I move closer, and I say, ‘Simon, oh my God!’
We sit there, side by side, looking down at that photo, which he grips tight between his fingers and his thumb. My hand is on his arm, also gripping tight.
‘Oh my God,’ I whisper again.
For there is Vanessa, smiling at us, her hair tied back in a one-sided ponytail, the length of it cascading down over one shoulder. She’s wearing a red and white checked shirt and beside her on one side are Tristram, Leanne and Fay. On the other side of her are Annabel and Dominic. They’re all there, all squashed together, grinning for the camera. Annabel has two fingers up behind Dominic’s head, sticking up like mini rabbit’s ears – how dated that gesture seems now – and Leanne’s eyes are half-shut. Leanne, who I have not seen for years and years: here she is, wearing her old yellow sweatshirt and that stripy scarf around her neck that I remember so well. They’re in the living room in that house in Oakley – I recognize the background. They’re all there. They’re all there except me.
‘It was my birthday,’ Simon says. ‘I got the camera for a present.’ Slowly, he moves that photo to the back, and shows me the next one. It’s much the same, only he’s in it this time and Dominic isn’t; Dominic must have taken the picture. But there is Simon, squeezed in between Vanessa and Fay, his cheek pressed up against his sister’s, the two of them so very, painfully alike. I see him and I remember him instantly, his boyish face, his wavy, soft blond hair. I see them side by side like this, I see the blue of their eyes and how very, very young they are, and my heart twists and buckles into a raw, tight knot.
‘And this one,’ Simon says, and he turns the photos again. This last one is just of Vanessa and Tristram, and it’s the most poignant of them all. They’re falling together in a hug, their faces lit with laughter, Vanessa so fair and ethereal, Tristram so much bolder in his features, his hair and his eyes so dark. I want to stare and stare. I cannot stop staring. I never thought I would see Vanessa again, ever, in any shape or form. She lives with the others inside my head, a ghostly dream of a person, but I never thought I would see her again like this, so real.
How can the dead be dead when you see them laughing like this, so human, so alive? I look at this picture and I can smell Vanessa’s hair; I can smell her perfume and the peppermint of her chewing gum. I hear the breath of her laughter and the plastic chink of her bangles clattering together as she throws her arm around Tristram’s shoulder. I hear the brush of their clothes and feel the warmth of their bodies; Vanessa’s sharp, china boniness against the gentle, fallible strength of Tristram. I hear Tristram calling out to Simon, ‘Go on, boy, let the camera roll.’ And Vanessa laughing again, the sound of it deep and easy and free.
I move my hand from Simon’s arm to his hand. I clutch the fingers with which he is holding the photo; I move his hand and the photo closer to my face. I lean down; I look harder, as though I might see more of Vanessa somehow, and of Tristram. As though I might see the pores of their skin and the flecks in their eyes. I stare and I stare.
‘Rachel,’ Simon says eventually. He is holding the photos with the hand that is nearest to me; he has to turn now in his seat to touch me with his other hand. Gently he brushes the hair back from my face. ‘Rachel,’ he says again.
I struggle to raise my eyes. Vanessa’s face is a magnet, drawing me down. I look at Simon; I look at the paleness of his face and the intense sadness in his eyes, and I look down again at Vanessa, so happy, so without fear.
‘How can you bear it?’ I say.
‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘This is all I have.’
I look at him again. His hand is still on my hair; again he strokes it back from my face, carefully, gently. Absently, he takes a strand and runs it through his fingers. ‘I took these photos with my camera. They are mine. I kept them in my bedroom, in a drawer.’ His eyes move from mine to that piece of hair that he is twisting now through his fingers. He frowns at what he is doing; he concentrates. I watch his face and I see him swallow, hard. ‘I came home from school one day and my mother had got rid of all Vanessa’s things.’ He pauses and the frown on his face deepens. Again, he swallows.
I dare not speak. I dare not breathe.
Eventually he says, ‘I was just a boy. It didn’t occur to me that she would do this.’ His voice is thin and fragile and so very precisely controlled. ‘I thought Vanessa’s room would always be there, with all her things, waiting for her to come home.’
