by Alison Booth
‘I like being here,’ Charlie had said that first evening in Coverack when I was tucking her into bed in the attic room. Although the heavy curtains were drawn, we could hear the waves as they gently shifted the shingle along the shoreline. ‘How long are we going to stay, Mummy?’
‘I don’t know yet, Charlie. It might be a while.’
‘Will I go to school here?’
‘Yes. Tomorrow if you like.’
‘Cool. I’ll make new friends and one of them might have a boat.’ Boats were her current obsession since watching a few episodes of Elias the Little Rescue Boat.
‘Sleep well, my darling.’ I kissed her brow.
‘What will you do, Mummy?’
‘Finish my thesis.’ But I’d realised only half an hour ago that I’d left a box-file full of some crucial notes in the London flat. That meant I’d have to go back again to collect it.
‘Can Tico sleep on my bed?’
‘Yes, but keep the door closed so he doesn’t run away.’
My parents were sitting in the living room when I came downstairs. My spirits plummeted when I saw three newspapers in a row on the coffee table. They hadn’t been there before. On the front page of each was a photo of that woman.
Zoë had been photographed getting out of a taxi. Although she was raising a briefcase to shield her head, the photographer had caught her in the instant before. Her face was unmistakably bruised and swollen. In The Times there was also a small picture of Jeff. His features were blurred, as if he’d been moving when the photo was taken. His hair was flopping forward onto his forehead.
I sat on the sofa next to my mother. The upholstery was too soft and I could feel my body sinking into it. With unsteady hands, I picked up the paper and read the text.
ISLINGTON DESIGNER CHARGED WITH ASSAULTING ZOË
A man has been arrested and taken to Maida Vale Police Station charged with assaulting the glamorous presenter of Rearranging Lives.
Zoë McIntyre, aged 29, was admitted to hospital two days ago with a possible fractured cheekbone after an incident at a London restaurant.
It is alleged that Mr Jeffrey Hector, aged 31, punched his lover Zoë in the face several times before smashing a chair through the window of the restaurant.
After her release from hospital, Zoë said she would not be taking any time off work: ‘I’m not going to let anything like this hold up my show, and I intend to press charges. Violence against women is something that can never be condoned.’
My mother coughed. There were tears in her eyes and her hand was shaking when she put it on my arm. ‘Sally,’ she said. ‘Did Jeff…did he ever…to you?’
‘Yes.’ I felt suddenly cold and began to shiver. Before I knew it I was clutching a glass of Scotch and there was a rug over my knees. My mother was holding my hand in hers. I must have fallen asleep soon after.
Later that evening, the phone rang when my parents were pottering about in the kitchen. I picked up the receiver in the living room.
‘Have you seen the papers?’ Jeff said.
I took a deep breath and thought of hanging up. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s why I brought Charlie down here.’
‘Zoë’s taking me to court.’
‘How could you do it, Jeff?’
‘She deserved it, the bitch.’
It didn’t seem to occur to him that I mightn’t take his side. ‘Why did she deserve it?’ My throat felt as if there were an iron band around it and I had to make an effort to breathe. In the kitchen my parents were talking still and I wondered what they were saying. My mother’s voice was muted and my father’s was a staccato accompaniment. The anger in Dad’s voice was for Jeff; he was never cross with my mother.
‘She dented the new BMW along one side,’ Jeff said. ‘It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d apologised but she didn’t. She just laughed.’
‘I think she’s right to take you to court.’ I found it easy to be honest when he was at the other end of a telephone line and not standing right next to me. ‘You can’t go around bashing up people because they do something you don’t like.’
But he was convinced he’d done nothing wrong. He thought that he was simply teaching Zoë a lesson. She wasn’t badly hurt, he told me. She deserved what she got; she provoked him.
‘But she’s seriously injured.’ I thought of her bruised face, the cut eyebrow, the eye that she had trouble opening, the abrasion on her cheekbone.
