The Book of You: A Novel

by Claire Kendal

The clinical psychologist asked me to start a new notebook. It’s handmade by my mother, covered in dusty plum fabric sprinkled with lily of the valley. The psychologist calls it a “Recovery Journal.” I flash the handwritten pages at her during our appointments to demonstrate what a sensible and sane patient I am. If I actually let her read it, though, she’d probably give me a big fat F for what I’m writing—and to whom I’m writing it.

  Tuesday, July 21

  My father is golfing with another retired teacher. My mother sits beside me in the soulless hospital waiting room. She is reading a newspaper while I try to think about anything other than the test results I’m about to be given.

  What I think about is you. What I spend way too much time thinking about is you.

  It is eighteen weeks since I’ve seen you. Eighteen weeks since you rescued me.

  Eighteen weeks since that man’s lawyer conned them into letting him out so he could break into my flat.

  The police arrested and charged him with the harassment and violence offences on the morning of Thursday, March 5. But the judge didn’t issue the restraining order until the afternoon of Friday, March 6. The catastrophic mistake was that they didn’t get him into court and before the judge within the twenty-four-hour legal deadline. That meant the restraining order he breached a few days later wasn’t legally valid, so they couldn’t keep him in prison for violating it.

  Would it have happened if DC Hughes hadn’t been away? I think even DC Hughes couldn’t have prevented his release for the legal technicality. But DC Hughes might have warned me that they’d freed him. He might have found some way to get him back in jail. He might have sent someone to watch over me, to stop him before he did the things he did. I’ve pieced that night together, or most of it, with the help of the sexual offences liaison officer. But I keep going over and over these contingencies, these countless what-ifs.

  I am torn from these thoughts when the doctor comes out to get me. He says hello to my mother, and she practically blushes in delight at the attention, despite the fact that she’s as scared as I am of what I’m about to find out. I give my mother’s hand a good-bye squeeze and rise to follow Dr. Haynes. My back is soaking wet, and I’m flashing between heat and chills.

  Sometimes I wonder if it is because of the things that happened that I am so sick, but Dr. Haynes says no. He says that extreme nausea like mine even has a name. Hyperemesis gravidarum. He says that some people think it’s what Charlotte Brontë died of, and I like it that Dr. Haynes knows such a thing. He says there’s a physiological basis for it. The multiple hospital admissions to get my hydration and electrolytes back up, as well as the anti-emetics I have to take each day, certainly feel physiological. I don’t think the clinical psychologist agrees with Dr. Haynes on this one, though.

  Dr. Haynes is very Oxbridgy and very kind and also very handsome in an intelligent superhero kind of way. In different circumstances, I would almost certainly have a crush on him; the different circumstances would be my never having met you.

  Dr. Haynes gives me a serious look. “I have the results back, Clarissa.”

  I thought I’d composed myself over the past two weeks, waiting for this moment. But icicles seem to pierce my heart.

  Dr. Haynes reaches across his desk to touch my hand. “The genetic tests eliminated the possibility that Rafe Solmes is the father of your baby.”

  I can feel my lips trembling, and my hands, and my eyelids vibrating, too, and I think it must be because my body is registering some kind of physical symptom of my relief. But Dr. Haynes tells me that twitching and tremors can be a rare side effect of the anti-emetics, and though he hopes it’s just a one-off, he wants to try me on a different medication. He says I’m very pale, and he makes me sip some water and climb onto the examination table to rest for a few minutes. He sits and writes in my notes, though he breaks off a few times to recheck my pulse and blood pressure.

  Even before I had proof, I had faith. I knew that baby was there as soon as we made it, when you woke me up after our first night together. But I mustn’t let myself think like that. For me to think of our first night together suggests we had a long series of nights together. There were only two nights. I tell myself that there will only ever be two.

  At last, Dr. Haynes lets me sit up, and I immediately start to babble. “I knew deep down it wasn’t his. The police asked me to have the test, and I was scared to refuse. I didn’t want them thinking I was motivated to kill him so that he couldn’t have any hold over me through the baby.”

