The Art of Forgetting

by McLaren, Julie

  “Oh, Emil.” Her hand reaches out to touch his, clasped around the cardboard box. She wishes she could be in its place so she could put her arms around him and hold him tight, but he has it pulled tight against him, like a barrier. Like protection. “Is it … is she …?

  “Yes, Laura, she’s dead, I’m afraid. She died last Tuesday. In the evening.”

  Laura does a quick calculation and she gives a little cry. Tears spring to her eyes. Tuesday was the day they went to the house. Tuesday was the day that they tore each other’s clothes off and had sex in the kitchen. While they were romping around, his mother was breathing her last breath. Of all the times it could have happened, it happened then and he was not with her.

  “Oh, Emil. I’m so, so sorry. I feel terrible.”

  “Not as terrible as me though,” he replies and his face crumples. But still there is the box between them. Still she can’t comfort him. She follows him back into the car park where there is a small, white van parked in his usual spot. She helps him unlock the doors at the back and then, when the box is stowed away, she attempts to hold him but he stops her.

  “No, Laura. Sorry, but I can’t, not yet. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll be in touch, but I need a bit of space right now.”

  Laura feels awful for days. She feels guilty that she practically enticed Emil away from his mother and then he wasn’t with her when she died. She feels guilty that they were indulging in such unfettered and selfish pleasure as the old woman breathed her last breath. She knows that people sometimes rally just before they die and she wonders if his mother opened her eyes and looked for her beloved son. Called his name. She also knows that if these thoughts are troubling her, that is nothing to what they must be doing to Emil. There never was a more devoted son and nothing can change that, but he will be thinking of how he failed her and he will never forgive himself. But will he ever forgive her?

  Two weeks pass and there is no word. Laura doesn’t even know how he will get in touch when he does, as his mother’s room now has a new resident and there is no reason for him to come to Cavendish House. She thinks of all the ways he might contact her, but there is a little niggling doubt that he ever will.

  Meanwhile, preparations for Wendy’s visit are well advanced. At least Laura has something with which to occupy herself, although she does find it hard to go into the kitchen. It is as if their lovemaking has left a mark in there; not a physical mark, but something in the air. As if the house remembers what took place that evening and is deciding whether to tell.

  Still, there are a few more practical issues to deal with, including the fact that Wendy’s daughter will be bringing her toddler with her and the house is anything but toddler-ready at the moment. Laura borrows a cot from the parents of a child in Lily’s class and buys some cheap bedding, but the stairs are steep and she knows they will need at least one stair gate. Her mother certainly had them when Laura’s children were younger, but if they are still here they must be in the loft. That’s one place they haven’t even started to clear, so she drives there one morning, intending to devote as much time as necessary to this final task.

  She pauses as she puts her key in the door. She knows exactly what the house is like now. Every room is clean and orderly and there will be no more surprises, but that does not apply to the loft. It is in its previous state – it is still her mother’s loft, not a sanitised version of it with all character and history removed. What will she find up there?

  Then she remembers something that her mother wrote. Something about the ladder and asking Dad to put in a new one. Of course he couldn’t, he was dead, but had Mum been up there even after she became so unwell? Could the loft hold the secret she had been searching for all that time? Suddenly, Laura wants to get up there. She wants to be the one that finds that missing piece of the jigsaw. She wants to be in control for a change. She will sort out the stair gates, but the rest of the day is free and she has time to tackle whatever might be hiding up there.

  Carefully, Laura opens the hatch to the loft and pulls down the folding ladder. If her mother was climbing up and down this in the last months she lived here, it’s a wonder she didn’t fall and break her neck. Laura even wonders if she should wait until someone else is here before venturing up, but dismisses that thought. Her phone is in her pocket so she can always call for help in the unlikely event of something happening.

  At least the loft is boarded and there is a bright central light. Laura can’t remember when she was last in here but it must be fifteen or twenty years. Her heart leaps as she pulls herself up to a standing position and looks around. It is chaos, at least in the area nearest to the hatch, but the predominant feature is a stack of carrier bags. I knew it, she thinks. There are at least ten of them, crammed with goodness knows what and leaning precariously against each other, as if her mother had simply opened the hatch and posted them in.

  Reluctantly, she walks away from the hatch. She must get the stair gates sorted first. She crouches as the roof slopes above her, picks her way past some old suitcases and a roll of vinyl flooring, and there is the baby stuff. There is a cot stacked against the chimney breast. Next to it is a holdall containing bedding, so that was money she could have saved and yes, there are two stair gates. She carries them across to the hatch and posts them through, leaning out to throw them to one side so they land on the bed. There. That was easily achieved. Now for the carrier bags.

  She stands on the top step of the ladder and reaches up to pull the nearest one towards her, but then her eye is caught by another. It is very full, and it looks as if something has been crammed in at a later date. It is sticking out a good three or four inches. It is an A4 pad and she can see her mother’s writing. Her heart pounds as she wrestles the carrier bag down onto the bed. If she believed in such things she might almost have said she’d had a premonition, but of course she does not. It was the last possible place to look and she was the one who looked there, that’s all it was. But all the same.

