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Where Love Lies Julie Cohen
BLACK SWAN 3
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TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA www.transworldbooks.co.uk Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers Black Swan edition published 2015 Copyright © Julie Cohen 2014 Julie Cohen has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 9780552779012 Typeset in 12/15pt Bembo by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd. Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY. Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
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Chapter One know exactly where I’m going. I’ve only been to the restaurant once before, but as soon as I step off the train at Richmond everything looks completely familiar. I touch my Oyster card and turn left immediately outside the station. A young busker with wild dreadlocks plays ‘Walking on Sunshine’. He throws his whole body into it, strumming and twitching and singing to the darkening London evening, as if he can make it midsummer noon with the force of his will. I dig into my jacket pocket and drop a pound coin into his guitar case amongst the litter of money. I check my watch; I’m meeting Quinn in five minutes. I’m cutting it fine, but from what I remember, I have plenty of time to get there. I pass familiar shopfronts and turn right at the junction. The restaurant, Cerise, is round the next corner: it’s a brick building, painted yellow, with a sign made of curly wrought iron. It’s a treat for both of us after our separate days of meetings in London – Quinn’s idea because I’ve told him they serve the best crème brûlée I’ve had outside of Paris. I turn the corner and I don’t see the restaurant.
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I stand for a moment, peering up and down the street. Maybe they have repainted it. I look from building to building, but there’s no wrought-iron sign, no wide window with a view of the tables inside. Anxiety rises from my stomach into my throat. A little bit late isn’t a problem, said my editor Madelyne this afternoon, just a couple of hours ago, on the other side of London. But this is more than a little. I shake my head. Of course. The restaurant isn’t on this street, it’s further on. How silly of me. I stride to the end of the road and over the junction. Quinn is never late. Quinn is frequently early. He’d prefer to wait outside wherever he’s going, looking around him or reading a newspaper, than to be rushed or rude. You’d think he’d know me well enough by now to build in some leeway when he’s meeting me, but he never does. I tried suggesting this once, breezily, and he listened, as he always does when I try to explain something. ‘I’d still rather read the paper for a little while,’ he said, and that was it. I’ve learned that Quinn is Quinn, and he does not change. And even though he never acts impatient or annoyed, I try not to be late so often. I even bought a watch. I hate to think of him waiting, over and over. It’s warm and I’m still feeling anxious, so I take off my jacket and drape it over my arm. The restaurant should be right here, on the left. Except it’s not; it’s a Starbucks. I frown. I must have got turned around the wrong way, somehow. This Starbucks looks exactly the same as every other Starbucks in the world, and definitely not like a French restaurant. I probably went too far down this road. I turn around and start back the way I’ve come. 10
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My phone rings. It’s Quinn. ‘Hello hello,’ I say, as cheerfully as I think I should. ‘Hello, love. Where are you? Are you still on the train?’ ‘No no, I’m in Richmond, I’m on my way. I took a wrong turn, I think, but I’ll be there in a tick.’ ‘Right,’ he says. ‘See you in a minute, love.’ He hangs up and I put my phone back in my handbag. He always says love, always, leaving in the morning or greeting me when I come in the room or ending a conversation on the phone. It punctuates beginnings and endings. It’s something his father does with his mother, and he’s slipped into the habit as if he were born to it. At the corner I catch a whiff of scent, something familiar, someone’s perfume. I stop walking. ‘Mum?’ I say. My mother isn’t here. Of course she isn’t here. But the scent is so strong, it’s as if she’s just walked past me. I glance around. Two teenage girls sharing earphones, a man walking a terrier, a young couple, her with a hijab and him with a pushchair. There’s a woman near the end of the street, walking away from me. She’s wearing a sleeveless top and rolled-up jeans, her shoulders tanned. Her hair is a long silver plait down her back. The scent of flowers trails behind her on the warm air. ‘Mum?’ I hurry after her. She turns the corner, and by the time I reach it, she’s gone. But I can still smell her perfume. It’s so familiar I can’t think of the name of it, and my mother never wore perfume anyway. This smell, though, is my mother: it tugs something deep inside me, makes my heart leap with hope and a kind of sweet agony. I run further along the street and think I see the 11
