“What’s really going on?”
He looked so surprised that Maddy began to get angry. She had promised herself she would stay calm.
“I’m not a total idiot,” she said. “Grace has told me everything.”
“Grace? What’s Grace got to do with this?”
So that was it. His strategy was going to be blanket denial. She hadn’t been prepared for that.
“Grace has told me all about you and her.”
“Me and her?”
“About you going out with her.”
“Me going out with Grace? Grace told you that?”
“Yes.”
He burst into laughter.
“And you believed her?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Maddy, I’m not going out with Grace. I’ve never done anything with Grace. My girlfriend’s Gemma Page. Everyone knows that. Grace has been having you on.”
The more he denied it the angrier Maddy became. He must think she was an imbecile.
“I’m the one you sent the emails to, Joe. Remember? I’ve still got them. You can’t just pretend it all didn’t happen.”
“What emails?”
“The emails you sent me.”
“I never sent you any emails.”
“Stop this, Joe! You can’t just make up your own reality. I’ve got them on my laptop. They exist. You and Grace used me as a cover to stop Gemma guessing about you. Grace has told me everything.”
“Grace Carey told you I sent you emails?”
“I’ve got the emails! The emails are real!”
He looked so bewildered that for the first time she began to doubt her own version of events. But it was true: she hadn’t dreamed the emails.
“I can show you them.”
“I’d like you to do that, Maddy. Something’s seriously not right here. What did you mean about stopping Gemma guessing?”
“About you and Grace.”
“If I was having a thing with Grace, which I’m not, why wouldn’t Gemma know anyway?”
“Because of her being pregnant.”
“What!”
“You’re trying to make her get rid of it.”
“Gemma is not pregnant, Maddy.”
“Grace told me. That’s why you sent me the emails.”
Joe put both his hands on her shoulders as if to steady her, and looked directly into her eyes.
“Okay. Let’s take this one step at a time. One, Gemma isn’t pregnant. Ask her. Two, I’ve never had any kind of a thing with Grace Carey. Three, I’ve never sent you any emails. I don’t even know your email address. Four, I love Gemma.”
Maddy closed her eyes. She felt giddy. Joe sounded horribly convincing. Was it possible there might be a whole other explanation?
“You’re on Hotmail, right?”
“No. I’m on Googlemail.”
“What’s your address?”
“[email protected]”
“Have you ever had a Hotmail address?”
“No. Hotmail’s rubbish. They cut you off if you don’t keep on using it. And you know what? Anyone can open a Hotmail account in any name they like.”
“JoeFinn41.”
“JoeFinn41?”
“That’s who sent me the emails.”
“And you thought it was me?”
“Yes. It was you. The emails talked about things you and I talked about in school.”
“We’ve hardly talked about anything.”
“Cyril the camel.”
“The emails were about Cyril the camel?”
“Yes.”
“Someone’s playing a joke on you, Maddy. What else did the emails say?”
“Nothing much.”
Now that Maddy had begun to doubt everything that had happened to her, her anger at Joe was turning to shame. But if the emails to her were fake, then he had never read the emails she had sent back. That meant he knew nothing about her crush on him.
Then she remembered the emails about Leo. Surely they could only have come from Joe.
“You said things about Leo, for me to tell my sister. About him being mean and unstable.”
“That wasn’t me, Maddy.”
“Imo phoned Leo and he talked to you about it.”
“No. Never.”
“Joe, everyone can’t be lying! Are you saying that Imo and Leo and Grace all made this stuff up together? Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
“I mean, who would do that?”
“It has to be Grace Carey,” he said. “But why? What have I done to her to make her tell all these lies about me?”
“Grace,” said Maddy. “You think it’s Grace?”
“As far as I can tell, this whole story has been fed to you by Grace. But I’ve no idea why.”
Already a new reality was beginning to take shape in Maddy’s mind. That story about turning Gemma’s suspicions on to her: it didn’t really make any sense. And now that she looked back she realized that Joe’s behavior, which had seemed strange at the time, stopped looking strange if you took away the emails. The moment at the school gates when Joe hadn’t seemed to understand her. The meeting outside the cinema. His untroubled cheeriness. It all made sense now. What didn’t make sense was Grace.
“Let me get changed,” Joe said, “and we’ll go and find Gemma. I want her to tell you for herself that this is all total bullshit.”
“No, it’s okay. I’d rather just forget about it.”
“So do you believe me now?”
“I suppose I have to.”
“I’m really sorry about this, Maddy. Someone’s played a shitty trick on both of us.”
“Looks like it.”
“I’ve got an idea or two. I’m going to sort this thing out. And when I do, I’ll tell you.”
“I think it must be Grace. I’ll talk to her. Leave it to me.”
They both stood there for a moment by the tennis courts, wanting to go, not able to go. It didn’t feel like it was properly over, whatever it was that had taken place between them.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” said Joe. “I mean, like when these emails started coming.”
“You said not to.”
“I said not to?”
