Alberta Clipper (37 page)

Two women appeared on the corridor, chatting together.  They stopped talking when they saw Mark.  He gave them a half-smile, and they passed him by, throwing looks to one another. 

“Christine.”  He lowered his voice a little until the two had turned the corner at the far end of the corridor.  “Okay Christine.  I'm going down now.  I'll be back in a minute with the manager.” 

He stood away from the door in silence.  He was considering following through on his threat, when he heard a noise from behind the door and a lock snapped back.  He only caught a glimpse of he
r as he lunged forward to stop the door
from swinging closed again.  He followed her inside and
it
slammed shut behind him with a bang.  The silence that followed felt like the prelude to something, Mark just didn't know what. 

She had sat down on the bed, facing the window, her back to him.  The room was a mirror image of his own on the floor above, and he could guess at the view she was staring at from the dimly lit bedroom.  London city, lit up against the dark night sky.  She could probably see the London Eye from where she sat. 

“Christine.”  He stood in the
little hallway of the room,
afraid to proceed any further.

“Christine.  Are you okay?”

He hardly recognised her voice when she finally did speak. 

“Not really
,
Mark,” she said.

Not for the first time when it came to Christine, Mark stopped trying to work out the right thing to do, and let instinct take over.  He set her phone down next to the TV, and walked over to where she sat on the bed.  He sat beside her, and looked out the windo
w too.  He tried to discreetly observe her
, but her countenance shocked him so, that he could only stare at her in dismay.  She had been crying, and her eyes were red against the pallor of her skin.  But there was something else.  Whatever made her what she was, her confidence, her spirit, her spark, was gone.  He hardly recognised her.  She seemed more like an empty shell than the vivacious, beautiful woman he loved.  Like her soul had been removed, and all that was left was her skin, and flesh, and bones.

“What did he do to you?” Mark whispered.  “Did he, did that guy hurt you?”

Christine looked a
t him
.  “What do you mean?  Do you mean Nick?”  Her voice broke at his name.  “No.”  She looked back out the window, and then down at her hands on her lap.  “No.  He did nothing wrong.”  Then she shook her head and stood up and paced the strip of floor between the bed and the window
,
like someone who was contemplating a difficult choice.  She looked up at Mark, and then covered her face with her hands.  “Oh Mark.  I'm sorry.  This is not your problem.  Just leave me alone.  I'll be fine.  Just leave me here.  Please.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”  Mark wanted to add
I love you, I'm not leaving you like this.  I would never leave you like this
, but he just stayed sitting on the corner of the bed, his hands flat on the polyester bedspread either side of him.

Christine lowered her hands and stared at him through wet eyes.  He couldn't be sure, but he thought she was looking at him and seeing the guy she had spent New Year's Eve with, the guy who had held her and kissed her and made love to her, not her cold, distant boss.  He hoped that was what she was seeing.  He stayed silent and as still as he could.  He could feel and hear his own heart thumping in his chest.  After a short while, she turned away and stared out the window again.  She seemed to be seeing past the city lights, past the dark sky.  She stood like that for what felt like a long time
.  Mark’s gaze never moved
from her face.

“I had a baby,” she said at last. 

Mark felt his own face flush with heat.  He held his breath. 

Christine stayed staring out of the window.  “When I was studying for my Ph.D. in England, my Mom got very sick, very suddenly.  She had an aneurysm.  She didn't die, but they couldn't revive her.  I went home, because we were told she might only last three or four weeks.” 

Her voice was monotone.  It felt to Mark like she was almost talking to herself, like she had forgotten that he was in the room.  He said nothing. 

“She only lasted three,” she went on.
 
“
But we were all ther
e.  When she died
.” 

Her voice cracked, and Mark had to fight the impulse to grab her into his arms.  Something told him to let her talk, to let her finish. 

“I found out the same day.  The day we buried her.  I was sitting in my father's room when I realised I was late, and I just knew.  And I was.  Pregnant.”  She whispered the word like it was the most horrifying condition to be in.  “We had just buried her.  My beautiful, perfect mother.”  She lowered her face into her hands and her shoulders shook. 

Mark sat still on the bed, just watching her. 

After a moment, she wiped her hand across her nose and looked up again
,
out of the window.  “I didn't cope very well.  I deferred my thesis, and stayed at home in Dub
lin with my Dad.  And I decided…
I made the decision
…
I decided to have the baby adopted as soon as it was born.  Just like that.  I decided to abandon her before she had even taken her first breath.  Her mother.  That's what I did.” 

Her voice was suddenly so hard and filled with disgust.  Mark started to speak.  “But -”

But you were grieving, you had just lost your own mother.  You can't blame yourself for that.

But he found he couldn't articulate his thoughts.  Christine turned to him suddenly, and the look of self-reproach in her eyes shocked him. 

“I, who had the most perfect mother.”  She stared at him for a moment, and then her shoulders relaxed.  “I abandoned her.  Before she had a chance.”

Mark closed his open mouth.  Christine turned back to the window.  She ran her finger and thumb down the edge of the curtain that was pushed to one side.  Mark watched her hand move.  He remembered that same hand on his chest.

“She was due that February.”  She closed her arms around herself and shivered, even in the stifling warmth of the hotel room.  “But I got sick one day.  In January.  I was brought into hospital.  My blood pressure -”  Her voice was almost a whisper again.  “They had to get her out.  It was all so fast.  I'd been totally fine -”  She shook her head.  “They took he
r away, but -
”  She stopped.  Mark's head was spinning.

