Suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do first when she reached Princeton, whom she would visit straight away. She doubted she’d be welcome, but she didn’t care. And she certainly did not intend to give any warning.
Part Three
Most people... make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
Six
She rang the bell on the intercom system. He didn’t answer, instead buzzing the front door open. Maybe he was expecting someone else? She entered anyway, and made her way upstairs to his apartment.
She could hear a dog barking.
It was another minute or two before he came to the door, a little black terrier bouncing around his feet. His face was pale and drawn, etched with shock and grief. He was wearing a grubby grey tracksuit which hung from his bony frame. His eyes opened wide with surprise when he saw her.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Jones heard herself say, immediately thinking what a terrible opening remark that was.
‘Sandy?’
He appeared to be asking her to confirm her identity.
‘Yes, it’s me.’
She managed a tentative smile.
Ed just stared at her.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
For a split second she thought he was going to refuse. Send her away. And she wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. Also, it occurred to her suddenly that he may not be alone. Connie had told her that Ed had married, only a couple of years after she did, that there had been a daughter, and that he and his wife had later divorced. But that was all she knew.
Eventually Ed stepped back into the hallway and gestured for her to enter. It was a small but cosy apartment. He led her to a bright blue and yellow kitchen at the rear.
The weather was unusually warm and muggy for New Jersey in mid-September, but Ed’s air-conditioning was so powerfully cold that Jones felt herself involuntarily shiver.
Ed’s shoulders were slumped low, his walk a shuffle. He moved the way Jones felt, on that dreadfully sad day. He sat down at a little scrubbed wooden table, bearing an overflowing ashtray and an empty coffee cup, and gestured for her to join him.
‘I didn’t think you’d ever take up smoking,’ she said, more for something to say than anything else.
He looked at her with something bordering distaste, and she didn’t like it at all.
‘How the hell would you know anything about me?’ he enquired sharply.
She winced.
‘In any case, I don’t smoke,’ he continued. ‘Not usually.’
‘Well, this is certainly not a usual day,’ Jones ventured.
‘No.’
His voice was just a little softer.
‘I’m sorry, I feel a bit raw,’ he continued.
‘Of course.’
It was weird. So awkward. As if she were a stranger. But then, she supposed that’s exactly what she now was.
‘I’m sorry to spring myself on you, Ed. I just, well, I just booked myself onto a flight and came here. Straight away, almost, after I heard the news.’
Ed stared at her levelly.
‘Why?’ he asked.
She was startled.
‘W-why?’ she repeated uncertainly.
He was clearly irritated. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue.
‘Why have you come here?’
The irritation was in his voice too.
She sought the words to explain. They didn’t come. she gave the only answer she could.
‘I had to, Ed, I just had to.’
‘After all this time...’
There was an inflection in Ed’s voice that Jones could not quite identify. She looked down at her hands on the table.
‘They would have been glad, though, that you came,’ he said suddenly.
Jones was touched. This was the first moment of comfort of any kind that she had experienced since the shock of seeing that first news item about the explosion.
And Ed had been closer to Paul and Connie than anyone. He and his younger brother Michael had been brought up by their maternal grandparents after their mother and father were killed in a car crash. Ed, aged three at the time, and Michael, just a baby, had been in the car, strapped in on the back seat. Their survival was considered a miracle. The much-loved grandparents had both died while Ed was at Princeton. So the boys were orphaned all over again, more or less, and Connie and Paul had become even more important to Ed.
‘Thank you,’ said Jones.
Ed shrugged.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jones blurted out impulsively. ‘Sorry I’ve never been in touch...’
Ed shrugged again.
‘That’s life,’ he said, his voice expressionless.
‘I know, but I should have...’
She paused, not knowing quite what to say next, which, of course, had been the problem twenty-one years earlier.
‘You should have said goodbye,’ he finished for her, raising his voice. ‘That, at least, would have been nice. You didn’t even tell me it was over. You let me think you were coming back. You didn’t tell me anything. You just walked out on me. I read about you and Dr damned Darling online, for God’s sake.’
‘I-uh, I’m sorry,’ she said again.
And she was too. Probably far sorrier than Ed would ever know.
He lit another cigarette, puffing on it in the slightly desperate way of someone not used to the habit.
‘So, how can I help you, then?’ he asked, his voice quiet again, polite and distant.
‘Do you know what happened to Paul and Connie, exactly what happened?’ she asked abruptly.
‘There was an explosion, Sandy. I’m sure you know that as well as I do.’
‘Yes. But was it an act of terrorism? Was it a bomb? And was RECAP the target?’
‘They’re saying that it might have been a gas leak.’
‘I know. And I don’t believe that. Do you?’
‘I don’t know what I believe. Why would terrorists attack Princeton? We’re a university, a seat of learning.’
‘And not the first innocent place to be torn apart that way. Think of Bali. The Twin Towers, the London Underground, Paris, that concert in Manchester. Not exactly military targets.’
‘No.’
‘Thank God you weren’t in the lab, too.’
‘I teach more or less full time, now.’ Ed laughed without humour. ‘At the high school. It was either that or skid row. So I have a price too. Ironic really.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
She knew what he meant. Whilst Jones had taken the career path, Ed had stuck to his vocation, to following his dream. And now he was teaching school, because it had been that or the street.
‘So you haven’t been working with Paul and Connie lately, then?’
‘Oh I have. Unofficially. That’s always been the euphemism round here for not getting paid. RECAP’s budget had been slashed to a fraction of what it used to be. And God knows, it was never great. But I couldn’t really stop. I’ve been monitoring things...’ His voice tailed off. ‘You know, the usual.’
‘I’ve got a fair idea.’ She paused. ‘Look. Connie called me a few days ago. She sounded... troubled. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I’m sure of it. She wanted to talk, only...’