He is also quite recovered from his recent illness. Maybe she just allowed herself to get things out of proportion. Allowed Simon to get under her skin.
Afterwards, she joins Daniels in the kitchen. He is sitting at the table rubbing polish into his boots. The collar of his shirt is neatly buttoned down and a thick cable-stitch sweater covers his chest. He has also slicked flat his unruly hair.
‘You look smart,’ she says. He looks a bit like historical pictures she has seen of rural gamekeepers or fishermen, proud of their profession, the image taken on a river bank or in a field.
‘Thank you,’ he murmurs absentmindedly, returning the lid to the polish. He holds the toecaps of his boots to the light, displaying their gleam. ‘Although I’m not sure why I’m taking so much trouble. Five minutes in this filth’n’wet and all my work will be undone.’
The snow is piling up in the garden. The mermaid sits with perfect poise on her rock, crowned with a fresh white bonnet.
‘I think it makes everything pretty,’ she says.
‘Maybe to you, kiddo.’ He takes out a soft cloth and strops it one last time across the two boots together. ‘But you’re not the one having to go out in it.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m seeing my daughter,’ he says. ‘After six months, she’s finally been in touch and told me where she’s living.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Oh, don’t think I’m fooled. She’ll be wanting something from her old man – money most likely.’
‘I remember when she was born,’ Evie says. ‘It was in my fifth year and you brought her to the apartment. I had never seen a baby before.’
He pauses. ‘Good God yeah, I remember. You couldn’t stop touching her little hands. It made Mr Davenport hoot to see you coo over her.’
It was true. The experience had triggered a confused longing that at the time left her wondering whether she was malfunctioning.
‘Well, she made thirty-five last year, has properly caught you up and overtaken.’
Life moves so slowly in the apartment, each day a replica of the one before, that when the passage of time does reveal itself, it does so with a showy leap and bound.
‘Well, I’m all done,’ he says. ‘I’ll not be back till late, got to make it all the way over to Bow.’
‘How will you get there?’ Bow sounds pretty, very distant and from the way he said it, not without danger.
‘Well, with the winter flooding closing the tube, it’ll be a riverboat from Westminster and then shank’s pony along the canal.’ He drops his boots on the floor and inserting his large feet in their thick socks, laces each in turn.
‘Is it really safe to go all that way at night?’
He stamps around on the tiles, testing the comfort, and takes his greatcoat from the back of the door. ‘Don’t you worry about me, young lady.’
He gets out his wallet and leafs through the notes, calculating maybe what he can afford to spare his daughter, arranging the sought-after dollars to the front and the less readily accepted pounds to the back.
His reflection in the glass looms over her. He ties a scarf around his neck and tucks it in.
‘Just promise you won’t take any risks and make sure you avoid drunken sailors.’ She is aware that she is just talking to delay his departure. But now that he is finally ready, he also seems reluctant to make a move.
They are both expecting something more.
‘Give me a hug,’ she says, helping the matter along. She gets up from her seat and stands in close. In response he puts an arm around her, holding her awkwardly against his chest. The familiar tincture of smoke, soil and cooking oil wraps her around. Daniels kisses the top of her head, in the centre of her parting, before gruffly letting her go.
8
You make me laugh, Simon says, as she sits back down at the table after Daniels has gone, already worrying about him.
‘Why?’
Because you’re like a cat.
Evie doesn’t respond and instead stares out into the falling snow. The hedges are already bent over by its weight and the distant corner gazebo, with its tiered roof, has become a ghostly mausoleum. Her sense of wellbeing is eroding fast.
‘Why am I like a cat?’ she asks irritably, unable to resist the bait any longer.
Programmed to purr when someone strokes you. She feels his satisfaction at making her ask – winning the battle of wills. She should have seen him coming.
‘It isn’t like that.’
So that thing you do for him, the soft obedient thing, what exactly is the purpose?
‘He misses his daughter. How she used to be.’
And there’s no exquisite teeny little hit in it for you?
She gazes out through the glass, trying to exclude Simon’s voice. He is twisting things as normal. She forces herself to think of something different. Tomorrow, Daniels will use the snow shovel to clear the paths and while he works his way around, he will be watched by the smart little robin that lives in the vine under the pergola. If it is mild, she may even be able to persuade her husband to put down his books for a half hour and stroll with her along the freshly exposed gravel.
At eleven p.m., Evie returns along the corridor to her room. She glances to the end but there is no sign of a light under Matthew’s door, although he could still be reading. She wonders whether she should go to him, whether she can build on the success of their game earlier. She feels lonely and it is tempting but then, thinking of the inevitable fight with Simon, she decides against it. Besides, her power is running low.
Instead she changes for bed in her room and lies down under the covers, speculating as to whether Daniels is safely on his way home yet from Bow and how late the riverboats run. The woman should have come to visit him here, not selfishly made him go all the way out to her at his age. The thought makes her feel something like anger – before she softens again, recalling the little baby with its tiny hands that Daniels carried in to meet them in its crib, thirty-five years previously.
What sort of mother would Evie have made? An indulgent one, she suspects, but such speculations leave her hollow and can’t be allowed.
The apartment itself is totally quiet, as if in her friend’s absence something vital is missing. The night feels polarised between the wind scraping outside and the stillness within, and the resulting tension leaves her more nervous for her future than ever she can recall. Unsettled, she is reluctant to put herself into standby, wanting to hold on until Daniels returns. Needing to know that he is back and all is well.
Simon won’t have it. Your levels are scraping zero, he announces in the darkness. You can’t hold a charge to save your life these days. I’m sorry, I know you don’t like to hear it but it needs to be said… and if you don’t put yourself down right this minute, I’ll initiate the override.
I can last another hour… she thinks back fiercely, and is about to add that he has no right to talk to her in this way, when he flicks the switch and a void closes in.
Wake up, he says, and then, because she does not respond, sends a ball of current arcing through her cranium. It is equivalent to all the lights in the apartment being flashed on in one go – what a migraine must be like – and her body is thrust upright, chest pumping.