The Stranger on the Train (7 page)

“Not to worry,” her mother said cheerfully. “Where did you go? Somewhere nice?”

“It was all right,” Emma mumbled.

Time for a change of subject.

“I'm thinking of moving to China,” she announced.

“To China?” Her mum sounded puzzled. “Why would you do that?”

“To work there for a while. Experience a different culture.”

“But what sort of job would you get? You don't speak Chinese.”

“I could learn, couldn't I?”

There was a pause.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Emma's mother asked.

“Why wouldn't it be?”

“Well, you've only got back from that waitressing job in Sydney—”

“It wasn't just waitressing.” Emma gritted her teeth. “I was in charge of all their PR work as well.”

“I know that, love. I know. All I'm saying is, shouldn't you try to get some proper experience or further qualification here before you head off again? Build some networks? You'll find you have nothing to come back to.”

“And you know so much about the business world?” Emma said coolly.

“Oh, Emma.” Her mother sighed. “I can't say anything to you. Give you any kind of advice.”

You should have done all that a long time ago, Emma thought.

“When are you coming to visit in Bath?” her mother asked.

“Soon. Work's kind of busy at the moment.”

“You haven't been home for a while.”

“I will be soon,” Emma promised. “Look, I've got to go now. I'm going out. I'm meeting someone at eight and I still have to get ready.”

“All right, love,” her mother said. “Have a good evening. Stay in touch.”

They said their good-byes and hung up. But it was a while before Emma took her hand from the phone.

I wish I could have the last few minutes back, she thought, as she often did after speaking to her mum.

One day this would be sorted out, once and for all. Emma had it all in her head, all planned out. One day when she had a proper job, a job her mother would be proud of, she would visit Bath and she and her mother would sit down and talk, really talk, and they would both say everything they wanted to say. Emma would tell her mother how hurt she'd been as a child, never having been hugged or held, never brought anywhere by her mum, always left at her gran's. Her mother would explain why she'd been so cold. There must have been some reason. She would ask Emma's forgiveness, and because Emma was now so happy and successful, she would graciously agree to let bygones be bygones. She and her mother would hug each other, and Emma's bitterness would melt away and she would let herself be as close to her mum as she sometimes longed to be.

Because then she wouldn't be so angry anymore.

Three days later, at work, she received a phone call.

“Is that you, Emma?” an elderly female voice asked.

“Yes?” Emma was confused. The voice, vaguely familiar, sounded out of place in the high-volume, frantic surroundings of the call center.

“This is Mrs. Cornes. Your next-door neighbor in Bath.”

“Oh.”

And then Emma felt a slow, cold finger at her throat. Why would Mrs. Cornes be phoning her at work on a Thursday afternoon?

“Emma, love.” Mrs. Cornes's voice trembled. “I'm sorry to have to tell you this. It's your mum.”

• • •

Subarachnoid hemorrhage, the postmortem said. Mrs. Cornes had been worried when she hadn't seen Emma's mother for a few days. She'd taken the spare key and called around to the house. In the hall, at the bottom of the stairs, lay Mrs.Turner, her dark hair spread around her head. She'd been dead for more than forty-eight hours. On the train to Bath, light-headed and frozen, Emma traced the tiny mark on her chin.

There were more people at the funeral than she had expected. Mrs. Cornes must have mobilized the citizens of Bath. Neighbors, none of whom Emma really knew, all had kind things to say about her mother. Afterwards, she spent a few days going through her mum's things to see what she wanted to keep or throw away. Mrs. Cornes helped her. They didn't have much time; already there were new tenants waiting to move in to the house. There were mainly clothes, old letters, a few bits of jewelry. That was about it, really. Her mum had left so little to show for her life.

In a frame on the mantelpiece, Emma found a photograph: herself, her mum and her gran, taken when Emma was about thirteen. Emma remembered the day. It had been her gran's birthday and a neighbor had taken the photo. Her mum and gran sat on the couch, side by side. Emma stood behind them, resting a hand on each of their shoulders. All of them were smiling, even her mum. Her gran showed no sign of the tumor that was already beginning to vanquish her right lung. Emma's mum looked young and fresh, wearing a rose-pink dress, so different from the gray tunic she wore to her job as a health-care assistant at the nursing home. Her hair was loose, the same dark brown as Emma's. She had the same blue eyes.

