From: Kit McDermott
10:44
She’s screaming for you.
She fell over in the playground and now her chin is bleeding and she wants Hello Kitty plasters, which I do not have, because I do not carry them around with me like you do.
Do you hear me, Laurie? Are you reading this? Your daughter is screaming for you.
I will not protect you from this. I will not.
12
Ichthyosaur
Now
We walk out of Hintze Hall, under a pair of giraffes, past the watchful eye of a marlin. He is wearing what he’s always worn, navy cotton-twill trousers, chocolate loafers. The precise shade of his shirt squeezes my throat – the lightest dove grey – in all my recollections, he is wearing that colour. He swerves to avoid an onslaught of students and I think there’s a new strength through his shoulders; he is leaner, wirier than I remember. If I saw him in the street, I might not recognise him from behind. A lie. I’d recognise him anywhere.
We take a short-cut through the shop, I watch him smile at a rubber in the shape of a T-rex, cup his hand briefly over a seed bomb, run his fingers under key rings, strange behaviour he never did before, until I realise he hasn’t been to a shop like this in almost two decades. At the shelves, he pauses, his eyes scanning the books before sliding away. His used to be there,The Complete Guide to Butterflies,a Common Jezebel on its cover. Not anymore.
‘I’ve been waiting for you for days,’ he says.
He’s been counting down the days, when for me, the recent past is a blur. I try to recall distinct details – what I did, what I said – but only snatches of yesterday are vivid: the bold, cursive, ‘Dear Darling’ at the start of his letter; Kit shaking his head at finding me sleeping in the greenhouse; Millie asking me where the baby is. I spread my fingers over the base of my throat.
‘I came here straight after I sent it. It’s silly. I’d only just posted the letter; there was no way it would get to you that quickly. But I couldn’t help it.’
I look away, pretend I have no idea what he means, but I do. What exists between us is cyclone, tornado, funnelled wind ripping up everything in its path, we know this and yet we’re both here. And I wonder. Have I really come for release? Or have I simply been waiting eighteen years to step into the sweet calm of its centre?
‘You’re a lawyer now?’
I nod. He knows I am; he sent that letter to the firm who redirected it to my home address. I think of him reading my online profile. He despises the corporate world, he’d skip over what I do, my deal list, my awards, but he would have lingered over the photo, the cursor blinking on my lips.
‘I could never have predicted that.’
‘What did you think I’d become?’
‘A botanist, a scientist. I could never picture you anywhere but here.’
‘I haven’t come back here since—’ Since what? I’m thrashing to find the right words, I’ve built a career on finding the right words, yet about this, I’m inarticulate, pre-verbal, savage.
‘But your collection. Those sketches.’
‘I don’t do that anymore. Now, I’m just a lawyer.’
He’s silent; I’ve disappointed him. A stab of pleasure flares in me. I am nothing like he thought. Nothing.
We turn into the Fossil Marine Reptile Gallery. Daniel seems relieved. He leans against the wall, breathes deeply in and out – he isn’t used to being in a crowd. After eighteen years in prison, Saturday morning in the Natural History Museum must feel like being crushed. For a few seconds, I’m relieved too – it’s quieter here, fewer people to protect my stomach against – until it occurs to me that there is too much space between us now, too much opportunity to observe each other without interruption.
‘Are you married?’ he asks, putting his palms on the brick as if to take in their coolness. ‘Tell me about your family.’
‘No.’ There are lines I can’t cross, though he and I have crossed so many together. I will not speak to him about Millie or Faye or Kit, not now, when everything is so raw. ‘Tell me about prison.’
‘No.’
Between us, the air sparks with all the things we won’t say – the metal of his car against that boy’s legs, the wail of a police siren, the softness of his prison jumpsuit, the trail of my wedding dress, a baby in my arms, so many unspeakable memories – and then I’m grateful to be in this museum, among the roar of children, the pound of palms against glass. In the quiet, this intensity would be intolerable.
He peels away from the wall, crosses the gallery to a pair of ichthyosaurs. No one is looking at them. In this gallery of petrified monsters, they are far from impressive. But for us, the shale of their skulls, the rattlesnake lengths of their vertebrae are bruise-tender.