Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Beatrice waited and waited for Orla to say something more about her snooping in the cellar. On the first morning, after Orla had come into her room to speak to her about it, she came downstairs to find Orla sitting at the kitchen table, a few sheets of paper filled with dense, spidery handwriting in front of her and Maud the cat perched contentedly on her lap, and Beatrice’s stomach lurched so violently with fear she thought she might be sick.
Now that Orla had had time to think about what Beatrice had done, she’d ask her to leave for sure.
‘Good morning,’ she managed, her mouth dry and her hands clasped behind her back.
Orla looked up at her serenely. ‘Good morning. Cup of tea?’
‘I’m okay, thanks.’ Confusion and relief washed over Beatrice in equal measures. ‘I have to go to work. I had the afternoon off yesterday, but I’m back in today.’
‘Were you ill? I noticed you were in your room all evening.’
Beatrice shook her head, feeling a treacherous blush creep up her neck and over her face. ‘I’m fine. It was – Parker, the little girl, had to be taken to hospital.’
She found herself spilling out the whole story. Orla listened in silence, her head on one side, rolling her pen from side to side over the pages she’d been writing on. Beatrice tried not to look too closely at them.
‘That must have given you quite a scare,’ she said, when Beatrice had finished. ‘Is the child all right now?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘And what about you?’ Orla’s eyes rested searchingly on Beatrice’s face.
Maybe I could say that’s what I was doing – the shock kept me awake and then I thought I heard something down there.
But there was something about Orla’s steady gaze that told Beatrice she’d only be digging herself deeper if she tried that.
Instead, she heard herself saying, ‘I’ll be okay. It’s strange though. I never realised how… how fond I’ve got of her. Of both the kids. I was quite calm at the time, but afterwards…’
‘A delayed reaction. It’s often the way. Maybe take it easy for a few days. Make sure you get plenty of rest.’
‘Yes, I will. Thanks, Orla.’
More confused than ever, Beatrice picked up her bag and left. Had her unintentional display of vulnerability saved her? Or were those words – Make sure you get plenty of rest – a warning of some kind? Were the pages she’d seen Orla writing on – A diary? A letter? – some sort of trap intended to catch her out prying again, this time red-handed?
Beatrice had no idea.
All week she lived with a creeping dread, worse than waiting for a dentist appointment because this had no fixed time or date. She could step, unsuspecting, into an ambush at any moment.
When the letter she had been expecting finally arrived, her mouth went dry with fear. There it was, on the kitchen table, placed neatly on top of the pile of post that included leaflets from local Indian restaurants, a flyer from a gutter-clearing company and several bills for Orla. Furtively, her heart pounding, Beatrice shoved it into her purse.
If Orla had seen it, surely now she would say something.
Only Orla didn’t pounce or ambush Beatrice. She treated her just the same as she always had, with the exception of those occasional long, searching stares which made Beatrice feel as if Orla was rummaging around inside her head the same way she’d rummaged through Orla’s paintings. That, and a lock appeared on the door leading to the cellar one evening, the hasp surrounded by a dusting of fresh wood shavings, a bright new brass padlock securing it.
That settled it. Orla knew that Beatrice didn’t plan to abandon her investigations, so she’d taken steps to prevent her.
But why wasn’t she saying anything?
As the days passed, Beatrice’s sense of anxiety heightened, but as a week went by and then a weekend, when she was off work and in the house most of the day, alone with Orla because Livvie and Luke were out and she couldn’t, somehow, force herself to go out and do any of the London sightseeing she’d promised herself and her mother she would, it ebbed.
If Orla was going to ask her to leave, she would surely have done so by now.
So Beatrice went to work on the Monday morning feeling – not relieved, exactly, but as if a storm cloud had lifted without any rain having fallen. The cloud was still out there somewhere, the deluge might still come, but for now she was safe.
Except she still hadn’t found the courage to open the letter. It was still there in her purse, sealed, the official logo on the envelope sending her heart pounding whenever she looked at it.
She also found herself approaching a new week of work with a sense of excitement and delight she’d never felt before. This could be the week when Slate signed his artwork without the ‘S’ being written backwards. It might be the week when Parker cracked putting on a T-shirt by herself. Now, when she stepped out of the elevator into the apartment, the day ahead felt replete with possibility, and she found herself dropping to her knees and pulling both the children into a hug when they came running to greet her.
‘You’re looking better, Bibi,’ Frances observed, turning away from the remains of her and the children’s breakfast on the kitchen island. ‘Not as tired as you were a while ago. Good weekend?’
‘Yes, thank you. I got plenty of rest.’
‘And what are you planning to get up to today?’
Beatrice knew her employer’s mind was already on her own working day, and that whatever she answered, the question would be repeated in the evening: And what did you get up to today?
But she said, ‘I thought we could go to the new messy play session at the SureStart place this morning. And then maybe the park in the afternoon. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, kids?’
‘I want to go to the library,’ Slate said.
‘Do you now, my little bookworm?’ Frances brushed a manicured hand over her son’s head.
‘I want to see Neil. Neil tells the best stories.’
‘Are you sure?’ Beatrice asked. ‘It’s going to be sunny. We could go on the slides in the park.’
‘Stories,’ Slate insisted.
‘Then Bibi will take you to the library, honey.’ Frances kissed each of her children on the head then stepped past Beatrice into the elevator. ‘Won’t you?’
‘Sure,’ Beatrice agreed. ‘But first we need to get you two dressed.’
With any luck, she thought, Slate would have forgotten all about the library by the time that had happened. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go – the prospect of sitting quietly by herself while someone else occupied the kids still had its appeal. But she knew there was no point looking through the newspaper archives any more – there was nothing more for her to find there.
