Mazarine Read online

  Between planes taking off and landing, there was hushed quiet among the cactuses. The smokers talked in low voices. A barman was serving drinks from a thatched-roof shack, and I ordered an unwise glass of wine, after which I dozed, drugged by the astonishing heat, before waking abruptly, stumbling down and consulting the screens, to find that my plane was already boarding at the furthest gate. I ran for it, scrambled into the queue, dropping my passport, apologising, found my seat and settled in for the next round, the stunned hours, the dizzy curve of the earth, dreams of Patrick and Maya.

  From the Heathrow Express I watched houses and streets flash by in the hot dark noon, the parks vivid green under the black skies of a summer thunderstorm that had delayed my flight, obliging the plane to queue in a holding pattern, not that this was unexpected, since flying into London often ended in this dreamy interlude, watching the great city turn below like a wheel, finally arrived (after twenty-eight hours!) yet not allowed to come down.

  The thunderstorm had rolled away when I arrived at Paddington Station. I took the Tube to Russell Square, coming up into strong sunshine, and towed my suitcase through the crowds, heading for Mecklenburgh Square.

  I found the halls of residence Mazarine had recommended, where I’d made a reservation, and checked in at a reception decorated in institutional brown panelling, like a high school office. From there I was directed to a flat in a brick building overlooking Lamb’s Conduit Street. A plaque on the door read Normanby Flat.

  The Normanby was a top-floor apartment consisting of a cramped sitting room, a bedroom with a small double bed, a bathroom and kitchen, and a spacious roof terrace. Two separate doors opened from the flat onto the terrace, and the whole space, although right under the roof, was cooled by the breeze. The terrace was completely secure, so the doors could be left open all night.

  Mazarine had been right; it was much better than a hotel room. Although small and minimally furnished, it was comfortable and safe, not to mention cheap — a real bolt-hole right in the centre of the city.

  I went out on the terrace, enjoying the heat after the rainy winter months in Auckland. I was in a daze, jet-lagged, disorientated, floating on lack of sleep. When it got too hot I retreated inside and flopped down on the bed. The curtain billowed in the breeze, the city gave off a low hum, and I had a moment of happiness. To arrive in this strange place was a relief; I was cut loose, drifting, luxuriously far from the problems back home. Safe from Nick.

  Dozing, I wondered if I’d left the country solely because I wanted to find Maya and make sure she was okay, or whether it was also because I wanted to write my first novel, and had chosen to interpret events — her failure to communicate, her strangely uncharacteristic email, the disappearance of Joe and his brother — in dramatic terms to justify flying here and writing about what I found.

  No, I thought, coming fully awake, it was wishful thinking to suppose I’d made it all up, that I was ‘fictionalising’. My girl had not contacted me since her last odd message and, as far as I knew, Mazarine had heard nothing from her sons. Now I was disconcerted: what a frivolous idea, and how wrong it was to feel happy when I still didn’t know where Maya was. I blamed the jet lag, which always left one slightly unhinged.

  I settled myself at the table on the roof terrace to ring Gene Jacobs and, reaching his voicemail, left a message. A moment of blankness, looking into the brown haze on the horizon, the distant city buildings shimmering in the hot air. The building site below me in Lamb’s Conduit Street gave off a steady vibration, rocking the ground. I stretched out my limbs, soaking up heat like a lizard.

  My phone started to buzz and turn itself around on the tabletop; Gene was calling.

  He was on a rock, he reported, on a beach somewhere around the coast from Split. He faded in and out a good deal, shouting happily about the beauty and the heat, and seemed so unfocused I wondered if he was drunk.

  ‘I’m in London,’ I shouted. ‘I was hoping we could catch up.’

  ‘Oh god, lovely, as soon as I’m back. Fantastic here. I’ve met someone.’

  I said awkwardly, ‘I can’t wait to see Maya. She’s still out of town.’

  His breath rasped in my ear. ‘Most people … course, holidays. Um, we’ll get together.’ He rambled about his new business; having left his job as an editor at Arlington Books, he was setting himself up as a literary agent. His voice faded, lost in crackle, returned.

