I could feel a sudden piercing in my head. I closed my eyes and put my hand to my forehead and moaned. It was like a hallucination or something – an image of flames. It lasted I don’t know how long then vanished as quickly as it had come … with just the orange of the flames remaining with me a little longer. For a moment I thought I was going to vomit but then that sensation passed too. I opened my eyes, feeling dazed and exhausted and I stared out the window as the rain cried down the panes.

  Marianne had got up, Jessica still in her arms, and was walking out of the bedroom. From her pallor and stumbling I could tell she’d not only been drinking but had taken tranquillisers as well. I sat down on the bed then lay down on it. Even in the midst of all this unreality there was some part of me that never ever lost touch, that was coldly observing, interested in some scientific way perhaps to know what exactly was going on, what the mechanics of this disintegration would be and the logic that would dictate the end.

  It was light when I’d entered the bedroom and dark when Marianne came back in. She seemed vaguely surprised to see me still there and stared blankly at me for a moment but then just crashed out on the bed beside me. I shook her to stop her dozing off: ‘I want to talk to you.’

  She opened her eyes. They were completely glazed over.

  ‘Nothing left to talk about.’

  ‘Yes there is. There’s Jessica.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The teddy bear. The teddy bear.’

  She was barely conscious, half talking in her sleep and slurring her words: ‘She wanted to. Nothing to do with me. I helped her. Made the cross, I’m tired. Need to sleep. I took some pills.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘You shouldn’t. Not while you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Getting rid of it. Fucking thing inside me.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that. I’m the Catholic. Not you.’

  I shook her again, quite hard, but I couldn’t wake her. I got her into bed and stared at her face as she breathed in this horribly laborious way, as though she were trying to bring something up from deep inside her. I had this vision of waking up in the morning or perhaps the middle of the night and turning to her and her being cold as marble and I knew that I’d have to stay awake now and watch over her. I lit a cigarette. I just kept staring at her. She was becoming more and more alien to me, almost as if she were someone I barely knew at all.

  XII

  I was walking past an Italian restaurant round the corner from work. There was a woman in there seated at a window table by herself. She was sitting stiffly in her chair facing the window front, drinking wine although it was only midday, staring at me or perhaps beyond. I glanced her way and for a moment I was sure that it was Susan Tedeschi. I stopped and stared, shocked at my own certainty. A dream returned to me, I’d had it that morning but perhaps on other occasions as well. In this dream I’m back in the morgue in the hospital in Oxford. I come in, Susan Tedeschi’s lying on the trolley, there’s a tag on her wrist. She opens her eyes and looks up to me and smiles. Then she props herself up on one elbow and beckons me with the other hand. Could it be that she wants to kiss me? I’d woken up in the night shivering and frightened like a child, disturbed also by the fact that Marianne was no longer there beside me.

  The illusion outside the restaurant only lasted a couple of seconds. Because the odd thing was that the woman in the restaurant didn’t actually look anything like Susan Tedeschi, apart from the blonde hair. For a start, she was maybe ten years too old. Then I realised that I did know this face after all, if only in a second-hand way. I’d seen photographs of it. I’d even filed one away along with the other Jarawa documents.

  I went in. She was talking to the waiter and then shook her head. The shock of thinking she was Susan Tedeschi had receded and now I was imagining a conversation with Jarawa. I was imagining telling him how I’d bumped into his wife one day and I could almost see his astonished smile. It was a new thing, these imaginary conversations … Or maybe it was a very old thing. It was like childish behaviour.

  She looked surprised and put out and left me standing for a few minutes but then invited me to sit down. We small-talked for a while. She was saying how strange it was to be back in London and how it had changed since she’d lived here. How less English it was now, how it was like any international city, same shops, same cars, same young men in the streets begging. She carried on in this vein for some time but eventually I cut in. I said that I knew it was difficult but really I felt obliged to talk about her husband. I said I’d just like her to hear me out one more time, to explain how she could help her husband by getting involved in our campaign. There was a long silence after I’d said my piece.

