The Making of Us (37 page)

‘Psychic?’

‘Yes, this psychic connection.’ He tapped his temple with his finger. ‘And I remember, I was sitting at work, in my office, and I saw a bird through the window. It was up high and it was flying like this …’ he drew a circle in the air ‘… round and round he goes. Round and round. And I find myself thinking that I would like this bird to stop flying round and round and to fly straight, straight across the Channel, straight up here, and then come to my brother’s window and tell him that I am missing him. And as I think this, I decide to write him a letter. I see it as a sign, yes? And then, well, here I am and my brother is leaving us.’ He let his head drop between his knees and then he brought it up again and Maggie saw that there were tears glistening on either side of his beautiful nose. ‘And I am here
only just
in time.’ He smiled a brave smile and before she could censor her own actions Maggie had taken both his hands in hers and squeezed them.

‘Thank you,’ he said in a croaky whisper. ‘Thank you.’

They sat in silence for a while, their hands still entwined. A shiver ran down her spine and she shuddered.

‘Oh,’ said Marc, misreading the involuntary movement, ‘you are cold? We should go inside? Get some coffee?’

Maggie nodded. She’d had no lunch. She’d quite like a sandwich. They walked slowly back into the building and towards the cafe. ‘Why did you and Daniel fall out with each other?’ she asked, tentatively.

‘Fall out?’ he said.

‘Yes, you know, have an argument, become estranged?’

‘Ah, yes, I see. But no, there was no argument. We did not have a fight.’

‘Oh. I thought …’

‘No, no, no. It was because of what happened. When he was at university. He told you about the child?’

Maggie looked at him questioningly.

‘He did not tell you?’ Marc sighed. ‘Oh, dear. Well, it is not a surprise maybe. It is a hard thing to talk about. And that is why he went away. That is why he could not talk to me any more. Why he could not be the man he used to be. Because of this terrible, terrible thing.’

They turned a corner and Marc held open a door for Maggie to pass through. As she did so her body brushed against his and she felt a startling sense of longing, so strong that she had to hold back a low groan. She ignored the feeling, dismissing it as the result of too many conflicting emotions jostling for space inside her head.

‘What terrible thing?’ she asked, probably more forcefully than she’d intended.

‘Oh, well. It is hard for me. He has not told you this thing and now he is so ill, and maybe he has not told you for a reason. Maybe he did not want you to know?’

‘No, he didn’t want me to know. I was always trying to get him to talk to me about his past, about how he ended up in this country, but he had …
has
this clever way of answering a question without actually telling you anything. But I must say, he’s shown me more of himself in the past few weeks than he ever showed me before. It’s almost as though, well, as though he can’t see the point of keeping his secrets any more. As though they’ve lost their meaning.’

‘Well,’ said Marc, ‘in that case, maybe we should talk. Maybe I should tell you, because it makes me sad to say this but I feel like my brother will not be telling anyone any more secrets now. I think his time for telling them is over.’

They bought mugs of tea and sandwiches at the cafe and took them to the guests’ lounge. They sat opposite each other at a black ash table adorned with brightly coloured dried flowers in a black vase. Maggie nibbled at the edges of her sandwich and waited for Marc to talk.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘my brother was in his final year at medical school. He was a student doctor, hoping to become a paediatrician. He was placed in a children’s cancer ward in a hospital just outside Dieppe and one night he was asked to administer some, how you say, morphine?’

Maggie nodded.

‘And, well, he misread the dosage. It was late. He was tired. He killed the child with an overdose.’

Maggie gasped and brought her hands to her mouth.

Marc shook his head sadly, just once, and sighed. ‘So, after this, there was an inquest, he was acquitted of manslaughter, but he could not go back to medicine. He could not go back to anything. He sat in his student room for a month, he saw nobody. And then, our mother … well, she is a very unwell woman herself, you know. She has always had the problems with her mind.’ He tapped his head. ‘Not a stable woman. And she took this accident very badly. She disowned my brother. Said she could not live with a child-killer as a son. And I think he found it very difficult to see me, his other half, so close we were, knowing that I could not feel what he was feeling. And knowing that our mother, she still loved me but she no longer loved him. And then, one day, he just disappeared,’ Marc clicked his fingers together, ‘like this. Gone. No words, no explanation.

