‘Yes, Mom.’
‘Call me when you get to your father’s, OK?’
‘Yes, Mom.’
‘I love you and I’m very happy you are all right. Don’t scare me!’
‘Sorry, Mom, I love you too. Bye.’
‘Bye.’ And as she pressed the little red button to hang up she began to cry. Her baby was out of danger. It was as if only now, when she knew he was all right, that she was able to admit to herself how frightened she had been. The mother that had sat for hours in the dark just listening to the rise and fall of her baby’s tiny chest, holding her own breath while she waited anxiously for each warm milky exhale – it turned out she was still that woman. Would it ever get easier? She doubted it.
An hour later she was sitting at the bar downstairs with a large glass of red wine she felt she deserved. Instrumental arrangements of Coldplay songs filled the air and an anorexic artificial tree blinked in mild alarm by the entrance to the lobby. It felt odd to be travelling alone. No Zach to check on now, no academics made amorous by afternoon drinking and distance from their wives to try and avoid. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, she felt calm. Elizabeth sipped her wine and looked around. Four older women gossiping and laughing at a table, maybe a post-holiday catch-up, or were they heading off for a bit of winter sun? A couple of pairs of businessmen sat opposite each other, some nursing pints, others with cups of coffee. Elizabeth tried to guess which ones were really friends and which were colleagues thrown together by commerce. Sitting alone at the bar made her feel slightly conspicuous. She thought she might just have a sandwich in her room rather than face the dining room as ‘a table for one please’。 She was just draining her glass and debating whether or not she should risk ordering another one, when she felt the familiar vibration in the pocket of her sweatshirt. The high-pitched alert from her phone made a couple of drinkers glance in her direction before she was able to tug it free from her pocket. Elliot. A twinge of guilt. She had meant to ring him first.
‘Elliot. Sorry. I was just about to call you.’ She made her way across the bar and out into the lobby.
‘Elizabeth. Hi. You’ve heard from him, right?’ She noticed his voice contained a little more irritation than relief at discovering the whereabouts of their son.
‘Yes. He called. What a little fool. All of this just for a girl.’
‘A girl?’ An odd question. Elizabeth had a slight sinking feeling. The calmness of a moment ago had disappeared.
‘Yes. That’s what he told me. He went to meet up with a girl.’
‘That’s all he told you?’
‘Yes. Why, what is it? Tell me.’
‘Try woman. As far as I can ascertain this girlfriend of his is in her mid-thirties.’
Elizabeth gasped and thrust an arm against a metal pillar to steady herself. Her son was barely seventeen years old.
‘What? How do you know this?’
‘He told me! He thought it would make me less worried to know that he was with an older person! What should we do?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I could strangle him. He was just on the phone as if butter wouldn’t melt. Who is she?’
‘No clue. I remember the family name is Giardino. I’m driving down to the family home tomorrow to pick him up.’
Giardino? Giardino. Why was that name so familiar to Elizabeth? Was it a celebrity? A store she went to? A student? The answer came to her with the sudden shock of walking into a glass door.
‘Michelle. Did he mention the name Michelle?’
‘That’s it! You know this woman?’
‘She’s the maths tutor that comes to the house.’ She stopped herself from adding, ‘the one you insisted I got.’
‘And you didn’t notice anything?’ His tone was accusing.
‘Do not try to put this on me. She just shows up every Thursday after school. Normally she leaves right after I get home.’ Elizabeth felt slightly nauseous. Michelle Giardino zipping up her padded winter jacket and then freeing her long dark hair from the collar, before calling out casually, ‘See you next week, Zach’ as she went to the door. Zach cross-legged on the floor with his textbooks spread out on the coffee table in front of him. The floor. The couch. Her bed. Had Miss Giardino been rolling around with her teenage son? Had Elizabeth been paying her to … she could barely bring herself to consider it … to fuck Zach?
‘Where did she come from?’
‘The school! The school recommended her.’