  ‘Look, I’m afraid I’m going to be blunt. I’m not going to get involved in your campaign. I’m sorry that I was rude to you on the phone, that was inexcusable of me. I’m not getting involved and you’ll just have to accept that I have my reasons.’

  ‘OK. But the least you could do was talk to me. You cut me off. You didn’t even want to hear what I had to say. I can give you an example right now of one way your involvement might be appropriate. The other day someone anonymously sent us a newspaper clipping, dated a few years back. It was about how you and your husband had separated. It implied that he’d been very violent towards you. I would have liked to talk to you about it. It’s likely that this story will come out anyway and it would be better to have a rebuttal ready for release. That’s just one thing …’

  ‘Well I can tell you now that I won’t be making any statement about my marriage, whatever the circumstances.’

  ‘Even if it might affect your husband’s fate?’

  ‘Our marriage has nothing to do with his situation now.’

  ‘Come on … let’s not be naïve. You may not live in London any more but you know how the world works. You know where PR fits into the picture.’

  She studied me in silence for a moment, hands clasped beneath her chin: ‘You’re very persistent, aren’t you? You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?’

  ‘That depends. It depends on what happens to your husband. I’ll do whatever I think is necessary.’

  ‘Yes. I can see that. Because you’re quite like him in a strange kind of way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I was surprised by what she said and genuinely interested but she didn’t answer. For a second she even looked like she was about to ask me to leave but instead she poured herself a glass of wine and offered me some. There was an empty glass on the table and for the first time I noticed that there were two table settings.

  ‘If you’re allowing some kind of, well let’s say resentment, to get in the way of supporting your husband …’

  ‘I think that’s a pretty shocking and insulting insinuation to make.’

  I shrugged my shoulders: ‘I apologise.’

  Then all of a sudden she completely lost her cool. All this stuff started spilling out about how her husband had caused her great pain, how he’d been unfaithful from day one and she wasn’t about to turn around and say he was a great husband to anyone now. As she spoke, my gaze shifted from her eyes to her arms, which were somehow too thin. I could make out the shape of the bone underneath the skin, parched by the sun. I’d switched off and in a way this outpouring had the effect of calming me. What was strange was how any intense concentration on Jarawa always brought me back to Marianne’s lover, and vice versa. Perhaps the connection was that they both seemed so real now. On the other hand, what seemed phantasmagorical to me was the hole in the cave and the great round boulder outside that was like a lid or a plug. That was what I found hard to believe in. That was what seemed the product of a strained imagination.

  Now I switched my gaze back to the woman’s eyes. She was still talking, but she’d regained control of herself. She seemed embarrassed by her outburst. She was saying that I’d misunderstood her, that whatever she felt personally, it was of course the principle at stake and that the death penalty was a horrible barbarity that must be opposed. A kind of weariness came over me as I heard those words. So you too, I said, you think he’s guilty as well? You as well?

  ‘I’ve hardly seen him over the last couple of years. I really have no idea of the situation …’

  Then she added that she didn’t want me to think she wasn’t doing anything, but that she didn’t feel ‘at liberty’ to tell me exactly how she was involved …

  Something about that phrase jolted me. I interrupted: ‘I think I know what you’re up to. Let me guess. You’ve got your contacts in the government and the military but it’s not safe for you any more so you’ve come to London. And you’re negotiating for your husband’s release through the embassy here. Right?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘A big guy with a shaved head. And there’re some Oxford academics involved as well. Pierre Douff maybe. And Richard Weldon. Certainly Richard Weldon. Right? And he told you not to get involved with us. And so did the big guy with the shaved head.’

  Now she nodded.

  ‘But Weldon’s mysteriously disappeared. Maybe he was only tangentially involved. Nobody’s sure whether his disappearance has got anything to do with the Jarawa case. And it’s put a spanner in the works. Right?’

  ‘How do you know about all of this?’

  I got up from the table: ‘It doesn’t matter. I can tell you something though. Something you can mention to the others. It might help them. Weldon’s disappearance has got nothing to do with your husband. That’s one thing I’m sure about.’

