The next thing I knew I was lying on the footpath. Some guy was there, standing over me, helping me up, saying you all right mate? Yeah, I replied, just slipped, that’s all. I’d passed out, for a second or two only, but I’d passed out nonetheless. It was the first time anything like that had happened to me. I sat down on a bench by a bus stop. I should have been feeling groggy but I wasn’t at all. In fact I was feeling better, really much better, as if my head had somehow been cleared of everything that had been tormenting me.

  Jessica was sitting on the kitchen floor, whispering to herself, playing some game that involved slow, repetitive movements, like those of a caged animal in a zoo. There was no creativity to her movements; in fact it was the very reverse of play and I could immediately see that something wasn’t right with her: ‘What’s up Jess?’

  At first she appeared to be deep in concentration and acted as if she hadn’t heard or noticed me but then eventually she said in a tiny voice: ‘Maman’s sick.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Maman’s sick.’

  She wouldn’t say anything else, though. For once I controlled myself and didn’t berate her as a feeling of dread spread through me. I ran out the back door, across the garden and into the studio … She’d stuck the bed right in the middle of the room for some reason, like it was a stage or place of execution. And she was lying there like a Victorian consumptive in her nightgown, stained red, staring at me glassily. I ripped off her nightgown and ran my hands over her body, looking for the wound but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t what I’d thought. What it was, was that she was haemorrhaging. Or had been haemorrhaging. It was impossible to tell whether it had stopped or not but her face and body looked almost like marble and she was limp and wasn’t speaking at all. She was just staring vacantly.

  I got my dressing gown from the bedroom and wrapped it round her then I heaved her off the bed and into my arms. It wasn’t so easy though. She’d put on quite a bit of weight recently, maybe it was being pregnant or maybe it was the drinking. I hadn’t had her in my arms like that in such a long time and I hadn’t felt her skin for weeks. As I crossed back over the garden with her I noticed that her lips were moving. I couldn’t hear anything but I could lip-read easily enough. What she was trying to say was: ‘Look after Jessica.’

  I said: ‘What do you mean? Of course I’m looking after Jessica. We’re both looking after Jessica. Jessica’s fine.’

  Jessica was still on the kitchen floor, playing her repetitive game. I carefully laid Marianne down on the sofa and got a sponge from the bathroom to clean off the worst of the blood but it wasn’t easy. It was everywhere. How had she got it even on her forehead and the stubble of her head, as if it were for some macabre ritual?

  ‘Now listen Jess. It was really good you told me about Mummy because she’s not well at all and we’re going to have to go to the hospital now. What I need you to do is go ahead of me and open the doors and then the car door while I carry Mummy. OK?’

  Jessica obeyed wordlessly. I heaved Marianne up again and carried her through the house and out the front door then laid her on the back seat of the car. But she didn’t look comfortable at all so I got a pillow from the bedroom to rest her head on, and a blanket as well. Then I suddenly remembered something I’d seen or read, about people who’d lost blood and how they should be given liquids and I ran into the kitchen and filled up an old wine bottle with tap water and took it back to the car.

  ‘OK? Comfortable? Why don’t you drink this? It’s only water.’

  She wouldn’t though. She was still looking at me in that glassy way and then she beckoned me feebly with her hand, exactly the same gesture as her lover’s, that way he’d beckoned me just before he’d died. It was a shock and I leant close to Marianne’s face and wiped some of the spit from her mouth. She was trying to say ‘Look after Jessica’ again.

  ‘Of course I’ll look after Jessica! We’ll both look after Jessica! Nothing’s going to happen to Jessica! Why are you being so damned melodramatic about everything?’

  I tried to laugh for encouragement but it came out all strangulated. I stuck Jessica in beside me and readjusted the rear-view mirror so that I could keep an eye on Marianne lying on the back seat. She kept on moving her lips, it was this thing about Jessica. Jessica herself just sat there, silently, looking straight ahead like a zombie. Then as we were driving I couldn’t stop myself repeating: ‘Of course I’ll look after Jessica! Of course I will! We both will!’ In a way I believed it too and I wanted to believe it while at the same time there was that other thing which was the blackness and the guilt. I wasn’t going to be here of course. I wasn’t going to look after Jessica at all. She said: I’m tired Daddy, and laid her head down on my thigh.

  I was heading for St Stephen’s where my friend Alex worked in casualty but whether he’d be there today I didn’t know. I kept looking at Marianne in the rear-view mirror. At first I thought she’d be OK, for a very stupid reason. It was because I’d managed to understand what she’d been saying to me when she’d beckoned me, unlike at the bedsit. It was a kind of superstition but I really believed it. Then just as we got to the hospital she started shaking in this unnatural way. I stopped the car outside the casualty entrance and shouted out to an ambulance guy or porter or whatever and we carried her through. We took her straight through to the emergency unit and she was still shaking like she was having a seizure. They transferred her to a bed then this young male doctor started firing a string of questions at me: how old was Marianne, what were her symptoms etc. I told him about Marianne being pregnant and haemorrhaging and how I also suspected that she’d taken sleeping tablets, maybe mixed with alcohol. As I was saying all this and answering the doctor’s questions another emergency was beginning to unfold on the other side of the ward. They’d rushed in this young guy who’d been in a car accident. He was being very difficult to manage. He kept shaking off the two nurses who were trying to get his clothes off and get him to lie down. He kept on sitting up and saying: ‘Listen, I’m not staying here. I feel fine, there’s nothing wrong with me!’ Then he looked in my direction for a split second and smiled insanely and I could see this ghastly open wound on the side of his head.