‘It felt as if my heart had broken. He did not tell us where he was for another five years. And then he said he was here, in England. He sent me these letters on this paper, with the English address printed at the top, yes? So I know where he is living. But he does not invite me. And I do not ask to come. And I do not know why this is. I do not know why there is this
bridge
that neither of us can walk across. It is almost as if, being a twin, it is all or it is nothing. You are either together or you are not. There is no halfway point between the two. So we chose nothing. And now, well, he is going away and I will never see him again. Not as he was.’

‘Poor, poor Daniel!’ said Maggie, one hand still at her throat. ‘And poor, poor you. That is such a terrible story.’

‘I know. It is a tragedy. A clever, caring, good man and one tiny mistake – and
pouf!
Everything turns to dust.’

‘No wonder he never told me that. I mean, imagine how he’s been feeling all these years, imagine the guilt and the lack of confidence. How would you ever trust yourself to do anything important again?’

‘Well, yes, exactly. And see how he has made his children? See how he has let other people take all the responsibility for them?’

‘Yes, but also he’s given children to people who couldn’t have them themselves. It’s almost like he was paying the world back for taking the life of one.’

‘Yes, that is true also. But I think it is mainly to avoid the risk, you see? His whole life since this accident has been lived to avoid taking the risk.’

‘Yes …’ said Maggie, and then she drifted away, as she realised that this was why their fledgling relationship had never headed down the road they’d both wanted it to. This was why he had never taken her in his arms and kissed her. This was why he had never told her he loved her. This was why they were still just friends. Because he did not want to take responsibility for her or her feelings. Because he did not want to damage her. ‘Yes,’ she continued, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘yes. I can see that. I really can. How sad,’ she said, ‘how very, very sad.’

Her brother didn’t have a middle name, but then neither did she. Her parents had not believed in middle names, for some unknown reason. She stood and faced his small stone tablet, carved from dove-grey stone, and stared at the lettering:
Thomas Pike
. Her brother. He would have been twenty-eight in August.

She’d been here before. She could remember it now, vividly. Her mother was buried here, too, on the other side of the chapel, between Lydia’s father and Glenys’ own mother. Lydia had been here to visit her mother’s grave as a child, and later as an adult to bury her father.

Rodney stood at her side with his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans. ‘You OK, love?’ he asked.

She turned partially towards him and smiled sadly. ‘I think so,’ she said.

Her brother’s ashes lay beneath her feet. A tiny box of dust. She wasn’t really all right. She was bereft.

‘Why is he buried over here?’ she asked. ‘Why is he all by himself?’

Rodney took a step closer to her and shook his head.

‘I don’t know what your dad was going through back then. I wasn’t there to know. But I suppose, your dad, he just couldn’t deal with it. The little tiny grave. And he didn’t want you to know about it either. Out of sight, out of mind, you know …’

Lydia turned back to the grave and felt cold dread run through her. Her father, again, doing the wrong thing. Always doing the wrong thing. Every single time. How could he have left Thomas here, a small boy, alone and away from his mother? How could anyone ever have thought that was the right thing to do?

‘I want to move him,’ she said, turning again to face Rodney, her face set with sudden resolve. ‘I want to move Thomas, close to our mum.’

Rodney puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’m not sure you’d be able to do that. They’re all pre-reserved, you know, pre-booked decades in advance by the sort of people who don’t want to leave anything to chance. There’s no spare plots up there by your mother. All gone.’

‘Well, can’t he go in with her? Share her plot?’

Rodney shrugged, apologetically. ‘I can ask?’ he offered.

Lydia nodded. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘thank you. It’s horrible.’ She shuddered. The morning air here in the cemetery was chilled and dewy and her head was heavy with too much wine and a late night. She and Rodney had sat up until three in the morning pulling apart the threads of their shared history. But still she’d awoken early and resolute, ready to come to this place and feel what she needed to feel in order to move on again.

