The wall behind us was spilling over with honeysuckle. The smell of it drowsy, heavy. Carmel is so beautiful, even in her jeans and an old T-shirt. Next to her I happily evaporate, ghost-like. Short hair, thin face. I always look tired, always cross. People are often surprised by my warmth. I wasn’t expecting you to be nice, they tell me; you look so cold. I saw myself once, reflected in the dark glass of an empty shop window. A woman with hunched shoulders, as though braced for impact.
A week later, and my dad is out of hospital. I am able to go and see him, staying on a rusting camp bed in the sitting room of his tiny flat with its comforting smells of tobacco and leather. Dad’s voice is only slightly slurred at the edges.
I grip his hand until Aunt Jackie says, ‘Stell, I think you’re hurting him.’
I don’t think about Marco at all until I arrive back at King’s Cross. I’m crossing the platform towards the exit, thinking about dinner, and then, boom, I see him. He is standing outside the newsagent’s with a woman. I slow and stop and feel a pinch in my chest, a cold needle beneath the skin. They are talking, her head craned to look up at him. She has blonde hair cut in a severe bob and delicate pink lips like a little doll. She is petite and pulled together, smiling at him with a row of perfect teeth. He touches her on the arm, saying something, and they both laugh, and when he lifts his suitcases and leans towards her as though for a kiss I turn away, ducking behind a coffee stand and out through the side exit, to where the taxis are. I am crying, and I don’t know why.
I’m not going to call him, I tell Carmel and Martha the following week at the opening of a new gallery in Brixton, in fact I’m going to delete his number off my phone. But I don’t delete it and I do call him, leaving drunk, slurry voicemails on his answerphone at two o’clock in the morning until I pass out with my face buried in my pillow. My lipstick leaves a red smear on the cotton like a strange kiss.
Two days later I am in the shower and Carmel is knocking on the door.
‘Your phone has rung like a million times,’ she barks as we pass each other in the corridor, ‘and leave your hair like that, it suits you.’
I pull a face at her and reach for my phone. An unknown number, nine missed calls. While I am holding the phone it rings again. This time I answer. The line is fuzzy and chaotic with traffic.
‘Hello? Hello?’
‘Katie? Do you know who this is?’
‘I think so.’
‘Go on.’
I laugh. This time I have remembered his name. ‘Marc-oh.’
‘Very good.’ He sounds like a cat, smug and contented with himself. ‘Now tell me yours.’
‘It’s Stella. I’m sorry – I know I should have told you right at the start.’
To my surprise he laughs. ‘You think I didn’t know?’ There is a beat. ‘I got your messages.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was drunk.’
‘I noticed.’
Another beat. I feel awkward and prickly.
I open my mouth to apologise again when he says, ‘Now, can you guess where I am?’
I hesitate. ‘Piccadilly Circus.’
‘Wrong country. I’m in Lisbon. I came here for a meeting and it’s ended early.’
‘That’s a shame.’ I pick at the nail polish on my toes.
‘Yes. I’m due to stay here for another two nights but I’m bored.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ I am frustrated, mildly waspish. I remember the look of the woman with her pastel-coloured dress and gleaming blonde hair, slippery like water. I am not in the mood for games.
‘Do you want to keep me company?’
‘Sure, what do you want to talk about?’
‘No, honey.’ Patient. ‘I mean here. Come here and keep me company.’
‘Okay, well. No. I mean, there are lots of reasons.’
‘Hold on—’ He holds the phone away from him for a moment and I hear him briefly speaking in Portuguese. ‘Sorry. You come here. I’ll have Alice book you a flight this afternoon.’
‘Who’s Alice?’
‘My girl Friday. And my girl Monday, Tuesday and so on. She’s my personal assistant. She’ll sort it for you. All you need to do is pack.’
‘Is she blonde?’
‘What?’
‘Alice. Is she blonde? Quite small?’
‘I suppose so, yes. Why?’
‘What about work?’
‘Skip work. Forget work. Come here; it’s beautiful. Do you have a passport?’
‘Yes – uh – somewhere. In the tin in the kitchen drawer, I think.’
‘Tell you what, Stella. If you find it, call me back and I’ll book a flight. If you can’t find it, don’t call me, and I’ll never bother you again. There’s your get-out. All right?’
I hesitate. I can hear him breathing down the line. I imagine him smiling, standing in the sunshine, bigger than I remembered, broader in the chest.
‘Okay,’ I tell him. ‘Okay.’
I find my passport.
A month later my dad has another stroke. This time an intracerebral haemorrhage in the brain tissue itself; a pointless, violent death, he had said about my mother, and now those words come back to me as I leave London on the 17:26 towards Cambridge. At school I had learned the word haemorrhage came from the Greek, ‘blood bursting forth’. I write that phrase down in my notebook, pressing the pen into the paper so hard it leaves indentations on the pages beneath like braille. I want to print it onto my skin, carve it with sharp edges; blood bursting forth. I get into Aunt Jackie’s car and see her pale and morbid-looking, unable to stop crying. I swallow against a lump building in my throat. She is saying, ‘I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry, Stella. I’m sorry. He’s gone.’
The bureaucracy of death is daunting. A steep-sided, slate-grey pit without handholds. Death certificates and probate and government departments and utility companies and creditors. The council need to know, and so do friends. Aunt Jackie takes out an obituary in the local paper. The man on the phone asks her if she wants it with an ornamental font and a filigree frame and she says yes, ending up spending nearly fifty pounds.
‘I don’t know how we’re going to afford the funeral, Stella,’ she tells me as we stand outside the front door to his block of flats. It’s windy and cold, the clouds thick and low and white. ‘It’s not like we can sell the house – it goes back to the council. And he has so many debts. I don’t know if we’ll even be able to afford a plaque for him.’
And she dissolves into fresh tears, opening the door to his little flat – the one with the kitchenette in the sitting room and the shared bathroom down the hall, the one that smells of tobacco and fried food. There’s his old chair with the high back and the place where his head faded the pattern in the fabric, his television with the taped-over remote, a lamp, the bookshelves. Tins of food piled into the plywood cupboards. The remains of his life. I find his last betting slip on the fridge – the horse is called the ‘Rose of Jericho’. When I take his suit out of the wardrobe – old and cheap and faded to grey, this will be his mortcloth, his funeral clothes – I tuck the betting slip into the pocket.