The Book of You: A Novel

by Claire Kendal

  “You’re holding my neck too tight. It’s making it hard for me to breathe. It’s hard for me to talk.”

  “Good.” But you loosen your grip. “Talking isn’t what I want anymore, Clarissa.”

  Your tongue is in my mouth. My breath is coming in uneven rasps, very loud and fast. Too loud and fast.

  Your hips are against mine, and you grind into me harder. My knees want to fold, but you’re clutching me with such force I cannot fall. “See what you do to me?” Your hand is on my breast. “We need to get you out of all these layers.” You say this as if we are lovers sharing a joke. “They’re in my way.”

  “You don’t want to do this out here, do you?” My voice comes out in a tremble, and you must think that this is because of passion instead of fear and repulsion.

  Your hand is in my hair now, pulling so that my eyes fill with tears as you tip my head and make me look up at you. “Can I trust you?”

  “Yes.” You look uncertain, but I think you’re wavering. “We’re not going to get to your house any time soon if we stay like this.” I try to make my voice sound teasing, and I think I fail, but it doesn’t matter because I’ve said what you want to hear.

  “I have plans for us tonight.” You pull my hair harder. “More of what I know you want.”

  You’re still pinning my arms behind my back with one of yours. You slide your gloved hand beneath my coat and dress and press it between my legs. “This is what you want.” I sway, but do not try to stop you. You press harder. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Tell me again.”

  “Yes. It’s what I want.” And though my words come out like a sob you finally take away your hand and release my arms. I force myself to let them hang calmly at my sides, though what I want to do is brush them off, brush away your touch, and shove you as hard as I can.

  “Good.” Good is clearly one of your favorite words. You put your hand on the small of my back. “You haven’t been making sense lately, Clarissa. Don’t you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take my hand.”

  I take your hand.

  “You need to let me think for both of us.”

  “Yes.” I step back so our bodies are no longer in contact.

  “You need to do what I tell you.” You tow me a few more feet.

  “Yes.” And I see that yes is a magic word for you, too.

  You’re moving me faster. “That’s the best thing.”

  “Yes.” And as the word comes out, a man and his big black dog step into the park at eleven o’clock, from the path that leads down to the allotments.

  I have been watching for this since you found me. I haven’t stopped looking even for an instant. It always seemed likely someone would come; I hadn’t stopped telling myself that the whole time; I couldn’t let myself stop believing that.

  You follow my eyes to the pair, and you falter. My boot might be soft rubber, but I balance myself and then aim it as hard as I can at your shin.

  You cry out at what you see as a betrayal as much as pain. “Bitch.” That word again. What you really think. “You lied to me.” You truly do look astonished.

  I scream and shout, but “Help me” comes out as a feeble croak, as if I’m in one of those nightmares where my voice won’t work right.

  “You were only pretending you wanted me.”

  “Yes.” And I can’t help but feel pleasure in this yes even though you manage to haul me a few more feet, and I’m screaming at you to let go of me, shouting that you’re hurting me. I’m trying to dig the heels of my boots into the tarmac to slow us.

  “I’ll never trust you again.”

  I don’t know if the noises I’m making are loud enough, or if the man sees the struggle, or if he can somehow just tell that something’s not right, but the man and his dog are speeding up as they approach us and you release me so abruptly I seem to fly for a few feet before slamming onto the road.

  “You’ve pushed me too far this time.”

  I scramble up.

  “That was your last chance.”

  The man and his dog are closer still.

  “I’ll punish you for this.”

  I shout again at the man, and my voice works perfectly this time, cutting through the cold, clear air with cold, clear clarity. “Please come. Please help me.”

  You walk away, toward your car at three o’clock, toward the school just beyond the park.

  When the man and his dog reach me, you turn and take a few steps toward us again so that the dog starts to bark at you and you freeze. You have to shout over the dog to make your voice carry the ten feet between us.

  You say to the man, “She’s my girlfriend. It’s just a lovers’ quarrel and she’s acting crazy and refusing to come to dinner like we arranged. You should mind your own business. Everybody has domestics.”

