‘Fine. Well, I suppose there’s no point in me saying that I miss you, it hardly seems relevant to you.’
‘Of course it’s relevant, I really miss you too, Issy.’ And there it was. My first lie. Or rather, the first lie that I was blindingly aware of, like staring into the sun and seeing the worst part of yourself eclipsed. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who simply told someone what they wanted to hear, but I didn’t know what the truth was any more. Or maybe I did but I didn’t know what to do about it. I was stalling. Did that make me a bad person?
‘Your mother called.’
‘What? My mother called you?’
‘Yes, Henry. She is going to be my future mother-in-law. If we ever get married, that is.’
I gulped.
‘She said your father’s checked himself into rehab.’
I’m not sure how many seconds passed by.
‘Henry? Are you there?’
I cleared my throat. It felt thick with something I was determined to suppress.
‘Yep, I’m still here.’
‘Well, aren’t you going to say anything?’
This was typical of my mother – using someone else to deliver the news she should have told me herself. I hated her and pitied her at the same time. She was always hiding behind someone or something. Perhaps she was ashamed of the whole thing. I know I was.
‘What is there to say? Am I supposed to be impressed? He’ll sober up for a fortnight, maybe three weeks at a stretch, then just when we’re starting to believe that he’s changed, he won’t come home one night and that’ll be the last we hear of him for another few years. It’s always the same.’
‘Oh, okay. I’m sorry.’
I made a fist of my hand and smacked my forehead. What was I thinking, saying this stuff to her?
‘No, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be caught in the middle of this. I’ll have a word with Mum. And I’ll be home soon. I promise.’
I spent twenty minutes trying to schmooze the archivist at Princeton University on the phone. (My definition of schmoozing was leaning heavily on my British accent and hoping that made me sound important.) As it turned out, my schmoozing skills were either rusty from lack of use or highly overestimated. By me.
‘Sir, you are welcome to visit the reading rooms here. Simply make an appointment—’
‘Yes, I understand that, it’s just not fiscally feasible to make that kind of journey at the moment,’ I said for the third time. As much as I would have loved a trip to New York, I could hardly afford the bed and breakfast as it was. ‘Is there any chance you could, you know, have a little look through Sylvia Beach’s letters for any correspondence with an Opaline Carlisle?’
‘So you want me to drop everything I’m doing and do your research for you, is that correct, Mr Field?’
‘Now when you say it like that—’
‘As I said, you can submit an online request – like everybody else – to consult the special collections.’
‘Yes, but time is of the essence.’
‘It is, Mr Field. My time is of the essence, and I have spent as much as I am willing to on this phone call. Goodbye.’
I stared at my phone. ‘I think that went rather well,’ I told myself and grabbed my wallet off the bed.
When I got to the front gate of the university, I saw her.
‘Fancy meeting you here!’ I said and wished I’d thought of anything more original to say. Thankfully she didn’t notice. Her face looked paler than usual and her eyes were bloodshot. Had she been crying?
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Um, yeah. Fine.’
People were bumping into us as she stood motionless before the entrance.
‘Are you going in?’
Her eyes darted about nervously, then she shook her head. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, to be honest.’
‘Well, let’s just step out of the way,’ I suggested, hooking my arm through hers and guiding her to a quiet corner inside the quadrangle.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I think I’ve changed my mind,’ she said, looking around with wide eyes, like a trapped animal.
‘Can I help at all?’
It was clear that she wasn’t even listening to me. Her mind was elsewhere.
‘I thought my mother was ill. I can’t speak to her on the phone and my father won’t answer my calls, not since—’ She broke off.
Not since she left her abusive husband? What kind of family would do that?
‘I texted my brother. He said she was fine. Must’ve been a misunderstanding.’
‘That’s good news.’
I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she was clearly upset about it.
‘Fancy a walk? You’d be saving me from a boring afternoon in the library.’
This was a blatant lie. Libraries were anything but boring to me, but I knew it’s what people said sometimes, and to my relief she nodded. I didn’t really know where we were going, but sensed that it mattered little to her. As long as it was quiet. We wandered off the main thoroughfare and down the quieter streets with independent shops and honest cafés. I found the holy grail – a second-hand bookshop with a tea room upstairs called Tomes & Tea. I waited until she had a pot of tea and a scone with extra jam in front of her before I spoke again.
‘We’re friends, right?’
She nodded noncommittally, towering a spoon of light cream on top of her scone.
‘And friends can tell each other stuff. No judgement.’
‘Henry, I—’
‘But they can also not tell each other stuff but still lean on the other person. If they want to. So what I’m saying, in the most ham-fisted manner ever recorded in history is, whether you want to tell me or not, that’s up to you. But I’m here, either way.’
‘Until you find your manuscript.’
‘Yes, well …’ She could see right through me. I had nothing to offer her; even this olive branch of friendship was a flimsy substitute for how I really felt.
‘If we’re being honest, I can’t understand why you would propose to someone and then immediately hop on a flight to another country searching for something that probably doesn’t even exist.’
That was not the kind of honesty I had in mind.
‘You’re hardly in any position to lecture me on my love life,’ I flung back, then immediately regretted it. ‘I didn’t mean—’
Her chair screeched on the floor as she got up. Her eyes were burning with hurt and maybe even hatred. I hated myself. What a stupid comment. I ran down the stairs behind her, quietly asking her to wait without wanting to attract attention. Walking through the bookshop, she happened to step into an anteroom by mistake and it was just us two, alone.
‘Please, Martha, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking, it was a stupid throwaway comment.’
She was looking towards the ceiling, trying to stop the tears from falling.
‘It doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have said those things, I was being unkind.’
‘You were right,’ I said, stepping closer. ‘I did run away from Isabelle. Not consciously, perhaps, but I found a way to not be there. I don’t know,’ I said, raking my hand through my hair. ‘I thought it was what I wanted and then I just freaked out.’