by S. E. Lynes
Yes, something like that. They’re a family now. Peter is nearly forty. He can’t expect to hold on to his youth for ever.
Fifteen
The week goes pleasantly enough. Samantha takes her cue from Peter, who doesn’t mention the poem again, though that doesn’t stop her students flying about her mind like spirits. She reminds herself over and over that the poem didn’t mention any names, that there’s no point dwelling on it, that to talk about it is to give it oxygen.
And she doesn’t mention the pills.
How easily and how soon she has slipped into secrecy, she thinks sometimes. She remembers her mother’s one daily cigarette, smoked at the back of the farmhouse. Don’t tell your dad was all she said when Samantha caught her. And despite being barely twelve, Samantha understood that this was a confidence never to be broken, that it had to do with the unique and subterranean solidarity of her sex, the secret armoury of survival in a world made by and for men. Her father’s secrets were a different kind. They were weapons of destruction.
And so, in secret, she checks the sofa every day and finds the pouch of pills still there. On the second day, she has the presence of mind to count them – there are twelve – and at the end of the week there are still twelve.
‘It’s obvious,’ she says to Marcia over the phone. ‘They’ve been there for ages. He must have forgotten all about them.’
‘So throw them out,’ her friend says. Of late, her tone has been impatient. She is doing a PG Cert and it is tiring her out, although it’s always possible she’s curt because she finds Samantha’s situation ridiculous. Even more possible is that she still harbours resentment for Samantha’s sudden abandonment of her and the flat they shared. Peter did pay the remainder of the rent, but now that Samantha is out of the heady reel of the first year of romance, now that she has faced childbirth and its aftermath, she can see that, at least for Marcia, rent wasn’t the point. Friendship was the point, and at that thought Samantha’s cheeks blaze with regret.
‘I can’t throw them out,’ she says. ‘If he remembers them, he’ll know I’ve found them and chucked them away.’
‘So? Tell him you don’t want to bring your daughter up around drugs. Fair enough, isn’t it?’
‘It’s hardly bringing her up around drugs, Marcy.’
‘Well, leave them where they are then. Listen, I have to go, I have a load of Hamlet essays to mark.’
I don’t have time for this is the phrase that lies beneath. Samantha’s just made notes on subtext for a class on dialogue later in the term. I don’t have time for you is another possible meaning. Marcia doesn’t exactly hang up on her, but where they usually sign off with love you, all she says is see you later, which stings.
They won’t see each other later. Later, Marcia will go out with the friends they used to have in common, or with her boyfriend. They will see a band or go for drinks or a pizza or … do whatever people of her age are supposed to do. Whatever it is, Samantha will not join them. After Emily was born, Marcia asked her to come out once, twice, even three times. But she was too exhausted; she couldn’t get out between feeds; Peter was late back from uni.
She has not been asked since.
The class comes around once again. Samantha resolves not to ask about the limerick. Peter is right, she should not. But this is not why she stops herself from asking. Honestly? It’s because she cannot stand the thought of no one admitting to it once again, what that will do to her ability to lead the class.
No one can function properly in fear.
Reggie returns, wearing a white T-shirt with a brick design and on it the words Pink Floyd The Wall scribbled in red. Samantha has heard of Pink Floyd, though she can’t remember from where or whom … her grandparents, possibly, when she was a kid.
‘Apologies for my absence,’ Reggie says, sliding a piece of paper onto her desk. ‘I had a hospital appointment. That’s my limerick from last week.’
‘Thank you.’ She glances down, reads enough to reassure herself.
There was a young man called Syd B
Who dreamt he was but four foot three.
Daphne arrives just as the class are settling down.
‘I took a later bus,’ she says, winking at Samantha.
Aisha and Jenny carry in takeaway coffees in bright blue cups. Neither of them looks like the kind of woman who would send a poison poem to another woman, but then what does that kind of woman look like? Bitch is a word Samantha hates, never uses, but it is the word that comes to her now: how do you spot a bitch?
