Warhol's Prophecy

to clear the table and wash up.

‘Don’t start, Rob,’ Hailey said, filling the sink with hot water.

‘Start about what?’ he snapped. ‘Our daughter getting lost when you were supposed to be looking after her? Why should I? I mean, she’s fine, isn’t she? Why should I start?’

‘If you knew how I felt, waiting for her to be found, you might be a bit more sympathetic.’ She handed him a clean, dripping plate.

He didn’t answer, merely continued drying crockery as she passed them to him.

‘Don’t give me the silent treatment, Rob,’ Hailey muttered. ‘If you’ve got something to say, then say it.’

‘Perhaps I should wait and do my talking tonight. That’s what those bloody sessions are for, isn’t it?’

She shot him an angry glance.

‘I didn’t force you to come, Rob. And if you want to stop going, then that’s up to you too. I thought we needed help. I hoped you understood that. I thought you wanted to do something to help our relationship. After all, it was you who fucked it all up in the first place.’

‘Yeah, I know. And if I hadn’t had an affair, we wouldn’t be going to Marriage Guidance, would we?’

Again she caught that heavy scorn in his voice.

‘It’s called Relate,’ she told him.

‘What difference does the name make? It does the same job, doesn’t it?’

‘And what job’s that? What job do you think it’s supposed to do, Rob?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m going to sit with Becky,’ he said, throwing the tea towel onto the worktop. ‘Perhaps she needs someone to keep an eye on her.’

He was out of the kitchen before Hailey could reply.

She heard his footsteps on the stairs.

Despite the fact that the television was on, the volume was low and Hailey wasn’t really paying much attention to the programme. It was a soap opera – wasn’t it always? She merely gazed blankly at the screen, listening as Rob made his way down the stairs, then into the kitchen. A moment later he wandered into the sitting room and sat down in the chair on the other side of the room, his gaze straying first to the TV and then to the daily paper lying on the coffee table close to him. He picked it up and flipped it around to the sports pages.

‘Did you read her a story?’ Hailey asked.

‘She was tired anyway,’ Rob answered. ‘It didn’t take long for her to drop off. Not surprising really, is it? I mean, she’s had a lot of excitement today – if that’s what you want to call it.’

He continued looking at the paper.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rob, drop it, will you?’ Hailey said wearily.

He lowered the paper.

‘Drop it? Our daughter gets lost in one of the biggest shopping centres in the country, and you say “Drop it.” What the hell were you doing?’

‘I knew this was coming. You think it’s my fault, don’t you?’

‘Do you have any idea what could have happened to her?’

‘I spent nearly an hour thinking about nothing else.’

‘You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’

‘No. Because I knew you’d react like this.’

‘How do you expect me to react?’

‘With a little bit of understanding. I went through hell this afternoon until they found her.’

‘And you just decided not to tell me?’

‘Don’t start lecturing me about deceit, Rob. You’re not really in a position to do that, are you?’

He raised his hands. ‘Change the record, Hailey,’ he said irritably.

She glared at him.

She was about to speak again when she heard the two-tone door-chime. Flashing him one final, angry glance, she got to her feet and headed for the door, from habit peering through the spyhole before she opened it.

As she waited on the doorstep, Caroline Hacket rubbed her hands together.

‘It’s getting colder,’ she commented as Hailey let her in.

Caroline slipped off her long grey coat to reveal a dark sweatshirt and jeans beneath. She draped the coat over the bannister and turned to Hailey, seeing how pale and drawn she looked.

‘Are you OK?’ she wanted to know.

Hailey nodded. ‘Becky’s fast asleep,’ she said, reaching for her own coat that hung on the rack behind her. ‘We’ll be back by nine.’

Caroline touched her friend’s arm and nodded. She turned as Rob appeared in the doorway to the sitting room.

‘How’s things in the world of big business, Rob?’ Caroline asked, smiling.

‘Not bad,’ he said, forcing a return smile that appeared more like a leer. He pulled on a jacket and dug in his pocket for the car keys. He then wandered outside, and a couple of minutes later Hailey heard the engine of the Audi throb into life.

‘You know where everything is, don’t you?’ said Hailey.

‘I should do by now,’ Caroline told her. ‘Go on. Everything will be fine. I’ll see you later.’

Hailey closed the door behind her and headed towards the passenger side of the waiting Audi.

‘Everything will be fine.’

How badly she wanted to believe that.

7

THE ROOM WAS small. No more than fifteen feet square. Sparsely furnished. It contained little except three chairs, a filing cabinet and a small coffee table. The walls were plain, their banality not even enlivened by a photograph or a painting.

The consultation room reminded Rob of a cell.

Cigarette smoke hung in the air like a curtain of dirty gauze, and the ashtray on the table next to a box of Kleenex was already full. Hailey and Rob were both smoking, watched with something approaching disapproval by the woman who sat in the room with them.

Marie Anderson was in her early forties: a small woman with the kind of outrageously rosy cheeks that made her look like a badly painted doll. She looked from Hailey to Rob, and then back again. For three weeks they had been attending these Relate sessions. For three weeks she had listened to their pain and their anger spilling out into this small room. And what she had heard from them she had heard a hundred times before, from a hundred different couples.

Words like ‘Betrayal’, ‘Infidelity’, ‘Anger’, ‘Revenge’ . . .

‘Hatred’.

Marie often wondered if her role was merely that of referee to these bouts of emotional pugilism. She had voiced her concerns about that to some of her colleagues, but found they saw their own roles as something similar. They were there to guide, to cajole, to interpret; they were not there to solve problems. They could not wave magic wands and reassemble marriages shattered by infidelity or a hundred other kinds of indiscretion.

The thing that Marie had found most difficult when she first began as a Relate counsellor was distancing herself from the personal problems of those she advised. It had been difficult then to merely lock up the office and walk home after every evening’s emotional upheavals. As time went on, Marie had found it all a little more bearable, but every now and then she was more deeply touched than she should be by the plight of a particular couple or individual. She wondered if even that would wear off in time. Was it ever possible to become immune to pain? And, if so, how long did it take?

Hailey stared at Marie, as if willing her to force an answer from Rob. Wanting her to make him reply to the question she had asked him a moment ago.

He took another drag on his cigarette, and blew out a stream of smoke to join the grey haze already filling the confined space.