Dreams Before the Start of Time Read online

  With his fingertips, Rudy rubs the wool fibres of the picnic rug. He hears the loud thud of a football being kicked hard. In his mind’s eye, the ball flies in a high arc across the wide expanse of grass. And he tries to imagine himself, a few years from now, kicking a football around Holland Park with Julia.

  As happens so often when he muses on Julia growing up, his thoughts slip back to the dimly lit viewing gallery. He imagines the orphaned foetus, the boy, moving within the baby bottle. He imagines the boy turning, pushing out his elbow, causing the womb to distend. He believes that he and Simone would have made a different decision had the boy moved.

  But he didn’t.

  THE COLOURS SHOULDN’T WORK, BUT THEY DO

  June 2085

  It’s the first-morning rite for Dr. Kristina Christophe’s holiday. She sits up in bed with the hardback notebook and sharpened pencil which—as soon as she unpacked yesterday—she placed on the bedside table. In readiness. She studies the handwritten lists within. It’s not an easy decision. She closes the notebook and lightly brushes her fingers across the exquisite marbled-paper covering. The rich colours mingle so naturally that the artist’s hand at work is unimaginable. Blobs of warm green—a scattering, it seems, of random-sized pebbles along a river bed—separated by rivulets of burgundy red and overlain by mostly smaller blobs of gold and sky blue. The colours shouldn’t work well together, Kristina muses once again, but somehow they absolutely do.

  She bought the notebook, on impulse, and at nauseating expense, during her honeymoon in Venice. It had been one of five such notebooks in a sparse, understated window display—quality and longevity seemed to be guaranteed. More than a mere notebook—an objet. And because of the cost, the notebook was the sole memento she took home.

  Their honeymoon in Venice delivered all the romance that Kristina had craved during a chaotic courtship. However, in the years subsequent to the honeymoon, she came to realize that she’d been deluded; Edward had no romance. The city itself had been her romantic partner. Or rather, romance had been conjured not by any murmured words or deft gestures—that hadn’t been Edward’s way—but by the sublime contrast of young love set against a backdrop of architectural decay.

  Although she and Edward separated two years ago, she has kept her memento. She gathered other reminders of her failed marriage in a box, which sits on the high shelf in her walk-in wardrobe alongside lesser hauntings—fabric she’s failed to make into cushion covers, boxes of shoes purchased in haste and worn once. Kristina has kept the notebook because over the years, sixteen in total, she has listed on its narrow-lined pages all the books she read during her married life, and the books she would like to read in her singleton future. She associates the notebook less with her honeymoon and more with the transient but true pleasure of a good read.

  Choosing a book from these lists will set the tone for her holiday. After ten minutes’ deliberation, she underlines “A Room with a View” by E. M. Forster—she prefers to start by rereading a classic—and places a pencil tick by the five titles she’d like to read by the end of her two-week break. When she finishes each novel, she’ll strike through the title in her notebook and add an asterisk if she feels it’s worthy of a reread. These asterisks give her a warm feeling. She hasn’t listed her books in any digital community: the notebook is the closest she’ll ever get to owning a physical library. She feels she has left it too late in life to start collecting print books. There had been an opportunity when her mother was downsizing and offered Kristina her book collection. But Kristina had been living in a small flat, so passed on the offer. How she regrets that decision. Even if the books weren’t her cup of tea, they’d have made a fabulous display.

  At home, she keeps the notebook propped up on the mantelpiece. Whenever she hears of a good romance, she adds the title in pencil to one of the lists:

  Romance in the classics

  Romance in historical novels

  Romance in contemporary novels

  Romance in speculative fiction

  Romance in gothic fiction

  Romance in biographical fiction

  Romance in prize shortlists

  Romance in comedic fiction

  Romance in short stories

  A southerly breeze carries the sound of waves lapping on the shore. It brings to mind one of her favourite quotes, and she flicks through the notebook to find her notes on Harriet Prescott Spofford. The winds were warm about us, the whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love.