“They couldn't save her.”  The words were barely audible.  Then her body lurched in a strange, dance-like movement and to Mark's alarm Christine turned and rushed towards the bathroom with her hand over her mouth.  He jumped up and went after her, sliding to his knees on the tiled floor as she retched into the toilet bowl.  He put his arm around her shoulders and tried to hold her hair as she retched and retched, each contraction of her body interspersed with loud sobs which seemed to come from her very core.  They frightened him. 

“Christine, it wasn't your fault.  You did nothing wrong.  It wasn't your fault.”  His voice was breaking.

“I abandoned her.  She thought I didn't love her.”  She retched.  “I was her mother.”  She looked up at Mark, her eyes pools of tears.  “Her mother.”

Mark pulled her back from the bowl until she was sitting upright on the floor.  He grabbed a towel that was hanging near him and wiped her face gently with it.  “Christine, it wasn't your fault.”  He didn't know what else to say.  She stopped sobbing, and sat staring straight ahead as he sat next to her, wiping her cheeks.  After a moment, she pushed the towel away.

“Her name was Zoë,” she whispered.

“That's a beautiful name.”

“My Dad named her.  I – I wasn't able.  I hadn't a name re
ady.  Her new parents were
to name her.  I didn't want to know.”

“Well, it's a lovely name.”  Mark felt anything he said would be inadequate, but Christine hardly seemed to notice anyway. 

“He said he tried to think of a name that wasn't already in the family.  No associations.  My poor Dad.”  Christine started to sob again.  Mark reached for her hand.

“He made me see her.  I didn't want to, but he made me sit there while a nurse brought her in.”

Mark said nothing.

“I couldn't, I couldn't hold her.”  Christine dropped her head to her chest.  “But I kissed her.  And I told her I was sorry.”

Mark squeezed her limp hand.

“She was so, little.”  Christine looked up into his face.  “And so cold.”

Mark tried to blink away the unfamiliar tears that were forming in his eyes.  Without letting go of her hand, he slid across the tiles until he was sitting next to her, leaning against the side of the bath.  He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her in to him.  She laid her head on his chest, like she had done in the taxi from
Shay
and
Nina
's house.  But this time, her body felt weak and lifeless against his.  They sat there for a while.

“Was Nick Zoë's father?” Mark said without thinking. 

Christine just nodded her head against his shirt. 

He squeezed her tighter to him.  “Did he know about her?  About Zoë?”

This time Christine shook her head and sat upright.  “No,” she said.  “It had just been a fling.  I don't know.  Maybe that was wrong too.  Not to tell him.  But I decided not to involve him.  And then – well then it didn't matter anyway.”

Mark thought about this.  He tried to imagine himself in Nick's place.  Would he want to know?  Probably not, if he were honest.  What good would it do anyone now.  Knowing.  She was gone now.  Unless he would want to -

“She's buried with my mother,” Christine said
,
as if read
ing
his mind.  “At least she has that.  She was never left alone.  She's with her grandmother.”

Mark tried to get his head around this slightly demented logic.  He didn't think any words he could say would comfort Christine so he just remained on the floor beside her, holding her hand.  The tears had stopped, and she just sat there, deflated.  Then she sighed and tossed her head to one side.

“I'm so tired,” she said softly. 

Mark was fairly sure that her exhaustion was more than physical.  Christine looked like someone who was carrying an enormous burden around with her, and was about to collapse under the strain of it.  He thought for a second before standing up and gently lifting her to her feet.  She felt like a ragdoll to him. 

“Come on,” he said quietly, and he half carried, half dragged her back into the bedroom and sat her down on the bed.  She was about to lie down when he held her upright again.

“Wait a sec,” he said, and he opened a press under the bureau identical to the one in his own room upstairs.  He rifled through the small bottles inside, before settling on a miniature of brandy which he brought to her.  He sat next to her on the bed, and emptied the bottle into a glass tumbler from the nightstand. 

“Here,” he said.

She didn't question it, she just took the glass and drank it back in two mouthfuls, wincing at the burn in her throat after each swallow.  Then she lay down on the bed,
and turned on her side without saying a thing.  After hesitating a moment, Mark
took off her shoes.  Then he turned down all the lights, except the one in the bathroom, and stood at the end of the bed, watching her.

Ch
rist.  Poor Christine.  His
emotions were a jumble of sympathy and shock, but also
distress
. 
Distress
for the knowledge that the person he loved was carrying this weight around with her all these years, clearly trying to lead a normal life, outwardly at least.  But who could live a normal life with that level of guilt?  And nothing, from what he could tell, was going to improve the situation.  If
five years hadn’t eased her pain, he wondered what could.

Standing there, looking at Christine lying silently on the bed, Mark saw a future full of reminders, full of setbacks, full of pain and regret and guilt.  He wondered how many others knew the truth.  Not many, he guessed. 
Nina
certainly didn't.  She would have hinted at it. 

But she had told him.  She had opened up to him.  Mark accepted that this had a lot to do with the fact that he just happened to be here, happened to witness her reunion with Nick. 

But still.  She needn't have opened the door.  She needn't have told him a thing.  She needn't have let him in. 

Mark stood on the heel of his right shoe with his left foot, and did the same with the right, kicking the shoes under a chair.  He walked over to the window, and drew the sheer curtain across, dulling the distant fairy-lights of London city.  Then he lay down on the bed
facing
her.  His arm was awkwardly around the top of her head, but she opened her eyes and without meeting his, moved very slightly closer to him, her head against his shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered.

“Don't be,” he whispered back.  “I'm here.”