This Must Be the Place (29 page)

‘I don’t know why you would say that,’ I say, careful to make my tone neither conciliatory nor accusing but somewhere in between. ‘I always consider you to have been … I think of our friendship as—’

I stop because Todd is snuffling with derision.

‘As what?’ he says. ‘Such a good and valued friendship that you would go to the States, apparently for a month or two, and not only never return but never write, never call, never even bother to let me know that you’re not coming back?’

I think this over. ‘Is that what happened?’ I say. ‘Really? I did that?’

Todd ignores me, opens the lid of a serving dish, examines the contents, lets it fall shut. He roots in a heap of rice, taking one spoonful, then two. I stare at him as he does this, at his hands, at the food. All this antagonism, I realise, isn’t to do with Nicola. It’s because I ran out on him. It’s because he’s hurt, he’s angry with me – still – for not coming back. This, I had not expected but perhaps I should have done.

‘I guess I did,’ I say. ‘I had no idea that you would see it like that, when really I—’

‘It’s still the same shtick with you, then, is it?’ Todd brandishes a pair of tongs at me.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh,’ he mimics, in an appalling American accent, ‘I had no idea, it’s not my fault, I’m just a big dolt, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t think, I had no intention of riding roughshod over you and all your feelings, you’re my best friend, Todd, but I’m just going to fuck off back home and never contact you again—’

‘Come on,’ I let out, ‘you can’t still be holding onto stuff that happened a lifetime ago. I was a mess at the time and while that’s no excuse—’

‘You’re right,’ he says, piling his plate with slippery, slithering noodles. ‘It’s no excuse. You could still have picked up the phone.’

With that, he turns tail. He sits himself down at the table, takes a sip of his beer and begins to eat. He eats with a regular motion, seemingly without enjoyment: it is the automatic slaking of a human need, nothing more.

I stand a few feet from him, my hands dangling uselessly by my sides. I consider leaving, just picking up my bag and walking away. No one need ever know this happened. I could package up this unpleasantness, this humiliation somewhere small and airtight and need never think of it again.

This man, though, has what I want. He holds the key to what happened. He is the only one I can ask: this is my only chance of finding out. If I blow this, that’s it. I will never know.

As I stand there, hesitating, wondering what to do, I recall something my mother told me, as a child. Apologise, she would say, apologise, and people’s defences come down and everything will be better.

I sit down. I take a mouthful of tea. I regard the man opposite me: he seems smaller, somehow, than I remember, shrunken, sitting there in his checked shirt, chewing his way through his dinner, avoiding my eye. No wedding ring, I see, and somehow this doesn’t come as a surprise. There is something very unmarried, uncoupled about him. I wonder how he ended up here, teaching in high school. I want to ask him: what happened, what about your academic career, what about your record collection, your in-depth knowledge of eighteenth-century travelogues, your devotion to the blurred lines between fiction and non-fiction?

But I don’t. Instead I put down my teacup. I sit up straight. I say: ‘I’m sorry, Todd. I really am. You’re absolutely right. It was very wrong, very remiss of me not to call you. To fall off the grid like that. There is no excuse for it. I apologise unreservedly.’

He looks up. He meets my eye for, it seems, the first time.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘It was a shitty way to treat you. You didn’t deserve it.’

He looks at me for a moment longer, chewing, then swallowing the last of his mouthful. Then he inclines his head and he’s almost smiling and there seems, in the atmosphere between us, a kind of flowering, an unfurling, a glimmer of what used to be. And there it is, right there, the legacy of my mother, Teresa Sullivan, in action.

‘There’s something I wanted to ask you, actually,’ I say.

Todd examines my face for a moment, then says, ‘Go on.’

‘It’s about Nicola.’

His expression is unmoving, his cutlery held in mid-air, in a position Claudette would not condone in the kids.

‘You remember Nicola?’ I say. ‘Nicola Janks?’

A hesitation. He digs with his fork through his plate for something. ‘Of course,’ he says.

‘It only recently came to my attention,’ I hear myself say and I am wondering why I sound so formal, as if I’m addressing my students, ‘that she died, shortly after—’

‘You didn’t know that?’ he asks quickly, laying down his fork. ‘Before, I mean?’

‘No, of course not. I only found out a few days ago. I was listening to the—’

‘You had no idea?’

