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Then, coffee mug in hand, I leave my pod and walk into Low Catch.
At the moment, my house is going to be rebuilt as four cottages back-to-back. It is a good use of space but it’s boring and two of the cottages will not have a sea view.
If, on the other hand, I do what Elodie did with her hexagons, I can split the four cottages apart like pieces of a geometric jigsaw, two cottages in front, with space between and two behind and to the side so they too have a sea view.
Easier said than done because there are a handful of trees in the way. To avoid cutting trees, a couple of the cottages would need to move farther to the east, about 5 meters. But that would breach La Canette bylaws of keeping within the 130% surface area of the original house.
I walk outside and look at the 'obstacle' trees, four hazel and two cedars.
Damn!
Unless…
Unless I incorporate the trees into the cottages. My laptop is open even before I’ve finished the thought, fingers flying over the keyboard searching for images of arboreal architecture. This is it, exactly! The unique quality I’ve been trying to find. Nothing square, walls can curve around tree-trunks, and cedars branches that spread their fronds wide can form part of the balcony railing. And if I echo the curve and angles of each cottage with its opposite in the next, they will look like they’d been sliced and chopped and pulled apart, exactly like a geometric jigsaw.
I’m busy sketching this when my thoughts are interrupted by Celine Dion. This is the ringtone assigned for my mother.
“Hal?”
Her worried voice puts me on instant alert. “What is it, Mum?”
“Have you spoken to Haneen? She was supposed to come shopping with me this morning, but she never turned up.”
My mother is not an idiot, she wouldn’t be upset just because my sister missed an outing. So, I put my pencil down on the table and wait for her to explain.
“She isn’t answering her phone. I kept calling and calling. In the end her husband picked up.”
“And?” I ask when she stops.
“He said she was having a lie in because it’s Sunday.”
My sister never sleeps late, not even as a teenager. Not even if she’s sick.
“Well…” I keep my tone unconcerned to calm my mother. “It is possible that she didn’t sleep well last night, or Henrietta might have been sick and kept her up late, you know what children can be like.”
“No, I don’t know what children can be like,” Mum snaps. “I never had children. You and your sister just turned up at my door when you were sixteen.”
“Sorry.”
There’s a pause during which she draws breath to speak several times before finally saying. “Hal, I’m worried. He’s...well he can be difficult.”
A cold feeling washes through me. Because Mum never comments on Haneen’s marriage. Always, whenever I say anything, she tells me to shut up.Don’t interfere, Hal. Marriage is a complicated business, and no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.
But now I realise she must have seen the same signs I see all the time. When Haneen comes to visit Mum, it’s alwayshimthat drops her off and picks her up again, two hours later. Her car is always “at the mechanic” and she never seems to have her credit cards on her. I don’t care that he hates me, but whenever I call her, he’s often hovering in the background, and she has the phone on speaker.
The suspicion of something not quite right in her marriage makes me hyper-aware of any mention of marital trouble. The other night listening to the story of Sir Montague and his abuse of his wife, I realised my fists were clenched ready to punch someone who’d died 300 years ago.
Exhaling slowly, I tell Mum, “Okay, let me try her.”
“She won’t answer.”
“I’m not going to callher.I’m going to call him.”
“Weren’t you listening? I've already tried that.”
My brother-in-law doesn’t answer, of course, but I ring twice more just to make it clear I mean business. Then I text him.
HAL: We’re trying to reach Haneen, but she’s not picking up. Is something wrong? Should we call the police?
