Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

Ruth Elliot had two subsequent strokes in hospital, which paralyzed her down her right side. Cate blamed herself. She should have been at home. Instead we’d sneaked out to watch the Beastie Boys at the Brixton Academy. Cate let a guy kiss her that night. He must have been at least twenty-five. Ancient.

“Maybe I’m being punished for lying,” she said.

“But your mum is the one really being punished,” I pointed out.

Cate started going to church after that—for a while at least. I went with her one Sunday, kneeling down and closing my eyes.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Praying for your mum.”

“But you’re not an Anglican. Won’t your god think you’re changing teams?”

“I don’t think it matters which god fixes her up.”

Mrs. Elliot came home in a wheelchair, unable to talk properly. In the beginning she could only say one word: “When,” uttered more as a statement than a question.

No matter what you said to her, she answered the same way.

“How are you today, Mrs. Elliot?”

“When, when, when.”

“Have you had your tea?”

“When, when, when.”

“I’m just going to study with Cate.”

“When, when.”

I know it sounds horrible but we used to play tricks on her.

“We have a biology test, Mrs. E.”

“When, when.”

“On Friday.”

“When, when, when.”

“In the morning.”

“When, when.”

“About half past nine.”

“When, when.”

“Nine thirty-four to be precise. Greenwich mean time.”

They had a nurse to look after her. A big Jamaican called Yvonne, with pillow breasts and fleshy arms and mottled pink hands. She used to wear electric colors and men’s shoes and she blamed her bad complexion on the English weather. Yvonne was strong enough to scoop Mrs. Elliot up in her arms and lift her into the shower and back into her wheelchair. And she talked to her all the time, having long conversations that sounded completely plausible unless you listened closely.

Yvonne’s greatest gift, however, was to fill the house with laughter and songs, lifting the gloom. She had children of her own—Caspar and Bethany—who had steel-wool hair and neon smiles. I don’t know about her husband—he was never mentioned—but I know Yvonne went to church every Sunday and had Tuesdays off and baked the best lime cheesecake in creation.

On weekends I sometimes slept over at Cate’s place. We rented a video and stayed up late. Her dad didn’t come home until after nine. Tanned and tireless, he had a deep voice and an endless supply of corny jokes. I thought him unbelievably handsome.

The tragedy of his wife’s condition gained a lot of sympathy for Barnaby. Women, in particular, seemed to admire his devotion to his crippled wife and how he went out of his way to make her feel special.

Ruth Elliot, however, didn’t seem to share this admiration. She recovered her speech after months of therapy and attacked Barnaby at every opportunity, belittling him in front of Yvonne and his children and his children’s friends.

“Did you hear that?” she’d say as the front door opened. “He’s home . He always comes home. Who does he smell like tonight?”

“Now, now, Ruth, please,” Barnaby would say, but she wouldn’t stop.

“He smells of soap and shampoo. He always smells of soap and shampoo. Why does a man shower before he comes home?”

“You know the reason. I’ve been playing tennis at the club.”

“He washes before he comes home. Washes the smell away.”

“Ruth, darling,” Barnaby tried to say. “Let’s talk about this upstairs.”

She would fight at his hands and then surrender as he lifted her easily from her chair and carried her up the sixteen stairs. We would hear her screaming and finally crying. He would put her to bed, settle her like a child, and then rejoin us in the kitchen for hot chocolate.

When I first met Cate, Barnaby was already forty, but looked good for his age. And he could get away with things because he was so supremely confident. I saw him do it countless times at restaurants, on school open days and in the middle of the street. He could say the most outrageous things, using double entendres and playful squeezes and women would simply giggle and go weak at the knees.

He called me his “Indian princess” and his “Bollywood beauty” and, one time, when he took us horse riding, I actually felt dizzy when he put his hands around my waist and lifted me down from the saddle.

I would never have confessed it to anyone, but Cate guessed the truth. It wasn’t hard. I was always inviting myself back to her place and making excuses to talk to her father. She didn’t even know about the times I rode my bicycle past his office, hoping he might see me and wave. Twice I ran into open car doors.

Cate, of course, found my infatuation hilarious beyond measure, thus ensuring I have never admitted to loving any man.

See the sort of stuff I remember! It’s all coming back, the good, the bad and the ugly. My mind aches.

I’ve been dreading this moment—seeing Barnaby again. Ever since the accident he has slept at Cate’s house, according to Jarrod. He hasn’t been to work or answered calls.

The front door has stained-glass panels and a tarnished knocker in the shape of a naked torso. I grab her hips. Nobody answers. I try again.

A lock turns. The door opens a crack. Unshaven and unwashed, Barnaby doesn’t want to see me. Self-pity needs his full attention.

“Please, let me in.”

He hesitates but the door opens. I move inside, stepping around him as though he’s surrounded by a force field. The place is musty and closed up. Windows need opening. Plants need watering.

I follow him to the kitchen and dining area, open plan, looking out into the garden. Cate’s touches are everywhere from the French provincial dining table to the art deco posters on the walls. There are photographs on the mantel. One of them, a wedding picture, shows Cate in a twenties flapper dress trimmed with mother-of-pearl.

Folding himself onto a sofa, Barnaby crosses his legs. A trouser cuff slides up to reveal a bald shin. People used to say he was ageless and joke about him having a portrait in his attic. It’s not true. His features are too feminine to age well. Instead of growing character lines he has wrinkled and one day, ten years from now, he’ll wake up an old man.

I never imagined speaking to him again. It doesn’t seem so hard, although grief makes everything more intimate.

“They always say that a father is the last person to know anything,” he says. “Cate used to laugh at me. ‘Dear old Dad,’ she said. ‘Always in the dark.’”

Confusion clouds his eyes. Doubt.

“Did Felix know?”

“They weren’t sleeping together.”

“He told you that.”

“Cate wouldn’t let him touch her. She said it might harm the baby. They slept in different beds—in different rooms.”

“Surely a husband would—”

“Marriage and sex aren’t mutually inclusive,” he says, perhaps too knowingly. I feel myself growing uncomfortable. “Cate even told Felix he could see a prostitute if he wanted. Said she wouldn’t mind. What sort of wife says that? He should have seen something was wrong.”

“Why couldn’t she conceive?”

“Her womb destroyed his sperm. I don’t know the medical name for it. They tried for seven years. IVF, drugs, injections, herbal remedies; they exorcised the house of evil spirits and sprinkled Chinese lemongrass oil on the garden. Cate was a walking bloody textbook on infertility. That’s why it came as such a surprise. Cate was over the moon—I’ve never seen her happier. I remember looking at Felix and he was trying hard to be excited—I guess he was—but it’s like he had a question inside him that wouldn’t go away.”