  “Well, they couldn’t think that now. Based on dating scans and your early pregnancy hormone levels, you are twenty-one weeks pregnant. This means the egg was fertilized nineteen weeks ago. My report concludes that you conceived a week before you were assaulted; you couldn’t have known at the time of Mr. Solmes’s death that you were pregnant. I have consulted with other specialists. Their views concur with this, and are also part of the report.”

  They had plenty of his DNA to compare to the baby’s. I didn’t need your permission for the test. I didn’t need your DNA, either. Now that they have officially ruled him out, you are the only option. A process of elimination.

  “And there’s more good news. No genetic anomalies were detected.”

  I’d been so anxious about the paternity test I never thought to worry about the baby’s health. What kind of mother will I be?

  He pauses. “I can tell you the sex if you’d like to know.”

  “I think it’s a girl,” I say. “Is it?”

  Dr. Haynes is smiling so much I think he really does care. “Yes.”

  “I think she has dark hair and bright blue eyes like her father. I think she’s very beautiful.”

  He laughs. “We’ll have to wait until she’s born to see if you’re right about the hair and eyes, but there’s no doubt she’ll be beautiful. Shall we take a look at her? I know how concerned you were about the amniocentesis needle and the risk of miscarriage.”

  Dr. Haynes squirts cold jelly on my belly, and she pops onto the screen as soon as the probe touches my skin.

  Her lips are exactly like yours, Robert. She shapes them into a rosebud and blows me a kiss. I blow one back.

  Wednesday, July 22

  The sexual offences liaison officer is here. She isn’t wearing a police uniform. She’s wearing a navy skirt and a cream shirt that hang elegantly on her willowy frame.

  Compared to her, I am curvy, a new experience for me. My breasts are fuller beneath the white gauze blouse that is like the one Lottie wore her first day in court. My stomach makes a small mound above the stretchy waistband of yet another skirt my mother whipped up for me.

  The officer’s name is Eleanor, and that’s what she likes me to call her. Not PC This or DS That. Just Eleanor.

  You’d tell me I mustn’t let myself forget for an instant that even if those understanding nods are all sincere, Eleanor is still watching and listening for any crumb of intelligence she can gather so that they’ll have a big juicy file to send to the Crown Prosecution Service. You’d tell me that I shouldn’t swallow the police line that they’ve given Eleanor to me because they regard me as a surviving victim who needs a single point of contact for all police communications. You’d tell me that the police keep sending Eleanor here because they regard me as a suspect.

  Eleanor and I sit in my parents’ living room in the two armchairs inside the bay window, my usual place for the view of the sea. Two cups of tea sit on the table between us, where my mother left them before disappearing into the garden with my father.

  Eleanor pushes her black hair behind her ears and shoots a look of gentle straightness in my direction with her dark eyes. “I promised I’d never keep any information from you that I am permitted to disclose,” she says.

  “Is it the Crown Prosecution Service?” I am struggling to sound calm. “Are they going to charge me in connection with his death?”

  “There are a few final pieces of evidence for the police to gather before they sen
d the complete file to the CPS for a decision on whether to charge. I believe they’re awaiting some reports from your obstetrician?”

  “Those are on their way.”

  She nods. “Good. There’s also the coroner’s final report. It’s for your protection that the police need to be thorough. It’s a serious and complex case, Clarissa, involving a violent death. It’s always in the public interest to ensure a proper investigation is conducted.”

  “I just wish it were over with.”

  “I know it’s hard to have this hanging over you, but I want to stress again how very rare it is for the CPS to bring a prosecution in connection with the death of an intruder into somebody’s home. Especially when the intruder acted violently and had a weapon. There’s a strong argument that you used force to defend yourself and another person. Diminished responsibility is an important factor, too, given your head injuries.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly, though I don’t feel very okay.

  She takes a breath. “I already told you that the five defendants in that trial were found not guilty on all counts.”

