The Shades Page 10

  Catherine had a vague recollection of a man with spiked hair talking about Fitbit and mobile sites. “I don’t remember.”

  “Like your friend, his daughter also happens to be interested in editorial—he asked if she could come in to talk to me. Do you know that she had the nerve to lecture me about recycling trends in fashion? As if that’s a novel thought, of course we are all paying our debts. She behaved as if I was an elderly relative being visited on sufferance—all this coming from a dimwit in a blouse that showed her boobs and a skirt that showed her crack. I wanted to tell her that if she thought her outfit was cutting edge she should consider a career in latex design for Slutty Apparel.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Catherine was dry.

  “Come on, Stig’s daughter? You have to understand that I have people in and out of my office all day with agendas—nothing wrong with that, but these time wasters really get on my tits when there are talented and educated women out there who have passion and commitment. They may not know somebody who knows the editor, but they are much more deserving.”

  “I’m sure all she wanted was a chance.”

  “Look, I’m sorry to rant. I know you were trying to help. And I think it’s good, really great that you were, but I wouldn’t waste your time. She’s slippery, this one. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear.”

  “Thanks for trying. I appreciate your consideration.” Catherine was stiff. She didn’t care if she registered disapproval.

  “Anytime.” Paige was matter-of-fact. “But how are you, my darling? You are elusive. When I call the number in London I get Michael, who refers me to your mobile or the number in the country. Both those mailboxes are always full.”

  “I should do something about that.”

  “And, Rowan—how is he?”

  “I expect, as you might expect.”

  “It’s going to take time.”

  Catherine was silent. Implicit in Paige’s remark was that there was a time frame for recovery. Does one ever recover? In her mind recovering was synonymous with forgetting. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to forget. When she had broken Rachel’s phone, it had been devastating to lose a line to her daughter, a reminder of whom they both were when she had not been looking.

  “Are you angry with me, Catherine? I’m getting that vibe.”

  “I can’t talk now . . . sorry.”

  “I hope you’re not fobbing me off? Haven’t we known each other too long to—”

  “We can speak later.”

  “Of course—but make sure next time you take my call.”

  When Catherine put down the receiver, her hands were shaking. Everything about the conversation had upset her: Paige’s accounting of the apparent mix-up with the meeting; her tone, which had been dismissive and patronizing. It wasn’t only her unflattering opinion of the young women that offended her, but what it had revealed about Paige herself—namely her monumental ego and jealousy. She didn’t believe for a second that Keira hadn’t turned up. It was much more likely that Paige hadn’t put the meeting in her diary and the girl had been turned away from the building without an appointment. If it had been anyone else, forgetting would have been an innocent mistake, but knowing Paige it was a passive-aggressive act, stemming from an ancient rivalry that was suddenly rearing its ugly head. If she hadn’t been so damming, it might have been nostalgic to see the face of competition after so many years. Get on my tits? Showed her crack? If anything, Paige was the vulgar one for using demeaning and hypersexualized language. If she was going to preach she needed to find a new vocabulary, especially as she was the one whose job it was to create a climate of envy for cosmetics and designer clothes, a bondage that made women more stupid for wanting them. Art out of commerce? Give me a fucking break! When she thought about it, she’d never liked her. When they’d first met they were both alpha females, English majors, with an interest in art. Finding themselves with the same enthusiasms in the same circles, they had allied together as a way of neutralizing their natural opposition to each other. Then Catherine switched to art history: Paige did too. When Catherine did her PhD, Paige headed straight to work for a soon-to-be-defunct art quarterly, before segueing into fashion. Looking back at the pivotal moments that a good friend might have celebrated: marriage, birth of a child, a successful show, a positive review, Paige’s reaction had always been tepid. She hadn’t wanted to see it before, but Paige was a draining naysayer, the kind of person who sucked the energy from the room but was incapable of giving anything back. What was most unforgivable was the way she’d used a young person as a pawn in a game of one-upmanship. Instead of admitting her own error, she had chosen to take a negative position against her. It must have been humiliating for Keira, who wouldn’t have been able to go near the building without authorization. She hoped that she wasn’t discouraged. She half expected the phone to ring at any moment—Keira calling to complain. She decided that she would sympathize, and then quickly move on. They would figure out a plan B—whatever that might be—she was resourceful and would think of something. When no call came, Catherine resolved to give her some time, another twenty-four hours, for the girl’s dignity, before she tried telephoning. If she had been embarrassed by being turned away, it was possible she might want to put a day between a bad experience and the telling of it. Finally, she called Keira’s number. A recorded message told her that the number was no longer in service. Her first thought was that she’d dialed incorrectly. After several more tries, she wondered if the girl had accidentally written the wrong number. She tried substituting the number 8 for 5, as it was only a half a pen stroke away. When that didn’t produce results, Catherine began to believe the line had been disconnected because the girl hadn’t been able to pay her bill. She regretted not having taken her email as well. She even considered calling Paige to check whether she had any other contact details but decided against this. As Catherine was Keira’s referee, it would seem odd that she didn’t have her number and would reflect badly on them both, possibly compound the negative impression that Paige already had. And so she waited, hoping the girl would make contact with her again.

