The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (4 page)

Stephanie looked at me as I sat down.

‘Lunch with the big boss?’ she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not today.’

That should keep them guessing.

MAY

Most mornings I walk to work through Regent’s Park. Markus drives me to Great Portland Street and then he heads east to Clerkenwell. I enter the park at the south end and love the formality of this part of it with its unfolding vista of fountains and flowerbeds. It’s a serene oasis in the middle of London. From the formal gardens you cross the road onto the Broad Walk with the zoo on the left. Some days you hear these strange, demented squawks coming from the birdhouse.

Our offices are in Primrose Hill and the whole walk takes me less than thirty minutes. Today there was an unseasonal wind stirring the trees into a frenzy. I had no jacket with me and was walking fast to keep warm. A man with a pug dog and a golden Labrador was walking in front of me. The Labrador was pure noble dog, all fine head and loping walk. The pug, in contrast, was comical and looked as if he was hopping along the path, his short legs working very hard with never more than two feet on the ground at the same time. He made me smile. I suppose some of us are lucky to be born Labradors and some of us have to be pugs and make more of an effort to keep up.

Halfway down the Broad Walk I felt a sensation of defin-ite wetness between my legs. I stopped at one of the benches and sat down, looked down, surreptitiously opening my thighs, and to my horror saw a spreading circle of watery red staining my pale yellow trousers. I’m still breastfeeding Billy so my periods hadn’t come back – until today. The trousers were fine cotton and absorbent and I could imagine the blood seeping up at the back. I didn’t know what to do.

Either I had to run back to the ladies toilet in the park or carry on to work as fast as I could and sort it out there. I decided to carry on, trying to hold my bag in front of me to hide the stain. In fact, my bag is bright red leather, so it seemed like it was a bit of a beacon and I felt embarrassed and ashamed of my poor leaking body. There was the usual contingent of dog-walkers in the park shouting confident greetings to each other and I imagined their eyes boring into my back as a great red stain spread across my bottom. The last few yards to the office seemed much further away than usual.

I reached the glass doors of our building, rushed past the receptionist, up the stairs and straight into the Ladies. I put on a towel from the machine. There was no one in there so I took my trousers off and tried to sponge the blood out with cold water. This just seemed to make it spread further and the trousers were wet now as well as stained. I was close to weeping as I felt like a child again, confronted by an adult world that was too much for me to master. I wanted to stay locked in the toilet cubicle, hiding from my team.

Finally I got a grip of myself, came out and headed for my office fast. I saw that Aisha was wearing a long black cardigan. I asked her if I could borrow it and I felt better the moment I had it on. I was an adult again. I decided to go up the hill to Hampstead to buy a new pair of trousers and then I would drop in at my gym for a shower and change. Aisha and I had to reschedule the whole morning of meetings.

I tried to tell Markus about it this evening. We were sitting at the kitchen table and I was making stuffed red peppers for dinner. I was pulling out the pithy white skin and chasing that last tenacious seed that always gets caught under the dome of the pepper.

‘I don’t understand why you got into such a state,’ he said.

I put the red pepper down on the cutting board and tried to explain why it had made me feel so uncomfortable.

‘It was a bit like the shame a child feels when they wet their knickers at school. You know, you’ve drawn attention to a private bodily function.’

‘Even if someone had noticed, all they would think is that you’d had an unexpected period.’

‘Can’t you see that it was embarrassing?’

What did I want from him? Empathy, I suppose. He has extraordinary eyes, long and narrow and slightly tilted up at the edges, and the clearest, iciest blue, like arctic waters. He was sharpening the kitchen knives on the sharpening rod, moving the blade back and forth with grace and precision. He always looked as if he was in control of his environment and I admired his expertise as he sharpened the knives. I started to peel and crush some cloves of garlic.

‘Someone told me today that Heja in my team used to be one of Finland’s top news presenters. Heja Vanheinen. Have you heard of her?’ I asked.

He tested the sharpness of the blade against his thumb. ‘Yes, she was the anchor for the main channel.’

