by Lucy Diamond
India, squeezed into a row near the back, felt beads of sweat pop on her forehead as the speaker – the family’s neighbour and friend, according to the order of service – went on. Dampness pooled at her armpits. Her long-sleeved boiled-wool dress was too hot for a muggy June day, it was a winter dress really, but had been the only suitable thing in her wardrobe. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that there must be more than two hundred people gathered in there, mourners packed elbow to elbow, the air thick and warm with the fug of breathing. The woman at the front pushed up her glasses with a stern expression as she finished her reading and pressed her lips together in a tight, straight line. Her hands were trembling, India noticed, as she took her Bible and returned to her seat, with a little nod towards the Goldsmiths. ‘Christ, it’s roasting in here,’ somebody whispered in the row behind.
Now Alice’s father was approaching the lectern, tall and stooping in his dark suit, his face carved deep with anguish. He told the room that his daughter had been the light of his life, affectionate and good-humoured, willing to do anything for anyone. As a girl, he said, she was the sort of daughter you looked forward to seeing after a day in the office, because she’d always have a funny story, a new joke, an impression of one of her teachers that would have him and his wife in stitches. It’s what people had loved about her, he said: her humour, her willingness to see the funny side. Whatever life threw at her, Alice would bounce back, undefeated, undiminished. ‘Which is why . . .’ His voice began to quaver. ‘Which is why it’s so very hard for all of us who knew her to come to terms with the fact that . . .’ He mopped his brow, seemingly unable to continue. ‘That . . .’
India’s heart felt as if it were being wrung inside-out; his pain was almost unbearable to witness.
‘That she’s gone from us. I’m sorry,’ he said, gripping the lectern and bowing his head for a moment. ‘I’m not finding this easy.’
Sorrow was rising through the whole room like a tide, people were reaching for handkerchiefs, tears trickling down their faces. Just look at the man before them, broken by the loss of his daughter, his voice cracking as he tried to continue. For the first time since her arrival, a feeling stole in on India that perhaps she shouldn’t have come here after all. Who was she to intrude on this poor family’s grief anyway, piggybacking on these people’s despair, when she had no right? She had muscled in on the drama like the worst kind of voyeur, sitting here in her uncomfortably tight dress and sweaty black tights, having been compelled to attend the ceremony in the name of some guilt fetish. Maybe Dan had been right all along, she thought, and suddenly felt ashamed of herself, as if she’d only just noticed her own cheapness in a reflection. This was not her world. She did not belong.
Alice’s tired, ashen-faced father had finished his eulogy and was limping away again, and India decided to make a move, squeezing her way through the sniffling ranks. ‘Excuse me. I’m so sorry. Could I just . . . ? Excuse me. Sorry. Thank you.’
Out she slunk, relieved to have escaped, shame stinging through her. Let that be the end of it, she told herself severely, gulping in the fresh air as she recovered herself. She seemed to have forgotten how to behave normally these days. Ever since her birthday, she had gone off at one wild tangent after another. It stopped right here.
‘Never did get on with funerals myself,’ said a voice just then, and she turned to see a wiry man leaning over a railing nearby, smoking a cigarette. She had been so caught up in her own thoughts she hadn’t even noticed him there.
‘No,’ she said quietly, not really in the mood for polite chat. She should get back in the car and go home, try to pull herself together. Try to remember how to be Dan’s wife and her children’s mother, and be satisfied with that for a change.
‘You okay?’ He’d turned to look at her and she squirmed a little under his gaze. He was about her age, she guessed, with sandy brown hair and a pierced ear, golden-brown eyes, a lean and athletic build. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but she was still so churned up that she couldn’t put her finger on it. ‘Knew her well, did you?’
‘Um . . .’ She was just about to fudge an explanation when his expression changed.
‘India? That’s never you, is it? India Burrell?’
She gaped, and then his features suddenly swam into sharper focus. ‘Robin?’ she asked, almost stumbling on his name. It had been so long since she’d said it aloud. ‘No way.’
