‘Was Edith my mother?’ he asked again, and the words were completely disconnected from each other as he tried to catch his breath. I looked to my right. His blue Ventolin inhaler sat between us. ‘Did you kill my mother?’ he shouted.
‘Of course not,’ I cried. ‘What do you take me for?’
‘You did!’ he roared. ‘You killed my mother! And you stole her book!’
He could barely breathe now, and he reached out for his Ventolin and, without thinking, I reached for it too, grabbing it before he could and wrapping it in my closed fist as I stepped back towards the door.
‘Give it to me,’ he gasped, and I told myself to hand it over but, somehow, I couldn’t. I knew my son, I knew how honest he was, how persistent, and I knew that he would never let this go until he discovered the truth. ‘Give it to me, Dad!’ he cried, standing up, the words like broken syllables in his throat as he wheezed, his entire body doing all it could to clutch at small breaths of air to clear his increasingly clogged lungs.
‘I can’t,’ I said. My eyes flicked to the clock on the wall of my office. It was eight minutes past two when he fell to the floor, his hand on his chest, his body pulsing up and down as it went into shock. And at that moment I understood only too clearly that it was him or me. If I helped him, my career would be over, and I could not – I would not – allow that to happen. I had worked far too long and far too hard to let it go. I was a writer, for fuck’s sake. I was born to be a writer. No one would ever take that away from me.
‘So, you just let me die?’ asked Daniel, and I lifted the pint before me and took a long drink, allowing the alcohol to enter my bloodstream, making everything seem all right, before setting it down on the table once again.
‘I let you die,’ I admitted.
‘I begged you for my inhaler. You wouldn’t give it to me.’
‘You would have told. I couldn’t allow that. I’m sorry.’
‘But you’re not, though, are you? You’re not really sorry.’
‘I did what I had to do,’ I told him. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to have wanted something your entire life and never be good enough.’
‘Of course I don’t. I died when I was thirteen. I never got the chance.’
‘Jesus.’
I looked up, glanced around. I was surrounded by a blur that gradually began to focus. I was in the Cross Keys. How had I got there? I remembered leaving home earlier but couldn’t recall arriving. How long had I been sitting there?
‘Daniel?’ I asked quietly, but it wasn’t Daniel sitting opposite me. It was Theo.
‘Your wife?’ he said. ‘Your own son? I knew you were bad, but this—’
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. I felt that disoriented sensation one feels when waking from a mid-afternoon nap, confused about the time of day, uncertain of one’s location or whether you’ve been part of a dream or reality.
‘I thought you were just a liar. A manipulator. An operator and a plagiarist. But this? I never even suspected—’
‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ I said, leaning forward, my entire body shaking now in confusion. ‘You can’t speak to me like that, you little prick.’
He nodded down towards his phone and tapped the screen. A large red button was visible in the centre.
‘You can’t act as if you didn’t say it. I have it all here.’
‘You recorded me?’ I asked, frightened now. I couldn’t recall ever being frightened in my entire life.
‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘I’ve recorded all our conversations. Right from the start. You said I could, remember? When we met that first day in the Queen’s Head on Denman Street? I wanted to quote you accurately for my so-called thesis.’
I swallowed, trying to recall. That had been almost a month ago now but, yes, he had asked and I had said yes. He’d put the phone in his pocket so that it wouldn’t distract us and I had complimented him on his professionalism. But still, the things he was saying didn’t quite make sense to me. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘You are writing a thesis, aren’t you? That’s what you told me.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m writing a book.’
‘A thesis that will become a book.’
‘No, just a book.’
I shook my head, desperately trying to understand. ‘A book about me, though, yes? For your father? At Random House?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘That’s true. It was his idea, actually. And I do want to be a literary biographer. I know I’m young, but what’s wrong with that? You were young when you published your first book. If this works out, and I think it will now, I’d say I have a great career ahead of me.’
‘So there’s no thesis then,’ I said, considering this. ‘Just a book.’ Well, that wasn’t so bad. It cut out the middle man, so to speak. ‘You’ve been writing a book about me all this time.’
He smiled and looked around the bar, the expression on his face suggesting that he couldn’t quite believe how slow I was.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he asked. ‘You’re not the subject of the book.’
‘I’m not?’
‘No.’
‘Then who is?’
‘You can’t guess?’
I thought about it but, no, I couldn’t. ‘Who?’ I asked again.
‘Don’t you remember when we first met? I told you that books had been my passion since I was a kid? And that my father worked in publishing but that his uncle used to write a little?’
I looked away. Did I remember this? Yes, I did, but I had focussed only on the fact that his father was an editor.
‘My great-uncle, that would be,’ he said. ‘He’s the subject. I’m writing about him.’
‘And not me?’
‘No.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, placing both hands on the edge of the table before me, for I was beginning to feel faint. ‘I feel like I’m in a daze.’
‘How’s your German, Maurice?’ he asked.
‘Average, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Enough to get by on. Why?’
‘Theo Field,’ he said, very slowly, enunciating each syllable as he smiled at me.
‘I don’t…’ And then, like a door opening beneath my feet and sending me falling to the rocks below, I felt a sensation that I was no longer part of this world. ‘Field,’ I said. ‘Acker.’
‘Acker,’ he agreed with a nod.
‘Ackermann. You’re…’
‘My father is Georg Ackermann’s son. He was killed in a tram crash, remember? You told me so yourself. Erich’s younger brother.’
‘Erich was your uncle.’
‘Well, my great-uncle.’
I leaned forward and peered into his face. Did he look like Erich Ackermann? No, he looked like Daniel. He looked like my son.
‘I thought you would be more willing to confide in me if I shared some things in common with him,’ he said, sensing what I was thinking. ‘It wasn’t very difficult. There’s lots of pictures of him online, so I changed my hair colour to look like his. And he posted pictures on his Instagram account of his bedroom and I saw that band poster on the wall. So I bought a T-shirt to match.’
‘No,’ I said quietly.
‘And he wore a ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. So I got one of those too.’
‘Your glasses?’
‘There’s no prescription,’ he said, taking them off and handing them across to me. ‘Just frames with glass. The same ones that he wore.’
I put them on. I could see through them without any difficulty.