You might remember me from some years ago. I am in the UK now and have a message to pass on to you from my mother Francesca.
Kind regards,
Carla
That will do. Polite and to the point. Personally, Carla didn’t share her mother’s hopes that Larry, or rather Tony, might miss her. But with any luck, he might agree to see Carla. If nothing else, she might be able to extract some guilt money from him.
Now for the next two tasks on her list. Registration at the college, near a station called Goodge Street, was far more successful. Everyone was so friendly! Lectures would start tomorrow. Did she have the reading list that had been emailed out during the summer? Yes? Good. There was a freshers’ drinks party tonight. It would be a way to meet people.
But, Carla told herself as she headed for the Tube again, she had more important things to do.
27
Lily
I wait until after the innocent verdict before making the call. The lorry driver case was tight. The other side had produced film of the ‘victim’: a happy, laughing teenager on her bike. It had almost swayed the women on the jury, most of whom had children.
But not quite.
‘Thank you.’ The lorry driver’s wife flings her arms around me outside the courtroom. ‘I thought we were going to lose at one point.’
So did I, although I’d never admit it. Drugs. Drink. It’s usually one or the other that leads to the cells or death. That memory of the Highgate pub still haunts my mind. It’s why I don’t touch alcohol any more.
‘We’re going to go out now and celebrate,’ says the lorry driver’s wife, glancing up adoringly at her husband. ‘Aren’t we, love?’
But the lorry driver, like me, is looking across the marble-floored foyer at the middle-aged couple who are silently holding each other. The woman’s head is against her husband’s chest. As if sensing our gaze, she turns and gives me such a look that I doubt the very existence of my soul.
‘I’m sorry,’ I want to say. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Most of all I’m sorry that your memory of your daughter has been tainted for ever. But justice has to be done.’
Then she walks up to me and I brace myself. This is an intelligent family. Much was made of this in court. The father is a professor. The mother spent her life bringing up her children. Luckily there are three more. But loss makes human beings into animals, as I have discovered.
The lorry driver’s wife gasps as an arc of spit hits me straight in the face. It’s directed not at the lorry driver but at me. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ hisses the bereaved mother.
I wipe the spittle off my cheek with the handkerchief that I keep especially for this purpose. It’s not the first time this has happened. And it won’t be the last. The woman’s husband is taking her away now, casting me baleful looks.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the lorry driver. His eyes are wet.
I shrug. ‘It’s all right.’
But it’s not. And we both know it. Thanks to an anonymous tip-off (you’d be surprised how often this happens), I was able to name the dealer supplying drugs to the teenager who had ridden her bike into the lorry driver’s path. If it weren’t for that, we couldn’t have established that the cyclist was a regular user, which in turn contributed to her degree of culpability.
Justice has been done. It doesn’t always look like you’d expect. But there is always a price to be paid.
I walk down the steps and into the bracing wind outside. It’s another world out here, I remind myself as I cross the road towards the park, narrowly avoiding a cyclist without a helmet. A world where I can choose to bin Tony’s piece of paper with Joe Thomas’s number on it.
Or ring it.
We have to have closure. It’s a phrase I hear again and again from my clients. Even if the verdict is guilty, they need to get rid of this sword hanging over their heads. I thought I’d got rid of mine. But every time I receive one of those birthday cards I realize I can’t escape. And now I have a phone number.
If I don’t ring, I will always wonder what he wanted to say. If I do, I am pandering to him. A woman walking past me drops her purse. Loose change spills out of it and I watch her pick up a clutch of silver. Why not? I take a fifty-pence piece out of my bag and throw it in the air. Heads I don’t ring. Tails I do.
Swiftly I catch it before it hits the damp grass.
It’s tails.
I should go back to the office. But I need time to think. My conversation with Joe has unsettled me. So I head for the National Portrait Gallery. It always calms me down to see other faces bearing the same kinds of expressions that I see on my own at different times.
Emotions don’t change through the centuries. Fear. Excitement. Apprehension. Guilt. And, when I snuggle up to Ed at night, relief that somehow we’re all still together. A family unit. Marriage has its ups and downs, my mother has always said. It’s true. It’s all too easy to throw in the towel. But I’m not going to allow Joe Thomas to do that to me.
I’m staring at a picture of Thomas Cromwell when my mobile goes. ‘Sorry,’ I mouth to a disapproving couple wearing matching scarves.
Swiftly, I head for the foyer, where a tourist is questioning the price of the exhibition ticket. ‘Where I live, our museums are free,’ I hear her saying.
I fumble in my bag, but my mobile is right at the bottom and I don’t get it out in time.
Missed call.
Ed.
My mouth goes dry. My husband never rings during my working day unless there’s an emergency with Tom. We haven’t had one for a while. It’s about time for another. It’s how it works.
Fingers shaking, I call him back.
28
Carla
Carla had been expecting something grand. Not like the Royal Academy, of course, which she was looking forward to seeing. But something that was, well, significant. Yet this narrow building was wedged between a shoe shop and a newsagent. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you might walk straight past. You even had to go down some narrow stone basement steps to find the entrance.
Then she stopped. Held her breath. All around her were walls. White walls. And on those walls was … her.
Carla, as she used to be.
The small Italian girl who always felt so different.
There was no mistaking her. Some of the paintings she recognized. But there were new ones too. Laughing. Frowning. Thinking. Dreaming. In big frames. Small frames. In bold strokes of red and raven black.
Oh my goodness! Silently, she gasped. There, in the corner, with a stick of charcoal in his hand, was Ed. Older than she’d remembered, with more lines on his forehead. He had glasses too, which she didn’t remember. But it was definitely him.
Sit still, Carla. Please. Think of something nice. Your new pink bike perhaps. Your friend at school. What is her name again? Maria! That’s right. His words came filtering back to her as she approached him.
‘Mr Macdonald?’
Reluctantly his head rose up to meet her gaze. She could see he was annoyed at being interrupted. His eyes hardened. Then they softened. He made to stand up but sat down again. ‘Carla?’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Little Carla? Is it really you?’
She’d been prepared for all kinds of reactions. But not this. Not this genuine look of pleasure. There was no shame. No embarrassment. No attempt to hide.
‘I wrote to you,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But you didn’t reply.’
Those bushy eyebrows rose. ‘Wrote to me? When?’
‘Last year. And then I wrote again.’
‘You addressed it to the gallery?’
‘Yes – no, not this one.’ Carla felt a tremor of doubt. ‘I sent the first to the flat and the second to a different gallery from this. Where you had an exhibition.’