They stared at each other. ‘Bloody hell. India Burrell. Look at you, all grown-up.’ He sucked hard on his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the wall, a shower of orange sparks cascading to the ground. Then he gave a short, dry laugh. ‘And all of a sudden the day just got more interesting.’
India’s breath was shallow in her lungs. Robin. He’d been on her mind so much lately, and now here he was in person – her first love, her first heartbreak, and at Alice’s funeral, of all places. It was as if the last few weeks had been building up in a crescendo to this single astonishing moment. ‘Oh my God.’ She couldn’t stop looking at him. ‘Robin bloody Fielding.’
‘To use my full name,’ he quipped, smiling that funny crooked smile of his, the smile that, once upon a time, had turned her knees to marshmallow. ‘History repeats itself.’
‘Doesn’t it just?’ she agreed in a daze. Putting a hand up to her mouth, she wished – moronically, vainly – that she had taken better care of her appearance before dashing out of the house, late as ever, that morning. Wished too that she was wearing something slightly more flattering than this years-old dress, the seams of which were straining on her hips, and that she’d thought to put on some lipstick and . . . Stop it, India. You’re at a funeral, not a Paris catwalk. ‘God. Um. How are you?’ Her voice was shaky, her emotions in freefall. Robin Fielding was right here in front of her. She had imagined this moment so very many times.
‘I’d always wondered if we’d meet again,’ he said, ignoring her question. His eyes were drinking her in, his expression hard to read. (Bemused, perhaps? Was he bemused that she’d turned into a middle-aged frump?)
‘Me too,’ she heard herself confessing. A multitude of questions brimmed within her, and she wanted to ask them all greedily, to hear the minutiae of everything he’d done in her absence, to know him again. Instead she kept her face neutral and said, ‘You know the family then?’, gesturing towards the memorial hall.
‘Not really,’ he replied, shrugging. ‘I play five-a-side football with Big Dave on a Monday night. Just wanted to pay my respects, like.’
Of course, he’d always been mad on football. Fast and skilful, although skinny enough back then to be shouldered off the ball by more thuggish players – it was all coming back to her. How well they had known each other once upon a time, and how carefully the details had been salted away in her memory during the intervening years. ‘India Burrell,’ he said softly again, his voice low and husky, and she found herself blushing.
‘India Westwood,’ she corrected him, feeling obliged to lay out her stall. Married, okay? Husband. Kids. Very respectable these days. Just so we know where we stand.
He raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘Sounds posh,’ he commented. ‘Is he posh, then, your fella? Is it all wining and dining for the two of youse?’
She laughed at the idea. ‘No. He’s a plumber. He’s not posh.’ There was another pause and then she said, ‘How about you, are you married?’ just as he asked, ‘Is he good to you, though? Is he worthy of you?’
Was he taking the piss? His eyes were glittering and she wasn’t sure if he was having a dig or being genuine. ‘He’s all right,’ she replied, shifting from one foot to another in her uncomfortable court shoes. The sound of people singing floated out from inside the crematorium, chords of an organ rose and fell with due pomp. ‘Abide with Me’ – they’d sung it at her Welsh grandma’s funeral two years ago; one of those songs that always made her feel melancholy. She looked at the ground, dirty white splodges of trodden-down chewing gum, a few stray petals from a
bouquet, his cigarette end; and then, when she gazed up at his face, it was as if she’d hurtled back through time and they were picking up right where they’d so painfully left off. The past was all around her, drumming through her veins, pounding in her ears and, before she knew it, she had opened her mouth, the words rushing helplessly from her lips. ‘Listen, I’m so sorry about—’
‘No need,’ he interrupted gruffly. Had his face darkened a shade, or was it her guilty conscience?
She wrung her hands, suddenly wanting his absolution, to get this over with, lay some ghosts to rest. It seemed an appropriate place for such an act, after all. ‘Robin, I can’t tell you how many times I regretted how we ended things, how—’
He cut her off again. ‘I know. Me, too.’ They looked at each other and then away again. Too much to say. ‘Still, we both survived to tell the tale, evidently.’
