fright, to respond at all.
‘Leo! What are you doing!’
‘Meg. Where is she? You said here, didn’t you? You said to meet here?’
‘Yes but…’ Megan checked her watch. She frowned, as though it was later than she had realised. ‘Maybe she…’ She cast about, letting the sentence dwindle. ‘Ellie?’ she said. ‘Ellie!’
The crowd around them was drifting to a halt. It was thinning anyway beneath the reddening sky but the pupils and parents who were yet to leave had ceased chattering and were turning to stare. Leo spotted a teacher inside the gates, watching Leo with a look of alarm. He saw her collar a pupil, then propel the girl towards the main building. Leo searched the faces searching his. He yelled his daughter’s name.
‘Mr Curtice?’
A girl’s voice; one Leo recognised. He checked about him for its source. ‘Sophie!’ Leo stooped and clasped his daughter’s friend by the shoulders. ‘Have you seen Ellie? She should be here. Have you seen her?’
Sophie was already shaking her head. ‘No, she—’
‘Sophie!’ Megan, crouching beside him. ‘Have you seen Ellie?’
‘No. I was just saying. I saw her in lessons this morning but after lunch she was gone.’
No. Please God no.
‘Gone?’ Megan said. ‘Gone where?’
‘I dunno. She—’ Sophie grimaced. ‘Ow. Mr Curtice, you’re hurting me.’
‘Let go of her, Leo, for pity’s sake!’ Megan tugged Leo’s arm and shoved at his shoulder. He released his hold at the same time and stumbled backwards, colliding with the gate behind him. He slid until he found himself sitting.
‘Gone where, Sophie? Where did Ellie go?’ Megan was gripping the girl’s shoulders herself now, locking Sophie’s eyes with her own.
‘I dunno. She wasn’t at the shop at lunchtime so I figured she’d gone to the park. I mean, just lately we… we haven’t been…’ The girl looked towards the ground. ‘When I didn’t see her this afternoon, I just assumed she must’ve gone home. That maybe someone had said something or something. To upset her, I mean.’
Leo could only watch. He could only listen. He wanted to lift a hand from the floor but sensed, if he let go, that he would not be able to stop himself falling.
Megan, in front of him, was standing, scanning the street. Coatless, she shivered, but made no move to wrap herself in her arms. She started to speak, to nod, and Leo was aware, vaguely, of a voice drawing closer from across the playground. Ms Bridgwater. The head teacher. Stamping her authority on a situation that was already beyond her control. And Megan again, raising her voice now, hurling gestures towards the school, along the street, back to the school and then —
And then she stopped. She fell silent. She looked at Leo and angled her head. She said something, a question, and Leo looked up at his wife but could not answer. Because he was right. Now that he had let go it seemed like he was tumbling, like the world all of a sudden had given way. In its place there was just a void, an encroaching blackness, and the words on the page he had drawn from his pocket and was somehow holding out towards his wife –
YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED
YOU DONT DESERVE A DAUGHTER
– scrawled in blood and underlined with Ellie’s hair.
-
She is early herself but he is already seated. It is not like him, she thinks. But then who is she, these days, to be able to judge?
She slides from her coat but no one offers to take it from her. When no one comes to direct her to the table either, she drapes the coat over her arm and makes her own way across the restaurant floor. It is busy for brunch-time and she has to weave and hoist her coat and apologise, more than once, for knocking other patrons’ chairs. Feeling hot, and damp from the rain, and conscious that her hair, probably, is a frizzy mess, she arrives. Leo stands to greet her.
This, ridiculously, given what she has come here to say, is the moment she has been dreading. Not the act of coming face to face after such a long time but the decision, once they are within range, about how she should greet her husband. A kiss, she thought, on the cheek but Leo is caught between the table and the leather bench and Megan, to reach him, would have to lunge. An embrace – a hand on the shoulder, a brief coming together – is her backup but this, in the circumstances, would prove awkward too. A handshake is out of the question so in the end Megan flounders. She says hi, then hi again, then smiles, sort of, and just sits.
He is staring. Megan does her best, with a surreptitious palm, to smooth her hair.
But, ‘You look well,’ Leo says. ‘You really do.’
In spite of her relief, she could take offence – what did he expect? – but his manner is earnest and his expression uncertain and she thinks that today she should endeavour to be kind. Compliments, she knows, are not her husband’s vernacular. He utters them, when he utters them, with the same failed fluidity that defines his French.
‘You look well yourself,’ she says. And this is indeed being kind because Leo looks anything but. He has shaved and is neatly turned out – a shirt collar beneath a V-neck jumper and the colours even vaguely coincide – but there is no dressing up a dishevelment that runs deeper. His skin is wan, sunless. He has lost weight. He had some to spare but it has slipped most noticeably from his cheeks. As for his hair: when she last saw him it was already deserting him and he has pre-empted the sedition of the rest by clipping it tight. The result, a stranger might say, was making the best of a bad lot – better than a combover, certainly. But it is not Leo.
She decides. If she was not sure before, she is sure now.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Leo already has a coffee but is directing a finger at a passing waiter. The waiter – a boy, practically, and east European, Megan predicts – has stopped mid stride. He does not have long, the bustle and his bearing convey. Quickly now, please: what will it be?
‘A cappuccino?’ says Leo. ‘Right?’
The waiter nods and is about to dart on but Megan reaches. ‘A Bloody Mary,’ she says. ‘Lots of spice.’ Again the waiter nods. Megan fails to look at Leo as she turns. She needs the drink. She is under no obligation to explain why. And now, she realises, she might un-decide. Such is her see-saw antagonism, her decision might tip on the weight of what Leo says next.
‘So,’ Leo says.
Megan lifts her head. Her husband is staring at his coffee.
‘So.’
‘You heard, then. The news.’
‘I did.’ She has an urge to reach across. ‘Leo, I’m…’ Don’t say it. You’re not, so don’t say it. ‘What happened? Do you know?’
Her husband has a gesture. It is not for strangers because it would be construed as rude. But for friends, family, Leo has a gesture – a flick of a finger, a turn of the head, a tightening across the lips – that says, I don’t want to talk about it. He will, Megan is convinced, use it now.
Instead he sighs. He picks up his teaspoon. He does not seem to know what to do with it so he puts it down again. ‘The short version?’ he says. ‘Or the long?’
Megan’s Bloody Mary arrives. It is a bouquet of celery in a blood-red vase. She would laugh, ordinarily. ‘I don’t have anywhere I need to be,’ she says instead. It is not true but she says it anyway.
Leo regards her, as though uncertain whether she means what she says. But he seems, in the end, to be convinced. He sighs again.
He is grieving, Megan realises. After all these years and after everything that has happened, he is suffering. For this child, this boy – this man, in the end: Leo is aching from the loss.