  A nurse hustled me out of the emergency unit and into a waiting room. I asked her if Alex was on duty and she said she’d go and check for me and then she left. Everything had happened so quickly, as if in a blur of words and images, and it was difficult to collect my thoughts.

  I lit a cigarette. The nurse came back, she said Alex would be down shortly. She frowned and said that smoking wasn’t permitted anywhere in the hospital.

  ‘For God’s sake. I’ve just brought my wife in. For God’s sake …’

  My hands were trembling as I spoke. The nurse shook her head with simulated compassion: ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid smoking’s not allowed here.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to smoke anyway.’

  She looked surprised and pissed off but she didn’t say anything and just walked out again. The only other person in the waiting room was a tramp with his left hand all wrapped in a bandage, which he waved in my direction. Got a cigarette, he said. I gave him one. If I’d told her what you just told her they’d have chucked me out, he said.

  Suddenly I remembered Jessica. In all the panic I’d forgotten about her and couldn’t remember where she’d been, whether she’d got out of the car or not. I got up and strode back through the emergency unit to the entrance. I couldn’t see Marianne anywhere. They must have moved her to another ward or something.

  There were a couple of guys in uniforms standing by the car, one was talking into a walkie-talkie. It’s my car, I said. Well you’ll have to move it mate, he replied. I opened the door. She was lying on the floor, curled up in foetal position, sucking her thumb and shivering. In the shadows I could see the profile of her nose, already so much like Marianne’s. I picked her up: What were you doing down there, I asked, but she didn’t say anything, she was shivering.

  I moved the car to the car park then walked back to the waiting room with Jessica in my arms. The tramp was still there. He started talking but I wasn’t paying attention, I was watching Jessica. She’d been dozing but now she’d woken up. She struggled out of my arms and sat down beside me and rubbed her eyes with the exaggerated gestures of a child. She sat there staring into space for a while but then eventually turned to me and said: ‘Daddy, when will I have to go to school?’

  ‘Not for a long time, Jessica. Not for over a year.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to school.’

  ‘Everyone has to go to school.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I’m not going to school.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  ‘Not ever.’

  ‘Well perhaps you’re right. I don’t know.’

  We both fell silent. It was hard to concentrate on any one thing. I lit another cigarette with the Zippo then gave one to the tramp. He was half talking to me, half talking to himself: ‘They’re happy to fix up my hand then sling me out, see. If I got some rare disease they’d spend thousands of pounds fixing me up then sling me out, see.’

  Alex came in. He looked quite different in a white coat, more the authority figure and less the friend. I could see he was just about to launch into all that crap about how we hadn’t seen each other in ages and I jumped up from my seat to pre-empt him: ‘How is she, is she OK?’

  Well she’s not in any danger, he said, looking vaguely taken aback by my abruptness. They’d put her on a drip and pumped her stomach for good measure and they were going to keep her in hospital under observation for twenty-four hours. Of course, he continued, you’ve probably already guessed the bad news. I nodded, but then shook my head. She never wanted it, I blurted out despite myself, in a way that’s what it’s all about, she was doing her best to get rid of it. Alex looked incredibly uncomfortable but it didn’t bother me. It didn’t bother me any more to say such things to him or to anyone else. It bothered me to say it in front of Jessica though, despite the fact that she couldn’t even understand.

  The thing is to get her to see someone, Alex was saying. He’d been talking all this time but I hadn’t been listening. What do you mean, I replied, get her to see someone? Well, like a psychiatrist, for example, he continued.

  ‘Psychiatrist? A psychiatrist? A psychiatrist is the last person she needs to see!’

  ‘OK. Now calm down, calm down …’

  I’d been getting all heated up and was almost shouting. Jessica was there standing beside me, holding my hand, tugging at it.

  Alex said: ‘Listen, are you all right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I stared at him like he was a stranger. He was one of those people you continue to see because you went to school with them or whatever but what did I really know of him? What did I know of anyone?

  ‘Are you going to be OK driving? I mean, I know this has been really traumatic and everything.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll be fine. Thanks. No I mean it, thanks for everything.’

  It was these terrible swings, one moment despising someone and the next tearfully grateful. He started going on about how we hadn’t seen each other for ages and how we should all get together sometime, me, Marianne, Alex and Suzie. That would be great, I replied mechanically.

  ‘Listen, I’ve just had this brilliant idea. We’ve got these tickets to see a play by that woman Marianne was going on about last time we came to your place, Sarah something. I think it’s the weekend after next. Why don’t you and Marianne come along too and then we could have dinner afterwards? That is, if Marianne’s well enough by then.’

  ‘Yeah. That’d be great.’

