“Let’s ring her bell,” says Francine at once. “Why ever not?” Leonard hasn’t seen her look so energized or so amused for months.
“I can’t do that. What if she isn’t on her own?”
“You can’t. I can. She won’t know me. I can always say I’ve got the wrong address. Walk on. I’ll catch you up.” She pushes him in the ribs, halfway between an impatient shove and a playful prod. “Buck up, Leon. Ain’t we the warriors?”
Leonard’s heart is racing as he continues up the mews. “I can’t do that” is one of those phrases that Francine has often teased him about. He knows he should at least have gone up to the door with his wife, or, better, volunteered to ring the bell himself, alone. He could pull his scarf and collar up. He’d not be recognized. It’s too late now, however. What’s the point of beating himself up about it on his birthday? He’s already been beaten up enough today and, on present evidence, can expect to be teased and prodded for many hours more. Even so, he cannot help pretending, as he walks along the street while Francine takes the risks, that he has volunteered and that he is alone on Nadia’s step, where he is recognized by her at once, though his face is masked. For a moment Leonard has her standing at her door in the same pajamas she wore in Texas on the day the Bushes came to town.
This Nadia, this one who knows him straightaway, is not the Red Nadia of old, plucky, stocky, and attractive, and, like her daughter, just a little mad; nor is she the hardly recognizable plump, sobbing mother from this morning’s news; nor the sofa socialist of Lucy’s description. She is Leonard’s own creation, but idealized and updated over time. She has matured into handsome middle age but, like Francine, is still strident and exciting. He has visualized making love to her countless times, because he never did make love to her at all. She is unfinished business. She is his road not taken, as it were. Mostly, when they are having sex in his imagination, they are fugitives, holed up in the woods or sharing floorboards in some radical squat, passionate and breathless, waiting for the timbers of the door to splinter or the wail of sirens to bring their loving to a halt. He has also sometimes—too often to admit — thought of her dressed up for the Capitol. She’s at her sexiest, as he remembers it. She’s put on lipstick for a change. She has a brooch. She has heeled shoes. Her linen pantsuit hugs her bottom well. A fiery, pregnant woman deliciously disguised. They’re waiting for the first lady to say child. And when she does say child, both Nadia and Leonard will be on their feet and heading for the podium. Yes, both of them. Now it isn’t Laura Bush who’s bumping heads with her, it isn’t Laura Bush who takes hold of though does not tug her hair, but Comrade Leon Lessing. They will have a future in each other’s arms. Ten pairs of hands take hold of him. Ten pairs of hands are pulling him. But all those Secret Service men and Texan Volunteers will not have the strength to drag him free, until Francine catches up with him and he must shake away the thought.
As it turns out, Nadia is at home but not alone. The door is answered by an officer in uniform. “Ah!” Francine lets her mouth fall loose and arches her eyebrows, faking her surprise. “Is this the right address?”
“Depends. Who are you looking for?”
“Ms. Sickert. Celandine,” she says instinctively. “My daughter’s place.”
He shakes his head. “Wrong house, I think. I’ll ask.” He turns away from the front door to reveal a woman — Nadia — standing at the dark end of the hallway, her face scumbled by shadow, her shoulders down. What had she hoped for when the doorbell sounded? “Anyone you know called Sickert Celandine—”
“Celandine Sickert,” Francine corrects him, automatically, and looks directly at Nadia, offering a smile to the woman. A smile of solidarity, of course. She knows exactly what it means to be fearful for a daughter, how the throat and heart are gripped by some keen torturer every time there is a caller at the door, or the trill of incoming e-mail, or someone on the phone, how the shoulders mass and sag, how the shadows gather round, how even talking is at times such a punishing and heavy task that it is easier just to shake your head than say, “Nobody of that name is here.” Just naming Celandine out loud, as Francine has just done, is painful still, even after eighteen months of getting used to it. Three syllables of pain. At once the memories stack up: that final, shocking, violent clash, that unsigned farewell note (“Dear Family, I’m moving out & moving on. No need to be in touch. X”), the early days of constant hope and bursting into tears and being practical, topping up her daughter’s phone until the number was discontinued, the weekly text messages she sends, the no-replies, the e-mails that are blocked or failed, and then the months of nagging dreams in which Celandine herself is blocked or failed or discontinued. She is floating facedown in a canal, or padlocked in a room, or working on the streets, strung out and pale, or — hard to swallow, this — she’s safe and well and happy in her life. No need for Mummy now. Or Unk.
“What names again?” asks Nadia, stepping forward and peering over the policeman’s epaulettes at the stranger on her step.
“Celandine Sickert?”
“No.”
Later there is better luck, although it does not seem so immediately. After killing an hour over coffee and more questions about Nadia and Maxie at the local Starters, Leonard and Francine are walking toward the Emmersons’ front door for the third and, they have determined, final time. They have a plan. If all is clear, Leonard will distract the photographers with some bogus query while Francine delivers an envelope marked “Nadia/Personal,” containing the unsigned note that she has written spikily with her left hand on the back of a Starters coaster: “Lucy safe. With friends. Not kidnapped. Teenage escapade. Tell nobody. DO NOT WORRY.” But in the event there is no need for any note. Much to the relief of the now four waiting photographers, Nadia Emmerson, dressed in a gratifyingly adventurous multicolored overcoat, steps out of her front door and gets into a silver citicar driven by a heavily built police minder, out of uniform. The uniformed officer that Francine spoke to earlier takes up sentry duty outside the house. He pops a sweet into his mouth. He looks as if he means to make it last.
“That’s it, then, I suppose,” Leonard says, both disappointed and relieved that the note is now undeliverable and that, for the time being, Nadia Emmerson is out of reach. He’s done his best; it’s not his fault — the usual chorus line. “It is my birthday, after all,” he reminds Francine. “What do you say we find ourselves a country pub, with a restaurant?”
“We could.”
Back at the rooftop car park, though, while Leonard is disconnecting the charger leads and settling the bill with his fob, Francine spots the silver citicar again, parked two spaces forward. The officer is sitting with the window down and with his in-screen switched on, tuned too loudly to a football channel, and muttering fan rant to himself. It’s midafternoon on a Saturday. The football season’s hot-ting up, and here’s an opportunity. He’s on duty, but he doesn’t have to miss the match.
“She’s only gone shopping, wants to take her mind off things,” Francine says, clapping her hands with satisfaction. “And she’s on her own. How lucky’s that? Her ape would rather sit up here and watch the game than do his job. Thank heavens for slackers.”
“What now?”
“Come on. We’ll sleuth her down,” she says, clearly enjoying herself.
There is no immediate sign of Nadia’s loudly colored overcoat in the avenues of the ground-floor concourse, so Leonard and Francine separate. She takes all the shops and cafés in the southern wing, at a dash, in what must seem a familiar panic to passing women. She’s just another scatty shopper who has left a bag behind or misplaced a child. He strides north with measured steps, peering into or briefly entering shops but trying not to draw attention to himself. There’ll be security cameras and precinct guards. Despite his care, he’s breathless soon, and sweating. He searches amongst the shelves of a B&N bookshop, not quite expecting he’ll discover his old comrade indulging her passions in “Politics and History,” but being logical and thorough. Now he’s squeezing between the aisles of a pharmacy, his shoulders brushing customers and, embarrassingly, toppling rows of shampoos and conditioners. He’s in the Java Café lounge, turning on his heels and scanning every circle of sofas for a glimpse of Nadia. He’s checking an energy advice agency — no luck — and then crossing the concourse toward a food store. He does not even reach the automatic doors. Francine is here. She grabs his coat. “Got her,” she says triumphantly.