Love After Love

by Alex Hourston

  ‘There’s mint tea, girls, in this one, and a rose cordial over there,’ I said. Lou and I had candied petals in a spare half-hour the previous day and laid one in the bottom of half the glasses, a mint leaf in the rest.

  ‘Look through here, though, look through here,’ Frieda cried and flung back a drape at the far end of the room. Behind the door out to our tiny front garden, stood a squat tent, hired for the night; a scarlet curtained pergola, lit by souk lanterns and piled with pillows. The girls began to scream in various tones and pitches until the sound seemed to come together in one brief wavering note.

  ‘Girls. You can’t make all that noise. There’s neighbours,’ I said but then they had stopped and each circled the space in silence, her phone held high before her.

  ‘Out the way now, Mum,’ Frieda said.

  ‘Happy?’ asked Stef, back in the kitchen.

  ‘I’d say so. Yes.’

  When Stefan next checked, they’d turned up the lights and were playing ‘Let’s Dance’.

  And finally the boys, and these children were new to me and their mothers too. They came to the door and made conversation, reluctant to deliver their sons, who looked down as we spoke, toeing the floor, fingers flexing around their devices. The girls were silent, also, in the room beyond, the squealing over, the atmosphere ominous and I felt all their difficulty as the first boy went through. This was Ollie; next came Toby, then Ethan. There was Caleb, Kyle and Jos. Zac and Ty and Ryan but it was Brandon whom I recognised, with a mother who loved him too much, who couldn’t take her eyes off him, much less her hand, a boy who met my gaze and smiled: ‘Hello, Mrs Jansen,’ and if a real-life smile could ting, his would; a cartoon glint, a square of dazzle off those big white healthy teeth. And I saw that the way he tucked his T-shirt in one side was no accident and that his hair was longer and less effortful than the rest. He had charisma, this boy. A boy of luck and shine. He made me think of David.

  ‘Bye, Mum,’ he called over his shoulder and I lost her attention to him for a moment. ‘Are the guys in there?’

  The family left and I went through to my desk. The room was cold, largely unused and stored the mahogany chairs and table of my girlhood. I found my workbook and turned to that last failed meeting with Marie, but there was just her name and the date, prim and underlined at the top of the page and a scribble I’d made, further down, of a catherine-wheel, perhaps, or a lolly.

  Then the door went and one of them – Clemency? No, it was Jude – took a long weak step inside, a gulp of a sob and abandoned herself to crying into the neck of her friend.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘What’s this?’

  Clemency gave a tiny scream. Jude detached herself quickly and the two of them straightened in some schoolgirl instinct.

  I flicked the light switch and they winced at the overhead bulb, girls more used to mood lighting and soft shades.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked and Jude’s head dropped again, crying more of her sweet, weak tears.

  ‘Speak up, someone,’ I said. ‘Clemency?’

  She gave Jude a furtive glance but there was little to be seen of her but her mass of hair, its great weight tipped forwards, the origins of its height revealed in the snarl of back-comb at the roots.

  ‘Look, we’re not blaming anyone,’ Clemency said, at last.

  ‘Well, if that’s the best you can do I’d better go in and ask somebody else.’

  I was up and past them before they grasped what I meant.

  ‘No, Mrs Jansen, please,’ the girls began, snatching for each other and me, cowering and supplicant and I understood that they were never spoken to like this, their feelings an irrelevance, nor an action taken without due discussion and regard.

  ‘Let’s hear it then,’ I said and Clemency began.

  ‘The thing is, Brandon and Jude. I mean, it’s not like they were together but they message, literally, all the time, and he likes everything she posts. Straight away. And he does not do that with everyone. Anyway. So I think she’s a bit upset.’

  ‘About what?’ I said.

  ‘And it’s not as if it was a secret, either. Everybody knew. Of the girls, I mean. Jude showed us all of it. We talked about it like every day.’

  ‘So where’s the problem?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I guess she’s just disappointed, I suppose, seeing as how things have turned out.’ Clemency’s wrist was thick with friendship bracelets and festival wristbands. She twisted the frayed cotton ends into a nib and looked at me carefully. ‘Now that he’s with Frieda,’ she said, with a tiny lift of gratification in her voice.

  Frieda, in her room, morose. That far-off look. Today’s face, stripped of colour, an appeal to somebody else’s taste. It suddenly made more sense.

  ‘That boy?’ I said. ‘This is about that boy?’

  Under the hair, the sobbing gained pace.

  ‘Er, it’s more the fact that Frieda knew, and still—’

  I chuckled. Clemency gasped.

