Brother and Sister (5 page)

She said comfortingly, "It's over, the cutting. I'll never tell anyone about it."

"No—"

"Why—why did you mention it?"

"Because when you told me what you wanted to do, I suddenly felt like I did when I needed to cut, I suddenly felt that everything
was spiraling out of control, that I couldn't keep hold of things, that I couldn't keep hold of you—"

"You'll always have hold of me," Nathalie said.

He gave her a shaky smile.

"Just don't ask me to do more than I can—manage."

"Forget it."

"I'll help you—"

"Dave," Nathalie said, "please don't worry. I shouldn't have asked you. I'm a selfish cow."

He gave her another doubtful smile, then he stepped back and opened the door of the summerhouse and took a gulp of damp air.

"No. You're brave."

She put a hand out and touched his sleeve.

"Can't I be brave for both of us?"

He didn't look at her. Instead, he took his plastic-covered plan out of his pocket and stepped out into the rain.

"No," he said, over his shoulder. "
No.
"

CHAPTER FOUR

T
he coffee shop was furnished with chic metal tables and chairs imported from the Continent with, at the back by a window
looking into a small paved garden somebody had devised for the use of summer customers in optimistic defiance of the climate,
two black-leather sofas. On one of these Sasha was sitting, leaning back with one arm along the back of the sofa and her long
legs crossed. She wore black trousers and a little cream-colored cropped jacket and the kind of heavy black laced-up boots
that Steve associated with long-ago Mods and Rockers. He also noticed—he hadn't seen this on their first meeting—that she
had a tiny jeweled stud in her nose, which flashed when she turned her head, a glint of blue-green, like a kingfisher.

He sat opposite her on the second sofa, leaning forward, his elbow on his knees. He had bought them both lattes—hers with
an extra shot of espresso—and these were on the low table between them in heavy white mugs. When Sasha had rung to thank him
warmly for passing on her request to Nathalie, his first impulse had been to say, "No problem, glad it worked out," and put
the phone down. But something else had intervened, an uncomfortable something about the way Nathalie was behaving at the moment,
about the atmosphere of distinct but undefinable edginess there was in the flat which was making—no getting round it—both
Polly and Steve behave edgily too.

So instead of putting the phone down on Sasha, he'd found himself asking her to meet him for coffee, and then was disconcertingly
pleased when she didn't sound even much surprised, and said she'd love to.

"A sort of debrief," she said.

He'd given an anxious little laugh.

"All above board—"

"Oh yes," Sasha said. She managed to sound both reassuring and at the same time shocked that disloyalty to Nathalie was even
a possibility. And now here she was, almost sprawled on the black sofa, telling him with perfect ease all the things he realized
he'd needed to know, to be comforted about.

"She was wonderfully straightforward with me," Sasha said. "I mean she said, 'Look, absolutely no therapy-toting, understood?'
"

"She hates that—"

"Of course. It can be such an intrusive approach. Anyway, I was there to ask, not tell, thanks to you."

Steve's eyes fell from her face to her boots. They had scarlet-edged eyelets and scarlet laces. They were brazenly unwomanly
and therefore—Steve swallowed.

He said, "Nothing to it. She wouldn't have agreed if she hadn't wanted to see you."

"She told me her father's theory. So interesting. He used to tell her and her brother that adoptive parents don't feel as
guilty about their children's personalities as birth parents do, so that frees them from the responsibilities that encourage
resentment. And I don't know about you, Steve, but my family
heaves
with resentments, and we're all
far
too involved with each other. Nathalie said she's always had space, that her parents have always given her space."

Steve thought of Lynne, of those persistent unspoken needs and wishes, of the anxious, silent pleadings for recovered hope.
He picked up his coffee mug.

"Of course we talked about it when we first met. We talked about it a lot then. But she really wasn't bothered and if she
wasn't, I wasn't going to push her."

"You wouldn't need to," Sasha said, "she was perfectly clear. She said she was thankful to be free of all that genetic claustrophobia.
She said she knew all she needed to know about herself from her birth papers but that she'd far rather have had the freedom
to make herself and her own way than have the path mapped out for her, which is what would have happened if she'd known any
more. She said she never doubted she'd been loved."

Steve took a mouthful of his coffee. Then he smiled, almost privately.

"Oh no."

"I can think," Sasha said, "of so many of my friends who can't say that of their
natural
parents."

