Nicci French - Blue Monday

‘Like what?’

‘As if you’re about to cry.’

‘What’s so wrong with crying?’ Alan asked, surprising himself. ‘Why shouldn’t I cry? Why shouldn’t you?’

‘I do, if you want to know. When I’m by myself.’

He picked up her hand and fiddled with the wedding ring on her finger. ‘You have secrets from me too.’

‘We should have talked about it more. But I keep thinking it will still be all right. Lots of women wait for years. And if it doesn’t happen, maybe we can adopt. I’m still quite young.’

‘I wanted my own son,’ said Alan, softly, almost as if he was speaking to himself. ‘That’s what I was talking about today. Not having a child, it doesn’t just make me sad, it makes me feel wrong, like a botched piece of work. As if I’m unfinished inside – and then all these things rush in to fill the emptiness.’ He stopped. ‘It sounds stupid.’

‘No,’ said Carrie, although she wanted to cry out: What about me? My son, my daughter? I would have been a good mother. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s not fair. Not fair on you either. I’ve let you down and I can’t put it right. You must wish you’d never met me.’

‘No.’ Though of course there’d been times when she had thought how much easier it would have been with a different kind of man, confident and with sperm that could swim right up her, like salmon up a river. She winced. The two things seemed to go together, but she knew that wasn’t right. It wasn’t Alan’s fault.

‘It all came pouring out of me, things I didn’t even know I’d been thinking. She’s quite a scary woman, but somehow you can talk to her as well. After a bit, it wasn’t even like talking to a person. It was like walking around in a house I’d never been into before, finding things, picking them up and looking at them, letting myself just wander around inside myself. And then I found myself saying this thing…’ He stopped, passed his hand across his forehead. He was suddenly feeling a bit sick, a bit out of breath.

‘What?’ asked Carrie. ‘What thing?’

‘I have this picture in my mind – it sounds daft. It seems so real, as if I’m looking at it or remembering it or something, not just imagining it. Almost as if it’s happening to me.’

‘ What ’s happening? What picture, Alan?’

‘Me and my son together. A little five-year-old, with bright red hair and freckles and a big grin. I can see him plain as day.’

‘You see him?’

‘And I’m teaching him to play football.’ He gestured towards the small back garden that he’d been neglecting recently. ‘He’s doing really well, controlling the ball, and I feel so proud of him. Proud of myself, too, being a proper dad, doing what dads do with their sons.’ His chest was tight, as though he’d run a long distance. ‘You’re standing at the window looking at us.’

Carrie didn’t speak. Tears were running down her cheeks.

‘Recently I haven’t been able to get the picture out of my mind – sometimes I don’t want to, but sometimes I think I’ll go mad with it. She said, did I think it was me as a boy that I’m seeing, or the boy inside me or something, and wanting to rescue him in some way? But it’s not like that. I’m seeing my son. Our son.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘The one we’re waiting for.’

It’s always like this. There comes a moment when you just know. It’s as simple as that. After all these months of watching, of waiting for the tug on the line and the bait to be taken, of being patient and careful, of wondering if this one is possible or that one, of never giving up or getting downhearted, then suddenly it happens. You just have to be ready for it.

He’s small and skinny, maybe young for his age, though it’s hard to tell. He hangs back from his classmates at first; his eyes dart around, to see where he’ll be wanted. He’s wearing jeans that are a bit too big for him and a thick jacket that’s almost down to his knees. He comes closer. He has round brown eyes and round copper-coloured freckles. He’s wearing a grey woolly hat with a bobble on it, but then he pulls it off and his hair is a flaming red. It’s a sign, it’s a gift, it’s perfect.

So now it’s just a question of time. You’ve got to get it right. There’ll never be another as perfect as this.

Josef liked this way of working. The clients were away and would only visit maybe every two weeks. He could live in the flat most of the time. He could eat there, if he wanted. In the past he had worked mainly as part of a team, and that was mainly good too, all the people with their specialities – the plasterer, the carpenter, the electrician – a version of a family that argued and fought and tried to get along with each other. But this was almost a holiday. He could work when he liked, even in the middle of the night, when it was dark outside and as quiet as it ever got. And in the day, sometimes, for example on a day like this, when it was about two in the afternoon and his eyes got heavy, he would put his tools down and lie back. He closed his eyes and thought at first about the problem of the hole and how far it needed widening to clear out the damaged wood and cracked plaster and then, for no reason at all, he started to think of his wife, Vera, and of the boys. He hadn’t seen them since the summer. He wondered what they were doing now, and then they faded as if they had walked into a mist, but slowly, so there wasn’t a clear moment when he couldn’t see them – and then he was asleep, dreaming dreams he wouldn’t remember when he woke, because he never remembered his dreams.

At first he thought the voice was part of his dream. It was the voice of a man, and before he could make out the meaning of the words he could feel their sadness, a raw sadness that sounded strange coming from a man. This was followed by a silence and another voice spoke and this one he knew. It was the voice of the woman downstairs, the doctor. Josef raised his hand and felt the roughness of the chipboard on his fingers. He saw the glow of the hole in the ceiling above him and slowly, dully, realized where he was: on the floor in her room. As he heard the two voices – the man’s quavering, the woman’s clear and calm – he felt a growing sense of alarm. He was listening to a confession, something that nobody else was meant to hear. He looked up at the ladder. If he tried to climb it, he would be heard. Better just to lie where he was and hope it would be over soon.

‘My wife was angry with me,’ the man said. ‘It was as if she was jealous. She wanted me to tell her what I’d told you.’

‘And did you?’ said Frieda.

‘Kind of,’ said the man. ‘I told her a version of it. But then, as I was telling her, it made me feel that I hadn’t really told you properly.’

‘What didn’t you say?’

There was a long pause. Josef could hear the beat of his heart. He smelt the alcohol on his own breath. How could they not hear him or smell him?

‘Can I really say anything here?’ said the man. ‘I’m asking because I realized when I was talking to Carrie that there’s always some kind of limit on what I can say. I mean, I can only say the sort of things to her that husbands are supposed to say to their wives, and when I’m out with a friend, I can only say the sort of things that friends are meant to say to each other.’

‘This is the place where you’re allowed to say anything. There are no limits.’

‘You’ll just think this is stupid…’

‘I don’t care whether it’s stupid or not.’

‘And you won’t tell anyone what I say?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘You promise?’

‘Alan, I’m professionally bound to respect your privacy. Unless you’re confessing to a serious crime. Or planning one.’