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woman ahead of me, crossing the bridge over the Thames. It can’t be my mother. It’s impossible. But I’m still thinking of everything I need to tell her: I’m married, I’ve bought a house, I’m sorry. So sorry for what I made you do. I collide with the plastic shopping bag held by a man coming the other way over the bridge, and it falls onto the pavement with a clang of tins. ‘Oi, watch it,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ I say, maybe to him, maybe to the woman ahead of me. I reach for his bag but he’s snatched it up again. He’s eyeing me up and down. ‘Don’t worry, beautiful, it’s my pleasure,’ he says. ‘Sorry,’ I say again, and carry on over the bridge, quickly. ‘Smile,’ he yells after me. ‘It might never happen!’ People are between us and she’s walking rapidly; my moment with the man with the shopping bag has put me even farther behind her. But the scent is as strong as ever, and as I get closer, dodging around pedestrians, my heart beats harder and harder. It’s impossible that when I catch up to this woman she will be my mother, Esther Bloom, and she will turn around and say, Darling. It’s impossible that she could take me into her arms and I could be forgiven. I know it’s impossible, and yet I can’t look away from her. It’s as if my body doesn’t know what my mind does. I can’t stop my feet from following her, faster now, running, my ballet flats pounding over the pavement, sweat dampening the cotton collar of my shirt. My jacket slips off my arm; I stuff it into my handbag, mindless of wrinkles, and hurry forward. The woman opens the door of a pizza takeaway. Panting, I clasp her by the shoulder. It isn’t my mother’s shoulder. It feels all wrong, and this 12
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woman is darker than my mother, with more grey in her hair, which is finer than my mother’s was – but my body has that irrational hope that when she turns around, her face will be Esther’s. ‘Mum?’ I gasp. It isn’t. It’s a stranger. She looks nothing like my mother at all. ‘My mistake,’ I say, backtracking. ‘So sorry, I thought you were someone else.’ She shrugs and goes into the takeaway. The scent of flowers is gone, replaced by a whiff of baking dough and melting cheese. My mother didn’t even like pizza very much. I rub my forehead and look around. It’s starting to get dark; the streetlights have come on, and this street is entirely unfamiliar, even more unfamiliar because not ten minutes ago I thought I knew exactly where I was, exactly who I was following. It’s as if the street has changed around me. As if the world has changed around me. In my bag, my phone rings. I know without looking that it’s Quinn, wondering where I am. I don’t answer it; I’ll be with him in a minute. I hurry back across the bridge and along the road, which seems quite busy now; the cars have their lights turned on. I see a sign pointing to the station and I turn that way. This street looks strange too, but if it takes me back to the station that’s good because I can definitely find my way from there. Though I didn’t just now. How did I get so lost? I reach for my phone to answer Quinn’s call. Sometimes it’s better to admit defeat and get somewhere that little bit 13
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quicker, and Quinn loves giving directions anyway. And also it would be sort of nice to hear his voice, his habitual calm. Hello, love. Two things happen at once: my phone stops ringing, and I see the restaurant. It’s thirty metres away, on the other side of the road from where I’d expected it to be, and Quinn is outside it, his phone in his hand. He’s wearing the same grey suit he was wearing when he left this morning to get the train to London, though the tie’s been removed and he’s unbuttoned his collar. His dark hair, as usual, is sticking up in the front because he’s been running his fingers through it. The restaurant is painted yellow, with a wrought-iron sign outside. Light spills through the window. Everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be. He spots me and runs across the street, dodging a cab. I kiss him on his cheek, where there’s a couple of days’ growth of beard. ‘You had me worried, love,’ he says, kissing me back. ‘What happened?’ I look at my husband: slender, pale, serious, with his grey eyes and his dedication to facts. The newspaper he’s been reading while he’s been waiting for me is tucked underneath his arm. He’s never been late in his life, and he’s certainly never followed a woman who doesn’t exist any more, except in his memory. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I just took a wrong turn.’
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