4

LEONARD IS NOT SORRY to get back to the van and be himself again. Those hours spent behind the Woodsman, so thrilling and so promising at first, have left him cornered rather than resolved. He is relieved, though, to find that his van has been neither clamped nor towed. Throughout his meeting with Lucy Emmerson he has never quite forgotten the single yellow restricted parking line running under its nearside tires and has worried what ingenious excuses he might have to offer Francine to explain why he is so unexpectedly late home. He cannot tell her he has ended up, expensively, at a City Highways car pound after an afternoon of drinking and smoking with a pretty teenage girl. A more likely delay, given his white lies of that morning, would be having the vehicle locked in by careless rangers at some unattended forest clearing. But, thankfully, the van is untouched. He can save his inventions for some other occasion. For a moment only, his spirits lift. This trip has not proved to be an entire disaster. Not yet, at least. Not if he can go back on his promise. He knows he will, he knows he must. Leonard flushes hot and cold at the prospect. What folly has he promised Lucy Emmerson? Pressed up close together on that wooden bench, conspirators, he has abandoned his good sense. On the journey back, he can concoct the most convincing reasons for his change of heart, something that will satisfy both the girl and himself, though nothing he does now—including speeding or taking risks, as he has just done, pulling out too carelessly into lively traffic—will get him home before his wife as he has promised.

Leonard knows the law. He should not be driving at all: 25 centiliters of wine is the limit and he has drunk three times that volume. And on an empty stomach. He’s risking a suspension. But it is only early evening, not quite dark yet. Random checks are not usually deployed until much later. He will avoid the motorways, however, where there are robot eyes to monitor the vehicles, and return the way he came, on rural routes. First, though, he turns the van round, drives back toward the hostage house, and parks again on the fringes of the mobile village with its circle of incident and rescue vehicles. Something pulls him there, something that he hopes is more than prurience. He is only idling, in both senses. He does not even turn the engine off or get out of the van. Instead, he reaches for his thermos under the passenger seat, where it has rolled and been forgotten during the jazz-fueled journey down. The lime-and-honey-flavored green tea is tepid and cloudy. It is reviving, though, and, he imagines, sobering. If he is stopped and questioned by the police (or Francine, come to that) because his driving or behavior is erratic, his grape-and-tobacco breath will have been partly cleansed and sweetened and might not betray him. Everything he does from now on until the lights go out tonight must help erase the day.

The parking ground is no less busy than it was this morning. Groups of officers come back off shifts, expressionless. Young men and women in uniform swipe their ID fobs at the catering van for their free drinks and sandwiches. Techies in hi-viz jackets fuss and tinker with their aerials and armories, issuing and taking back the beam guns or laser tasers that frontline officers from the National Security Forces are authorized to carry and far too ready to use. The army and police forces do not mix with the rescue services, Leonard notices. Taking lives and saving lives are worlds apart. And they all despise the television crews. They are like playground gangs, keeping to their own kind and unhurriedly sharing their boredom with familiars. So the siege continues. Nothing new has happened this afternoon, he thinks, and is disappointed. Now Leonard understands what has pulled him back onto this open ground, something worse than prurience: it is the hope that the hostage-taking has been ended quickly while he’s been in the pub, not only for the victims’ sake, and not at all for Maxie Lermon’s sake, but for his own well-being.