That had been a good evening. They'd taken Gran to dinner at a restaurant. The three of them had drunk a bottle of wine. Emma took the photograph down and stared at it.
What was it all about, Mum? Did you want me?
Did you love me?
She'd never know now. She wrapped the photo in a sheet of newspaper and put it into her bag.

Mrs. Cornes saw her to the station to catch the train back to London.

“Who do you have up there, Emma?” Mrs. Cornes was distressed. She had on the navy Sunday coat she'd worn for the funeral, buttoned up to the neck, with a patterned silk scarf underneath. In the harsh morning light, her lipstick, crookedly applied, was too pink for her face. She peered up at Emma.

“Your mum worried about you,” she said. “All that traveling you'd been doing recently. Not putting down any roots. I hate to think of you not having someone you can depend on.”

“Joanne, the girl I live with, is a good friend,” Emma assured the kindly woman. “She won't let me down.”

She went to shake Mrs. Cornes's hand and somehow found that she was hugging her instead. Mrs. Cornes smelled of rosewater and scones. They held each other tightly for a moment. The guard blew his whistle. Emma let go of Mrs. Cornes. She stepped away and walked through the barrier.

• • •

She was in the Grape one evening with Joanne, when Oliver came in. She hadn't seen or thought about him for a while. He was with friends, but left them to come over and speak to Emma.

“I heard about your mum,” he said. He stood in front of her, looking down. “It's a tough thing to happen. If you need to talk to someone about it, I'm here.”

Whatever he saw in her that night made him decide to stay with her instead of going back to his friends. He sat beside her for the rest of the evening. They drank a bottle of wine and talked about death, wondering what the point of everything was if it all came to nothing in the end.

“What's the point of beauty, even?” Emma asked in a low voice. “My mum loved the sea. Especially in the evenings. She loved the sunsets in Cornwall.”

“Beauty is a myth,” Oliver said. “The sea and the sun aren't beautiful. We're just programmed to think they are because they represent water and heat. The fuel we need to survive.”

The morbidness of the conversation suited Emma's mood. She didn't notice that Joanne had disappeared. Tears filled her eyes at the waste of it all; the futility of her mum's short life.

Oliver held her hand.

“Come out with me,” he said. “This weekend. A friend of mine is in a band. They're doing a gig in Brixton.”

• • •

The gig was in the top of a pub, somewhere in the maze of side streets between Clapham and Brixton. Emma didn't make a massive effort to dress up for the evening. She wore her jeans and the reliable black top she'd got in the L.K.Bennett sale, with the shiny bits around the neckline. At the last minute, Joanne insisted she put on a pair of dangly jet earrings. But she wasn't really in a party mood. Her mum had just died. This was no date she was going out on. Oliver was being a friend.

A very handsome friend. He met her outside Brixton tube station, looking very tall, wearing a blue shirt and dark wine velvet trousers, and Emma knew she was lost. The pub was on a corner, a spacious brick building with outsized windows and a large green canopy. Under the patio heaters, the wooden benches on the pavement were packed with people chatting and laughing. Inside, the pub was even more crowded. Emma followed Oliver up a narrow set of stairs. At the top, a very pretty blond girl with a clipboard and a fluorescent wrist stamper flung her arms around Oliver and showed him and Emma to a table with a good view of the stage. The stools were low and very close together. Every time Oliver leaned to say something to Emma, the tips of his knees brushed against hers.

The music was a mixture of blues and jazz, some upbeat and lively, some slow and sad. The singer, a tall black girl with long, braided, blond-dyed hair, was good enough that, at times, everyone fell absolutely silent to listen.

Oliver talked about his girlfriend.

“Sharmila and I have split up,” he told Emma over seafood chowder and Guinness. “She had to move to Edinburgh for work.”

“I'm sorry,” Emma said. “You must miss her.”