  Chapter 15

  I didn’t stop thinking about Linda, not altogether. I’d be on the platform, standing in my usual place, and somebody would approach from behind and I’d find myself thinking it was her, just for a moment. Then I’d get this nasty little pang of guilt, as if I had somehow made her disappear and I’d have to force myself to think about something else. Or I’d be walking home and a police car would pass and I’d imagine it outside my house when I got home, the police sitting in my front room waiting to confront me, and my parents white with anxiety. Of course this was nonsense as I hadn’t told anybody, not even Andy, but that didn’t stop my heart skipping a beat.

  I’d almost become accustomed to these moments when something else happened; something that really shook me. It was a Friday, so I was home from work a bit early and I was thinking about what I was going to wear that evening. Andy and his band had been booked for their first actual gig and as the girlfriend of the lead guitarist, I had to look right. Would it be the purple mini-dress with bell sleeves or should I go for more of a hippie look? I had made some flared trousers from my parents’ old silky bedspread and I thought I might try them out. So I wasn’t thinking about Linda, and I didn’t really think anything much when my mum opened the door before I had the chance to turn my key. I just assumed she was off out somewhere as I was coming in.

  “Judy, you have a visitor. In the lounge.”

  A visitor? Random possibilities buzzed through my head. The police? Linda? Had she returned and come to see me? That didn’t seem likely, but nor did any of the authority figures I visualised sitting in my dad’s armchair, hands folded and waiting for me. There was something about the way my mum had announced it: a visitor. Not naming the person rendered him or her distant in some way. All that whizzed through my head whilst I stood there in the hall, apparently frozen, until my mum touched me on the arm.

  “Come on, love. You can’t keep her waiting.”

  I wanted to ask who it was, but somehow the words took too long to form
and we were in the lounge before I could say them.

  “Mrs Lucaretti, this is my daughter Judy.”

  A woman who looked about my mum’s age, or possibly younger, was sitting in my mum’s usual chair. There was a half-empty cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her and her handbag was on her knee. That was something my mum did, sitting with her bag clutched close, as if she was expecting someone to creep up and snatch it from her any moment. But the resemblance ended there. This woman was everything my mum was not. She was blonde and her hair was swept up into a stylish pleat at the back, held in place by a large, wooden clip. She was wearing make-up – not the little dab of lipstick that my mum preferred, but fashionable heavy eyeliner and mascara. Her clothes were modern without being too young and she wore shoes with heels, something my mum would only do if there was absolutely no alternative.

  “Judy, Mrs Lucaretti wants to talk to you about Linda. Go and sit down and I’ll top up the tea.”

  So saying, she whisked away the tea cup and stared pointedly at my dad’s chair, opposite to where the woman was sitting. Mrs Lucaretti. Linda’s mother. Linda’s mother, who had somehow found out what had been going on and had come to confront me with it before telling the police. Before telling my parents. I sat down, feeling utterly sick, utterly wretched and guilty, and waited for it all to fall apart.

  “I’m so sorry to come here like this, unannounced,” said Linda’s mother. “I know you must have already talked to the police, but I’m desperate. Absolutely desperate.” She rummaged in her bag and now I saw why she liked to keep it so close, as it was stuffed with tissues. She extracted one and held it below each eye in turn and I couldn’t help a rather mean thought. Why, I wondered, does she apply so much eyeliner if she knows she is likely to cry at any minute?

  “The thing is, I found something in Linda’s room. It was between her mattress and the bed frame. I’ve shown it to the police but they don’t seem to think it’s important. They barely looked at it. They seem to have decided that she’s the kind of girl who would just go off and leave her mother without a word, but she isn’t. I want you to have a look, if you would be so kind, as I know you were friendly for a while and your name crops up a couple of times.”

  More tissues were extracted and stuffed between Mrs Lucaretti’s trim waist and the handbag. Then she produced a small notebook from its depths and reached across to hand it to me, just as my mum came back in carrying a tray. The notebook was returned to the bag, the tea was dispensed and biscuits were declined. Only when my mum had rather reluctantly made some excuse about things in the kitchen that needed attention and left us together again, did she bring it out once more and hand it over.

  My heart was pounding as I turned the pages. It was a small notebook, spiral-bound, with faint blue ruled lines. Linda had obviously been using it for a number of different purposes as it seemed to be a mad jumble of thoughts and lists, reminders and dates, wishes and plans. There were new cosmetics to be tried, some sort of a diet regime probably copied from a magazine, the odd phone number and occasional remarks in a semi-diary form. Obviously I can’t remember word for word, but there were many odd snippets, and the occasional rant:

  Helena witch-faced Perkins is a fat frump and if she thinks she is going to impress Barbara by sucking up to her she is wrong!!! I think she’s after my job but she can forget that idea! Today I came back from lunch and she was sitting in my seat. She moved when I came in, but I saw her smirking at Mr Fellows. If I hadn’t been so cross with P for standing me up I might have said something.