 LEONARD SETS OFF ON THE JOURNEY home in a media-silent van. He needs to stay calm and unruffled, and he has to think. He’s overreached himself, that much is obvious, and he suspects that getting back to safe and level ground will not be trouble-free. This is a tangle from which he knows he has to extricate himself at once. He imagines the conversation he will need to have with Francine, proving something she already knows: that he is foolish and suggestible, that thanks to him Celandine’s old room is being given up to a missing young woman, but not the one his wife is praying for. Kidnapping of any kind is an offense, he tells himself, no matter that the victim is a coconspirator and more accountable than she might seem. The newspapers, the police, will know the truth: here is a “teenage child” who should expect good counsel and a restraining hand from her elders, not help and encouragement. Threatening violence is also an offense, even if the threat is little more than theater and could never produce anything other than blanks. And then there is the lesser crime of wasting police time. No one would blame Lucy for that. She’s too immature, they’d say, to be the ringleader, to be the instigator of such a devious venture. Seventeen-year-olds have limited judgment, and less experience. But a man of almost fifty? How could a man of almost fifty, wittingly and willingly, go along with such a plan and give no thought to any of the consequences? Leonard Lessing … Mister. Lennie. Less … On tenor … You are charged with willful mistreatment of a minor. And conspiracy. How do you plead? No, this is not a good idea at all.

He flicks on the drive-time news and, hoping for too much, waits for an update on the hostages. But he has to listen first to the main items of the day, the forthcoming Reconciliation Summit and the many protests planned, and then a report from Los Angeles predicting a majority yes vote in California’s unofficial Proposition 101, nicknamed Montezuma’s Revenge, calling for the Latino state’s secession from the union. “It is feared,” the correspondent says, “that should these polls prove accurate and the majority embark on forced implementation, then many non-Latino Californians might resist with violence.” Leonard imagines himself and Maxie holed up among the redwoods, comrades in arms, an International Brigade of two. It’s For Whom the Bell Tolls filmed at Big Sur, though whether they would be fighting for or fighting against the rule of the WASPs of America is not clear. Am I the only one, he wonders, the only adult anyway, who has such childish, self-deluding fantasies? Is everyone a reckless hero in their dreams? Is everyone a Mr. Perkiss in their dreams?

Maxie himself is the third item in the newscast. It has been a quiet day for him and everyone involved, the presenter says. Pizzas and fresh fruit have been delivered by “elderly representatives” of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, and police, predicting “a long negotiation,” have established telephone contact with “the group.” Nothing promising. So Leonard turns to music once again: this time some classic Lester Young to fuff and schmooze him back to Francine. But he is too agitated to concentrate on music. And in pain. His frozen shoulder, which he has virtually forgotten while sitting in the pub yard with Lucy, has started to trouble him again. Driving stiffens it, he finds.

It is already eight in the evening when he gets back. It’s too late to eat a meal together, so he has stopped in the district shop near home and bought, as he often does, a box of carob Florentines for his wife. There are no lights on in the house, and this is surprising and a little worrying, though a relief as well. But Francine’s little car is parked in its usual place, charging at the domestic fuel box, and when Leonard steps into the moonlit gloaming of their glass-roofed hall, he can smell cooking and the beat of broadcast music. She’s watching the Maestro channel in the dark, a Verdi opera, but as the telescreen pitches light into the room he can see that her eyes are closed and she is napping, worn out. Her legs are up on a stool, and only one of her slip-on shoes is still hanging from her toes. She has loosened the top buttons of her trousers. And as ever she has taken off her watch—“unwinding,” she calls it—and put it on the arm of the futon, next to a used cup and plate. He lifts the surviving shoe off her foot, carries the crockery into the kitchen, washes it, and then returns to find her sitting up, awake and flushed. He sits down next to her and puts the Florentines on her lap.

“That’s nice,” she says. “Have I been sleeping?”

“Dead to the world.”

“What time is it? When did you get back?”

“I’ve been back quite a while. I let you sleep.” He leans across and kisses her behind the ear.

“You smell of cigarettes.”

“I can’t think why.”

“Well, nor can I. Where did you go?”

“Into the forests, like I said. Pepper’s Holt and up into the birch hursts. They were burning off the bracken. Maybe that’s it.”

“It doesn’t smell like bracken.”