  ‘Gene? Hello? Who’s the person Maya works with most at Arlington?’

  His tiny voice came back. ‘You mean Daniel. Daniel Gray. He and Maya work for Aiden, well they did, before he, you know. Now I suppose they work directly for Tristan, or Lettice or …’

  ‘Daniel Gray, I remember him. Do you have a phone number for him?’

  ‘Oh sure, I’ll text you his number, and his email will be on the website. Nice guy. He and Maya—’ He said something I didn’t catch.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Sorry, he and Maya, they—’

  ‘If you could text his number, that’d be great,’ I said, but he was gone.

  Opening my laptop, I logged on to the Normanby free wifi, and looked up Daniel Gray’s picture on the Arlington website: a lean face, keen eyes, not quite handsome but alert and good-humoured, a pleasing look. I took note of his tan, even teeth and wavy hair. Had Maya found a replacement for Joe, an older man?

  How things had changed. Before the internet, I would have known Maya’s street address as the place to post my letters, and would have gone straight there to pester her flatmates and look in her room for clues, but she and Joe had recently moved flats, and while I knew they’d moved to Queen’s Park, I’d had to ask her friends for the address, and they didn’t yet know it. Nor did that bother them. For her New Zealand friends, a street address was unnecessary, irrelevant. It was online addresses and phone numbers that one needed, and so it was possible, in fact it was the norm, to be closely connected at all times and yet have no idea where anyone was physically located.

  Occasionally my conversations with Maya had touched on this subject, and I’d found it disturbing. She’d seemed at times to blur, or subtly to redefine, the definition of ‘contact’, to believe that you could know and even love a person without being physically present and near, able to touch, hear, smell. For Maya, ‘being there’ online was the same as ‘being there’ in person. It made me wonder, were we humans evolving into something new, separate from our old selves?

  I knew this: if I made contact with Maya in the next few days, even if she emailed and we Skyped and talked on the phone it would not be enough. I needed to be in the same room with her, to put my arms around her. My animal self demanded it.

  Being there. It reminded me of the Judge’s emails, rebuking me. When I’d told him, a few years into the silent treatment, that I’d finally realised the extent of my mother’s coldness, he wrote, flatly denying it. ‘Inez has always been there for you.’

  The Judge had presided over so many well-known cases (including the famous Baxter Inquiry and the Sinclair Royal Commission) he’d become a figure of history. He had an eye to posterity, what with being so venerable. He was aware that in the future there could be a stack of his letters collected and archived. In addition, about five years ago, a journalist had made inquiries, wanting to write a biography. The Judge had strung him along for a while before deciding he wanted to write his own book, but the journalist hadn’t given up on the idea, and meanwhile, it seemed to me, the Judge’s communications had taken on an eerily self-conscious quality.

  When Inez’s treatment had finally driven me out of denial, and I’d started trying to understand the family dynamic, I’d thought of the Judge as a neutral figure, if not an ally, given our good relationship and the fact that, in my opinion, he was considerably saner than Inez. But I realised, rather belatedly, that his only interest was in airbrushing my quest for the truth out of existence. Looking back at them, it’s clear: his emails paint me as bafflingly crazy, and Inez as a saint.

/>   It was a kind of trap. I wrote to him frankly, indignantly; I appealed to him, I made my case, and received in return messages that floored me, so thoroughly did they falsify, soothe with a hint of iron, and attempt, with the odd flash of cold anger, to shut me down. He accused me of madness; he denied my reality. Inez went out of her way to speak to me, she was a paragon, a wonderful mother; she was warm, kind, etcetera.

  Clichés that he’d never normally use were a giveaway. He was squeamish about ‘personal matters’ and used terms like ‘being there’ for someone only with an eye to their effect, and with a tiny grimace of distaste only discernible to those who knew him. He once went so far as to tell me in an email (was there, deep down in his soul, a little black gnome blackly laughing at this?) that Inez had constantly ‘reached out’ to me. The irony was, the only other person who would clearly detect the false note was Inez.

