I’d never before met anyone who seemed so utterly at ease with life. I liked his jokes, his confidence, his spontaneity, even the artless way he swore. He didn’t care one jot that I hadn’t been to university. Neither had he; his own school career was far more checkered than mine.
“I accidentally got expelled,” he told me one morning over breakfast, “twice, actually. Two different schools.” He grinned at me over his bowl of muesli.
“What did you do?” I asked him, a slow smile of amusement spreading over my face. It was still early days in our relationship, a time when all our conversations seemed to move fluidly between brilliantly funny and meaningfully intense.
“Racketeering, cheating, lying,” Jamie said cheerfully, “you name it, I did it. I was forever in trouble. I had yet to learn the noble art of not getting caught. God, my poor parents.” He squeezed my hand. “They’ll like you, though.”
I was amazed anyone could be so blasé about their bad-boy past, so open and frank. Also, just a tiny bit concerned. Oh, forget it, I told myself, people grow up. And Jamie wasn’t a clown; he had a serious side too, I knew that from the way he talked about conservation, his great love of the wild. He told me that one of the reasons he loved his job so much was that Pearl River Wines not only had vineyards but also owned a small private game reserve. It was mainly used to entertain their well-heeled guests, but Jamie got to stay there every couple of months, for free, whenever he went to Cape Town for work.
“How d’you even get a job like that?” I asked him. We were lying on his bed, flicking through an album of photographs he’d taken at the reserve. I stopped on an image of three lion cubs tumbling together in the long grass, the edges of their solid furry bodies glowing fire-red, backlit against a setting sun. “Wonderful,” I said.
Jamie shrugged. “Good luck, I suppose. Friend of a friend. I’d had loads of different jobs before that. I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life, to be honest.” He pulled a face and stuck his hands behind his head. “So many options out there: that’s the problem. And only one life to do all of it. God knows how you’re ever meant to decide on anything.” For a long time he stared at the ceiling, as if lost in thought. Then he said, “D’you like dogs?” I sat up, laughing, somewhat surprised by this abrupt shift in the conversation. “Mum breeds spaniels. Someday I’d really love a dog. A little Staffy or something, you know, from Battersea Dogs Home. Get a rescue.”
I smiled. We didn’t have dogs when I was growing up. My mother was always desperate for one—something small and cute, she’d said, a Chihuahua perhaps, or a pug, but my father said he questioned why anyone in their right mind would invite a pissing, crapping, germ-laden, bollock-licking, arse-dragging, flea-ridden animal to live under their very own roof; and, while we were at it, he didn’t much see the point of horses either, when cars were faster, less temperamental and didn’t leave their passengers stinking of shit.
“Sure,” I said, “I like dogs.”
I ran my hand through his hair. I loved that he loved animals. I loved too that he’d asked my opinion on that matter, and, even more, that his first choice would be a rescue. That was nice, I thought. It showed good character. That mix of sunshine and humanity reminded me something of Robyn.
I was drawn to him like honey.
***
Jamie was sharing a flat in North London when I first met him, renting a bedroom from Sam, an old school friend of his. It was an arrangement he’d made in haste, he said, not ideal, but a temporary measure until he got a place of his own. The year before he’d made something of an abrupt return from years of living in Cape Town. “Beating a swift retreat from my disastrous marriage,” was how he actually put it. His ex-wife, Melissa, was still there. He showed me a couple of pictures of her once, a smiling blonde on a sun-drenched beach.
“Why didn’t it work out?” I said. We were lying in his bed, late at night.
Jamie shrugged. “I wanted kids. She didn’t.”
Come on, I thought, there’s got to be more to it than that.
“Isn’t that the sort of thing you should discuss before you get married?”
“Yeah. No, we did. Melissa could be very”—Jamie paused, searching for the right word—“contrary. Don’t get me wrong, I did love her. She was sharp, adventurous, spirited…but she could be a bit—hell, I don’t know, tricky. Oppositional. The moment I said we should start trying for a family she said she’d changed her mind. Now she didn’t want kids at all. And, no shit, I promise you she was always like that: didn’t want the stuff she could have, irresistibly drawn to everything else.” He sighed, looking grim. “Did the same thing with me, I suppose, got bored with me the moment we got married. We lasted only eighteen months. Yet another catastrophe as far as Mum and Dad were concerned: not just a divorce but no grandkids to dote over either. God.”
He sounded so dejected that I took his hand and squeezed it. We stayed like that for a while. Finally, he rolled his head toward mine. “How about you?” he said. “Do you want kids?”
