A Heart Bent Out of Shape (28 page)

‘So, I figured it out in the end, Kristina,’ she said, ‘with a little help. You could have told me, you know. Or would that have been no fun? Because you liked to tease me about my American Literature professor, didn’t you? Would it have been so very bad to have just told me the truth? You could have trusted me, you know. I don’t think Joel ever set out to make a fool out of me, but what about you? You weren’t perfect, no one ever is, but I was so sure that you were better than that.’

The wind whipped easy tears from her eyes. Through the burly chestnut trees she could glimpse the shape of the Hôtel Le Nouveau Monde. She walked towards it.

‘And now? What now?’ she said, beneath her breath. ‘You’re gone. I hate it, every day I hate it, but it’s true. And we’re still here, Joel and I, Jacques and I, me and him. Kristina, what if what we have is real? Despite the lies, and despite everything that’s gone before, what if it’s true too? Hugo thinks it’s all wrong, but you, what do you think?’

Sometimes Ouchy teemed with people but today it was quiet. She kicked through piles of iced leaves and gravel crunched underfoot. She had felt the heat of Joel’s hands as they closed around her, and the press of his body in the cabin in the mountains. The unquestionable truth contained in a kiss. Out of the dark came these things, and she knew that they were hers. She wound her way through the chestnut trees and thought of Joel’s hole of grief, and how, for all her presence, he had been so alone in it. If she had only known, if he’d only trusted her with the truth, how different things would have been. Or maybe not? Perhaps everything would have been just the same.

As she walked she began to warm up. He had comforted her, when she needed it most. That was true. He had kissed her and held her. That was true. He had distracted her from all that was sad and bad and taken her into the white Alps and loved her there. That was true. Any trickery had always been accompanied by warming words and hope; the hope that one day things would be better than they were now. And that had been true.

She stopped when she got to the hotel. A momentary lull in the wind had left its flags drooping. The doorman stood rocking on his heels. He nodded to her. Perhaps he recognised her; more likely he was just being polite. She walked on past, her mind turning on Joel. She had always thought him bristling, contained of an energy she couldn’t fathom. And it was true that there always seemed to be a part of him she couldn’t reach, as they lay beside one another in the dark, as she watched him when he wasn’t looking, how he turned the music all the way up in the car and gripped the steering wheel as though he’d rip it from the dashboard. Perhaps she had been warned, after all. He had looked into her eyes and told her to keep away, to run while she still could.
Find a nice Swiss boy with impeccable manners and neat shoes
, wasn’t that what he’d said? And yet she had fallen all the same.

Jacques
.
She smiled a tight little line of a smile. She had always thought that she and Jacques shared an affinity, bonded by their affection for Kristina, unified in their separate grief. It was Kristina, her sweetest friend, who had brought them together. She decided there and then that it would not be Kristina who pulled them apart. There was no Jacques. There was only Joel.

thirty-three

It was nightfall when Hadley rode
the bus home to
Les
Ormes. Around her, Lausanne glittered and twinkled as it always had. Perfectly presented shop windows beamed brightly, and the fine hotels were illuminated like stage sets. Hadley closed her eyes. She wanted more than anything to sleep. In the morning she would see Joel. She would tell him that she was ready to listen, and that she was ready to try and understand.

Les Ormes was its usual ominous hulk. A jaundiced streetlamp lit the passageway to its foyer. A group of international students stood smoking on the steps and in their black winter coats they appeared like a clutch of jackdaws. They chattered amongst themselves and laughed into their cigarettes. Hadley slipped past them. She was barely inside the hall when Helena appeared and rushed up to greet her. She must have been waiting on the leather sofas, flipping through the free newspapers and torn-edge magazines, and now her cheeks were candy-pink with excitement.

‘Hadley, there you are! I’ve been looking for you all over.’

‘Hels, I’m so tired. I’m just going to crash . . .’ she began.

‘But there’s someone here for you. I saw him as I walked in after class; he was sort of loitering in the corridor, looking quite shifty, actually. But he’s so handsome, you’d never just go up to him and ask him what he was doing or who he was looking for. He so obviously wasn’t a student. And then once I was in my room I heard a knocking at your door. I just stuck my head out, to see who it was, in case it was Jenny or Chase or someone to say hello. But it was him.’

‘Helena, who?’

‘Your professor’s here.’

‘What, Joel?
Is
he?’

‘I let him wait in my room. I’d have shown him to the kitchen but the others would have torn him apart. He’s very monosyllabic. All he said was that he was here to see you, but I knew straight away who he had to be. God, he’s handsome, Hadley.’

He was standing with his back to them. He was staring through the window, across the balcony and down towards Lausanne’s tiny lights, and the dark shape of the mountains beyond. Perhaps he was in a world of his own for he made no move to turn at the sound of the door. Hadley had the chance to study his blond hair, his lofty height, his dark coat that fell to somewhere near his knees. She closed the door behind her. It was not Joel Wilson.

‘Hello,’ she said.

By some miracle, the word came out in one piece. He turned around. He made as if to smile, then stopped himself. Instead he nodded, as if the sight of her affirmed something essential; joining dots and solving puzzles, Hugo might have said. He held out his hand to her and she walked towards him. She took it.

