Mateo carefully scraped up the last of his dessert, tilting the elegant glass dish to get at every blob of the home-made damson jam, then lovingly licking the sweet pastry crumbs from his spoon. The evening was turning out far better than he had feared. When his colleague Helena had invited him to dinner, his first reaction had been pure astonishment. That was rapidly swallowed up by an inexplicable sense of dread that sent shivers down his spine. He experienced the overwhelming impulse to think up an excuse – any excuse – to turn her down.
Not that Helena was an offensive person, far from it. Shy and introvert, she rarely said anything during meetings, and it was quite easy to forget that she was there. Even her clothing, plain, simple tops and trousers in shades suspiciously close to that of the communist-era paint on the walls of the museum offices, seemed designed to make her fade from view.
At the same time, under water and unseen, she was the driving force behind digital access to the museum. When Goran, the museum’s head, had shown Mateo around on his first day, he had said, ‘Anything you need, you go to Helena. She’s been here for years, and she knows more about this museum than anyone. I don’t know what we’d do without her. She’s an incredibly hard worker, never even goes on holiday. All these other people just come and go, play around with the code for a few months, then we never even hear from them again. It’s Helena who pulls it all together.’.
Mateo couldn’t help but feel that he was being insulted, and it seemed very unfair. Offer longer contracts if you want people to stay on, he thought. His own contract was only for six months. Not that he minded that. He’d worked in several different countries now, both in Europe and beyond, and he loved nothing more than the chance to explore someplace new. A nomadic lifestyle was ideal for him. The idea of being pinned down in one place, in one job, gave him the creeps. But he also prided himself on giving something back to his hosts. He worked exclusively for cultural institutions, and he felt he’d made a valuable contribution in every country he’d visited. Always one for travelling light, he didn’t accumulate many souvenirs. Instead, he kept an online gallery with live links to all the apps, websites, portals etc. that he’d helped to build. His equivalent of stuffed animals’ heads on a hunter’s wall, as his father had once joked. On rare quiet evenings he browsed through them with a mix of pride and nostalgia, checking they were still working and sending his ex-colleagues messages; to compliment them on a new feature, report problems or simply see how they were doing. So he was very hurt at being dismissed as some sort of casual temp who just ‘played’ with the code and then left without a backwards glance – and that before he’d even had a chance to start.
Fortunately, he had little to do with Goran, mostly working with Helena, who seemed very appreciative of his skills and ideas, and apparently found it perfectly natural that he would move on in due course. He never really got to know her, as she barely spoke enough to cover the work they needed to do, let alone to make any small talk. But he’d come to respect her deeply. Not so much for her knowledge, although it was indeed titanic. Nor even for the admittedly impressive way in which she managed to weave the contributions of the individual developers into a coherent whole, no mean feat given the alarmingly long list of developers’ handles connected to the code, an inevitable consequence of the policy for short-term contracts. No, what Mateo really admired was the way that Helena steadfastly pushed development forward through the maelstrom of politics, volatile personalities, temper tantrums and threats of budget cuts that seemed to permanently rage in the realms of upper management. Like an undertow, strong and silent, she pulled everyone unrelentingly in the right direction, heedless of the waves crashing on the surface. The online offerings of the museum were so innovative that they drew the attention – and envy – of much larger players in the cultural sector. Even to the extent of attracting Mateo, who was greatly in demand and could pick and choose his projects. And that success was all down to Helena.
In short, Helena was someone he would happily work with again. But to spend an entire evening in her company? What would they even talk about, now that his work was complete and he was leaving soon? He pictured sitting across the table from her in complete silence, dutifully shovelling the contents of a plateful of stodgy food into his mouth. He had never actually seen Helena eat, as she always stayed behind at her desk while he went to lunch with colleagues, sometimes in the canteen but more often in one of the charming small restaurants nearby. Judging by her functional square lunchbox, Helena’s lunch probably consisted of a few simple sandwiches. What would she dish up for an evening meal? A dried-out slab of grey meat with insipid mashed potato, accompanied by some overcooked vegetables, dressed up with a drizzle of greasy gravy? One of the joys of visiting new countries was sampling the local cuisine. Mateo had tried andouillette in France, developed a taste for pies in England, and still got a friend to regularly send him supplies of the salted liquorice he had become addicted to in Finland. He considered himself a gourmet, with adventurous tastes, and regretted any meal wasted on indifferent food.
However, it wasn’t just the prospect of a dull evening with food to match that made him want to refuse. There was something odd in the way that Helena had delivered the invitation. Something in the tone of her voice, the set of her face, that had triggered some primitive alarm bell. That had reminded him of his backpacking days, of a dark narrow alley, a deserted bus, an overfriendly man offering to drop him off at the hostel. A deep instinct that thrilled through him, shouting, ‘Don’t go there, don’t do that!’. It was crazy. This was Helena, just plain Helena, the woman he’d shared an office with for the past six months. Yet the sense of danger had continued to pulse through his body, pounding out a warning of – what?