She looked up warily, but his expression was hard to read. God, Robin Fielding, she marvelled again. It was almost as if she’d conjured him up from her imagination – all her wondering about parallel lives, and the different turns she could have taken. And now here was one of those very same untaken turns, standing in front of her, back from the past. ‘We did,’ she agreed meekly. ‘We both made it this far anyway. Twenty or so years, or however long it’s been.’
‘Twenty-one,’ he said, and then surprised her with a loud laugh. ‘Jesus, now I feel old. What do you say, kid: shall we have a pint and find out what’s been happening in those missing twenty-one years, or what?’
The question seemed to press an accelerator pedal inside her heart. ‘What . . . now?’ she asked dumbly, thinking about the messy house she’d left behind, the laundry pile that was particularly mountain-like that week, the hoovering that was yet to be tackled. Your real life, India, remember? ‘Um . . . Don’t you want to go on with David and the others, for the wake?’ she asked.
‘Not really,’ he replied, glancing sidelong at her. ‘I’d rather talk to you.’
Oh God. And there it was, that look of his, that cheeky, flirty smirk that had only ever led to trouble. How could it be that twenty-one years had passed and he still had this effect on her? Because before she knew it, despite everything, she was dimpling up at him and saying, ‘Go on, then. You’re on.’
‘I should only have a half,’ she said, two minutes later, when they were waiting to be served in a pub round the corner. ‘I’ve got the car, so . . .’
‘I can’t imagine you driving,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘You were always getting lost around college, do you remember? No sense of direction.’ His eyes rested upon her. Dragon eyes, she’d once termed them, because they were brown and flecked with gold. She’d never seen eyes like his, before or since their relationship. ‘There’s just so much I don’t know about you, Adult India. Wait, no, that sounds dodgy.’
‘I’m pretty crap at driving,’ she confessed, trying to keep the mood light. ‘Still get my left and right muddled up.’ Just the other day George had crouched low in the passenger seat with his head in his hands as she attempted to parallel-park in their street, because it was ‘embarrassing’ apparently to be seen in the same car as somebody so rubbish at manoeuvres. Not that she was about to start discussing her kids with Robin. Even being here together, just the two of them, she was already wondering if she’d been too bold, too ready to accept his invitation. We’re old friends, she told herself. Two old friends catching up. No harm in that. ‘Half a Foster’s, please,’ she said to the hovering barmaid, then turned back to Robin. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Are you buying then? A pint of Boddingtons, please, love,’ he said.
Boddingtons, she thought, registering the fact as if adding it to a newly revised Robin Fielding file. He’d drunk vodka or Newkie Brown back when they’d been an item. She’d been a fan of snakebite-and-black herself, resulting in the most lurid purple puke, nine times out of ten. Mmmm. She checked her watch as they waited for the drinks and her skin tingled with the strangeness of the twist today had taken. Half-past one already, and just look at her: having gatecrashed a stranger’s funeral, she was now loitering at the bar of a pub alongside Robin Fielding, with this very strange tension crackling between them. All the unsaid words, all those intimate moments, all those years of silence. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she should try apologizing again and leave.
He’d noticed her looking at her watch. ‘In a hurry, are we?’
‘Not really, but I can only stay for one. I’ve got to get back for the kids.’ I’m driving, I’ve got kids to pick up – oh, she was getting her excuses in early all right, she was setting down those boundaries. Although, as soon as the words were out, she could have bitten her tongue clean through at her own mistake.
He noticed her grimace. ‘You’ve got kids?’ His voice was as smooth as silk, but she wasn’t fooled.
‘Yeah. Three of them. You?’ she parried, keen to move on. ‘You didn’t even tell me if you were with anyone, by the way. Not avoiding the question, are you?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of avoiding your questions, India Burrell,’ he replied, although he didn’t choose to elaborate with any kind of answer. She opened her mouth to correct him on her surname again, but then changed her mind, not wanting to labour the point. She had the feeling he had said her maiden name deliberately, anyway.