She shakes her head at him and smiles, then takes his hand and wraps her fingers through his, something that she hasn’t done unbidden for far too long. “It’s nice to have you home. I hated coming back and no one here. Kiss-kiss.” She pulls the hair back from her face and turns her head from him, offering the same ear that he kissed before. “I realize we’re having bumpy times,” she says, not facing him, “but … you know I love you more than all the buts. This morning, with the breakfast tray. I didn’t mean to upset you …”

Leonard does not kiss her, though. He can smell the cigarettes as well. He knows that here he has a chance to recount the truth about his day, just to get it off his chest and have her agree with him that he must extricate himself. For a moment he even considers arguing that she should phone Lucy herself, with some excuse. It’s tempting. But who can tell what Francine might think or what she might advise? He suspects she could be more angry that he has deceived her than with the scheme he and Lucy have dreamed up. It’s possible that she could even like the prospect of a guest in the house, a bright young woman sleeping in a once-bright young woman’s room. But, no, he will say nothing, because he understands from experience that once Francine has committed herself to something, she will be lost to it. He has married a woman with a wild stripe. She will be deaf to any warnings or any fears he might offer about willful mistreatment of a minor. “Oh, Leonard, do grow up,” she’ll say, as she has said more than once before. “I know what they’ll put on your gravestone. It’ll say ‘Scared to Death.’”

So he pulls his hand away from hers and goes again into the kitchen. As he has feared while she’s been holding him, his fingers do stink of tobacco. He plunges them into the suds left from the washing-up and wipes them roughly with the pan scourer. He swills his mouth with grapefruit juice and rubs his teeth. When he goes back in the room, sucking surreptitiously on a mint tablet, he is relieved to find that Francine is dozing again. He presses her earlobe until she half opens an eye. “Come on, go up, you need to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Carry me upstairs,” she says, putting her hands around his neck and putting on her Helpless Hannah face. She loves it when he carries her. She’s small enough.

“I can’t. My shoulder’s killing me.”

“Well, don’t be too long. Come up soon.”

Leonard doesn’t go up soon. It’s cruel to have to stay downstairs. Life is playing tricks on him. Francine has made it clear—isn’t it so?—that she does not want him to pull out and flatten the futon tonight, that he will be more than welcome on her side of the bed. Everything she has done since his return is telling him she is ready, hoping even, to make love. It’s what he’s wanted for the past few weeks but has not dared to initiate. At last a window opens in their life. But Leonard cannot attend to his wife or even satisfy himself just yet. His mind is fixed elsewhere.

Leonard has to hunt to find the remote console pushed into the folds of the futon. It’s behind the still-warm cushions where Francine has been sitting. His hand is shaking even more than when he loaded Maxie’s photograph the previous evening. He has been aroused by Francine’s attention, the warmth and smell of her, his love for her too infrequently expressed. That’s cause enough to make him shake. But he is shaken by the lies he’s told as well. And by the stupid criminality he’s felt, the guilt, of coming back to his wife stinking of Lucy’s roll-ups. But most of all he’s shaken by the phone call he must make. He’ll do it now and go upstairs for his reward. Do it, do it, do it now, ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum. He’ll phone. Yes, he will phone.

Leonard clicks an on-screen toolbar and, half watching for updates in the headlines window that is minimized in the corner of the screen, opens Utilities and scrolls through the options until his arrow locates TelecomUK. He specifies Domestic and Residential, types in Lucy’s full name, and identifies her hometown, not expecting any luck and not getting any. Cell phone numbers are always hard to find with so little information. He presumes her mother will have a registered home address, though. What isn’t registered these days? He tries again, with “Emmerson, Nadia.” But gets nothing other than “This person could not be found. Check your data.” Maybe she has changed her name, he thinks. Or has a married name. Or has adopted a more exciting title: Red Nadia, Nadia Firebrand, Ms. Sofa Emmerson. He simplifies his search, her surname only. The engine offers seventy results, only four of which have N as their opening initial. He highlights and strikes out the rest, and then strikes out “Nigel Emmerson.” He’s narrowed it to three. He writes the numbers and addresses next to the initials N. H., N., and N. T. T. on a scrap of card torn from the cover of Francine’s Florentine box. He’ll have to try them all until he strikes lucky. But Leonard cannot risk calling the numbers from the house—there is an extension next to the bed that always Morses its own erratic commentary when the terrestrial line is in use—and so he puts his shoes back on and, hoping that Francine is too fast asleep by now to hear the chime of the front door, goes out into the street and to the parking bay to try these numbers from the van, even though he knows it’s almost ten o’clock and late in the day to be calling strangers.