‘What about your father?’ I ask. ‘Why didn’t he stop her?’
‘He didn’t live with us any more.’
‘Well, what did she do with all her stuff?’
Simon’s eyes move from my hair to my face now, and I realize that I must be gawping at him in horror. I blink, and try to soften my stare.
‘I do not know,’ he says simply. ‘I just came home and it had all gone. She wouldn’t talk about it. Rachel, I went mad, shouting at her, pleading with her. She would not talk about it. Soon after we moved house.’
‘To Kew?’
‘No, no. I never lived in Kew. My mother moved to Kew when she married again, though that marriage didn’t last, either. No, we lived in Dorking for a while, in a horrible, horrible little house, just the two of us.’
‘Oh, Simon.’
‘It was a very bad time. Fay was the only thing that helped me through it, but in the end she went, too.’ His hand moves from my hair to my face now; very gently, he touches my cheek. ‘But I’m sorry,’ he says now. ‘You don’t need to hear all this.’
‘Simon, I do.’
‘Rachel, you are so kind,’ he says. He smiles at me so sadly, and he lowers his hand from my face now, so that he is holding the photos in both hands again, as if he might put them away. ‘I wanted you to see these photos,’ he says. ‘They are all that is left of my sister.’
‘But your mother would still have some photos of Vanessa, surely.’
‘They’re all gone. Everything’s gone. She wiped my sister right out of our lives.’ He fans the photos apart and snaps them shut, like a hand of cards.
There is something like panic rising up inside my heart. ‘But your father, then?’ I persist.
‘I haven’t seen my father for years.’
‘But it’s just so wrong.’ I put my hand on his. I stop him taking those photos away. I look down and there is Vanessa laughing up at me, so beautiful, so real. I want to keep looking at her. I want to look at her forever and ever, and never stop looking at her. I don’t want her just to be gone, cast out, as if she never existed. ‘I can’t stand it,’ I say. ‘I just can’t stand it. Your mother . . . she can’t do this. She can’t just forget her . . .’ I’m breathing so hard I can barely talk now and I have to force the words past the hard lump in my throat. ‘Simon, you don’t just forget your child. You can’t.’
You can’t. No matter how hard you try. No matter how much you pretend that you’ve forgotten. I close my eyes to stop the tears, but all can see is myself in that delivery room, half-lying, half-sitting on that bed, with my knees bent and that hideous hospital gown pushed up, and the midwife peering down between my open thighs as if delivering dead babies was what she did every day, while the contractions rolled like waves, one on top of another. It felt as if my baby was dragging her nails down my insides, trying to claw herself a grip, clinging, clinging against the tide.
‘Not long now,’ piped the midwife in her cheery nurse’s voice. ‘Nearly over.’ I wanted to snap my legs shut on her face.
It wasn’t nearly over. It would never be over, never.
And then I think of Andrew. I see his face, after they’d wheeled me back down to the ward and drawn the curtains around my bed, as if somehow that would shield me from the fact that the other women in the room still had their babies, their real live babies, still safely inside them. I see his face as he stood there beside the bed, staring at me, useless, the skin on his cheeks pale and drawn and sickly. I see him searching for the words with which to convince me somehow that he
had the first idea of what I was going through. I see his mouth moving on a silent wobble, I see the reddening of his eyes.
‘Rachel, I have to go now,’ he said at last, his voice pleading and weak. ‘I have to go and . . . and . . . I have to get Jono.’
My head is in my hands. My head is bursting with the rage I feel towards Andrew, a rage that buzzes and presses against my skull till I can’t think, feel, can’t see anything else.
Vaguely I am aware of Simon’s arm around my shoulders, holding me, stroking me. ‘Rachel?’ he is saying. ‘Rachel, are you okay?’ But I can’t answer and I can’t open my eyes. My head is a boiling, churning, fizzing mass.
‘We won’t forget her,’ Simon is saying. ‘I won’t forget her, and you won’t forget her.’
