Reading the diaries again, another daydream had taken hold of her. Perhaps Jake might take a fancy to Anna. He would be about the right age. Really, Leah was a bit young for him. Then Anna could drop that difficult man of hers and if Jake and Anna were a couple – well, Jake could come and stay here and help me with this story while Anna looks after me. Or perhaps Leah will get to Cambridge and Jake will decide to follow her. He could get a job on a Cambridge paper, or maybe do another degree. He could live here with me and Leah would come and visit.
Fantasy it might all be, but that morning anything seemed possible. Marianne was so cheerful that Anna was amazed at the transformation. When it was time for lunch they opened a bottle of wine and played cards while they ate together – laughing and chiding each other as they had done in times past. Once Anna had gone, Marianne sank back into her chair and fell into an untroubled sleep.
As Jake and Leah emerged from the entrails of Clapham Junction late in the evening, a bubble of contentment seemed to surround them, protecting them from the icy east wind which blew into their faces. Jake was unashamedly upbeat. Charlie, his boss, had been very excited with the material they had produced on the abuses of the postal voting system and now the lawyers were crawling all over it. A provisional date of 1st December had been fixed for publication. This would be his story; an important step in his career as a journalist.
As a reward for all Leah’s hard work, Jake had persuaded the Chronicle to allow her name to appear as a part of the investigative team.
‘OK?’ he said, taking her hand as they walked up Lavender Hill.
‘Stoked… and don’t let them change their minds! That will show Mum I’m doing a real job and not just hanging around you like some dopey lovesick teenager.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Fuck off.’
Jake put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. He found it endearing that in moments of excitement her Australian accent always came to the fore. Since that strange evening the previous week, when she had pestered him about Fran and he had told her the story and then shocked himself as much as her with the sudden violence of his behaviour, a new calmness had come over him. The tension that had been part of Jake’s life for so long seemed to have dissipated, and something solid and fulfilling was growing in the vacated space. He couldn’t yet articulate what was happening but he sensed the changes somewhere within him.
He also knew that Leah was more relaxed because of what her father had told her that morning about Marianne. He felt sure, he had said, that she would change her mind. She hadn’t said so exactly, but he had sensed it. At the very least she would delay any final decision.
‘Are you going to help Gran with those diaries, then?’
‘If she asks me.’
‘No, I don’t think you should wait to be asked. Especially in her state of mind. Call her up and offer to help. It might be just the incentive she needs.’
Jake thought for a moment. ‘You’re right. It might help. I will call her.’
As they entered Jake’s flat together, relieved to be out of the wind on what was surely the coldest night of the year so far, the reassuring warmth which they expected was absent.
‘Shit, it’s cold in here,’ said Leah, as Jake went to the kitchen and started fiddling with the boiler.
‘Bloody thing seems to have seized up,’ he said.
Leah looked at him. There was nothing in her facial expression which an observer would have noticed but a split second of eye contact was enough for Jake to follow her to the bedroom, shedding his coat on the way and falling onto the bed beside her.
‘Hey, your hands are cold,’ said Leah, laughing.
‘Sorry, it’s not exactly warm in here,’ said Jake, pulling the duvet over them as they embraced and began undressing under the covers, exploring each other’s flesh with cold hands.
‘Fuck, I can’t get these off…’ said Leah.
‘Let me help.’
‘You need to pull from the bottom.’
‘Shit… it would help if you didn’t knee me in the balls.’
‘Sorry. Let me make them better.’
And so, with occasional curses, and small cries of painful pleasure, they removed their clothes in the chill of their unheated flat and made love to each other with humour and tenderness.
Meanwhile Jake’s phone buzzed repeatedly. Fortunately, both had long since mastered the art of ignoring their phones and the bleating failed to distract either of them from their more immediate concerns. It wasn’t until later that Jake listened to the message.
‘It’s only George,’ he said. ‘Advance warning that Pauline in HR wants to speak to me tomorrow morning.’
‘What about?’
‘About you, he thinks. A warning against inappropriate conduct with an intern.’
‘Screw inappropriate conduct,’ she said, nestling close to Jake.
‘My thoughts exactly.’
Perhaps it was too much to expect the mood to last. Marianne awoke to a fit of coughing, which sometimes happened for no apparent reason when she had been lying back in her chair. A terrible dry cough which made her feel she was going to choke. She had also drunk too much wine and now badly needed the lavatory. The room was almost dark – she had slept longer than expected – and as she fumbled for her glasses she knocked over the small table beside her chair. Cursing silently amid another spasm of coughing she pulled the lever to get her chair upright – but now her sticks were out of reach. Then she couldn’t hold it any longer – her bladder let go and she felt the warm, wet spread of her urine.
It took her almost an hour to sort herself out, change her clothes and wipe down her chair; and sitting now at the kitchen table she tried but failed to revive the optimism of the morning. That small benevolent snapshot of Russia now seemed absurd; it had been the place where her life had taken the wrong turning, where she had deceived her husband and gravely injured herself – where, as she now knew, she had helped deliver a man into the hands of the KGB and to his death in a Siberian gulag.
What had she been thinking, imagining she could fly off around the world, spending money she didn’t have? She had already taken out far more of the value of the house than she had intended – or that Callum was aware. Every month, the interest reduced the balance of her equity and ratcheted up the future interest payments. She had a responsibility to ensure that at least something went to her grandchildren – it was unfair that they should be burdened by debt that she had never had to cope with.
This, of course, was the secret she was keeping from Callum, from Dorrie – and most especially from herself: a sense of duty to those with a life still to lead. How could she think of wasting what little money she had left, when others needed it more? Why should she linger on when Callum and Helen needed to get on with their lives in Australia and Anna would be better off going back to Latvia with her boyfriend? A dozen times she had denied it to them, just as she continued to deny it to herself. Some part of her knew that such reasoning could not exist. To think it would be to risk communicating it; and to communicate even a hint that she was choosing to die now in order to liberate those closest to her, would destroy anything good which might come from her death. The easiest way to keep a secret, she knew, is never to know the secret – to forget what you might know but can’t divulge – and so she wiped these thoughts from her mind before they could gain a foothold.