S. Watson - Second Life

I’ve met up with Adrienne, too. Finally. She invited me to a concert and we had dinner afterwards. We chatted; the argument we’d had outside the house felt all but forgotten. Before we said goodbye she turned to me.

‘Julia,’ she said. ‘You know I love you. Unconditionally.’ I nodded, waiting. ‘And so I’m not going to ask you what’s going on. But I need to know. Are you all right? Is there anything I need to worry about?’

I shook my head. ‘No. Not any more.’

She smiled. It was the nearest I’d come to a confession, and she knew I’d tell her, one day.

I’ve only been weak once, one Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago. I’d fought with Hugh, Connor was being impossible. I couldn’t help myself. I logged on to encountrz, ignored the couple of new messages I’d accumulated, then searched for his username.

Nothing. Username not found . He’d vanished.

I couldn’t help it. I called him.

His number was unavailable. It didn’t even go to voicemail. I tried again – in case there’d been a problem, he was out of the country, there was an issue with the connection – and then again, and again, and again. Each time, nothing.

And then I realized where I was, what I was doing. I told myself I was being ridiculous. I’d promised myself complete cut-off; I’d told myself it would be easier, the best way.

And here it was. The severance I craved. I should be grateful.

I get in late. I’ve been out, taking photos, first portraits of a family that had been in touch through the website, then on the way home I’d stopped off to get some shots of people as they stood outside the bars of Soho – trying to get back to the subjects who really interest me, I guess – but now Hugh is already home. He asks me to come with him, he has something to tell me.

It sounds ominous. I think of the time I got home from the gallery, the police in the kitchen, the news that Kate was dead. I know Connor is fine, his light is on upstairs, it’s always the first thing I ask when I arrive home and I’ve already done so tonight, but still I’m nervous. Tell me now, I want to say, whatever it is, but I don’t. I follow him into the kitchen. I dump my bag on the floor, my camera on the table.

‘What is it?’ He looks serious. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

He takes a deep breath. ‘Roger called. From the Foreign Office. They think they know what happened to Kate.’

I feel myself collapse. Questions tumble out – What? Who? – and he explains. ‘There’s a man, this guy who they arrested on something totally unrelated. Roger isn’t allowed to tell us what, exactly, but he hinted it was something to do with drugs. A dealer, I guess. Anyway, apparently he’s known in the area; they even questioned him about Kate but he said he’d seen nothing.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘When they searched his place they found Kate’s earring.’

I close my eyes. I picture him ripping it off her, or her being forced to give it to him, thinking that cooperation might save her life when in fact it did no such thing.

A dealer. Was it drugs, after all? Not sex?

Suddenly I’m there, again. Me and Marcus. We’d go together, but I’d wait for him. At the end of the street, on the corner, outside the station. He’d meet our dealer, hand over the cash. He’d come back with what we both wanted. Smiling.

But Kate saw none of that. I made sure of it, even the one time she visited us, during the school holidays. She hadn’t wanted to go home and be alone with Dad, she begged me to let her come for a visit. ‘Just for a few days,’ she said, and I relented. I scraped some money together to pay for her ticket, and our father put up the rest. She came for a long weekend and slept on the bed in our room while we slept on the couch, but I’m certain she saw nothing. It was a few weeks before Marcus died, and neither of us was using. I took her to the galleries, we walked the length of Unter den Linden, drank hot chocolate at the top of the Fernsehturm. I photographed her on the streets of Mitte – pictures that are lost, now – and we wandered around Tiergarten. I left her with Marcus only once, when I went to buy groceries, but he knew how much I wanted to keep her from drugs and I trusted him completely. When I got home they were playing cards with Frosty, the TV on in the background, showing cartoons. She saw nothing.

Still, shouldn’t I have set a better example?

I begin to sob, a sound that turns into a howl of pain. Hugh holds my hands in his. I’d thought it might make me feel better. Knowing who’d killed my sister. Knowing he’d been arrested, would be punished. It should draw a line under everything. It should open up a future, allow me to move on.

But it doesn’t. It feels so meaningless. So banal. If anything, it’s worse.

‘Julia. Julia. It’s all right.’

I look at him.

‘I can’t bear it.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s definitely him?’

‘They think so.’ I begin to cry properly, tears run in thick streams. My sister dead, her son devastated, over drugs?

‘Why?’ I say, over and over. Hugh holds me until I calm down.

I want my son.

‘Have you told Connor?’

He shakes his head.

‘We need to tell him.’

He nods, then stands up. He goes to the stairs as I go into the kitchen. I grab some kitchen roll and wipe the tears from my face, then pour myself a drink of water. When I go back into the living room Connor is sitting opposite his father. He looks up. ‘Mum?’

I sit down on the sofa and take Connor’s hand.

‘Darling…’ I begin. I’m not sure what to say. I look at Hugh, then back at our son. I dig as deep as I can, searching for the last reserves of strength. ‘Darling, they’ve caught the man who killed Auntie Kate.’

He sits, for a moment. The room is perfectly still.

‘Darling?’

‘Who?’

What to say? This isn’t the movies, there’s no big plot, no satisfying resolution to the story, tied with a bow at the end. Just a senseless waste of life.

‘Just a man,’ I say.

‘Who?’

I look again at Hugh. He opens his mouth to speak. Don’t say it, I think. Don’t tell him it was someone selling drugs. Don’t put that idea into his head.

‘Auntie Kate was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he says. ‘That’s all. She ran into an evil man. We don’t know why, or what happened. But he’s been caught now, and he’ll go to prison and pay for what he’s done.’

Connor nods. He’s trying to understand, trying to come to terms with the lack of an explanation.

After a moment he lets go of my hand. ‘Can I go back to my room now?’

I say yes. There’s an urge to follow him, but I know I mustn’t. I leave him for ten minutes, fifteen. I ring Adrienne, then Anna. She’s shocked. ‘Drugs?’ she says.

‘Yes. Did she—?’

‘No! No. Well, I mean, she partied, you know? We all did. But nothing hard core.’

As far as you know, I think. I’m only too well aware how easy it can be to keep these things hidden. ‘Maybe you just didn’t know?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Honestly, I don’t.’

We talk for a while longer, but I want to see my son. I tell Anna I’m looking forward to seeing her in a couple of weeks and she tells me she can’t wait. We say goodbye, and then I tell Hugh I’m going up to see Connor.

I knock, he tells me to come in. He’s playing music, lying on the bed, facing the ceiling. His eyes are red.

I say nothing. I go in. I hold him, and together we cry.

She’s arriving today. I’m picking her up later, we’ll have a coffee or something, but for now I’m alone. I have the newspaper spread out in front of me. I turn to the magazine, skim read something about some fashion designer, what she wishes she’d known when she was young, then turn the page. A real-life article, someone whose daughter became a heroin addict; I turn that page, too. I think of my own narrow escape – if that’s what it was, if I really can be said to have escaped – and wonder for a moment whether they’d run a story about me and Lukas. I shudder at the thought, but my story isn’t unusual. I got myself involved with a man who wasn’t the person I thought he was, and things went too far. It happens all the time.