15 A Terrace on the Watergate Walk #2
“‘Things got complicated after nine a.m. Passengers boarding the bus said there had been explosions in the Underground. There had been a bomb at Aldgate, Edgware Road, and another at Russell Square. People boarded and repeated things they’d heard on the radio or from others. Nobody knew anything for sure. The rush-hour confusion kept growing, minute by minute, and soon the police cut off streets, cordoned off others, and made us change our route. The 30 never goes up Upper Woburn Place, but they weren’t letting anyone through King’s Cross.
The traffic jam was monumental. The buses trapped each other in a convoy.
One 30 bus behind another, just inches apart.
At Euston we picked up loads of disoriented and frightened people with no idea where we were going.
They just wanted to get as far away from the Underground as possible. ’
“‘When we reached Tavistock Square, by the British Medical Association, I was stopped, and suddenly, hell opened up right in front of me. The bus ahead of mine, another 30 identical to the one I was driving, exploded. The blast tore the entire roof off in one go. Half the bus, the rear section, simply vanished. The bus, the people on it, the blue seats—everything. Everyone and everything went flying right in front of me. It shot up into the air in a single second and disintegrated. You can’t imagine what that’s like.
You can’t grasp things, until you’re inside the nightmare. ’
“I didn’t know what to say.
“‘I promise you that since that day in 2005, there hasn’t been a single day I haven’t thought about it, not a single night I haven’t woken with a jolt like everything was exploding again.’
“‘I’m so sorry, Mark. I’m speechless.’ I touched his forearm.
“‘Tell Paulina that the Grangers always escape by the skin of our teeth. But this time I almost wish I’d . . . Anyone who’s seen hell is trapped there. You can’t get out.’
“‘I’m so sorry. Now I understand why you retired early.’
“‘I spent a few days hospitalized, in shock. Then they discharged me, but it wasn’t long before I was declared permanently unfit for work. Post-traumatic stress disorder, they said. In plain terms: Your life is fucked forever.’
“‘I’m truly sorry. Truly, Mark.’
“‘They got on the bus to flee the Underground and died anyway. Life is so brutal. Chance is so cruel.’
“‘It was al-Qaeda, if I remember correctly?’
“‘The man who blew himself up with his backpack was eighteen. Between the four suicide bombers, fifty-two people were killed. In less than an hour, it was over. Anyone who’s seen hell can’t get out. No one can convince me otherwise.’
“Mark was a spent man. And there I was over a business card, a book, a question that, in that moment, almost seemed ridiculous . . . I felt like an idiot. But since I was there, having found him and gotten him to meet me, I tried to steer the conversation back. You know, Gina, I’ve always been a prudent man.
“‘According to what Paulina says, you were a big reader.’
“‘Yes, that’s true. Good memory . . .’ He smiled for the first time, with the pride of a seducer who still carries that inside him somewhere. ‘I hope she remembers something else about me.’
“‘Now, Mark, I don’t know if you feel like picking up a book?’
“‘Feel like it? Pfft. I don’t feel like anything. What I do have now is time. Yes, I try. I read sometimes. I pick up a book thinking it’ll distract me, but I get tired of it right away.
I leave everything half unread. The reality I experienced was so brutal that no story can stand comparison. Everything slips through my fingers.’
“‘You’re not in the mood, I understand. Can I tell you what Paulina is asking to see if you remember?’
“‘Go ahead.’
“‘You came to Barcelona with one of Paulina’s business cards . . .’
“‘Correct.’
“‘A card you found inside a book . . .’
“‘And it said “Call me.” on it in French.’
“‘Appelle-moi, exactly. The question is actually twofold. Do you remember which bookshop you bought the book in?’
“‘And what’s the second?’
“‘Do you remember which book you found the business card inside?’
“‘I might still be useful to someone here for once. Back then I bought a lot of books, very close to here. Either I went to the secondhand booksellers in Covent Garden, or if I was looking for something new or a specific novel, I went farther up, to Charing Cross. Do you know the bookstore Foyles?’
“‘I passed it on the way here.’
“‘There’s a basement downstairs with a few armchairs where you can sit and read. That’s where I picked up a novel by John Fowles and sat down to read it.
Sometimes I read the first chapter and if I liked it, I took it home.
And either I was sitting there, or maybe I was already at home, and Paulina’s business card fell out from somewhere between the pages. I took it as a sign.’
“‘A novel by John Fowles?’
“‘The Collector. Have you read it?’
“‘No, no. Lawyers read denser books.’ I felt the absurd need to apologize. ‘Is it any good?’
“‘It’s really good. It’s the one about a young guy from London, an introverted, ultra-shy boy who turns out to be a sex maniac who kidnaps a student. But when he has her locked up at his house, he treats her sweetly. It’s what they call a psychological thriller, but it’s very well written.’
“‘And what does the protagonist collect?’
“‘I didn’t say? Butterflies. He collects butterflies.’”
Her ear glued to the phone, Gina let Biel tell her about the whole investigation and his meeting with that Mark who was reduced to wreckage, a collateral victim of the worst attack on British soil since World War II.
She felt deep pity for that man who had appeared like an angel the second she was leaving home after a fight with her father.
Suddenly, on hearing the magic word, she had to interrupt her friend’s exaggerated lawyerly narration.
“Don’t you see, Biel? Do you remember what Jean-Pierre said to my mother in the first letter? While at dinner, she asks him why he collected butterfly books. Jean-Pierre didn’t collect butterflies. He collected books about butterflies.”
“Why do you think I called you euphoric, Gina?”
“And where did my mother put the business card? Bravo, Biel. That really is a big clue. Do you think my mother went to Foyles in London and slipped her cards into the butterfly books?”
“Isn’t that love? A kind of madness?”
“But what if it wasn’t only in London? My father told me she traveled a lot in her last years.”
“Can you imagine?”
Biel hung up, satisfied. She owes me one, he thought.
And he was convinced that sooner or later he’d collect in the way he liked best. He dreamed of experiencing, if only once more, one of Gina’s silent orgasms. She, on the other hand, exhilarated by the discovery, no longer thought about Biel or poor Mark Granger.
From that moment on, she had only one goal.
She had to meet him one way or another. She had to find Jean-Pierre.