N. H. Emmerson, or at least the person who answers the phone, is female and not quite British. Canadian, perhaps. She sounds anxious, not used to evening calls.

“Is Lucy there?” he asks.

“Lucy who?”

“Lucy Emmerson.”

“We are Emmersons, but we haven’t got a Lucy here.”

“Do you have a Lucy in your family?”

“Who is this speaking, please?”

Leonard ends the call rather than answer, rather than be ill-mannered and not reply. He knows he has mishandled it. This time, with N. T. T., he’ll be more subtle. But there is no need. “Lucy’s living with her mum these days,” an older man volunteers at once.

“Is that with Nadia?”

“Correct.”

“Can I check her phone number with you?” Leonard reads out the last remaining number on his list.

“Correct,” the man says again. “Is it Lucy that you want? Say hi from Grandpa Norman, will you, when you speak? Do you take messages?”

“I can.”

“You can tell her that I’m sorry about her bicycle. Some people’ll help themselves to anything these days.”

“Somebody stole her bicycle?”

“Correct.”

Leonard cannot phone at once. His heart is beating and his mouth is dry. He drains the last few drops of now cold tea from the neck of his flask and clears his throat. If it weren’t for Francine, perhaps awake indoors, and maybe even calling out his name to no reply before coming downstairs in her bare feet, hoping to find her husband safe and deaf to the world between his iPod earphones rather than dead on the carpet, he’d leave this final call for fifteen minutes or so. Enough time for a fortifying shot of rum, if they still have any rum. Enough time for deep breaths and embouchures. He dares not risk the fifteen minutes, though. He keys the number at once and lets it ring. He will allow ten tones and then give up. A second and maybe better possibility would be showing up tomorrow at the Zone as agreed and talking then and there to Lucy, explaining to her face to face why her genius is flawed. Yes, that would be less cowardly and less immediate. But Nadia Emmerson answers her house phone at once. Her voice is still familiar and unnervingly attractive, though any trace of adopted Texan has gone.

“Has anybody at this number lost a bike?” Leonard asks, unable to stop himself from disguising his own voice.

“Good heavens, yes. My daughter has. Who’s talking, please?”

Leonard can hear a background voice, the television possibly, except that Nadia is shushing it. “It’s a man about your bike,” she says, off-mike, and to the phone, “Hold on. She’s coming now.” And here is Lucy on the line, teenage-husky and familiar. “Hey,” she says.

“Lucy, listen to me, this is Leonard Lessing,” he whispers. “Pretend to Nadia that someone’s found your bike, okay? Then redial me on this number in the morning, at nine o’clock. Exactly nine o’clock. We have to talk. Tomorrow morning, then. Don’t let me down.”

Leonard lets himself again into a lightless house and undresses in the hall, wincing off his sweater and his shirt. He stows his shoes on the shelf and carries his used clothes upstairs with him for the laundry pile. The floorboards wheeze beneath his feet. It is the second time today that he has stepped naked into the bedroom. Now that his troubles seem at least partially resolved, he is in a celebratory mood. Francine will leave for work tomorrow by half past eight, and by half past nine Leonard will have rescued himself from the madness that has trapped him briefly. He has been tired—the driving and the stress, the alcohol, the lies—but unexpectedly he now feels wide awake and optimistic rather than defeated. Francine has offered him an olive leaf. She’s coiled her fingers round his fingers. She has said “Kiss-kiss.” Perhaps she’s surfacing at last from the hollow of her missing girl, he thinks. I’m here to help, I’m here to cherish her. So he does not put on his snooza shorts but slides under the duvet undressed. He puts his hand on Francine’s hip. She’s not asleep. “Too late,” she says.