India paid for the drinks – guilt-money, she thought to herself, handing over a tenner – and they sat down at a corner table.
‘So—’ he began.
‘Do you—’ she said at the same time, unnaturally polite. Then they caught one another’s eyes and laughed, the momentary tension dissolving again. ‘This is weird,’ she said, sipping her drink and hoping it wouldn’t go straight to her head. Now, of all times, she needed to keep her wits about her.
‘Really weird,’ he agreed. His face was pale and rather pinched; he was still as slight and angular as ever, India thought, with none of Dan’s comforting bulk, which anchored him so securely in the world. There’d always been something fragile about Robin, something kind of brittle. Had life been kind to him in her absence? she wondered, noticing the first grey hairs coming in at his temples, the grizzled five-o’clock-shadow around his jaw, the redness of his knuckles as he lifted his pint. Was he happy?
‘Go on, tell me about yourself, then,’ she said, taking another sip and feeling the alcohol spread through her body. ‘What do you do these days? And where did you go to, after – you know. When you left.’
He shot her a look she couldn’t decipher, but proceeded with stories of dodgy squats and time on the dole in Camberwell, before taking her through his jigsaw-like career, a spell as an accounts clerk (‘Bunch of number-crunching tosspots’), followed by a few years in social care (‘Working with people even more fucked-up than me’) and then his most recent job, rehabilitating young offenders and running drug-addiction clinics (‘I’m on nodding terms with every criminal and junkie in the north-west,’ he told her with that odd mix of swagger and self-defence).
His brittleness gave way to a warmer humour after a few minutes as he teased her about how middle-class she was these days, with her mortgage and family and her job teaching music (‘Last of the renegades, you, eh?’). She hadn’t let on that her ‘teaching music’ was to squalling babies and their earnest parents, unable to bear the paroxysms of mick-taking that particular confession would have sent him into. Somehow they were onto a second drink by now – a Diet Coke for her this time – and then they were deep into reminiscences of their old haunts, their old crowd, and all the daft teenage things they’d been so passionate about at the time. (Each other, mainly, India thought to herself, although they were both carefully avoiding getting into that, at least.)
Eventually it was half-past two and she couldn’t put off leaving any longer, not if she didn’t want to get caught up in a school-run cross-town traffic nightmare, anyway. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ she said, reluctantly.
‘Back to the plumber and kiddies?’ he said, and there
it was again, that dangerous glint resurfacing, just when she’d been hoping they might have got past all that.
She refused to rise to his bait. ‘Back to the kids,’ she said steadily, getting up from the table. ‘Well, it’s been good to see you.’
‘We should do this again,’ he said. ‘Catch up properly – make a night of it.’ She could see his incisors when he smiled, sharp and fox-like, and felt uneasy all of a sudden.
‘We could sort out a bit of a reunion,’ she countered, feeling the need for safety in numbers. ‘See what the rest of the old gang are up to.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a shit about the rest of the gang. I meant us two. Me and you. Robindia.’
Robindia. God, she’d forgotten that stupid hybrid of their names. They’d joked about calling their first home that, she seemed to remember. ‘Ah,’ she replied, trying to formulate the correct response.
‘What’s up? Worried what your husband would say? Everyone’s favourite plumber might go for me with his biggest spanner?’
She didn’t like the mocking tone of his voice, the fact that he could turn vicious in a single second. He’d always been sarcastic, rallying against the rest of the world, but she’d never experienced the sharp edge of it personally before. ‘Well . . .’ she began uncertainly.
‘I’m kidding. Sorry. I just like your company, that’s all. You’re a gorgeous, interesting woman, I could talk to you all night. I’m not being funny with you, honest.’
Her hand closed around the strap of her bag under the table, every instinct she had telling her to leave well alone. Then he leaned forward and she made the mistake of looking into those bewitching, unearthly dragon eyes, as he smiled his most charming smile and said, ‘Go on. You know you want to. You know you’re curious.’