Lana strides in in her own serious way. She has re-shaved the side of her head and Samantha thinks she may have a new piercing, a bolt at the top of her ear. She glances at Samantha, and while her smile is peremptory, there is no overt malice in it. Over sixty per cent of communication is non-verbal, isn’t it? Surely Samantha would pick up on any animosity? Two weeks ago, she would have said yes, absolutely. Now, her world is as solid as cloud.
Sean follows, still with his anorak zipped tight to his neck. He is carrying a motorcycle helmet
‘The roadworks on the A316 are still causing traffic delays. They’re re-laying the gas main. I took the thirty-three from Hammersmith, but then I got off and went back for my motorbike. It’s only a scooter, it’s only a hundred and twe—’
‘Great, Sean,’ she says. ‘Take a seat.’
There are seven students. Who is missing? Tommy. No, Tommy is here, his eyes red and sore-looking. He was sarcastic in that first lesson, but, frankly, he doesn’t seem compos mentis enough to write something purposefully nasty. Besides, with his self-conscious louche irony, he seems to enjoy his former drug addict status, its power to shock, and Samantha suspects he is too self-obsessed to contemplate targeting someone he’s never even met before.
Suzanne. Suzanne is missing. A flare of doubt courses through her. Perhaps she didn’t like the last class. She was very quiet. Could it be her? Samantha doesn’t think so. Her clerihew suggested a liking for daytime television and celebrity gossip magazines, and if the first poem hinted at some sort of connection with Peter, then that is highly unlikely.
‘All right,’ she says, forcing herself to focus. ‘I thought today we’d try some flash fiction …
She explains the super-short form. It is a slice of life, an odd story that captures a moment or a mood. It can leave the reader on a troubling precipice or with a lasting image. And it is prose, a break from poetry.
Together they make a word map on the whiteboard.
‘A word map is all about freedom,’ she tells them. ‘Just shout out any old random thing. There are no wrong words, no wrong ideas. The fear of getting it wrong kills creativity.’
They shout out words. They are more confident than in week one, she thinks, and this delights her. In no time, twenty words have gone up on the whiteboard: fire, sun, red … now thirty, now forty … desert, blaze, madness; boots, fight, hell.
‘This is wonderful,’ she says, her wrist beginning to ache from all the scribbling. ‘Is anyone getting a sense of a narrative at all? Anyone got a character coming out of the fog?’
‘I have an old cowboy,’ Daphne says.
‘That’s good.’ Samantha gives her a smile. ‘And do we know where he is and what he’s doing?’
A story emerges from some mysterious collective. The energy in the room is palpable.
‘An old cowboy has to bury his horse out in the desert,’ Reggie says, and Samantha sees an affectionate glance pass between him and Daphne.
‘Yes,’ she says, clearing a patch of board and scribbling sentences now.
‘It’s hot, damn hot,’ Reggie drawls, making his classmates giggle. ‘The work is tough but he owes his hoss a proper burial.’
‘Why?’ Samantha asks. ‘Why is it so important?’
‘The horse is the last living thing he knows,’ Jenny chips in. ‘His only remaining friend.’
‘Yes!’ Samantha is breathing fast, trying to keep up. ‘And the why of that is potentially our r
eal story.’
They carry on. They seem fired up. All thoughts of the malicious poems drain from Samantha’s mind, and when her watch alarm beeps to signal half-time, she startles, is genuinely shocked to see that an hour has passed.
The students file out for their fifteen-minute break. Aisha hovers with Jenny at Samantha’s desk, asks if she would like anything from the canteen. God, these women are keen. They’re like a couple of Peter’s acolytes.
‘That’s kind,’ Samantha says politely. ‘I’m fine with my water, thanks.’
They seem to be waiting for her to say something else. Looking at them both, she cannot help but wonder again if one of them might be capable of writing something with malicious intent. She doesn’t think so, but again, who is she to say? Just because someone is pleasant-looking on the outside doesn’t mean they’re equally pleasant inside. It’s a perfectly bog-standard reflection, something everyone knows. Why then does the world respond otherwise? Why does the world place so much value on external beauty?
‘Did you want something else?’ she asks. ‘Can I help you with something?’
