ANNIE AND CLARISSA were inspecting the cloakroom, making sure it was deserted.
Annie’s words practically burst from her. “I hate obsessed women.” Unusually, Annie had makeup on. She was wearing a blue pencil skirt and a low-cut black blouse that she’d hidden from the defendants beneath a cardigan she’d just removed and stuffed in her bag.
“You look so pretty, Annie,” Clarissa said.
Annie lifted her shoulders and made a face and shook her head in dismissal of the compliment. “I’m thirty-five, Clarissa. I’m a boring accountant, and I look like one.”
“Accountants aren’t boring. They know everyone’s secrets. And accountants look as different from one another as anyone else. You’re beautiful—and there’s no one accountant look.”
“My husband’s new girlfriend is a twenty-five-year-old fitness instructor, and she definitely looks like one.” Annie puffed out a little snort of something that was almost a laugh. “He’s too dazzled to notice that since he left, our six-year-old’s index finger is on a constant loop between her nose and her mouth, she scratches her bottom every five seconds, and she’s started doing this jutting thing with her head that makes her look like a turkey.”
“I did all that as a child. I grew out of it. Mostly.” Annie managed a smile, and Clarissa went on. “You’ll help her through it. I know you will. You’ll do whatever you have to do. And it sounds like a temporary thing, with a clear reason for why it’s started happening. Not like there’s anything medically wrong.”
Annie nodded and gave Clarissa a gentle push toward one of the sinks. “Wash your hands. We have to stop meeting like this.”
The two of them waved their hands about after they’d finished, not even bothering to try the always-broken dryers, then walked out of the jurors’ waiting area and down the stairs. No Robert, Clarissa saw. She wondered where he’d rushed off to.
They paused outside the revolving doors. Clarissa glanced up the road with a mixture of hope that she’d see Robert after all and fear that she’d see Rafe. She saw neither, and her disappointment at Robert’s absence was greater than her relief at Rafe’s.
“I must run,” Annie said. “My husband—or whatever it is I should call him—is delivering Lucy. They’re meeting me at that burger place around the corner. Happy families.”
Clarissa picked a piece of fluff from Annie’s dark hair. “He’ll see what he’s missing.”
Annie’s eyes welled up. “Thank you.” She gave Clarissa’s arm a squeeze. “Funny duchess,” she said fondly. And then she turned and hurried away. Clarissa waited until Annie was safely out of sight before she did, too.
Wednesday, February 18, 5:45 p.m.
At least you aren’t waiting for me in person when I get home. But Miss Norton has left an envelope on the white shelf, reflected in the gold-framed mirror on the wall above it. Inside, on a small cream card, you’ve written five words. I dream of you, still.
I try not to let myself imagine what you do to me in your dreams. I wonder how I got myself into them. Can I get myself out if I make sense of how it happened? Is that the key? I want a spell to unwind time, to spool it back to the moment just before it all went wrong, so I can send it forward again in a better direction. The trouble is working out which instant was the crucial one.
But hindsight only shows me that I couldn’t have stopped you. Nothing I could have done would have stopped you, however clearly I can see you coming when I look back.
Thursday
Thursday, February 19, 8:13 a.m.
You are standing between the station’s dark-green double doors. If I want to go in, I must pass within a foot of you. That’s why you chose this position. I whirl around to try the other entrances, only to find they’re both sealed.
You smirk when I return after a few seconds, watching me shrink myself as far away from you as I can as I walk in. I’m so close to the door frame I bash my funny bone against it. You follow me to the queue, right behind me. I want to behave as if you’re a mere shadow I can’t see or hear, but it’s difficult when I’m rubbing my elbow to stop the weird numbness. Because of the risk of bumping you, I have to suppress the urge to flap my arm up and down like a mad chicken.
You do not speak until I get to the ticket gate. That’s when you move in. As I hurriedly feed my ticket through, counting the microseconds for the turnstile to release, you whisper, “You look so pretty in your sleep, Clarissa.” This is you in nice mode as opposed to angry mode. The ticket pops up, the turnstile snaps, and I push through.
