a naked foot. David noticed that her toes were not beautiful—misshapen as pebbles—but the nails were painted electric blue.
He propped himself on the arm of a massive maroon sofa. It ran the entire length of one glass wall—the exterior walls of the living room were ceiling-to-floor windows, and an outside walkway ran along them, enclosed by a chest-high barrier of hammered concrete. In the corner of the living room there was a huge battered travelling trunk—the kind of thing a seven-yearold in a peaked cap and uniform, going back for Michaelmas term, might sit on in a railway station in the 1950s. There was an armchair that matched the sofa and was functioning as a filing cabinet of sorts—papers were divided by being stuck behind, or to one of the sides of, the seat cushion. Ruth was at the other end of the hallway—in the bedroom he assumed—talking loudly.
‘Look, all I’m saying is you can do all of that stuff after you’ve graduated…No, no, I think it’s incredibly important that you do it, you have to do it, but after you’ve graduated…Honey, I understand that completely. But you’ve spent three years working towards this thing…I don’t care what he says.’
David shrugged to let his satchel fall from his shoulder. It landed on the oatmeal carpet with a jangle of the keys inside.
‘He did not pay for your education. Did he say that? Who paid the fees at Wellsprings? Who pays for your apartment?…No, all I care about is you making a mistake now that in ten years or ten days, you might regret…’
David stepped into the galley kitchen. It was pristine and impersonal as a show house, except for invitations to art events that patched a cork noticeboard. How could she already have received so many? A door shut at the far end of the corridor but no footsteps approached. He slipped outside to the balcony; he could then at least pretend not to have been listening. London laid out like a postcard, like its own advertisement. The Millennium Wheel, Big Ben, Tower Bridge. A light blinked on the pyramid top of Canary Wharf to warn migrating birds and gazillionaires in helicopters not to come too close. He sat down on a plastic folding chair that dug into his back. From this level he could only see the sky, its baggy cloudlets and scatter of stars. He fastened his duffel coat and retrieved his satchel from the living room, skinned up again and smoked, and waited. He listened to a few Leonard Cohen tracks on the iPod, then some early Sinatra to lighten his mood. When he went back in again to get a glass of water, according to the wooden sun-clock hanging above the sideboard, twenty-two minutes had passed. The flat was silent. Down the hallway the bedroom door was open and inside the bed was huge and white, the tangled sheets and duvet ski runs, snowdrifts, ice crevasses. He faked a little cough to warn of his approach, but it dislodged something solid in his throat and by the time he reached the closed door of the bathroom he was hacking noisily. He knocked, needlessly gently now—a tap was running within.
‘Ruth, everything all right?’
‘Oh no, fine. Sorry. I’ll be out in two minutes. Sorry.’
He turned to pad up the corridor but the lock snapped back and she appeared. She’d taken her jacket off and was wearing a yellow vest that showed her shoulders, freckled and thin but tanned, un-English. Her eyes were just cuts now in marshmallow puffiness. She’d been crying and had washed her face; she still gripped a small black towel.
‘I’m so sorry, David. This is sort of embarrassing for me, and probably for you too. Bridget is being so difficult and her father…’
She began to cry again and then moved towards him. The actual contact came as a shock. He’d kissed her cheek many times, and even once lightly pressed his fingers on her shoulder as they parted. But now they embraced, and he arranged himself in it, and felt her shoulder blades sharp on his forearms. Things were changing. He knew he would never see her in quite the same way again. In an instant she had grown beyond the abstract; desire was no longer theoretical. Touch is much more dangerous than sight, or little smiles, or honest conversations, or whispers about pictures in a gallery. Touch is how the real thing starts. He felt an overwhelming urge to protect her, to gather her up and keep her safe. Her slender body shivered as she exhaled a long sigh, and he gripped her tighter. She was so light. He could lift her so easily. The smell of coconut soap came off her hair and he breathed it in deeply, willing it to fill every cell within him.
When she straightened up and stepped away he was almost surprised to find his body hadn’t retained the indentation of her form. Immediately she busied herself—arranging the towel on its rail, tugging off the bathroom light. She walked quickly and he followed. When she pulled a bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge he leant against the kitchen counter, watching. It seemed to him then that leaning against a kitchen counter was obviously the embodiment of style. He felt enormously powerful. If he so desired he could run a marathon or lift that fridge and throw it. Instead he handed her the corkscrew, the only visible utensil in the room, with a courtly flourish of his wrist. A hypnotic spell of domestic familiarity had been cast between them, then she broke it.
‘God, I’m sorry, David. I hope I didn’t make you feel…awkward.’
Did he look awkward? It wasn’t awkwardness he felt. She gave a sad laugh, took a sheet of kitchen paper from a roll hanging on the wall and blew her nose loudly. This depressed him. He disliked hearing a nose being blown; he always attended to his own in private. A little of her mystique disappeared into that piece of kitchen roll, and it annoyed him that she didn’t care. He tucked his blue shirt back into his waistband where her hug had pulled it out, realized he had pushed it inside his underpants and rearranged it.
‘Oh shit, I’ve got mascara on your shirt.’ She raised a hand to brush at it and he stepped back, aware suddenly of the softness of his chest.
‘No, no, it’s pen, I think, it’s fine.’
‘Let’s get some glasses, sit down. Do you have cigarettes? Oh poor Bridge…She’s such a wonderful girl. But sometimes…’ She sighed and clinked the bottle down onto the coffee table, then turned back to the kitchen.
‘Teenagers!’ David half-shouted after her, and then regretted his banality.
‘Christ—she’s twenty. I think this is the way she’s going to be. Headstrong. Like her mother.’ She allowed herself an indulgent half-smile as she reappeared in the room, holding filled glasses.
‘What’s the actual issue?’ David said professionally, taking one from her and settling back in the sofa.
‘She wants to drop out of her acting course. Well, change to a teaching programme. And I don’t think it’s the best idea she’s had.’
‘You know, I came to see you once when I wanted to change courses. I stayed behind after a lecture. I’m sure you don’t remember.’
David had always wondered if she recalled their conversation, and now he saw she didn’t, although she wasn’t going to admit it. She walked to the balcony door and looked out.
‘Of course I remember. You were going to switch courses…’
‘You were very supportive. You said I should do the thing I thought was right for—’
‘Oh, I know but, David, this is my daughter. You were some…’
She couldn’t choose a noun and her indecision seemed to spark something unpleasant in her: she cried, ‘Oh, be realistic!’ and waved a hand at the window, the walls, anything that might be secretly encroaching on her life. David, mortified, stared hard at the arm of the sofa. He had become Bridget’s surrogate in the argument. Ruth sighed, then added softly, as if it should be a comfort, ‘I wouldn’t have cared