  There was an uncomfortable pause: Alex’s suggestion hung in the air as if it were something distasteful, like an obscene joke at a funeral. The idea of seeing a play the weekend after next seemed like a dream. The idea of doing anything at all in a fortnight’s time seemed quite unimaginable.

  Once we’d got back from the hospital I woke Jessica up and put her in a chair by the kitchen table and started preparing her dinner. She’d been dozing in my arms but I knew what she was like. I knew if I didn’t feed her now she’d sleep for an hour or two then wake up and turn hyperactive again. I talked to her to keep her awake: ‘And who’s that one a picture of?’

  I was looking at the drawing Marianne had pinned to the wall. But Jessica was paying no attention to me and I had to repeat the question. Finally she said: ‘It’s the man. The man in the mask.’

  ‘What man in the mask?’

  ‘The one I told you about. A million times.’

  ‘Which one?’

  She suddenly slid off her chair, all excited, and started shouting: ‘It’s you, silly, it’s you! It’s you again! I told you before!’ She was giggling maniacally, like it was a tremendously funny joke.

  ‘OK Jessica. Calm down now.’

  I got her to eat her food without too many problems but then it took ages to get her to go to sleep. She kept asking where Marianne was and I’d tell her she was at the hospital but she wasn’t listening. She was building up to some kind of hysterical fit and I just kept talking to her softly and patiently. Eventually she started to doze off in spite of herself, still murmuring and muttering in her sleep and I slipped quietly out of the room. I wandered around the house at a loss as to what to do with myself then went and sat outside in the garden. It was incredibly quiet for London and there was this ache of loneliness that pervaded and coloured everything.

  The door to Marianne’s studio was open and it occurred to me that I’d better go and clean up inside. I went in. Everything felt strangely barren, as though some powerful force had swept through and then left forever. The bloody sheets were piled up on the bed and her ripped nightgown was lying crumpled on the floor like the aftermath of some unimaginable ritual act. There were a lot of clothes lying messily on the floor. I sifted through them, picking out a skirt, top and some underwear to take to Marianne when I went to the hospital tomorrow morning. Then under all the clothes I noticed papers and stuff as well. There was that photo of her grinning wildly, the one that had been at the bedsit. I tried to picture Marianne going back to clear out the bedsit. I tried to imagine her there, packing things into boxes, her face totally impassive or maybe with tears in her eyes, who knows? But how was it that I hadn’t thought of all these things before, how was it that I so lacked the imagination? There were pages of writing, scribbled in Marianne’s characteristic mix of English and French. Most of it was illegible but certain phrases sprang out accusingly at me: ‘Grieving him, angry at him for disappearing like that. But you can’t be angry at the dead for long …’ Then a little further on: ‘… but he was a gentle man!’ It shook me when I read that. I knew she was writing about her lover and not me. The worthlessness of everything I’d done rose up around me as I put the pages down and walked back into the garden.

  XV

  It was maybe a dream of the man at the mouth of the cave, hands stretched towards me and the smile I had never forgotten, but then I woke up and the memory slipped away. I got up and went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on and on the way I noticed the blinking light on the answering machine. There were the usual messages for Marianne asking where she was and there were several for me too, from the office. Where had I disappeared to yesterday afternoon? Jo wanted to speak to me urgently. Her voice sounded strained but she didn’t say whether it was about Christian or Jarawa. Perhaps she’d found the note on my desk. Today was the twenty-second of August, after all. After the constant focus on that date it had still somehow crept up on me and caught me unawares.

  I got Jessica dressed and fed then drove her to the crèche. The supervisor was clearly surprised to see her and I remembered that Jessica hadn’t actually been there for some time now – she’d been spending her days with Marianne in the studio. In the car she’d been sitting beside me gripping my thigh but once we’d got inside the building she was eager to get away and play with her friends. I squeezed her hand harder: ‘Don’t leave me now Jessica,’ I whispered to her, ‘don’t leave me now.’ Of course she didn’t have the faintest clue what I was going on about, I was maybe embarrassing or even scaring her. The supervisor too was looking at me strangely. I let go of Jessica’s hand and suddenly she bounded off in the direction of a little Chinese boy. I turned back towards the car to drive to the hospital.

  There’d been this nervousness about seeing Marianne again. But after dropping Jessica off it was as if I’d been cleaned of all emotion, and I could face it now with equanimity. A nurse showed me into a ward of ten beds. Marianne was sitting up in her bed, staring into space, wearing a hospital gown that opened at the front. She looked a little better than I expected but no longer beautiful. There was the shaved head I’d never got used to but now she was pale and bloated as well. Her skin was blotchy, her breasts hung heavily and there were new lines on her face.

  ‘I brought you some clothes …’

  ‘Where’s Jessica?’

  ‘Don’t worry. She’s at the crèche.’

  I sat on the bed for quite a while without either of us saying anything or even looking at each other. Instead I looked round for the guy I’d seen yesterday with the head wound but he wasn’t there, which didn’t mean anything of course. There were things I wanted to say to Marianne but here didn’t feel like the place, although who knows whether I’d get another opportunity now.