It takes me a beat to respond.
“Kate. It’s Alec.”
32
I travel to her house in a kind of trance, blank of thought and purpose. The taxi ride becomes a stark fact: within twenty minutes I will be in a room with Kate for the first time in over two years. She didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. There was no gulp or awkward silence on the phone, no apparent sense of shock. Just a note of happy surprise, almost as if she had been expecting me to call.
Yes, it’s a good time. Come straight round. I understand. Anything.
I pay the driver and walk the short distance to the front door of her house. It’s still deep blue, the glass mottled, the base flecked with the scratches of a dog’s paw. I glance up at the sitting-room window, looking for a twitch of curtain, some sign of her, but there isn’t even a light on inside. So many times I walked up these steps and just the sight of her face would lift me, an inexplicable joy. Will that still happen? Can I still feel things in that way?
So I ring the bell. I don’t hesitate. I just press it right away.
Odd not to have keys. Odd to have to wait.
A light comes on in the hall and then the tall outline of her, blurred by the glass. Now comes the first true nervousness, a swallowing void in my stomach. This was a sudden decision. I have not thought it through. Her hand is on the latch of the door.
New haircut. Bobbed. It suits her. In the first instant that I see her I know that it will be possible to tell her everything and to depend on her silence. Kate says my name very softly with a nice ironic smile that does something to diffuse the forced theater of reunion. Then we hug-it seems the right thing to do-but that goes wrong. I lean too far in, across the threshold, and our shoulders collide. We do not kiss.
“I like your hair.”
“Thanks,” she says, dismissively. “Had it done a while ago.”
Her mood is cool, patient but without much warmth. Perhaps that will change. To begin with, she will want to show me that she has moved on. Perhaps for this reason there has been no attempt to look pretty for me. Her face is without makeup and she is wearing her old Nicole Farhi sweater, stretched and holed at the elbow, with a pair of torn blue Levi’s. No perfume, either.
She turns and walks back into the hall and I see that she has put on weight, perhaps as much as fifteen pounds. Her hips have widened out. All of us getting older.
“Let’s go to the kitchen,” she says. “I made tea.”
That’s her mug on the table, the one with the teaspoon in it. She always liked her coffee that way. She’d lie in bed in the morning with her index finger wrapped around the handle of the spoon, supping with sleepy eyes.
Not much has changed in here. Everything still smells and looks the same. The Hermitage poster from the time Kate went to St. Petersburg is still hanging on the wall, and there’s a pile of yellowed newspapers on a wicker chair by the door. Just like the old days. We never got around to recycling. A dishwasher, though, over by the sink. That’s new.
“You got a dishwasher.”
“Yes.”
“They’re great. Wish I had one. Saves so much time.”
She smooths down her hair, edgy and flushed now. This isn’t easy for her. Memories coming back all the time.
“You sounded awful on the phone,” she says.
“It’s just been a terrible few weeks. I had some bad news.”
“No one’s hurt, are they?”
“No. Nothing like that. No one that you know, anyway.”
She looks perplexed.
“I’m sorry to ring you out of the blue. You were probably busy.”
“I wasn’t.”
Think of something to say. Fill the silence.
“Are we alone?” I ask.
Kate hesitates, gives a look that I interpret as guilt, then says, “Yes,” as she touches her chin.
“Good. Just had to be sure.”
I sit at the seat nearest the window, weak sunlight on my back. There’s a small yellow jug on the table with daffodils in it. Kate goes toward the sink and offers me tea, tapping a steaming pot on the counter. I say no. If I could only tell what she is thinking. Is she still angry with me, or is this slight detachment only nerves? She walks back to her chair, an apple in hand, and sits.
“So what is it?” she asks. She has a genuine look of concern about her, the patience of a true friend, but this may be entirely artificial. She is capable of that, of putting on a show. It’s quite possible that she feels nothing but hatred for me.
“I’m involved in something,” I tell her, starting out sooner than I had anticipated. “I just needed to talk to someone. Saul wasn’t around.”
She doesn’t react to the mention of Saul’s name. He is just someone from her past now.
“So I rang you. That’s why I rang you. Because of that. I’m sorry to bother you like this. It just seemed to make sense.”
“It’s really all right.”
She must think it’s weak of me to have come here: how could she not? I should have a new life by now, a new girlfriend, somebody else to lean on. To rely on the past like this is pitiful. I’ve known too many couples who meet up after an absence of a couple of years, and one of them always wonders why they wasted so much time on the other.
“You look tired,” she says.
“I haven’t been sleeping all that well.”
“You sure you won’t have tea?”
“Sure.”
“Nothing else? Sprite or Coke? Something to eat?”
“Nothing, thanks. You’re kind to offer.”
“So how come you haven’t been sleeping?” she asks.
I take out a cigarette and light it, not bothering to ask if that’s okay. I couldn’t bear too much politeness between us. My eyes fix on an unpaid bill lying on the kitchen table,?124 to BT. At least they have Cohen in a Geneva hospital with Swiss doctors who’ll give him the best treatment they can.
“Alec?”
I had wandered off.
“Sorry. Why am I not sleeping? Stress, I suppose. Just worry.”
“About what?”
“All kinds of stuff…”
“What kind of things? Why have you come here?”
“I think I may have been responsible for something terrible. For someone getting hurt.”
She doesn’t visibly react to this. She will just want me to go on talking. “He’s someone at work. I’m in the oil business now. He’s on my team.” I am starting to speak more quickly now, feeling the rush of the impending confession. “What I’m going to say to you, Kate, you have to swear to tell no one. You can’t speak to your dad about this, or to Hesther, or anyone…”
“Alec, I won’t. I promise.”
“Because no one knows. There’s just me and three other men, that’s all.”