‘You never said. Why on earth would she give that up? I mean, something like that to work on the magazine?’

He shrugged, absorbed with the knife’s blade. ‘Helsinki is a small city, it doesn’t satisfy everyone.’

‘She just doesn’t strike me as someone who would be a television presenter, though. She’s a bit too much of an ice queen for British TV.’

‘She was much admired in Finland,’ he said.

I’d peeled far too much garlic and would have to throw some of it away.

‘So it’s odd she left that job. I don’t get it, do you?’

He opened the kitchen drawer and put the sharpening rod and the knives away, each in its allotted place.

And then he said rather coldly, ‘Why should you care?’

I felt rebuked by him and was instantly defensive. ‘Why shouldn’t I be interested? I work with her every day.’

Something has changed with Markus since I went back to work. We aren’t easy with each other as we were during my pregnancy and I wonder if he thinks I should have stayed at home with Billy. We talked about it and I felt sure he supported me going back to work. He’s become more withdrawn these days and our silences are getting longer and more difficult to bridge. We don’t giggle together any more. So I chatter on in my nervousness to try to fill the silences and I know this irritates him even more. And he has created taboos around certain subjects. He will never talk about his life in Finland and I know very little about how he spent the first thirty-six years of his life. I wish he would tell me more but I can’t push it. I think there must have been a major rift with his family as none of them came to our wedding.

Why did we marry? I did not expect it and, in fact, it was Markus who said that for the baby’s sake we should marry before the birth. He said that in order to be free you needed to know which of society’s rules you could break and which rules you had better observe. Hardly a romantic reason to get married. We had this low-key registry office affair, which upset my mum, who would have liked us to marry in a Catholic church with the full service. There was no way Markus would have agreed to that. I was heavily pregnant at the time and only close friends and family were invited.

My parents came over from Lisbon and my aunt Jennie was there and I was sure someone would come from his side, one of his brothers if not his parents. His only guest was his partner from the diving club, someone he has met since moving to London. Did he even tell his parents in Helsinki that he was getting married? There has never been any word from them, not even a card. When I asked him about it he was cagey and changed the subject.

We hardly spoke over dinner that night. The stuffed peppers were OK, but it was not one of my best dishes and tears were pricking behind my eyes after his earlier rebuff. I knew I was being over-sensitive. It had been a difficult day and he’d made me feel foolish. I wanted to tell him that Billy had pulled himself up into a standing position just before dinner. Now I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. His face had its familiar closed-off look.

Straight after dinner Markus went into his workroom. It used to be Aunt Jennie’s dining room. She never used it much and when Markus moved in with me he made it his own. He took out all the old furniture, ripped out the ancient carpet and sanded the floor. He painted the walls white. Then he built new shelves for his books and installed his drawing table and plan chest. He has hundreds of books and each one is lined up exactly at the front edge of the shelf in the most precise way. He has turned it into a very attractive if rather minimalist workroom. There’s his brown leather armchair by the door and I sometimes sit there and read while he works.

Tonight he was sitting as usual on his high stool in the arc of light thrown by the lamp onto the sloping plane of his drawing table. I joined him in there after Billy was asleep because I do love to watch him draw. He is such a perfectionist in his work. I’ve learned not to talk to him while he works. So I sat there correcting proofs, looking up from time to time to watch and admire him. His concentration is so intense that he creates a kind of force field around him that cannot be crossed.

MAY

Kathy is a creature of habit. Every day she arrives at work with a small polystyrene cup of cappuccino. She carries a soft red leather pouch bag worn across her body. I have watched her take out her office keys. The bag has zipped pockets on either side and she keeps all her keys in the left pocket. As soon as she has unlocked her glass-panelled office she lifts her bag over her head and places it on the lower bookshelf at the side of her desk. Then she comes out with her coffee and talks to Aisha, who sits outside her office. They consult the diary and then, usually, Kathy walks over to our section. We are herded together in a group of five desks with our terminals emitting faint radiation over our breasts. She is always friendly in the mornings, chirpy I think is the right word. She asks us how we are getting on and makes encouraging comments.