“I do, a bit,” Oliver said. “But she was always going to put her career first. I don't blame her. If there'd been anything real between us, I might have gone to Edinburgh or she might have stayed here. But neither of us wanted to make the sacrifice.”

By the time the gig was over, it was after one and the tubes had all stopped for the night. Oliver walked Emma home to her flat in Clapham. One minute they were walking through streets lined with littered doorways and steel-shuttered shops, the next, as was often the way in London, they found themselves turning down much posher roads, with tall, sprawling houses surrounded by trees. Clapham Common, lit partly by streetlights, partly by the glow from the houses around the edges, looked black and leafy and romantic. Emma probably wouldn't have cut through the park at this hour on her own, but with Oliver she felt safe. Her corner of London had never looked particularly beautiful to her before, but it did that night.

Especially when Oliver stopped her under a vast old horse chestnut tree to kiss her.

This was it, then, this was the one. There was something so special about him. Emma had fallen under a spell. She'd read that in books, but thought it was just something people wrote. Now she knew what it meant. Everything about Oliver was magical: not quite human. His skin was so smooth and clean. He didn't smell of sweat, even after a long day, like normal people, just of warmed cotton, as if he wasn't really there.

Emma heard all about Oliver's childhood: about the car crash, the aunt who'd made it plain she'd never wanted a child. Oliver had an older sister living in Birmingham whom he rarely saw. This shocked Emma. How could a sister and brother lose touch like that? Her concern for Oliver made her forget her own unhappiness. She'd had her gran, at least, when she was young and her mum was . . . not herself. Oliver seemed to have had no one. She imagined him as the seven-year-old child he'd been, alone and frightened, and the thought of it almost broke her heart.

Oliver was always full of ideas for outings and exhibitions and music festivals. Over the next few weeks, there were surfing trips to Cornwall, a weekend on Skye, the green river in Hampshire. He took her to a party in an underground tunnel in the Docklands where an unexploded bomb from the Second World War was embedded right there in the wall. Emma was thrilled. Although it did occur to her to wonder why, if it was common knowledge that a live bomb was sitting directly under London, the authorities hadn't got around to doing something about it.

Oliver could be moody at times, but Emma didn't let that put her off. He worked hard, often spending weekends and nights at work, supervising the transfer of money to and from accounts all over the world. Emma stayed in with him when he was tired and wanted to slump in front of the TV. This lowness was a part of him that other people didn't see.

“You're such a caring, genuine person,” he said to Emma during one of these down times. “Sharmila was colder, less giving. I'm a bit like that myself, I think.”

“No you're not,” Emma reassured him. Then she hesitated. Was this a good time to bring up something she'd been thinking for a while? “You know, you should try to see more of your sister.”

“Sasha? What for? We saw each other last Christmas.”

“Well, you could see her at other times too,” Emma said. “You should phone her. Spend some time together.”

Emma often fantasized about meeting Oliver's sister. She would look a bit like Oliver, she thought, maybe with a sparkier personality. She and Emma would hit it off straightaway. It was coming up to Christmas now. Emma and Sasha would go shopping together for Oliver's present, and Sasha would have them all to her house for dinner on Christmas Day.

Oliver was looking baffled. “Well, she doesn't phone me. How often do you see
your
sister?”

“I haven't got one,” Emma said.

“Oh.” Oliver stared at the television. “I'm sorry. You did say.”

“I wish I
did
have a sister,” Emma said. “At the end of the day, your family is who you can rely on the most.”

Oliver yawned.

“Well,” he said. “Sasha's ten years older than me. Married with three children. She's nice enough, but a bit, you know, bourgeois. Never done anything with her life. I wouldn't know what to say to her.”

“Maybe
I
could call her?” Emma suggested. “It might be easier that way. You know, woman-to-woman. We could organize dinner.”

“It's all right, Emma.” Oliver was polite. “The thing is, you don't really know my family.”

When he phoned her the next time, he had some news for her. He hoped she hadn't got the wrong idea but he didn't want things to go too far between them. Sharmila was moving back to London, and they were going to give things another go.