‘The newspapers exaggerate. You can’t believe anything you read. This is a godsend, for them and for Zoë. It’ll boost their sales and Zoë’s viewing figures.’
He hesitated, and I wondered if he realised how cynical he was sounding. But it seemed he was merely pausing for breath in order to continue with his lamentation. ‘I’m the only sucker that comes out of this badly,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s mentioned how poorly Zoë behaved.’
Again I thought of hanging up and again I decided against it. The last thing I wanted was a custody battle with Jeff, not that he would have a chance of winning that. But I felt I had to keep the lines of communication open between us. I asked him if his father had read the newspaper accounts. But his father was abroad; he and Jeff’s stepmother, Marge, had emigrated to Australia two years before so there was some possibility that he mightn’t find out at all, or at least not for a time.
While Jeff cared what his father might think, it became obvious as his monologue proceeded that his primary concern was that his design practice might be adversely affected by the publicity. But after a time it occurred to him that perhaps the notoriety might bring in more clients. I gritted my teeth. Maybe not the women, he said; but yes, he thought it might actually bring in the men.
His voice had become so loud that I had to hold the receiver away from my head. Scents from the garden wafted through the open window – from the recently mown grass and the roses in the garden bed. My fingers were becoming sore from clutching the receiver too hard: I was transferring my anger with Jeff to my hand.
He began to tell me what a ghastly night he’d had in the police cells. In that interminable phone conversation, he never once asked after Charlie. It was as if she didn’t exist.
Although I wasn’t at all sympathetic, that didn’t stop him. He denied causing injury; he denied any responsibility. His view was that he was the victim and that he, rather than Zoë, deserved pity. After he’d got all that off his chest, he told me he was planning a few nights out. He and his old school friend, Steve James, were going to get pissed. They planned a bit of a bender; that was how he went on to describe it. They were going to celebrate Jeff getting bailed out of jail.
I don’t think he heard much of what I was saying. He was talking for his own benefit, to justify his behaviour to himself. As soon as I put down the receiver, I realised he was using neutralisation techniques. Deny the injury took place. That way you couldn’t be held responsible for something because it hadn’t occurred.
There was no doubt that he was getting worse, not better.
Chapter 8
NOW
‘Has the stuff from Marge arrived yet, Charlie?’ I dump my briefcase on the floor by the door and shrug off my raincoat.
‘It’ll take a couple of weeks,’ Charlie says, blowing me a kiss. There is a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of her. ‘I only wrote to her a few days ago. You know what the post from Australia is like.’
Keeping my face expressionless, I stroll to the bay window. The street is deserted, save for a young man sauntering along the pavement as if it’s a warm summer’s evening and not a blustery late October night with scraps of leaves flying about like confetti. He sees me and waves. I recognise him now; he lives two doors away.
‘Are you worried it might get lost, Ma? Marge said she was going to send it registered post.’
‘No. I was just wondering if it had come.’
‘I’ll tell you when it gets here.’
‘Thanks. I’d hate for it to get lost.’ What a hypocrite I’m being; I�
��d love the parcel to get lost. I’m dreading what might be in it and I want to be in the house when it arrives.
And I’ve simply got to let Charlie know the truth about how her father died.
* * *
When I had arrived back at Coverack, some days after identifying Jeff’s body in London and more ghastly interviews afterwards, I found Charlie playing outside in the back garden. Watched by my mother, she was crawling about on her hands and knees in the grass, absorbed in some game involving half a dozen clothes pegs and a few stones.
‘Come into Grandpa’s study,’ I said, after we’d hugged and kissed. Charlie’s body was hot from her exertions and she smelled of recently mown grass and clean cotton. After sitting her down in one of the armchairs in my father’s study, I knelt on the Persian rug in front of her. ‘Charlie, your father’s had a massive heart attack.’ I took her hands in mine. They were warm and sticky. ‘He died peacefully, in his sleep.’ I wanted to observe her reaction, to gauge what she might feel so that I could better protect her from what was happening to us.
