She climbed off the window seat and ejected the tape, selecting another to replace it.
This one was labelled Mozart String Quintet No. 3 in C Major, K. 515, Carnegie Hall, 1985, and Elodie stood watching the preamble for a few minutes. The video had been shot documentary-style, starting with a biographical introduction to the five young string players – three women and two men – coming together in New York to perform together. As the narrator spoke about each one in turn, the footage showed her mother in a rehearsal room, laughing with the others while a violinist with dark curly hair joked around with his bow.
Elodie recognised him as her mother’s friend, the American violinist who had been driving the car from Bath to London on the day they were both killed. She remembered him vaguely: his family had come to dinner once or twice when they were visiting London from the States. And, of course, she’d seen his photograph in some of the newspaper articles published after the accident. There’d been a couple, too, amongst the boxes of loose photos at home that her father had never got around to sorting.
She watched him for a moment as the camera followed his movements, trying to decide how she felt about this man who had unwittingly taken her mother from her; who would remain linked to Lauren Adler forever by the circumstances of their deaths. But all she could think was how impossibly young he looked, and how much talent he possessed, and how right Mrs Berry was that life’s only nod to fairness was the blindness with which it dealt unfair blows. After all, he had left a young family behind, too.
Lauren Adler was onscreen now. It was true what all the newspaper columns said: she had been breathtaking. Elodie watched as the group performed in concert, jotting down notes as she considered whether the piece would be a good choice for the wedding ceremony and, if so, which portions they might decide to use.
When the tape ended, she started another.
She was halfway through her mother’s 1982 performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto Op. 85, with the London Symphony Orchestra, when her phone rang. Elodie glanced at the time. It was late, and her first instinct was to worry that something had happened to her dad, but it was only Pippa.
Elodie remembered the book launch at the publishing house in King’s Cross; her friend was probably on her way home now, wanting conversation on the walk.
Her thumb hesitated above the answer button, but the call rang out.
Elodie considered ringing back and then silenced the phone and tossed it onto the sofa.
A peal of laughter carried up from the street below and Elodie sighed.
Some of the disquiet from her meeting with Pippa earlier that day lingered. Elodie had felt possessive about the photo of the Victorian woman in the white dress, but it had been more than that. Now, sitting in a room filled with the melancholy strains of her mother’s cello lines, she knew that it was the way Pippa had asked about the recordings.
They’d already talked about the subject, back when Penelope had first suggested using clips of Lauren Adler in the wedding ceremony. Pippa had wondered then whether Elodie’s dad might not have reservations, given that he could barely talk about Elodie’s mother without welling up. Frankly, Elodie had held the same concerns, but it turned out he’d been quietly pleased, echoing Penelope’s sentiment that it was the next best thing to having her there.
Today, though, when Elodie had said as much, rather than dropping the subject and moving on, Pippa had pushed further, asking whether Elodie agreed.
Now, watching Lauren Adler as she brought the Elgar to its aching conclusion, Elodie wondered whether perhaps Pippa had her own reasons. Within their friendship Pippa had always occupied the more dynamic space, inviting attention where Elodie, naturally shy, preferred to play the support act; maybe in this one instance, when Elodie could lay claim to an extraordinary parent, Pippa resented the intrusion?
Even as the thought occurred to her, Elodie was ashamed of it. Pippa was a good friend who was even now busy designing and making Elodie’s wedding dress. She had never done anything to suggest that she begrudged Elodie her parentage. In fact, she was one of the few people who’d never seemed particularly interested in Lauren Adler. Elodie was used to people, when they learned of the connection, tripping over themselves to ask questions, almost as if from Elodie they could absorb some of the talent and tragedy that had surrounded Lauren Adler. But not Pippa. Although over the years she’d asked plenty about Elodie’s mother – whether Elodie missed her, whether she remembered much from before her mother died – her interest had been limited to Lauren Adler’s maternal role. It was as if the music and fame, though interesting enough, were inconsequential in all the ways that mattered.
The Elgar recording ended and Elodie switched off the TV.
Without Alastair there to insist on a ‘proper weekend lie-in’, she planned to get up early and take a long walk east along the river. She wanted to get to her great-uncle Tip before his shop opened.
She showered and climbed into bed, closing her eyes and willing herself to sleep.
The night was still warm and she was restless. Free-floating anxiety circled in the air above her like a mosquito looking to land a sting.
Elodie turned and tossed and then turned again.
She thought of Mrs Berry and her husband, Tomas, and wondered if it was true that the love of one person – and such a tiny person as Mrs Berry, five feet tall on a good day and as wiry as they come – was comfort enough to alleviate another person’s fears.
Elodie was frightened of so many things. Did it take time, she wondered, for the certainty of another person’s love to accumulate such power? Would she discover, somewhere down the track, that the knowledge of Alastair’s love had made her fearless?
Did he love her that way? How was she to know?
Her father had certainly loved her mother that way, but rather than make him brave, the loss of her had made him timid. Edward Radcliffe, too, had loved with a depth that made him vulnerable. I love her, I love her, I love her, and if I cannot have her I will surely go mad, for when I am not with her I fear—
Her. The woman in the photograph came to Elodie’s mind. But, no, that was her own obsession. There was nothing to link the woman in the white dress to Radcliffe; it had turned up in his satchel, certainly, but the photo was in a frame that had belonged to James Stratton. No, Radcliffe had been writing about Frances Brown, the fiancée whose death, it was well known, had driven him to his own demise.
If I cannot have her … Elodie rolled over onto her back. It was an odd thing to write about a woman to whom he was engaged. Surely the very act of engagement meant the opposite? She was already his.
Unless he wrote the message after Frances’s death, when he was facing the same abyss of absence that had confronted her own father. Is that when Radcliffe had drawn the house, too? Was it a real house? Had he stayed there after his fiancée’s death – to recuperate, perhaps?
Elodie’s thoughts swarmed, dark feathered birds circling closer and closer.
Her father, her mother, the wedding, the woman in the photo, the house in the sketch, Edward Radcliffe and his fiancée, Mrs Berry and her husband, the little German boy alone on the doorstep; life, fear, the inevitability of death …
Elodie caught herself entering the dreaded night-time thought-loop and stopped.
She pushed back her sheet and slid out of bed. She’d been down this road enough times to know that she was as far away from sleep as one could be. She might as well do something useful.
The windows were still open and the sounds of the nocturnal city were a familiar comfort. Across the road, all was in darkness.
Elodie turned on a lamp and made a cup of tea.