These are the very words that Andrew should have said to me, but he didn’t, he just didn’t.
Simon holds me close and my face is buried in the warmth of his chest. He strokes my back, he strokes my hair. Over and over he whispers, ‘You and I, we’ll never forget her, Rachel, never.’
I don’t know who starts it, but we are kissing, then; small kisses at first, small, searching kisses, on the cheeks, on the mouth. But then the kisses grow deeper and I haven’t kissed like that for years. You don’t kiss when you’ve been married too long. The kissing just dries up. Like too many other things, it just stops. The very thought of it becomes almost distasteful, but here I am now, kissing like I’m sixteen again, kissing Simon, kissing him till the pressure in my head starts to melt and run.
For a second he pulls away, just a fraction. I open my eyes and look into his. I see them deep and blue and charged. My heart is a balloon inside my chest, swelling up and up. And then he’s kissing me again, with both arms around me now, one hand holding my head and the other on my back. Then he moves that hand on my back, he moves it just slightly so that he’s touching my side, and my body jolts like it’s been shocked. He moves it again and I’m practically quivering under his fingers. And still he kisses me, gradually pushing me backwards till we’re lying down on that sofa and my arms are up around him, pulling him down to me, holding his warm, hard body as tight as I possibly can against mine; and all thoughts of Andrew, all miserable, guilt-ridden, suffocating thoughts of Andrew, are punched right out of my head like a fist through glass.
I think of when we were young, back at those parties. I think of everyone getting off with everyone else. It didn’t matter who you were with; you just went with it. You went with the moment, with the pure bliss of the feeling; with the bliss of being young, and so eternally alive. Sometimes I think the girls slept with the boys just because they didn’t know what else to do with them; they were like kids in a sweet shop, working their way through the pack. It never got that far for me. I was too uptight, too watchful. But here I am now, just like them at last. Just like one of them.
Simon props himself up on an elbow, and starts yanking off his tie and shrugging off his jacket. Impatiently I wait, I tug at his shirt. He bends and kisses me as he gets first one arm free, then the other, then he pulls away again. He’s about to speak. I know what he’s going to say, he’s going to suggest that we go through to the bedroom, but I can’t do that. I won’t be able to do that. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to do anything when we got there; I’d wake up from this. I’d chicken out. And I don’t want to chicken out. I want to just do it – fast, here and now. So I grab at his head: I pull him back down. I manage to kick off my shoes and slide my legs up around his, letting my dress scrunch up around my thighs. He groans into my mouth. He pushes my dress up further. I am shaking, literally shaking now, my teeth chattering against his as he kisses me. I reach between us and start undoing his belt; like a whore I start pushing down his trousers. I cannot think. I will not think.
He twists sideways, stretching a hand down to try and grapple with his shoelaces. ‘Shit!’ he mutters. ‘Sorry.’ I let him sit up. And while he’s dealing with his shoes, I wriggle out of my tights and pull my dress up off over my head. And before he can really look at me I pull him back down to me again, clutching him to me as he gets rid of the last of our clothes. I arch my body under his, and loop my legs up around his back. And down he comes, thrusting into me. I watch his eyes; I watch how they flicker. I see the moment. I see it, I feel it, and inside my head all else is blown away. There is just this. Me and him. Now.
I used to say, if the opportunity arose, that one man was much like another.
On girls’ nights, for instance, after a few drinks, when inevitably the conversation would get around to what if?
What if you got the chance?
What if you met someone?
What if you could be sure you’d never be found out?
Or in idle, rambling speculations with a friend, or with Janice even, I’d say, ‘But in the end, when it comes down to it, it’s just another man humping on top of you. It would be fine, until you got to that point, but then it would be just the same.’
But it isn’t the same.
‘He’ll end up like your husband, wanting his socks washed and his dinner cooked. And surely one husband is enough in any woman’s life.’
But now I know, it really isn’t the same.
