Coincidence: A Novel Read Free Page B

felled in slow motion until he is face down on his desk, his hands locked behind his head. There is something desolate about his manner.
    He stays like this for some time.
    â€˜Everything that happens,’ says a very soft voice, ‘happens for a reason.’
    Thomas doesn’t stir. Perhaps he didn’t hear the voice. Maybe it was too quiet for him to hear.
    â€˜Everything that happens . . .’ whispers the voice again.
    Thomas levers himself up. He mouths the response through thick lips: ‘ . . . Happens for a reason.’ He is distracted. He taps his fingertips on his desk.
    Now that we look closely, there is no one else around. Did he imagine the voice?
    There are footsteps coming down the corridor. He waits for them to pass.
    â€˜Everything that happens . . .’
    It isn’t a voice at all. It is nothing but the echo of a voice. The remembered echo of a voice. He isn’t even hearing it. He is fabricating it, creating it from phantoms and figments of his mind.
    His eyes flicker to a calendar propped up on his desk. ‘Six days,’ he whispers. ‘Six days.’
    Then, without so much as a knock, his door bursts open. He has a visitor.
    â€˜Clementine?’ Thomas springs upright and starts to lift himself from his chair.
    â€˜Thomas, dear boy. Don’t get up.’ The visitor is a woman, comfortably twice his age. She wields a walking stick, and seems out of breath. She sinks heavily into the armchair without inviting a handshake. ‘On second thoughts,’ she says, ‘you can make me a tea.’
    â€˜Of course,’ Thomas says. He looks taken aback.
    The woman casts her eye around the small office. ‘So this is where you’ve been hiding away,’ she says. ‘On the fifth floor, where no one will ever find you.’ She speaks with a faint accent. There is something Germanic or Eastern European about her voice, a huskiness, a hint of Lili Marlene.
    â€˜ You found me,’ Thomas says. He has made his way over to the workbench and is pouring water from a jug into a kettle.
    â€˜Only after an ascent worthy of a Sherpa,’ says the visitor. She is looking this way and that, as if sizing up the room for sale. In response, Thomas Post starts to scoop up books and papers from the desk and floor. It is a transparent but hopeless attempt to tidy the avalanche of clutter.
    â€˜My dear boy, do leave all that alone,’ Clementine says. ‘If you shovel that stuff back onto the shelves you’ll never find it again.’
    Thomas stops, looking sheepish. ‘You’re probably right.’
    â€˜I’m always right.’
    â€˜It’s just . . . I don’t get many visitors.’
    â€˜Five floors up, I’m not surprised.’
    Thomas busies himself with mugs, waits awkwardly for the kettle to boil.
    â€˜This is your opportunity,’ says Clementine, ‘to ask me why I’m here.’
    â€˜Ah yes,’ Thomas says, and he bobs his head like a nodding dog. ‘So, Dr Bielszowska . . . to what do I owe the pleasure?’
    What an odd couple they are. Thomas Post, thirty-something, gauche and gangling; Clementine Bielszowska, surely past the honourable age for retirement, looking more like a grandmother than an academic: small and stout and sporting a shawl that can only have been hand-knitted.
    The kettle boils and Thomas makes tea. He balances Clementine’s mug on the arm of her chair.
    â€˜So?’ Thomas says. He is back in his seat and waiting for a reply.
    â€˜I thought,’ Clementine Bielszowska says, ‘that we were friends.’ She says this accusingly.
    He gives a nervous shrug. ‘We are friends.’
    â€˜So . . . when did you last come to visit me?’
    He starts to laugh, but stops in the face of her uncompromising gaze. ‘I’ve been busy.’ As he speaks, he knows these words won’t suffice. Not for this