But Charlie didn’t seem to feel anything. It was the shock, I suppose. But I knew I’d have to be careful with her: it might take days or even months before she understood the loss. She said, ‘What’s a massive heart attack?’
I explained that it was when the heart stopped pumping blood around the body, as if the body’s engine had been suddenly switched off. ‘Your dad wouldn’t have felt any pain,’ I said, ‘because he was asleep. But you mustn’t worry about it happening to you when you fall asleep, because it hardly ever happens to anyone until they’re well over sixty.’
I didn’t take Charlie to her father’s funeral. She stayed with my parents while I caught the train up to Somerset, to the seaside town of Burnham-on-Sea where Jeff was to be buried, and where he had grown up. The arrangements for the funeral were made quickly, almost furtively, once the coroner reached her verdict of accidental death. There were only six of us there: Jeff’s father, a couple of his friends from school whom I hadn’t met before, Zoë and me, and the clergyman. Jeff’s father had flown back from Australia as soon as he’d heard the news.
* * *
Standing at the bay window in my house in Kentish Town, I begin to shiver as the wind roughly fingers the window sashes. From the creaking of the floorboards behind me, I guess that Charlie is now in front of the bookcase. She is probably looking at the silver-framed photograph of the three of us that was taken not long after she turned four. I keep it there, on the middle bookshelf, for Charlie. Although I never look at it myself, I will always remember it. In the picture, Charlie is wearing the Liberty dress that my mother gave her and her hair is smooth and shiny. Standing in the middle of a park bench on Hampstead Heath, she is framed by her father and me. We are all smiling for the camera. We are the perfect family.
I pull the curtains across the rattling window sashes. October is the worst month for gales.
Chapter 9
THEN
My friend Alessandra had taken Charlie to see Peter Pan. It was a few months after Jeff and I had separated, and I’d hoped for an uninterrupted afternoon working on my thesis. Alessandra was a fellow graduate student who liked to borrow Charlie from time to time and, as Charlie adored her, this arrangement worked well for all of us.
I had just settled down at the kitchen table with my laptop when the phone rang. It reverberated through the draughty unheated hallway of my flat. Reluctantly I got up to answer it.
‘Hello, is that Sally?’ I didn’t recognise the deep female voice at the end of the line.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Jeff’s friend here.’ She paused. Right away I knew who she was but I didn’t intend to help her out. ‘His girlfriend,’ she added.
‘I see,’ I said, as coldly as possible.
‘Something dreadful has happened.’ She hesitated again. ‘I can’t really explain on the phone. Can you come around?’
‘Is it about Jeff?’
‘Yes. But he’s not ill or anything. I need to talk to you. As soon as possible.’
‘What about right now.’
‘I can’t explain over the phone. Can’t you come round?’
There was a pause. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry; you’ve got your little daughter. Shall I come to your place instead? I could get a cab right away. Though Charlie shouldn’t really hear what I have to say.’
‘No, don’t do that.’ I didn’t want this woman in my flat. ‘I’ll come and see you. Charlie’s with a friend at the moment.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘I’ll be there in an hour.’
‘Thanks Sally. That’s really very sweet of you.’ She gave me her address in Little Venice before ringing off.
I changed quickly; call it vanity, call it self-respect, but I didn’t want to meet Jeff’s girlfriend wearing my scruffy working clothes. I caught the tube to Warwick Avenue station and walked the short distance – through wide, tree-lined streets and past affluent-looking houses – to the address she’d given me. This turned out to be a mansion block of flats overlooking the canal. I pressed the button on the entry-phone. No one spoke to me but the door sprang open almost immediately and I walked up one flight of stairs. By now I was feeling decidedly curious. The door to flat 4 was ajar. As I crossed the landing it opened to reveal a slender woman, perhaps ten centimetres taller than me. At first I couldn’t see her face: she appeared to be dressed in black from head-to-toe, and was silhouetted against the bright light blazing out of her flat.