  Four in the morning and I can’t sleep. It’s been strangely calm over the past few days. As if the whole world was in suspension, waiting for something that refuses to happen. I came home the day I saw Jarawa’s wife and there was a removal van parked outside the house. But it wasn’t what I’d expected. They were moving a bed into the house, not out of it. Marianne was there, guiding the removal guys through the house, out the back door to the garden then into her studio. One or two other things followed – a fridge, a cooker, a table. Then she disappeared and the first time I saw her again was yesterday evening. I don’t know what she’s doing in there. Sleeping by day and painting by night I think. I can see the light on in the studio from the kitchen window. Actually it’s a strange comfort that she’s there, just a few yards away from where I am. Because I can be alone only to a certain extent. If she moved right out it would be infinitely more difficult for me. For her too perhaps.

  I was back from another BBC interview, I was feeding Jessica. This was yesterday. Jessica was being hyperactive. She often is now and rarely sleeps before eleven at night. I suppose she sleeps with Marianne during the day. She was playing up and refusing to eat and making fun of me. That was good because it meant she was feeling confident of herself and unafraid of me, which was unusual. Usually she gobbles the food in silence and runs back to the studio. She’d been drawing and painting. She’d brought some drawings in from the studio, perhaps to show me or perhaps not.

  ‘Did you do these today?’

  ‘I’m helping Maman. Now she needs me to draw for her.’

  ‘I see … And who are the people in the pictures? Do you know?’

  They were mainly in black and white, vaguely sinister stick figures. She pointed at me, giggling: ‘You! They’re you!’

  ‘What, all of them?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And this is what Mummy asked you to draw? Pictures of me? Or was it your own idea?’

  ‘Yes … no … dunno …’ She was playing distractedly with her food, she’d lost interest in the pictures, in our conversation. I noticed a small red mark on her neck that hadn’t been there before. I was just about to examine it when all of a sudden she said: ‘Look at me. Look at me Daddy. Guess what I’m pretending.’

  She’d put down the little plastic fork she uses and rested her head on the table. She was staring across the room in this fixed, disturbed way.

  ‘I’ve no idea, Jess. I don’t know what you’re pretending. Maybe you’re asleep.’

  ‘Course not! You can’t sleep with your eyes open silly!’ ‘I don’t know then. I give up.’

  ‘Guess Daddy.’

  ‘I can’t guess. Tell me.’

  ‘I’m dead. I’m playing a dead person.’

  ‘OK. Stop it. Eat your food. Stop it now, Jessica.’

  She started chanting: ‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead …’

  ‘That’s enough! I said that’s enough!’

  I could feel my anger rising like a wave and I leaned over the table in a trance. Perhaps I was about to grab Jessica or something but the sound of the doorbell sliced through the air and put an end to the madness. Jessica had stopped chanting and sat up and I stood there frozen to the spot. The doorbell rang again. I couldn’t think who it could be.

  A couple of policemen stood on the doorstep, one tall John Cleese type with a moustache and a smaller, stocky guy. The tall guy said: I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour sir but we’re looking for Marianne Soubirous. Does she live here?

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Are you perhaps her husband?’

  ‘Yeah … not exactly … we live together.’

  ‘We’re investigating a disappearance, a man who disappeared from his home in Oxford two weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since. We found your partner’s name in his address book. No doubt she’s not involved in any way but you can understand that we need to contact everyone anyway …’

  He didn’t have a London accent – in fact he didn’t sound like a policeman at all. He sounded like quite a friendly guy. His slight stoop and rounded shoulders reminded me of Christian. Jessica had disappeared somewhere, maybe her bedroom. I walked back through to the kitchen and opened the back door. I wasn’t thinking straight. Was it relief that the police weren’t here for me or was it anger? I walked across the damp grass to the studio. I could hear music coming from inside, howls and distorted guitars. I opened the door. I thought Marianne might be working since she usually works with music, but she wasn’t. She was moving around in this weird way. It was hard to make out what she was up to, dancing maybe, or doing exercises. She’d shaved her head. It made her look completely different. I wondered why she’d done that. She’d had such lovely dark hair.