Steve thought about his father. Then he considered mentioning him and decided, reluctantly, against it.

He said instead, "I wonder why people still feel so uneasy about adoption?"

"Oh, that's just numbers," Sasha said. "It's just less common. IVF, legal abortion, less stigma about illegitimacy. One study
I read said there are only about a quarter of the adoptions now than there were thirty years ago." She uncrossed her legs
and leaned forward to pick up her coffee. "Social attitudes are so different. I mean, in Nathalie's day there were two social
improprieties to wrestle with—her natural mother being not married and too fertile and her adoptive mother being married and
infertile. All that's gone, thank heavens."

"Has it?"

"Oh yes," Sasha said confidently. She smiled at Steve over the rim of her mug and her nose stud blazed with a sudden tiny
turquoise fire. "As a society, we talk about
everything
now, don't we? I mean, can you imagine Nathalie's mother and mine having the kind of conversation Nathalie and I had?"

"No—"

"She's a stunning woman," Sasha said. "Lucky you. A stunning woman with no hang-ups."

Steve said awkwardly, "I just had a feeling that maybe I wasn't doing enough, being sympathetic enough. That maybe this whole
adoption thing
was
some kind of problem for her and I wasn't helping, I was just making assumptions—" He stopped and then he said awkwardly,
"I'm grateful."

Sasha's eyes widened.

"Who to?"

"Well, you. You've—you've set my mind at rest."

"Good," Sasha said. She smiled again. "Just think of the selection procedures Nathalie's parents went through to get her.
Pretty rigorous. They must have wanted her very badly."

Steve looked into his coffee again. He nodded.

Sasha said, "Can you imagine wanting anything that badly?"

He shrugged.

"Career things, maybe. I certainly wanted my daughter, but far more when she was actually here than before she was born."

"Of course," Sasha said. She leaned back into the sofa again and draped her arms out sideways. "It's often so difficult to
visualize
what we want, isn't it?"

Steve grinned at her.

"Did you visualize Titus?"

Sasha laughed. She threw back her head so that Steve had an uninterrupted view of her neck rising smoothly out of the collar
of her jacket.

Then she said, "You couldn't
visualize
Titus, could you? I mean, you couldn't exactly
invent
him."

"He's a clever boy."

"Oh yes," she said, "and huge fun. We met doing yoga."

"Titus does
yoga?
"

"Of course not. He'd come with a friend, with the sole purpose of making fun of us all."

"Tantric Titus—"

"He only came to one class. Hopeless, of course, but so funny."

"I'll remember that," Steve said. "It'll come in very useful." He put his hands on his knees. "I'm really sorry, but I ought
to get back to the office."

She smiled at him, without moving.

"Of course—"

He stood up.

"Thanks so much for seeing me. And—and what you said—"

She was still smiling.

"My pleasure, Steve. Any time. Thanks for the coffee. I'm going to stay here and finish mine."

He moved away, his hand raised in a half-wave.

"Bye, Sasha."

She waited until he was half a dozen steps away and then she called after him, "See you soon, Steve," and laughed when he
went on walking.

Back in the office, Meera was typing from Steve's dictation tapes with her headphones on, Justine was on the telephone and
Titus was pinging pellets of waste paper into his bin with a rubber band.

Steve said, passing him, "I don't pay you to do that."

"I'm thinking," Titus said. "I can't think unless I'm doing something else." He slid off his stool and followed Steve across
the ancient, polished floorboards. "Have a good time?"

Steve stopped and turned to stare at him.

"What's up with you?"

Titus grinned.

"She tells me everything."

"Very unwise."

"Actually, thanks for asking Nathalie—for setting up this thing. It meant a lot to Sasha."

"Well, good," Steve said. He hitched himself half on to his stool and leaned forward to move the mouse for his computer. He
said, not looking at Titus, "Nice girl."

"Yes," Titus said. He put his hands in his pockets and yawned. "I could kick myself, though."

"Why? Is she pregnant?"

"No," Titus said morosely. "It's just that I really like her."

"So?"

"Well, I don't
do
that," Titus said. "It's the
girls
who really like
me,
usually. Remember Vannie?"

"Oh yes," Steve said.

Vannie had had the kind of body and sheer physical presence that was impossible to overlook, but all the same when Titus dumped
her without ceremony she had sat for days in the downstairs reception area, huddled and sniffing and—dreadful to witness—pleading
with him to take her back. Steve glanced sideways at Titus.

