What Men Say (29 page)

“It's not
his.
” Ignoring Loretta's yelp, Bridget began to gabble: “It was when they did the first scan, I didn't know they could tell the age of the fetus so accurately, they took one look and said I must have got the dates wrong, it was more mature than they expected. Remember that time in February when we split up?”

“Yes, but—”

“That's it, that's when it happened, I've been over the dates a hundred times.”

“But whose is it?” Loretta demanded unwisely. “Do you know?”

“Of
course
I know, I wasn't sleeping around. I went to a ghastly party in Headington and you know I don't normally drink that much but I was so depressed . . . I don't even remember leaving but next morning I woke up and there he was. I mean, I've never even fancied him. He
said
I invited him in, his wife was away at the time—”

“Who?
Who are you talking about?”

“Stephen.”

“Stephen Kaplan?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God.” Loretta breathed out, letting her body sag on the hotel bed. She wondered how Bridget had thought she could get away with it, given the difference in their physical types—Stephen small, dark and wiry, Sam tall with straight blond hair. Blame it on recessive genes? “Does he know? Stephen?”

Bridget choked. “He just
laughed
when I told him. You know that old joke, with my brains and your looks . . . I was still sort of hoping I'd made a mistake,
that he'd turn out to have used a condom or something. But he didn't.”

“God,” Loretta said again. She understood now why Bridget had insisted the baby would bear Sam's name—as though naming something had the power to alter its essence. “How did Sam find out? You didn't
tell
him?”

“Course not.” She added, bewilderingly: “It was the estate agent.”

“What?”

“The hospital sent a letter saying all the tests were negative and giving the new date when it—when the baby's due. Some idiot put the old address on the envelope, Woodstock Road, and it's been sitting there ever since. The agent sent it on last week, after she showed Professor Lai round. It came this morning. I was on my way to the hospital and Sam thought it might be urgent. He was waiting in for the plumber, one of the loos isn't flushing properly since the police messed about with the drains.”

“Where are you now?” asked Loretta, trying to assimilate all this information. “At home?”

Bridget was silent for a moment. Then she said in a small voice: “I'm at your place. I forgot to give you back the key. I didn't know where else to go.”

Loretta pictured the note she had left on the kitchen table, next to an unopened tin of Felix, for the neighbor who came in to feed the cat. She had scribbled down the date and time of her return flight, and the name and telephone number of her hotel, just in case of emergencies.

Bridget drew in her breath and said: “He hit me, Loretta. Well, slapped me.”

“Slapped
you? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I ran out to the car. He came after me, he banged on the window and shouted about a divorce.”

“What do
you
want?”

“I don't know. Oh, Loretta.”

“You're sure he didn't hurt you?”

Bridget sniffed. “My cheek hurt for a while but it's all right now.”

Loretta glanced at her watch. “Look, I'm going to ring the airline and see how soon I can get a flight. It's too late to get back tonight, but maybe tomorrow—”

“Thanks, Loretta. I didn't want to ask.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Bridget, you don't think he'll come after you?” A slap wasn't fatal, it hardly turned Sam into a wife-beater, but distance doubled her anxiety. She gave an involuntary glance at the bathroom door, as though someone might be lurking in there.

“I haven't turned the lights on at the front. I mean, I'm not scared of him or anything, but I thought I'd sleep in your room if that's all right.”

Loretta's stomach contracted. “There's a torch under my bed, you can use that on the stairs.” She did not add that it was heavy and made of rubber, purchased after a spate of burglaries in Southmoor Road. “Listen,” she said, “put the phone down and I'll try the airport. I'll call you back as soon as I can.”

“Can't I ring you? What if it's Sam?”

Loretta sighed and wished she had a more up-to-date answering machine, one with call-vetting. “I'll let it ring twice, put the phone down and ring again so you'll know it's me. All right?”

“All right.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“A slice of toast this morning. I'm not hungry.”

