Second Life (3 page)

‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘So far . . .’

‘He gets on well with his dad?’

‘Very.’ I don’t tell her that it’s how well he gets on with me that I worry about.
I try to be as good a mother as I can, yet sometimes it doesn’t come easily. Certainly
not in the same way that fatherhood comes to Hugh.

I remember I talked to Adrienne about it once. Hugh was busy with work, and Connor
and I were on holiday with her twins. She had been amazing, all day, with all three
children. They were much younger, there were tantrums, Connor was whining about everything
and refusing to eat. I hadn’t been able to cope, and felt bad. ‘I worry it’s because
he’s not mine,’ I said, once the children had gone to bed and she was sitting with
a glass of wine, me with a soda. ‘You know?’ She told me I was being hard on myself.
‘He
is
yours. You’re his mum. And you’re a good one. You have to remember that everyone’s
different, and your mother wasn’t around to set an example. No one finds it easy.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. I couldn’t help wondering what Kate would have said.

‘That’s good,’ says Anna now, and I smile. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re very lucky to have
him.’ We carry on looking at the flowers. We make small talk, avoiding the subject
of Kate. After a few minutes we walk back out, towards the car park. Adrienne is
waving to me, and I tell Anna I’d better go over.

‘It’s been good to meet you,’ I say.

She turns to me and takes my hands in hers. Her grief has broken through again, she’s
begun to cry. ‘I miss her,’ she says simply.

I hold her hands. I want to cry, too, but I don’t. The numbness pervades everything.
It’s a defence, Hugh has said. I’m blocking everything. Adrienne agrees: ‘There’s
no right way of grieving Kate,’ she says. I haven’t told any of my other friends
how I feel in case they think I’m unconcerned about my sister’s murder. I feel bad.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I miss her, too.’

She looks up at me. She wants to say something. The words tumble out. ‘Can we stay
in touch? I mean, I’d like that. If you would? You could come and visit me in Paris,
or I could come and see you. I mean, only if you want to, I guess you’re very busy—’

‘Anna, please.’ I put my hand on her arm to silence her. Busy doing what? I think.
I had a few jobs in my diary – a couple wanted pictures of them with their eight-week-old
baby, the mother of a friend of Connor’s wanted the family and their Labrador – but
I’ve cancelled those. Right now I’m doing nothing except existing, thinking of Kate,
wondering whether it can really be coincidence that the day I went to look at the
picture of Marcus is also the day that claimed her.

I manage to smile. I don’t want to seem rude. ‘I’d like that very much.’

Chapter Three

Hugh is eating breakfast. Muesli. I watch as he pours milk into his coffee and adds
half a spoonful of sugar.

‘Are you sure it’s not too soon?’

But that’s precisely why I want to go, I think. Because it’s been two months and,
according to my husband, I’m still in denial. I need to make it real.

‘I want to go there. I want to meet up with Anna. I want to talk to her.’

As I say it I realize how much it means to me. Anna and I are getting on. She seems
warm, funny. Understanding. She doesn’t seem to judge. And it was Anna who was closer
to Kate than all of us – closer than me, closer than Hugh, or Adrienne – so it’s
Anna who can help me, in a way that my other friends can’t. And perhaps I can help
her, too.

‘I think it’ll do me good.’

‘But what are you hoping to achieve?’

I pause. Perhaps part of me also wants to be sure she doesn’t think badly of me and
Hugh, for taking Connor. ‘I don’t know. It just feels like something I want to do.’

He’s silent. It’s been nine weeks, I think. Nine weeks, and I still haven’t cried.
Not properly. Again I think of the postcard that’s still in my bag, where I put
it the day Kate died.
Marcus in the Mirror
.

‘Kate died. I have to face it.’ Whatever
it
is.

He finishes his drink. ‘I’m not convinced, but . . .’ His voice softens. ‘If you’re
sure, then you should go.’

I’m nervous as I step off the train, but Anna’s waiting for me at the end of the
platform. She’s wearing a dress in pale lemon and standing in the sunlight that arcs
in from the high windows. She looks younger than I remember, and she has a quiet,
simple prettiness I hadn’t noticed at the funeral. Her face is one I’d have once
wanted to photograph; it’s warm and open. She smiles when she sees me, and I wonder
if she’s already shedding her grief, while mine is only just beginning to grip.

She waves as I approach. ‘Julia!’ She runs forward to greet me. We kiss on both cheeks
then hold each other for a few moments. ‘Thanks so much for coming! It’s so good
to see you . . .’