  You say to me, “I’ll see you later, Clarissa. When you’ve calmed down.”

  You say to the man, “Shut your fucking dog up.”

  As you move away, the dog allows short gaps between his barks. When he seems certain you aren’t coming back, he is quiet.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say to the man, wiping my mouth with my coat sleeve. And then, beyond caring that I am asking a perfect stranger for a big favor, I say, “Can you please walk me home? It’s only ten minutes from here. I’m scared he’ll be waiting for me.”

  The man picks up my mitten, which has fallen off. I hadn’t noticed. I run it over my forehead and lips and ear and neck, then shove it in my pocket. The man finds my hat, too, and I wipe more at all the parts of my skin that you have touched. I am weeping, and trying hard not to let myself dissolve into outright sobs.

  The dog licks my hand, as if he wants to comfort me. I realize there is grit in my palm. The man says, “This is Bruce. He likes you,” and he rummages in his coat for a tissue and wordlessly hands it to me, and I dry the tears that seem to be freezing onto my cheeks and the snot that’s beginning to make my lips and skin crack.

  The man and Bruce walk me home. The man is tall. Taller than you. He is thin. Thinner than you. Even beneath his layers of outdoor clothes I can see this. He is nice. A million times nicer than you. And normal, I think. A zillion times more normal than you. He is a nerdy, clever computer geek. A trillion times more interesting than you. His name is Ted, a name I like infinitely more than I like yours.

  I grow calmer as we walk. We don’t talk about what happened in the park, as if something so ugly and embarrassing is best forgotten now that we are back in civilization. We hardly talk at all, beyond the minimal and polite things strangers disclose. Our breaths puff out in frozen clouds. So does Bruce’s.

  But then he politely suggests that maybe it’s time for me to look for a new boyfriend, and when I tell him once more that you are not my boyfriend, I can barely stop myself from crying again.

  The man saw you. He saw the tail end of what you did to me in that park. And even he isn’t sure of what he saw. He is nice, but even he thinks that perhaps it really was just a lovers’ quarrel. Even he considers the possibility that your account is the true one.

  When we reach my house, I rub the top of Bruce’s silky black head to say good-bye. “Thank you, Bruce. You’re very kind and good.” The man smiles. I tickle the soft folds of fur beneath Bruce’s snout.

  The man stands at the bottom of my path and watches as I walk to the door and open it. Then he rushes home to his wife and baby. And I rush straight into the hottest shower I can bear, where I scour off every trace of you.

  Afterward, what I want most is to swallow some sleeping tablets and crawl under my covers. But I don’t. As usual I force myself to pick up the black notebook. I make myself put down every detail of what you did to me tonight, though it is the last thing I feel like doing. I have no concrete proof of what happened in that park. But I write it all down as if it were a story. Perhaps the leaflets are not completely useless after all. They have taught me that a time will come when the story
matters a lot. And I already know that every story has a true name. I wish this story’s name could be different, but nothing will change it. This story is The Book of You.

  Wednesday

  CLARISSA WAS IN the jurors’ cloakroom. The smell of her shampoo was especially strong; she’d lathered and rinsed and repeated three times. She studied herself in the looking glass, surprised her face could be so pale despite her having scrubbed it so hard the night before. She half expected to see his fingerprints on her throat, but there was nothing; she’d even checked the back of her neck at home with a hand mirror. It occurred to her that he had exercised quite deliberate control over the amount of pressure he applied.

  Her phone signaled an email, startling her—she’d meant to switch it off. It was from Hannah. They’d been taking the same evening Pilates class for the past year. Hannah wondered where Clarissa had been the last few weeks, and whether she’d like to go for a drink after Thursday’s class.

  I want your friends to be my friends.

  Rafe had targeted Rowena. Maybe he’d hurt Hannah. Maybe he’d already got to her and would be waiting in the pub with her if Clarissa turned up.