And Neil – for some reason she couldn’t quite name, she felt awkward about the prospect of seeing him.
Slate didn’t forget. After persuading them to spend the morning in the park and then wrestling with them over their lunches, Beatrice – unable to face disappointing him – reluctantly gave in. She soon found herself sitting cross-legged on the fringes of the circle of children while Neil, glove puppets on both his hands, launched into an improbable tale about a lonely little boy who was befriended by a dragon.
He isn’t a good-looking guy , she thought – nothing like the dark-haired, chiselled-featured boys she’d dated in college. But there was something cute about the total lack of inhibition with which he engaged with the children, the way his goofy grin flashed out when they laughed at the funny parts of the story, the way he held their attention, fascinated, through every pause.
‘And so Ferdinand the dragon went to school every day with Jeremy,’ he concluded, ‘and soon, he found he had lots of friends. All of the other boys and girls wanted to play with him and his dragon, and Jeremy didn’t feel lonely any more. But the funny thing was, none of the teachers ever asked him why he came to school riding on the back of a dragon.’
Neil got to his feet, laughing and shaking his head as the children crowded round him pleading for another story. Beatrice hung back, waiting for Parker and Slate to give up and accept that it was time for them to leave.
But Neil brought them over to her.
‘That story was adorable,’ she said. ‘You had them in the palm of your hand. Did you make it up yourself?’
‘I guess.’ Neil smiled. ‘My mum used to make up stories for me when I was a kid and I kind of got the taste for it.’
Beatrice thought of the story her father used to tell her at bedtime. Somehow, the memory no longer brought the nostalgic comfort it once had.
‘Anyway, how’s it going?’ he asked. ‘Have you found out anything more? About the house?’
Beatrice’s hand moved involuntarily towards her purse. Her feelings of awkwardness – shyness, almost – about Neil had dissipated now she’d seen him behaving so naturally around the kids, greeting her so casually. She might as well open the letter now – if its contents were confusing, Neil could help her understand. And, more importantly, she could dispose of it here, in the public library, in the large cardboard bin with the recycling logo on its side. It would be safer here than in Frances and Peter’s apartment, and certainly safer than in the house on Damask Square.
‘I got the deeds to the house.’ Her words came out in a rush. ‘I sent off to the Land Registry for them. Apparently anyone can – it doesn’t have to be your house or anything. You just pay a fee and they send them.’
‘Wow. And what did they say?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ve got them right here.’
She took out the envelope and showed him.
‘Cool. So are you going to open it, or what?’
Now that the moment was upon her, Beatrice found it quite natural to slip her thumb into the corner of the envelope and slide it across, the paper tearing more or less evenly along its fold.
As easy as opening an envelope , she thought.
She took out the paper inside and looked at it. It was a photocopy, the blank areas pale grey and the printed ones darker, as if the original document had been yellowing or its print faded with age, or both.
Neil leaned in close to her shoulder and they both looked at it.
‘The house hasn’t been sold since 1938,’ Neil said. ‘So your landlady…’
‘Her grandmother didn’t buy it from the Doyles. She can’t have done. She must be…’
Even though it was the information she’d been hoping for, now that it was there in front of her, she felt a sick sense of something like dread.
‘What are you going to do?’ Neil asked. ‘Will you ask her if she’s your birth mother?’
Beatrice’s mouth was dry. ‘I can’t.’
‘I get that. It’s quite the conversation to have.’
‘And we… we had an argument. Things aren’t great between us. And anyway – I can’t be sure. Not sure sure. I can’t confront her if I’m not sure. She might say it isn’t true. I’ll have to think about it.’
‘Bibi?’ Parker appeared at Beatrice’s side, her hand tugging at her skirt. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Sorry, sweetie. We’ll get you home.’ She turned back to Neil. ‘I should get going.’
‘Before you go.’ Neil had pulled the puppets off his hands and was looking down at them. ‘I was going to ring you, but now you’re here, I might as well…’
‘Might as well what?’ Beatrice asked.
All the confidence he’d shown in front of twenty boisterous children a few minutes ago seemed to have deserted him.
‘Ask you in person. Ask you whether you’d like to go for a drink sometime.’
‘A drink? With you?’
‘Or a movie. Or a coffee or whatever. See an art exhibition somewhere.’ He looked up from the puppets, met Beatrice’s eyes, then looked down again.
‘Like a date?’ Beatrice asked, and he nodded.
Beatrice thought again of her mother’s bedtime story: the same every time, apart from the minor differences and embellishments. Clearly, Neil’s mom hadn’t needed to tell just the one story, over and over again. She’d been able to give free rein to her creativity, knowing that her son had a family that was truly his.
Neil had roots: the grandfather he visited so often that he knew the ins and outs of his relationships with his neighbours. The Shabbat dinners the family no doubt had together every Friday. The lack of self-consciousness with which he was able to entertain a group of kids.
Beatrice longed for those things. All the material possessions her parents had given her, all the love they’d lavished on her, would never make up for that. And while Neil gave freely of himself, she was still learning who she herself might be.
Not Beatrice – the other girl. Aisling. The one who might have been Orla’s daughter, except Orla hadn’t wanted her and had given her away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not really looking to date anyone right now.’
She watched his face fall, then recover quickly. ‘No worries. It was worth a try.’
‘But maybe we could have lunch or something anyway,’ she added hastily. ‘You know, as friends.’
‘I’d like that,’ Neil replied. ‘I’ll ring you.’
Beatrice said goodbye and hurried away with the children. Later, while she cooked their dinner, her thoughts kept returning to him. Had she made a mistake, rebuffing him so abruptly? But he’d said he’d call her anyway. The thought made her smile, and she found herself hoping very much that he would.