You don’t see me when my knees buckle in the tunnel. But I quickly pick myself up and stumble up the stairs and get myself onto the train and fall into a seat, realizing that my body is becoming unglued. You are ungluing it. Ungluing me. Piece by piece.
The man beside me is staring, and asks if I’m okay, and I don’t think I can speak, so I gulp and make myself nod yes. He hesitates but turns back to his newspaper.
I have torn a stocking, and it’s sticking to my skinned knee, but it’s only a minor scrape. The tips of my fingers are tingling, as if they are thawing after frostbite, but I know it’s not the fault of the cold or my funny bone.
I consider phoning my doctor’s secretary during lunch to see if she can get him to post me a prescription for antianxiety medication. But I decide against it, remembering how Lottie had taken antianxiety tablets. I’m already following her too closely down the sleeping-pill path. And I know that more drugs will not make you go away. The cliché about needing to treat the problem and not the symptom is completely true. I know that to neutralize my anxiety would be very foolish. That anxiety is warning me that there is danger, something I can’t allow myself to ignore.
THE DAY WAS a carnival of fear. One witness after another shot nervous looks at the blue screen as if to check that it hadn’t suddenly become transparent. Each and every shaking, quaking wreck claimed that their heads had been so messed up with drugs they didn’t remember saying or doing or seeing anything. Annie swore and muttered and nodded and hissed and looked as if she wanted to kill them all.
THEY WERE WALKING to the train station again, side by side but not touching. It was sleeting. Robert was holding an umbrella over both of their heads. Clarissa liked this very much and was working hard to seem coherent. More and more clearly, she saw that Robert was an unfailing Rafe repellent: he wouldn’t come near her when she was with Robert. She saw also that it hadn’t been an accident that Rafe had left her alone until Henry left.
A car slowed alongside them. A stab of fear clutched her stomach. But the face peering at them was not Rafe’s. Waves of relief went through her. Robert nodded in greeting, and Mr. Tourville returned the gesture before driving away.
“He is preposterous, isn’t he, Robert?” she said. “It’s not just me?”
“It’s just you.”
She considered the possibility with intense mock seriousness for a few seconds. Then she shook her head to confirm her confidence in him. “Do you think we’ll be kicked off for walking together? We’re sharing an umbrella. Mr. Tourville might report us to the judge.”
“Not against any rules I’ve found.”
“Have you looked?”
“We can’t be the only ones.” His phone was ringing, but he made no move to answer it.
“You’re popular.”
“I’ll ignore this one.”
“If your fingers are tired, I can text for you again.”
“How helpful you are. But I think Jack’s had enough excitement lately.”
“I hope he greeted you warmly when you got to the pub last week.”
“A great smacking kiss, Clarissa. Our relationship will never be the same again. He calls me his beloved now, and I owe it all to you.”
“That’s very sweet. I like to help along friendships whenever I can.”
“You’re too kind.”
The sleet had stopped. She didn’t know how long the windscreen wipers on the passing cars had been off. She knew only that s
he was sorry when he closed the umbrella.
Thursday, February 19, 9:00 p.m.
I’m in my sewing room, hemming a skirt. I will wear it tomorrow with boots and a clingy black cashmere sweater. It is brown and mock-suede, slightly A-line, above the knee. It fastens with silver buttons up the center. I am secretly hoping Robert will like it—I’ve caught his eyes flicking over me before when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Just as I finish, the smoke detector starts to scream and I rush into the kitchen. The lentil soup I set to cook has boiled away to thick, inedible sludge. I do this kind of thing a lot. I switch off the gas and snap on the extractor fan to clear the smoke.
I climb onto a chair so I can reach the smoke detector’s red button. I push it in with a satisfying plunge. Even in the new silence my eardrums continue to vibrate.
On the countertop are the letters I grabbed before coming up to the flat. I’d tossed them there, nervously, putting off examining them until I’d finished my skirt.