  The judge let the other ten members of the jury go into deliberation without us. All five of the defendants walked free while I was still in hospital under police guard and you were having an operation on your leg.

  “It’s hardly a surprising result, given the way the defense barristers all tore Miss Lockyer to pieces.” I look down at my lap. “She was so brave.” I speak very softly, still not looking up. But then I do. I make myself. And I see that Eleanor is frowning.

  She unzips her brown leather portfolio. “The police thought you’d want to be informed.” She hands me a newspaper clipping.

  A verdict of death by misadventure was recorded at the inquest into the death of a popular 28-year-old Bath woman. Tragic Carlotta Lockyer died of an overdose on May 10. Coroner George Tomkins noted that significant amounts of heroin and crack cocaine were found in her body, and that their toxic effect had been enhanced by high levels of methadone in her bloodstream. Mr. John Lockyer, 78, told the hearing that his granddaughter had successfully completed a detoxification program but relapsed shortly before her death. He discovered her body on the bathroom floor when he returned from church.

  I hug myself and rock back and forth in the self-comforting behavior one of the police witnesses described Lottie engaging in. I sob wretchedly. Some bile chokes up and dribbles down my chin, and I wipe it with a tissue. Eleanor waits patiently until I’ve calmed down. I don’t know how much time passes until I do. I blow my nose loudly.

  “I can see how very, very sad you are,” Eleanor says. “I’m sad, too. So are my colleagues. She was a courageous young woman, and she fought a terrible fight.”

  I glare right into Eleanor’s night-sky eyes, trying but failing to unnerve her.

  “I can see you’re very angry, too, Clarissa,” she says. “That’s understandable.”

  “That article’s a fake. It was published last week, after the supposed inquest on July thirteenth. They don’t have those inquests that fast, just two months after someone dies. You said yourself that we’re still waiting for the coroner’s report on that man—he died four months ago—that’s twice as long a time. Lottie is somewhere else, somewhere far away, and the police want those men to think she’s dead so she can have a new safe life. That article’s a lie, to trick them.” I am snatching at hope. Maybe Laura did something like this, too.

  “I don’t think so, though it’s a clever theory and I’d like you to be right. We all would.”

  “You wouldn’t say. You might not even know.”

  “True on both counts,” Eleanor says.

  My father shouldn’t have named me Clarissa. Pollyanna would have been more fitting. But there can be no glad game here. Laura is lost, probably forever, and so is Lottie. I cannot save either of them now by making up silly stories.

  Thursday, July 23

  It’s therapy morning with Mrs. Lewen, the clinical psychologist. I had to promise to see her each week. That was the only way they’d agree to release me from hospital in Bath and make all of the arrangements with the police and doctors here in Brighton.

  Patient compliance is a phrase I’ve heard too many times.

  I hate the word compliance.

  Mrs. Lewen is in her late fifties, with short curly brown hair. She’s a few stone overweight and wears bright-colored caftans. Today’s is yellow and orange and purple. She looks like an earth mother, but I don’t really think she is.

  There’s a framed poster from the film of The Wizard of Oz on her wall. The main characters with their arms linked, about to skip off down the yellow brick road. Mrs. Lewen thinks there’s a life lesson in that film for everyone who ever watches it. I can’t imagine that you would like Mrs. Lewen much.

  Mrs. Lewen settles into a peach armchair and smiles expectantly. I’m huddled on the sofa that faces her, my legs curled beneath me. The sofa is peach, too. All of the furniture is upholstered in this supposedly tranquil peach, and I detest it. The walls are peach, too. If Mrs. Lewen ever tries to make me listen to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” there will be puke on the peach carpet.

  Last week’s subject was my face. The plastic surgeon’s gobbledygook clotted the air; Mrs. Lewen made me repeat his phrases as if they were medicine.

  The good news is that faces heal fast. My scar is one and a half inches long, a diagonal slash across my cheekbone. I measured it.

