The Woman in the Fifth (9 page)

I read on:

. . . and that's why you cheated on Mom with that student and then fled overseas when everything got too hot. Is this true? I hope not.

Your daughter

Megan

I slammed my fist so hard on the desk that the guy behind the counter looked up in surprise.

'Sorry, sorry,' I said.

'Bad news today?' he asked.

'Yeah. Very bad.'

I turned back to the computer, hit the
Reply
button and wrote:

Dearest Megan

I have made many mistakes in my life, and have been guilty of all sorts of wrong calls. But I never – repeat:
never
– wanted to end the marriage to your mom. That was her decision – and one which I tried to talk her out of. If I had my way, I'd still be living at home with you and your mom. Please understand that your mom ended the marriage because she was angry with me for what I had done . . . but she wasn't exactly blameless for the way things turned out. But, once again, let me reemphasize the fact that being away from you – and being unable to see you on a daily basis – is so terribly hard. And my one great hope is that I'll be seeing you very soon indeed.

Love

Dad

PS It's very important that you don't raise any of this with your mother. If you start asking her questions about whether she wanted to divorce me, she might get suspicious and wonder if we're in touch. The last thing I want is to lose contact with you.

After hitting the
Send
button, I turned to the guy behind the counter and said, 'Apologies again for punching the desk.'

'You're not the first. A lot of bad news gets read here every day. But maybe there'll be good news for you tomorrow.'

The guy was right. When I returned the next afternoon, there was a reply from Megan.

Hi Dad

Thanks for writing what you did. I'm still confused by it all. Like who's telling the truth here? But it's good to know that you didn't want to leave us. That means a lot. And don't worry about Mom. She'll never know we've been writing each other. But do keep the emails coming. I really like them.

Love

Megan

The fact that she signed the email with '
Love
' . . . that was not simply 'good news'. That was the best news I had received since this whole nightmare started. And I immediately wrote back:

Dearest Megan

It really doesn't matter who is telling the truth here. What does matter is that we stay close. And as I said yesterday, I'm sure that we will be seeing each other again very soon.

Love

Dad

It was a Friday when I sent that email – so it didn't surprise me that I didn't hear from her over the weekend. As she had a computer in her room at home, I knew it might be dangerous if I emailed her on Saturday or Sunday . . . just on the off chance that her mother or Robson might walk into her room when she was opening her mailbox (yes, this was overly cautious on my part – but I wanted nothing to jeopardize our correspondence, let alone land Megan in trouble at home). So I resisted the temptation to write her – and just continued on with my usual routine. Wake up at eight, the morning shop, the morning write, lunch, out the door by 1.30 p.m. at the latest, movies, home by midnight, a Zopiclone sleeping tablet chased with herbal tea, sleep . . . and the inevitable 2 a.m. wake-up call when Omar came rolling in drunk (he did this nightly without fail) and proceeded to pee loudly. Though his loud bodily functions would always snap me into consciousness, the Zopiclone ensured that I'd pass out a few minutes after this wake-up call. As such, I gave daily thanks to that hotel doctor who had overprescribed me one hundred and twenty tabs of this knockout drug.

But every morning I awoke to the charming discovery that Omar had left the toilet a mess. After weeks of having to clean up after him, I finally hit the wall. It was the day after I had received my last email from Megan – and the large pool of urine on the floor sent me to his door. I banged on it loudly. He answered after a minute, dressed in stained boxer shorts and an AC Milan T-shirt that strained to make it over his vast gut.

'What?' he asked, looking half-asleep.

'I need to talk to you,' I said.

'You talk to me? Why?'

'It's about how you leave the toilet.'

'How I leave toilet?' he said, getting a certain edge to his voice. I tried to adopt a reasonable tone.

'Look, we both have to share the toilet—'

'We share toilet?' he said, sounding outraged.

'We both use the
same
toilet at different times.'

'You want we use it together?'

'I want you to lift up the seat when you pee, please. And I always want you to flush the toilet and use the scrubbing brush when—'

'Fuck you,' he said and slammed the door.

So much for my attempts at diplomacy. The next morning I found Omar had pissed everywhere . . . not just on the toilet seat and its adjoining walls, but on my front door as well. For the first time since moving in, I ventured back to the offices of
Sezer Confection.
Mr Tough Guy let me in with a scowl. Monsieur looked away as I spoke. In other words, business as usual.

'There is a problem?' Sezer asked.

I explained what had happened.

'Maybe it was a cat,' he said.

'Yeah – and he happened to arrive on a magic carpet with a full bladder. It was Omar.'

'You have proof?'

'Who else would piss on my door?'

'I am not Sherlock Holmes.'

'You need to talk to Omar,' I said.

