Omega

He led me towards the road, where the Scenic was waiting. Didn’t he deserve Tanya far more than me? Wasn’t I, even now, more preoccupied with my private yearnings for Tanya than the whereabouts of my own family? Though I no longer believed them dead, their absence was like a form of bereavement. I could visualise myself in Hamley’s. Sara inspecting the jigsaws and board games, Bethany in the pink and purple realms of fairy-tale Barbie. That had been the previous Christmas, the last one we’d spent together. I was alone in Regent Street when I’d had the accident. Just like Owain.

Tanya came up and swabbed my nose with a tissue. I could smell the sheepskin leather of her mittens, feel the wool brush againsmy chin. She tucked her arm forcibly through mine and kept me walking. Geoff went ahead, hurrying towards the Renault.

When he’d returned to Tatiana’s house it was with a Chinese takeaway for three. I’d been drinking steadily and kept doing so while we ate, conversing on autopilot as we talked about old times, sticking resolutely to our student days. At some point Tanya announced that she didn’t want to spend the night alone, would make up beds for both of us. Neither of us wanted to sleep in Tatiana’s bedroom, thus neatly sparing Tanya any dilemma of who would be closest to her. I arranged armchair cushions on the living room floor, while Geoff bedded down next door on the front room sofa.

And that was how I spent my last night with her: in a room full of dead flowers, feeling as if I was already worlds away. Next morning they drove me to Paddington station. Geoff took himself off again to allow Tanya and me a last few minutes alone. It’s you I should be with, I blurted, but she just laughed and said I didn’t know what I wanted. It would be three years before I saw her again.

TWENTY-THREE

The sound of laughter again. Only this time it was Marisa. She was hauling me to my feet, wobbling as her skates shifted about on the ice.

I managed to find my footing. Marisa was bundled up in a black outfit with furlined collars and cuffs. She looked like the young heroine from a Hollywood version of a Tolstoyan epic, her hair tucked under a domed hat.

Both of us were breathing hard, puffing vapour. A few other skaters were in action on the ice, most of them staying close to the tumbled remains of the stone bridge that jutted out from the bank. They were all military personnel, young men and woman enjoying a brief liberation from their duties. The boundaries of the “rink” had been demarcated with striped yellow-and-black hazard tape pinned to the ice with chunks of masonry.

The frozen Seine was dusted with fresh snow that had fallen overnight, its whiteness etched with the lines and arcs of the other skaters. On its far side a fire had been lit under the bridge’s broken overhang. A ragtag group of dark figures was gathered around it, roasting small carcasses on skewers, thin smoke rising slowly and forming a hazy blue layer in the windless air.

Marisa’s face was so close to mine that I could feel the heat of her breath on my cheek. I became conscious that it was Owain, not me. He and Marisa held one another at the waist, still unsteady on their feet, Marisa laughing. Neither of them were practised skaters and both had taken several tumbles.

It was a moment when it would have been easy for Owain to kiss her, though of course he did not. Gingerly they made their way back to the bank, where an ice mobile was parked on the shoreline. Marisa had picked him up in it at their rendezvous earlier that morning, a vintage Skoda she’d temporarily requisitioned from a refitting shop. She’d never driven one before but somehow they’d managed to survive a hair-raising trip along the river, dodging ice-locked boats and refuse spills that would lie there until the spring thaw. Owain could still taste the craft’s sooty exhaust.

They surrendered their skates to an old woman huddled in a booth and climbed the embankment steps to a prefabricated building that housed a restaurant. It was one of the few independent establishments that still served a three-course meal, run by an enterprising Laotian family who specialised in seafood but would rustle up a steak for those customers who wouldn’t question the meat’s provenance.

The restaurant was deserted, and they were given a window table on the balcony overlooking the river. The balcony was enclosed but there was no heating, and Marisa used a serviette to swab the condensation from the window. They watched the refugees and homeless around the fire on the opposite shore. Uniformly clad in clothing blackened by grime and smoke, wearing wraparound hats of every description, the men, women and children waited in turn for their portions. Another company of the army of the dispossessed.

“What do you think they’re cooking?” Marisa said to Owain.

“I’d rather not know.”

“It feels obscene to be dining here when they’re scavenging for scraps.”

“It’s not our doing. And we have to eat, just as they do.”