The Child Who

-

She is early herself but he is already seated. It is not like him, she thinks. But then who is she, these days, to be able to judge?

She slides from her coat but no one offers to take it from her. When no one comes to direct her to the table either, she drapes the coat over her arm and makes her own way across the restaurant floor. It is busy for brunch-time and she has to weave and hoist her coat and apologise, more than once, for knocking other patrons’ chairs. Feeling hot, and damp from the rain, and conscious that her hair, probably, is a frizzy mess, she arrives. Leo stands to greet her.

This, ridiculously, given what she has come here to say, is the moment she has been dreading. Not the act of coming face to face after such a long time but the decision, once they are within range, about how she should greet her husband. A kiss, she thought, on the cheek but Leo is caught between the table and the leather bench and Megan, to reach him, would have to lunge. An embrace – a hand on the shoulder, a brief coming together – is her backup but this, in the circumstances, would prove awkward too. A handshake is out of the question so in the end Megan flounders. She says hi, then hi again, then smiles, sort of, and just sits.

He is staring. Megan does her best, with a surreptitious palm, to smooth her hair.

But, ‘You look well,’ Leo says. ‘You really do.’

In spite of her relief, she could take offence – what did he expect? – but his manner is earnest and his expression uncertain and she thinks that today she should endeavour to be kind. Compliments, she knows, are not her husband’s vernacular. He utters them, when he utters them, with the same failed fluidity that defines his French.

‘You look well yourself,’ she says. And this is indeed being kind because Leo looks anything but. He has shaved and is neatly turned out – a shirt collar beneath a V-neck jumper and the colours even vaguely coincide – but there is no dressing up a dishevelment that runs deeper. His skin is wan, sunless. He has lost weight. He had some to spare but it has slipped most noticeably from his cheeks. As for his hair: when she last saw him it was already deserting him and he has pre-empted the sedition of the rest by clipping it tight. The result, a stranger might say, was making the best of a bad lot – better than a combover, certainly. But it is not Leo.

She decides. If she was not sure before, she is sure now.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Leo already has a coffee but is directing a finger at a passing waiter. The waiter – a boy, practically, and east European, Megan predicts – has stopped mid stride. He does not have long, the bustle and his bearing convey. Quickly now, please: what will it be?

‘A cappuccino?’ says Leo. ‘Right?’

The waiter nods and is about to dart on but Megan reaches. ‘A Bloody Mary,’ she says. ‘Lots of spice.’ Again the waiter nods. Megan fails to look at Leo as she turns. She needs the drink. She is under no obligation to explain why. And now, she realises, she might un-decide. Such is her see-saw antagonism, her decision might tip on the weight of what Leo says next.

‘So,’ Leo says.

Megan lifts her head. Her husband is staring at his coffee.

‘So.’

‘You heard, then. The news.’

‘I did.’ She has an urge to reach across. ‘Leo, I’m…’ Don’t say it. You’re not, so don’t say it. ‘What happened? Do you know?’

Her husband has a gesture. It is not for strangers because it would be construed as rude. But for friends, family, Leo has a gesture – a flick of a finger, a turn of the head, a tightening across the lips – that says, I don’t want to talk about it. He will, Megan is convinced, use it now.

Instead he sighs. He picks up his teaspoon. He does not seem to know what to do with it so he puts it down again. ‘The short version?’ he says. ‘Or the long?’

Megan’s Bloody Mary arrives. It is a bouquet of celery in a blood-red vase. She would laugh, ordinarily. ‘I don’t have anywhere I need to be,’ she says instead. It is not true but she says it anyway.

Leo regards her, as though uncertain whether she means what she says. But he seems, in the end, to be convinced. He sighs again.

He is grieving, Megan realises. After all these years and after everything that has happened, he is suffering. For this child, this boy – this man, in the end: Leo is aching from the loss.

Megan shivers. She cannot help it and she cannot hide it. Her husband, though, does not notice. He is searching for his voice in his coffee cup.

‘It was the guards,’ he says. ‘Two of them. Allegedly, of course. They haven’t admitted anything and from what I hear each one’s covering for the other, blaming some mysterious inmate. But the guards. Can you believe it?’ Leo smiles and shakes his head.

Megan looks at her hands.

