The Actuality Page 24

  ‘There was a break-in and he was shot.’ By saying it quickly, matter-of-factly, she gets it out, without her voice cracking. She blinks back tears. ‘I want to explain everything,’ she says, ‘who I am.’

  ‘Yes, I think it is time.’

  ‘It is just not an easy thing.’

  ‘Well, if it helps, I know what you are not. Yes, you are perfect in every way, even down to the heart-shaped mole below your ear – almost invisible as you blush, just as it should be. But you are not Evelyn, so surprise me. Do your worst.’

  She gazes across the lake to the distant peaks. ‘Matthew had me . . . constructed.’

  ‘Had you constructed?’ He is confused. ‘What are you talking about? Are you saying . . . that you’re not . . . ? You are saying—!’ He leans back, gazing at her, open mouthed. ‘I thought such a thing was no longer possible. Never was possible.’

  Evie blushes more deeply still. ‘He had me made as a copy,’ she repeats.

  Uninvited, Maier reaches for her hand and, lifting her wrist, runs his fingertips along her forearm. ‘So soft and smooth,’ he murmurs. ‘Just like skin.’

  ‘It is skin,’ she says quietly, letting him continue to touch her.

  ‘I had no idea such work was possible.’ He releases her and settles back into his chair. ‘Well, this is indeed a surprise.’

  The maid comes out again and irritation crosses his face, quickly replaced by renewed intrigue.

  ‘She turned up at the door, asking for her,’ the maid says, but Sola is already racing across the terrace with the ridiculous dog snapping at her heels.

  ‘And who is this?’ Maier asks.

  ‘Je Sola,’ the child replies, drawing to a breathless halt, although the question was not directed at her.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Evie says to him. ‘I asked her to seek me here, if I was gone too long.’

  ‘Y’wer gone ages,’ the child reprimands, pressing forcefully against her shoulder with the sharp edge of her own. ‘Je worried à mort.’ And she toys with Evie’s hair with her fingertips, then gives her plait a pointed tug.

  ‘What is your connection with this child?’ Maier asks, gazing curiously.

  ‘Elle ees ma Maman,’ Sola replies, pressing her lips forward, as if she is fighting the urge to stick out her tongue.

  ‘I was not asking you, Mademoiselle,’ Maier says.

  ‘It is what she chooses to call me,’ Evie says.

  ‘And is she . . . like you, too?’

  ‘If you cannot tell,’ Evie replies slowly, ‘then does it really matter?’

  34

  Maier gives them a room in which to rest. It is on the new side of the house, with a view onto the wooded hill.

  ‘Eees this to be our home maintenant?’ Sola asks, bouncing from one to the other of the two single beds.

  ‘I am not sure,’ Evie replies.

  Sola goes into the bathroom and plays with the taps, twisting them on. ‘I think I will have a bath,’ she says, emptying pink salts from a jar onto the surface of the water, sending up a suffocating rush of scent that has her backing out of the doorway, pinching her nose. ‘Eet smells worse than Pompie in there,’ she exclaims.

  She kicks off her shoes into the corner and drags her dress over her head, dropping it on the dog which, blindfolded, runs around in a circle.

  ‘Keep the door open,’ Evie says, as the child skips back through. Even cloaked by the steam, she can see that the girl’s shoulders are criss-crossed by welts and her neck marked with finger-shaped bruises.

  Evie hears her land with a splash in the tub, and sinks into the pillow from where she watches through the mirror the child dip her head and rise again, eyes closed, nose breathing soapy bubbles. How nice it must be to be without fear, despite everything that life drops on you, from whatever height.

  She needs to recharge but that can wait. They are not expected until the evening and she has all afternoon. But then, before she can prevent it, David pops into her head and quickly her imagination is on a dangerous track – fancying what could have been. Snapping herself out of it, she takes the unit from her bag and brusquely plugs herself in.

  The two walk along the corridor a little before seven. Sola is bursting with excitement, which may not be a good thing. She has also insisted, against Evie’s wishes, on bringing the dog, but then again that may be better than leaving it locked in to ruin the room.

