Another thing was unduly bothering me – and this really is rather pathetic and adolescent. I’d seen photographs on Facebook of all my uni chums at a party to which I hadn’t been invited and I was surprisingly hurt by this; in the dark hours of the night, it plagued me. On top of this, Karl was doing a lot of consulting abroad. He seemed to be away all the time so I was single parenting and trying to cope with my increasingly deteriorating parents. I was getting more and more concerned about their future and what was going to happen with them, and was spending every spare hour I could trying to sort through their house and its endless junk. Josh, now sixteen, seemed to have decided I was a fool – everything I said appeared ridiculous to him and was received with a snort of derision. The school was complaining about his behaviour, and Annie was also in trouble – she’d got into a fight in the playground and had sent one boy to A&E. I seemed to be failing on every front.
I was feeling more and more distant from Ness. Her life had changed now and she was making the most of the weeks without the children. She had a new-found freedom and was frequently off for weekends with her old mates at spas, always trying to get me to come along too, but of course I couldn’t because I was the fort-holder. I felt a little ousted; I was no longer her priority, her life had moved on. I felt isolated and lonely on all fronts, actually. I was losing too many things at once and had woken up that week with the distinct whiff of it – that old tidal wave of misery on the horizon.
‘You’ve got a lot on your plate,’ Dr Rhys Evans said. ‘It’s not a crime to struggle.’
At that moment Sebo poked her head around the door. ‘Did Mrs de Cadenet come back in here?’ she asked. Dr Rhys Evans and I looked at each other and then got up quickly. My mother had gone AWOL; we rushed about the building and eventually found her talking to the greengrocer round the corner about aubergine recipes.
There we have it, Dr R. So that was the day my mother started knocking back the Floradix for her lack of iron and I started knocking back the Lofepramine for my lack of happiness.
Chapter 10
Emma was unfamiliar with this part of London and if it wasn’t for Google Maps and the efficient female Australian voice giving her directions, she would have absolutely no idea of how to get there. She’d only decided an hour ago that she was coming. Despite leaving numerous messages, no one had returned her calls. She had planned to go to her yoga-meditation class and then spend the rest of the day with Si. Emma liked to have a clear agenda, but Si, without putting it in the diary, had gone off to a day’s orchestra practice – their annual concert was coming up and this year the bassoon actually had a solo.
She decided against the yoga. The central heating was playing up and there was so much preparation involved for a class before the humiliation of piling herself into her yoga clothes. Shaving and hair washing were vital – mid-lizard pose it was possible to find yourself alarmingly close to random parts of strangers’ anatomies. Somehow she always seemed to end up next to twenty-year-old contortionists in spray-on stretch suits who made her feel huge and ancient with the malleability of a crowbar. Then there were further embarrassments in the tiny changing rooms as naked, nubile, rippled, perky-breasted girls with no hang-ups and topiaried little mounds chatted loudly by the cubicles while Emma, clasping a towel to her roll-over tummy and untamed bush, tried to squeeze past to the showers.
A long time ago, when she and Si were first together, she used to get her bikini line waxed. She couldn’t remember when she stopped; she cited feminist reasons but really it was laziness. But why was she lazy? When did she stop bothering? When did she stop thinking of herself as a sexual being? How had she lost her libido? She knew it was still there somewhere, lying latent; she still had occasional urges, but the urges had become secretive, not something to be shared with Si.
Did you and Si Hubby ever have passion?
‘Turn right on to Fulham Palace Road,’ said the Australian.
Emma didn’t want to think about sex; it made her uncomfortable. Far too much importance was placed on it; we were cluster bombed by it wherever we looked. She had decided somewhere along the line, manipulated by the media and advertising, no doubt, that sex was the terrain of the young. Connie was right, the body didn’t lie; now that her periods were deeply painful and erratic, it seemed that her own uterus was conspiring against her, and her vagina had joined in the rebellion by becoming paper-dry. And she didn’t know whether the cause of it was physiological or psychological. Oh, the joys of the menopause knew no bounds: the hair that fell out when she washed it, the sudden claustrophobic sweats and the indisputable fact that her biological purpose on the planet had come to an end, all spoke of mortality. She, as a human being, in essence, had become obsolete.
