The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (14 page)

I wanted to go too. I felt awful and my heart was so heavy because yet again a happy evening had ended badly. It hurt to love him, but love him I did. I made myself wait there until Jennie was up and we sat in her kitchen and had tea and toast together. She stopped me as I started to apologize. She could see that I was wretched and she just said that if I needed a place of my own then her flat was mine for the asking. That offer of hers spoke volumes – a place of my own.

JULY

I recognized him at once. That was the man I saw in Billy’s room, the man in the photograph. He had visited her late that night while Markus was away. Now he was hugging her and she was hugging him back. Then she saw me and pulled away from him and she looked guilty as hell. I could not say a word. I was so angry. She has Markus and yet she does that.

I got into my car and drove to my appointment with Bernadita. She is a specialist in deep tissue massage. Usually I look forward to my massages with her. This time as I was driving to her place every instinct made me want to turn the car around and drive to Markus’s office. I wanted to tell him what a traitor Kathy is. To do so I would have had to reveal that I was watching her flat, because that was when I saw that man holding Billy.

I parked my car on a meter and walked to Bernadita’s garden flat. She always offers me green tea before we start the massage and today we sat in her garden and drank the tea. I gradually calmed myself as I sipped. I admired her lavender bush. It can wait; it will wait. I will choose the moment to tell Markus.

Massage can help with depression and weakness and I became interested in aspects of alternative medicine like aromatherapy two years ago, after Arvo Talvela died. How he would have disapproved of it all. He considered alternative medicine to be quackery. Arvo was an intellectually rigorous man and he had become the most important person in my life. I saw him twice a week. He could see the good in me and he loved me for who I was. And then he died. He died one morning in May from a massive brain haemorrhage. He was fifty-six years old. He died suddenly on a Tuesday, at half past eight in the morning. Tuesday was one of our days. We would always meet at noon.

I do not remember the days and weeks that followed Arvo’s death. I was in deep shock. I handed in my notice. I told the TV station I had to take a sabbatical of three months. I knew they would have resisted if I had said I was going for good. They agreed reluctantly enough to the three month break. I knew I would never work there again.

I felt so alone. I would find myself standing on the street outside Arvo’s consulting rooms at twelve noon on a Tuesday. The fact that he was gone for ever was too much for me to accept. He was the only person in the world who understood my troubles and he had been my compass and my anchor. Now he was gone. I would never hear his voice again, the inescapable finality of it. Grief is like fear, you are diminished by it. You are a shameful thing. You skulk around the streets and avoid the gaze of people.

I do remember what pulled me out of that blank horror. At the end of that summer I met Ilkka in the street. He told me he had heard that Markus was working for an architectural practice in London. He gave me the name of the company. For the first time in months I felt some stirrings of interest. Of course, I had to find Markus again. I had to tell him everything even though it had been years.

I started to feel a sense of purpose. I travelled to London and after a few months of renting I bought my beautiful flat on the river. Having a lot of money has its compensations. Then I found out that he was with someone. I tracked down her address and the magazine where she was working. An architectural magazine; it made sense. She must have met Markus through the magazine.

I remember the first time I saw her. It was late one evening and I had been sitting outside her flat in my car. Suddenly she and Markus came out of the main door together. It was a shock to see him with her. I felt electrified by it. Should I drive away? He might see me and recognize me. I could not drag my eyes away from them and anyway they were oblivious to the cars in the dark street. They stood there talking together and then she turned to go in and I saw that she was pregnant – four or five months pregnant! The fabric of her top was stretched over her distended stomach. He pulled her round to him and kissed her. It was such a public place to do that, out there on the street. How smug she looked as she turned to go into her building. She thought she had everything: the good job, the baby growing inside her, and him.

If only I had found him a few months earlier. When I worked in television I was told that my sense of timing was impeccable. I was able to time my links into the news headlines on the hour perfectly. This time my timing was out. I was a few months too late. She was already carrying his child.

