The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  ‘I do,’ Simon says at last. ‘I do remember you.’

  NINE

  It’s raining, hard. I come out of Bank station pushing up my umbrella, trying to time its opening with my ascendance into daylight, and failing; rain pummels its way down the back of my collar. By the time I reach the top of the steps my hair is all but soaked, and my shoes too, the suede mopping up the rain like a sponge. I move with the crowd; I have no choice. It’s just gone midday, but the Tube was still packed; no one is walking today.

  I cross the road and pull into the shelter of a building, and look around, to get my bearings. The rain is hammering down and magnifying the roar of the traffic as it swooshes along the wet road. Just across from the station exit there are roadworks going on, and the splintering crack of a jack-hammer machine-guns through the saturated air. I screw up my eyes, squinting out from my umbrella to read road names, and peer at the map that I printed off Google, soggy now, breaking up in my hand. I see a sign for Lombard Street and head down there, tilting my umbrella against the rain, till I come to the crossroads, and then I wait among the huddle of rain-beaten office workers for the lights to change. Fenchurch Street is straight across.

  Simon’s office is in a grand, white, stucco-fronted building with columns flanking the entrance, and stands wedged between two much newer buildings, phallic towers of metal and glass, thrusting up at the skyline. ‘Sutton and Wright Associates’ is etched on a gold plaque to the side of the revolving doors, along with several other company names. In and out of these revolving doors passes a constant stream of people clad in the business colours of black and grey; I am in a different world here, a world so far from my daily round of supermarkets and schools and endless, sundry errands that I had almost forgotten it existed. I feel like an alien. Like a mouse, come up out of the wrong hole. And yet nobody looks at me. Nobody sees me. I could be anyone; I realize this, and it thrills me.

  Andrew worked in the City for a while, when we were first together. He worked for an accountancy firm in Cheapside. And when I had my job at the auction house we used to come in together on the Tube; I’d get off at St James’s Park and walk, and he’d stay on till Cannon Street. And when we moved out to Surbiton we took the overground in, and went our separate ways at Waterloo. Andrew used to take the Drain and come up at Bank then, just as I did today. I think of him, melding in with the crowd. I think of him and I miss those days; I miss how we were back then. But Andrew hated working in the City; he hated the push of it, the constant, driving shove. It was because of him that we moved out to Surbiton in the first place; it was a halfway point, halfway out. Then he got his job in Guildford, and I kept mine, in Piccadilly. From then on, in the mornings, he went one way and I went the other.

  I watch all these people. I watch how they move, fast, clipped, defying the rain. I try to do the same. I march up to those revolving doors, shake down my umbrella, and I am propelled into that building as somebody else comes out. Inside, it is quiet suddenly; plush, like in a luxury hotel. My heels sink into a carpet designed to absorb sound. There are leather sofas scattered about the foyer, and low glass tables, and straight ahead a curved reception desk behind which two girls answer calls in fast, constant rotation. On the desk to one side of them is a tall glass vase filled with lilies; the smell permeates the air like a funeral parlour.

  I approach the desk. I wait. My umbrella, folded up and held down beside me, is dripping on the carpet. Eventually one of the girls looks up at me, her eyebrows raised instead of a smile.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m here to see Simon Reiber, at Sutton and Wright.’

  She shoves a registration book at me. ‘Sign here, please.’ Then she gives me a visitor’s badge, which I hold onto, because the shirt I am wearing is silk, and my coat is just too plain thick to stick a pin through.

  She keys a number into her control panel. ‘Visitor for Simon Reiber,’ she says into her mouthpiece, and to me, ‘Take a seat. He’ll be down in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Is there a ladies’ down here?’ I ask, and she points me to the corridor past the lifts. I follow her directions, and once inside I look at myself in the mirror and do my best to repair the damage wreaked by the rain. Other women come and go while I am there, checking their faces before they rush off to lunch, chatting noisily, dashing in, dashing out, slamming the doors behind them.