I shake my head. ‘No. As I said—’

‘I thought,’ he frowns, prods some noodles to the side of the plate, ‘someone would have called you.’

‘Well, no one did.’ I take a deep breath. ‘But really my question is how you could have … I don’t even know how to put this … I’m sure you know what I mean without me saying it. Don’t you? It isn’t, really, the kind of thing you could ever forget.’ I try to gather my thoughts, to focus on what I need to say. ‘That time in the forest. How could you have … kept it to yourself like you did? How could you have done that? To me – and to her. You knew that she was … you knew … but you didn’t say anything. You know what I’m talking about, right? We understand each other, here, don’t we? What I’m struggling with right now is how you let me just—’

‘Is that what this is about?’ Todd pushes his plate away, places his elbows on the table, holds his head in his hands. ‘That’s why you’ve come?’

For a moment, neither of us speaks.

Then he says shakily: ‘Look.’ He inhales once, twice, his face trembling. ‘It’s not something I’m proud of.’

I almost say, I’m not surprised. But I want him to go on so I opt for a neutral, ‘Hmm,’ instead.

‘I … It was a long time ago … I was … I don’t know … I guess I was upset, hurt, angry. All of the above. It was a mistake. I’m willing to admit that. I’ve felt terrible about it, obviously, ever since.’

He raises his head and there is a chill spreading through my abdomen, like a stain. The worst has been confirmed. I did run off and leave the dead body of my girlfriend in a forest. I did that. I, Daniel Sullivan, was happy to turn my back, to walk away. I didn’t know at the time but perhaps I kind of did. I’m finding it hard to meet Todd’s eye, to hold his gaze. What the
fuck
? I want to scream. What were you thinking? You were the one on the ground, with your fingers on her non-existent pulse, you were the one who said, she’s fine, go. Run, Daniel, run.

I want to slam my hands on the table, I want to reach out and do some damage to the craven, sweating face in front of me but I don’t. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say. The chill is reaching my shoulders, my neck, and I feel as though I may never speak again. Is this, I find myself wondering, how Ari feels when he’s about to stammer? That uncertainty, that doubt, the risk that words will never come again, that it’s just silence from here on in?

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I manage.

‘I don’t get …’ Todd passes a hand over his face. ‘How did you find out? It was so long ago. Was it Suki?’

‘Huh?’

‘Did Suki tell you? Has she –’

‘I told you,’ I murmur, distractedly, over him, ‘I heard it on the radio.’

‘– been in touch with you? How did she know? Did she find it? Did she read it? She must have done. It was hidden in my room. She was always going through my room.’

‘What?’ I say.

‘I didn’t know she knew,’ Todd is muttering, almost to himself. ‘She never said. She always was a devious little … Look, it was a stupid thing to do, I know that. I had no idea there was even a possibility that Nicola wouldn’t make it. Never. If I’d known she was in that state, I would never have taken it, of course I wouldn’t. You were the one I was angry with, not her. I only took it to get back at you. Everything always seemed to come so bloody easily to you. All you ever had to do was crook your fingers and everyone came running. But I shouldn’t have taken it. If you only knew how much it’s weighed on my conscience ever since, I—’

‘Wait,’ I say, ‘wait. What are you talking about?’

Todd looks at me or past me, his face distorted, stricken, guilty. ‘The letter.’

‘What letter?’

‘Your letter.’

‘My letter?’

‘The letter you sent to—’ He stops. He scans my face. The silence see-saws between us. His expression folds, shuts up tight. ‘Um,’ he says. ‘Are we at cross-purposes here? What are you talking about?’

‘The wedding,’ I say, confused, the jet lag slowing me down. ‘The party. Up in Scotland. Remember?’

‘Mm-hmm.’ He nods vigorously. ‘I remember.’

‘We slept in the woods. Nicola was there and then I left, the next morning.’

‘Yes.’ He nods again and again.

‘And Nicola was on the ground. You said I should go, that she was fine.’

He’s still nodding and saying, ‘Mmm, mmm.’

‘But she wasn’t fine, was she?’ I prompt. ‘She was dead.’

Todd frowns, as if presented with a mathematical equation he can’t solve. The nodding turns slowly into a shake of the head.

‘She was dead,’ I repeat, ‘and you told me to go. You wanted me to catch my plane.’

Todd still shakes his head.