  She closes the notebook, inspects the pools of gold and blue on the front cover. The colours remain as fresh as the day she bought it, but then, she takes great care to avoid any scuffing. When she travels on holiday, she wraps it in a nightdress. Since her separation, she has bought a new nightdress for each holiday—Edward would never have noticed if she’d done so during their marriage.

  When she and Edward met as hospital trainees, they hit it off straight away. They shared a similar sense of humour, similar taste in music and games—though not books—and the sex was good because it felt urgent; they had so little free time together. So following an eighteen-month courtship—though courtship suggests a romantic strategy that simply wasn’t there—they decided to marry at the end of their training. They didn’t get around to buying an engagement ring; Kristina didn’t push the idea because she thought at the time, foolishly so, that an engagement ring might be a token of gender subservience.

  Nevertheless, she stage-managed several almost-romantic moments amid their busy hospital schedules. These were rarely intimate dinners à deux because they also struggled to keep in touch with friends. Kristina became adept at organizing picnics, and when she and Edward bought their first house, she organized barbecues. She didn’t mind being the social secretary in their relationship; she was the natural organizer between the two of them. And Edward’s working hours were more chaotic because he specialized in accident and emergency.

  Kristina strokes the leather spine of the notebook. It’s funny. Edward loved the drama of A&E, but he never showed any interest in reading thrillers, nor any fiction. On the rare occasion he asked what book she was reading, she’d say, “I’m catching up on the shortlists,” or “Historical fiction, medieval,” or some such—she never mentioned romance. She had decided in her late twenties that as a medic, she read quite enough serious material. The pressure was constant—to read this journal, that journal, the other journal. The way she came to see it, her professional life was dedicated to the betterment of others, so her spare time ought to be her own. And she could meet the pressures of her day job, in the long term, if she learned to find peace in her time off. Ever since, she has carved out time for pleasurable, unputdownable reading. She asks herself when she reads a book blurb: Is this a good book for a Friday evening after a long week at the clinic? If in doubt, she confers with Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth is an online buddy who is Scottish but lives in Texas. That’s all Kristina knows about her. Kristina suspects, reading between the lines, that Elizabeth is a grossly underemployed public administrator—someone who looks busy but is in fact spending her office hours reading fiction. Elizabeth is a prodigious reader of romance, and the administrator for a romance readers’ forum. On the face of it, she and Elizabeth have nothing in common other than their appetite for a romantic quest.

  Kristina slides open the door leading from her bedroom to the deep terracotta terrace that runs the length of the villa. She shields her eyes against sunlight reflected off the Mediterranean and Ligurian Seas. From the terrace, perched high above the yachting marina of Menton, the last town in France before the Italian border, Kristina feels the rush—the French Riviera stretching into the distance, so clear today: the high-rise apartments above Monte-Carlo and the succession of headlands—Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, Cap-d’Ail, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, Juan-les-Pins. She mentally pinpoints her favourite coves, her favourite headland restaurants. She’s unsure, but she believes she can make out the offshore solar farms near the Îles de Lé
rins. This is her fifth holiday in this villa—the second time without Edward—and she’d never stay anywhere else on the Riviera. It occurs to her that if she ever wrote a novel herself, her opening chapter should describe this panorama, exactly as it is now: an immense sky with individual fluffy clouds—as a child might draw—and the sea, brought to life by discrete patches of diamond brightness scattered as far as the horizon, amid dark malevolence. It strikes Kristina as a metaphor for . . . life itself! She huffs. What does she know about writing novels?

  She wishes that just once Edward had said during their holidays here, “You’d love this book. You must read it.” Back in the early years of their marriage, she’d felt confident that she and Edward had enough in common. They were mutually respectful, being professional equals. A sound footing, you’d assume. But she began to wonder—as early as their fifth wedding anniversary—how they were going to fill the years, and she doesn’t doubt that a similar thought occurred to him. Holidays were the worst. They’d find an idyllic restaurant in the Italian countryside, or overlooking the sea, but it would soon become obvious that neither she nor Edward had any interest in what the other had to say. She became embarrassed when they resorted to chatting about medical matters, the world of work.

