by Emily Barr
I pause for a moment, before they see me. Kate is tall and slender, and is dressed beautifully, as ever. She wears a long camel coat and black suede boots, and her hair is over her shoulders. She and Ian are deep in animated conversation. They wouldn’t have spotted me if I was standing between them. I remember talking like that to Jack when we first met, before we married. I was besotted with him for six months, and obsessed with the idea that he was my passport to being someone else. The old Evie would never have landed a handsome, sensitive art student. Today’s Evie would never put up with one. I have outgrown him.
We used to sit up in our student bedrooms and talk, and drink cheap wine or vile instant coffee through the night. I can’t think what we used to talk about, but I remember the sun coming up and the thrill of having stayed up till morning with my lover. Often he would ask me to play my cello for him, and with the blatant selfishness of youth, and no regard whatsoever for our neighbours, I would perform. I loved the way he watched me while I did it. I kept up my practising regime just for him.
At college I used to make sure I dropped my relationship into conversations at every opportunity. I’d yawn ostentatiously, and apologise in as clear a voice as I could muster. ‘Sorry,’ I’d say. ‘I didn’t get to bed till six.’ Many of my classmates didn’t know Jack, but they all knew all about him. I made sure of that. I had reinvented myself - losing weight, dyeing my hair, and paying close attention to fashion - before I went to college. A handsome boyfriend was the perfect finishing touch to the new Evie S.
I can’t believe Kate and Ian are still wrapped up in each other like that. Neither of them has an ulterior motive. They have been together for years, yet they’d still be blissfully happy marooned on a desert island for the rest of their lives. Despite their fertility problems, they are the luckiest, most innocent people I know.
‘Hey, lovebirds,’ I say, walking right up to them before they notice me. ‘Room for a gooseberry?’
Ian grins broadly. As Jack’s cousin, he looks disturbingly like my husband, but he is completely different. I like Ian. He is straightforward, and he dotes on Kate.
Jack and I never discussed babies. I avoided the subject, and, when his mother asked him hopefully if we were planning to give her any grandchildren soon, Jack always shook his head and said there was plenty of time. I had the feeling that he would have loved one, but that he was waiting for me to suggest it. I was the one with the exciting career, after all.
If we had found ourselves in Kate and Ian’s situation, if I had been as desperate to conceive as Kate is, I suspect that Jack’s patience would have worn thin long before three years were up. He would probably have left me. But Ian wants a child as much as Kate does. He supports her totally. I am slightly jealous of what they have, now that I’m on my own. I should be looking forward to meeting someone like Ian, but I know that it will never happen to me. I don’t deserve it. I can’t keep up my façade. Kate does. For her, it isn’t a façade.
‘Sorry, Evie,’ she says, with a laugh. ‘We didn’t see you coming. How did it go?’
I grin. ‘It went great, thanks.’
She catches her breath. ‘So you’re getting back together?’
‘That’s what Jack wanted, but I said no. I feel fantastic.’
‘You said no?’ She looks pained as my words sink in. ‘No?’
Ian chuckles. ‘Kate promised him you’d say yes.’
She glances at him in annoyance. ‘Sorry,’ she says to me. ‘He asked whether I thought he had a chance and I told him he probably did. I didn’t want to get involved but it’s hard work not to when he’s living with us. Every time I see you he wants to know everything you said. And you said you wanted to give it another go. It’s a bloody nightmare, actually.’
‘I didn’t know what I was going to say when I went in there,’ I say carefully, knowing that Jack is Ian’s cousin and friend and their lodger, ‘but when I saw him I knew it wasn’t the moment to be going back to the relationship. So I told him so. There’s no point not telling the truth.’
‘So,’ Ian says, with a small sigh, ‘you left him crumpled on the floor, despairing of everything. He’s either drunk by now or he’s slashing his wrists.’
‘Don’t say that! He’s fine. I’ve seen him happier, but he’s fine. Let’s find my new home. Then you can have your sofa bed back. Four weeks is a long time to have a lodger.’
‘Oh,’ says Kate, taking a band from her slender wrist and tying her hair back, ‘it’s only Jack. It’s not like we have to be polite to him or feed him or anything. He’s hardly my mother-in-law.’
