She was moving towards the door now, but stopped again to turn and look at the woman with terrifying hatred and anger in her face.
‘And don’t tell him I’ve been here. Don’t tell him anything. I’ll make things very unpleasant for you if you do. Just remember that.’
She backed away, still trembling in little waves of aftershock from the horror and humiliation of the encounter, keeping her head still turned to face the frightened, watery eyes behind the glasses watching her as she left the room. As she opened the front door she heard a movement behind her, and looked back to see the woman standing at the open door of the sitting room, still holding her breast with one hand.
‘I need to think,’ said Eleanor, sounding horribly feeble and conciliatory to her own ears. ‘You may have to leave here. I don’t know what arrangements you’ve – you may have to leave, that’s all. And Ruth. I won’t make it easy for either of you. You or your daughter.’
She closed the door behind her and began to make her way down towards the ground floor. Just as she reached the last step, she heard the door open again on the landing up the single flight of stairs behind her. A voice, still sounding frightened but given more confidence now by the relative safety of the distance between the two of them, called down to her with an urgency fuelled by genuine bewilderment and confusion.
‘What do you mean? I don’t understand. What has Ruth to do with it? My daughter’s name isn’t Ruth. What do you mean?’
Eleanor kept going down the stairs. The emotional and physical turmoil of the encounter had left her shocked and bruised, and she couldn’t at first make any sense of what the woman had said to her. Not only the meaning or implications of it, but even the words themselves wouldn’t form any kind of pattern in her head; they seemed to float about in their own mysterious limbo, creating strange sounds and echoes but not transmitting any clear signal. It wasn’t until she was crossing the street outside, jumping automatically out of the way of a car coming down Nottingham Place, headlights full on and flashing irritatingly into her eyes for a moment as it passed, that she began to appreciate what had been said. She needed to be still to concentrate, so took a moment to open the car door and get in before going over the words that were beginning to arrange themselves into a comprehensible order in her mind.
‘My daughter’s name isn’t Ruth.’
Yes, that was the crucial phrase. That was the bit that didn’t fit, that made nonsense of the understanding she had felt sure she had of the whole situation. How could it be? The woman had admitted she was the girl’s mother, there had been no doubt, no hesitation about that. Did Ruth have another name? Was that just for the office: an assumed name to cover some horrible original one? Did her mother know her as Charlene, or Kylie, or Tracy? Or call her Freckles, or Ginger, or Bimbo, or Bitch or Slag or—Hold on, hold on. Calm down. Keep thinking clearly for a moment.
But even as she tried these names against the picture she conjured up of the chic red-haired girl, she knew she was on the wrong track. They didn’t fit her any more than did the accent, clothes and general aura of the woman who was her mother. Or wasn’t her mother. And, in any case, Eleanor had heard the woman call out to her. She had heard her call ‘Ruth’ down the stairs at her. It just didn’t make sense.
She sighed and buried her head in her hands to think. She knew she would have to go back, would have to talk to that wretched woman again, but at the moment she just couldn’t bear it. She sat in the shadowy quietness of the car, the only noise that of the occasional passing car and the hum of traffic from the busier streets nearby, and despaired.
John Hamilton rose from his desk, stretched his shoulders backwards and grunted with the effort and relief of it. He shook his head a little, feeling his jowls shake and a loose lock of greying hair flop forward over his cheek, then reached for the finely striped grey jacket that hung over the back of his chair. It was unlike him to have taken it off in the first place, but this late in the evening and at a time such as this, when the office was almost empty, he indulged himself in the small luxury of sitting in his shirtsleeves while, tonight, he’d checked through the initial draft of next year’s budget. He was about to pick up his briefcase, when he remembered that he hadn’t yet made his usual call to Eleanor, and he glanced at his watch as he went to pick up the phone.
Eight fifteen. Later than usual, but not too late to ring her. Anything after ten, and he would hesitate, never sure if she might be taking the chance to have an early night while he was away in London and when she didn’t have an evening meal to prepare. He perched on the edge of the desk and listened to the sound of the phone ringing. One, two, three – up to six double rings, then he heard the familiar click of the machine switching on, and Eleanor’s brisk tones announcing the fact that she wasn’t in and to please leave a message.
‘Good, good, good,’ he muttered to himself as he waited for the long beep. He wasn’t in the mood for a chat, and the fact that she was obviously out at one of her local dos meant he could get away with a message instead. He hadn’t a clue where she was, but knew he could leave a message ambiguous enough to cover the possibility that he ought to know.
‘Hi, darling. Only me. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to ring earlier, but it’s budget time and I’ve only just finished. I had no idea how late it was till I stopped. See you tomorrow night, darling. Hope all’s going well with you. Thought I’d ring now in case I didn’t speak to you later. Poor me! Back to my bachelor pad, now, and the delights of baked beans. I might give you a ring when I’m there, but if not I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Lots of love.’
He was proficient at leaving messages; never sure why so many people stuttered and hesitated when confronted with the silence of the waiting tape. He was very happy to talk into the anonymous quietness; relaxed in the knowledge that he would not be interrupted, that he could put across what he wanted to say in his own time and without the distractions of any interjections or observations before he had finished. His messages to the office staff that he would dictate into a pocket recorder while driving to and from Surrey, or at home in the evenings, were legendary. Firm, detailed and leaving out nothing, they were delivered with greater clarity and confidence than when he spoke to the staff in the flesh, when there was always a tiny element of something approaching shiftiness in his behaviour: a certain reluctance to look the other person in the eye for more than a few seconds, after which he would glance away, or down to a paper on his desk, or at an imaginary speck on his sleeve.
He smoothed the flopping strand of hair back over his head with his palm, picked up his case and left the room, satisfied that he had dealt with everything that needed to be done, and that he could look forward to an evening of relaxation and comfort, and maybe a little enjoyable – no, he would think about that later, when he had eaten.
As he rounded the corner into Nottingham Place, a green Range Rover pulled out from a space about opposite the flat and accelerated away. He manoeuvred the BMW into the space smoothly, took out his case from the front seat and walked over the road, setting the car alarm and locking the doors with a satisfying click as he pressed the small pad set into the key. He kept hold of his silver keyring but let the car key swing round on it as he searched quickly through the other keys with one hand to find the one he wanted.
Eleanor sped up Nottingham Place, anxious now for only one thing: to get back home and lie in a hot bath. She had sat for another twenty minutes in the car, half waiting for John to arrive, half terrified that he would, but she suddenly felt she couldn’t bear to wait any longer, and that the only hope of restoring any feeling of sanity was to get back to familiar surroundings and wash away the horror of the day in a scaldingly hot scrub in the safety of her home. Now that she was on her way she felt better, and she switched on the radio to try to stop her mind starting