They’d visited her mother first, her grave still scrubbed and tended by Rodney and by her own brother. Then Lydia had stood for a moment over the grave of her father and tried to feel something other than muted rage and vague distaste. She tried to summon pity and compassion from her heart but had found none. Life dealt many people a tough hand and not everyone went on to lead the failure of an existence that her father had. Other people, as the saying went, made lemonade.

She turned to Rodney and she smiled. ‘I want to go now,’ she said. ‘I need to go home.’

‘Of course you do, love. Go home and absorb it all. Go home and work it all out.’

She nodded, grateful for his insight into her thought processes. That was exactly what she wanted to do.

‘I’ll take you to the station now, there’ll be a train at twenty-past, we should just make it.’

Lydia glanced once more at the grey stone that lay on top of Thomas Pike and she kneeled upon the damp grass and ran her hands over the tablet. She would be back again, she knew that. There was more in this small, proud country for her now than bad memories. For all that she’d lost, she was gaining more and more every day. She put her fingers to her lips and kissed them, afterwards pressing them to the stone.
I’ll sort this out
, she promised Thomas silently. And then she and her uncle walked back to his car in the golden light of a just-risen sun.

‘Ah!’ said Bendiks, standing on the landing at the top of the stairs when she arrived back four hours later. ‘You’re home! I was just trying to call you.’

Lydia looked up at him in surprise and then at her handbag where her mobile phone was. ‘I’ve just been on the tube,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he said, and started to walk down the stairs towards her.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes! Of course. I was just desperate to know how it went … with your brother, in Wales. And, truth be told, I was missing you a bit. It’s a big house when you’re on your own.’

Lydia smiled. She felt gripped by fondness and affection for him. He greeted her at the door with a kiss on each cheek and gently removed her shoulder bag from her grasp. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me.’ He smelled of shampoo and soap. But there, underneath it, was that other smell, that smell that always got her, that slightly musky smell of the essence of him.

‘You know we have a session this afternoon?’ He put her bag down on the stairs and eyed her smilingly. ‘Three o’clock?’

‘Shit, yes, of course. Sorry, I’d completely forgotten.’

‘I expected you to. So I’m not going to hold you to it. But if you’d like, we could still go for it?’

Lydia tried to clear some head space to consider the option. ‘What time is it now?’ she asked.

‘It’s nearly one.’

‘OK, then,’ she said. ‘Yes. I think I could do with a workout.’

‘Excellent,’ said Bendiks. ‘Cool. I’ll see you here at three then and we can start with a run. And while we run, you can tell me all about it.’

They ran for nearly an hour. They hadn’t meant to but Bendiks didn’t have another client and the sun was out and there was a soft breeze and the pavement just seemed to unroll in front of them, metre after metre, like an endlessly unfurling carpet. They took an easy pace, gentle enough for talking without breathlessness, and Lydia told Bendiks everything. She told him all about meeting Rod, and the baby brother who’d died in a stranger’s house; she told him about the little grave a hundred metres from where it should be, and the sense of letting go of her past whilst simultaneously embracing it. And Bendiks listened and said all the right things at all the right junctures and it was the closest Lydia had come in a long time to really opening her heart to another human being, to revealing the truth about herself without any caveats or exceptions. She didn’t worry about how she would be perceived, or what he might be thinking, or if she was boring or sweaty or if her mascara had smudged. And it was utterly, exhilaratingly, liberating.

They tumbled through the front door at 4.30 and went straight downstairs to the gym. And as they walked, Lydia looked at the outline of Bendiks’ body through his sweat-drenched clothes, she stared at the tendrils of wet hair that curled against the skin on the back of his neck and she considered the ache in her groin. Before she’d had a second to censor her thoughts she found herself saying: ‘Shall we have a sauna?’

She stopped breathing as the realisation that she had said those words out loud hit her.
Shall we have a sauna
? It was worthy of a cheesy seventies porn movie. She couldn’t look at Bendiks. A silence of less than a second felt as long as summer. She closed her eyes and waited to see what she had done.