‘You’re Hadley,’ he said.

She found that she couldn’t let go. She felt her fingers squeezing his, holding on for dear life. His eyes widened, and hers filled with tears.

‘You’re real,’ was all she said back.

It was almost six weeks since Kristina had died, and all that time Jacques had been in the Middle East on business, staying in a sky-rise desert hotel. His wife had walked among the impeccable gardens and silver-burst fountains as he drove about in ice-box cars, running meetings in his shirtsleeves. He had cut all ties with Kristina before he left, finally choosing to save his marriage over the ebb and flow of a summer romance that lingered too far into autumn. He had fallen for Kristina,
complètement, totalement
, he said, in an accent that was everything that Hadley had imagined when she used to think of Jacques. His blond hair would have been smoothed back that morning, only it fell messily now, raked by tormented hands. His sunny brown skin had turned ghost-pale. He had learned of Kristina’s death only by accident, he said, almost as soon as he returned to Switzerland. He saw a tiny printed snippet in an old newspaper, the last to be delivered to his Geneva apartment after he’d given the order to cancel. He had collapsed with the shock of it. For he’d loved her and wanted a life with her, once, before he decided what was right.
Was it possible
, he said,
to love two people at once?

‘I don’t know,’ said Hadley. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We argued the night she died, because I was ending it, because I was going away. We went round and round in circles, and she kept saying that she was late for you, that she couldn’t do this now, but I had to make her understand that it was over. I didn’t want to leave on a lie; I owed her that, at least. In the end, she ran out in a fury with me. I thought it was the last time I’d see her for a long time. Not for ever.’

Hadley watched a single tear glisten on his cheek, and wondered why it didn’t drop and run. She thought of the
Pierrot
nightshirt Kristina wore, the painted sadness. She saw him brush it away with the back of his hand.

‘I found you through the university,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been so alone in my grief, and so late in my grief. I’ve only been back in Switzerland two days and I had to find someone who knew her. She talked about you, Hadley.
My sweet English friend
, she’d say.’

‘I tried to find you, too,’ said Hadley.

‘You tried?’ said Jacques. ‘
Merci
. For trying.’

They were in Helena’s room. Kristina’s room. Jacques was sitting on the edge of the bed. Helena was on the floor with her back leant against the door, her arms wrapped around her knees. Hadley had wanted her there when she saw it wasn’t Joel; she’d caught her sleeve and said,
stay, please stay
. Hadley stood by the window, just another Lausanne night falling away behind her.

‘I hate the thought that she died unhappy,’ said Jacques. ‘That she died with the words of our argument still in her ears. Were you with her? Was it after your party? Had she had a good time? Had she smiled? Please tell me she smiled.’

Hadley hesitated. A white lie would be so easy, and so gentle.

‘She never made it,’ she said. ‘She was late and I was upset, and we went to a different bar. You were the last person to see her.’

‘The last person?’

‘Yes.’

He sank his head into his hands. She knew that posture, she knew how it felt.

‘We argued too,’ she told him. ‘She phoned me on her way from Geneva. I was horrible, I told her not to bother coming. I can’t change that, Jacques, but I also know that it can’t be the thing that I remember. Because there was so much more.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Kristina told me something about you once,’ she said, ‘I thought it was the loveliest thing. She said that you were the most handsome man in the world, and that you made her feel like she was the most beautiful woman.’

‘She said that?’ He lifted his head, blinking fast. A sad smile crossed his face.

Hadley nodded. In her chest something shifted, and she breathed deeply.

She walked him out to the street. It was dark and quiet, and bone-cold.

‘You’re shivering,’ Jacques said. ‘You should go back inside.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Hadley, her teeth chattering. They made for the bus stop, their arms linked together.

‘In fact, I won’t take the bus, I’ll walk to the station from here,’ he said. ‘Hadley, I’m glad to have met you. So very glad. If I hadn’t, I might have tricked myself that Kristina never existed. I might have tried to pretend that we never mattered to one another. That’s the coward’s way to avoid pain; it always gets you in the end.’

Hadley stared back at him. She unlinked her arm.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

‘Are you angry with me, Hadley? That somehow I mistreated her? I wouldn’t blame you if you were,’ he said.

‘Kristina knew what she was doing with you,’ she said.

‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, then, ‘just, what you said before. About pretending she didn’t exist. I’m confused, I guess.’

‘Confused about me?’

‘Confused about someone who isn’t you.’

He looked sideways at her. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. His manner was brisker now that they were on the street, now that all had been said. ‘I’m sorry, but I really do have to go now. I’ve stayed too long already.’

He kissed her on both cheeks, three times, in the Swiss style.

‘I did love Kristina, Hadley,’ he said. ‘Once, I would have dropped everything for her. But then I made a decision and I had to stick by it. That was all. If I hadn’t ended it, things might have been different. I have to live with that guilt.’

‘Or they might have been just the same. It wasn’t your fault, Jacques,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault.’

