Cooee (36 page)

I stare at him with absolute blankness. It seems to me my responses here are really important. He's flying a kite, I can see that. He's doing his old thing of trying to unsettle me, catching me off guard. I don't want to give him even the faintest sniff of anything untoward.

It doesn't matter what he thinks or suspects or wonders about. What matters is that I don't open the door to him, that I don't open it even a crack, even a skerrick, that he remains entirely ignorant of all the goodies I'm hiding, the veritable treasure chest of what he would call relevant material. He can suspect and wonder all he likes, so long as he isn't certain, so long as he doesn't
know
.

On the whole, I don't think I handle it badly. I'm shocked and astonished and, yes, hurt; but mainly I'm just tired. It all happened so long ago.

‘For Christ's sake, Frank. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't you?' I say this wearily, heavily aware of his eyes resting on my face (they're small eyes, rather too close together: my mother would have said he wasn't to be trusted), affability forgotten, the bloodhound gene taking over, his body fairly trembling with alertness and suspicion and mistrust. I maintain my fatigue, my incredulity.

I've never been so pleased, to see the back of him. When he finally goes I'm limp with exhaustion and damp with sweat. I'd thought it was all over. I'd thought he'd lost interest, that I'd fought him off, that I could relax. But I'm right back in it again now. Thanks to Sophie, I can't stop worrying, not yet.

The knock — the final knock, I mean, the knock that tells me it's all over, red rover — is still out there somewhere, waiting to happen. It's like the iceberg, bobbing around in the Atlantic (well, really big icebergs probably don't bob; they probably just mooch along, heavy and full of destiny), patiently expecting the Titanic to happen. And then:
Wham!

The next time I see Kate, I draw her aside.

‘Pritchard's been,' I say.

‘And?'

‘And what?'

‘Does he know?'

‘He doesn't know. Not yet.'

‘But he suspects? Because of Sophie, he suspects?'

‘God knows what he suspects,' I say. ‘He certainly thinks something odd has been happening.'

Kate looks unhappy, as well she might. I don't suppose anyone really wants their mother convicted of murder.

I couldn't bear to stay at home: I was too edgy. I went to a couple of movies, but that was hopeless as a strategy for self-distraction. I couldn't have told you what they were about, not even two minutes after I'd walked out of the cinema.

So I went to work. The arrangement I had with Bea was that I would work two days a week. She gave me a narrow look, one morning.

‘This is the fourth time you've turned up this week, Izzie.'

‘So?'

‘The practice can't afford to pay you extra, you know that.'

This was manifestly untrue, in fact. Bea was making so much money she didn't know what to do with it all. I didn't care, though.

‘I'm restless,' I said. ‘You don't have to pay me. I'm happy to put in a few extra hours. That new job's got a couple of tricksy bits. I'm just ironing them out.'

She raised her eyebrows.

I wandered into my office and worked, sitting under the same skylight where I had sat when I first saw Max — how long ago? Nearly twenty years.

I doodled at my sketches for our latest project, a vast old mansion in the hills that someone with more money than sense wanted to convert into a health resort. I wanted to tell him to knock it all down and start from scratch. He was set on old-world charm and what he called art-deco flair. The place wasn't remotely influenced by art deco, and I'd tried to explain that to him, too, but eventually I'd given up: when a client doesn't want to hear something, it's no use telling them.

Inspiration wouldn't come. It was a huge, leaden manor with cold corridors, small windows, tiny attics and antiquated plumbing. Nothing would save it. I was running behind schedule on it, and starting to loathe the whole project. Bea agreed with me that it was hopeless, but pointed out that it was worth a heap to us. The incentive didn't seem enough, somehow.

There's a knock on my door.
Not here
, I think, suddenly panicking.

But it's only Kate.

‘Hi,' she says, cheerily, presumably for Dawn's benefit. ‘I was passing.'

‘Hi,' I say.

She comes in, closes the door behind her, sits down. ‘I was going to ring. Then I thought, might they be tapping your line?'

‘I can't imagine they are,' I say, although in fact I have privately canvassed this possibility and concluded it is highly likely. ‘Anyway, you could have rung my mobile.' I'd often thought how Max would have loved mobile phones — their convenience, their glitziness, their whizzbangery.

‘They tap mobiles, too.'

‘How do you know?'

‘They do,' said Kate, definitively. ‘Anyway, it doesn't matter if they are or they aren't: I just thought, we have to talk.'

‘I don't see why.'

‘Mum, I've got an idea.'

These are not words to fill me with confidence, not from Kate, but it's clear I'm not going to be able to stop her.

‘I've been thinking,' she says. She has an odd look on her face. ‘I've got a plan.'

And she tells me what it is.

‘What I thought is this. I'll go to see Superintendent Pritchard.'

I stare at her. She's leaping right into the lion's mouth?

‘It's a natural thing to do. I'm Sophie's mother, after all. I'm the mother of the child who has been telling him things, asking him to do things. We've talked already. I'll ring him up. I'll say I want to see him, want to talk some more.'

‘But why?' I ask, dazed.

‘You'll see.' She pauses, thinks. ‘You may not like what I'm going to do. But it's the only thing I can see to do. I think it might work, so please, Mum, just consider it. Okay?'

I look at her, mutely. My mistrust is profound. First Sophie meddles in my affairs; now Kate. What in God's name is she hatching?

‘So,' she says. ‘I go to see Pritchard. I'll be rather cool, you know. I'll say, he should have contacted me earlier about Sophie. I'll say, I could have saved him a lot of trouble. Sophie is an emotional child and she's got a bee in her bonnet. I'll say, she's got the wrong end of the stick, and if he acts on anything she said, he'll find himself in trouble. Up the creek without a paddle. Chasing mares' teeth.'