“Have a look in the freezer while I ring Charles de
Gaulle. What about Mrs. Mason? Does she know you're there?”

“Someone came in this evening to feed the cat. He was lying on your bed with me and he went racing off downstairs. I don't think she realized I was here.”

“I'd better speak to her as well. Go and get something to eat and I'll see about this flight.”

It took Loretta longer than she anticipated to get the right number for the airline, to find someone who could deal with her request and to establish that there was no way of swapping her return flight on Thursday afternoon for one the following morning. Instead she had to buy an expensive single ticket for Wednesday afternoon, paying by credit card and not thinking about how she would find the money when the bill arrived next month. The television was still flickering silently when she finished, the specially extended news bulletin having given way to an American film, and she turned it off before dialing her own number in Oxford.

“Bridget? It's all fixed. I should be home tomorrow evening about seven. Did you find something to eat?”

“Yes, it's in the oven. It'll be ready in five minutes.”

“Try not to worry. I mean, we'll sort something out.” This was well-meant but not entirely honest; Bridget had dealt a bitter blow to Sam's self-esteem, and Loretta did not think he was a very forgiving person.

“Loretta? I was watching the news before you rang and they've charged him, that bloke they arrested on Sunday. Apparently they found her case in his loft.”

“In his loft? They said that on television?”

“No, I knew already. A couple of reporters rang last night, Sam told me when he came to bed.” Bridget suddenly sounded very tired.

“And does he drive a blue van?”

“Yes. He works for a wine warehouse in Banbury.”

“Wine? I thought it was supposed to be something toxic.”

Bridget sighed. “There's an advert on the side, some wine called Explosif.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's Algerian or something.”

“Like Red Infuriator?”

“What's that?”

“They sometimes have it at Bottoms Up.”

“I suppose. Listen, Loretta, the timer's just gone off. Can I tell you the rest tomorrow?”

“Of course. Bridget?”

“Yes?”

“What happened at the hospital this morning? How's your blood pressure?”

“Down a bit, or it was.” She sounded close to tears again. “Don't worry, they've given me plenty more tablets.”

Loretta lifted the phone back onto the bedside table and went to the open window, gulping in the dusty night air. She felt queasy, her stomach churning as though she had eaten something bad even though she had gone to one of her favorite restaurants in Paris. Her room was on the top floor of the hotel, at the back, and if she stood to one side she could see the twin towers of Nôtre Dame; the view across the rooftops calmed her, gradually dispelling her mental image of Bridget eating by torchlight in Oxford. Lights were coming on in uncurtained windows and in the distance she could make out a fire escape at the back of an apartment block, its sharp contours blurring as it zigzagged down into darkness.

Somewhere a woman began to sing, imitation Piaf, every note a throbbing vibrato. It could be a recording
but Loretta thought not, picturing the singer moving from table to table in the outdoor café in the Rue des Grands Degrés, accompanying herself on a guitar. She listened for a while, motionless by the open window, until the song reached its melancholy conclusion and was received with a polite spatter of applause. A breeze ruffled the muslin curtains and she drew them across, bending to turn on the table lamp as she went to the chair where she had left her Filofax lying open.

Rose Earhart, the Australian friend she had arranged to meet for dinner the following evening, lived in a tiny flat off the Boulevard Rochechouart. Loretta dialed the number and was unsurprised when the phone was answered by another answering machine. Rose was self-employed, a film editor who worked for subsistence wages on low-budget films, and she had warned Loretta she was putting in long hours to finish a movie by a Senegalese director.

“Rose,” Loretta said tiredly, “I'm so sorry but something's come up and I have to go back to England.” She hesitated, wanting to say more but held back by feelings of protectiveness towards Bridget, even though the two women did not know each other. “It's too complicated to explain just now,” she added, “but I'll write when I get home. I'm really sorry about tomorrow night.” She pressed down the rest, dialed 0 for reception and began to explain, in halting French, that she would have to check out the following morning and would like to settle her bill—the French word escaped her for a moment—she would like to settle her
addition
as soon as she had finished breakfast.