  I finally understood that he wasn’t addressing me in his emails, well, he was, but he was communicating with an eye to the world, portraying himself as a kindly, sane and reasonable man dealing with a thoroughly irrational daughter. By the time I’d realised what he was doing, the picture of me had been painted; the record had been made. He would keep his own letters, not my replies; in his file there would be no evidence of my protests, my reasoned arguments, my refutations. He had deftly created a portrait of me — an unflattering one — and a second, positive one of himself and Inez.

  He went furthest when he wrote that Inez, who was so timid and sensitive, ‘feared’ me. That she feared my ‘anger’.

  Could I go so far as to call it gas lighting? Gas lighting: a form of domestic terrorism where you deny a person’s reality and convince them and the world that they’re crazy.

  I suppose it didn’t matter, that the Judge, my own adoptive father, whom I’d adored, saw fit to throw me to the wolves …

  It wasn’t as if I could do anything about it.

  Anyway.

  The jet lag and heat made me lightheaded. After a hot shower and two cups of instant coffee, I was about to start emailing when I saw that Gene had texted me a cellphone number, so I opened my diary, scanned the notes to self I’d written on the plane, worked my face into a friendly expression, and rang Daniel Gray.

  An hour later I was standing on his steps, looking at the pretty pub on the corner, the handsome houses, the pleasant tree-lined street leading to the Heath, along which a couple were walking arm in arm. The man, in coloured sunglasses and with a satanic little beard, resembled Ricky Gervais, although perhaps it was just the jet lag that made me think so, or was it that one part of my mind was searching ceaselessly among strangers for a face, any face, that was familiar?

  The door opened and Daniel Gray appeared, holding a toddler on his hip, turning back to talk to someone in the hall.

  I gestured at the street. ‘That looked like—’

  He leaned around the door, manoeuvring the child in his arms. ‘Oh, Ricky Gervais? Mm. He lives around the corner, we see him all the time.’ He offered his hand. ‘How are you? Lovely to see you. Come in. Please excuse the chaos.’

  I followed him down the hall, and into a ground-floor flat with a bright living space that opened onto a garden. He set the child down, steadying her on her feet.

  ‘This is my daughter, Lily. Say hello, Lily. And out there is Rufus.’

  A little boy was wedged midway on a plastic slide and making his way down in jerks, kicking with his feet.

  Daniel sighed and ruffled his curly hair, making it stand on end. ‘Um. They’re twins.’

  ‘Twins. How lovely.’

  ‘They’ve just turned two. They are lovely, but they’re very hard work. D’you know, these days when I hear of people having a new baby, I don’t say “How lovely”, I say, “Are you okay? Are you coping?”’

  ‘I know what you mean. It gets easier.’

  ‘This is my parenting day. I’m at Arlington four days a week, then they’re at daycare.’

  ‘You’re not on holiday.’

  ‘I will be. Matthew, my partner, and I are going to Ibiza; we’re going to leave the kids with my parents. I can’t wait. Look, do you fancy a walk? Only if I don’t take them out to the Heath, they start to go really feral.’

  I stood about, tripping over toys and pretending to help while he got the toddlers organised and out on the street, where he unfolded a twin stroller and persuaded them to climb into it. We squeaked along the road into a wooded part of the Heath, where he let them loose and they capered around collecting stones and flowers. It was cool and pleasant under the trees, the sunlight filtering down through thick leaves.

  We came to a pond, where dogs were plunging about fetching sticks.

  I always forget how beautiful London is in summer.

  ‘Anyway, go on,’ I said.

  He was telling me about the kids. He wasn’t Maya’s replacement for Joe; he’d come out since I’d last met him years ago, had left his wife, whom I dimly remembered as glamorous, and now had a husband. They’d produced their twins, who were their own biological children, using an egg donor and an American surrogate. The girl was Daniel’s child, the boy was the child of his partner; this they knew because they’d had them DNA-tested in the course of bringing them back from the US and getting them British passports.