In a way, that was why he had accepted. His fear seemed so completely illogical, so utterly ridiculous. What was the worst that could happen? He would be bored to death for a few hours, and that was a small sacrifice to make for someone who had helped him so much. So, against all his instincts, he had found himself agreeing, comparing diaries to find a free evening in the short period before his impending departure. But his unease had remained, and several times in the intervening period he had contemplated sending her an email with some trumped-up excuse, then working from home until his departure so he wouldn’t have to lie to her in person.
He didn’t cancel, however, and when the appointed evening arrived he managed to locate Helena’s home, a bland terraced house in a row of bland terraced houses. The suburb could have been in any of a hundred cities in a hundred different countries. It was a complete contrast to the narrow, winding street in the city centre where he had rented a room, part of a bohemian warren of tiny bars and cafes, clubs with live music and artists studios, thrumming with creative energy far into the night. His fond farewell to the area the previous night, in the company of the eclectic collection of friends he’d made in the past months, had gone on into the early hours of the morning, and was both memorable in the main and fuzzy in the details. Now he was here, in a street with neatly trimmed lawns and carefully tended flowerbeds, where the neighbours probably complained if you made any noise after 11pm, holding the obligatory bunch of flowers and bottle of wine toted along by all polite visitors, and afflicted with a queasiness that wasn’t entirely to blame on the night before.
At the moment that he rang Helena’s doorbell, he had a sudden flash of insight into the possible cause of his apprehension. It was absurd, laughable, it couldn’t be… but – what if Helena fancied him? What if she expected a romantic tryst, a no-strings one-night stand with someone who would be gone from the country the next day? Her own spark of bohemia in a bourgeois existence? What would he say, how could he turn her down without upsetting or insulting her? His stomach churned and he wanted to turn and run, or at the very least throw the flowers into the hedge, before they could be misinterpreted as evidence of amorous intentions that he didn’t have.
The sound of the door opening broke into Mateo’s panicky thoughts, and his guts clenched in dread – only to relax immediately as he was greeted by a middle-aged man, smiling in welcome as two small children peeped around his trouserlegs, pulling cheeky faces at the newcomer. He hadn’t even known that Helena had a family. As he was ushered in, he realised that he knew absolutely nothing about her outside of work. The interior of the house, clean and well-kept but also cosily untidy, hinted at a much warmer personality than the buttoned-up professional he knew. Candles glowed on small tables, flowers cascaded from hanging baskets, and the living room Helena’s husband – Paul, as he introduced himself – ushered him into was filled with comfortable, squashy sofas and chairs upholstered in red and purple velvet, the carpet so thick that his feet sank down as if he were walking on clouds. Round paper lanterns in different colours hung from the light fixtures, bathing the whole scene in a soft glow.
Helena called a polite welcome from the kitchen, where she was busy with the food. Paul made him comfortable and poured him a glass of a local aperitif, chatting away in a bashful but engaging manner about Mateo’s stay in the country – what had he seen, what had he done? How had he liked the food, the countryside, the people? The conversation continued as they were called to the table. Mateo was surprised by an array of his favourite local dishes, succulent cuts of meat, gently spiced stews, piquant sauces with a steaming pile of potato pancakes, which had become his ultimate comfort food during the last six months. He was plied with wine while the conversation shifted from local sights to local traditions and culture, the children chattering away in their own language and surreptitiously pushing their vegetables under their napkins, sneaking glances at Mateo as if daring him to betray them. By the time dessert came he was quite stuffed, but couldn’t resist the delicate pastry horns filled with sweet jam and ice cream.
When he had licked his dessert spoon so clean that it seemed it had just been polished, he laid it down and praised the food in glowing terms. Helena smiled shyly. ‘We always like to make sure our guests have a good last meal’, she said. Her words sent an unpleasant jolt through Mateo. But almost immediately she blushed and covered her mouth. ‘Oh, that sounds so awful in English! I only meant your last meal in this country. But even that is not true, is it. Or are you leaving so early that you will miss breakfast?’. ‘No’, laughed Mateo, ‘although it’s quite an early flight, I still have time for a good last breakfast’. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all, he thought, that the only available slot for this dinner had been his final night. He wouldn’t have fancied having to endure the rigours of the airport in the state he’d been in this morning. ‘Where are you going to next?’, inquired Paul. ‘First Vienna, for a hackers’ festival’, answered Mateo. ‘After that, who knows. I have a few months before my next project. I think I’ll just see where life takes me’.
