Hemlock and Roses

Chapter 11 Half Past Eleven

No, it didn't. She went out.

ELIAS

The text came at 11:52 p.m.

He knew the time exactly because he had been looking at the clock on the workshop wall when his phone buzzed on the bench, and the hands had been standing at eight minutes to midnight, and he had thought, as he thought every night at that minute and had thought every night for seven years: Now. This is when it started.

He picked up the phone.

Iris.

My father has told me everything about you. What you did to me before. How you frightened me. I don't want to see you again. Don't come to the workshop door when I'm there. Don't contact me. I mean it.

He read it twice. Then he set the phone down on the bench very carefully, as if it might break.

It was her number. It was her name. And it was not her.

She never used full stops in a text. Not once, in fourteen months. She said they were aggressive. She said a full stop at the end of a text was like slamming a door in someone's face, and she would rather die. She wrote in long, breathless strings of lower case, joined with and and dashes, every sentence trailing off into the next as if she couldn't bear to stop talking even in writing.

Don't contact me. I mean it.

Two full stops. Two doors, slammed.

Iris isn't here.

He was on his feet before he had finished the thought.

The Hale house stood on a quiet, tree-lined crescent on the north side of the city, three storeys of pale stone behind black railings. He hadn't been there in seven years. He found that he remembered every step of the way. His body knew it. The left turn at the church. The long hill. The streetlamp outside number fourteen that had always buzzed.

It still buzzed.

He did not go to the door. He didn't go up the steps or knock or ring. He crossed the road and stood under the dripping chestnut tree opposite, in the rain, with his hands in his pockets, exactly where he had stood once before, seven years ago, for four hours, waiting for a light to come on.

He didn't know what he meant to do. He only knew that if she was in that house, and if what had sent that text was in that house with her, he could not be anywhere else.

The ground floor was lit. The dining room, behind its tall windows: he could see the glow of candles, the edge of a white tablecloth. The music was faint through the glass. He didn't need to hear it clearly to know what it was. Four notes rising. A held breath. The long fall.

He stood under the tree with the rain running down the back of his collar and his burnt hand clenched in his pocket, and he listened to Arthur Hale play Chopin to his daughter, and he understood, for the first time, with a cold and absolute certainty, exactly what that music was for.

At 1:38, the candles went out.

At 1:46, a light came on on the second floor. A small window at the side of the house. He knew that window. It had been hers when she was a girl; she'd pointed it out to him once from the end of the street, laughing, telling him that if he ever wanted to serenade her, he'd have to do it from the neighbours' garden because of the angle.

A figure came and stood at the window.

She did not wave. She did not move. She stood with her hands at her sides, looking down at him through the rain-streaked glass, perfectly still, the way she had stood in his doorway seven years ago with her coat buttoned to the throat.

He looked up at her. He did not look away.

"Iris," he said. Too quietly for anyone to hear.

The figure didn't move for a long time. Then it stepped back from the window, and the light went out.

At 1:52, the front door opened.

Arthur Hale stood at the top of the steps in a dark dressing gown, silver hair silver in the streetlight, a phone in one hand. He did not come down. He didn't shout. He stood exactly as he had stood seven years before, quite still, looking across the road at the man under the tree.

Then, without taking his eyes from Elias, he raised the phone to his ear.

The patrol car came at 2:09. Two young officers, apologetic, wet. One of them read from a sheet.

"Elias Vane? You're on police bail, sir. One of your conditions is no contact, direct or indirect, with any member of the Hale family, at the request of Professor Arthur Hale, who's lodged a historical complaint of harassment. You're in breach. I'm sorry, but you'll need to come with us."

Elias took his hands out of his pockets and held them out, wrists together. The officer looked surprised, then embarrassed, and said that wouldn't be necessary.

As they put him into the back of the car, he looked up one more time.

The side window on the second floor was dark. Behind it, nothing moved.

Across the road, on the top step, Arthur Hale watched the car until it reached the end of the crescent. Then he went inside and closed the door, very gently, the way you close a door on a sleeping child.

Iris woke in a narrow bed with a faded floral quilt and a c***k in the ceiling shaped like the coast of Norway.

She knew that c***k. She had stared at it every night of her childhood.

She sat up too fast, and the room swung, and she gripped the edge of the mattress until it stopped. Grey morning light. Pale yellow walls. A shelf of old books — The Little Prince, Alice, a battered illustrated Odyssey. A music stand in the corner with nothing on it.

Her childhood bedroom. In her father's house.