  Her birthday was a downer, every time. Edward seemed loath to buy her a birthday present. He’d remark on how lucky they were to have such good jobs. He’d say, “We don’t need to buy presents; we can buy ourselves whatever we want, when we want it.” Undeterred, Kristina kept a secret pinboard to remind herself of anything Edward mentioned that suggested an ideal present. On his birthday, he’d remark, “What a good memory you have.” It didn’t cross his mind to make more effort himself.

  They don’t have children—they’d consistently shied away from that decision—though perhaps they made a mistake there.

  Maybe true opposites fare better. Kristina keeps her eye on a small fishing vessel as it weaves its way through the moored yachts and splutters off towards the Italian coastline. Since she moved into remote gestation at the clinic, she has edged ever closer to this conclusion. The unlikeliest couples seem perfectly happy. Yet those seemingly well matched can be riven with unexpected complexities.

  Take Rudy and Simone, a handsome couple who came to her clinic just over a year ago. Kristina has no doubt they’d have created the most beautiful baby, with minimal intervention. But they denied themselves that possibility because—and she didn’t put this in her notes—they were messed up. As Kristina saw it, they had everything going for them—similar professional jobs, each clearly in love with the other, no complications in their medical histories—but, sadly, their individual neuroses bore down on this major decision in their lives: Simone wanted a child only if it was disconnected from her genome. For some reason that Kristina can’t quite fathom, Rudy willingly accommodated Simone’s wishes. So Kristina agreed that Rudy could become a solo father, and the result was a healthy baby girl. Simone became a stepmother of sorts to Rudy’s child.

  Kristina shakes her head. So many shades of fucked up, and she has seen so many of them. Her current theory—which she wishes she’d come up with sixteen years ago—is that two people are well matched when their individual neuroses are complementary. In her own case, she knows she’s needy because her parents were emotionally disconnected from her. And Edward was unable to make physical expressions of affection because, she guesses, his parents, although loving, became hypercritical in their drive to see him succeed.

  She makes her first cup of coffee of the day and returns to the terrace with her reader and notebook. Sitting astride the low terrace wall, she makes a plan of attack for her holiday. Today, she’ll take the train from Menton-Garavan along the coast to visit her favourite haunts in Nice. She’ll hang out in cafés, read a book, sunbathe on the beach. She opens her reader, cross-checks with her notebook and pulls up the novels on her reading list. She opens each novel in turn and reads the last page. It’s a bad habit—even Elizabeth disapproves—but she hates the disappointment of an unhappy ending.

  Later that morning, at Menton-Garavan station, Kristina buys a return ticket to Nice. She plans to head straight to the restaurant on Rue Lascaris, which serves the best shellfish platter on the Riviera. She takes a seat on the platform, looks up at the monitor—train due in sixteen minutes. It’s tempting to start her first holiday read—E. M. Forster’s classic—but the station is too bleak, feels inappropriate. Better to save that book for the beach this afternoon. Instead she opens the final chapter of Miranda Mostly; she might as well finish it before the train arrives. She skims across the paragraphs—it’s an easy read—but as she reaches 98 per cent, with the train due in three minutes, she finds herself captivated; Miranda Mostly concludes with one of those authorial flash-forwards that Kristina utterly adores. She reads the final sentence as the train pulls in. She steps aboard knowing that although Miranda and Gregory have married against their families’ wishes, they will win everyone around as soon as their first child is born.

  An hour later, Kristina will arrive in Nice, and much to her disappointment, she’ll find there’s no table free at the restaurant in Rue Lascaris. Deflated, she’ll walk down to the quay in Old Town and discover that a one-time shabby art deco café has been renovated and reopened as a brasserie, evidently popular. She’ll take the only free outdoor table; she’ll assume that the man at the next table is French or Italian, which will suit her because she dislikes making small talk with other tourists. Twenty minutes later—Kristina’s shellfish platter having been served—he’ll remark, in English with a Scottish accent, that she has ordered well. He’ll tell her that he’s taking a day off from his work as a perfumer, and he’ll visit suppliers in Grasse the next day. “How interesting,” Kristina will say. He’ll offer to take her along: “It’s a lovely drive, and I’d love some company. You could look around Grasse while I have my meeting, and then we could have lunch. I know all the restaurants.” But she’ll turn him down.

