The Girl I Used to Know

by Faith Hogan

  ‘It’ll take a bit of getting used to…’ The girl reached forward again to stroke the cat. ‘I’m just glad he’s here to be honest.’ She smiled up at Tess, ‘It doesn’t matter much what his name is, so long as he’s okay. I’ve always fancied changing my own name. Robyn is so…’ her words died off as her attention drifted back to the cat. ‘I’m so glad he’s here,’ she repeated as she sat on the sofa opposite Tess.

  They sat for almost an hour, just talking about nothing and everything and sometimes not even saying a word, but listening to the purr of a very contented Matt.

  ‘It’s just for a short time, mind. I’m not a complete softy,’ Tess said, trying to keep her voice as firm and blunt as she could, because she did mean it. She had no place in her flat or in her life for a cat, much less for a teenager dropping down whenever the fancy took her, did she?

  ‘So, Mrs Cuffe, how was your day?’ Robyn asked and there was that unmistakable gentleness about her that made Tess feel relaxed and comfortable all at once. It was impossible to dislike her. ‘Aside from the arm that is?’ Robyn smiled, sipping from the mug of tea Tess had poured for her.

  ‘Oh, dear, if we’re going to get Matt’s name right you may as well use mine too,’ Tess said in a brittle voice, but she smiled at the same time, or at least it felt like a smile, it had been so long, it was almost hard to tell. ‘Call me Tess, will you?’ She waited until the girl nodded and then went on, ‘My days are never anything special. It’s the same old story.’ What could she say? Tess was out of the habit of making small talk, but the card from Nancy that had arrived a few days earlier seemed to fill the silence between them, as though it was taunting her to be mentioned.

  ‘Go on, tell me anyway,’ Robyn said with the kind of open innocence that will accept as true everything you say. She waited until Tess told her far more than she ever intended to, and yet, all she spoke of was Matt and the gardeners working in the square that afternoon. The ordinary things of everyday life that seemed to come alive again simply in the sharing.

  ‘Do you know, that’s done me the world of good?’ Tess said when she finished talking and she knew that there really wasn’t much more she could say.

  ‘You don’t get to talk to many people so?’ Robyn said gently.

  ‘No, I suppose I don’t,’ Tess admitted. ‘I didn’t think I was missing anything; maybe I am too cut off for my own good.’ She looked about her little sitting room and she couldn’t tell if it was more precious knowing that Richard and Amanda had wanted it so badly or because living here put her in the way of people. Was she happy being here because being in the way was better than not being anything to anyone at all? She knew that if she didn’t march up those steps once a week and drop her ten bob rent in the front door, sooner rather than later, ample Amanda would surely come down to check if she was still carrying on as the thorn in their side or if they had finally seen her out.

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I’d say you’re not the only person in this house feeling as if you’re a little lost.’ Robyn’s eyes narrowed with meaning.

  ‘There was a poster in the hospital, some do-gooder’s idea of entertainment perhaps,’ Tess mumbled, ‘it said; loneliness is an epidemic and this last while, I’m beginning to think it’s more dangerous than people ever recognise.’

  ‘The worst is when you’re afraid to admit it.’ Robyn pointed over her head now, ‘Some people don’t even realise it.’

  ‘Do you think? Maybe it’s a touch of pride too.’

  ‘Yes, maybe it is for you, but you’d be surprised at the people who are lonely into the depths of their souls and they can’t even see it because they’ve worked so hard to block it out with everything money can buy.’ Robyn said the words quietly and Tess found herself thinking of Amanda King and wondering if she spent her days thinking about what might have been, just over Tess’s head, as she did the same here in this little flat.

  ‘I think you’re much too clever for your age, Robyn. You need to stop thinking about things and get yourself out with your friends,’ Tess said and Robyn smiled at her in a half-hearted way.

  Then, as the old carriage clock on the mantle began to call out the hour, Robyn jumped up suddenly. ‘Gosh, I can’t believe that’s the time, my mum will kill me.’ She rushed towards the door after nuzzling her face into Matt’s fur one last time.