  I watched them toddling about in their sun hats, little marvels of modern engineering.

  ‘Maya’s still out of town, of course,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, she went to Paris with her boyfriend — where was she going after that? South of France? I tried to persuade her to go to Ibiza and take lots of drugs, that’s what we’re — oh, sorry, I’m talking to her mum.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘She’s been in Istanbul actually,’ I said.

  ‘Oh right, lovely.’

  ‘Have you been to her new flat?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure where it is.’

  ‘So, you’re both due back at work at the same time?’

  ‘Last week of August, me. Maya decided to take longer. After Aiden died, the place was chaotic. People were upset; it felt a bit unstable. Everyone was suddenly worried about their jobs. I’m lucky: my partner Matthew’s a doctor, we can always pay the rent if I get laid off.’

  ‘It’s why I contacted you. About Aiden. It was a bit of an impulse calling you; actually, Gene Jacobs suggested it. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not, why would I? It’s nice to see you.’

  ‘Patrick really liked Aiden. I suppose I want to know why.’

  ‘Why he committed suicide? … I still can’t believe it.’

  ‘A real shock.’

  ‘Not only a shock. It was … I don’t know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Completely unexpected. Don’t pick that up.’ Gently, he prized an object out of the boy’s fingers, scrubbing his hand with a tissue.

  ‘Unexpected?’

  ‘No one knew he was depressed. He went under the train at 7 a.m., in his suit, on the way to work. He must have decided he couldn’t take one more day. He’d seemed completely happy and normal. He hid it very well. It’s frightening. Anyway, Maya must have talked to you about it. She and Aiden were …’

  I waited. ‘Were?’

  ‘Well, they worked together on some projects, pretty closely.’

  I hesitated. ‘You don’t think they were …?’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Not having a relationship?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. No. He and Sophie were fine.’ He made a face. ‘Although, how can I be sure? Obviously, none of us knew anything.’

  The little girl tripped and fell over, while her twin ran along the path towards a large terrier with a brutal head, whose owner pulled its chain, hauling it back as it strained to reach the child. Daniel scooped up the wailing girl, calling for the boy. The boy hesitated, the big dog rearing on its lead, its owner, a man with a thick gold chain and a sleeveless shirt that displayed his muscles, muttering about keeping kids under
control.

  We watched the man wrenching the terrier away down the path.

  ‘You said they worked on projects?’

  ‘Maya was very junior obviously. She was working with Lettice, and Aiden specifically picked her out, he told Lettice he wanted Maya to work for him. He had an eye for talent, I guess, so he always got his own way. He did the non-fiction; he was a really good editor and he was fantastic at thinking up ideas for books. He’d hear of an interesting person and he’d say, “Let’s make contact. Let’s see if they want to write a book.” Some of his authors, he practically wrote the books for them, and they sold really well. Some wrote their own, others were ghosted. They had great subjects. Don’t do that, my love. No. Give it back to Lily. Good chap.’

  ‘There was the one by the boy who escaped from Isis.’

  ‘Exactly, that kind of thing. The bestsellers funded the serious titles. Aiden was good at getting in quick, forming relationships. By the time other publishers had thought of it, Aiden had made friends, so he’d get the deal. He had his secret weapon, too.’

  I looked deep into the woods, at the beams angling down, sunlight on a patch of bluebells. The jet lag had intensified as we’d come out of the trees into the hot sun, and there was a shushing in my ears, like the whisper of the sea in a shell. We were on open ground now, a sloping field of dry grass near Kenwood, edged by massive clumps of rhododendrons.

  ‘Secret weapon?’

  ‘Angela.’ He pronounced it with a hard g, as in Angela Merkel. ‘She’s a journalist; she was probably Aiden’s best friend. Angela would mention subjects to him, that’s how he’d get in first. She contacted them, interviewed them, and she’d tell Aiden about them. Who’d say, “How about a book?” He’d meet the person, get them interested, and they’d go from there. Angela’s pretty charming; she’d have helped the process.’