  Then Michael had appeared at the gallery with his bloody photograph. She couldn’t be too annoyed with him. He didn’t fully understand why Keira had become a sensitive subject with her—she hadn’t kept him up to date with all her dealings. Even so, his pedantic quibbles were unhelpful and she didn’t understand what he was trying to prove. All she wanted was another chance to see Keira again, to remedy the damage she had done by advising her to see that self-centered egotist for advice about her career.

  The same day the new issue of the Great Estates Quarterly came out, the letter also arrived. As soon as the brochure was distributed, Michael double-checked the properties he represented—a total of six in this one, eight including the two he shared. He liked to make sure all the information was correct, just in case mistakes had made their way into the document between proofs and publication—“gremlins,” as he called them, or “ghosts in the machine.” All was fine, everything suitably glossed and glossy. As he leafed through the pages, it never ceased to amaze him the sheer volume of historic estates that came up for sale every year—and these were only a fraction. How impermeable they must have seemed at the time, set up with care and pride, bastions of family and success, only to be sold, dismantled, and exchanged by second and third parties, with as little delicacy or emotional attachment as players in a game of Monopoly. With a shudder, he recognized that it wouldn’t be long before Hamdean went through a version of these proceedings, although since being carved up into apartments it was no longer significant enough to be included in such grand company.

  At eleven, he went to reception and grabbed an espresso from the nifty pod contraption, plus two biscuits to get himself through until lunch. When he returned to his desk, he saw that Karen had delivered the morning’s post. On top of his inbox there was an envelope addressed in his son’s looping hand.

  He speculated on its con
tents, guessing that it was an official form, a permission slip for signing, otherwise Rowan would have texted. He acknowledged that it was a sorry state of affairs that a mundane communication from his elusive son could evince so much excitement and be the highlight of his day.

  When he sliced open the envelope, he was surprised to see that there was a letter inside—a long one at that. The sight of so many words was emotive and caught him unawares. He wasn’t sure whether this was because he was witnessing the miracle of a child’s consciousness, or whether it was his amazement that Rowan could read and write in an illiterate, techno age, or whether it was because the last time he received a handwritten note from him had been on Father’s Day, ten years before.

  After reading the letter, he was emotional in a different way.

  Dear Dad,

  I hope all is well with you and that everything is fine. I am writing to your office because I don’t want Mum to get hold of this first and I suspect you might want a chance to prep her on what I’m about to say.

  I have decided to leave school at the end of term. I have found something so much more meaningful to do with my life than smoking dope, doing A-levels, and sleepwalking through the rest of my education. I don’t want to waste any more time and money when there are so many more important things to be done in the world. We are at a tipping point now with global warming and I need to do something to stop the destruction of our planet before it’s too late. I can hear you groaning and urging me to stay on at school and suggesting a BA in environmental studies or emerging energies, political science or a law degree, but, trust me, I’ve given this a lot of thought and have gone through all my options and come to the conclusion that only urgent action will suffice. We are beyond talk. Any hope of change will be blocked by the massive corporations that run our country and have us in a toxic stranglehold, controlling the economy, the press, and government—policy is being dictated by a self-interested elite. To save the planet we must find alternatives to unjust systems in selfless community and confront those who are invested in keeping us in a cycle of pollution and greed. To do that we need people on the front line. I’m not alone. There’s a group of us and we are growing. Before you freak out, ask yourself what have you taught me other than to work hard, be polite and respectful. I ask that you respect me now by taking me at my word. Please don’t try to persuade me against any of this. If you do you will make it impossible for me to stay in contact and I would like to be able to talk to you and Mum from time to time.

  I plan to be in touch with the lawyer who handled Grandpa’s trust so I can access the money he left me so I can use the money to live on. Please don’t try to stop me—not that there’s much that you can do. There was a reason that Grandpa wanted me to have this money when I turned 16 and you should respect his wishes too.

  I know that at first this will be hard for you to understand and I’m sorry if my decision causes you and Mum any more stress. I hope that in time you will come to see that what I am doing is for the best. Things are different than when you were born, which is why I need to do something now.

  Love,

  Rowan

  Michael experienced Rowan’s letter as an assault. Reading it was the psychic equivalent of being punched by a stranger in the solar plexus, while learning of his child’s abduction by the same. In a short period of time Rowan had become remote, but there was no end to the dismay of discovering how far he had actually gone. He could have broken down and cried but office decorum at Great Estates told him that it was best to reserve that option for later.

  He reread the letter. It was worse than he’d thought on first sight.