  *

  When Robyn left, Tess took down the little postcard once more. She had read it so many times already since it had arrived, but she was drawn to it. There was something pulling her to the curling font of her sister’s hand. She tried not to think about Nancy any more. Nancy and Douglas were the past. She’d learned to put them out of her mind over the years, but the truth was, they’d never really left her. They were, between them, the reason she was still here. It was all such a long time ago now, a lifetime really. God, she drifted into memories that for so long she’d tried to forget and again she felt that well of sadness open up within her. Douglas was gone and although Tess cast him from her heart so many years before, now it felt like old wounds were opening up once more.

  Chapter 17

  January 12 – Monday

  Amanda knew, she couldn’t go on like this. It was as though she was running from a ghost, and the thing was, she wasn’t even sure if the ghost was real. Richard seemed to be gone more often than home, since condom-day, and when he was home, she couldn’t breathe. It seemed he pulled the oxygen from every room. His presence was a leash on the air so she couldn’t even make a cup of tea without producing a muddle. When he was gone, she rattled about the place waiting for his prickly silence to return. Their marriage was just going through the motions. They hadn’t had sex in about six months. But then they were married for God’s sake, surely the occasional slump was to be expected? All those things on their own didn’t really strike any cords with her, or at least they hadn’t before she found the condom in his tuxedo.

  Funny, but now she could add another dozen items to the list of why her marriage was in trouble and the condom, while perhaps the most damning, seemed as if it was only the wake-up call she needed.

  What could she do? Time was slipping past and it felt as though she’d done precisely nothing. Apart from the fact that she’d completely gone off cake and walked for what seemed like miles while listening to every self-help download she could find. She knew it was the demon of fear as much as her very real desire to make him love her again that pushed her in seemingly unending circuits around the square each evening. Sometimes, she wondered if Tess Cuffe had demons of her own because she appeared to be every bit as driven as she walked in the opposite direction. Her face was set in a kind of determination that matched Amanda’s dread in ferociousness. Amanda wasn’t sure how, but no matter what time of day or night she set off about the square, she seemed to run into Tess walking angrily in the opposite direction to her. God, she dreaded each time they passed each other. She was almost thankful when Tess insulted her; it was easier to deal with than her loaded silent glares.

  Perhaps, all of that was good. She knew she needed to put everything she could into herself for now because the road ahead would be rockier than the Inca trail. She hadn’t told anyone what was tormenting her. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Richard had been unfaithful to her – how hard was that? But, she knew, it wasn’t the saying of them that stopped her so much as the expectation that she would have to do something about it. That was what stumped her. She had no idea what to do. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to kill him, to rail on him and shout and scream, but she knew Richard too well for that. That would only result in him walking out the door for sure, and even if she hated him in this moment, Amanda wasn’t sure that she wanted him in the arms of some new woman either. For now, all she could do was keep moving on that little wheel that had taken her to this point in her life. She kept making breakfasts, lunches and dinners. She brought her kids to school and collected them each day. She stopped nagging them about doing homework and start
ed to really look at them instead. It dawned on her that as little as she knew about herself these days, perhaps she knew even less about her children.

  Monday morning brought with it the added dread of the Berkley; she felt it looming about her shoulders. Even Carlos, the sexy gardener, whistling at her with a cheeky grin, hardly managed to lift her spirits. Nicola had invited her for an impromptu coffee morning with the other wives. Coffee with the girls was a ritual begun too many years ago to back out of these days. She was not ready to raise their heavily groomed eyebrows, at least not until she found her feet in these peculiar badlands of suspicion and fear. She looked at herself in the full-length bathroom mirror. Her roots were beginning to show, a whiter grey than she thought she deserved, she was only forty-six for heaven’s sake; but the colour was completely beside the point. The point was that they would see it as a slip. It was enough to alert the others that something was amiss. She’d seen it before. A scuffed shoe – taken as confirmation of the first step on the road to fashion meltdown. There was no place in their set for anything less than perfection at all times. The scuffed shoe, it turned out later, was as a result of a flat tyre, which in turn, spun out to be the responsibility of the wife, who had been sauntering about the country electioneering on behalf of the Green Party. Everyone knew, the Green Party were hardly more than a hen’s kick from the socialists. Yes. Grey roots would definitely cause a stir. Amanda would have to make sure they had something else to muse on for now.