  She emailed back that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the class anymore, and was busy tomorrow night. Then she switched off the phone, knowing he’d isolated her even more. He’d done what he set out to do. It was all in the leaflets.

  She was washing her hands again when Wendy came in. Wendy was twenty-three and had shown Clarissa pictures of her boyfriend. She met him for lunch each day and proudly took his shirts to the dry cleaner’s, enjoying the new game of playing house. Clarissa had silently shaken herself for the shot of jealousy that went through her heart.

  “Look.” Wendy was clutching the center of her skirt. Her white-blond, straight-as-straw hair fell over her pretty pink face. The navy polyester was sliced to the top of her thighs. “It’s one of my office skirts. I need to run into work after court today.”

  Clarissa knew that Wendy was a secretary for a software company.

  “I’m thinking that slash wasn’t originally part of the design,” Clarissa said, glad to be reminded that catastrophes could sometimes be of a relatively mild and easily reparable order.

  “I caught it getting off the bus.” Wendy tried to smile. “The defendants will love it. I don’t think they get too many treats.”

  Clarissa moved away from the one hand dryer that actually worked, though she wanted to put her whole freezing body beneath the stream of hot air. She rummaged for her hand-sewing kit, assembled by her mother in a bag made from scraps of poppy-and-daisy-patterned fabric. Wendy peered at the contents as if they were instruments for performing brain surgery. “I can mend it for you,” Clarissa said. There was self-interest as well as kindness in the offer; needlework always calmed her, and she liked Wendy.

  Five minutes later they were in the quiet area. Wendy was in a chair. Clarissa kneeled on the blue carpet before her, stitching from the top of the gash toward the hem.

  She was trying to ignore the fact that her fingers were stiff and her arms were aching from the way he’d gripped them. The skin on her wrist was patchy and red and tender, as if he’d given her an Indian burn with his leather gloves. She’d deliberately chosen a top with long, fitted sleeves to hide the marks, though she’d made herself take a photograph of them early that morning. It had seemed a futile thing to do, but she’d reasoned with herself that even if the image proved nothing on its own, it might help later as part of a larger picture.

  Robert walked in, raising a mildly quizzical brow.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Wendy said, laughing.

  He sat down and opened a book, his eyes studiously glued to the pages.

  Clarissa tried to concentrate on the skirt and not look too much at Robert. She reached for the scissors.

  “Any other hidden talents,” Robert asked, “aside from being a couture seamstress?”

  She couldn’t stop herself from replaying Rafe’s voice. I know your hidden talents.

  “Just the one.” She snipped the thread. “But I’ll be showing at London Fashion Week. Under a top-secret label.” She smoothed Wendy’s skirt and stood up. “Done. Fifteen-minute repair.”

  She couldn’t stop asking herself why he was wearing the gloves. She couldn’t stop herself imagining the most frightening reasons.

  “I want to know the label,” Wendy said. “I’ll auction my skirt as a Clarissa original.”

  She couldn’t stop wondering, over and over again, what she might have escaped.

  “My secrets die with me,” she said.

  The usher appeared to check if they’d finished, and Wendy hurried over to talk to him.

  She couldn’t stop reminding herself that he’d only touched the surface of her. She couldn’t stop trying to convince herself that she had washed him all away.

  She knew Robert had deliberately hung back so he could walk with her up the stairs to Court 12. “How can I find out your secrets?” he said with a quiet smile.

  She couldn’t stop letting him poison everything else; she had to stop that.

  “I’d probably hand them all over, for you,” she said lightly. “But you mustn’t ever say I didn’t warn you. Some of my secrets aren’t very pretty.”

  “I might have a few skeletons in my own cupboard,” he said.

  SPARKLE’S BARRISTER WAS covered in acne and made Clarissa think of a bullying schoolboy. “The very day of your police medical exam, you went and met Mr. Sparkle. Why would you leave a place of safety, the police station, to meet this supposedly violent and terrifying kidnapper you’d just escaped?”

  “Patronizing git,” Annie muttered, quite discernibly.