We run across the road to the central reservation, and climb over the railings. Kate manages it elegantly, despite her long coat.
‘Any news on the American guy?’ I ask them, as we wait for a gap in the traffic. It’s a sunny day with an improbably blue sky. This is proper winter. My heart leaps as I realise that I love it. It has been weeks since I last noticed the weather, or anything outside my internal world.
Ian answers. ‘We were just talking about that. There is news, actually. We’ve got an appointment with Ron Thomas, and we’ve just booked some flights. So we’re going to see him on January the fifteenth.’
Kate is glowing, and so excited that she almost steps into the path of a passing Porsche. She jumps back as the driver blasts his horn at her and speeds past. ‘He said in his email that he could guarantee us a baby,’ she says, unruffled. ‘No get-out clauses. That’s what’s so great. We pay upfront and he carries on treating us for as long as it takes. This is it, you know? This is the big one. It’s going to happen.’
Ian puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘Normally at times like this it’s my role to counsel caution. But this time I can’t do it. I’m just as bloody excited as she is. This guy is very impressive. He has an amazing success rate.’
‘How much do you have to pay?’ I ask, as we scuttle to the other side of the road. ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’
‘It might sound like quite a lot,’ says Ian, cautiously. ‘And that’s because it is. We’ve had to do all kinds of begging and borrowing and scraping to get it. An IVF cycle is the equivalent of ten thousand pounds.’
‘Ten grand? And flights and everything on top?’
Kate touches my arm. ‘The great thing is, when you’re paying that much for treatment, the money for flights and hotels pales into insignificance. We were even thinking of flying business class, just because we can’t afford any of it.’
‘But we came to our senses quick enough.’
I look from him to her, and laugh. ‘You two are such Pollyannas. Not that you shouldn’t be optimistic about the treatment, but to wave all the other expenses aside as insignificant is very cool.’ I stop for a moment and think of the times they have been wild with excitement because they were embarking on IVF, or Kate was starting her first cycle of Clomid, or when they got Ian’s sperm analysis back and found it was fine, and when a laparoscopy revealed that Kate had no obvious problems either. I think of the number of times they’ve been disappointed over the past three years. Then I think of the money sitting in my bank account.
‘I’ll get your flights,’ I tell them firmly. ‘And your hotel. You’re not arguing. I want this to work as much as you do and it’s the least I can do, with all that money sitting around doing nothing.’
We turn down Kensington Church Street. I see them looking at each other.
‘Thanks, Evie,’ says Kate, after a pause. ‘I’d love to say no, of course you can’t help us out, but we’re not in a position to turn help down, so thank you very much indeed.’
‘Yes,’ says Ian. ‘Thank you. That’s extremely kind.’
I am feeling satisfied with my own benevolence, pleased with my place in the world, by the time we arrive at Bedford Gardens to look at the first of today’s flats. When I see the mansion block, my spirits are lifted further. It is a red-brick and grey-stone building which towers above the neighbouring townhouses, and within a few seconds I h
ave mentally reinvented myself again. I can live here. I could be a happy west Londoner, living in my 1930s apartment, strolling down to Kensington High Street to shop, and popping to the extremely smart restaurant round the corner for dinner with various new, glamorous male admirers.
Helping Kate and Ian with the money has given me a surge of optimism. I can afford it. I will fly them business class, and find them a gorgeous New England hotel with hand-stitched bedspreads. I consider offering to help with the cost of their treatment too. Once the house is sold I’d be able to do that. I open my mouth to extend the offer, then close it again.
