The Family Remains(71)



‘Well, one up and disappeared. Left me in a flat in L’Ariane with six months of unpaid rent. The other—’

Rachel watched her face, keenly, painfully.

‘The other was – well, he was the worst person in the world.’

A muscle twitched in Rachel’s cheek. ‘God. Really. In what way?’

‘Well, just in the usual ways in which some men are the worst people in the world. You know.’

Rachel looked into Lucy’s eyes. She saw a chink of fear, a chink of pain.

‘You mean he hit you?’ She mouthed this so that the children would not hear.

Lucy nodded, her eyes flicking to her children and back.

‘How many years?’

‘A few. Long enough. Too long. You know.’

‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Yes. I do know. My ex, he didn’t actually …’ She mouthed hit me. ‘But he was violent. In other ways. And if I’d stayed longer, it would only have been a matter of time.’

Lucy nodded, her eyes wide. Rachel saw tears shimmering on their surfaces and then Lucy clutched Rachel’s arm and squeezed it. Rachel looked down at Lucy’s hand and blinked. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she said. ‘For you? For your children?’

‘Oh. God. No. You’ve been more than generous. But thank you.’

Rachel opened up her handbag and pulled out her purse. She slid out two more twenty-euro notes. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take these. Go home. Order a pizza. Get the kids into bed. Take the night off. It’s getting cold.’

Lucy gazed at the two notes for a few seconds. Rachel expected her to push them away, but she didn’t. She took them and she put them in her pocket. Then she wiped some tears from her cheek with the back of her hand before pulling back her shoulders, picking up her violin and saying, ‘I’ll play a song for you. Any song you like. Just name it.’

Rachel sank her hands into her pockets and breathed in hard to control a wave of tears.

‘For us?’ she asked.

‘Yes. For us.’

Rachel thought for a moment, cast her eyes to the sky, looked back at Lucy and said, ‘How about “Firework”? Katy Perry?’

Lucy nodded. Knowingly. Then she put her bow to the strings and played and for three minutes Rachel stood and listened, tears coursing down her cheeks, the lyrics playing silently inside her head, overwhelmed by the sense for the first time in months that she was not alone in this world.





50




June 2019


Marco knocks the fox’s head against the glossy blue-green door. He looks at his mum and she looks at him. After a moment he knocks again. Then he steps forward and puts his ear to the door. There is nothing. No sounds of breathing or of footsteps or of a TV set or radio or food being prepared or phone calls being made or anything. Just silence.

‘Uncle Henry!’ he calls out to the silence. ‘Uncle Henry. It’s me. Marco. Are you in there?’

He knocks once again, twice, three times. Then he sighs. ‘Now what?’ he asks his mum.

She looks at the time on her phone. ‘We could just go and get something to eat?’

They haven’t really eaten anything since the Quik E Burger at breakfast time. Just the ice cream at the zoo. Marco nods and they head across the street to the brasserie that Peter Lilley had told them about, the one with the one-syllable name that turns out to be Blanche.

They sit outside on a terrace on the sidewalk and are handed large menus by a smiley girl with plaited blonde hair. ‘Can I get you guys anything to drink?’

His mum orders a glass of wine and the girl says, ‘You’re British?’

‘Yes.’ Marco’s mum smiles. ‘Yes, we are.’

‘What brings you to Chicago?’

‘Oh, just trying to find an old friend.’

‘Really? You’re the second person in a row from Britain to tell me they were here trying to track someone down. I wonder if he was looking for you!’

Marco sends his mum a wide-eyed look.

‘Oh,’ she replies coolly. ‘What – what did this guy look like?’

‘He was kind of your age, I guess. But fair, blond hair. I’d say tinted though. Very nicely dressed. Very polite. Do you know him?’

‘Well, yes. I think I might. I think he might be my brother.’

‘No way! Wow! And you’re both looking for the same person?’

‘Yes, I believe we are. Though now I’ve lost track of my brother too.’

‘Oh my goodness! Well, I’ll keep an eye open for him for you. Let him know you’re looking for him if I see him.’

‘Just ask him to call me. He knows I’m here. He just needs to call me.’

The waitress leaves to get their drinks and Marco stares at the windows of the building opposite.

‘Which window is the one with the fox’s head?’ he asks.

‘That one roughly.’ Lucy points at a window on the first floor.

‘We should sit here for as long as possible.’

‘Yes,’ his mother agrees. ‘We should. But first decide what you want to eat.’

He looks down at the menu and sees schnitzel and he remembers something: a similar moment on a pavement in the summer heat. Just before they left France a year ago. ‘Remember’, he says, ‘when we were still in France and your fiddle was broken and we had no money? Remember we had that last dinner? And I didn’t want to eat my schnitzel because I was so cross with you for not telling me why our lives were so shit?’

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