‘You covered for me,’ I insist. ‘You knew I gave her the drugs and you covered for me. You told me to go so I could get out of the country.’

Still shaking. He has a small, peculiar smile on his face: a little twisted one. ‘No,’ he says, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. I can’t believe you don’t know this, that you … that all this time … It’s so odd that you never …’ With effort, he readjusts his face, to one of gravity, of seriousness. ‘She didn’t die that night, Daniel. Not then. She was very ill. I had to take her to hospital just after you’d gone. I called an ambulance. We had to dodge some tricky questions but I managed to plead ignorance. They pumped her full of vitamins and stuff, treated her for the cold. But she made it through. She was OK. I drove her back south, in her car. Remember her car?’

‘Yes.’

‘The red one? I drove it.’ He sounds mystifyingly proud of this, even now. ‘I got her home. I stayed with her for a while and—’

‘You stayed in her house?’

‘Yes. The hospital said I should. Said she shouldn’t be left alone. She was getting better.’ He meets my eye. ‘She really was. She was making an effort, you know, to – to get well. And I was looking after her. For you. I took care of her. I knew that was what you’d want.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She …’ again, that look of opacity, almost craftiness ‘… got worse again. By December, she was hospitalised.’

‘With … the eating thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she died?’

He nods. ‘They called me. Her heart gave out. A weakened valve. I think she had less of a chance because of those other episodes when she was younger. Anyway, I got a call, like I said, from the hospital, asking me for her next of kin.’ He gives a shrug and I have to turn away.

I find myself swallowing and swallowing, as if to keep something down, as if there is something in me fighting to get out. I have to consciously push images from my mind: Nicola as frail as a bird, a hospital bed, her house, which was beautiful, painted dove grey with woven rugs on the wooden floors, bookcases lining the stairs. Who would have come to dismantle it, to cart away all those books and rugs? Who would have been the first over that threshold? Did they come with boxes and bin-bags?

Todd is standing, lifting his bag, pulling out his wallet and tossing notes onto the table. My mind is thrumming, bruised, overworked, but somewhere a veil of fog lifts.

‘Hey,’ I say to him, as he starts to leave. ‘What were you talking about before?’

‘Nothing,’ he says, without turning round. ‘I don’t know.’

He says goodbye to the girl at the door and steps out onto the pavement.

‘Wait,’ I say.

He walks away, in the opposite direction to the way we came.

‘Todd! Wait!’ I catch up with him. ‘What was all that before? The thing you’re not proud of?’

Todd shrugs. He increases his pace.

‘The thing that was so long ago,’ I say. ‘You thought Suki had found something in your room.’ It comes back to me. ‘The letter.’

‘I’m not sure,’ he murmurs. ‘We were … at cross-purposes. I thought … I thought you meant … something else.’

His evasion fills me with the kind of rage I haven’t felt for a long time. I grab his arm. He pulls away, his face disgusted, fearful, but I don’t release him. We grapple in an undignified, middle-aged sort of way on the pavement of a commuter town and I seize him by the lapel of his jacket. I press him against a lamp-post.

‘You said,’ I breathe into his face, ‘it was a letter I wrote. A letter I sent.’

‘No,’ he tries again, ‘I was … mistaken. Let go.’

‘What letter was it?’ I say and the answer slides into my head, like an envelope under a door. ‘It was that letter I wrote to Nicola, wasn’t it? The one I sent from New York. The one where I asked her to come join me in Berkeley.’

Todd doesn’t answer. He is panting, perspiring under my grip.

‘Wasn’t it?’ I spit. ‘You took it, didn’t you? You hid it from her.’

I let go of him suddenly. I don’t want to touch him, feel his flesh under my hands, have the fabric of his clothes bunched in my palms. He staggers sideways, almost falls, but rights himself. We are both breathing heavily. The sun sears our skin, scalds our heads.

I lean against the wall of a closed sofa shop.

‘That’s why she died, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘Because she never got the letter. She knew I’d write to her. She knew it wasn’t the end. But she never got it. Because you took it. You read it, didn’t you? You read it and found out I wasn’t coming back.’

I come towards Todd, who is straightening his jacket, brushing himself off, with affronted fastidiousness.

‘You shitty, selfish, lying bastard!’ I yell, jabbing my finger into his chest. ‘You realise, don’t you, that you killed her? You did that to her. It was you.’