‘No, there’s a hold-up with the casualty file. Somebody must have taken it out and I’m trying to track down who it was. Get back to me.’ She was harassed and irritated and eager to get off the line.
Everything was gone. Now what?
?
Where was it, oh, where was it? I flung open the trunk. Elsie’s paintings, dozens and dozens of them, lay there in piles. Some were glued together by their paint. Some still had masking tape on their corners, where they’d been stuck to the walls. Three-legged monsters in green and red, yellow daisies with their straight stalks and two looped leaves, violent purple daubs, faces with wonky eyes, indeterminate animals, lots of seascapes, wavy blue lines traversing the thick white paper. Rainbows with the colours running into each other; the moon and stars bleeding yellow into rough black nights. I lifted each picture, looked at it, turned it over. Surely it would be here. Traces of Finn’s presence in the house could be seen: occasional titles, neatly written in with their dates, an adult representation of a dog alongside a child’s one, several times whole hasty pictures of horses and trees and sailing boats obviously done by Finn. But I couldn’t find what I needed. I’d come to a dead end.
I went into Elsie’s room and pulled open drawers. Dolls with pink limbs and gaudy dresses stared at me, knitted animals, little boxes with nothing in them, beads in satisfying primary colours, satiny ribbons, whole armies of those tiny plastic things which are always put into party bags. In her drawing pad there were several paintings, but not the one I wanted. Under the bed was one slipper and three separate socks and Anatoly, asleep. I climbed on to a chair and pulled down from the top of the wardrobe an untidy pile of used paper folded up. On the top, in pencil, was Elsie’s name written over and over, in large wonky letters. Underneath was the treasure map. I’d found it.
I jumped off the chair and spread the paper out on the floor tenderly, looking at the daubs of colour and the rusty red letters. An ‘S’ and an ‘E’. And there, an ‘F’: signed in her blood.
I lifted the paper up very carefully, as if it were like a dream that fades when you try and grasp it. In my study downstairs was a stack of large brown envelopes and I slid the map and its signature of blood inside one and sealed it up. Then I picked up the car keys and ran outside. I had it now.
‘You again.’
I had taken a seat but Chris remained standing, hands on hips, looking down at me.
‘I’ve found her. It.’
‘What?’
I took the envelope, still sealed, and put it on his desk. ‘In here,’ I said, speaking very slowly, as if he were demented, or as if I were, ‘in here is a picture.’
‘A picture. How nice.’
‘A picture,’ I continued, ‘drawn by Elsie.’
‘Look, Sam,’ Chris bent towards me and I noticed that his face had become ramer red, ‘I wish you well, honesdy I do, but go home, see your daughter, leave me alone.’
‘This is a relic from a children’s game. Finn and I signed our initials, each in our own blood.’ He opened his mourn and I thought he was going to roar at me, but no sound came out. ‘Give it to Kale. Have it tested.’
He sat down heavily. ‘You’re mad. You’ve gone completely insane.’
‘And I want a receipt for this. I don’t want it disappearing.’
Angeloglou gave me a fixed stare for a long time.
‘You mean you want a record kept of your behaviour? Right,’ he shouted and began rummaging feverishly on his desk. He didn’t find what he was looking for and he stormed across the room returning with a form. He banged it down on the table and picked up a pen with deliberation.
‘Name?’ he barked.
Thirty-Five
‘I’ll have’ – I ran a finger down the handwritten menu – ‘smoked mackerel and salad. What about you two?’
‘Chicken nuggets and chips,’ Elsie said firmly. ‘And fizzy orange drink. Then chocolate ice-cream for pudding.’
‘OK,’ I said easily. Elsie looked taken aback. ‘Sarah?’
‘Ploughman’s, thanks.’
‘What about drinks? Do you want a shandy or something?’
‘Lovely.’
I gave the orders to a barmaid who appeared to be ten months pregnant, took our ticket and our drinks, and we went outside into the gorgeous spring day and sat down, coats still buttoned up, at an unstable wooden table.
‘Can I play on the swings?’ asked Elsie, and charged off without waiting for a reply. Sarah and I watched her struggle on to the seat of a swing and rock it violently to and fro, as if that would give her momentum.
‘She seems well,’ commented Sarah.
‘I know.’ A little boy in a stripy jersey climbed on to the swing next to Elsie’s and the two of them stared suspiciously at each other. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’
‘Kids are resilient.’
We sipped our shandy with the sun on the napes of our necks, and didn’t speak for a bit.
‘Come on, Sarah, don’t keep me on tenterhooks. What did you think of the book, then? Plain speaking, mind. Aren’t you saying anything because it’s so bad?’
‘You must know it’s good, Sam.’ She put an arm around my shoulders and I almost burst into tears; it had been a long time since anyone except Elsie had hugged me. ‘Congratulations. I really mean it.’ She grinned. ‘And wildly controversial of course. I’m amazed you could write something like that in such a short time, and with all that happened. Maybe that’s why. It’s very good.’
‘But?’
‘There are a few tiny little things that I wrote in the margin.’
‘I mean
‘There’s no really but. There’s a question.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Not even a question, just a comment.’ She paused, picked up her glass and ran a thumb around its rim. ‘It feels like a summing-up of a career, not just the beginning of one.’
‘I’ve got a habit of burning my bridges.’
Sarah laughed.
‘Yes, but this time you’re burning your bridges in
The little boy was pushing Elsie on her swing now. Every time she went swooping up, sturdy legs pointing to the sky and head thrown exaggeratedly back, my heart banged anxiously.
Our lunch arrived. My mackerel lay among a few shreds of tired lettuce, looking orange and enormous. Elsie’s meal was entirely beige. ‘You made the best choice,’ I said to Sarah, and called to Elsie, who came running.
?
After lunch, after Elsie had eaten every last chip and scooped up every last drop of ice-cream, we went for a short walk, to the old church I had visited once before, and talked about South America and Elsie’s father.
‘Do you love it here ?’ asked Sarah as we walked beneath the enormous sky, beside the sea that was blue and friendly today, the ground spongy under our feet, birds curling overhead.