One of the traits I most despise in myself is my rash propensity to make offers I haven’t thought through. I say things to people because they make me feel good about myself. This is not a noble trait, and I wish I felt secure enough not to do it. It doesn’t matter when it involves money, but over the past couple of years I have frequently found myself on the verge of offering my services to Kate and Ian as a surrogate mother. The offer has sprung to my lips again and again. It is laughable. Each time I have forced myself, just in time, to realise what a grotesquely inappropriate offer I am about to make. I force myself to consider the reality of pregnancy, of bearing a child only to give it up. It is funny, really, that I even think about it. I, of all people, should never contemplate it. My friendship with Kate, one of the things that grounds me and keeps me going whenever I feel like running away, would deteriorate. It would be the worst thing I could possibly do. The papers would notice the pregnancy, and then they would realise that I wasn’t keeping my baby. I know I would let my music become worse and worse until my career evaporated. I cannot believe I allow myself to be tortured by thoughts like that. It is an impossible idea. And yet I still find myself opening my mouth to make the offer. A year ago, I even began to suggest that Jack and I could have a baby and give it to them. Or that we would have twins, and keep one. I am insane.
The flat is on the top floor. Its ceilings are low, its windows small and square. The walls are painted in light colours, and although the spare bedroom - my room? - is barely wide enough for its single bed, I like the atmosphere, and I can imagine myself living here. My cello would fit behind the door, and I could sit on the bed to play it, unless it was all right for me to play in the large living room.
When I see the only flatmate, Megan, I am shocked by her youth. She has flawless skin and very long brown hair, and is dressed unseasonably in a blue cotton dress, with bare feet. She looks like Alice in Wonderland. I size her up instantly. She is not a threat.
‘Hello!’ she exclaims, with a giggle.
‘Hello,’ I tell her. ‘I’m Evelyn. These are my friends, Kate and Ian.’
‘Hi, Evelyn!’ she says, turning a delicate pink. ‘Hi, Kate! Hi, Ian! Come in.’
Megan giggles constantly. After a few minutes I decide she is not, after all, eighteen, but probably in her mid twenties. She has a strange manner, and I am unsure whether she is nervous or simply irritating. I want to look round her bedroom door, to see whether her room contains an elaborate doll’s house, or stuffed toys enjoying a tea party.
Megan announces, with a little laugh, that her flatmate, Andrea, moved out last week because of family problems, but that she’s agreed to keep paying rent until someone else moves in. She twirls her hair around her finger and explains that, while she had sixty-three responses to her advert in the Guardian, ‘almost all of them were so clearly unsuitable! I can tell immediately on the phone. I’ve only let eight people come and see the flat. So you are honoured.’
‘Thank you,’ I tell her, catching Kate’s eye and smiling.
The living room is bright and spacious. All the furniture is perfectly tasteful, which I believe to be a rarity in a rented flat, and the rooms at the front of the building, which don’t include my prospective bedroom, have views over the rooftops and aerials of west London. There are some birds on the sitting room windowsill, looking in. I would love to practise in here, every day.
I look at the CD collection, which spreads over two shelves of the bookcase. ‘Are these yours?’ I ask Megan.
She twists her hair around her little finger. ‘Yes,’ she says, once again turning pink, and appearing to execute a little ballet step on the spot. ‘Some of them are my parents’. It’s actually their flat. But mostly they’re mine. I love classical. I know it’s a bit uncool of me.’
Ian and Kate burst out laughing. Megan’s flush deepens, and she looks at them both, confused and suspicious. She seems on the verge of tears.
‘Evie’s a cellist,’ Kate explains. Megan laughs, relieved.
‘Oh, right,’ she says. ‘Sorry, I thought you were laughing at me, for some reason. I didn’t know why.’ She turns to me. ‘A cellist in the house would be glorious. Do you play much?’
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘I do it for a living.’ I savour this moment. I know Megan has heard of me, and I am fairly certain she won’t say anything cutting. If she does, I will be cutting back and will leave. I take a CD from her collection. ‘This is one of mine,’ I say, casually. I have seen my CDs all over the place for years, but I am still wary of anyone saying offhandedly that they are overrated, overpriced rubbish. While I know that they’re not brilliant, I want everyone else to adore me. I want the rest of the world to be blind to my faults.
‘Yours?’ asks Megan, confused. ‘But this is . . .’ She looks at me, then down at the CD case, which bears a picture of me, draped in a tiny piece of pink chiffon, and holding a pink rose. ‘Christ, sorry,’ she says, smiling tightly. ‘You must think I’m stupid. I knew you were called Evelyn too, and it’s an unusual name, but I didn’t even recognise you. If you’d said you were Evie I might have got there in the end. But I don’t expect to have famous people turning up at my flat!’ She giggles again, and looks down.