  Evie ponders the evening ahead and the challenge it presents. Earlier with Maier, an understanding between them had felt at hand. Her existence was a shock, but she thought in the end a good one and surprises are, after all, intended to bestow happiness. Like the little offerings Daniels unearthed for her on his shopping expeditions.

  She is clad in a simple blue silk dress with pearl buttons not much larger than teardrops, which she found in town. The material is vintage, worn daylight-thin at the hips, but all the same delightfully slippery smooth, with hand-stitching around the cuffs, so petite as to be the work of children and almost invisible to the eye. The sort of thing for which the skills have been all but lost. She has tied her hair with a velvet ribbon, combing it unfussily behind her ears in a blatant impersonation of Evelyn in her student days.

  A maid, a different one to earlier, meets them in the long, glass-walled reception room. She leads them outside onto the same terrace as before, where, despite the nippy air, a square table has been spread with a crisp white cloth. A candelabrum stands in its centre, candles doggedly alight despite the evening breeze. The maid invites her to sit, pulling back a chair and then, beside it, another for Sola, on which additional cushions have been thoughtfully placed.

  ‘Where ees he?’ Sola asks loudly, adjusting the padding under her behind to prop herself forwards, so that her ribs press against the table edge.

  ‘It is his house, he will arrive when he is ready,’ Evie says.

  ‘Think you we can make heem love us?’

  ‘I do not know what you are referring to.’

  ‘Oh Maman! You know why we are ere exactement, you can try to pretend le contraire, but y’aren’t foolin anyone.’ She turns to the dog on her lap and, squeezing its cheeks, asks mischievously, ‘Does she, Toto?’

  Despite the chilly evening, the atmosphere around the table possesses a balminess that caresses the skin and the candle flames waver only when they talk across them. It is like they are under an invisible glass dome, the sort of thing Daniels placed over his cakes to protect them from the air. The effect is intriguing and she cannot see how it has been achieved.

  The maid brings a fruit drink for the child and pours iced water from a jug into Evie’s glass. Evie gazes across the lake towards the lights on the far shore. Oh how wonderful it would be to be invited to stay, for this to actually become their home. Can she indeed make this man love her and could she love him in return – like a father? Perhaps there is enough of Evelyn in her programming to make her side happen, whether she wills it or not.

  Evie hears voices and turns to face the house. Maier emerges onto the step above the terrace and pauses. He looks back inside. Dimly, through the glass, a second figure can be seen making its way laboriously across the unlit room.

  So it is not going to be just the three of them – she should have realised that from the fourth place setting. Despite the enveloping warmth, a chilly sense of foreboding swells – that she has been assuming too much – and before she can shake it off, the figure, a woman, reaches the doorway and, helped by Maier, raises her foot over the threshold.

  Evie abruptly stands. Her chair scrapes on the boards and, as she lurches back from the table, crashes onto its arm.

  ‘What ees it Maman?’ Sola begs. The dog stares up at her, baring its teeth, the fur on its shoulders standing on end.

  Despite the commotion, neither Maier, nor the woman he is escorting down the steps, look her way. The noise remains trapped within the bubble of air.

  As the woman descends, one stair at a time, she leans heavily on a pencil-th
in stick, her elbow supported by Maier. Reaching the decking, she straightens, lifting her head to reveal a weary face with lips drawn tight.

  Evie’s body is in shadow but her neck and cheeks are lit by the candlelight. It takes the woman several seconds to focus on her. ‘Who is this?’ she mutters.

  ‘I thought you two should meet,’ Maier says nervously. His voice is audible to Evie with her strong hearing, despite the muffling effect around the table. ‘Evelyn,’ he continues, ‘this is . . . Evie.’

  Evelyn stares, absorbing what is being presented to her, and a shudder passes through her. She leans hard on her stick, the tendons in her neck prominent as her body sways.

  ‘Je think Maman, that thees was not part of le plan,’ Sola murmurs, without yet understanding what she is witnessing.

  Evie falters too. The legitimacy of her existence has been snatched away in a heartbeat.