  WHY DID YOU go and meet Mr. Solmes in the park?

  That’s what Clarissa would be asked if she went to the police and complained.

  You wouldn’t have gone alone to that park unless you wanted to see him. He came to the public gallery the day before to visit you, and you spent time with him afterward. You had dinner with him and your best friend the previous week. Clearly you are very well acquainted.

  That’s what they would say.

  You were never in any danger, and you know it. You were even seen holding hands. You know very well that Mr. Solmes never threatened you. You were a willing participant in that conversation. You said yes multiple times to Mr. Solmes’s requests; then you changed your mind without bothering to communicate this to him. Now you’re out for revenge. You have since refused all of Mr. Solmes’s reasonable attempts to reach an amicable understanding.

  She’d already spent enough time in Court 12 to know how it worked.

  Mr. Solmes tells us that you have recently started to take sleeping pills. Clearly you are not stable.

  They’d say that, too, with no mention of how Mr. Solmes came by the information, or what was driving her to take them.

  You were unsteady on your feet. When you slipped, Mr. Solmes intervened to prevent you from falling and injuring yourself. For that—and the barely detectable mark on your wrist which resulted from his catching you—you rewarded him with false allegations of assault and attempted kidnapping. No good deed goes unpunished.

  That’s how they would conclude.

  MISS LOCKYER SHOOK her head in weary disagreement. “The police wanted me to go. They said to act normal, not to let Sparkle suspect I was helping them. And I needed drugs.”

  Sparkle looked like he was trying to suppress his laughter in church.

  “It’s certainly true that you had the police eating out of your hand.”

  “They were kind to me, yes.” She swallowed hard. “Go ahead and make something dirty out of that, too. You lot are good at that. It’s not hard for you to do with me, is it?”

  It’s not hard for them to do with anybody, Clarissa thought.

  Wednesday, February 11, 12:50 p.m.

  Annie and I are wandering through the outside market during lunch. I am sipping coffee. Annie is eating a hummus sandwich
from the deli stall. I have bought a bottle of organic grape juice. Annie has bought a pot of clotted cream, an apple cake, and a huge trout.

  “Get some steak,” Annie says. “You look like you could use some iron.”

  “The locker room’s going to smell just lovely, Annie. I won’t tell anyone who’s to blame.”

  “Oily fish is good for kids.”

  I can’t help wrinkling my nose. “If you can make them eat it. Those googly eyes will freak them out. I hope you’ll decapitate it first.”

  Instead of the exasperated nudge I expect in response, Annie leans toward me. She speaks in a low voice. “That man keeps staring at you. The one by the butcher’s stall.”

  I know it is you before I turn to look. My eyes are on you for only a few seconds. I tear them away as if frightened that they will meet yours and I will be turned to stone. But I take in your navy UCLA sweatshirt, your jeans, your dark trainers. I take in the fact that you are not wearing the leather gloves.

  “Do you know him? Do you want me to leave you to talk to him?”

  “No. God, no. Please don’t leave. I don’t want to talk to him.” I don’t realize that I am clutching Annie’s arm until she loosens my fingers, though she places her hand over them, gently, for a few seconds.

  “He looks mean, Clarissa. He looks angry. He’s glaring at you. He looks—I don’t know—as if he’s trying on purpose to look intimidating. Kind of like the defendant who smacked and punched Miss Lockyer and burned her earring. What’s his name again?”

  “Godfrey,” I say.

  “That’s the one. Except that your man’s much better at being menacing.”

  “He’s not my man, Annie. Please don’t ever say that.” I glance at my watch, a mere ritual, as if ordinary gestures have power, but I don’t take in what it says. “We’d better get back.”

  “He’s following us. Who is he?”

  “Someone I used to know. Don’t look at him. Ignore him.”

  Telling others can strengthen evidence and provide corroboration, thereby increasing the likelihood of a prosecution.

  My voice is very quiet. “I might—at some stage—I might need you to say you saw him here. Would that be okay?”