Surrogate – a psychological thriller (3 page)

"I know this sounds stupid," I said, "but I don't even know your name."

"It's Emily. Emily Givings. But everybody calls me Mole."

"What, like the animal?" I made little pointy ears with my fingers. "Why are you called that?"

"It was my father's pet name for me when I was small, and it stuck." She looked down at the floorboards as if remembering something. "I couldn't say the word Emily."

"So, what do your parents do?"

She looked up. "Oh, they're both dead. They died in a car crash three years ago."

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

"Of course not." She drained her thimbleful of liqueur and stood up. "I feel like another. Fancy a top-up?"

She got up from the sofa and crossed the short distance to the drinks cupboard. I rose too, feeling cross with myself for having been so tactless. There was a silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece: a black-and-white photo of a handsome couple in late middle age. He was distinguished-looking with swept-back grey hair, while she reminded me of that television actress, Felicity Kendal. He had his arm around her, and they were both laughing.

"Are these them?" I said, wanting to make her feel better.

"Yes. It was taken just before they died."

"Emily," I began. My tongue felt thick in my mouth.

There was a pause, and we both waited a moment before leaning towards each other and kissing. Her lips tasted soft and pulpy. I dropped my hand to her breast and felt her nipples beneath her dress. We both tore at each other's clothes, hungrily dumping them on the floor, although it’s true there was a comic moment while we had to grapple with the sofa bed. For a moment we both got terrible giggles, and I wondered if we were going to be able to go through with this. In my experience laughter and sex did not go together. Once we had pulled the bed out, we made love slowly and languorously, and this was making love, not fucking. One thing about pretty cat-like Emily was she purred while having sex, which I found incredibly arousing.

Afterwards, lying there with Mole stroking my shoulder, I watched car headlights chase each other across the ceiling and understood for the first time the meaning of the word peace. Of course, I'd had girlfriends, mostly silly trashy girls I had met in nightclubs, but this felt different somehow. Curled up with Emily in this sofa bed in the weeks to come, I would feel a profound sense of calm.

"My God, what capacity," said Mole opening my fridge. Inside were a few cans of lager and a half-eaten tub of hummus. She lifted the lid and wrinkled her nose. Then she ran her hands along the black work surfaces and inspected the Miele oven. It was the first time she had visited my Docklands apartment, and I could tell she was impressed.

"Do you really live here just on your own?" she said with a slightly awed voice while I showed her around. "You need a bike to get around."

Next was my bedroom with its emperor-sized Napoleonic bed, although I felt embarrassed by the black silk sheets. To be honest, the only action they had seen recently was the launderette. Next we stood in the second bedroom doorway and unconsciously held hands. Possibly both of us were thinking the same thing – that one day this would be nursery of our first child. Things were moving quickly between us, in hindsight too quickly: we answered a need in each other, both only children whose parents weren’t there for them – Mole because of her parents’ tragic car accident and me because, well, I had never really known the warmth of a family around me. I developed a stutter after my parents’ divorce, and Mum, who was concerned enough to take me to a child psychologist, later took great pleasure in repeating the therapist’s description of Dad as a "pathological narcissist". Right now, though, all we were looking at was a bare spare room that Currie sometimes crashed in if he stayed over. Mole squeezed my hand back and let go.

Finally I showed her the view from the balcony. The space-age nightscape of Canary Wharf lay in the distance, hot pink and electric blue lighting up the skyscrapers. You can always tell what's most important to a society by the height of its tallest building, I reflected. It used to be that churches dominated skylines, but money is what we worship now – Barclays, Citibank and HSBC. Below us, a solitary man was ploughing up and down a swimming pool lane through the glass roof of the fitness centre. He was a gay guy who lived in one of the flats below mine – John? James? I wasn't sure of his name – and he was always in there as far as I could tell, one of those insecure gym bunnies too obsessed about their weight to go out and ever meet somebody. We bumped into each other sometimes when I pounded the treadmill before work, doggedly running after Miley Cyrus or Rihanna or whoever else was cavorting on MTV. "This could be the start of my fitness campaign," Mole said brightly.

I don't remember much about those first few weeks together except that we were happy. Happiness, after all, ends in itself; misery is what you remember. Of course, I recall what came later in exquisite detail, like a map of hell that you retrace with every step. What I do remember from that time is being curled up on the sofa watching a DVD and eating ice cream, trudging through frozen grass in the park, and Mole tumbling back into bed naked, laughing and adorable.