There is nothing remarkable about the envelope I find in the middle of the pile, but I know it’s from you as soon as I see it. I have a kind of instinct for it now. I pull out the white sheet of paper, unfold it, and read.
You know The Arabian Nights, Clarissa. You know what King Shahryar did to his first wife, for being faithless, and to her lover. You know what he did to the ones who followed her, after he’d enjoyed the wedding night, Clarissa, to make sure they had no chance to betray him.
My chest squeezes, and I wonder briefly if this is a heart attack. My legs become things that will not hold my weight. I crumple onto the charcoal-blue slate. I’m not sure how long I stay there, sobbing into my own lap, trying to replay my own life. How many snapshots have you stolen from it? Watching when I know. Watching when I don’t know.
And to her lover.
Even though Robert isn’t my lover, you imagine that I would like him to be, and you want me to know that you are watching him, too. I’m furious with myself for letting this happen to him. I can’t pretend anymore that Robert is too big and strong for you to hurt.
I begin to stand, curling my fingers around the top of the oven to heave myself up. My left hand presses hard against the cast-iron saucepan, still fire-hot. I cry out, staggering to the sink and plunging my skin beneath a stream of icy water. Already, inch-long, angry red strips are visible on my ring and middle fingers. I blow out little puffs of air, like a woman in labor.
I abandon the kitchen mess, leaving the letter where I dropped it. I will stuff it in the back of the living-room cupboard with your other things later.
I wrap my fingers in a dripping-wet washcloth. They are throbbing fiercely. I swallow some painkillers with sleeping medication added to them that I bought when Henry took me to New York two years ago. The pain dissolves the tight locks I normally keep on all memories of how happy he’d made me then, so that my heart is burning, too.
You have done this. It is your fault. As if you’d taken an iron and pressed it into my fingers yourself.
Friday
Friday, February 20, 8:03 a.m.
As I walk from my front door to the taxi, I see that the black rubbish bag I left outside is gone and my recycling box is empty, though all the others on my street are untouched. It doesn’t matter. You will find nothing of interest in any of it.
You are positioned in front of the station when the taxi drops me off. You watch me as though I’m a scientific experiment whose reaction you are awaiting.
Wordlessly, you follow me in, making me catch my breath and shake and feel my face redden as I try to act like you aren’t here. Would you be pleased to know the bandages on my fingers are because of you? I do not tell you. I do not look at you.
I drop my season ticket wallet as I hold it clumsily in my bad left hand while attempting to extract the ticket with my right. I bend to pick it up, my face reddening more as the queue builds behind me. At last, I manage to feed my card through the ticket gate. All the time your eyes are on me. I can feel them. Serious and intent and only on me. This time, you feed your own ticket through and follow. You walk through the tunnel beside me.
There is a rushing in my ears. Although I can see their mouths moving, the voices of the people around me sound as if they are coming from far away. It is like being in a surrealist film.
“What happened to your hand, Clarissa?”
Or a bizarre children’s cartoon. People look so large, zooming toward me and swerving out of my path just in the nick of time.
“Would you like some company on the train, Clarissa?”
The tunnel is growing darker. I blink my eyes rapidly, hard, trying to squeeze away the mist that seems to be gathering.
“Been reading any good fairy tales lately, Clarissa?”
My breathing is heavy and fast.
“Few people understand them as well as we do, Clarissa.”
I can’t get enough air.
“Clarissa? Clarissa. Clarissa.” Your face is above mine, your tongue darting out to lick your lips, quickly, like a reptile. “I have the missing piece, Clarissa.” Your hands are under my arms. I am slipping to the ground.
I open my eyes. The tunnel is very bright. I am lying on my left side. The chill of the concrete beneath the slushy tiles is seeping through my clothes and into my skin. My head is resting on a strange coat.