He looked momentarily grateful, but then his face clouded again. ‘Except it was, wasn’t it?’ he said.

She stayed on the street. The last hour had rinsed her. She leant against the wall and watched Jacques walk away in fast strides, his legs moving like scissors. For all his sorrow, he was just as Kristina had said. He had come and gone and everything had changed again. She watched him, as on the street he stepped aside to let someone pass. A man was dashing up the hill with uneven steps. He trod into a pool of streetlight and her heart bolted in her chest. It was Joel. He was running, and he could only be running to see her. Joel passed Jacques, and they were within inches of one another, their feet pounding the same piece of pavement, their misted puffs of cold-night breath disappearing into the same patch of air. Two quite separate people, after all. She could have flattened herself against the wall, dropped into the shadows, and Joel would likely have blasted past, for his head was down. Instead she stepped into the middle of the pavement. He pulled up, his breath gasping.

‘Hadley? You’re here,’ he said.

He reached for her, as though she were a figment that might slip away. His hand, usually so deft and warm, was slippery and chill to the touch. He seemed as though he had run all the way from downtown, his heart hammering in his chest. He was drenched in a cold sweat.

‘Did you plan it?’

‘Plan it?’ he said, with disbelief. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘That was Jacques,’ said Hadley. ‘That man you just passed.
Jacques
. He’s really real. He’s everything Kristina said.’

Joel wheeled round, and his open jacket flapped. His hands went to his head. Jacques was almost out of sight. Streetlight illuminated his last steps and then he was gone.

‘I thought she’d lied, I thought everybody had lied,’ she said. ‘All that looking for Jacques, and then he found me. How did you know he was here? I don’t get it.’

‘Hadley, I don’t know any Jacques. I never did.’

They stared at one another, and oceans rolled between them.

‘But you said it was you,’ she said. ‘I was so sure it was you, and you said that it was. You loved Kristina, you were Jacques; I thought that was it. Hugo thought that was it.’

‘I didn’t even know her, Hadley. I didn’t know her at all.’

‘But in your apartment, you knew that I’d worked it out. But I hadn’t, had I? I got it wrong. So why did you do that? Why did you pretend to be him?’

‘I didn’t pretend to be him, Hadley,’ he said.

‘But then I don’t understand. If he’s Jacques, if you’re not Jacques, why were you so upset? Why are you upset now? Joel, I don’t get it.’

His arms hung at his sides and he appeared shrunken inside his jacket. All of the stuffing was gone from him.

‘Please say something,’ she said, ‘please tell me something that makes sense.’

Joel rubbed his face with both hands. ‘Can we go inside?’ he said. ‘Can we talk someplace else?’

‘No. Here,’ she said, ‘talk to me here.’

He placed a hand on each of her shoulders. It was a delicate touch, as though she, or he, might break.

‘Hadley,’ he said, ‘when you came to my apartment, the way you were talking, I was so sure you understood. And it was such a relief. Such a dreadful, sickening, awful relief.’ He gave a short, sharp bark of a laugh, a sound entirely lacking in mirth. ‘Then afterwards, when I thought about it, hell, I couldn’t
stop
thinking about it, I realised you must have gotten it wrong. That whatever you were thinking it had to be something else.’

His lips moved loosely and at his jawline his stubble had thickened into a beard. His eyes searched hers, and she stared back, looking for the Joel that she knew.

‘You’re frightening me,’ she said, stepping backwards. His arms dropped and he caught at her hand.

‘Hadley, I’m frightening myself. I haven’t slept in two days. You’re the first person and the last person that I needed to talk to about this. I’ve been the worst kind of coward. The absolute worst. So whatever’s coming to me I deserve it. I’ll take it, I’ll take it all.’

‘What are you telling me, Joel?’ she said, her voice peculiarly level.

He didn’t answer. He just looked at her as though she already knew.

‘Say it,’ said Hadley, very slowly, each word spiked as though it would cut her tongue, ‘because what I’m thinking is absolutely, completely,
impossible
. So you need to say it. Or I’ll get it wrong again. I’ll think you’re someone you’re not. Again.’

‘Hadley . . .’

‘Tell me. The truth.’

‘I love you.’

‘Not that. Never that.’

‘Hadley, I can’t . . .’

‘One true sentence. Isn’t that what your Hemingway would say? The truest sentence you know, Joel. Say it.’

‘I’m going to the police.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the accident.’

‘Why?’

‘She came from nowhere, Hadley. Like the blizzard, from nowhere. She just stepped into the road. I didn’t even hit her hard. I wasn’t driving fast. But she fell. And she must have hit her head on the pavement, because when I looked back I could see she wasn’t moving. And there was blood on the snow. And I didn’t do that, I know I didn’t, I didn’t hit her that hard. She must have slipped on the ice. I barely brushed her, I know I didn’t. Perhaps I was just driving by. The worst timing. The worst stroke of Fate. And before I knew what was happening I was driving on. Why? You want to know why? I want to know why. I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times and all I have is this: I didn’t want my life to end because hers had. This girl I didn’t know. This girl who just stepped from the darkness, this girl who slipped and fell. And I know exactly what that makes me.’