‘Come in.’ She stood back to let me by, and shut the front door behind me. When she turned, I saw her face fully illuminated for the first time. The shock took my breath away. There was an abrasion on her left cheekbone and a small cut immediately above the ocular orbit; the flesh around this was so bruised and swollen that she could barely open that eye. Even with this damage, I could see that she was beautiful, with classically proportioned features. Horrified, throat suddenly constricted, I opened and shut my mouth but couldn’t get any words out.
Of course I knew without being told who was responsible.
‘I’m not an attractive sight,’ she said. ‘Thanks for coming, Sally. You can see why I didn’t want to go out looking like this.’
I followed her into a large sunlit room overlooking the canal. Her shiny platinum hair, cropped very short, glowed like an aura. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve just realised that I haven’t told you my name,’ she said, turning to look at me. Her battered face was even more shocking in this pristine room. ‘I’m Zoë. Zoë McIntyre.’
The name rang a bell, yet I’d never heard Jeff mention it. I thought I’d seen her face somewhere before, although I couldn’t remember where. Clearly she expected some sort of recognition. She looked faintly disappointed when I didn’t react, when I simply said, ‘Hello, Zoë.’
‘Do sit down,’ she said.
I sat in the Eames chair she indicated, and she perched on the edge of the white upholstered sofa opposite. ‘When did it happen?’ I asked, leaning forward. To relax back into this chair would put me at a disadvantage.
‘Last night.’
‘How?’
‘Oh, surely you can guess how it happened. Jeff lost his temper. He didn’t like something I did. But instead of talking it through like a mature adult, he lashed out at me like some stupid schoolboy bully. He punched me and when I fell over, he kicked me really hard in the stomach.’
‘Your poor face.’ I almost apologised, but realised at once that this was inappropriate. I wasn’t responsible for Jeff; I was never responsible for Jeff. He was not my fault.
‘The whole thing took place in public. In a bloody restaurant, can you believe? The man’s mad.’
This marked a new stage in Jeff’s violence. My throat felt dry. I swallowed and could hear the gulp.
‘You’ll be wondering why I wanted to see you. It wasn’t to get your sympathy. I know you must really hate me.’ Zoë spoke almost aggressi
vely and I could see a pulse jumping in the hollow at the base of her throat.
‘Was this the first time?’ I had to find out if he had begun with this, or with a less extreme form of violence, as he had done with me.
‘Of course it was. Do you think I would have put up with this and hung around for more?’ she said irritably. ‘But what I want to know is; did he ever hit you?’
‘Yes.’ A nerve under my eye twitched. Although I smoothed the skin with my forefinger, it jerked again and again.
‘How often?’
‘I suppose every six months or so.’
She raised one eyebrow, the undamaged one, before smiling oddly, the way people sometimes do in the face of bad news. From these grimaces I intuited that she thought little of me, a woman who’d let herself be knocked around. She said, ‘More fool you for putting up with it.’
I stood, my eye convulsing again in a way that must surely have been noticeable. Anger made my heart pound too hard and it was a struggle to keep my voice steady when I spoke. ‘I’m not hanging around here listening to your abuse,’ I said. ‘You’re a bitch, if you don’t mind me saying so. You stole my husband and now, when he turns out to be a bad draw, you start bawling me out. I think you deserve everything you got!’
‘Well, at least I’m not some pathetic little woman, standing by her man regardless of whether he’s a dickhead or not.’ She kept her voice calm and rather patronising, as if she was speaking to a small child. But my anger drained away when I saw that talking was an effort for her: that pulse at the base of her neck was thumping still. She turned away, perhaps wanting to conceal her emotion, but a few seconds later she continued, still in that condescending tone, ‘And he really is a dickhead, darling. In fact, he’s more than that, he’s a…he’s a…’ She paused, at a loss for words.