Emma had been putting off going on HRT; she had been putting off labelling herself as going through the menopause full stop. But she was. These days she wanted to concentrate on other aspects of herself: the meditation, the effort to try and change her habitual thinking, to have more self-belief. But in actual fact, despite trying for a year now, she felt she hadn’t progressed at all. She wasn’t sure she had any graspable technique or aptitude for it. The moment she sat straight and closed her eyes in a search for stillness, it eluded her. Her thoughts played havoc, her mind a whir of daily problems, self-doubt and guilt. The book by her bed was reinforcing the fact that she must be kind to herself, not be full of blame towards either herself or anyone else.
But her behaviour in Connie’s room the other day was shameful, whatever the book said; even thinking about it set off a profound embarrassment. It had been horribly unprofessional – Connie could have done anything. She could have escaped (she’d already escaped once from Milton House, for God’s sake), she could have attacked someone, stolen a car … the consequences could have been unthinkable. Afterwards, Emma had driven straight to her supervisor to confess. But when, at the end of a long day, she’d arrived at Tom’s office, one lone light on in the building, her tread silent with the shame of her deeds, she had found him playing Call of Duty, a duvet laid out on the sofa. She’d suspected he was having marital problems but hadn’t realized that he was sleeping at the office. She had discreetly exited and re-thought her own bad behaviour, and Connie’s future. The psychologist assessing Connie was getting nowhere – she was refusing to even speak to him, or the social worker. The CT scans showed that there was nothing neurologically wrong with Connie’s brain. Emma knew, in fact, that she had come a long way with her, that things were progressing. There had been reported a noticeable change in Constance’s behaviour at the clinic; no incidents recently, which meant no fitting, no public urination or defecation, no fights, no inappropriate sexual behaviour. She was taking her medication. If Emma was taken off the case, her assessment would have to begin all over again. It was one tiny lapse that no one need know about. She felt resolved. She hadn’t had a drop to drink since then.
‘In four hundred yards turn right …’
But Connie hadn’t escaped or done any of those things Emma might have imagined; she had been kind and tender. And Emma had been quite thrown when Connie cried. This was progress; she was feeling. The sound she made was what had shocked Emma, that ghastly soul-wrenching sob, as if her body knew what she had done even if her mind couldn’t remember it. Emma had wanted to take her in her arms, hold her, rock her and tell her everything was going to be OK. But it so evidently wasn’t. In fact, everything was going to get a lot worse; so instead, she had scuttled out like a rat.
‘In three hundred yards turn right on to …’
She found herself looking forward to their sessions. Connie’s company, although unsettling, was strangely exhilarating. She wondered whether it was because Connie didn’t lie. The rest of us are all plausible liars. When she was with Connie she felt like she was following a straight line in a world of angles. She couldn’t veer from it now; she’d gone too far down it to turn back. Now she found herself conscious of the lack of her; she missed Connie’s ruthless, raspin
g commentary.
‘Carry straight on for eight hundred yards.’
She’d rowed with Si this morning. She’d picked a fight with him. And he’d accused her of getting obsessed with this psychopath. But was he right? Was she obsessed? She had always been somewhat obsessive: from Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie to Siouxsie and the Banshees and serial killers. But what he didn’t seem to understand was that this was the way she had to work: she had to get inside this woman’s head, slip her feet into Connie’s shoes. (Had Connie really put on her shoes while she lay there crashed out on her bed?)
‘At the roundabout take the third exit on to Putney Bridge Road.’