  The unfamiliar language was striking. Rowan’s proposed abandonment of his education to an environmental fringe was beyond the pale. This letter did not read like the gentle and tolerant boy he knew but the voice of a chippy, left-wing militant. Rowan never used words or phrases such as “tipping point,” “suffice,” or “come to the conclusion,” and he questioned whether Rowan had written it at all or been put up to it by one of his friends or another subversive type. He wondered whether his therapist at school had been responsible for radicalizing him. He hadn’t liked the last one in London who looked like Charles Manson and hadn’t even had the good manners to wear socks to the meeting. He wished that he had listened to Catherine’s warnings and had stopped Rowan from going away.

  The money that Rowan referenced in the letter had been controversial from the start.

  Catherine heard about the money from her father when both children were still in nappies and Rachel just crawling. They had driven down to see Frank for lunch in Sussex. After noticing how old and doddery Frank was looking, Michael waited for them all to finish their ham and cheese sandwiches (the extent of Frank’s culinary expertise) before leaving father and daughter inside the cottage to have time together, alone. According to Catherine, Frank had told his daughter that he was going to settle £25,000 on each of his grandchildren to have at the age of sixteen, to which Catherine had replied that was very kind but wasn’t eighteen, or even twenty-one, a more appropriate age, when they would be more likely to do something worthwhile with the money? Frank had told her that she was missing the point: the money was for them to pursue a passion, give them the freedom to travel, take a trip they might otherwise not take. He knew how important this could be. After leaving art college, he’d spent two years traveling in Mexico, South America, and Japan, having scraped enough cash by sketching tourists outside Hyde Park. This period had proven the most formative of his life. When she’d tried to argue her point, he’d cut her short: “Catherine, I’ve seen you make choices, and they haven’t always made you happy,” which she’d taken about as well as a slap in the face. She’d backed off completely and made a hasty exit, Rachel on her hip, Rowan swinging in a bassinet in her hand. She’d found Michael in the field, chatting to some ramblers he’d met on the footpath. Seeing her expression, a compelling eye-roll and glare denoting that a quick exit was necessary, they went inside, bid hasty goodbyes, and left. In the privacy of the car, Catherine shared with Michael some details of her conversation. Although she’d never asked her father to qualify what he meant by unhappy-making choices, she had taken this personally, as a deep criticism of her. She believed that because she hadn’t become an artist like him and had muddied her hands in the dirty world of commerce, he looked down on her and disdained her existence. Michael disagreed. He thought if anything Frank was referring to their marriage, because Frank Hall thought he was boring—it was obvious that he did. He’d seen how his father-in-law’s eyes became glazed whenever Michael tried to engage him in conversation. Frank clearly thought that Catherine could have had a more interesting life if she’d married someone else. Michael reckoned he was probably right, but also thought that it would have been hard for her to find someone more devoted. He agreed with his wife that sixteen was too young to be trusted with such a large sum of money, but he never would have had the temerity to say this to Frank. He also understood why Catherine’s reaction might have seemed ungrateful to her father and he said as much to his wife.

  Catherine called the lawyer who handled her father’s settlement, a Mr. Durlacher, who was part of a large firm that handled family estates. Mr. Durlacher listened with a polite but professional manner, making it clear that, as she wasn’t his client, he wasn’t able to discuss the matter, but he did let it be known that as the children were minors there was nothing that required him to notify the child, only the parents, which was a tacit agreement that there was no need for the adults to advertise the money until the children were older. However, Rachel, being the beady one in the family, somehow found out about the legacy, presumably by rooting about in their papers. A year before she died she’d asked Michael, “What’s this about Grandpa’s money?” Michael had told her that it wasn’t enough to make her an heiress, so she should quickly forget about it and put the idea directly out of her head. As the subject of Frank’s wishes had been such a sensitive issue with Cath
erine, he also told Rachel that he wouldn’t mention their conversation to her mother, as she would be disappointed to hear that her daughter was a snoop. Rachel had laughed and agreed. It never occurred to him to put an embargo on her sharing this information with her brother; he assumed that this was how Rowan had learned about the bequest. The deed was structured in such a way that in the event that one sibling didn’t reach the age of sixteen, that child’s portion would revert to the other. At the time of drafting, the paragraph outlining the worst-case scenario might have read as lawyer-speak or legalese to a layperson, but it proved prophetic and came to bear on Rachel’s death, two weeks before her sixteenth birthday, when Rowan’s inheritance from his grandfather doubled.

  Michael decided to write to Rowan and give his son the respect that he desired. He would tell him that he would go see him on the weekend and they would sit down together, have an adult discussion about how Rowan might realize his goals—within the parameters of upper school. He would urge, cajole, use every trick in the bloody book to insist that he stay where he was and go on to university.

  He was particularly troubled by the suggestion that Rowan would sever ties if he or Catherine tried reasoning with him. The idea that he was capable of ruthlessly cutting them off was so painful that he wondered whether Rowan was being dramatic in order to scare him. However, the more realistic part of him knew that his son wasn’t bluffing; he had already gone and he wasn’t coming back.

  He had to think how he would broach the subject with Catherine. She was low because after a brief flurry of friendship the girl seemed to have dropped her. She held Paige responsible for alienating Keira, having gratuitously set her up for rejection. The bossy editor was now completely persona non grata.