‘Actually, it was just … We’re going to grab a quick coffee after class,’ Aisha says. ‘Would you like to join us?’ Her manner is shy. She glances to Jenny, as if for reassurance.
Jenny’s grin is guileless. ‘Just a quickie,’ she adds. ‘If you can stand the thought, obviously.’
Samantha hesitates. She has left milk for Emily. And Peter tends to leave almost an hour after she gets in. Things are a little cool with Marcia, she doesn’t see the rest of her friends from uni and the mothers at the baby group are so much older, so much more at ease with motherhood and all that goes with it. It would be nice to talk to some intelligent women. After all, it’s possible their good looks match perfectly lovely personalities. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. And frankly, friend-wise, Samantha isn’t exactly fighting them off with a shitty stick, is she?
‘I can only stay for half an hour,’ she says. ‘But that would be lovely, thank you.’
At the end of the class, she tells them to leave their flash fiction pieces on her desk.
‘I’ll have a quick read through,’ she says as they begin to pack away their things, ‘and feed back to you next week.’
She tries to say goodbye as politely as she can, to wish them all a good week, while keeping her eyes trained like lasers on the papers as they land. One by one they place their sheets on the pile. But none of them leaves more than one, she is convinced. She puts the papers in the folder. She has not left the room. No one, no one could have tampered with her stuff.
Aisha and Jenny are waiting for her outside the classroom. There is a moment of shyness, of awkwardness, as if all three of them sense some kind of boundary about to be crossed. But it is only a moment before they wander together across the courtyard to the canteen, where, in the corner, some music students are setting up for a recital. No sooner there, however, when Samantha realises she needs to pee.
‘I’ll grab the coffees,’ Aisha says. ‘What would you like?’
‘A peppermint tea, please, if you don’t mind,’ Samantha replies.
It is only when she gets to the loo that she realises she has left her folder on the canteen table. Bugger. After she’s been so careful! Jenny was sitting at the table watching the bags while Aisha got the drinks. But it is too late for Samantha to dash back. Even if she pleads forgetting something, Jenny will have had time to add to the contents by now. No one would notice a slip of paper going into a folder. No one would even know it’s not Jenny’s folder. But then, she would have to risk Aisha seeing her. Aisha would know she was rummaging in Samantha’s folder and ask what she was doing.
Unless they’re in it together? God, this is horrible.
Samantha washes her hands, chest tightening. In the mirror, her face is drawn, strained. There are black shadows under her eyes; her cheekbones look more defined. She looks older than twenty-two. God, she looks almost thirty! Suspicion is exhausting, ageing. And here she is, about to have coffee with two women she doesn’t even trust.
‘We got you a muffin,’ Aisha announces when Samantha returns. ‘You look like you’ve lost weight since the start of term; we need to feed you up!’
‘Oh,’ Samantha says, wondering what on earth her weight has to do with Aisha while at the same time wondering if it’s true and whether what Aisha really means is what she herself has just noticed: exhaustion, strain.
‘Peter calls these cupcakes on steroids,’ she says, to keep things light. ‘He says they’re artificially inflated with all kinds of rubbish.’
Oh God, that was tactless. She tears at her fingernail with her teeth. What the hell has happened to her?
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean … Thanks, though, it looks amazing.’
‘It’s blueberry.’
‘Blueberry? Yum.’
She sits down, lays a proprietorial hand on the folder, tries to act normal. What is normal again? How does it go? She can’t eat that cake. It isn’t Peter’s objections, it’s Aisha and Jenny. They have been so friendly … too friendly? Obviously they haven’t poisoned the muffin. Ninety-nine per cent of her knows they haven’t, that it’s outrageous, the stuff of fiction. But the one per cent …
She takes the knife and cuts the muffin into three. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Let’s share it.’
Ridiculously, she waits until the other two have taken a bite, but by now her stomach has closed with stress. Her throat too feels swollen; she can barely swallow her drink.
‘So you both went to UCL?’ she manages to ask, sliding her folder into her satchel.
Jenny looks at Aisha, something indiscernible in her expression. ‘We met in the pub, didn’t we, Aish?’