  I glanced around the studio. She’d done it up since I’d last been there. She’d painted it and had hung her canvases round the walls, crammed the walls with them so they completely dominated the small space. I stared at them. I had the impression that I’d never understood Marianne’s work before or perhaps I’d just never really thought about it. Perhaps I’d thought that these canvases were simply fantastic designs. Now I could see quite clearly that they weren’t designs at all. The bright colours were in fact a struggle against a fear I’d been only vaguely aware of before. And yet how was it that I’d never noticed this? How could that be?

  She stopped writhing around when she noticed me, although not out of embarrassment – she just looked up at me questioningly. It was hard to take her looking at me like that, she looked so raw with her shaved head. I shouted over the music: There’s the police at the door, asking for you. She didn’t reply. She was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a thick, shapeless woolly jumper, despite the fact that it wasn’t cold at all. She went over to the stereo and turned it off. Then she pulled off her jumper and slipped out of the tracksuit bottoms without looking my way and put on jeans, bra, T-shirt. I noticed black paint on her fingertips, like she’d just been fingerprinted or something. She didn’t look nervy or anything, although it wasn’t calmness either. She looked blank, like she’d just smoked a joint or taken a tranquilliser.

  I followed her back through the garden. I wondered what she was going to say to the police but in a way I couldn’t get too interested. It was the small things which so often caught my attention now rather than the larger picture. For instance as we walked I was thinking about the staring eyes Jessica had had when she’d been pretending to be dead. It wouldn’t have occurred to me at that age that a dead body might have its eyes open.

  The policemen were still there on the doorstep and Marianne invited them in. She was smiling now, it was amazing how she could suddenly turn into someone quite different at whim, and it was something about her that I resented. The police didn’t seem at all fazed at her shaved head but of course they’d never seen her any different. The tall guy, the one who did all the talking, was saying that if Marianne wanted to discuss this in private then there was no need for me to be present, or that if she wanted they’d be happy to come back tomorrow during the day. The small, stocky one just stood there saying nothing. He actually had a notebook in his hand, like a cartoon caricature. No no, said Marianne, there’s no need for you to come back, there’s no need for it to be in private.

  She led them into the kitchen/dining room and I cleared the table of Jessica’s half-eaten sausages. The tall one launched into his spiel again, about how a man had disappeared and how Marianne’s name had been found in his address book, etc. As he spoke I watched Marianne, her mask of a face transforming from polite attentiveness to a sort of empathy, almost as if the policeman himself had suffered some loss that he was now unburdening onto us.

  The policeman asked Marianne if she knew this man, Richard Weldon, and at first Marianne shook her head; then she said maybe, the name was familiar after all, but she couldn’t immediately say why. I’d left a knife on the table and Marianne had unconsciously picked it up and was fiddling with it, turning it round in her hands so that sometimes the blade pointed at me, sometimes at one of the policemen, and sometimes at herself. Did she have any idea why her name might be in the man’s address book, asked the policeman. Well, said Marianne, I’m an artist. I meet a lot of people, people in the art world and collectors as well … Was this Richard Weldon perhaps a collector? The policeman said he didn’t know, he’d look into it, and he got out a photo. Do you recognise him, he asked. Again Marianne shook her head uncertainly. I couldn’t say for sure that I don’t know him, she said finally, he looks sort of familiar but beyond that I couldn’t say. She handed the photo back to the policeman, who then turned to me. And you sir, he said, have you ever seen this man before? The photo was blurred, perhaps it was the same one they’d used in the newspaper – it was surprising in a way that they didn’t have a better picture. The blurriness of it distorted the man’s features, rendered them vaguely indistinct like the image of a ghost. I shook my head. For a moment I couldn’t speak, then I said: Never seen him before, I’m afraid. But as soon as I’d said that, I realised that I’d been too forthright in my denial, that Marianne had played the better game. Because no one can ever be too certain that they haven’t seen some guy in a blurred photo.