She drove over the bridge, the uneven tarmac echoing slaps against the car’s underbelly. She turned to see the view over the river. It was beautiful. The tide was high, the sun was out, and clouds moved fast across the sky. They’d found Connie somewhere down here, stark naked. She turned right and pulled up where she could. She got out of the car, did up her jacket. The wind was strong but not cold; it felt pleasant against her skin. She breathed in the air as she wandered down to the water and away from the bridge. There was a faint whiff of chimney smoke mixed in with river dampness and autumn leaves. The ducks were swimming between the sunken branches of the trees, the water beyond them moving at an incredible speed. She stood there, hands in her pockets, mesmerized by it. Flotsam and jetsam drifted past her and she felt comfort in the transience, the assurance that sooner or later we would all be swept away and replaced. She thought of Connie. The report said she’d fought the police off and in the end they’d had to taser and sedate her before she was bundled off and sectioned.
Emma stepped back to let a procession of bikes go past in a blur of lycra. The scent of male sweat engulfed her and she felt irritated by the certainty with which they occupied space. Why did no one ring bicycle bells any more? Were they not aerodynamic enough or was she just old? Beyond them, she focused on a log in the middle of the river, almost the size of a tree.
‘Emma?’ She turned to her right. One of the cyclists had stopped and turned around to look at her.
‘Emma Davis?’ He was clad in skin-hugging black and yellow, like a thin wasp.
‘Yes,’ she said, curious. No one called her Davis. Something about his smile was incredibly familiar. He took off his helmet. Oh my God. It was Dougie.
‘Dougie?’
‘Yes!’
‘Dougie Thompson? Oh my God!’
She couldn’t help it, she felt herself flush profusely. At school, she had had a crush on Douglas Thompson so intense she had been flattened by it, rolled out like a piece of unleavened dough. She had not been the only one. Everyone was touched by him, with his quiet confidence and his sense of self.
‘Wow …’ she said, stupidly seventeen again.
Dougie hadn’t just been the coolest boy in school; he was also the cleverest. Not as clever as Emma, but only because he didn’t work as hard.
‘I thought it was you!’ he said, lifting one long leg over the back wheel and picking up the bike as if it were no heavier than a bag of crisps. He brought it back to where she was standing. ‘I thought, I know that girl …’
Girl. It hadn’t been until the first year of A-levels that he’d even noticed Emma. He was going out with Deborah Jenkins at the time – he only went out with cool girls, not Goths like Emma and Sally Pea – and the rumour was that he’d got Deborah pregnant. Emma remembered the day when the maths teacher had given him a hard time for not handing in his work and she had passed him hers under the table. They’d hung out a bit after that and Deborah Jenkins had got her to be a kind of go-between. And she did get between. She and Dougie would get so carried away talking that they’d both completely forget to pass messages back to Deborah. And when Deborah began to freeze her out, Emma had understood for the first time the powers of her own attraction.
‘You look really well,’ he said. What he meant was: you used to be so fat. Puppy fat, her mother had called it; pointing it out the very day Emma had begun to appreciate her own contours.
‘I mean, I liked the Goth look and everything …’
Any personal comment made her blush – she no longer had the white make-up to hide behind – and she felt the second wave of blood rush about her body and settle on her chest. There was nothing she could do about it; it betrayed her time and again, announcing her inner feelings to the outside world.
‘How are you? Do you live round here?’ he asked.
‘Thanks. Fine. No … Do you?’
‘Yeah, not far. Battersea. You’re a doctor, aren’t you, a psychiatrist …?’
‘That’s right.’ She was flung back to the contradictions of her youth: the self-assurance masking the vulnerability, the cliques, the passions, the stuttering, that heavy weight of the future brimful with possibility.
‘Sally and I always thought you were going to be prime minister!’ he said. She laughed. Had they really? ‘But I’m not surprised you’ve gone into people’s heads; you were always curious. And kind.’
The flush on her chest burned again. ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you do?’
She switched off after the letters ‘IT’. Always curious and kind. Dougie Thompson. Sally Pea. Deborah Jenkins. How had she lost touch with everyone? Where had all the years gone?
‘Did you hear about Sally?’ he was saying, still smiling at her.