‘You too,’ I say.

‘You must be exhausted! Let’s get a drink.’

We go to a café, not far from the station. She orders us both a coffee. ‘Any news?’

I sigh. What’s there to say? She knows most of it already. The police have made little
progress; Kate had been drinking in a bar on the night she was attacked, apparently
alone. A few people remember seeing her; she seemed in good spirits, was chatting
to the barman. Her phone records haven’t helped, and she was definitely by herself
when she left. It’s irrational, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m responsible
for what happened.

‘Not really.’

‘I’m sorry. How’re you doing?’

‘I just keep thinking of her. Of Kate. Sometimes it’s like nothing’s happened at
all. I just think I could pick up the phone and call her and everything would be
all right.’

‘You’re in denial. That’s normal. After all, it hasn’t been that long.’

I sigh. I don’t want to tell her how Kate has been haunting me, that I’ve been dialling
her number over and over again only to hear a pre-recorded voice, speaking in French,
informing me that her number hasn’t been recognized. I don’t want her to know I bought
Kate a card, that I wrote out a message and sealed the envelope, then hid it in the
bureau underneath a pile of paperwork. I don’t want to admit that the worst thing,
the hardest thing, is that some small part of me, a part of me I hate but can’t deny,
is glad she’s gone, because at least now she’s not ringing me up in the middle of
the night to demand I return her son.

‘Two months,’ I say. ‘Hugh says that’s hardly any time at all.’

She smiles sadly, but says nothing. In a way I’m relieved; there’s nothing anyone
can say that might help, everything is irrelevant. Sometimes silence is better and
I admire her for braving it.

‘How about you?’ I say.

‘Oh, you know. I’m really busy with work, which helps.’ I remember that she’s a lawyer,
working in compliance for a big pharmaceutical company, though she hasn’t told me
which one. I wait for her to say more but she doesn’t.

‘How’s Connor?’ she asks. She seems genuinely concerned; I can’t believe it had once
crossed my mind that it’d been her trying to help my sister to get him back.

‘He’s all right. I suppose . . .’

Our coffees arrive. Two espressos, sachets of sugar in each saucer, a single foil-wrapped
chocolate.

‘Actually, I’m not sure he is. All right, I mean. He seems angry all the time, slamming
doors for no reason, and I know he’s crying a lot. I hear him, but he denies it.’

She doesn’t respond. Part of me wants to tell her I’m worried I’m losing my son.
For so many years we’ve been so close, more like friends than mother and child. I’ve
encouraged him in his art, taken him out sketching. He’s always turned to me when
he’s been upset, as much as he has to Hugh. He’s always told me everything. So why
does he now feel that he has to suffer alone?

‘He keeps asking if they’ve caught anyone yet.’

‘It’s understandable,’ she says. ‘He’s young. He’s lost an aunt.’

I hesitate. She’d known, surely?

‘You know Kate was Connor’s mother?’

She nods.

‘How much did she tell you?’

‘Everything, I think. I know you took Connor when he was a baby.’

There’s a tightening in my throat, a defensiveness. It’s that word. ‘Took’. I feel
the same familiar spasm of irritation – the rewritten story, the buried truth – and
I try to swallow it down.

‘We didn’t
take
him, exactly. Back then, Kate wanted us to have him.’

Even if she didn’t later, I think. I wonder what Kate’s version of the story became.
I imagine she told her friends that we’d swooped in, that we snatched Connor when
she was managing perfectly well, that we only wanted her baby because we couldn’t
have one of our own.

Again the tiny part of me that’s relieved she’s gone bubbles up. I can’t help it,
even though it makes me feel wretched. Connor is mine.

‘It was complicated. I loved her. But Kate could have a very distorted sense of how
well she was coping.’

Anna smiles, as if to reassure me. I go on. ‘I know it wasn’t
easy for her. Giving
him up, I mean. She was very young, when he was born. Just a child herself, really.
Sixteen. Only a little bit older than Connor is now.’

I look down at my coffee cup. I remember the day Connor was born. It had only been
a few months since I got back from Berlin, and I’d been at a meeting. I was back
in the programme, and I was glad. Things were going well. When I got home Hugh had
packed an overnight bag. ‘Where are we going?’ I said, and he told me. Kate was in
hospital. In labour. ‘I’ve called your father,’ he added. ‘But he isn’t answering.’

I couldn’t process what I was hearing, yet at the same time part of me knew it was
true.