"Why should you worry? I'm sure she likes you too."

"But
does
she?"

"Titus," Steve said, "I have a meeting to plan for and you have the Gower logo to finish."

"I nearly have."

"Go away," Steve said. "Tell Justine about your feelings."

"She's not interested," Titus said. "She thinks I'm an upper-class twerp with an emotional age of seven."

Steve didn't look at him.

"Well?"

"I may be a twerp," Titus said, "but I think being in love is
shit.
Aren't you supposed to feel on top of the world?"

Steve said resignedly, "I left her finishing half a pint of latte in Caffe Roma. Go and find her."

"Blessings," Titus said.

"And then stay until that logo is finished."

"It's a deal."

"I don't actually think you're a twerp," Steve said, "but you
are
bloody annoying."

"I know," Titus said happily. He blew Steve a kiss.

Steve watched him briefly as he slip-skidded across the floor and vanished through the door to the staircase. Justine put
the phone down and looked across at Steve.

"Love," Steve said with ironic emphasis.

Justine made a face. He glanced up at the wall beside him, at Nathalie laughing, in her blue shirt, at Polly just
regarding,
from under her hat. He thought of Sasha, lounging on the cafe sofa, telling him all the things he needed to know, all the
things he knew he was daft to worry about but needed reassurance over all the same. He smiled at the photographs and felt,
simultaneously, a mildly superior pity for Titus's anxiety. He would cycle home, he told himself, past the Union Street flower
stall, and buy Nathalie a love token. Iris, if they had any.

"There was no need," Marnie said quietly, "to speak to him like that."

She was standing behind David in the little room he used as an office, off the hallway. Since she had been at home, the office
had been considerably more orderly, with the introduction—unquestionably an improvement but also mildly admonishing—of box
files and a year planner which now hung on the wall above his desk.

David continued to look at the computer screen.

"I've told him about golf balls over and over. I've told him he can putt to his heart's content but he can't practice drives
in the
garden.
"

"It wasn't what you said," Marnie said in the same even, reasonable voice, "it was the
way
you said it."

"Marnie," David said, "could you possibly concentrate on bringing up just the children, and refrain from including me?"

There was silence. In it, behind his back, David could sense Marnie wrestling with this remark. When they were first together,
she would merely have laughed, or thrown something—very accurately—at him. But over the years, she had become rather less
equable about anything that amounted to criticism, anything that implied that there might be faults or flaws in the blatantly,
palpably fair-minded way she was trying to deal with family life, with David. Sometimes David summoned up an image in his
mind of that athletically built girl in her blue canvas sandals swinging into the nursery school with all the calm assurance
of someone who understands the kind of life they have, and knows how to handle it. That image, if he was feeling tired or
low for any reason, could sometimes make him feel sharply nostalgic.

He took a breath now and said, still looking at the screen, "Sorry."

"That's OK," Marnie said. Then she said, in a softer tone, "What's up?"

He shrugged.

"Oh, work—"

"But it's going well—"

"Yes."

Marnie moved from behind him to beside him. She put a hand out towards his computer mouse, almost as if she'd had a thought
of turning the machine off, and pulled it back again.

"Want to talk?"

David sighed.

"Come into the kitchen," Marnie said. "I'll make some coffee."

Marnie always made coffee. In her grandmother's kitchen—her Scandinavian grandmother, who had bequeathed Marnie her smooth,
fair coloring—the coffee pot had been the great domestic totem, sitting all day on the back of the stove, strong and bitter
and familiar.

"I don't really want coffee—"

"But you want to talk."

"Not want—"

"David," Marnie said, "when do we ever want to do the things that need to be done?"

He got slowly to his feet.

"I'm going to have coffee," Marnie said. "It's not important whether you have any or not. It's only important that you talk."

She went out of the office and down the hall to the kitchen. David looked out of the office window, at the hornbeam hedge
he had planted and which was not thriving, closed his eyes, counted to ten, opened them again and followed her.

She was standing in the kitchen measuring coffee into a red enamel jug. David stood in the doorway and regarded her. She was
wearing clean jeans and a navy-blue polo-necked sweater, and her pigtail was pulled over one shoulder and fastened at the
end with a clip decorated with a row of ladybirds. Ellen had given her mother that clip. Ellen knew it was hopeless to give
her mother anything remotely funky: ladybirds, however, were acceptably orderly and unostentatious.