‘No, I’ve lost touch with lots of people …’
‘She just won a hundred and fifty grand on the lottery.’
‘What? No way!’ Emma shrieked. It was incredible. He was laughing, they both were. He had always had that effect on her, relaxing her in a highly unrelaxing way. He moved a little closer as another stream of bikes passed by.
‘Honestly, that girl!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She’s throwing a huge birthday party – she’d kill me if I told her I saw you and didn’t ask you. You’ve got to come.’
‘That’s right! Her birthday. December 14th!’
He was getting his phone out of a bicep pocket. His skin was smooth and brown. ‘What’s your number, Dr Davis?’
‘Robinson,’ she corrected, and immediately wished that she hadn’t; she’d brought a kind of otherness into their conversation. This was no place for husbands. It wasn’t fair that a man could keep his mystery but a woman had to be branded. She watched him tap the number into his phone as she told him the digits, noticing and remembering his ease of movement, the grace of his fingers and how, to her delight, someone had once mistaken them for a couple. She wondered whether he remembered that night at Jamie Storm’s party, how they’d talked all evening on the sofa and their legs had been touching for hours. She never knew whether he was aware of it or not.
What a fool she was; of course he wouldn’t remember. That was thirty years ago.
‘Yes, you’re married, I knew that. You’ve got kids, haven’t you?’ he asked.
She stared at him. Her head went blank. The blush drained away.
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say. ‘And you?’
‘Yeah, two boys. What about you?’ he asked.
She paused. ‘Just one. A girl. Abigail.’
Just for a moment she wanted to be like a normal person.
‘Lovely name,’ he said. She looked at him and nodded. Yes, it was a lovely name. ‘How old is she?’
‘Nine,’ she said. It was as if Emma was watching the conversation from one of those speeding clouds up there.
Afterwards she sat in the car for a long time without moving, staring at the steering wheel. Why aren’t the streets full of wrecked people?
*
It wasn’t until the parking attendant tapped on her window that she came out of her reverie and started the engine. The cheery Australian voice, impervious to loss, took her by surprise.
‘Rerouting.’
Yes, she thought, rerouting. She looked at her phone, noticing that her battery was about to die. It was eleven. Still no response to her messages. She would make it a br
ief visit.
Emma parked up in Allinson Road, as near to number five as she could. It was a gentrified Victorian terraced street. She had once hoped that she would live somewhere like this, where blonde women pushed prams, kids left unlocked bikes outside jolly coloured doors that were left open, window boxes bloomed, bins lived in painted kennels nestled beside olive trees wafting in lavender, and neighbours popped in to arrange dinner parties, postmen whistled and left packages next door. Bad things don’t happen in places like this.
Oh Connie, how did you let it all go so wrong?
She watched the road in her wing mirror: muddy boys in football gear climbed out of a four-by-four. Two girls whizzed round the corner on skateboards in tutus, followed by a woman with neatly messy hair being tugged by one of those non-moulting poodles on a lead, a small boy bouncing a ball behind her. Emma watched them go. She had always wanted that: to be part of a busy, bustling family, like the one Si had come from. That had been a strong part of her attraction to him – his family: the noise, the jostling, the jibes and the effortless love.
Her own mother’s love had always felt conditional – on Emma making her mother feel good, on Emma being clever (like her), on Emma being thin (like her). And it had just been the two of them for most of the time. It wasn’t until she was older, when she was an undergraduate and had come across the personality of a narcissist in her studies, that she had begun to make sense of her mother. When Emma had failed to get pregnant, her mother would constantly remind her how easily she herself had got pregnant, keen to remove herself from Emma’s failings as a woman. And so it had transpired that all those years of taking contraception and morning-after pills had been for nothing, because Emma’s body (‘such child-bearing hips’, ‘such a maternal bosom’) wasn’t up to it. And what joy, what extreme happiness for her and Si, when the second round of IVF had worked. And so the blow had felt even harsher when it came.
Too Close Page 12