“You said that I was to go on the same as ever at school. Like, it was to be a secret.”
“Somebody really thought this one out.”
“Only it turns out it wasn’t you.”
“Why was it supposed to be a secret?”
“Because of Gemma.”
“So I was supposed to be cheating on Gemma with Grace Carey and with you too?”
“Just forget about it. It was just Grace playing games with us. No harm done. I’m glad I sorted it out in the end.”
“Even so, I’d like to know why. Do you think Grace was trying to break me and Gemma up or something?”
“I don’t know, Joe. I’m a bit confused, to tell you the truth.”
“Gemma and me have been together since we were sixteen. People think Gemma’s dumb because she’s pretty, but she’s not dumb at all. She’s just very sweet-natured. She sees the good in people, always. When I tell her about this I know what she’ll say. She’ll say, Grace can’t have meant any harm, she must have thought it was all a game, she wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. Gemma thinks that way because she’d never want to hurt anyone herself. She’s a good person, she really is. I’ll tell you what she is. She’s innocent. I think that’s what I love so much about her.”
If Maddy had any remaining doubts this speech laid them to rest. It did more than that. It restored to her a Joe she could like and respect.
“You’d better go and get changed,” she said. “And you don’t have to tell Gemma. It would only upset her.”
“I can’t not tell her,” said Joe. “We tell each other everything.”
“Okay.”
He gave her his cheery wave and loped back past the tennis courts to the changing room.
Where was Grace? She would probably answer her phone if she called, but it wasn’t the sort of conversation she wanted to have over the phone. She needed to see her face to face.
She could find Cath, and amaze her with the new revelations. She did want to share it all with Cath, to puzzle out with her what had been going on. But not quite yet.
Maddy found herself in a strange state. She was no longer miserable, the way she’d been after losing Joe’s love—his imagined love. She wasn’t angry, the way seeing her mother in tears had made her angry. She was what she’d said to Joe: confused. She felt as if she’d been stirred up inside with a big wooden spoon and now none of her thoughts and feelings were where they used to be. It was a little frightening, like being lost, or being in a country where you don’t speak the language.
But here was a strange thing: she no longer felt her life had no meaning. It wasn’t that she’d found a meaning, far from it. What she’d found was the moreness of things. There was so much more than she’d realized before. People were much more complicated. Joe had been desirable, then hateful, then admirable, all within a few days. Her father had been missed, hated, pitied, loved, all within a span of forty-eight hours.
I know nothing, Maddy said to herself. I’ve been going about in a dream. Maybe even now I’m only half awake.
It was like coming out of a curtained room into bright daylight. She was dazzled, overwhelmed. There was so much to see, so much to know. And not just about this startling new world. About herself.
I don’t know who I am. I’m not who I thought I was. I’m more. I’m complicated in ways I’ve never realized before. Not just happy or sad, but both, and all the shades in-between, all the time. I can be afraid of the melting glaciers and still turn up the radiator in my room. I can buy cheap jeans in Primark and still feel sorry for exploited garment workers. I can contradict myself. I’m not supposed to be simple. I’m complicated. I’m a mess. I can think a hundred different things at once. I’m one insignificant creature and I’m the center of the universe. My existence has no meaning and my existence is its own meaning. I am therefore I am.
Where was Rich? He was the one she wanted to talk to about all her new thoughts. Not Cath, not Grace. She cursed Rich all over again for not having a phone. Right now she wanted to be with Rich more than any other person in the world. Typical male. Never there when you need them.
So I suppose I’ll just have to go and find him.
26
All at once the feelings
Maddy made her way down the street where Rich lived, and found herself paying attention to her surroundings. In the strange new mood that possessed her she felt as if she was seeing everything for the first time. The houses she was passing were large detached Edwardian villas divided by hedges or walls. How odd it must be to live in a street. For Maddy as for everyone her own house was the original, the house of which all others were distorted copies. Her house was out of town and flanked by woods and fields. Here every house had others beside it, pretending to be just as important. Surely it made you feel less special living in a street, living in a house that had a bay window and a porch and high gables just like the house next door. The small front gardens were all different, and the front doors were painted in different colors; but these were homes that identified themselves by numbers. The Rosses lived at Number 47. How could you feel individual if you lived in a house known only by a number?
And yet Rich was individual. He was the most individual person she knew. He had said to her, “A whole lot of unusual stuff goes on in my head.” It was true. She thought of the Larkin poem, and the letter from the pope. Who thinks of things like that?
She opened the little iron gate and went up the path to Rich’s front door. The big bay window of the kindergarten room was decorated with transparent colored butterflies. There were no visible signs of life within.
She rang the bell. It jangled clearly in the hall beyond the door. No one appeared. She rang again.
It then occurred to her that Rich might have had some kind of accident. Maddy’s mother was such a proficient worrier that Maddy rarely worried for herself; but once begun she took to it with a dismaying facility. Perhaps Rich had electrocuted himself on the doll’s house lights. Perhaps he had been mugged on the way to school for the phone he did not possess. Perhaps he had severed an artery on a kitchen knife while unloading the dishwasher. When you started to think about it there were so many ways to be injured. So many ways to die.