A railway guard and a plump, middle-aged woman are crouched beside me. The woman is tugging at my skirt. I nearly swat her hands away, but that’s when I see how exposed I am. The skirt’s ridden up so much that the flesh above my stockings is showing. She’s trying to cover me.
People slow to stare as they walk by: I am the car crash.
I struggle up, first sitting, then getting to my feet and leaning against one of the huge framed advertising posters lit up on the tunnel wall. It is for the Cinderella I refused to meet you at. I am searching the tunnel, but I don’t see you anywhere. The guard and the woman are telling me I fainted and it should be investigated; they want to call an ambulance or at least put me in a taxi home.
The woman picks up her coat, and I see the damp splashes of trampled, soiled snow that have stained it. I apologize, thanking her again for her kindness, offering money for dry cleaning, but she refuses.
“A man caught you,” she says. “You’d have fallen hard and hurt yourself if it hadn’t been for him. He was so careful and gentle with you before he had to run for his train.”
You made yourself look like a hero, a rescuer. The thought makes me lean more heavily against the poster. My knees are weak again. I fear I’m going to slide down the tunnel wall—bump, bump, bump with my back along it—and land in a little heap. If ever you need witnesses, they’ll testify that you’re a chivalrous knight.
The guard hands me my newly made bag, and I loop it over my shoulder, promising that I’m fine now, really fine, and much better for their care, but I have to get to Bristol. Graying and gentlemanly, he insists on seeing me up to the platform and onto the train.
SHE WAS SITTING with Robert at one of the horrible plastic tables. She kept her bandaged hand in her lap and out of his line of vision. The burned skin was pulling. Already her fingers were covered in blisters. At least it wasn’t her writing hand and wouldn’t affect her note-taking. She’d swallowed three ibuprofen on an empty stomach before leaving her flat, imagining her mother frowning at her for overdosing. That might have contributed to the fainting. At least the drugs were working and her head wasn’t pounding anymore.
It was small, the injury to her fingers. It was nothing compared to the things Robert must see every day. Yet everything about her felt raw, like her skin. She thought she probably looked normal but feared she might, mortifyingly, start to cry.
Robert squinted slightly. “You look sad.”
She wanted to form a smile to deny this but managed only to bite her lip, another twinge of guilt for bringing him to Rafe’s notice but not having the courage to tell him. What sane man would want to be involved with her when she
was in such a mess? And to tell Robert would presume a degree of closeness, even of obligation between them, that she wasn’t confident of. It was way too much to lay on him.
But she knew it wasn’t fair to do nothing. She tried again to think about how she could warn him to be alert. Subtlety completely failed her; she just blurted it out: “You can defend yourself, can’t you?”
“I’m six foot three. I boxed and fenced every weekend when I was a boy, and I coach kids in both. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I can see that,” she said.
“I once had to knock a guy out who tried to stop us going in to save his wife.”
She managed to laugh, but only feebly. “Did you save her?”
“Yep. Not a mark on her. But he had a black eye.”
She managed to smile, but only briefly. “I was thinking about how hard it must be. The not-being-able-to-save-people part of it. Having to see them suffer. Maybe being able to live with that is the bravest thing of all.”
“You get used to it. No bravery involved.”
“There’s something,” she said, “that I was wondering about.”
“You’re not going to ask me to introduce you to Jack, are you?”
“It’s a little soon. Maybe in a week or two.”
“Very wise.” He was soon serious again. “What were you wondering about?”
“Is it very hard,” she asked, “when a child dies?”
“It’s just another body, Clarissa.” He reached over the table, gently touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I can see that I’ve shocked you. Yes, in some ways it’s worse when it’s a child—I was wrong to think the lie would be easier for you than the truth. But you’re fragile today, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Each death is sad in its own way. The deaths we see aren’t necessary. They’re premature. But I forget sometimes how it seems to others. You get hardened to all the death. You have to, to keep doing it. Most of us, we don’t talk about it except to other firefighters, so I’m not practiced at that. I’m not careful enough, around you, of how I talk.”
The Book of You: A Novel Page 14