Then there was the whole delightful process of introducing each other to our different worlds, although, to be honest, mine was never as interesting as hers. She took me to artists' parties, where I felt people's eyes glaze over when I told them I worked in insurance. You could see them thinking, who is this boring man Mole has shacked up with? She tried developing my visual sense as we went around Cork Street openings and she explained the history of art. I felt embarrassed about the framed Ikea posters on my walls. This visual sense was something I had never used before. In turn I showed her around Lloyd's, and she seemed impressed by the floors of underwriters. She pored over the ledger that recorded the Titanic disaster and admired the famous Lutine Bell, which used to be rung whenever there was a loss at sea.

I remember one Sunday in particular – we didn't even do much, just wandered around the flower market and had lunch in a pub – and yet I had never felt so happy.

It must have been a couple of months after we met that we drove down to see my mother. By now Mole was spending most evenings in my gated apartment block, which, as I said before, felt soulless by comparison with hers. I missed our weekends in Quigley Street, but we wanted to spend as much time together as possible, and my flat simply had more space than her single room.

Mum had badgered me for weeks for us to come and see her, but I had always found an excuse – pressure of work, that kind of thing, you know how it is. The truth was that Mum drank, and I dreaded going to see her for that reason. Often she would slur her words when she rang up, and I never answered her calls after nine at night.

The car rolled to a stop outside Mum's bungalow in St Leonard's- on-Sea near Hastings. There was a threat of rain: typically English weather, soggy and redolent of childhood days out in an anorak with a packed lunch. Mum's bungalow was in a cul-de-sac with other bungalows built in the early sixties. As I pulled up the handbrake, Mole said she had expected something grander. I explained that Dad's lawyer made sure Mum got as little as possible after the divorce. By putting all her cards on the table and confessing her adultery, she thought she was being grown up and honest. Instead, Dad had punished her. He had even made sure he got custody of me, her only child, claiming drink made her an unfit mother. The truth was that she had never really drunk until her son was taken away from her. I remember my acute embarrassment when she would unexpectedly appear at school chapel on Sundays. Of course, she had been desperate to see me.

We walked down the garden path, pressed the bell and waited. Privately I sent a prayer that Mum would be in a fit state to see us. But sure enough, she answered the door unsteadily, her head bobbling from side to side. It was just after midday and she was pissed. "Mum, this is Mole; Mole, Mum," I said, stepping across the threshold.

We exchanged greetings, and Mole presented a little posy of flowers she had bought on the way down. Mum looked Mole up and down for a moment and then turned away, shuffling towards the kitchen sink. Mole and I exchanged a look. She had heard my teenage stories about having to hide the vodka bottles; one night I had got so desperate that I had thrown all the booze in the house into the dustbin.

Not that it helped. It was difficult to believe that Mum had been an alluring flight attendant when she met Dad. She had served him on a flight to the Middle East and had gone out with him during the stopover. In a moment of clarity once, Mum admitted that she had let herself go. A girlfriend from her stewardessing days had come to stay and bluntly told her the truth, which had left her shaken. "And your mother never met anybody else?" Mole asked. I shook my head.

We went through into the sitting room, and Mum asked what we wanted to drink. Mole said she would have a tonic water, and I nodded that I would have the same. We made small talk, and I explained how we had met. The conversation proceeded in fits and starts, and it never seemed to get going. Every time Mole lobbed the conversational ball towards Mum, it would roll to a stop at her feet. She lit another cigarette and tapped ash into an overflowing cut-glass ashtray resting on the wing of her armchair.

Eventually Mum asked, "So, how's your father?"

"His kidney problems don't appear to be getting any better. He seems to spend more and more time hooked up to that dialysis machine."

"Is he still with that Russian bitch?"

"Mum, Eliska is Czech, she's not Russian. And they've been married for nearly ten years. The way you talk, it's as if it happened only yesterday."

As I said, Eliska was my father's second wife, a grave woman in her thirties who always seemed to be dressed in black. Dracula's wife, I called her. When I was a kid, I used to stay up late watching old horror movies on TV. On one occasion, I must have fallen asleep, because all I remember was Dracula swooshing down candlelit corridors and his ethereal brides materialising out of the fog. At first I thought Eliska was another of Dad's girlfriends, women tottering around overpriced boutiques in high heels. Eliska, though, stuck around. I noticed her look of peasant cunning when she visited Sundials for the first time.

"This must be a beautiful view in the summer," said Mole, interrupting my thoughts. She stood up and walked over to the picture window. The clouds were sagging with the inevitable rain. Mum asked Mole about her parents, and she told them about the fatal car crash. A passer-by had seen the car swerve on the country road and go straight into a tree. The inquest blamed mechanical failure in the car, she said.

We had lunch, and I kept furtively checking my work emails. As I expected, the whole afternoon had been a waste of time, and I wanted to get back to London. I sensed that it was a strain for Mum too. All she wanted to do was carry on drinking and ruminate bitterly on the past. It was so desperately sad.

