these coloured chaps rampaging down the street and why clever young ladies like you have been reduced to blistering their hands with soap suds … it's all down to the unions, Daddy was right. It was the road to ruination.'

Kerstin bends down and opens the machine door, trying to ignore the tirade that is emanating from Clarissa's mouth. She must have been in the flat by herself all day, thinking, reminiscing about the good old days of bullied servants and mothers with butter-soft hands, and now out it all comes, like a torrent pouring into the room, washing away Kerstin's counting, crashing over the walls, sending everything into disarray. If I don't say anything, thinks Kerstin, then maybe she will go. She pulls out the blouse, but aware of Clarissa above her, she only half inspects it before putting it back into the drum and closing the door.

‘What are you putting it back in for?' Clarissa's voice drills into the side of her head as she pours the jug of powder into the drawer. ‘You'll find, dear, that it's perfectly clean. You'll wear out the fabric with over-washing, you know. See I do know a little about washing. Once I got married, a wife was
expected to do her bit, what with the war and what have you. And unfortunately, my husband was rather a tight-fisted old so-and-so and wouldn't shell out for staff. Said I'd been a pampered brat and I'd have to learn to cook and clean with the rest of them. Can you imagine? Still, in the end I got rather good at it, particularly after the baby was born, all those nappies, yes, got rather good at it…'

Kerstin can feel herself getting hotter, her face burning with rage. She turns the machine on again and stands staring at the clear glass-fronted drum. She will not respond, she will not engage, she will just stand here like a statue until the old biddy gives up and goes back to her flat.

But as the cycle starts up, Clarissa leaps across and bangs her fist on the top of the machine. ‘Trust me, my dear, that blouse was clean. You're going to ruin a perfectly good garment with all this washing. Now let me switch this thing off for you and we'll recover it.'

‘No!' The word screams out of Kerstin's mouth almost of its own volition. She has to get this woman out of here, she is obstructing her on this, one of the most serious of procedures. Her father is dying, her blouse has been tainted and this bigoted old wretch is going to make everything worse, she will bring the bad thing down upon her, she will make death triumph, make the darkness claim her father and Kerstin has to stop her.

She grabs the old woman's shoulder, it feels as hard and brittle as a branch of a tree.

‘Clarissa, you must stop. I know what I am doing. Please will you leave me to attend to my washing in peace.' Kerstin hollers the last of this sentence in German and Clarissa freezes then turns gingerly.

‘I know that language,' she hisses. ‘Hun language. My brother-in-law, God rest his sainted bones, was in the RAF. He fought for this country against the purveyors of that devil language. They burned babies in ovens … the Nazis … they killed millions of innocent Jews. I will not listen to that language in my home. This is my home, no matter what they say, and I will be wherever I want to be. I will walk these corridors, I will do as I please. I am Clarissa Burton-Lane. You are a German! A Hun in our midst and I never realised it. You talk like an English woman but your anger has let it slip. Ha, they will let anybody in here now … a German … a madwoman washing her clothes to smithereens. My brother-in-law was in the RAF you know … dropped the bombs on Dresden …'

For a second, as Kerstin stands watching this onslaught unfold, she feels weightless, as though she is floating on the ceiling looking down on this emaciated old lady, her face contorted with hatred shaking her fists at a pale haired young woman with blistered hands. Then suddenly she is back in her body, her heart pulsating against her chest, aware that if she leaves now, if she does not complete the task then God help her, she will be ruined, darkness will claim her. There is one
obstacle between her and the machine and as she reaches out and smashes it with the metal jug, time seems to slow down, like the waning spin cycle on the machine. There is a crack as metal meets skull and the old lady flies in a blur across the room, her head scraping against the edge of the skirting board, her body rolling and twisting until it stops and lands in a crumpled heap by the door.

Silence. A deep, empty silence fills the room and it is thick, like gloopy liquid has been poured in from the ceiling. The silence fills Kerstin's lungs, choking her from within. She goes to speak but no words come; her brain and body are frozen to the small patch of linoleum where she stands staring at a lifeless body.

She should go to her; check her pulse, call an ambulance, do the things that any fully functioning human being would do. It was an accident, nobody would suspect her, they would think the old woman had tumbled, like she had on the way to the post office.

Kerstin looks at the washing machine. She has to finish the wash, she has to ward off the darkness, otherwise her father will die. She goes to move but then she sees it; deep red blood stuck to the floor in patches. It is seeping from Clarissa's head, leaking out like a thin river coursing through a map. She cannot step across the blood; she cannot get to her clothes. Soon the blood will have reached the machine and that will be it. She has to get out of here.

She places the metal jug on the top of Clarissa's washing machine; still reticent, even amid this mayhem, to taint her washing with blood. Then she tiptoes towards the door, counting to seven and back before opening. Taking one last look at the room, she sees the silver machines neatly lined up; the packets of washing powder stacked onto the shelf and the pale, white lump lying in the middle, eyes open as if asking ‘why?'

Closing the door behind her, she makes her way to the narrow lift and presses the silver button. No one will know, she tells herself as she steps inside. She will go back to the flat, and work out what to do. She has an overwhelming compulsion to clean, to scrub and rinse from top to bottom, to remove the stain of death from her. She can smell it now, a clammy, sweaty smell clinging to her nostrils. She must wash it away immediately.

The lift reaches the ground floor and Kerstin waits for the jolt; the rackety noise before the doors open. It seems to take longer than usual, and Kerstin starts to panic. Please do not stick, not this lift, this narrow airless space. She has to get out. She closes her eyes and starts to count but before she gets to three, the doors slide open and a man and woman stand in front of her.

It feels like her heart is going to explode and for a moment she thinks about standing her ground, not letting them into the lift. Then the man smiles at her, he is holding a clipboard.

‘Oh, hi,' he says brightly. ‘I didn't think anyone would be at
home. I'm from Elizabeth Charles Estate Agency. You must be the lady from Flat 2?'