Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro Page A

few more pages of
Mansfield Park
. But now I found I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept going back to the purple notebook. What if it hadn’t been an impulsive action at all? What if she’d planned this for days? What if she’d composed something carefully for me to read?
    After another ten minutes, I went back into the kitchen and stared some more at the purple notebook. Then I sat down, where I’d sat before to drink my tea, slid the notebook towards me, and opened it.
    One thing that became quickly apparent was that if Emily confided her innermost thoughts to a diary, then that book was elsewhere. What I had before me was at best a glorified appointments diary; under each day she’d scrawled various memos to herself, some with a distinct aspirational dimension. One entry in bold felt-tip went: “If still not phoned Mathilda, WHY THE HELL NOT??? DO IT!!!”
    Another one ran: “Finish Philip Bloody Roth. Give back to Marion!”
    Then, as I kept turning the pages, I came across: “Raymond coming Monday. Groan, groan.”
    I turned a couple more pages to find: “Ray tomorrow. How to survive?”
    Finally, written that very morning, amidst reminders for various chores: “Buy wine for arrival of Prince of Whiners.”
    Prince of Whiners? It took me some time to accept this really could be referring to me. I tried out all sorts of possibilities—a client? a plumber?—but in the end, given the date and the context, I had to accept there was no other serious candidate. Then suddenly the sheer unfairness of her giving me such a title hit me with unexpected force, and before I knew it, I’d screwed up the offending page in my hand.
    It wasn’t a particularly fierce action: I didn’t even tear the page. I’d simply closed my fist on it in a single motion, and the next second I was in control again, but of course, by then, it was too late. I opened my hand to discover not only the page in question but also the two beneath it had fallen victim to my wrath. I tried to flatten the pages back to their original form, but they simply curled back up again, as though their deepest wish was to be transformed into a ball of rubbish.
    All the same, for quite some time, I carried on performing a kind of panicked ironing motion on the damaged pages. I was just about coming to accept that my efforts were pointless—that nothing I now did could successfully conceal what I’d done—when I became aware of a phone ringing somewhere in the apartment.
    I decided to ignore it, and went on trying to think through the implications of what had just happened. But then the answering machine came on and I could hear Charlie’s voice leaving a message. Perhaps I sensed a lifeline, perhaps I just wanted someone to confide in, but I found myself rushing into the living room and grabbing the phone off the glass coffee table.
    “Oh, you
are
there.” Charlie sounded slightly cross I’d interrupted his message.
    “Charlie, listen. I’ve just done something rather stupid.”
    “I’m at the airport,” he said. “The flight’s been delayed. I want to call the car service that’s picking me up in Frankfurt, but I didn’t bring their number. So I need you to read it over to me.”
    He began to issue instructions about where I’d find the phone book, but I interrupted him, saying:
    “Look, I’ve just done something stupid. I don’t know what to do.”
    There was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said: “Maybe you’re thinking, Ray. Maybe you’re thinking there’s someone else. That I’m going off now to see her. It occurred to me that might be what you were thinking. After all, it would fit with everything you’ve observed. The way Emily was when I left, all of that. But you’re wrong.”
    “Yes, I take your point. But look, there’s something I have to talk to you about …”
    “Just accept it, Ray. You’re wrong. There’s no other woman. I’m going now to Frankfurt to attend a meeting about changing our agency in Poland.