  I was beginning to think Linda’s mother was clutching at straws but then I saw an entry containing my name, and that’s where it started.

  Today, Judy, sweet little Judy, attracted attention from a viper. Vipers must be eradicated.

  I think that’s what it said. It was something like that, something unexpectedly vehement. Sometimes I can practically feel things, see them as if I am holding them in my hands, and then they go again. Linda’s notebook is like that. One minute it feels as if I could transcribe the entries for you and the next I can just see her writing like a jumbled script, like the pretend writing that children do. Anyway, the gist of it was that Linda had obviously carried on her campaign against the man, as I had feared. She referred to him as ‘G’ but there were amounts of money and dates dotted around between streams of invective about people who aren’t what they seem. I don’t think there was much that anyone else could have deciphered, but I knew what it was all about. My name came up a couple more times if I remember, but it was about me being ‘stuck up’ I think or scared, or both, I don’t know. There were other names in there, mostly people who seemed to have been included because they had angered her, as well as some named only by initials.

  I don’t know how long we sat there like that. Me turning the pages, reading some passages and skipping others, with Linda’s mother opposite me, poised and expectant with tissue at the ready. I had to look at it carefully, to at least pretend I was giving it careful consideration, but I was already framing my response as I read. It was pretty clear what had happened. It was that bit of her daughter’s life that her mother would never know about, not unless I told her, but I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. I said I hadn’t a clue what Linda had been talking about in the viper entry and that we had drifted apart when Andy came on the scene. Perhaps Andy was the viper? Perhaps she thought he wasn’t good for me? As for G, and the dates and times, I guessed it was a boyfriend. But we hadn’t really seen much of each other by then, by the summer, so I couldn’t say for sure.

  I handed back the notebook. I was sorry I hadn’t been able to help. I was sorry about Linda and I hoped, I really hoped, she would be found soon. I watched as Linda’s mother collected her tissues and returned them to her bag, I watched as she picked up the notebook, held it tight as if absorbing something of her daughter before putting it back. I watched as she rose to her feet and held out her hand.

  “Thank you so much for your time. I know you’ve got to get on with your life, but if you do think of anything, anything at all that could help ...”

  I assured her I would. I lied and lied and lied again and then we went into the hall and my mum came to show her out and more tissues were produced and more tears fell and I felt like the worst person in the whole world. The very worst.

  Oh, I’m so glad to have found this! I’ve been looking for it for so long, I was beginning to think I would have to start all over again, and that might have been difficult, but there it was, with the first one, on the worktop, all muddled up with the papers. I must sort them out and ask someone to take them to that place where they – silly, but the word escapes me – where they mush them up and make new paper. Anyway, this is not supposed to be about me now, nor the pile of newspapers which keeps growing every day. What happened next?

  Well, nothing, not for a while, I don’t think, but then it was Christmas, or at least Christmas was approaching, and I couldn’t help thinking about Linda’s mother, all alone. What would she do? I was tortured by a picture of her sitting beside a Christmas tree with Linda’s unopened presents. Or would she even buy any? What do you do in a situation like that? Would she get a stab of pain and sadness every time she went into a shop and saw something Linda would have liked, something she might have bought for her?

  I think this must have been building up in me. I had no-one I could talk to about it, not even Andy. He was a sweet boy, but he wasn’t the world’s greatest thinker and we didn’t have those kind of talks, not like I did with Vic when he came along. If I’d been with Vic then, and not with Andy, who knows what might have happened? I probably would have told him and he might have told me what I should do. I remember the first time I met him, in that pub – what was it called? The one with all the old sofas and armchairs. Our crowd practically took it over that year, until the landlord got a visit about underage drinking. Vic was sitting by the fire and I was next to him, not together, just next to him, and then he asked me something
, had I heard the new Leonard Cohen album, and I hadn’t, but he told me about the lyrics, and how you had to listen and listen to interpret them, and how you heard new things every time. I hadn’t heard anyone talking about music like that before. It made me feel buzzy inside.

  Anyway, that’s off the point too. The point is, that I felt worse every day as Christmas grew closer and everyone became more and more jolly and festive. Paul came back, apparently completely normal, and everyone in the family seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief to see him cheerful again. We had been close as children, but less so in the past couple of years, so I was really pleased when he put his hand on my arm one evening as I stood up to go to bed. Everyone else had gone up ages ago, but we’d been watching the end of a film together.

  “Don’t go up and leave me all alone,” he said. “We haven’t had a proper chat for ages and my body clock is still set to student time. Besides, I need someone to share this with,” he added, producing a long joint from a tin.

  Of course I knew what it was. I had never tried it but Andy had. I’d been at parties and gigs where joints were being passed around so I had seen its effect, but I hadn’t been tempted so far. I wasn’t even a smoker, although I had shared the occasional cigarette when I was younger, just to be daring. Now it seemed important not to refuse Paul, not to make it seem that I disapproved or that I was too far removed from his life to have a little smoke and a chat. I was only going to take a couple of puffs. It wouldn’t do any harm.