Nine forty-six. He was late. Must be having trouble getting that last double twenty or whatever it was he needed. She pictured him carrying his empty glass over to the bar and saying, “Well, that’s my limit for tonight. See you tomorrow, Bobby.” Yes, he would be there! He had actually said so, she remembered: “See you tomorrow, Bobby.” And Bobby would say, “Night, Jack,” as usual. Any moment he would be walking out of that door. Martha was hardly breathing; her chest felt tight with excitement and apprehension. She ground out the cigarette and glanced over at the pub.
At ten o’clock, it happened. The door rattled open and one man-her man-walked out in his dark jersey and baggy jeans. She stayed where she was, as if rooted to the spot, her hands frozen to the railing. She must try to look like a casual tourist, she told herself, just admiring the nighttime view: St. Mary’s, the abbey ruin, the lights reflected in the harbor. A slight breeze ruffled her hair and brushed along her cheek like cold fingers.
He was walking in her direction, toward the Cook statue. She turned her head to watch him coming. How it happened, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was just the sudden movement, or maybe the light from a street lamp had caught her face as she turned. But he saw her. She could have sworn that he smiled and his eyes glittered more than usual. He started walking toward her.
She felt pure terror, as if her very bone marrow had turned to ice. He walked up beside her and rested his hands on the railing too.
“Hello,” he said, in that familiar, hoarse voice. “Lovely night, isn’t it?”
Martha could hardly catch her breath. She was shaking so much that she had to clutch the railings tight to stay on her feet. But she had to go through with it. It was too late to back off now. She turned to face him.
“Hello,” she said, in a voice that she hoped wasn’t trembling too much. “Don’t you remember me?”
18 Kirsten
The doctor insisted that Kirsten leave the hospital in a wheel-chair, though by then she was quite capable of walking unaided. The demand was made even more ridiculous when she reached the top of the front steps and had to get up out of the chair and walk down them.
Her father’s Mercedes was parked right outside. With Galen in front, carrying her things, and one parent on each side, Kirsten made her way toward it.
At the car, Galen-who, true to his word, had visited her almost every day that week-shook hands with her father, said good-bye to her mother, who inclined her head regally, and gave Kirsten a peck on the cheek. He had learned, she noticed, not to expect too much from her physically, though she still hadn’t told him the full extent of her injuries.
“Are you sure I can’t offer you a lift anywhere?” her father asked him.
“No, thank you,” Galen said. “The station’s not much of a walk, and it’s out of your way. I’ll be fine.”
“Back or front?” her father asked Kirsten.
“Back, please.”
In the spacious rear of the car she could stretch out, her head propped up against the window on a cushion, blanket over her knees, and watch the world go by.
“Are you sure you want me to go ahead?” Galen asked her through the open window.
Kirsten nodded. “Be sensible, Galen. There’s no point missing the start of term. If you do that, you might as well not bother.”
“And I can’t persuade you to come with me?”
“Not yet, no. I told you, don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”
“And you’ll join me soon?”
“Yes.”
She had finally managed to convince him to go to Toronto, partly by insisting that she was fine and needed only rest, and partly by promising to join him as soon as she felt well enough. When he agreed, she wasn’t sure if it was due to the logic of her arguments or because she had given him an easy way of getting off the hook. He had acted a little stranger each day-distant, embarrassed-and Kirsten had come to believe that perhaps there was something in what Sarah had hinted about men friends turning “funny” when women became victims of sexual attacks. Also, Hugo and Damon had sent more flowers and messages through Sarah, but they hadn’t visited again. Kirsten was beginning to feel rather like a pariah. In a way, it suited her, for at the moment what she wanted above all was to be left alone.
Galen stretched his arm through the window and patted Kirsten’s hand. “Take care,” he said. “And remember, I want to see a full recovery soon.” Kirsten smiled at him and the car pulled away. She watched him waving as the Mercedes headed down the road, until it turned a corner and she could see him no longer.
Her father cleared his throat. “I suppose you’d like to drop by the flat first and pick up a few things,” he suggested.
Kirsten didn’t, in particular, want to set foot in her tiny bedsit again, but neither did she want her parents to think she had lost all interest in life. Even if some of her deepest feelings were numb and her instincts were beyond her control, she could still make an effort to behave in the normal, accepted manner. They seemed dispirited enough as it was. Her mother had more or less accused her already of not trying hard enough to “snap out of it,” and her father had become more and more resigned and distant. If she showed no interest at all in her possessions, they would only worry more. So she said yes and offered directions. Appearances were important to her parents.
The car slid smoothly away from the gloomy Victorian hospital and toward the student area of town: rows of tall, old houses in which entire families and servants once used to live. Blackened by two hundred years of industry, and emptied by a succession of changes-the breakup of the family unit, the Great War, the Depression, the inability of most people to afford servants-they had fallen into the hands of local businessmen, who transformed the once magnificent rooms, with their high ceilings and fixtures where the chandeliers used to hang, into small flats or bedsits-as many to a building as they could manage-and rented them to students.
Kirsten had an attic room in a cul-de-sac near the park. After spending her first year feeling miserable in a bright, noisy student residence, she had been happy there for the last two years. As the three of them got out of the sleek, silver-gray car, she noticed people along the street looking out through their curtains. It must be quite a spectacle, she supposed, finding a Mercedes parked in such a place, where the cobbles still stuck through the various attempts at tarmac.
Torn newspapers, chip wrappers, empty cigarette packets and cellophane paper littered the pavement and gutters; weeds and unmown grass consumed the garden. In the hallway, which looked as if it hadn’t been swept for a month, neat piles of mail lay on a rickety old table.
The time-switch Kirsten pressed revealed a bare bulb on each landing and cobwebs in the high cornices. The walls were painted a color somewhere between eggshell blue and institutional green-painted, that is to say, some years ago-and the high ceilings were puce-what Sarah called “puke.” In the light of the unshaded sixty-watt bulbs, the place looked even worse than it was.
As they climbed the stairs, Kirsten was aware of her mother’s stiff disapproval. On entry, she seemed to have held her breath and not let it out for fear of having to breathe in again.
Feeling foolish as she did so, Kirsten knocked on her own door. She still had a key, but the room was officially Sarah’s now and she couldn’t just barge in. She hoped Sarah didn’t have a naked man in her bed.
The door opened. Kirsten noted with relief the empty room behind Sarah, who wasn’t even wearing one of her calculatedly offensive T-shirts that day. Instead, she wore white trousers and a baggy blue sweatshirt with UCLA printed across the front.
“Kirstie, love!” she yelled. Her fine, porcelain features broke into a smile anyone would have expected to shatter them, and she flung her arms around Kirsten.
Kirsten returned the embrace, then broke away gently. She didn’t react as badly as she had to Galen’s touch, but she still felt herself drawing back inside, holding in.
“My mother and father.” She stood back and introduced her parents, who hovered in the doorway.
“Cup of tea?” Sarah asked.
“That’d be lovely.” Kirsten looked at her father, who nodded. Her mother shook her head slightly and looked at