'If I do not have proof that it was his piss on your door . . .'

'Can you at least get someone to clean it off?'

'No.'

'Surely as the building manager—'

'We clean the corridors. We make certain that the
éboueurs
pick up the rubbish every day. But if you piss on a door—'

'I didn't piss on the door.'

'That's your story. But as I said: since you have no proof, I must assume—'

'Forget it,' I said and started walking out.

'One small thing,' Sezer said. 'I have had word about Adnan.'

I stopped and turned around.

'And?' I asked.

'As predicted, he was arrested as soon as he stepped off the plane in Istanbul last month. They brought him to Ankara for formal sentencing – as he had been found guilty in his absence. He got fifteen years.'

I heard myself say, 'That's not my fault.' I regretted the comment immediately. Sezer put his fingertips together and smiled.

'Who said it was your fault?' he asked.

I washed down the door myself that day. And the toilet walls. And scrubbed the bowl clean yet again. That night, after Omar had had his late-night piss, I found I couldn't get back to sleep. Though I did my best to rationalize what had happened – to tell myself that Adnan had been on the run for years and had simply been lucky to escape being controlled until that morning when he came to fetch me – I couldn't pardon myself. Another ruined life, courtesy of yours truly.

There is only one cure for a sleepless night: work. I wrote like a maniac: five pages before dawn. It was early days yet – page thirty-five of what would be a very big book – but already, my protagonist, Bill, was nine years old and listening to his parents tear each other apart while drinking highballs in their New Jersey kitchen.

I was writing this scene – and feeling very pleased with it – when I noticed the leak. It was coming from the little cabinet below the sink. A small pool of water had gathered on the scuffed linoleum. I stood up from the desk, went over and opened the cabinet. The cause of the leak was immediately evident. A piece of tape, fastened to the waste pipe, had come loose. There were a few loose tiles at the bottom of the cabinet. An old roll of black duct tape was positioned on one of them. I picked it up. In doing so, the tile beneath it came away. There was a small piece of plastic protruding. I pulled at it – and discovered a little carrier bag hidden in a hole that had been dug crudely into the floor. Inside were tightly rolled wads of banknotes, around twenty of them – each individually secured with a rubber band. I undid the first wad. The currency contained within was a mishmash of five-, ten- and twenty-euro notes. I counted out the twenty notes contained in the bundle. It came to a total of two hundred euros exactly. I unrolled a second wad. Another thirty notes totaling almost exactly one thousand euros. Another roll. The same set-up. By the time all the wads were open and spread flat on the linoleum, I saw that I was staring at four thousand euros.

Outside, light was smudging the night sky. I carefully re-rolled all the banknotes and put them back into the bag. Then I pushed it back down into the hole and covered it with the loose tile before tearing off a piece of duct tape to plug up the leaking pipe. That done, I stood up and made coffee and sat at my desk, staring out at the dirty window and realizing that I had a major moral dilemma on my hands.
Four thousand euros
. At my current rate of expenditure, it would buy me almost another four months in Paris. And I knew how easy it would be to say nothing about my find. Especially with Adnan locked away in Ankara.

But if I said nothing – and I got my additional four months – then what?

Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. Though I'd probably get away with it, I wouldn't let myself get away with it.

I finished the coffee. I grabbed my notepad and scribbled the following note:

Dear M. Sezer

I would like to make contact with Adnan's wife to enquire directly about his situation. Might you please have a postal or email address for her?

Amicalement

And I signed my name.

I went out and placed the note in the mailbox for
Sezer Confection
. Then I returned to my room and rolled down the blind and set my alarm clock and pulled off my clothes and finally fell into bed. I slept straight through until 1 p.m. When I awoke, I noticed a scrap of paper that had been slipped under my door. The writing was spindly, small:

Her name is Mme Z. Pafnuk. Her email is: [email protected]. She knows who you are and what happened.

The note was unsigned. Leave it to Monsieur Sezer to twist the knife at any given opportunity.

I went off to a movie. When I returned to my
quartier
after dusk, I stopped at the Internet café. There was one email awaiting me online:

Harry:

The librarian at Megan's school noticed that she was spending excessive amounts of time on the computer. When challenged as to what she was doing, she said that she was merely surfing the Net – but appeared very nervous. The librarian informed the school principal who called me, stating that he was worried she might be having an inappropriate correspondence with a stranger. When she got home, I insisted she tell me the truth. She refused, so I then demanded she open her AOL mailbox for me. That's when I discovered all your emails to her – which she had dutifully saved. Your attempts to wriggle your way back into her life – and play the caring father – are nothing short of disgusting. Just as your pathetic attempts to demonize me are contemptuous. You only have one person to blame for your disaster – and that is yourself.