  *

  ‘Oh, I’m thinking about growing out my colour,’ she said it automatically, regretted it immediately, but it was the best she could do. Today, she had bigger secrets to hide than just her grey hair. The women looked aghast. None of them would be brave enough to go grey. They may never put a name on it, but they were well aware that being married to a wealthy man opened up too many possibilities for him to stray into the arms of a younger, blonder, better woman.

  ‘Really,’ Megan asked in a tone that left little doubt as to what she thought of the plan.

  ‘Well, yes. I’ve been considering it for a while, since before Christmas, as a matter of fact. You know, you see so many of these stunning women our age and they’ve gone for a natural look that probably has very little to do with being natural at all.’ She nodded towards Clarissa, who in a previous life had been a fashion editor.

  ‘Hm.’ Clarissa made a noise that was at best vague. She was probably the most diplomatic of the bunch, not that she was any less of a bitch. ‘And you’ve thought this through? Fully?’ She looked a little sceptical. ‘It’s just, most of those women, well to get away with that unstructured, natural look, they tend to have…’ She drew her breath in, tapped her finger on cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut, ‘they tend to have very refined bone structures, whereas you…Well, Amanda, you’ve a softer look. More gentle, you know. It’s a good thing in terms of aging.’ She was warming to her subject, looked across at Megan who had a heart-shaped face, but it was thanks to Botox and the surgeon’s knife. Gravity, starvation and step aerobics had long since wreaked their toll on any elasticity in her skin.

  ‘Well, that’s nice of you to say so, Clarissa. Maybe I’ll save on the fillers as well as the hairdressers,’ Amanda said.

  ‘Aren’t you having a biscuit?’ Megan asked, but Amanda caught a look shared between the women.

  ‘Um, no. Not today thanks,’ Amanda said and she could almost hear the nails hammering into her coffin lid. No doubt, she’d be the topic of conversation for the next week between the women. ‘I’ve started working out.’ She nodded over towards Megan. ‘Not as serious as you, Megan, obviously, but I’m quite determined to shift some of this weight before the summer. You know, we’re talking about a romantic cruise, just for the two of us this year.’ Then, in an Oscar-winning performance, she whispered, ‘Of course, Richard has to square it up at work yet. You know how things are,’ and she looked meaningfully at Nicola who blanched. The other women followed her gaze and, for a moment, something hung in the air between them.

  ‘I’m not sure I do,’ Nicola’s voice had risen an octave. Her normally cool reserve ruffled by the implicit suggestion that her husband was under some kind of additional pressure at work. Nicola always worked hard to make sure that she appeared to be completely neutral. It was part of the whole cool-girl chic she had going on. God, but Amanda had adored her when they first met. She had looked up to her, really, until this last week. Nicola just seemed to be so… everything Amanda wasn’t? She was thin and stylish, that was for sure. It was more than that though; Nicola, with her dark hair and pale skin, was self-assured, she was never out of her depth. Rather, Nicola excelled at making everyone around her feel as if they had to make a supreme effort to please her. Funny, but it was only now Amanda realised that Nicola was a right old hag.

  ‘Oh, well.’ Amanda sat back in the chair and smiled as enigmatically as a gypsy behind a frenzy of smoke and mirrors. ‘Never mind. Anyway, the point is, I fully intend to fit into the sexiest bikini I can find, especially if we’re going on the yacht that Richard has promised.’

  The women gasped. They were all vying to holiday with the CEO. Until now, with Amanda’s subversive suggestion, they expected the first invite to go Nicola’s way. After all, she was the queen of this little set and rightly so, because her husband was top dog in the last bonuses on the trading floor.