I lie there, on that sofa, with all of London spread out there below me, and Surbiton seems so very many miles away. I half-cover myself with a cushion, and curl up my legs. I want to believe I am sixteen again, but sadly I am not, however much Simon tells me I am beautiful, however much he kisses me, kisses my tummy, my breasts, my thighs. He tells me I am beautiful, and I feel that I am beautiful, as I have not done so, for a very long time.
He leans up on one elbow, half beside me, half on top of me. He trails his hand over my skin, and kisses me, again and again.
‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘Rachel, Rachel. You were worth the wait.’
And then we talk. We talk as we will go on talking, every time we meet now, at every opportunity. We talk about Vanessa, and the old days; about the things we all did. And about the things that they all did, without me; the parties at other people’s houses to which I wasn’t invited, the trips into town, the gatherings after school. I was on the edge of their group, don’t forget, just a hanger-on, a friend by association. But Simon talks as if he has forgotten, as if he thinks I was always there, right in the middle of things. Remember the time we stayed at Annabel’s dad’s house, and Tristram got completely pissed and fell in the swimming pool unconscious and we had to fish him out? he says. And, You know, it was the quiet evenings I liked most, when there were just a few of us, all curled up on the sofa in the den, watching videos.
And of course I was never there for those things. I listen, and I feel the old envy, creeping in.
But he talks as if I was there. And so I feel as if I could have been. I listen to him talking, and I see myself, just slotting in. I see myself laughing at Tristram as he falls back, drunk, into the water. I see myself squeezing in on the sofa between Vanessa and Simon, grabbing a handful of popcorn and saying, Ssh! I can’t hear!
And I see myself missing the last train back from London after seeing some band in Camden, even though I was jealous as hell at the time that it didn’t even occur to Leanne to get me a ticket. But I imagine myself now, lolling on the cold concrete floor at Waterloo station along with the rest of them, waiting for the 5 a.m. milk train back to Oakley, with the sound of whatever music it was that they’d just listened to, still pounding in my ears.
And then I’m back at Simon’s house again, after yet another party; I’m with him when he walks into his bedroom and catches Leanne and Tristram going for it in his bed. I’m right there alongside him, slamming a hand up in front of my face in embarrassment. I’m with him; I’m there. I’m laughing.
I’m there too at all those backstage parties that Annabel’s dad was always getting them in to, the ones I heard so much about from Leanne; and at the Christmas Eve party that they had in Oakley the year that it snowed really hard, when they all went out onto the green for a ma
ssive snowball fight – there I am, tumbling on the ground, shoving a snowball down Vanessa’s neck. And how much better it is to think that I was there with them, rather than stuck at home with my parents, my sister and maybe a grandparent or two, missing out on all the fun. And then we’re on the green again, in summer this time; Simon talks and talks, and so clearly that I picture myself with them all, lying back on the grass and doing nothing, just counting the stars in the clear night sky.
I’m there as he talks. I’m there in my head. I’m back in that beautiful world.
TWELVE
The train chugs me back to Surbiton.
I sit there in a carriage half-filled with the tired-faced late-workers, and the after-work drinkers breathing out their sour, petrol breath, and the small groups of tin-eared teenagers chattering over the rattle of their iPods, their voices rising at the end of each sentence so that everything they say is a question, to be answered by another question, and I am hot from running, hot from Simon. I am wet from Simon. I sit there, looking like a housewife and feeling like a whore, with the wet of him still taking its time to seep out of me, and soak into my clothes.
There was no time to shower. There was barely time to dress. The trains to Surbiton are frequent, but the last one leaves Waterloo at 11.20 or so, and if I missed that I’d really be in trouble; but Simon and I, we lay there on that sofa and the time just ticked on by, till suddenly I had to leave and it was such a rush, then, such a panic. Simon threw on his trousers, his shirt and his shoes, but no underwear and no socks, and dashed downstairs to hail a taxi out in the road behind his block, while I scrambled a little slower to get into my clothes and then followed him. He got into the taxi with me; for some reason I hadn’t expected that.
‘Waterloo,’ he barked at the driver, ‘fast.’ And he threw himself back against the leather of the seat beside me, flushed, and breathing hard.
The Child Inside Page 14