She was wearing one of her mother's old nightdresses, white cotton, too big for her. She had no memory of putting it on. She had no memory of climbing the stairs. The last thing she remembered was a candle, very small and very far away, and her father's lips moving.

There you are.

Her clothes were folded on the chair by the door, very neatly, the way her father folded things. Her phone was on top of them.

She reached for it with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

Eleven per cent battery. 7:14 a.m. Saturday. No missed calls. And in her sent messages, at the very top, a text to Elias that she had not written.

She read it.

My father has told me everything about you. What you did to me before. How you frightened me. I don't want to see you again. Don't come to the workshop door when I'm there. Don't contact me. I mean it.

She read it again. And again.

Don't contact me. I mean it.

She knew those words. Not these exact words, but their shape. She had heard them two nights ago, in a long grey room, in his quiet voice, laid down one by one like stones on a grave. You said I should stop calling. You said you'd changed your number. You said if I came to your parents' house, your father would call the police.

She had done it again.

She had done it again, and she didn't remember doing it. Seven years ago she had stood in his doorway and broken him, and she didn't remember. Last night she had picked up her phone and done it all over again, and she didn't remember that either.

Iris sat on the edge of her childhood bed and put her hand over her mouth and made a sound she had never heard herself make.

Her father was in the kitchen, making toast. He turned when she came in and his face filled with concern.

"Darling. You're up. How's your head?"

"What happened last night?"

"You don't remember?" He put down the butter knife. "You had two brandies on an empty stomach and fell asleep at the table. Right in the middle of the nocturne. I couldn't wake you, so I carried you up." He smiled ruefully. "You're heavier than you were at six."

"I sent a message. To Elias Vane."

His smile faded. He looked at her for a long moment, and then he came round the table and put both hands on her shoulders.

"I know you did, sweetheart. You showed me. You were very upset after everything I'd told you about your mother, and about him, and you said you needed to end it. You were very brave." His hands were warm. "And then he came."

Iris went still under his hands.

"He was outside the house, Iris. At two in the morning. Standing under the chestnut tree, just like before. Just like seven years ago." His voice dropped. "I'd hoped never to see that again. I had to call the police. I'm sorry. I know you've grown fond of him. But he's on bail, and one of his conditions was that he stay away from us, and I couldn't let him—" He stopped and shook his head. "They arrested him. He's back in custody."

She stepped back out of his hands.

"I have to go," she said.

"Iris—"

"I have to go, Dad."

He let her go. At the front door, she looked back. He was standing in the kitchen doorway with the light behind him, a tall, kind, silver-haired man holding a butter knife, and he lifted his other hand in a small, sad wave, the way he had waved her off to school every morning of her life.

She did not wave back.

Morrow wouldn't look at her.

"He breached his bail," he said, signing something at the custody desk without raising his eyes. "Bell's furious. She was ready to drop the whole thing after Ashby's statement and Shaw's surveillance, and he goes and stands outside your father's house at two in the morning. Your father lodged that harassment complaint seven years ago, Hale. It's on file. Two nights of phone records, a man standing in the street. And now he's done it again."

"He came because of the text."

"What text?"

"I sent him a text. Last night. Telling him to stay away from me."

Morrow finally looked up.

"So he got a message from you saying stay away," he said slowly, "and his response was to go and stand outside the house where you were sleeping."

"It's not what it—"

"Hale." His voice was tired. Not angry. Just tired. "That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. I've seen it a hundred times. You've lectured on it." He put down the pen. "Whatever's going on between you two, I can't help him now. And I'm not sure I'd want to."

He was in the same cell. The same narrow bench, the same grey blanket. He was sitting on the edge of it with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, as if he had been sitting like that all night.

He looked up when she came in. The look on his face when he saw her almost made her turn around and walk out again.

It wasn't anger. It wasn't hurt. It was relief. Pure, naked, uncomplicated relief, as if she had walked in through the door after being missing for years.

"You're all right," he said.

"I'm fine. I'm— Elias, I'm so sorry. I don't— The text. I don't remember sending it. I don't remember anything after the music. I woke up this morning and it was there, and I—"

"I know."

"How can you know?"

He looked at her steadily. "Because you don't use full stops."

She stared at him.

"In texts," he said. "You never have. You say they're aggressive. You say a full stop is like slamming a door. You write everything in one long sentence with no capitals, joined with and, and you never finish anything. You'd rather die." He paused. "That message had full stops. Every sentence."

Iris looked down at her phone. At the message. Don't contact me. I mean it. Two full stops, small and black and final.

She never used full stops. She'd forgotten that about herself. She'd forgotten it, and he hadn't.