  The rain has made my hair curl up into ringlets, and I do what I can to smooth it out again. When I was a teenager I wore my hair cut short, to just below my chin, and parted on one side. The shorter it is, the curlier it is, and it used to fall sideways across my face in a mass of spirals. I wore a lot of eyeliner back then, too, in a dark plummy colour, which made my eyes look greener, and scarlet lipstick that stood out bold against my pale skin. I stare at my reflection now, and there is a knife of loss digging under my ribs. The makeup that I touch up now is neutral; peachy colours, as advised by the woman in John Lewis. Colours that suit me perhaps, but that certainly don’t make me stand out. But why would a woman like me want to stand out? I am what I am: wife, mother, the springboard from which other people leap, the carpet on which they stand. The constant, the unnoticed; the always there.

  I think of how different I was when I last saw Simon, and how I will seem to him now. I am forty years old. More than that. I am forty-one.

  Back in the foyer I wait for him, my lipstick reapplied, my hair arranged as well as it can be. I sit on one of those sofas, and I try to look at ease. But every time the lifts bleep and the steel doors slide open, my heart lurches. How will I greet him? What will I say? I hardly knew him. He was just a boy; gawky, mixing his records in the half-dark.

  When he does approach me, at first I’m not even sure it’s him. This man strides towards me, tall and thin still. His hair is not as blonde as it was, and it’s cut very short, so that the curl is all but gone. His shoulders are broad inside his suit, which is expensive, as is his blue shirt, and his blue and red tie. At first I look at him absently, but he walks towards me with purpose. And then I know that is him; it is Vanessa’s brother.

  ‘Rachel?’ he says, and I more or less jump to my feet, and feel the colour flooding into my face. ‘It’s good to see you.’ His voice is warm. He takes my hand, leans down and kisses me on the cheek.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, and my voice is almost a squeak. I am so aware of his height, and of his shoulders in that smart suit, and the general fact that he is a man now. When Vanessa died, I never gave a thought to how Simon must have felt, nor to their mother and father, either. I just thought of myself, and Leanne, and Vanessa’s other friends who dropped right out of my life, held there as they had been by such a tenuous thread. I was a teenager, as selfish in my own solitary way as any other. But the people who really loved Vanessa, the people whose lives she filled every day, the people for whom there would now forever be an empty room, a space at the table, a silent, unfillable void – what about them? I am swamped with sorrow suddenly, and with shame for my selfishness. Simon was only fourteen when Vanessa died. What can it be like to grow up with a sister, then have her so cruelly snatched away? I think of Jono. I think of the sister that he would have had, and I try to smile at Simon, but I can’t.

  ‘I’ve booked a table at the Italian up the road,’ Simon says, and he does smile, making up for my gaucheness. ‘Shame about the weather.’

  We don’t speak while we walk; we can’t. I follow him through the crowds jostling along the pavement, my umbrella slotted under his. And I wonder what I am going to say to him. Meet me for lunch, he said on the phone. How about Tuesday? He sounded so keen, so pleased to hear from me. I wonder if he ever saw any of the others after Vanessa died; if any of them ever bothered to look out for him, to keep in touch.

  The restaurant is busy already; it’s a big place with wide glass windows at the front. On the way in he says hi to a couple of people, and I feel them looking at me; I feel them wondering who I am. We stick our umbrellas in the stand by the door and the waiter shows us to a tabl
e near the back. I walk carefully, afraid that I’ll slip in my wet shoes and make an idiot of myself. There are mirrors running along the side walls and, as we walk, I check my appearance. I wonder what he thought when he saw me. He recognized me; to me, even that is a surprise.

  We sit, and I am overwhelmed with the strangeness of this. It is more than twenty-five years since I saw him last, and I have never really spoken to him before. At least, not properly. Not in any real way. Nothing more than the one-liners we all threw his way. Oh, Simon, put on some decent music, won’t you? Oh, Simon, shouldn’t you be in bed by now? Or were you hoping to be in bed with me? Come on, Simon, you know you’re gorgeous, but aren’t you still at junior school?

  ‘It is so good to see you,’ he says again now, and with such warmth and conviction that I am a little unnerved. He’s really looking at me, studying me almost; I see his eyes moving across my face, taking in my eyes, my hair, every detail. He’ll be thinking how much I’ve changed, surely; how can he not? And yet he says, ‘You look amazing.’