  Did Matthew know? Did he lie to her all these years or was he lied to himself? And why did Maier not say earlier that his daughter was alive? Evie realises as she thinks it that she herself said nothing to reveal the misapprehension. But from Evelyn’s point of view, it must be far worse – presented with a replica of her younger self with no opportunity to prepare. The theatrics of the introduction are insensitive at best.

  ‘What have you done?’ Evelyn asks of her father, while continuing to stare at Evie. ‘Is she yours?’

  This accusation blindsides Maier and he is momentarily lost for words.

  ‘Did mother know? Where have you been hiding her all this time? Is this to mock me?’

  ‘No . . . no I mean, she is not that,’ he answers, stumbling. ‘I would never have done such a thing,’ he adds, horrified, or at least feigning it. ‘To your mother or to you.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘She arrived today unannounced. Until then I knew nothing about her.’

  ‘She arrived out of the blue, and you just let her in?’

  ‘How could I turn her away?’

  ‘And where exactly did she arrive from?’

  ‘From Matthew,’ he says.

  Evelyn trembles. ‘I see,’ she mutters. ‘So this is to mock me.’

  ‘Evelyn, I had no idea,’ Evie murmurs, desperate to make amends for the appalling misunderstanding that she herself is at the heart of, while inside she seeks to adjust to the altered circumstances. It is not as hard as she might have imagined. She was written to believe she was Evelyn, but this was only ever an artifice which even early on proved unsustainable, and ever since she has been no more than playing a part. And not even one she has been very good at. Finding Evelyn alive may finally allow her to be herself.

  Evie steps away from the table, emerging from the cocoon of warmth around the dining area into the night’s chill.

  ‘Where did he find her?’ Evelyn asks, her voice suddenly loud.

  ‘Let us sit down and talk and all will begin to make sense,’ Maier says, sounding slightly desperate, his magician’s reveal not having gone as well as he’d hoped. He tries to take Evelyn’s arm but she shrugs him off and, one step at a time, traverses the remaining yards unaided. The maid materialises from the shadows and pulls back a chair and Evelyn seats herself, wincing as she settles.

  Maier rights Evie’s chair and she feels the shawl of warmth surrounding the table wrap her back around as he slides it in. He takes the remaining one for himself and unrolls his napkin, gazing at his elderly daughter and her youthful doppelgänger.

  ‘Enough games,’ Evelyn mutters. ‘Tell me who this is.’

  ‘It would be polite to ask her yourself, rather than pretend she is not there.’

  Evelyn glares back. Her breathing is quick and shallow and her hand grips the table edge, dragging deep creases into the cloth.

  ‘Tell her, Evie,’ Maier says, ‘who you are.’

  ‘Who I am?’ she stammers.

  ‘How you know Matthew will do, as a start,’ he says gently. ‘We’ll take this a step at a time. There is a lot to absorb.’

  Evie looks over to Evelyn, her look full of compassion and regret, ‘I am Matthew’s wife.’

  Evelyn breathes in sharply and her knuckles whiten. ‘And what interest is this to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I—’

  ‘I do not want your apologies. I do not ask for pity,’ she mutters. ‘Who do you think you are, coming here with your presumptions?’

  Evie cannot hold her look and turns away, witnessing Sola’s face as she does so. Her mouth is open so wide that all her teeth, all the way back to the molars, are on show.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything,’ Evie says quietly.

  ‘And what are you doing married to an old man, you’re barely a child. What do you get from it? Money? That’s usually the thing, I believe?’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘Is Eve even your real name?’

  ‘Evie,’ she corrects, her voice hollow.

  ‘You realise you look like me, when I was young, when he and I were . . . But I guess you know that. What did he do, pay for the surgery? It would have been typical of him. He altered me too you know, for life, but not in a positive way. I wasn’t always like this . . . a cripple.’

  ‘Evelyn dear, be generous,’ Maier says.

  She twists to face him, revealing a crimson ribbon holding her greying hair off her neck. ‘Don’t “Evelyn be generous” me, when it was you who let her in.’