  We’re fortunate that it was a straight wound. My scar is swollen and pinched and puckered around the edges.

  Scars fade and flatten considerably over the first year. My scar is vividly red and raised.

  Superficial facial nerves come back, but it can take six to eight months. My face seems not to move properly around my scar, the way a person’s mouth feels after a shot of novocaine.

  Today, my initial silence is too long even for Mrs. Lewen. Usually she likes me to be the first to speak, but this time she quietly prompts me by asking what I’m thinking about.

  “Robert.” As soon as the word is out I stare into my weak black Earl Grey tea. I take a sip and imagine that my stomach slows in its churning.

  Mrs. Lewen prods me further. “You’re comfortably into your second trimester now. The pregnancy’s looking secure. Don’t you think Robert has a right to know?”

  Mrs. Lewen’s skin is very pink and slightly rough. Her cheeks are flushed. I wonder if she has high blood pressure.

  I shake my head. “He wouldn’t want the baby.”

  “You can’t know that. And you’re still pining for him, Clarissa.”

  Two years dead, you said. Within a minute of meeting me you said that that’s how long your wife had been gone. Within a minute of meeting me you told me the most outrageous lie anyone’s ever told me. Is it a tale you automatically spin to any woman you might possibly be interested in? Later, you actually said it was a road crash. You even supplied the time of day.

  Mrs. Fireman, that man said, putting his knife in my heart before he put it in my face.

  I must have exposed you. What happened to me had to have exposed you. There was no hiding me from her in the aftermath. Your horrifying knife wound and blood loss. The police interviews and visits. The witness statement. You were torn out of your normal life, too, because of what happened to me.

  Rape victims cannot be named. Even if they might also be murderers. What happened to me kept my name out of the press, but I don’t think you could have kept it out of your house.

  I imagine your wife. Make it go away, she must have said. Just make it go away. You are never, ever to see her again, she must have said. Perhaps you had no choice but to make me go away.

  Eleanor told me your leg was healing, but you’d always have a limp. She said you’ll need more operations. You’re probably fighting your own battle against post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Does your wife drive you to your hospital appointments? Help you with physiotherapy? Is she punishing you? Can your marriage recover from t
his? Do you want it to? I try not to let the questions take me over, but it isn’t easy. I try not to let myself wonder what she looks like.

  After Henry, I swore I’d never again let myself fall in love with a married man. That I’d never again do to another woman what I did to his wife. You took away my choice in this with your lie. I’d never have touched you if I’d known. Our baby wouldn’t exist if I’d known.

  Despite everything, I imagine myself kissing your leg, trying to kiss it better.

  “You could get in touch with Robert, you know,” Mrs. Lewen says. “You could find out with certainty the situation with his wife. The man who hurt you—he wasn’t a reliable source.”

  “The sexual offences liaison officer confirmed Robert’s still married. He lives with her.”

  Eleanor told me your wife was in London those two nights you spent with me. She was called away again, unexpectedly, the night you changed your mind and turned up and rescued me. Are you glad you did?

  “You can still find out more about him, why he did what he did.”

  “I should think that’s pretty obvious.”

  What must she feel, to know that her last-minute change of plans helped to save my life?

  “You’re not cynical, Clarissa. People do things for complex reasons. From what you’ve said of Robert, he’s a good man, even a heroic man. I’m not denying that what he did to you was wrong, but you must have confused him badly for him to have acted so out of character.”

  Was it the promise of seven weeks out of your own life? With me added to make the time of the trial even more memorable and exciting? Maybe you wanted to secure my part in it all with that whopper of a lie. You said you saw me on the train that first day. Maybe you decided then and there that you’d reel me in because you knew your wife would be away in six weeks’ time: an opportunity you didn’t want to miss. Maybe you even saw I was reading Keats and that’s why you said you liked him—you notice everything.

  You must have imagined you’d go straight back to how it all was, once the holiday was over. You must have imagined I wouldn’t leave the faintest trace or imprint on you.