The more I watch her the more I learn.

Today something had happened to throw her routine. As she came up the stairs she did not have her little white cup with her. She rushed into the ladies toilet. She came out some minutes later. Her trousers were wet and stained. It looked as if she had bled onto them. She walked awkwardly to her office and fumbled to open the door. I walked over to get a better view. I saw Aisha go through to her and close the door behind her. They had an animated conversation for a minute or two, Kathy gesticulating. Then Aisha took off her long black cardigan and gave it to Kathy. She put it on and buttoned it up carefully. She rummaged through her bag, pulled out her wallet and then dropped the bag in its usual place by the side of her desk.

I was walking back to my desk as I heard her say to Aisha, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Thanks so much, Aish.’

She hurried down the stairs to the exit with barely a nod in our direction.

I knew this was my chance. I walked up to Aisha’s desk, waiting until she was on the phone.

‘I need to borrow the
Who’s Who
.’

‘Sure,’ said Aisha, putting her hand over the receiver. ‘You know where Kathy keeps it?’

I nodded. The
Who’s Who
sits with the other reference books in the bookshelves by the side of her desk. I walked over slowly and bent down to pick up the book. My back shielded my hands from Aisha’s view. As I bent down I reached over to her red bag, unzipped the left pocket, took out the keys, zipped it up again, stood up and slipped her bunch of keys into my jacket pocket. I walked out of her office holding the
Who’s Who
. Aisha was still talking on the phone.

I had very little time. I flipped through the
Who’s Who
for a few minutes. Then I got up and walked down the stairs and out of the building. Our offices are in Primrose Hill. We are close to a parade of shops. I did not want to use the first place I came to, a shoe-repair bar. I walked further down the road to the hardware shop. I waited while an Italian woman spoke at length to the man behind the counter. I could feel the tension mounting in me so I started to do my breathing exercises to keep calm. Finally he turned to me.

I took her keys from my pocket and said, ‘I need a set of these, please. Can you do them straight away?’

He fingered the bunch and said it would take half an hour. I hesitated. She might be back before I had them. I would have to replace them later in the day. I could do it as long as she did not leave for meetings all day, as she sometimes did. And then it came to me. Even if I did not replace the keys it would not matter. She would think she had misplaced them. She had been in a state when she arrived at the office this morning and she would blame herself. I handed the keys to the man, left the shop and crossed the road. I decided to sit on Primrose Hill while I waited.

It was a windy day and the trees surged and dipped. I fastened the buttons on my jacket. My fingers were cold and stiff. A young mother hurried by with a wailing child kicking and struggling in his buggy. The child wanted to get out and arched his back in fury. The mother’s face was tense. The child’s cries reached a crescendo and she looked as if she wanted to slap him. Instead she pushed faster, her face contorted.

An elegant older woman walked by with her dog. The woman was probably in her mid-sixties and dressed all in soft grey. In contrast her dog was a scruffy-looking piebald mongrel and I wondered at her choice. She must be an animal lover. She would have gone to the rescue dogs’ home and asked for the plainest dog, the dog that had suffered the most, the dog that no one else would choose. Certainly the dog looked back at her with adoring eyes, not quite believing his good fortune. I looked at my watch. Give it fifteen minutes more then go back to the shop.

Toiling up the hill to my right, a middle-aged man was pushing his wife in a wheelchair. He stopped at the summit and tucked a tartan blanket more securely over her knees. They talked briefly. Her face was lined but not unhappy. He started on his way again, holding the wheelchair steady against the downward incline of the hill and the suck of the wind.

When I was nine years old my great-aunt Tanya died at the age of forty-seven. She was my grandfather’s younger sister and he adored her. She was a famous singer until she was paralysed by her illness, a muscle-wasting disease. She had been forced to stop performing at the height of her fame. It was a rare genetic disorder. My ancestors had a very high opinion of themselves, of the purity of their bloodline. They rarely married outsiders as no one in their small community was good enough for the Vanheinens. Usually they married their first cousins. And Tanya paid the price for their pride.