‘Mares' nests,' I say, automatically. ‘Hens' teeth; mares' nests.' The thought of Kate thinking she can threaten Pritchard is making me physically ill, the bile rising in my throat.

‘Whatever. So then he'll ask why. So I'll say, I don't really understand what his interest in my stepfather was, and you won't tell me. And he'll say, why not? And I'll say, there were reasons why you won't talk to me about Max. And he'll say, what are those reasons.' She pauses.

‘Yes,' I say, swallowing. ‘Go on.'

‘So I'll tell him. I'll say, the reason my mother and Max split up was that Max was having an affair with me. And I'll say, he kept on having it. I'll say Max went to Sydney after you and he split up — I thought Sydney would be a good place to have him live, because it's so big, so crowded, you couldn't possibly prove someone hadn't been in Sydney — but I'll say he came down, every so often, to see me. I'll say this went on for around two years.

‘And then I'll say he went overseas. I'll say, I've had postcards from Prague and Mexico. I thought Prague and Mexico would be good because they're a long way away and a long way apart. I'll say I last heard from Max maybe two, three years ago. And I'll say I don't have the postcards any more, because I didn't want my husband to see them.'

Kate pauses. She's twisting her fingers, knitting them unconsciously into the old game of church and steeple that she and I used to play together when she was tiny.
Open the doors and let out the people
, I nearly say.

‘Do you see what I'm doing, Mum? It'll all work, you see. It'll explain for him why you never told him why Max left, because of course you didn't want to admit that he'd slept with your daughter. And it explains why Max left, too. And it makes him think Max kept on being alive long after he left you.'

She muses for a moment. ‘And, the thing is, I think I can make him believe me. There'll be enough truth in the lies I'll be telling for me to pretend to myself it is real, that everything I'm saying has really happened. In point of fact, and you might as well know this, all I'll be doing is telling him a story I've told myself. When Max and you split up, I thought Max would come to see me. I was sure he would. I didn't think in a million years he'd go away without somehow coming to see me. Because he knew about Sophie, of course he did. Max wasn't stupid: Max would have taken one look at Sophie and he would have known. And we needed to talk about it, and I know we would have talked about it. But he never came.

‘Now, of course, I know why not. But then I didn't know, I just thought, where's he gone? I thought, sooner or later, he's bound to come. And I kept imagining I'd open the door and there he'd be, and then, because, you know, you and he had broken up, we could … well. We could get together again. Just for a little while. And I kept imagining that he'd gone somewhere not very far away, and that he'd turn up. And everything would be the way it had been, could be. Well, that was the story I told myself. So if I tell this to Pritchard, I'll only be telling him what I wanted to happen, what I'd talked myself into believing was going to happen.' She breaks off, tiredly.

I sit in a trance and watch her hands.
Here's the church; here's the steeple.

‘I don't know what to say,' I eventually manage. But the rage flickering within me is going to tell me what to say, very soon. I feel it grow. I let it grow.

‘I think it might work, Mum. It might make you safe. I want it to make you safe.'

‘You think he'll believe you?' I snap.

‘I don't know. Yes, I think so. I think I can be very believable.'

‘Kate,' I say, the tsunami inside me swelling, overflowing, rushing out of control. ‘Kate, this would be the most ... the most half-baked, idiotic, perverse,
stupid
thing to do. Can you not see that?'

She looks at me, sideways, clearly surprised. ‘It'll prove Max was alive, after he was really dead. Why will that be stupid?'

‘There is no reason in the world for Frank to believe any of this half-cocked crap. Can't you see? All he will think is that you and I are conspiring. All he will think is that I've been foolish enough to set you onto him, to spin him a story to make him believe Max is still alive. Can't you see how transparent it is, how ridiculous?'

She simply stares at me.

‘You're a fool,' I say. ‘Thank Christ you haven't done anything.' A dreadful suspicion smites me. ‘You haven't, have you? You haven't done anything? You haven't spoken to him again?'

‘No.' She has a blank look.

Can she really not comprehend? What right does she have to break the secret, the secret of her and Max, the secret she told me she'd never tell? Can she really think Frank will be such an idiot as to fall for a story like this, that she can maintain a defence against all his art and skill, his little levers and screws, his delicate chiselling and his slow, relentless assaults? And how dare she lay claim to Max? How dare she imply that his interest in her could have been anything other than a passing aberration?

‘Thank God for that, anyway,' I snarl.

‘But I want to save you, Mum. You're in danger, and I want to save you.'

‘If I want to be saved, I'll let you know, thank you very much.'

‘Is that all you can say?' Kate's voice breaks. ‘Is that all you can say to me? I've planned this all for you. You mightn't like what I've thought of, but it might make you safe. I'm telling you, I'll perjure myself for you. I'll do anything for you. I only want to try to help you.'

‘For God's sake, Kate,' I say. ‘Fuck off, will you? Just fuck off. And mind your own business, you and Sophie both. Just stop meddling. Leave me alone.'

Tears stream down her cheeks. ‘Ever since I can remember,' she sobs. ‘Ever since — oh, God, what does it matter? I've always wanted …'

She can't go on, and it looks as if I won't ever know what it is she always wanted. My anger against her balloons. I cannot bear the thought that she could even consider telling Frank about her and Max, about her and Max in bed together. I can't bear to imagine Frank sitting at my kitchen table, his eyes meeting mine, the knowledge of Kate and Max, of what Kate and Max did, shared between us. The thought of Frank's sympathy, his genial commiseration, is intolerable.