Deep Waters (43 page)

‘She made it look like suicide.’

‘Oh, and is that supposed to make it any better! I walk into a room, the bed is flooded with blood . . .’

‘Shhh! Shhh!’ Çetin held his much larger brother and began rocking him again. ‘Halil,’ he said, ‘I have lain awake for nights and nights thinking this through. She had no choice. It was either that or our own deaths.’

‘You should ask her.’ Samsun put out one cigarette and lit another. ‘You talk, you—’

‘Mother doesn’t communicate with me in the way you imagine. Samsun,’ Çetin said, ‘when she does come it’s more like, well, ideas in my head.’

‘Yes—’

‘Mother is dead. She died in 1957.’

It was said so calmly that it took a moment for both of them to realise the words had come from Halil. Suddenly very calm, he cleared his throat before he spoke again.

‘Whatever Çetin may experience of her now, that is a fact,’ he said. ‘I was there. She ended. For me.’

‘Yes, but Halil,’ Samsun began. ‘Çetin—’

‘Mother never communicates with me!’ Halil roared. ‘She never has, she never will! She is dead! It’s the only way I can deal with this!’ Halil looked at his brother whose eyes were fixed on his face with some concern. ‘Now that I know the truth I want no more of it, no . . . Çetin, I don’t want to know any more, nothing. To me she is dead, she—’

‘All right, all right,’ Çetin, soothed. ‘It’s OK, Halil. It’s just that—’

‘We’re magical people,’ Samsun, ever her own publicist, interjected with a smile. ‘We’re different. You aren’t.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s life, cousin!’

In spite of themselves the other two laughed.

And so life returned to normal, after a fashion, in the stifling, smoggy confines of the İkmen living room. The three of them smoking, drinking, arguing, crying. Life, family life. Touched but now purged of a tragedy they had dealt with all their lives in their different ways. Çetin by building a huge wall of family around him, both at home and at work. Halil by keeping everyone out – of his mind and his heart.

They drank and smoked some more. Samsun Bajraktar collapsed in a heap of inappropriate hysterics just before dawn. Halil simply passed out. Which left only Çetin, who just sat and smiled at the wall until Fatma came in to prepare the apartment for yet another day. She said the three of them, drunk and sleep-deprived, looked like a nest of vampires . . .

Her cousin Julia was appalled by the conditions.

‘You shouldn’t be in a place like this!’ she said, looking around what Felicity imagined was a hospital ward. ‘We need to get you home.’

They obviously hadn’t told Julia the whole truth about what she’d done. Either that or she couldn’t understand their English. But then perhaps Julia did understand but didn’t care, after all, her mother’s family had never liked her father, the Turk. And in truth it had been Mary’s money that had kept them all for so long – the house in Holland Park, her father’s gangsterly lifestyle . . .

Not that she could tell Julia any of this. There was something in the way, something that lay between her and other things, other people. It wasn’t a door or a screen or anything like that; it was something much more nebulous. And it was within her rather than outside her body. As if something had been switched off, something vital – stuck.

The sex still went on, however, which was good. She knew that David was dead, she’d seen his head explode all over her own head and shoulders. But somehow the feel of him remained, inside, that rush of orgasm every so often overwhelming everything around her. That was wonderful, and it was another reason why venturing ‘out’ had to be a bad idea. ‘In’ was safe now, because inside herself so much that was superfluous seemed to disappear. Here there was no conflict – couldn’t be because there was no one else. She could neither hurt nor be hurt and physical appearance was irrelevant.

Here perhaps it had truly happened. Vampire. Not feasting upon others so much as feasting upon herself, slowly appreciating and absorbing her own mind. A digestion of one’s totality until nothing remained.

She wondered vaguely whether her cousin Julia could see it, this contraction of her being. Next time she came perhaps Felicity, whatever that was, would have disappeared. Not just in the mirror now, but completely.

When İkmen, hungover and looking deathly, arrived at his office later that day, he found a message to call Samsun Bajraktar on his desk. What she could possibly want, apart from a hangover cure, he couldn’t imagine, but he called her anyway.

‘What is it?’ he asked through a pall of comforting smoke. ‘I thought you’d gone home to bed.’

‘Well, I am at home, Çetin,’ she said, ‘and I am about to go to bed, but have you seen page three of
Bügün
?’

Horrified that any member of his family should even know the name of such a scandal rag, İkmen spluttered, ‘Are you serious?’

‘Can you get hold of a copy?’

‘Some of the more inarticulate grunts down in the squad room may have a copy.’

‘So go and ask them!’ Samsun said. ‘I’m not joking, Çetin. It’s important.’

‘It had better be,’ he said ominously. ‘I’ve got to walk downstairs and then, more importantly, back up again.’

‘Call me back,’ Samsun said, ‘after you’ve looked at page three.’

‘Right.’ İkmen put the phone down and then, probably because he was still too fuzzy with alcohol and lack of sleep to think of anything else, he went and did as she had asked.

To say that the grunts in the squad room were surprised when İkmen asked them for their copy of
Bügün
, with its stories of alien abduction and breast enlargement, was an understatement. Roditi, for whom such reading matter was essential to a full and robust fantasy life, handed it over in a spirit of both disbelief and resentment. After all, if İkmen was reading
Bügün
then the world was indeed stranger than people thought.

When he returned to his office, İkmen spread the paper on his desk and opened it at page three. An impossibly large woman stared back. İkmen called Samsun.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I have page three.’

‘Look at the photograph under the woman of silicone,’ she said. ‘The one of the boy and the old lady.’

‘World’s greatest age difference?’ İkmen said, reading the title of the story.

‘That’s it,’ Samsun said in a satisfied tone. ‘He’s twenty-nine and she’s a ninety-year-old widow, originally from Kars. Her late husband was a cotton sultan, loaded, and now she’s marrying—’

‘Is this relevant to anything?’ İkmen asked tetchily as he reached for yet another cigarette.

‘Well, if you look at the caption to the picture, you’ll know,’ Samsun said.

İkmen did so and spluttered with shock.

Samsun laughed. ‘Yes, Çetin,’ she said, ‘that is
the
Dhori Vlora, in case you were unsure. Hasn’t he done well for himself?’