“Hey,” he said. His voice was low and soft.
“It was Laika,” I said, breathless. “I saw Laika. She was on the embankment. She—” I pointed in the direction in which I had seen her walking, “She was going that way. We’ve got to find her.” I took a step down the pavement. Jamie pulled me back.
“Sweetheart,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s not Laika.”
“It was,” I said into his chest. “It was Laika. It was her.”
“How many years has it been? Twenty? More? Darling, think about it, you wouldn’t just spot her on the street. You wouldn’t recognize her—you’ve told me that yourself. She’d be changed beyond all recognition. You’re carrying around some vision of her as a young, healthy girl, a thirteen-year-old, but the truth is, even if she’s still alive, she’s probably living rough or holed up in an institution. She wouldn’t look the same. She could be missing teeth for all you know. It was somebody who looked a little like her, perhaps, somebody who reminded you of her, as she used to be.” He pulled me close. I put my head against his chest and I knew in some clumsy way he was trying to be kind, so I closed my eyes and breathed until I no longer felt the urge to punch him on the jaw.
“Darling,” he said, his voice gentle but firm, “your dad warned me this might happen. You’re not going to see Laika on a street in Paris. You’re not going to see her in London, or anywhere. Whatever awful thing happened to your sister, she’s not coming home.”
Jamie asked me to marry him that night and I said yes. We hatched plans together and, as soon as we got back from Paris, I moved into the little flat he shared with Sam.
***
Three weeks later, Jamie went to South Africa for work. On the morning of his departure, he stood in Sam’s hallway with his bags packed, cupping my face with his hands.
“I’ll take you with me another time, promise.”
He gave me a flash of that wide smile, perfect white teeth in two perfect white rows, then, from the window, I watched him bound down the outside steps to the waiting taxi, the morning light catching his golden head as he folded himself in through its door. I watched the black cab disappear down the street until it turned the corner and was finally out of sight.
Then I ran to the bathroom and threw up.
***
I knew I was pregnant straight off, even before I could take an accurate test. My entire body felt fundamentally different: powerful, elemental, complete. With Jamie still away, I went about my days in a blur of happiness and exhaustion. In the bathroom I stood in front of the mirror, running my hands over the flat of my belly, dazzled by the magic going on inside. I was going to be a mother.
No, I already was.
15 Satellite Willa
Jamie’s reaction to the news was a mixture of incredulity and pure joy. Given my age, I don’t think either of us had really expected things to happen quite so fast. As soon as he returned from South Africa, and on weekends when he wasn’t summoned by my dad to play golf, we started house hunting in earnest. We began our search first in the nicer parts of Central London, a dream that was almost instantly moderated to the outskirts. I’d been putting money away since I left school, but I’d never earned a lot. Even combined with Jamie’s savings, our little nest egg didn’t stretch to much. We looked at grotty basement flats that stunk of damp or in which the windows rattled with each passing train. At one place the so-called second bedroom was a cupboard.
Three months into my pregnancy, I started to feel desperate. Sam’s flat was nice enough, but obviously we couldn’t stay there, not with a baby on the way, and, while Sam was lovely, he was Jamie’s friend, not mine. Jamie himself was only living there as a favor, so I tried to make my own presence as unobtrusive as possible, arriving home after the others whenever possible. But I was tired, and still prone to bouts of sickness, and occasionally, very occasionally, I’d get home first.
Which is how I came to speak to Melissa.
The landline was ringing as I opened the front door. I dumped my bag and snatched it up, thinking it might be Jamie.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” a woman’s voice said. “Why aren’t you picking up your cell?” A South African accent.
I paused. “Are you calling for Jamie?”
“Who is this?”
“Willa.”
“What are you doing in Jamie’s flat?”
Oh, no, you don’t, I thought. “He’s my partner,” I said. I put a protective hand on the small swell of my belly. “We’re engaged.”
There was a moment of near silence, then a quick humorless laugh.
“Is that right?” the voice said slowly. “Unbelievable. Good luck with that.”
It was Melissa, of course it was, but Jamie arrived home at the same time as Sam, so I had to wait until we were in bed to tell him about the strange call.
“Ah,” he said. “Okay. Sorry about that.”
“But why was she calling you? What did she want?”
“God knows,” he said. “Perhaps she’s heard you’re on the scene.”
I let that sink in. “What was she like?”
“Melissa? Messy.”
“That’s it? She was messy?”
“I mean it. She was brought up by servants. It used to drive me mad. I’m a neat freak—like you.”
“Come on,” I said, half laughing. “This is your ex-wife. You can come up with a bit more than that.”
Jamie glanced at me. “Okay, then, feisty. How about that? A dynamo. Very single-minded about pursuing her goals. Not to mention combative: took no prisoners, shot from the hip. Melissa loved a good fight. She was forever arguing, running out of rooms, yelling at the staff.”
“The who?”
