The Versions of Us (42 page)

From the radio, now, comes the theme music to
The Archers
. Eva listens, closes her eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face, the soft farmyard sounds of summer in Ambridge. Opening them, she sees Umberto – a venerable old man now, scrawny and placid as an Italian
nonno
– stretch and turn in his favourite shady spot under the clematis. She goes over to him, tickles the cat under his chin. ‘What do you say,
caro mio
? Shall I go and see if your
papà
’s woken up?’

He is awake. She replaces his lunch tray on the trolley, puts a hand to Ted’s face. ‘Gosh, darling, you’re burning up. Shall I open the window?’

He blinks rapidly at her. She goes over to the window, lets in the street sounds, the faint promise of cooler air. She looks back at him, at his bad side, where, since the last stroke, his features seem to have slipped, resettled. His eyes watch her with an inexpressible sadness. She says, ‘My darling. Please don’t look at me like that. I can’t bear it.’ He blinks again, and then closes his eyes.

They have heard nothing from Sophie for six weeks when Jim comes in from his studio and says, ‘I think we should go and look for her.’

It is a Tuesday, just gone eleven. Eva is standing by the kitchen window, holding a mug of coffee: her mid-morning break from writing. She is almost at the end of what, after all these years, she hopes will be the final draft of her collection of short stories. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, darling?’

‘No.’ He places a hand on the door frame, steadying himself. ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea at all. But it’s the only idea I’ve got.’

Eva drives. The morning is bright, windswept; the trees that line the narrow lanes bend and sway as they pass, and blossom is falling from the hedgerows. Jim thinks about the last time he saw Sophie, just before Christmas. She had resisted all their attempts to invite her over for Christmas Day – her mobile never seemed to be switched on – and he had decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d driven to Brighton alone – Eva was in London for the weekend with Sam and the grandchildren, and Jim had stayed to finish a commission that he was meant to have ready for shipping the following week. He’d followed these same roads, slippery then with a fine layer of frost.

The address he had for his daughter was on a road called Quebec Street: a tiny terraced house, its blue-painted facade cracked and peeling. For a long time, there had been no answer. He had begun to wonder if she had moved without telling them: it would not have been the first time. But then, there she was – or a shadow of her, bone-thin and shivering in a long-sleeved T-shirt.

‘Dad,’ the shadow said. ‘Didn’t you get the message? I don’t want to see you.’ And then she had closed the door in his face.

Now, as they turn onto London Road, Eva says, ‘Quebec Street, then?’

‘Only place to look, isn’t it?’

She reaches across for his hand. ‘Darling. Please don’t expect too much.’

He grips her hand tightly. ‘I know.’

They park at the far end of the street, in front of a neat, whitewashed house, a pair of wooden model boats beached on the living-room windowsill. On the short walk along the pavement, Jim feels his legs grow heavy; two doors down, he stops, suddenly afraid that they might give way. Eva takes his arm. ‘Do you want to sit down? Come back later?’

Jim shakes his head. He will not be afraid of his own daughter. ‘No. Come on. I have to try.’

For the second time, then, he rings the doorbell. They stand on the pavement in anxious silence. A girl passing on the other side of the street – leather-jacketed, her hair a luminous shade of green – watches them without smiling.

He presses the doorbell again, waits. Then, finally, there is the sound of footfall on the stairs, a shape looming in the hallway through the frosted glass. Jim holds his breath. The door swings open. Here is a man he doesn’t know – a man wearing a black T-shirt, grubby jeans; his skin unnaturally white.

‘What?’ the man says.

Jim regards this stranger; tries, and fails, to get the measure of him. ‘I’m Sophie’s father. Is she in?’

‘Got the wrong house, mate.’ The man has a strong London accent and a faint smirk. ‘No one called Sophie here.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Jim takes a step forward, but the man bars his way.

‘Mate. Don’t try it. I’m telling you – you’ve got the wrong house.’

Eva places a hand on Jim’s arm, urges him back. ‘If that’s the case,’ she says, ‘we’re very sorry to have disturbed you. But we’re confused, you see. My stepdaughter used to live here. My husband saw her just a few months ago.’

The man looks at her, openly smiling now. Jim would like to reach out and punch him, feel the crack and splinter of bone and tooth beneath his fist. But Eva’s restraining hand remains on his arm.

‘Well. I can see why that would be confusing. But she doesn’t live here now.’

‘Do you think,’ Eva says in that same reasonable tone, ‘we could come inside and see for ourselves?’

‘No. I don’t think so. Now why don’t you both run along back to your nice comfy middle-class lives?’ And the door clicks shut.

Jim barely hears the man. He is looking at Eva, so brave, so dear to him. Suddenly it all seems dreadfully clear: he has chosen Eva – the certainty of happiness with her – over his daughter. He has brought this terrible moment on himself, on all of them; it is the logical conclusion. He should not have left Helena. He should never have tried to go back in time, to the moment when he and Eva had their entire lives before them. He has gone against the natural law of things: the law that says you get one chance at happiness, with one person, and if it falls apart, you do not get that chance again.

In his mind, he spools back through the years, to Anton’s birthday party, to the moment he saw Eva standing in the kitchen in her long dress, her shoulders bare, her hair gathered at the nape of her neck. He should have turned away from her then, gone back home to Helena, to their baby daughter, to the life he had made his. But he knows he could never have done it. He could never have turned from Eva as he had that time in Cambridge, outside Heffers bookshop: she was pregnant with Rebecca, staring after him, watching the back of his departing head. It had taken all his strength then not to look back. He could never have been that strong again.