JULY

Tonight, after Billy was tucked up asleep, I told Markus that I was keen to do the Alhambra and Segovia heritage sites in Spain if he would come with me. I said it wouldn’t be till September so maybe we could work it? I felt sure he’d be bowled over by the sites and it could be part of our summer holiday. Markus didn’t say no. He was cautious in his response.

‘Maybe, they would be great places to visit. If I get the Durham project then probably not...’

‘Surely we can fit in a short summer break?’

‘You wouldn’t be on holiday, would you? You’d be working. What about sorting something with Fran? Maybe get away for a few days to Spain?’

‘I suppose I could leave Billy for a day or two. I’m not sure, I might feel anxious.’

We were in his room and Markus was sharpening his pencils. He turned the pencils in the sharpener until he had achieved a perfect point on each one and lined them up in front of him in a straight line.

‘Who is doing Finland?’ he asked.

‘Laura, she’s doing all the Scandinavian sites. I asked Heja first. She was dismissive of the idea. In fact, she gave the impression that she thought the whole project was a bit of a bore.’

And then it suddenly struck me.

‘Markus – do you want to go to Finland? Here I am going on about Spain. I could organize that so easily. We could take Billy to see your family.’

Markus stood up. ‘Really, I don’t. I’ve no wish to go back there at all. You’re keen to do the Spanish sites so stick to that. Do you want some coffee? I think I’ll make another pot.’

‘I’ll do it. You get on with that drawing.’

I got down his coffeepot and the jar of coffee out of the fridge. Markus ground coffee beans every morning and he insisted that I keep the ground coffee in the fridge, he was such a perfectionist about these things. So there was another clear rejection from him of any idea that we should go to Finland and meet his family. I unscrewed the coffeepot and filled the bottom half with water, just under the valve.

I thought about my own trip to Lisbon. Why didn’t I want to show Markus the photos of me? I spooned the ground coffee into the funnel and pressed it down with the spoon. The shots were rather good, though not how I saw myself at all. I looked Portuguese in them. Maybe it was the light or maybe it was the way that Hector had shot them, but I exuded a kind of Mediterranean sultriness in the pictures. I screwed the top on the pot and lit a low flame under it. Although Hector had said he thought I looked like someone from London; he’d said that on our first day, at the Torre de Belem. The pot started to burble and I waited until it got to an insistent hiss, then turned off the flame and poured the rich dark coffee into a bone china mug. I took the mug through to Markus.

‘That smells great, thanks. Aren’t you having any?’

‘No, way too late for coffee for me. Are you planning to work long?’

‘Probably a couple more hours...’

‘I think I’ll turn in.’

I kissed the top of his head and touched the hair on his forehead. I could see him struggling not to show impatience with my gesture. When he’s working he’s untouchable. He bent over his drawing. Then he looked up and said, ‘Kathy, I‘m so glad the project’s going well for you.’

I checked Billy, who was lying on his back in his cot, deeply asleep. He’s going through a good sleep phase at the moment. I stroked his white-blond baby hair, his downy face and chubby arms. He’s the image of Markus when he was a baby. I have this one photograph of Markus, which he gave me when Billy was born. Markus was about one year old and he’s sitting up on a blanket, his wide face smiling into the camera, and it could be Billy sitting there.

I went into our bedroom and undressed and stood naked in front of the long mirror on our wardrobe. I’ve always been insecure about my looks. People say I have a striking face, an attractive face, which means they don’t think I’m pretty. My eyebrows are so thick and dark. When I was a teenager I wanted to reinvent myself and started to pluck my eyebrows into thin high arches that gave me a permanently startled look. It was painful and my mum tried to talk me out of it. She said I was embarking on a lifelong struggle against a very tenacious part of myself and that I should accept my eyebrows as they were.

I ignored her advice, as you do when you’re a teenager. For weeks I sat in my bedroom in front of one of those magnifying mirrors, tweezers in hand, my eyes streaming with the pain as I pulled out the thick dark hairs. In the end I gave up and my eyebrows grew back thick and dark. My hair is thick too and I usually keep it chin length as when it gets any longer it just becomes too much of a good thing.

