I was intelligent enough to know you could never be certain of the body’s next twist, but also optimistic enough to think it might be possible, in one’s mid-thirties, to arrive at a sense of solidity. But I had not. I didn’t want to talk about it any more. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I probably wanted him to express the desire and conviction that was required for both of us, which was unfair, I suppose. Instead, I opened my laptop, and there, shiny and new, was an email from Rebecca.
‘Oh, my god,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Joe.
‘I applied for this job.’
‘Were you applying for jobs?’
‘Hold on.’
I opened the email, my heart thumping. Joe tried to read it too but I moved off the sofa and went to the bedroom. ‘What’s going on?’ he called after me, but I didn’t reply.
Laura sounds great! Rebecca had written. I’ve discussed with Deborah, and she chatted with Constance. Could Laura get to Constance’s for an interview tomorrow at 2pm?
Holy mother of god.
Hi Rebecca. Yes, I typed – she should be free most of this week in the daytime. I’ll just confirm this time with her and get back to you. Could you send me the address again?
Risky, but I had no choice.
Sure, Rebecca emailed back. Clearly she was rushing this one through, keen to impress her boss, or simply to get the matter off her desk. It’s 17 Dacres Road, NW3 5RP.
Perfect, I wrote.
I sat on the edge of the bed and texted Zoë. Hi Z, can we swap shifts tomorrow? Sorry for last minute. I’d be so grateful.
Zoë texted back immediately. Sure thing x.
Thanks, I wrote back.
I waited for five minutes to pass on my watch. I opened the laptop again and replied to Rebecca’s last email. Laura can do tomorrow at 2pm, I wrote. Let me know any feedback, and we can take it from there.
Thanks, wrote Rebecca. Fingers crossed!
And that was it. I lay back on the duvet. This cannot work, I thought. It simply can’t. At some point, the literary agency is going to be in touch with whoever was suggesting the candidates to them. I cannot get away with this.
But at the very least, I reckoned I had about twenty-four hours before I was caught out. And before that happened, I was going to make sure I got inside 17 Dacres Road, and put myself in front of Constance Holden.
14
Not having lived north of the great dividing river, I never much went to Hampstead Heath. If I wanted vast open space, I went to Richmond Park, revelling in its huge skies and autumn golds, thinking of Henry VIII hunting his deer – their descendants still grazing underneath the oaks. But here I was, striding over Parliament Hill. I made my way to the famous view of central London, the whole of the sky from east to west, Gherkin, Walkie-Talkie, Shard, the dome of St Paul’s, the hollow of the Eye – a witch’s broken incantation into Soho, the modern geography glinting in the sun. It was a warm October; people walking in shirts and sunglasses, with a carelessness that belied the fact that in eight weeks we’d be deep in the grip of a London winter. In a daze, I passed small cloudy poodles, and watched a blue-eyed husky drag a woman along, her thin arms jerking on the lead with a hint of savagery. I saw men, their white legs in sports shorts; children on scooters, whizzing.
I was there on that hill, and I was not. I felt as if I was floating above myself, watching the fast pace of my own feet as they made their way off the Heath. I was Rose Simmons, and I was Laura Brown. I was north, I was south, and I was no point on the compass. Somehow, I was walking down the hill that led to Dacres Road, to meet a person who’d known my mother. A woman who my father said might have something to tell me. I tried to gather myself together, to remember all the things Laura Brown had achieved in her life.
I hadn’t told Joe what I was doing. I didn’t want his opprobrium or doubt. I wanted to do this entirely on my own. And yet, it occurred to me as I turned into Dacres Road, that no one knew I was here. What if Constance recognized my mother’s face in mine, and made a prisoner of me, feeding me through a cage, fattening me for her stove? I would die here, answerless, and no one would know how to find Rose Simmons ever again.
*
The houses on Dacres Road were four storeys tall, with little gable windows at the top and basements visible if you looked down as you ascended the steps to the raised front doors. Their brickwork was good quality, and had endured well over a hundred years of London air. They were deep reddish brown and neatly built, and the window bays were painted in creamy white. Trimmed tight hedges and plump rose bushes complemented the ivy that tumbled over stained-glass porches. Expensive serenity – although by the looks of them, many were now divided into flats. There seemed something inevitable that Constance, a writer, lived in one of these grand Hampstead houses – but actually I was glad of it, because this would probably be the only manner by which I would ever get to see inside one.
Numbers 11, 13, 15 – I was nearing her house, my pulse racing. Just knock on the door, I said to myself. What’s the worst that can happen?
I thought – in fact, I was convinced – that she would open the door and recognize me immediately, that the traces of Elise Morceau would be so obvious to her. I pictured Constance, taking me to New York, finding the apartment I’d spent my early days in. A closing of a circle, to find my mother’s story: that was worth this risk.
I reached number 17. The front of the house was covered with ivy, which cloaked the lintel of the porch. The tiles beneath my feet were small black and white diamonds, cracked here and there with age. The door was a dark bottle green, with two panels of glass in deep red and yellow, blue and violet. The knocker was a cast-iron shape of a woman’s hand, emerging delicately from a cuff. I lifted the hand and dropped it on the iron ball beneath, and waited. After a good ten or so seconds, through the warped glass panes I saw a figure moving down the hall, tall and dark, mutating as it came forward, its outline like a ripple of black water.
You could run, I thought. You could pretend none of this ever happened.
But I was sick of pretending. I wanted to know the truth.
Then Constance was before me, the door wide open, her face and body framed by the mouth of her house. She stopped short when she saw me. Her eyes rested on mine fractionally too long.
Now, I thought. Now! Everything’s going to fall into place.
‘Can I help you?’ she said.
I’d been expecting someone slightly haggish, I’ll admit. A reclusive novelist was supposed to be an old lady, a wyrd sister with poor personal hygiene, hoarding cereal boxes, a mad oestrogen-deprived biddy with her hair matted on her head, but the brain inside it a work of genius. Constance Holden did not look like that.
She looked hard, I would say: her body looked hard. Her body was a lesson. There was no spare flesh on her, jumper tight and neat about her, black trousers fitted yet loosening out towards the ankles. A single gold bangle on her wrist. White hair, up in a chignon. Tortoiseshell half-glasses hanging round her neck. Her eyes were light, her cheekbones broad. Those eighties headshots flashed past like a series of matryoshka dolls rising up from within her.
In the flesh she was more upright. Had she really known my mother, kissed her, held her, hurt her? Had she ever wondered what had happened to the child that Elise once had? My breath stopped in my throat; I couldn’t speak. I shifted on the tiles, trying not to grab her by the arms and say, It’s me, Rose. I grew up. I remembered what my father had told me; that I needed to be careful.