I look sideways at Ian, raising my eyebrows as an instruction to him to say something to lift the excruciating atmosphere that seems to have descended.
‘Evie loves not being recognised,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Pretend you’ve never heard of her. What do you do, Megan?’
I smile at Kate. Ian can always be relied upon.
Megan turns to him with a shy smile. ‘I work for a bank. Would anyone like a cup of tea?’
We all nod, and mutter about how lovely that would be, and follow her into the large kitchen, where she motions for us to sit at the table. I watch her graceful, precise movements as she puts an old-fashioned kettle to boil on a gas ring, and takes a bright red teapot from a pine-fronted cupboard. I think living here would be like living in a doll’s house.
‘I only do that to pay the rent,’ she says, over her shoulder. ‘It is deeply boring. Even though this place belongs to Mummy and Daddy they still say I have to pay them, because they think it’s important that I live in “the real world”.’ She forms quotes in the air with her fingers. ‘But what I would love to do is photography. These are my pictures.’ She indicates some prints on the wall. I look at a shot of three dirty children staring at the camera. The closest one is grinning happily. The middle one appears shy but curious, and the girl on the end is looking suspicious. It is an intriguing image. ‘I guess we can’t all be good enough at what we love to be paid to do it, like Evie,’ she adds. ‘Is it OK if I call you Evie, rather than Evelyn?’
‘Of course,’ I tell her, sensing that this adorable flat is about to become mine. ‘And these are truly gorgeous pictures. Is this in India?’
She smiles. ‘Cambodia. Near Angkhor Wat. As you can see, there is a somewhat ambivalent attitude to camera-wielding tourists. Does everyone take milk? Anyone for sugar?’
Ian is looking at the other framed prints. ‘One, thanks, Megan. These are great. You’ve done a lot of travelling, then?’
Megan nods. ‘Not enough.’ She hands us big comforting mugs of tea, and sits at the table. ‘I love it. I’ll go away again when I’ve saved up. Maybe to Central America.’
‘You don’t seem like a travelling type,’ I say, with
out thinking. It is hard to reconcile her outward appearance with her obviously adventurous nature. ‘I mean, you must have hidden depths.’ I try to decide how rude I have just been, but Megan changes the subject.
‘Evie,’ she says, ‘I thought you were married? Sorry to be blunt. I’m just beginning to remember things I’ve read about you. I’m not sure the bedroom would be big enough for a couple. You were brilliant at that Royal Gala performance, by the way. Gracious, if you live here I might get my own private performance of the Bach! I’ll make a confession: I used it as my ring tone for about two days until I realised everyone else was doing the same.’
I smile at her. ‘You’ll be as sick of it as I am. And, Megan, I am happy to see that you’re obviously not a reader of the tabloids or the gossip magazines. I left my husband nearly a month ago, on the night of that gala, actually.’ She composes her face into an oh, I’m sorry expression. ‘It’s OK,’ I say, quickly, holding my hands up. ‘Nothing nasty. No one else involved.’ No one that I’ll admit to, anyway. ‘Just one of those things. You know. Lovely cup of tea. Is it Darjeeling?’
She nods sagely. ‘English breakfast. Well, I’m single too. We’ll have to go out together and see who we meet. Oh, crumbs, sorry. That’s assuming you do want to move in. I am totally jumping the gun here. I hardly need say, the room is yours if you want it. Sorry it’s so small.’
She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before. I’m not convinced that her sweetness is genuine, and wonder how she manages when she’s travelling around Asia, but I think she might be rather entertaining. I have no intention of going out with her to meet men, but her flat is spectacular.
‘I’d love to, Megan,’ I tell her. ‘Thank you very much.’
chapter four
December 18th
I pick up my letters from the kitchen table, put the kettle on the stove, take my Sultana Bran out of the cupboard, and drop the last tea bag into one of Megan’s big mugs. Every morning I lurk in bed until I hear Megan leave the flat. It is very rare, at the moment, for me to have something to get up for. It is extremely rare for me not to have a hangover. Christmas, I have discovered, is the best possible time to be single.