His words moved through me like the first shoots of spring, all my secret desires pushing to the surface. I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
I would have let that special moment hang in the air, but he made a grab for me, laughing. “Come here,” he said. “We’d better get on with it, then.”
God, that was good. I almost enjoyed sex that night.
***
Cat had only just had the twins, so I said we should get ourselves over to visit. They would be my litmus test, and it was a good one, as it turned out: we arrived to what could justly be described as utter chaos. Sophie, wearing her favorite red dungarees and fairy wings, was marching up and down the length of the kitchen table performing magic tricks, most of which involved shouting Ta-da at the top of her voice while pulling random objects out of a hat. Meanwhile Cat, still in her pajamas, was sheltering in the front room with the boys, both of whom were intermittently producing the sort of intense, keening noises only a newborn with colic can effect. Lunch was a selection of random stuff pulled out of the fridge.
“Is it like this all the time?” Jamie asked, looking bemused as he picked out bits of Lego from a salad made from carrots, lettuce leaves and a tin of chickpeas.
“God, no,” Cat said. “It’s not all sunbeams and roses. Sometimes parenting can be quite hard.”
I thought I saw a quick flash of horror sweep over Jamie’s face, but later, as we sat together on their sofa, each of us holding a tiny sleeping child, he cast me a look so full of tenderness and wonder that I felt a soft wave of genuine love for him.
The universe had spoken: here was my match.
***
It was summer. We settled down easily, naturally, fluidly, almost without discussion. We visited galleries and went to the theater. We ate in tiny bistros and talked endlessly. We walked through London’s parks and lazed on the grass, sitting in puddles of golden evening sun, drinking glasses of Pearl River wine, Jamie’s head bent toward mine. When I was on my own, I felt like singing the entire time. I smiled at strangers on the tube.
Even better, when my temporary contract came to an end and there were no more limbs to paint, Fen asked me to stay on. “Not so much as a prop-maker,” he said. “More as an assistant, a co-worker. I can’t pay a huge salary, but it’s a permanent job offer if you want it. I need somebody who can deal with people. I am aware,” he said with a grimace, “that part of the job is not exactly my forte.”
Everything was falling into place. Within months we were talking about hunting for a place of our own, somewhere to buy rather than rent, a proper home with two bedrooms, maybe three if we could afford it. I told my parents the big news over Sunday lunch. My father placed his knife and fork on the side of his plate and fixed me with a flat stare.
“I need to meet this man. Get him down.”
I met my father’s eyes. He smiled.
I’d already met his mum and dad. Now Jamie had to meet mine.
***
My father and Jamie got on. Over lunch they drank Pearl River wine while my father told Jamie all about the superlative bids made for Ming Dynasty porcelain at auction. Later they stood outside, arms crossed across their chests, and discussed the comparative merits of their cars. Meanwhile my mother and I sat at the kitchen table trying to decipher a message somebody had posted a few days before on findlaika. I read it aloud for the thousandth time.
I see 1998 en picardie ilisabat et gentille Jabir.
“Clearly whoever sent it doesn’t speak much English,” I said. “The best I can make out is that somebody thinks they saw her in Ilisabat, in 1998. The problem is there’s nowhere in Picardy called Ilisabat, in fact, nowhere in France called Ilisabat. I’ve tried Isles Abat and Isles à Bat, but they don’t exist either. At a push, Gentille could be Gentilly, north of Paris. The police said they’d look into it but not to pin my hopes on anything. They said it could be anywhere French speaking: Monaco, Burundi, Haiti. Guadeloupe.”
“Not this again,” my father said as the two men came back in. “It’s a slow news day, is it? You know all about findlaika, do you, Jamie? Then you’ll know just how much trouble it generates. The tabloids drag up some old story, then some jackass concocts a load of rubbish, and this one, without even telling us, jumps on a plane—”
“Once. I jumped on a plane without telling you once.”
“And buggers off on some wild goose chase halfway round the world.”
“This is the first sighting there’s been for ages, Dad.”
“This isn’t a sighting, Willa. It’s complete gibberish, from which you have apparently extracted that someone claims to have seen her twenty years ago. It’s clearly bollocks. This is just some donkey playing with you, Willa, a bored child. Leave it alone. I’ve told you before, that website of yours doesn’t help with anything. Shut it down. It just upsets you.”
“You’ve got to admit,” Jamie said, “it doesn’t sound very likely.”
“Exactly,” my father said. He gave my boyfriend a slow nod. “Good man, James.”
I shut the laptop.
***
—
At the end of the afternoon my father nodded his approval to me. To Jamie he said, “She’s a good girl, Willa, golden.”