Helena and her husband started clearing away the dishes, waving away his offer of help and suggesting he sit down in the living room and relax. The children, who had been looking a little sleepy, suddenly sprang into life, the older one calling some question to their parents, which was met with indulgent approval. As Mateo lowered himself onto the comfortable sofa with yet another glass of wine, the two of them flung open a cupboard door, jostling with each other as they pulled out a pile of photo albums.
Mateo’s stomach once again twisted, but this time his sense of dread was far more prosaic and with a very understandable cause. Please God, no, no holiday photos. Much as he loved taking pictures of his own travels, he would rather have his eyes poked out than sit through a session of other people’s holiday remembrances. There was that awful occasion when one of his friends had made him suffer through a three-hour-long viewing of slides of his trip to South America (slides! who put their pictures on slides anymore?!). And those photos had at least been interesting. How would he bear pictures of a classic family holiday – sandcastles, swimming pools, barbecues and campsites? He took a subtle glance at his watch, and tried to calculate how long he would have to stay before reasonably being able to make his excuses. He had an early flight the next day, surely they would understand that he couldn’t stay late?
The children plumped themselves down on either side of him on the sofa, wriggling with eager anticipation, as Helena and Paul sat down in the chairs across from him, opened up the top album and handed it to him across the coffee table. He blinked in surprise. Nepal? They had been to Nepal?! He couldn’t believe it. Nor could he believe the rest of the dizzy procession of locations that passed before his eyes. Soaring mountain peaks, cobalt blue lakes, colourful festivals, lively meals with the locals. Mateo couldn’t believe how adventurous the family was. The Gobi desert – with two small children in tow! He found himself making mental notes of places he would love to go himself someday. And the stories that went with the photos, quietly related by Helena and her husband and punctuated with excited elaborations in broken English by the children, were absolutely spellbinding. Encounters with bears, humorous misunderstandings of culture and language, narrow escapes from tropical storms, moments when disaster threatened only for them to be saved by friendly passersby, who then promptly invited them home and became friends for life.
The evening drew on, but if anything, the enthusiasm of Mateo and the family huddled round the albums grew, and the children chattered more and more, taking over the narration from their parents as their confidence in the foreign language and their trust in their visitor grew. As he was looking through the last album, Helena went to get some chocolates while Paul poured out generous glasses of a local liqueur. Leafing through the album, Mateo came across the now-familiar sight of the whole family posing with a young adult. He smiled inwardly. He had feared having to coo over an endless procession of photos of the children. Yet the reserved Helena and Paul clearly preferred to photograph the places they visited rather than themselves or their offspring, with this one exception. Every holiday had concluded with a similar photo, with the children pointing out ‘Uncle Sven’, ‘Auntie Sakkina’, ‘Uncle Eduardo’, ‘Auntie Norah’. His own parents had always referred to adults by their Christian names, and he had first come across the custom of calling family friends ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’ when he was working in the UK. Smart of Helena and Paul, he thought, to make sure they had someone along every time to help with the kids. Sure enough, the younger child’s finger, still sticky from dessert, descended on the photo, while the older announced, ‘And this was Uncle – ‘. ‘Peter’, said Mateo, chiming in simultaneously with the child, to his own astonishment. As she chattered on, he was filled with bewilderment. He had not recognised the face. In fact, he was positive he had never seen the man before in his life. And yet, ‘Peter’ had seemed so obviously to be the right answer, the natural next name in the sequence: ‘Sakkina’, ‘Eduardo’, ‘Norah’, …’Peter’.
As he was pondering the strange synchronicities that life could randomly produce, the final page was turned. The final page, that is, with photos on it. The rest of the album was filled with blank pages, and the older child announced, ‘Those are for our new holidays’, before placing the book on the table with an expectant air. That was odd, all those blank pages, seeing as the photos were printed, not stuck in. Who would order a printed album with blank pages? A mistake perhaps? If so, he hoped for Paul’s sake that he wasn’t the one at fault. Helena never commented on errors, but the look of wounded disappointment in her eyes was worse than a thousand furious rebukes.
Paul handed him a glass brimming with potent dark liquid, then scooped up the child next to him on the sofa so he could sit down, cuddling the little boy on his lap, while Helena did the same with the little girl on the other side. ‘Cheers’, said Helena, as they all clinked their glasses together, the children joining in with their beakers of juice, comically proud looks on their faces at their own imagined maturity. ‘Now’, said Paul, ‘you’ve listened to our stories quite long enough. Helena says you are quite the traveller yourself. Tell us about where you have been’.