Having said goodbye, we sat in the car listening to the rain thrumming on the roof and watched water rivulets chase each other down the glass. "Fuck," I said finally. Mole leaned over and put her hand over mine. I felt my eyes pricking with tears, but I was determined not to cry.

"It's not your fault," Mole said. "She's a deeply unhappy woman."

"I know. It just hurts when I see her like that." I blinked and shook my head before starting the engine. It throbbed with its reassuringly throaty growl.

"You don't make her drink. That was her choice, remember that," Mole said, squeezing my hand. I was so thankful this woman had come into my life. She was my support, my helpmeet. "Now that I've met your mother, when am I going to meet your father?"

"He says he's not well enough to meet you yet. Honestly, Mole, he wants to see you. It's his damn kidneys. Mum says he's being poisoned to death from the inside. He doesn't want to be bedridden when we go and see him."

Mole looked disappointed, and we drove back to London mostly in silence.

The next week sped by quickly. The full extent of our losses from the Dutch Marquez was only now piling up, and it seemed as if the platform would pull our syndicate down with it. Every time I thought we had a handle on how much money the syndicate was going to lose, another liability would bob up. Rumours began circulating that we were insolvent, and the strain was becoming intolerable. Trying to put on a brave face for everybody who worked there, all those people who relied on me for their livelihoods, was agonising. I tried talking to Dad, but the fight had gone out of him. It was down to me now. I can only compare that period to walking a tightrope, and there was no guarantee we were going to reach the other side safely.

I will remember the following Saturday forever.

We were standing on the King's Road outside the Register Office at Chelsea Town Hall, watching a couple getting married. The bride and groom emerged through an explosion of confetti, and they looked so happy. I turned to Mole and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Dammit, I loved this woman, so what was stopping us? My father was dying, and my mother probably wasn’t long for this world either. Both Mole’s parents were dead. Strike while the iron's hot, the voice in my head said. In hindsight, I realise I was probably clinging to something, anything, that would give me certainty – but then again, hindsight’s always twenty-twenty, isn’t it?

Mole said she wanted to go over the road to buy some must-haves for my kitchen, a whisk and an egg timer. She enjoyed cooking. Christmas was looming, and she also wanted to get presents for friends. Men hate shopping, I told her, so why didn't she go inside and I would be waiting when she came out?

Instead, I went into the town hall, where a cleaner was already sweeping up the confetti. He directed me to a registrar, who appeared to be packing up for the day. "I want to get married here, right now," I told him. The registrar said it wasn't as simple as that – this wasn't the movies, you couldn't just get married off the street. A notice had to be on display for at least one week.

Mole was waiting outside Heal’s when I crossed the road to meet her. She looked annoyed that I’d kept her waiting.

"What took you so long?" she said. "You've been ages."

"Sorry. I was over the road in the town hall. Listen, Mole, I want us to get married. What's stopping us? I love you."

Mole looked at me incredulously. "You haven't even asked me. This isn't the most romantic proposal. I had hoped you would get down on one knee or something."

With that, I knelt down and proposed to her right in the middle of the street as Christmas shoppers streamed past us. Of course she said yes – although she later joked that she agreed only because she was so mortified that she wanted me to stand up.

Currie was in the stands at a football match when I got him on his mobile. I told him our good news and that I wanted him to be our best man in a week's time.

The next seven days felt as if I had one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. Mole and I met one lunchtime to wander through the hush of Burlington Arcade, admiring rings in the window. There was one in particular that caught Mole's eye: a plain gold band with a stonking diamond on top. The faintest alarm bell rang at the back of my mind as I watched Mole gazing at the display in the shop window with a look of, well, to be frank, greed. I felt slightly lightheaded when the jeweller showed me the price tag. Still, I wouldn't remember how much this ring cost in a month's time or even a few days, I rationalised. This was forever. Mole's eyes glistened with tears when she tried the simple gold band on for size. "I've never seen such a beautiful ring," she said, admiring her finger.

Looking back, I suppose it was odd that the only person Mole invited to our register office wedding was a work colleague. Of course because, like me, she was an only child, there were no brothers or sisters. But didn't she have any uncles or aunts, or cousins? ("I don't really know her at all," the workmate confided over a glass of champagne in the restaurant afterward.) I was also surprised by how short the service was, despite Mole insisting on adding a vow to tell each other the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it made either of us feel. Telling the truth was important to her. ("If you don't tell the truth, there's nothing to hang onto anymore," she said.) And yet the moment the registrar declared us man and wife I felt oddly high, with the clerk's face taking up the whole of my vision. It was almost as if I did not dare look at my bride.