  Were she to accept his offer, Kristina and this man with no name would begin a love affair. They’d spend a blissfully happy year together in London despite their lives being so different—professionally speaking, that is—one being of such consequence, the other seemingly frivolous. But during a cold snap one day in early spring, he would slip on ice and die from head injuries after several weeks on life support. Inconsolable, Kristina would return to the Riviera and swim out to sea until she could swim no farther. She would slip below the waves and make no effort to save herself.

  If the man did not slip on the ice, Kristina would realize over the following year that she and this man were, in fact, profoundly incompatible, and their relationship would dissolve in acrimony.

  Instead, having rebuffed the perfumer’s offer, Kristina will pay the bill for her shellfish platter and quarter carafe of Vouvray. Normally, she would order an espresso, but she’ll want to escape before the perfumer strikes up conversation again. She’ll walk down to the long pebbled beach, and after reading A Room with a View for half an hour—to allow her lunch to settle—she’ll strip to her bathing costume and take a swim in the near-still waters of the Mediterranean. She has always adored swimming in the sea. She’ll swim out of her depth, then float on her back and look up at an unblemished blue sky. She’ll say to herself: This will be a perfect holiday.

  DREAMS BEFORE THE START OF TIME

  Untitled No. 97, 1992, Dominic Munroe

  A photograph. A small open tin of paint sits on a cobbled path close to a wall. The cobbles are black, granite most likely; the paint is pure baby blue; the wall is stippled with grey render. A makeshift stirrer stands in the paint. But the stirrer is longer than necessary—it’s a strip of timber moulding—no doubt conveniently at hand rather than fit for purpose. And the top end of this stirring stick leans against the wall for support. There’s a double danger of imbalance: If the top of the stirrer slips sideways, it will tip the tin over. Or a passerby, distracted, could knock the whole arrangement across the c
obbles.

  The skylight is a black rectangle. Marco Munroe sits in his office at the top of the house, tucked under the eaves. Free of disturbance—for his daughter is asleep—he looks through his grandfather’s photographs. They came to light only after his death. Now Marco imagines his grandfather lying on the pavement to photograph the tin of paint. That’s dedication. Marco frowns as he swipes through the images, admires Dominic’s tenacity in recording everyday street scenes in a body of work built up over sixty years. It’s more than dedicated; it’s doggedness. And Dominic kept it secret, never exhibiting the images, nor attempting to sell them as far as anyone knows. A secret project, Marco wonders, or simply private?

  In his student days, Marco was tempted by photography as a career—that is, commercial rather than fine art photography—but opted instead for industrial design. It’s crazy, to his mind, that Dominic didn’t upload this collection, or at least the best of the collection, to a stock photo library. He wonders if he should do so himself, provide an income stream for the family. It’s a fantastic resource—over three thousand images shot between 1990 and 2050. On average the collection contains one photograph per week for Dominic’s adult life. So did he take a weekly stroll specifically to find a good shot, or did he carry a camera at all times, constantly alert?

  Marco suspects—in fact he has persuaded himself—that his grandfather stuck with this photography project for one overriding reason: namely, to protect his own sanity, to maintain his own sense of balance in the world. Sure, he made a good living copying the old masters, but he needed to satisfy a deeper impulse. Marco reckons his grandfather shot the photographs—these are not “snaps”—as a reminder to himself, as a statement: This is me. This is Dominic Munroe.

  In this reimagining of Dominic’s past, Marco reveals his own starry-eyed tendency—one he accepts as a recurring flaw. He had believed everything was going well between Colin and himself. But Colin moved out; Marco never saw it coming.