  ‘What did Matthew do?’ Evie asks tremulously.

  ‘You mean this?’ She holds up the handle of her stick.

  ‘Evelyn, all that was years before she . . .’

  ‘No! She should know about the man she’s married.’ Evelyn turns to face her. ‘I was your age or thereabouts. We were in England. Your husband and I had been friends but that was all in the process of changing. Spending time with him had become oppressive but he’d made the assumption he owned me already, he’d even bought a ridiculous house in the country to be my wedding present and was furious because I spoilt everything by rejecting his proposal.

  ‘We were returning from it in his car. He was driving down the narrow lanes like a madman to terrify me, and losing control we ended up crashing into a bank. The collision concertinaed the front against my legs, destroying me and his precious automobile in the same instant. Only, he got to walk away.’

  Evie cannot look at either of them and stares at her napkin still folded on her place mat. Sola takes her hand underneath the table.

  ‘So no, I never died, nothing so romantic. Although over the years, suffering operation after operation as the surgeons spliced my splintered limbs back together, I have often enough wished I had.’

  ‘He left you?’ she murmurs, horrified that Matthew had deserted her so callously.

  ‘Oh, not quite. He briefly sentimentalised about nursing me himself, but when I returned home for treatment, it was the last I heard from him. And of course you know the final bit already, how he claimed the role of victim, spreading the lie that I had died . . . I tell you, if I had known he was doing that!’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Evie murmurs.

  This version of events has taken a ram to her happy memories of her husband. Instead, a recollection of falling short of his vision of perfection, of being abandoned outside his room trying to work out her mistake, rattles around her head.

  ‘You don’t look so pleased with yourself now,’ Evelyn says.

  ‘I never meant—’

  ‘How long have you been . . . married?’

  ‘Forty-one years, last autumn.’ Evie is close to tears, only just holding them in.

  Evelyn snorts derisively. ‘You think this is amusing?’

  ‘No, it’s true,’ Maier murmurs. ‘Forty-one years. I was fooled too and that was in daylight. Our friend is, how can I put it, not quite what she seems.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Evelyn’s eyes are suddenly wide. ‘That she’s a “bot”?’

  She stares at Evie, then reaches across and t
akes her chin roughly in her hand and drags her face around to stare into her eyes. ‘Well, that just about sums him up. The only type of woman that would put up with him. And there I was taking you merely for an opportunistic little slut. So where is he now?’ she asks aggressively. ‘Why did he send you?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ she says, observing Evelyn, confronted by this revelation, momentarily brought up short.

  The atmosphere around the table grows cold despite the fabricated heat. Everyone draws breath. Sola stares at each of them in turn, her mouth still agape.

  ‘Good,’ Evelyn says at last. ‘I’m glad.’

  35

  In Evie’s dream she is seated in her garden swing, the one Daniels hung for her. Sola is asleep in her arms.

  David comes up behind and leans over, cold water dripping from his hair onto her neck. ‘What will you do in ten or eleven years’ time?’ he asks.

  The question disturbs her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When she is your age? Will you let her go? Is that not what parents must do?’

  Evie wakes, head spinning, and brusquely detaches her charging lead, throwing it onto the carpet. She swings her legs around to sit on the side of the bed, only then realising that Sola is not beside her.

  She checks in the bathroom and outside the door.

  She goes down to the long reception room in which she met Maier the day before and crosses the sunlit floor. The sliding glass doors are partially pushed back, letting in the icy morning air. She runs through, down the steps and over the boards to the lake edge and paces along, peering into the dark water. She doesn’t even know if the girl can swim.

  Evie returns inside and crosses the gravelled courtyard to the old side of the house, keeping to the route she had been brought along yesterday. She reaches the space in which she had been left to wait, then, following the distant sound of a piano – the melody not gracious as before but riotous and skirt-lifting – runs up the tower stairs. The higher she climbs, the lower the ceiling and the narrower the steps, whereas in the new building the opposite holds true – everywhere is bright and fresh, passageways are broad, natural light plentiful; nothing is steep or crooked or oddly arranged.