I looked at myself for a few minutes. My breasts were still larger than usual because of the breastfeeding. I put my hands under each breast and felt the weight of them. Then I turned sideways and saw how my stomach protruded a bit. My clothes were a bit tight on me at the moment, after the pregnancy, and I needed to lose a few pounds. Maybe that was why I looked sultry in those photos: my clothes were clinging to me! I stroked my stomach and held it in and pulled my hands down over my hips and thighs. My skin felt dry so I rubbed some body lotion in, enjoying the feel of the cream on my thighs.

Lying in bed, I thought about the heritage project and what lay ahead. Philip wants us to have some kind of launch in the autumn to coincide with the first issue; a high-profile launch, he said. He has warmed to the idea and now seemed willing to spend money on it. I felt vaguely guilty about wanting to do the Spanish sites, which I hadn’t yet allocated to anyone in the team. Why wasn’t I being honest with myself? I had been strongly attracted to Hector. I rolled over and checked the clock; I didn’t want to go to sleep; I wanted to have sex with Markus.

This weekend Markus and I tried to buy a sofa. We had long agreed that the sofa Jennie had left behind had served its time. It was a perfectly reputable sofa, a Wesley-Barrell, in fact. It had an old-fashioned look to it and a gold and orange geometric pattern that we often joked about. I suggested we go down to this furniture showroom I knew in Highbury that had lots of sofas on display. We could take Billy with us and walk around the showroom and try out a few sofas to see if there was anything we both liked.

When we got there I made a beeline for a lovely squashy yellow fabric sofa that was bright, cheerful, and was called the Cuddler. Markus picked out a tubular grey leather and chrome sofa, which was sleek and Scandinavian in look. I tried sitting on the Markus sofa and it wasn’t just firm, it was actually hard.

‘It’s no sofa, it’s a bed of nails,’ I said, laughing. ‘We couldn’t cuddle up on this!’

He looked at my Cuddler sofa then and thought it was just as unsuitable.

‘It’s got no structure’ he said. ‘It’s far too soft and it wouldn’t last.’

We stood in the showroom smiling sheepishly at each other and scanning the many sofas on display. Was there anything we could compromise on? We both quite liked a cream fabric sofa. Neither of us loved it. We eventually decided it was a hopeless quest and left to have lunch at a nearby restaurant that was advertising Thai street food. It was a funny and fruitless afternoon and Aunt Jennie’s old sofa was spared.

JULY

Today I had my regular appointment with Mr Banerjee, my Ayurvedic physician. We meet every two weeks. How Arvo would have disapproved of Mr Banerjee’s methods. Arvo had a strong puritanical streak. He believed that suffering honed one’s character; that the ephemera fell away and the essential person was left. I felt that Mr Banerjee was helping me even though today he made me drink a disgusting herbal infusion. He said he was pleased with my progress.

I parked my car and was walking towards the entrance to my block when I saw Markus standing in the hall. I stood quite still in the car park. He had not called me. Why had he just turned up like this? Two residents walked past me and swiped open the apartment block door. Then he turned and saw me and waved at me, his face happy and excited. I hurried over to him, swiping the door with my card and pushing open the heavy glass door.

‘We’ve won the contract! I just heard. I had to tell you at once.’

I hugged him.

‘That’s wonderful... just wonderful...’

‘I really wanted this job.’

‘You’re a great architect.’

‘I feel so good, Heja.’

‘Come upstairs. We’ll have a drink to celebrate.’

We went up in the lift together. There were three other residents in the lift with us and we just stood there smiling joyfully at each other. Once out of the lift I took his hand and pulled him towards me. We hugged each other tightly and then we kissed; standing in the corridor outside my flat we kissed each other again, the first time in over seven years. Then he pulled away, looking confused, and followed me into my flat. I went through to my dressing room where I keep a few bottles of very good wine. I brought one out with me. Markus was looking out of my riverfront window.