‘In
labour
?’ I said. ‘But—?’

‘That’s what they said.’

But she’s
sixteen
, I wanted to say. She has no job. She’s living at home, our father
is supposed to be looking after her.

‘She can’t be.’

‘Well, apparently she is. We need to go.’

By the time we arrived Connor had been born. ‘Don’t be angry,’ said Hugh, before
we went in. ‘She needs our support.’

She was sitting in bed, holding him. She passed him to me as soon as I walked in,
and the love I felt for him was instant and shocking in its intensity. I couldn’t
have been angry with her, even if I’d wanted to.

‘He’s beautiful,’ I said. Kate closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted, then looked away.

Later, we talked about what had happened. She claimed she hadn’t even known she was
pregnant. Hugh said it wasn’t that uncommon. ‘Particularly with teenage girls,’ he
said. ‘Their hormones might not have stabilized, so their periods can be irregular
anyway. It’s surprising, perhaps, but it does
happen.’ I tried to imagine it. It
was possible, I suppose; Kate was a plump child, faced with a body that was now unfamiliar.
She might have missed the fact she was carrying a baby.

‘She tried to manage,’ I say to Anna now. ‘For a couple of years. But . . .’

I shrug. She had nothing. By the time Connor was three she’d taken him to Bristol
– without telling anyone why – and was living in a tiny bedsit with a shared bathroom
and no kitchen. She had an electric hob plugged in next to the sink and there was
a travel kettle balanced on an upturned washing-up bowl. The only time I visited,
the place smelt of urine and soiled nappies, and Kate was in bed while her son sat
strapped into a car seat on the floor, naked and hungry.

I look up at Anna. ‘She asked me to take him. Just for a few months. Until she got
on her feet. She loved Connor but couldn’t look after him. Mum wasn’t around, of
course, and Dad had no interest. Six months turned into a year, and then two. You
know how it is. Connor needed some stability. When he was about five we decided –
all of us – that it’d be better if we formally adopted him.’

She nods. ‘You didn’t try to contact the father?’

‘It was all a bit of a mess. Kate never told us who he was.’ There’s a pause. I feel
a sense of great shame, on Kate’s behalf, plus sadness for Connor. ‘I don’t think
she really knew.’

‘Or maybe he wasn’t someone whose help she wanted . . .’

‘No.’ I look out of the window at the traffic, the taxis, the bikes wheeling by.
The atmosphere is heavy. I want to brighten it. ‘But he has Hugh, now. They’re incredibly
close. They’re actually very similar.’

I say it in a kind of rush. It’s ironic, I think. Hugh is the one person that Connor
has no blood relationship to, yet it’s Hugh who Connor looks up to.

‘You know,’ says Anna, ‘Kate always told me that although it was very painful she
was relieved when you offered to look after Connor. She said that, in a way, you
saved her life.’

I wonder if she’s just trying to make me feel better. ‘She said that?’

‘Yes. She said if it hadn’t been for you and Hugh she’d have had to move back in
with your father . . .’

She rolls her eyes, she thinks it’s a joke. I keep quiet. I’m not sure I’m ready
to let her into the family story. Not that far, not yet. She senses my discomfort
and reaches across the table to take my hand.

‘Kate loved you, you know?’

I feel a flush of relief, but then it’s replaced with a sadness so profound it’s
physical, a beat within me. I look at my hand, in Anna’s, and think of the way I’d
held Kate’s in mine. When she was a baby I’d take each tiny finger and marvel at
its delicacy, its perfection. She was born early, so fragile, and yet so full of
energy and desire for life. I wasn’t yet seven, but already my love for my sister
was fierce.

And yet it wasn’t enough to save her.

‘She said that?’

Anna nods. ‘Often.’

‘I wish she’d told me that when she was alive. But then I guess she wouldn’t, would
she?’

She smiles. ‘Nope . . .’ she says, laughing. ‘Never. That wouldn’t have been her
style.’

We finish our drinks then take the Métro as far as Rue Saint-Maur. We walk to Anna’s
apartment. She lives in a mansion block, above a laundrette. There’s a communal door
and Anna tries the handle before punching the code into the entry lock. ‘It’s broken,
half the time,’ she says. We go up to the
first floor. There’s a writing desk on
the landing, littered with post, and she pulls out one of its drawers and feels underneath
it. ‘There’s a spare key here,’ she says. ‘It was Kate’s idea. She was always forgetting
her keys. It’s handy for my boyfriend, too, if he gets here before me.’