  I laugh, somewhat embarrassed. ‘I didn’t think you’d remember me,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t there that often – at your house, I mean.’ He shrugs, dismissively, and I add, ‘Just at those parties. And it was a long time ago.’

  I am finding it hard to meet and keep his gaze. He is incredibly good-looking; he has Vanessa’s eyes, they are the same shape, the same blue. He has her paleness too, and the same thin nose, though it’s more exaggerated on him, more masculine, obviously. What must it be like for him to look in the mirror and see his sister every day, to see her features growing older as he grows older – but as she, of course, never will? Is it a comfort to be reminded, I wonder; does it give a sense of permanence somehow, a sense that even though she has gone, a part of her lives on still, in him, and maybe in his children, too, if he has any? Or is it unbearable, never to be allowed to forget?

  ‘The parties were fun, though,’ I say. ‘I often think about them, about the things we did. I often think about Vanessa.’ I pause, but he says nothing. He’s looking at me still, waiting for me to continue. ‘Did you keep in touch with any of the others?’ I ask. ‘Do you know what became of them?’

  But instead of answering me he asks me, ‘Do you?’

  I shouldn’t have asked. There was just too much death, too much waste. But he’d know more about them than me, surely? He’d know what happened. ‘I heard about Tristram,’ I say. ‘And Annabel. It was just so sad.’

  He smiles a small, one-sided and very wry smile, but his eyes are unreadable.

  ‘I stayed friends with Leanne of course, but . . . I haven’t seen her for years.’ I realize how bad this sounds. Just saying it makes me feel bad. We thought we’d be friends forever, Leanne and I, but look how wrong you can be. ‘I often wonder what happened to her,’ I say. And to the others, too; to Dominic and Fay, especially.’

  ‘I used to go out with Fay,’ he says.

  ‘Really?’ I look at him, surprised, and he raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, really,’ he says. ‘For about four years or so. She was my first proper girlfriend. My first true love.’ He says this in a voice laden with irony. Such sarcasm is a defence mechanism, I know, but it makes me uncomfortable. ‘But she decided I wasn’t the one for her after all. She’ll be married to some rich chap now, a few kids, house in the country. Which is pretty much what she’d have got if she’d stayed with me.’

  His tone unnerves me. I’m not sure how to respond, but then the waiter comes to take our orders. We haven’t even looked at the menus, but Simon orders the veal, medium-rare, as if it’s what he always has. ‘The fish is good,’ he says to me, all warmth again.

  ‘I’ll have the fish, then,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet.’ When the waiter has gone away, he says, ‘And the last I heard of Dominic he was trying to sell apartments to idiots in Tenerife. But that was a long time ago.’

  ‘It seems we all fell apart after Vanessa died. As a group, I mean. She was like the magnet, holding us together.’

  ‘What happened to you, then?’ he says, and there is an edge to his voice. He picks up the restaurant card propped up against the little rose vase on the table and starts turning it in his fingers. He has long fingers, like a musician, and short, bitten nails. I see that he is wearing a thin gold wedding ring.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing exciting anyway.’

  ‘You weren’t at the funeral.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asks, and I sense an anger in him, something deep, simmering below his watchful, guarded surface. All her other friends were there.’

  Carefully I say, ‘I wasn’t invited.’

  An oversight, that’s all,’ he says straight back. ‘You should have just come.’ He scrunches up that card between his fingers and drops it down. And then he snaps, ‘For God’s sake, it wasn’t a party.’

  I feel the colour rising in my face. He is angry with me. He thinks I should have stayed in touch, with him, with the others. He thinks that I just left them; that Vanessa died and I walked away. But I felt my lack of an invite sorely. It was a rejection; a Keep out, you’re not of our world. That’s how I interpreted it. Maybe I should have just turned up anyway. But I wonder, what would have happened to me, if I had stayed in touch? I think of the darkness that seemed to swamp and absorb the others: Tristram, Annabel, Dominic, and Leanne too, to some extent. Maybe I did let them go. Maybe I knew that I had to.