‘Jim? Darling. Are you all right?’

He says nothing. He stumbles, and Eva catches him. ‘Come on. Let’s get back to the car.’

She drives down to the promenade, parks on Brunswick Square; takes him by the elbow, like an invalid, and leads him to the seafront. Down a set of steps to a café: a hard metal chair, fish and chips in a yellow polystyrene box. The beach is bare but for a dog walker, throwing a stick; the agile arc of the dog; the sea wide and grey and angry.

‘Where is she?’ he says.

‘Somewhere we can’t get to.’

‘Drugs.’ It is the first time Jim has said the word aloud, but it has been there between them for months – years, even. Sophie’s erratic behaviour. Her weight loss. The sallow hue of her skin.

Eva nods. ‘I think so.’

‘It’s my fault,’ he says.

‘No.’

‘It is. Everything. Sophie. Mum … I let them all down, Eva. I wasn’t there for them. I’ve never cared about anyone but myself.’

‘And me.’

He looks at her. The wind is whipping at her hair. She is everything to him: his whole world, or the best version of it. Surely he never really had a choice. ‘And you.’

They are silent for a moment. Eva gathers up the empty boxes, carries them over to a bin at the path’s edge. He watches her small, deft movements. With her back turned, she could be twenty still; even when she turns, she does not really betray her sixty-one years.

Sitting down again, she says, ‘Jim, you can’t blame yourself for everything. You just can’t.’

‘I should have put Sophie first,’ he says quietly. ‘I should have been a better father.’

‘Darling.’ Eva turns to him, cups his chin with her palm. ‘I don’t think there’s a father, or a mother, alive who doesn’t feel that way. You did the best you could.’

‘I wish I’d done better.’ He stands, and she does the same. Her hand drops from his face, and he reaches for it. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so worried about her.’

‘Of course you are. And we’ll do everything we can to find her. When we get home, we’ll call everyone we can think of. Helena. The Ship: that’s where she was working, wasn’t it? Sam might have some ideas. It’ll be all hands on deck, Jim, all right? We’ll find Sophie, and we’ll bring her home.’

Relief floods through him: the relief of having Eva, loving her, sharing a life. He takes in a great lungful of air.

‘Let’s go down to the sea,’ he says. And he leads her onto the pebbles of the beach, where they stumble as they tread, clumsy as infants taking their first steps.

‘Ready for the big speech?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’ Eva takes a sip of champagne. ‘I’ve got cue cards in my bag.’

‘Clever girl.’ Penelope lifts her glass, chimes it against Eva’s. ‘You’ve had tougher audiences, anyway.’

They are standing on the top deck of the ship, at the prow. Around them move men in dinner suits – men of their own age, mostly, with slicked grey hair (if there is any left to slick) and comfortable, reddish faces – and women in evening dresses, their décolletages gamely exposed. Watching a woman across the deck – her white hair piled into an elaborate chignon, the neckline of her red gown plunging deeply over the fine crêpe-paper skin of her breasts – Eva feels an odd blend of pity and admiration. She and Penelope have exercised careful restraint: Pen, now resignedly stout, is neatly encased in black spun through with fine gold thread. Eva is in dark green silk. Expensive: a treat to herself, bought on impulse.

‘Lovely dress. You look so tiny. Damn you.’

‘Hardly. But thanks, Pen.’

Penelope smiles. She watches Eva for a moment, her head fractionally tilted, considering. More seriously, she adds, ‘You’re beautiful, darling. Age shall not wither you. It might have got to the rest of us, but it’s leaving you alone. Remember that.’

‘All right, Pen. I’ll try.’ Eva places a grateful hand on her friend’s arm. She has always been there when Eva needed her; and how many times, in recent years, has Eva had reason to be thankful for that? ‘I’d better nip to the loo before dinner. See you down there, OK?’

‘OK. Good luck with the speech. Picture them all naked.’ They stare at each other; Penelope is the first to laugh. ‘Actually, on second thoughts, don’t.’

The toilets are on the lower deck, beside the ballroom, where waiters in white jackets are flitting between round tables heavy with glassware; in the centre of each table rises a single calla lily in a tall white vase. Through the wide glass windows, the chimney of the new Tate Modern thrusts up against the darkening sky; across the river, the answering dome of St Paul’s is stately, palely glowing. Eva stands for a moment in the doorway, watching her city; taking it in.

‘Eva. There you are. Thank goodness.’ Thea: greying hair discreetly highlighted, the fine straps of her slip dress exposing the taut contours of her upper arms. Fifty-eight years old, and she still works out every morning in the basement gym of the house in Pimlico. In the weeks after Jim left – those first terrible days, when time had seemed to collapse in on itself, and Eva couldn’t even bring herself to change her clothes – Thea had tried to instil a similar discipline in her sister-in-law. Three mornings a week, she had come to collect Eva, bundled her into the MG, and set her going on the rowing machine. ‘Exercise cures
everything
,’ she’d assured Eva, in her brisk, Norwegian way. But it wasn’t true: Eva had not been cured. She had simply redistributed the pain around her body.

‘It all looks wonderful,’ Eva says now.

‘Do you think so? I’m so glad.’ Thea comes over, lays her head on Eva’s shoulder. She is given to such sudden gestures of affection; at first, Eva found them a little disconcerting – not very British, and certainly not very Austrian – but she has grown to like them very much. ‘There’s someone on our table we’d like you to meet.’