She went back down the path and out through the iron gate. She stood, uncertain what to do, looking up and down the street.
A car appeared. Maddy tracked it with her gaze: it was dark blue, a high, boxy people-carrier. It came nearer. She recognized Rich’s father at the wheel. Too late to hide. She stood by the gate and watched the car pull up before her.
The entire family got out. Rich saw her with surprise; Kitty with curiosity. Maddy felt foolish.
“I was on my way home,” she said. And meeting Rich’s father’s gaze, “Rich hasn’t got a phone.”
“Gran’s dying,” said Kitty.
Now Rich was by Maddy’s side.
“We’ve been at the hospital all day,” he said. “Gran had another stroke.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.”
They all went into the house. Maddy was going to leave, but Rich seemed to expect her to go in with them.
“Gran’s in a coma,” he said.
“She’s going to die,” insisted Kitty.
“She might, darling,” said Mrs. Ross. “We don’t know. We have to be prepared.”
Kitty’s eyes fell on the stair-lift. She started to cry.
“Who’ll ride in her stair-lift?”
Mrs. Ross took her in her arms.
“You don’t want Gran to go on if she can’t talk or move or recognize any of us anymore.”
They gathered in the kitchen.
“I should go,” said Maddy. “If I’d known I wouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Where do you live, Maddy?” asked Mrs. Ross.
“Out on the old North Road. The shop with the camel.”
“Oh, yes. I know. It’s a wonderful shop.”
“I’ll walk with you,” said Rich. “I’d like to get out. I’ve been in the hospital all day.”
“So have I,” said Kitty. “But I don’t want to come too.”
So Maddy and Rich set off together.
At first Rich didn’t seem to want to talk.
“I’m really sorry about your gran,” said Maddy.
“It’s sad,” said Rich. “They kept doing all these tests on her and she couldn’t talk or anything. She was just all floppy.” Maddy could hear the edge of tears in his voice. “When she was young she was very beautiful. She had six proposals of marriage. Now this.”
“Will she really die?”
“I hope so. She’s almost not there already.”
They came to the junction with the road out of town. The tree-covered slope rose up on the far side.
“This is the start of my secret walk,” said Rich. “Up through the wood. That’s the way I’d go if I was on my own.”
“You do your secret walk. I’m okay going the rest of the way.”
“Or you could come too.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be alone?”
“No,” said Rich. “I’d rather be with you.”
As simple as that. Neither of them questioned it. The nearness of death made them unselfconscious.
They crossed the road and turned off up the rutted farm track. The late afternoon sun was still high above, the air warm. The track led up the rising slope into the trees.
“I’ve never met anyone else here,” said Rich. “I feel like it’s my private wood.”
“It’s beautiful.” Maddy looked through the galleries of tree trunks on either side. “I ought to know the names of all the trees but I don’t.”
“I think most of them
are beeches. That’s an oak.”
They climbed higher and higher, stopping from time to time to look back through gaps in the trees at the town below.
“Everyone leading their busy little lives,” said Rich. “Living and dreaming and dying.”
“And we don’t know any of it.”
“I’m glad. It would be too much.”
“Do you think there’s a lot of unhappiness?”
“More than we can ever know,” said Rich.
They reached the gate at the end of the wood.
“We could go up onto the top,” said Rich. “Or we could have a rest in the tree barn.”
“I’m all for a rest.”
The tree barn delighted Maddy.
“It’s got a tree growing inside it!”
“I love this place,” said Rich. “I don’t know why.”
“It’s amazing. It’s like being inside and outside both at the same time.”
They went in under the ash tree’s spreading branches. Maddy felt the dead leaves that were heaped on the ground.
“Dry,” she said, surprised.
“It only gets wet here after heavy rain. The wall shelters it.”
Maddy sank down onto the soft leaves, grateful to take the weight off her weary legs.
“Oof!” she said. “You can tell I don’t take enough exercise.”
Rich sat down nearby. For a moment neither of them spoke.
“The doctors say Gran won’t last more than a few days,” Rich said. “She’ll have another stroke and that’ll be it.”
“So all you can do is wait.”
“I just can’t imagine her gone. She’s always been there.”
“It must be so strange.”
Maddy found she was thinking of her father. He’d always been there. Hard to imagine him gone.
“She has this Zimmer,” said Rich. “It makes such a special sound when she goes by on the landing. I hear it outside my room.” The beginnings of tears in his eyes once more. “Stupid the things you realize you’ll miss.”
“I came home yesterday,” said Maddy, “and found Mum crying in the kitchen. Dad says he wants to leave. He’s got this other woman in China.”
“Why in China?”
“That’s where he goes to buy furniture.”
Rich considered this in silence.
“Is he really going to leave?”
Rich and Mad Page 18
