Peter May - Freeze Frames

Enzo watched her. He had been attracted to her physically from the first moment he met her. But it was her mind that had seduced him. When they were good together it was wonderful, but that was only too rare. The distance she kept between them frustrated him to distraction. While he would have given himself to her completely, she prized her independence above all else, and had made it only too apparent that she would not give it up for him. He dragged his eyes away from her to look around the room again. “Killian had a very ordered mind,” he said.

Charlotte looked thoughtful. “More than ordered, Enzo. Obsessive. This was a man fixated. Everything had to be in its place. A place he created for it.” She pointed. “And those display cases on the wall. Look at them. He must have measured from the ceiling. And between the frames. I bet there’s not a centimetre difference between them. I can visualise him as a man consumed by the need for routine, of doing the same things in the same way every day. Bringing order to the chaos of life.” She wandered over to look more closely at the display cases. The rows of insects neatly pinned to pristine backboards. “A man drawn to insects. Creatures that live short, unfettered lives, but lives which also revolve around rite and routine. Think of the bee, the ritual dances, the order of the hive. The organisational qualities of the ant. The apparent randomness of the butterfly. Such a short life, but compelled to spend it flying from one flower to the next-one of nature’s pollinators. The lives of insects must have seemed extraordinary to him. Compelling, but contradictory. Free but ordered. Short but intense.”

“So what does all this tell you about him?”

She turned pensive eyes in his direction. “It would be my guess that this man spent time in prison.”

Of all the conclusions she might have reached, this was not one that Enzo could ever have foreseen. “Why?”

“People who lose their freedom cling to things that give their lives meaning, Enzo, a reason to exist. Order, routine, ritual, something that marks the passing of time, gives it shape and form.” She raised an eyebrow. “Am I right?”

“I have no idea. If he was in prison in Britain, or in Poland, Jane either doesn’t know or hasn’t told me.”

“Better ask her, then. Over one of your dinners together.” And with a dismissive wave of her hand, she banished Adam Killian back to the grave, as if he were of no importance. She was done with him. “And now you can show me where I’m going to be spending the night.”

He lifted her overnight bag from where he had laid it on a chair, and led her into the hall and up the stairs to the tiny attic bedroom. She looked from the window across a lawn where the last light of the day lay in long, autumn yellow strips, divided and subdivided by the trees along the west side of the garden. The dew was already settling on the grass and would soon turn white as it froze in the tumbling temperatures. She turned her back to the light and cast curious eyes around the room, settling finally on the unmade bed.

Enzo missed the cold that clouded them suddenly. He was distracted. It was almost seven, and he knew it would take him nearly thirty minutes to drive south to the Trou de l’enfer, and his rendezvous with the writer of the note. “I’m going to have to leave you for a while,” he said. “I have a meeting in half an hour.”

“How long have you been sleeping with her?”

The question came straight out of left field and caught him completely off-guard. “What?”

“You’ve only been here four nights. So either you’re a very fast worker, or you knew her already.”

Enzo felt his face flush and wondered why he should feel any guilt. She had no right to make him feel guilty. “What are you talking about, Charlotte?”

She nodded toward the bed. “Two people slept here last night. A quite separate imprint left by heads on each pillow.”

Enzo glanced toward the rumpled sheets, and saw where Jane’s head had left a deep depression on the left-hand pillow. He had spent the night curled up alone on the right side of the bed. He was damned if he was going to defend himself, but he did. “We’ve never been mutually exclusive you and I, Charlotte. You were the one who made that the rule, right from the start.”

“Men find love so easily,” she said. “Or, at least, sex. They always seem to confuse the two. I don’t think I want to sleep in a bed where you made love to another woman the night before.”

He sighed his exasperation. “I didn’t. I might have. But your call put a stop to that. You want to hear it?” He crossed to the answering machine on the bedside table. “Your message will still be on the tape. A real passion killer. What was it Jane said as she left…? Oh, yes. We’d better not soil the bed. Because I really don’t feel like changing the sheets.” His finger hovered over the replay button.

“Don’t!”

He swung around to face her. “What do you want, Charlotte? Jane Killian doesn’t mean a damned thing to me. But I’m not made of stone. And you’re never there.” His voice stopped abruptly, cut off by the shock of seeing the silent tears that ran down Charlotte’s cheeks. Her fine, brown eyes were blurred and lost behind them. “What’s wrong?” His question sounded feeble, hopelessly inadequate in the face of her obvious distress. He stepped toward her to lay a hand of concern on her cheek.

But she brushed him aside, crossing to the bed to sit on the very edge of it, her hands folded together in her lap. She seemed oddly crushed, and fragile in a way that belied the strength he knew she possessed. “I’m pregnant.”

Two simple words, almost whispered, that would change his life forever. The shock of them left him bereft of something to say, and holding his breath. He stood in the silence of the room, hearing the blood pulse through his head. Finally he found his voice. “How?” And no sooner had he uttered the question than he realised how absurd it was. A thought not lost on Charlotte.

“Law of nature, Enzo. You fuck a woman without protection, there’s a good chance your sperm will find her eggs.”

He felt a stab of anger that wasn’t entirely without justification. “I thought you took precautions.” It’s what she had always told him.

“Accidents happen.” She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, and ran a fingertip beneath each eye to remove the smudged mascara. She was regaining control of herself. But it was clear she was hanging on to it by the merest thread.

“When?”

“Oh, about three months ago. Remember, you were up in Paris for that conference? We had dinner. You bought that bottle of Saint Julien. What was it…?”

“Chateau Laland-Borie, 2004.”

“Yes. And then we went back to my place. Drank Armagnac and made love.”

Enzo remembered it well. It had been a long and passionate night. Charlotte had been warm and affectionate during that visit, anxious to spend time with him, almost frenetic in her lovemaking. “You’re sure it’s mine?”

Her head came round sharply. A look that might have turned him to stone. “I’m not like you, Enzo.”

He felt both reprimanded and angry, and fought back. “I haven’t seen you in three months, Charlotte. You haven’t returned a single one of my calls. And suddenly you show up out of the blue and tell me you’re pregnant-with my child.”

Her voice was tight with tension. “There is no other man in my life.”

“There would be no other woman in mine if you had been prepared to commit to me.” His anger subsided as quickly as it had spiked, and whatever else might have flooded his mind, he believed she was telling him the truth. She was carrying his child.