Tree of Pearls. Louisa Young

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СКАЧАТЬ in Malaya. She had a very English profile. Pretty little nose. Fine fine lines on dry dry skin telling of late late nights and a lot of gin and tonics.

      ‘Fine,’ I said. In that English way.

      ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ she demanded.

      Teflon slid off me. I was totally confused. Why was she asking me that? What the hell do I say? I can lie about Eddie’s death but I can’t –

      ‘Why?’ I asked.

      ‘You look it.’

      Don’t say, ‘How can you tell?’

      I didn’t have to.

      ‘It shows,’ she said, and I looked to my belly and gave it away.

      ‘Not there,’ she said. ‘In your face.’ She was smiling at me, a warm, lovely smile.

      I couldn’t look at my face. But my face looked at her, and she knew.

      ‘How marvellous,’ she said, with complete sincerity and kindness, and she was the first person to say so, the first person to know, and even though she was her, I kind of loved her for it. Then she jumped up and hugged me. Taken aback? Yes I was.

      ‘How many weeks are you?’ she asked.

      The phrase confused me for a moment. What does it mean? Then I worked it out. ‘Nine,’ I said. ‘Or … no, nine.’

      ‘Oh wow,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t usually show at all so early. Maybe it’s twins. How long have you known? Oh …’ And I thought she was going to cry again.

      I remembered her in the back of the ambulance that Harry and I called to take her away after Eddie’s funeral, in her big fur and stilettos, her over-sized black sunglasses, shouting and calling about abortions that he’d made her have. No children, wanted children, had children, had children taken from her.

      What does she mean, twins?

      I don’t know about pregnant. Pregnant is new to me.

      Oh god, Sa’id.

      *

      Chrissie and I were still talking when Brigid came back with Lily. I didn’t want to. But I didn’t not want to. She told me what I didn’t know – that after the abortions (four) she had got pregnant again, which she considered something of a miracle, and gone away on a cruise, and not come back till she was eight months gone, and produced a daughter, for whom he hired full-time nannies, and who he had sent to boarding school from the age of four. She’s sixteen now, and Chrissie was going to see her at Christmas though she was spending the holidays with a schoolfriend because she (Chrissie) didn’t trust herself yet. Eddie hadn’t seen her for three years when he … died. She told me about scans and Braxton Hicks, about evening primrose and pethidine, about yoga and pools and the perineum, about hot curry to bring on labour. About clary sage and pre-eclampsia and BabyGap and Kamillosan and the Natural Childbirth Trust and the importance of letting the umbilical cord stop pulsing before it is cut. I didn’t mind. I told her that I had only known for twenty-four hours. I told her that I was amazed and terrified. She said that was normal. She made me laugh several times, and didn’t ask who the father was. She told me about foetal alcohol syndrome. I didn’t tell her her husband was still alive. She left when Lily came back, and ruffled her hair as she went.

      Then Harry came to put Lily to bed. ‘I was thinking I’d like to have her for weekends sometimes,’ he said, ‘but actually I’d rather be with both of you.’

      ‘You’ll be wanting parental responsibility, anyway,’ I said.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will. Better write to the court. When we get back the new birth certificate.’

      New birth certificate.

      I didn’t tell him.

      That night I lay in bed thinking of the tiny Egyptian inside me, and I dreamt of a painting I’d seen in one of the tombs outside Cairo, where the occupant – Ptah Hotep – is portrayed with a tiny adult-proportioned daughter, just tall enough to reach his knee, holding on to his calf with one outstretched hand and striding along with him, between his knees, as he strides that Egyptian tomb-carving stride. If I remember rightly he was the Pharoah’s Official Keeper of Secrets, and hairdresser. Or maybe that was Ti. Anyway, plus ça change.

      *

      On Monday Preston Oliver rang during breakfast: well, while Lily was letting her porridge get cold and I was wondering why I didn’t feel like drinking coffee.

      ‘Can you make it down here for 9.45?’ he said.

      ‘No,’ I said, on principle.

      ‘Try,’ he suggested.

      ‘I’m not available,’ I said.

      ‘Make yourself available,’ he said. ‘Seventh floor. They’ll tell you at reception.’

      So I rang Zeinab and took Lily round there to play with Hassan and Omar, school having broken up, and climbed on a number 94 from the Green, changed at Oxford Circus and read the paper all the way in self-defence against Christmas shopping and rucksacks and loden coats and swinging cameras and Selfridges bags and all the rest of the battery of the tourist in London. And got off at Westminster, and ambled down Victoria Street, and approached our national centre of law enforcement at about five to ten. I was glad to be late. It made me feel free.

      I’d never been inside before. It just looks like an office. Computer screens everywhere. Could have been a newspaper office, or an insurance office, or anything. Noticeboards, big rooms divided into little ones by unconvincing screens. Photocopiers. Someone had put up some half-arsed paper-chains. I hate offices more than almost anything. My sweat smells different in office buildings. I come over all metallic.

      Oliver’s office was not big, not small. I know people set store by this stuff. Status and so on. But I wouldn’t know where to begin. He had a window, though, so he can’t be that lowdown. And a desk of his own.

      ‘Glad you could make it,’ he said.

      ‘Yes, well,’ I replied.

      He looked at me.

      ‘Coffee?’

      Visions of Nescafe floated up on the smell of central heating. ‘No thanks,’ I said. I haven’t been sick at all, I realized. Aren’t you meant to be sick? Maybe I wasn’t pregnant. I was going to the doctor that afternoon.

      ‘Harry will be joining us in a moment,’ he said, ‘but before he does I want to talk to you.’

      I grunted.

      ‘You’re going to have to help us, Angeline.’

      Bollocks I am, I thought. And just gazed at him, as a cow might. A nice fat pretty cow called Bluebell.

      ‘You’re a freelance, aren’t you? Consultations and what-have-you? I’m hiring you.’

      Oh yes? I almost laughed.

      ‘I’ll give it СКАЧАТЬ