Mateo never needed much prompting to talk about his journeys, and the strength of the liqueur only loosened his tongue even more. He told of sun-drenched days surfing in Peru, rain-drenched music festivals in muddy English fields, bus trips across the US, hikes through remote mountain ranges in three different continents. The people he’d met, from the stereotypical naive gap year student he’d rescued after she’d been relieved of all her possessions by a conman, to the immensely capable guy who’d helped crew a round-the-world yacht, and the woman who’d taken part in the original Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury and was just as much of a free-thinking hippie as ever, despite a pacemaker and a hip replacement. Maybe it was the alcohol warming his veins, but the memories seemed particularly vivid, as if he were reliving all his travels rather than just remembering them. The family leaned in close, drinking in his every word, and the small boy even crept across onto his lap, holding his finger tightly. He was filled with a warm sense of wellbeing, of belonging, and nostalgia for his childhood home. What a shame that he had never come to visit Helena before. He would have liked to have spent more time with her family.
When his narrative had finally wound up with the tale of his own gap year trip, to Australia, he heard the small clock chiming one in the morning and was suddenly horrified at how long he’d kept them all up. ‘Mattie’, his mother had often chided him, ‘you must think of others. Don’t just talk, talk, talk about yourself’. But his hosts didn’t seem upset, in fact the children didn’t even look tired. On the contrary, the older girl jumped up and called, ‘Photo, photo!’. The whole family sprang into action, Paul fetching a camera and tripod, Helena shifting the furniture while the children dragged on Mateo’s hands, pulling him over to the fireplace. ‘That’s right’, said Paul, ‘over there, next to Uncle Mateo’.
Suddenly, it clicked in his head, why he had known that the next name would be Peter. The list of the most recent developers’ handles on the software – ‘SakkinaG’, ‘Eduardo153’, ‘FunkyNorah’, ‘PeterLiu’. And that one handle that he had aways found odd, ‘NesnajNevs’ – Sven Jansen, of course. Was that Helena’s game, treat each departing developer to a slap-up meal and then guilt-trip them into coming along on her next holiday as a free childminder? Mateo shuddered at the thought of it, his nostalgic feeling completely extinguished. The occasional dinner, perhaps, maybe take the kids to the zoo, play ‘Uncle Mateo’ for an afternoon – that would have been fun, a bit of a novel departure from his usual free lifestyle. But to spend days, even weeks on end trapped in their company, no escape… No way, he thought. If they ask, I’ll just say no, I already have plans. Then he cursed himself inwardly for having just told Paul the exact opposite, that he was completely free. Then – a much better idea – he thought, I’ll say yes, I’d love to, but I don’t know yet exactly when I’ll be done at the hackathon, I’ve promised to help the organisers clearing up afterwards. I’ll get in touch once I know more. Then I’ll just ‘forget’…
Pleased with his plan, he was able to take the children’s hands and arrange a cheerful smile on his face. As he faced towards the camera, he saw the last photo album lying on the coffee table, still open. But not at a blank page anymore, instead it was showing photos of – hang on a minute, that looked just like Australia. And not just anywhere in Australia. That was the trail he had followed along the bay, when he’d got caught out by the early sunset and got on the wrong bus in the dark, only to finally find his way and finish the evening watching the light show on the harbour bridge. That bar, that was exactly where he’d sat, looking out over the water. Befuddled confusion filled him as, deep down inside, that alarm bell sounded once more. As he stared at the book, the page flipped over by itself, to a blank page. His head started to spin. He’d drunk far too much, he’d been imagining things. As he struggled to regain his composure, the child standing next to him squeezed his hand gently. ‘Smile for the camera, Uncle Mateo’, he said. Off balance, Mateo looked forward again, only to be blinded by the camera flash. The spinning grew worse, and he lurched forward, filled with shame that he was going to humiliate himself by collapsing drunk in Helena’s house. In front of the kids, too.
When his vision cleared, he was lying on his back, staring up at the paper lanterns. Oh God, he really had passed out. He tried to struggle up, to make his embarrassed apologies, but he couldn’t move. His hands were still held tightly by the children. He couldn’t feel the floor under his back, but he could feel a sandy surface under his feet. He was standing on Bondi Beach, the waves gently lapping the sands, the smell of the salt air in his nostrils, just like on that last morning in Australia. But, at the same time, he was lying down, looking up at those paper lanterns on the ceiling. Faces loomed above him, everything seeming to be far too large. He was standing on the beach. He was lying on the table. Then, like looking at an Escher print, suddenly it all snapped into perspective. He was standing on the beach. In a photo, in the album lying on the coffee table. Transfixed on the page, like a butterfly pinned in a collection. A giant hand loomed above, the cover of the album descending towards him. He tried to pull his hands free, tried to scream. But he could only lie there, frozen in time, holding hands with the happy family on the beach, as the cover dropped down on him with a booming, final thud, and he was shut away in the darkness.