Russell sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow waiting for his flight to be called. He could hardly believe this was happening, instead of his being in London with Mary, as they had planned, revisiting old, half-remembered places, lunching with Mary, then driving out to Bray for dinner at the Waterside Inn with Mary-God, he must cancel the table. He felt wounded as well as angry, and he wanted the reassurance of home. The more he thought about Mary and what might or might not have happened to her, the more he felt convinced that she had just not tried hard enough to contact him-and that hurt.
He stayed at the Dorchester until lunchtime, still hoping she would contact him, had called her home several times, but there had been no reply. He left a couple of messages, giving his mobile number, but his phone remained stubbornly silent.
They had brought him the Times with his breakfast, but after he had read the front and the city pages, he phoned down and demanded the Wall Street Journal. It was the only paper he ever read. The young man who brought it asked him if he would like him to switch the television on, but Russell told him sharply that if he wanted to watch it, he was quite capable of switching it on himself.
Russell was an enthusiastic user of technology: of his laptop and his iPhone. However, he was not a television watcher; he hated its banality, its obsession with trivia. He preferred the radio, and most of all he loved the BBC World Service. He and Mary had discovered that they both listened to it when they couldn’t sleep, and although their nights only partly overlapped, he still liked to think of her lying there, listening to the same voices, the same news reports. It brought her closer…
Well, he had obviously been keener on that closeness than she had…
The car journey, once they were on the M4 extension, had been swift. “Bit different from yesterday, sir,” the driver said. “Traffic held up for hours, it was. I gave up, just went home-there was no way you could get through.”
“Really?” said Russell, getting his iPhone out of his attaché case and rather ostentatiously fitting the earbuds into his ears. He would listen to music. He had no intention of getting involved in a conversation about traffic, for God’s sake…
He checked in, went to duty-free and bought himself a couple more books, and then moved up to the first-class lounge. He walked through the seating area, passing the TV screens on his way. He glanced at them: an earnest girl was saying something about Prince William and Harry and some concert they had just put on and how marvellous it had been. He moved off. As he did so, he half heard something about an accident the day before and that someone or other was still in intensive care. Not guaranteed to take his mind off his troubles; he moved into the computer area and called up his e-mails. There were three: two from his secretary, one from a colleague. He’d tried very hard to persuade Mary to have e-mail, but she’d resisted. “I like getting letters,” she said, “and if it’s urgent you can telephone me.”
It might have helped… he wasn’t sure how, but it might… Dear God, this was painful.
An hour passed while he wrote e-mails and looked at the online edition of the Journal; then he decided to get a whisky. That might ease the pain.
He walked out to the bar; they had only one whisky, and that was a blend.
“I’m not drinking that rubbish,” he said. “I want a single-malt. What is this, economy or something? Just give me a club soda.”
He went and sat down near the screens, so that he could see the latest on his flight. No delays; they should be in the air in thirty minutes. And he could shake the soil of bloody England off his feet. He should never have come back, never.
The flight was called; he walked to the departure bay slowly; there seemed to be a delay.
“For God’s sake, what is the matter with this airline?”
“Sorry, Mr. Mackenzie. If you just wait over there, shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
He sat down, sighed heavily. This was what he hated most about flying: sitting helplessly, life at least temporarily out of his control…
The man sitting next to him was reading a newspaper; he had it fully open, knocked Russell’s arm as he tried to fold it over.
“Sorry, mate.”
The man turned to his companion, a pasty, overweight creature in a tracksuit.
“Shocking thing, that crash yesterday,” he said. “Thank God we wasn’t trying to get a flight last night. Says here seven miles, both directions. Hundreds of people missed their planes. Three people killed…”
Russell stood up. All anyone seemed to be interested in today were car crashes…
“Would rows A to G please commence boarding immediately. First- and club-class passengers may also board at their convenience.”
Better check his phone for the last time; not that there was anyone he wanted to hear from…
There was one message on it. Left that day, half an hour earlier. A number he didn’t recognise…
“Hello, is that Mr. Mackenzie?” It was an English voice. “Mr. Mackenzie, you left a message on my mother’s answering machine. Mrs. Mary Bristow. I’m afraid she’s in the hospital-she was involved in a traffic accident yesterday. We only heard ourselves quite late last night. Anyway, if you want to ring me back, my number is-”
A series of clicks went off in Russell’s brain. Holdups for miles… serious traffic accident… in intensive care… hundreds missed their flights.
So there had been a reason: a perfectly good reason. And he had been too blind, too arrogant, too self-centred to try to find it. And Mary, his little Mary, was lying in a hospital, possibly dangerously ill…
Abi’s flat was in a rather unlovely outpost of Bristol; she’d bought it eighteen months earlier, on the strength of her new job. She loved it; it was in a small purpose-built block, fairly recently built. It had two bedrooms, one of which was let to her best friend, Sylvie, to help pay the mortgage; a very cool galley kitchen, with white cupboards and black work surfaces; a studio living room with floor-to-ceiling windows; and a bathroom that, as Sylvie said, was too small to swing a kitten in, much less hold a bath, but which served its purpose perfectly adequately.
She had furnished it slowly, through the year, refusing to put any old rubbish in it that she didn’t like; the Bristol branch of IKEA had served her well. The room she was most proud of was the living room, with its white blinds, white carpet-no one was allowed in with their shoes on-and two black corner sofas. She’d talked a photographer mate into giving her a very nice set of black-and-white prints of pictures he’d taken in New York, and had them framed by one of the suppliers at work; it all looked seriously classy. Her latest acquisition was a plasma TV, not too huge, but big enough to feel you weren’t missing anything watching a film on DVD rather than in the cinema.
She was actually watching Notting Hill for the umpteenth time, having got back from the gym exhausted but feeling slightly better, and wondering if she could face any lunch, when she decided to ring her phone once more.
“Hello?” said a voice.
“Oh… oh, my God… it’s William, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And that’s Abi? I was hoping you’d ring.”
“So-you’ve got my phone?”
“Yes, you gave it to me to hold yesterday. I’d put it down and forgotten all about it, only just found it again.”
“Fantastic. I thought I must have dropped it on the road or something. It was such a terrible day, and-”
“Certainly was. How are you feeling?”
“Oh… you know. Bit… out of it. Look, could I come and get it, do you think? I’m really missing it. Tell me where you are, and I’ll drive over.”