“Probably you what?”
“Well, that maybe it damaged him, that perhaps I cut his life short by taking him to Prague...”
Anna fiddles with her napkin ring and takes a sip of her wine. She looks at me, and I feel for a moment like one of her clients receiving counsel. “I do understand why you think like that,” she says, “but you shouldn’t. Really, don’t do it to yourself.”
“Why not?” I say. “With what we’ve learned about the clinic. It’s more than possible.”
Anna shakes her head and puts down her fork. “I have spent so much time over the last few years beating myself up, about what we could have done with Jack, whether you were right about Sladkovsky, whether we should have gone for treatment abroad, in Germany, or pushed more on that Marsden trial. But for what? Jack was dying, Rob. He would have died, no matter what we had done. The best specialists in the world told us that. Sladkovsky’s or no Sladkovsky’s, Jack didn’t have a chance.”
I swallow, drink some water, pick at a spring roll.
“The funny thing,” Anna says, and I think I see the slightest hint of a smile, “is that Jack actually quite enjoyed the trip to Prague, being at the airport, on the plane.”
I smile, remembering his little backpack and how it was too big for him but he insisted on carrying it. “He did, didn’t he. He did always love going on the plane.”
“Do you remember Crete? When they let him sit in the cockpit before takeoff?”
“I do. He absolutely loved it.”
Anna is about to say something when the waiter arrives with the main courses. Little prawn sliders with coriander and tarragon. Cuts of beef bathed in chili. A laboriously arranged and dressed papaya salad. Anna is quiet, almost as if she thought she had said too much.
“Can I ask you?” I say, as we begin to eat. “Why did you get back in touch, on Hope’s Place?”
Anna takes a bite of her crab cake, diligently chews and swallows, and then wipes her mouth. “Well, at first, I was just a bit worried about you. I didn’t want you to kill yourself.” She stops, puts down her fork, her brow furrowing as it would when she was perturbed by a crossword clue. “But it’s a bit more complicated than that. If you must know, I think a part of me was hoping you would start talking badly about your wife, or ex-wife, or whatever I am. And then, for once and for all, I would know how horrible you really were and I could stop thinking about you.”
Anna smiles and takes a deep sip of her wine and, for a moment, it is as if we have gone back in time, a cavernous Cambridge restaurant, our lives stretching out before us. “God, Lola would kill me now,” Anna says, chuckling to herself. “She always says I’m far too honest... Anyway, my master plan didn’t work, that was the problem. Because you didn’t say anything bad about me in your messages. You only said nice things, and you seemed so genuinely sorry.
“It was more than that, though. I loved talking to you on Hope’s Place. The way you wrote, how you explained things, talked about your feelings. Your messages really helped me. And it was what I had always loved about you, how we used to talk for hours, in bed, late into the night. Just the two of us. So...as I said, my plan didn’t work, and I suppose that’s why I’m here.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from crying. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry I was horrible to you. It was disgusting what I did to you.”
“Oh, Rob,” Anna says. “You don’t need to keep saying sorry. I do understand, you know.”
“But I want to,” I say, the tears welling behind my eyes. “I just...I feel I owe it to you.”
Anna looks at me sternly. “If you say sorry one more time, I will walk out and leave you here with the bill.”
I let out a little laugh. “Thank you,” I say, “for being so nice. I don’t deserve it.”
“No, you don’t.” She gives me another stern look that turns into a smile and we sit, taking a breath, sipping our drinks.
“Can I ask,” Anna says, breaking the silence, “how much do you remember about what happened? After Jack died, I mean.”
“Not much,” I say, a pang of shame that she is asking, the fear that I will hear more about the things I did. “It’s a bit blurry, to be honest, just bits and pieces.”
“Did you know that every night after Jack died, I set my alarm for midnight or one o’clock and got up to check on you?”
I didn’t say anything, couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Every night I thought you might die, choke on your own vomit or something.” She stops, evaluates the expression on my face. “I’m not saying it to shame you. That’s what you always thought. No, you were ill, Rob. You had a breakdown, and I just didn’t know what to do. I tried to get you help, a place in a rehab clinic, but you refused.
“So that was that. I didn’t know what to do, so, like you, I just withdrew into my own little world, as well. I worked long hours, I read my books, all my silly crime novels. And then when you started drinking even more, the arguments started, about every little thing—Sladkovsky’s clinic, how I was always so cold, Jack’s room. God, we spent so long talking about the room. You accusing me of clearing everything out. I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
I am confused and don’t know what to say. I remember the boxes and bags,