The arrivals lounge at Terminal One was large and bare, with two fast-moving queues for EC passport-holders and a much slower one for other nationalities. Loretta
took out her passport and checked her watch anxiously, thinking she might just catch the 5:30 coach to Oxford if she was lucky. She joined the shortest queue, shuffling along behind an Italian woman with upswept blond hair and a chunky gold necklace until the line came to an unexpected halt. Loretta tutted, stepped sideways to see what the hold-up was and groaned when she saw the man behind the desk questioning two Asian men. They had old-style blue passports, the precursor of Loretta's shiny red one, and the younger man was turning out his pockets, searching for something. Loretta watched them uneasily, wondering whether she should volunteer to help.

“Your passport, please. May I see your passport?”

Loretta turned, not entirely certain that the remark had been addressed to her. The speaker was a man in a dark jacket, not in uniform but unquestionably official. Loretta stared at him and said: “Me? Why?”

He plucked the passport from her hand, scrutinized the unflattering picture taken in a photo booth and snapped it shut. “All right, Dr. Lawson, would you come this way?”

“Where to?” Loretta hung back, glancing at her fellow passengers in the hope of finding a sympathetic face, someone whose support she could enlist. She was out of luck: the blond Italian was flipping through the pages of
Oggi,
oblivious to what was going on, and the French couple behind her were preoccupied with a crying infant.

“There's nothing wrong with my passport,” Loretta protested, following the man in the jacket only because she wanted it back. “I mean, where are you taking me?”

He ignored her, leading the way to an unmarked door in the side of the terminal building. Rapping loudly on the door with one hand, he thrust the passport at her
with the other and walked away. The door swung inward and Loretta hesitated on the threshold, repelled by the gray, institutional furniture and the acrid fumes of cigarette smoke. Two black lines, roughly parallel, snaked across the floor, as though an unconscious body had recently been dragged across it; Loretta's fertile imagination immediately began filling in the details, a drug courier collapsing under interrogation as a condom packed with cocaine burst in her stomach, the chaos in the room as customs officers tried ineffectually to revive her. At that moment a door opened on the far side of the room to admit a man and a woman, both of them familiar, and any notion that she had been stopped on a customs matter evaporated from Loretta's head.

“Dr. Lawson.” The Inspector greeted her in a tired, cheerful voice, coming round the table to shake her hand. “Sorry to grab you like this but it is important. Good flight?”

Her grip was tense, contradicting the matter-of-factness of her greeting, and she had the restless, exhausted look of someone feeding on high levels of adrenaline. Loretta said nervously: “What is this? What's going on?”

The other detective coughed, turning his head aside, and Loretta recognized the young man she had seen on Sunday afternoon, outside the Ashmolean.

“Sit down, Dr. Lawson.” The policewoman gestured vaguely towards the chairs and waited for Loretta to move. “Please,” she added, pulling one out herself.

After a slight hesitation Loretta said, “OK,” and let her carpetbag slide to the floor. She perched on the edge of a chair, hardly aware how uncomfortable it was, and faced the Inspector across the table. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I've forgotten your name.”

“Queen,” said the policewoman. “Stella Queen. And this is DC Blady.”

Loretta nodded, feeling slightly less at a disadvantage. “OK,” she said again, “are you going to tell me what this is about?”

Instead of answering, Inspector Queen patted the pockets of her suit jacket and frowned. “My cigarettes . . .”

Blady produced a gold packet and she took one, looking interrogatively at Loretta. Loretta shook her head and she returned the packet to its owner, leaning sideways as he struck a match and lit her cigarette. She leaned back in her chair, visibly relaxing as she inhaled, and was silent for a moment.

“Just one thing,” she said unexpectedly, “before we start. Why did you change your flight from Paris, Dr. Lawson? I gather you weren't expected home till tomorrow?”