Aisha brushes her mouth with her fingers. ‘The Marlborough Arms.’
Samantha feels her neck heat. That’s Peter’s after-work local. But then it used to be hers too. It’s the local for loads of UCL students. It’s where she first noticed Peter, asked Marcia who he was.
So. Hardly a clanging coincidence.
‘I thought you were in different years though?’ she says, nibbling a crumb from the cupcake.
‘We were.’ Again it’s Jenny. ‘Aisha is much, much older than me.’
Aisha laughs. ‘Cheeky bitch. I’m a couple of years older.’
‘Five,’ Jenny coughs into her hand; both of them laugh. They are clearly close; they clearly enjoy one another’s company very much. Samantha feels a pang. She and Marcia had this. In fact, lots of her friends made her laugh easily. She has stopped laughing. She can’t remember when she last got a fit of the giggles.
‘I was back at UCL for my masters,’ Aisha is saying. ‘I was working for this frozen food company – so random – and hating it, so I went back thinking I might go into academia. My boyfriend at the time encouraged me to do it.’ She looks at Jenny. Again, something passes between the friends but Samantha has no idea what. ‘Anyway, Jenny was in her final year, weren’t you?’
‘I was,’ Jenny says once she’s swallowed the last of her blueberry sponge. ‘And now I’m working at Starbucks and the Prince’s Head – you know, the pub on the green?’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘That’s the kind of career highlight a good honours degree from a top uni will get you. Next time you fancy a drink, go there and I’ll give you a free pint.’
‘Because of course it’s your pub, isn’t it, Jenny?’ Aisha teases and they both snigger.
Samantha giggles too. Her anxiety about the two of them fades a little. Not enough to eat or to want desperately to check the folder, but enough to release the lock in her jaw.
‘I actually went to UCL too.’ It feels like a confession.
Aisha glances at Jenny. Yet again, something is exchanged in the way they look at one another, and Samantha’s unease returns. But it is impossible to remark on it. What the hell could she say without appearing paranoid?
‘Small world or what?’ Aisha says.
‘I’m … I’m actually living with someone who works there …’ Samantha trails off, realising that she doesn’t want to say who. Peter isn’t an English lecturer, there is no reason why they would know him, but he is good friends with the head of the English department, and of course, there are the unsettling poems to consider. Poems that could have been written by either of these women, or both. ‘Speaking of which, I’m going to have to run. My partner’s waiting for me to get home so I can take over with the baby.’
‘Aw, little Emily,’ Jenny says. ‘How old is she now?’
Samantha smiles at them both, a shy heat climbing up her neck. ‘She’s nearly five months.’
‘Five months? How cute,’ Aisha coos. ‘Well, hopefully you can have coffee again next week. We always have a quick one after class, so you can join us any time. We promise we won’t lead you astray.’
‘Unless you want us to.’ Jenny laughs at her own joke; Aisha is not far behind.
‘Listen,’ Aisha says, taking out her phone. ‘Let’s swap numbers then you can always text if you’ve had to dash off or whatever.’
Samantha recites her number, really out of nothing more than politeness because, despite everything, she has been raised not to be rude. Biting her bottom lip with irritating cuteness, Aisha taps the digits into her phone.
‘Great,’ she says. ‘I’ll text you now. There you go. Now you’ve got mine.’
Samantha’s phone buzzes in her pocket. Anxious now, she thanks them for the tea, promises to pay next time, and leaves the two of them chatting in the effortless, good-humoured way that gives her a pain in her heart. She walks quickly, texting Peter as she goes.
Running late be home soon going as fast as I can.
She hasn’t punctuated but he’ll have to lump it. And she won’t even tell him she’s had a third of a muffin. Despite her nerves being all over the place, it felt good to spend time with women who are nearer her own age and with whom she thinks she might have things in common. Aisha is around thirty, she thinks, Jenny a little younger. Neither of them has a decent job, despite being graduates. Samantha is lucky that Peter was able to swing her this teaching gig. Even if it feels too soon after Emily and is only two hours a week, it’s something from which she can build.