‘He was up for parole,’ Leo said. ‘Or he would have been. Maybe that was why. Huh. I didn’t think of that. Maybe just the thought of them letting him out…’ Leo shakes his head again. ‘Such rage,’ he says, as much to himself. ‘So much rage.’

‘Don’t tell me you can’t understand it, Leo. Not now. Not after everything that… that we…’ Megan’s anger, from nowhere, overwhelms itself.

‘What? No. Meg, please. I didn’t mean…’

She turns her cheek. She presses her lips. Leo, she can tell, is searching for the words that might appease her but she could save him the effort because there are none, not in that moment. Her husband, however, seems to have reached the same conclusion because the silence stretches.

When Megan turns back he avoids her eye.

‘It was the guards,’ Megan says. Her voice is taut but composed. ‘You were saying: it was the prison guards.’

Now Leo looks: a child peeking from beneath the covers. He nods, tentatively. ‘That’s right.’ He clears his throat. ‘That’s what people seem to think.’ He sits straight.

‘What did they…’ Megan, too, adjusts herself in her seat. ‘The guards. How did they…’

Leo does not answer right away. He is staring again. He wants to ask, she can tell: do you really want to know? Probably she does not but she can hardly confess to that now.

‘They stabbed him,’ Leo says and that, Megan thinks, is that – at least now they can move on. Leo, though, is not finished. ‘They stabbed him,’ he says again, ‘and punctured his lung. They locked him in the shower block and they watched through the glass as he drowned in his own blood. Allegedly,’ Leo adds. His smile, on anyone else, would seem dangerous.

Megan shuts her eyes. She makes a motion with her hand, as though Leo had not already stopped talking.

When she recovers herself, he is watching her. There is something in his look that was not there before.

‘He’s dead, Megan. Daniel Blake. He’s dead.’

She shakes her head. What is that supposed to—

‘That’s why you’re here. Right? That’s why you wanted to see me. He’s dead, I promise you. They’ve had their blood.’

And so, his expression seems to say, has she.

‘Leo. Really. Is that what you… Surely you can’t think that I…’

He waits.

‘… that I wanted – ’ she lowers her voice ‘ – this.’ She is shaking her head and Leo seems suddenly uncertain.

Until: ‘The divorce,’ he says and his shoulders wilt. ‘Right? Closure, finally. That’s what this is about?’

Still Megan shakes her head. ‘No. Leo, no.’ She almost laughs. How has she behaved? How has she treated him that he holds her intentions in such base regard?

Leo is searching the tablecloth for direction. He looks at Megan and his eyes draw narrow. Well? he does not say. What, then?

‘The house.’

Coward.

‘The house? What about the house?’

Nothing. Forget the house. This has nothing to do with the house.

‘I’m planning… I’m planning to sell it.’

Leo takes a moment to react. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘That’s up to you.’

‘I saw an agent. You wouldn’t believe how much he said it was worth. I mean, we’d split what was left, obviously. After we pay off the mortgage.’

‘Sure. That’s fine. It’s up to you.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Why would I mind? It’s your house, Meg. That’s what we agreed.’

‘I live there. That doesn’t make it mine.’

‘No, that’s true but…’

‘It’s a lot of money, Leo. Aren’t you interested in knowing how much?’

So much for the sweetener. So much for softening the blow. But how, really, did she expect him to react, given how much each of their attitudes towards money has changed? After Ellie, it hardly seemed important to either of them. It is the reason – one of them – why their parting was so effortless. There was nothing, no complications even, to bind them together.

‘I earn enough, Meg. I trust you. Sell it for what you can and take what you need.’

Megan nods. She fiddles with the straw in her drink.

‘Meg.’

She looks up.

‘This isn’t about the house,’ Leo says. ‘Is it?’

And the surprise, this time, must surely show on her face. But again, why should it? She knows him; he knows her. After the greater part of twenty years together, there is no escaping that.

Except, if today proves nothing else, it is that Leo does not know Megan as well as he might think. He does not know, for instance, how furious she is, how it feels sometimes like she is choking on hate. He does not know how atrophied her heart has become, how ruthless that allows her to be, how pitiless. He does not know, after twenty years of being together and a decade now of being apart, what his wife is capable of.

‘No,’ Megan says. ‘It’s not.’

And he does not, above all, know what she has done.