  Amanda felt the delicious warmth of jiggery-pokery sneak through her. She had put them on the back foot and now they’d be hard-pressed to decide on who was the most worthy to gossip about for the coming week. It was a reckless move and perhaps she was making herself a hostage to fortune, but for now all Amanda wanted was to keep a straight face and not collapse in a sobbing heap before these witches that for so long she’d convinced herself were friends.

  *

  ‘Richard.’ The coffee morning emboldened her and she dialled his number while she sat in the jeep waiting for the traffic lights to change. She called his cell phone before she had time to change her mind.

  ‘Yes?’ He was distracted, but he knew who it was, otherwise he’d have sounded interested. She wasn’t sure when he’d started treating her as if she was the hired help, it had crept up between them slyly.

  ‘Just thinking, I’m in town with time to spare, fancy lunch?’ As far as she knew, Richard rarely had more than a sandwich, snatched between phone calls, emails and playing with Monopoly-sized amounts of other people’s money. None of the bankers liked to take too long away from their desks, not if they could help it. ‘I mean, I’ll pick up lunch and bring it to your office, if you fancy it?’ She felt her lip sting, where she had bitten down hard on it. When did she start biting her lip again?

  ‘I’m not going to have time to stop for coffee, never mind lunch. Big moves in China, it’s all got to do with a takeover in Minneapolis, but that’s just an opportunity for the Chinese and I want to put in a finance bid for that takeover,’ he said and she had a feeling that he was flicking through numbers while he spoke. She could imagine him, shirtsleeves rolled up, a thin film of sweat on his brow, his dark hair neatly combed. Maybe a stray strand or two fallen down on his forehead, his little pot belly hanging out over his expensive suit pants, while he did the maths to come up with the most attractive offer so he could swipe the business from beneath his competitors and his colleagues. Richard was two years older than she was, but he looked younger. He didn’t suffer the usual aging complaints of greying hair or creasing skin. When Amanda thought about it now, he should look a lot older. He had a very stressful job. Of course, he also had a wife to take care of his every worry, so outside of work, life just chugged along around him. It guzzled along so efficiently all he had to do was turn up occasionally and everything was tickety-boo. The thing was, he was turning up less now and maybe that was something that could work in her favour.

  ‘It’s just a thought,’ she said to the empty car, because Richard had already hung up the phone. ‘So,’ Amanda said to herself in the rear-view mirro
r, ‘if he’s not having lunch at his desk and he’s not eating dinner, how come he’s not fading off the face of the planet?’ It was a question that wouldn’t have occurred to her a month ago. Funny, but before this, she’d never have put together the whole idea that eating less made you a thinner person. Perhaps she’d just been blocking it out. ‘It looks as if it wasn’t the only thing I was blocking out.’

  Chapter 18

  Forty-eight years earlier…

  Douglas was, as she might have guessed, early. It didn’t matter, because Tess was ready to walk out the door as soon as he knocked. He looked so dapper, his tuxedo jacket, flawless black, heightened the golden strands of hair that fell across his forehead.

  ‘Borrowed,’ he said, pulling down sleeves that might have been an inch longer, but not so short you’d notice. ‘Nancy, how are you feeling today?’ It was one of those questions that didn’t really require an answer. She was back in secretarial college and Tess thought maybe she’d met up with some girls to be friends with. Nancy was arriving home a little later most evenings and she seemed to be much happier in herself. Perhaps, Tess thought, she was falling in love too.

  Tess looked at her sister now, sitting with a magazine contentedly. They were so different, she couldn’t imagine Nancy experiencing the sort of passion she felt for Douglas. She couldn’t imagine her falling head over heels for some chap. In her mind’s eye, Tess could see Nancy meeting some respectable young man and settling into the sort of boring domesticity that their parents had.

  ‘Hello Douglas,’ Nancy said, looking up from her magazine, as though she’d only just noticed him, ‘you look very nice, try to be good, both of you.’ She smiled serenely at them, but Tess thought she’d never seen her look more aloof, while at the same time something about her seemed to catch the air between them all. In an instant, her sister, normally so plain, had turned into an ice maiden and even Tess could see that there was something remote, untouchable and, yes, perhaps attractive about her indifference.