  ‘I’m surprised you even noticed,’ I say at last.

  ‘You were one of my sister’s friends,’ he says. ‘Of course I noticed.’

  I swallow hard, feeling ridiculously close to tears suddenly. I picture him, the mere boy that he was, looking around at the funeral, seeing who was there, and who wasn’t. And I picture myself that day, walking alone in the woods near my college at lunchtime, walking far, far away from everyone else so there would be no one around to hear me cry. And cry I did, in loud, hollow sobs. I remember the sound of it echoing back to me, creepy in the damp autumn air.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I assumed the funeral was for family and close friends only. And, as I wasn’t invited, I assumed that didn’t include me.’ And in case I sound petulant I add, ‘But you know I liked Vanessa enormously.’

  Our wine arrives then, thankfully, followed by our food. It is a struggle to eat anything, but I’m grateful for the wine, though I wouldn’t normally be drinking at lunchtime.

  ‘So what made you get in touch now, then?’ Simon asks. He isn’t eating much, either, but the wine is fast disappearing.

  Carefully I say, ‘I think I’ve met your mother. Recently, I mean.’

  ‘Oh?’ he says.

  I can feel my heart starting to thump. ‘That is, I think she’s your mother. I’m pretty sure she is. But she insisted that she wasn’t.’

  He sips his wine and waits for me to continue.

  ‘Or, rather, she insisted that she wasn’t Vanessa’s mother. And when I asked her about you – when I asked if she had a son called Simon . . . well, she got sort of upset. Angry, really. She asked me to leave.’ Which is, of course, an understatement. I feel a wave of heat, rising into my face.

  ‘She asked you to leave where?’ Simon asks slowly. He is watching me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Her house,’ I say.

  ‘You were in my mother’s house?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I was in this woman’s house. In Kew.’ I pause, but he says nothing, just watches me intently. ‘Does your mother live in Kew now?’ I ask.

  Simon lifts up his glass and puts it to his mouth. And he carries on looking at me as he drinks. Slowly he lowers his glass again, and he says, ‘Yes. She does.’ And then, ‘But what were you doing at my mother’s house?’

  And so I tell him – the edited version, of course. That I’d dropped my son at his friend’s and then popped into the cafe for a coffee, when in came this woman, who left her credit
card. I heard her name, but it wasn’t till she left that I made the connection, and I ran after her, and caught her up at her house. I tell him it was then that she invited me in. I don’t want him to know that I followed her the way that I did. I don’t want him to think that I am a person who creeps about, haunted by her own obsessions.

  As he listens he holds onto the stem of his wine glass, which he slowly rolls between his thumb and his forefinger. Again I notice how bitten his nails are, which seems at odds with his tightly held composure. He watches me, his face so guarded.

  ‘I was so sure that she was your mother, Simon, and yet she insisted that she wasn’t.’ Nervously I drink my wine. I feel that perhaps this is territory I have no right to venture into, almost as though I am prying. But I have to carry on. ‘I remember your mother was so glamorous, Simon, so . . . vibrant . . . and yet . . .’ How can I say it? How can I tell him about the torn stockings and the frayed clothes, and just how shocked I was, to see her like that? ‘I told her I was Vanessa’s friend. I told her my name, not that I’d expect her to remember me, of course, but . . . I just wanted to pass on my . . . love, that’s all, and to tell her how much Vanessa had meant to me.’ I swallow. ‘But she insisted she’d never had a daughter.’

  I cannot think what else to say. The restaurant is noisy. All around us people are talking and laughing; the constant bray of the City lunch. And more deafening still is the endless clatter of cutlery on china, the clink of glasses, and the waiters putting down or piling up plates, and shouting to each other over the din. But all this fades into the background. At our table, suddenly, there is silence.

  Simon lets go of his wine glass and taps at the base of it with his finger, agitated, tap-tap-tap. He is frowning, the muscles in his jaw set and tight. I wish that he would speak. My heart is racing away now, from the wine, from nerves.

  At last he says, ‘My mother has found life very hard.’ He speaks slowly, carefully, as if picking his words.