  ‘Girls,’ I said, ‘let me reassure you. That boy is vain and spoilt. He is no loss. Clemency, please don’t look so alarmed. Jude, you will survive, more than that, you will thrive. You people always do.’

  Jude raised her head, sending tributaries of glittered tears off down her face. The two girls gaped at me with twinned bafflement.

  ‘How about I get Frieda out?’ I said. ‘Perhaps we can clear things up before your parents arrive.’ Jude wiped her nose in the crook of her elbow, bursting the inky streams into a phlegmy smear.

  ‘OK, Mrs Jansen,’ she said.

  ‘Are you going in there?’ Clemency asked, in a high fast voice of shock.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said.

  She gave a short excited giggle. ‘I think it might be an idea if you knocked.’

  At the door I caught them exchange a look, goggle-eyed and twitching, an impression of me, I assumed.

  Frieda, when I pushed open the door, did not protest this time. She didn’t move from where she sat; legs folded beneath her on our velvet button-backed chesterfield revealed now that its throw lay at their feet, trampled in a complex tangle of discarded shoes. She looked heavy-lidded, relaxed, luminous. Brandon was by her side, very close, no apology in it and Beatrice, on the other, pressed almost as tight, moonstruck too; in awe of her friend’s success.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Frieda said. Brandon, whose arm lay across my daughter’s shoulders, lifted his fingers off her and waggled them.

  ‘Can you come out here, a moment, please?’ I said. ‘Did you notice a couple of your guests are missing?’

  At the sound of my voice, an anxious couple scrambled out through the mouth of the tent.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Free said. As she pulled away, he let his fingertips run the length of her arm and she cast a strange blind look back at him, drunk on the pleasure of it, either the boy or her win. There was only that; not me, my shock or opinion, or the hurt girl next door and her friend, and the danger they presented with their telling of events.

  ‘Where are they?’ she said, with an ambiguous little tremor.

  ‘In there,’ I replied. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  *

  I found the broom and swept up a pile of dog hair, party poppers and the foil from prosecco corks. I moved a great pile of belongings to its next stop at the bottom of the stairs. Amongst it was Frieda’s envelope, the first time I had seen it out of her grip, and whereas before I might have looked, this time I simply laid it with the rest. And as I did, I saw Tara’s message written in a corner: For Frieda. Food for thought XX, and I recognised that hand from the gift that I had found, that perfect little earring which Frieda had worn to catch the boy and I supposed that they had talked that through; Frieda, tender and ready, and Tara, wise, warm and credible. I imagined them settled in her actress’s snug, the older woman’s counsel: first love, its power and its pitfalls. Who belongs to whom, the politics of friends. Sharing the way it had happened for her, so long ago now. What she had learnt and would happily pass on. Meanti
me, I had been here, hiding, twisted and obsessive, atrophying over my own heart’s desire.

  The hall was dark and I was alone. My subconscious took its chance and threw up a couple of little reminders: the skewed tooth in his smile, the way his touch was wired into my system, how his closeness brought me rest. I was still there with my back against the cold cellar door, imagining the empty space behind me with a sick satisfaction, the tumble through moist air and the blunt connection of stone and skull, when the girls came out, arms linked, all three faces streaky now. The party throbbed behind its door and they moved towards it, until at the last, Free stopped Jude with a hand at her chest.

  ‘OK?’ she asked, seriously, proprietary. She ran her thumb under the other girl’s eyes, making the mess far worse and wiped what she had collected there on her jeans.

  Jude nodded. The hierarchy had shifted. ‘Come on then,’ Frieda said. They shared a brief three-way hug.

  ‘Mum!’ Free cried, when she saw me. ‘You scared me half to death!’

  They all shrieked with varying commitment and collapsed against each other in mock fear and relief, their hands in unceasing motion, tweaking hair, pulling at sleeves, running their fingers across the surfaces of their skin, seeking out any fresh imperfection.

  ‘Wrap it up now, Frieda,’ I said. ‘The parents will be here.’

  Then: ‘Mummy.’

  ‘Christ, Louisa. You made me jump. What are you doing, sitting up there by yourself?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Waiting for you.’

  She sat cross-legged, her book spread in her lap.

  ‘Bedtime now. Come on.’

  ‘Can I read, though? Just for a bit?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ I said. ‘No more,’ and she scampered up the stairs.

  *

  It was fathers mostly for the pick-up, who didn’t want to double-check that nothing had been left, nor cared how the party had been or what I had gleaned about their children’s lives.

  The final tidy revealed little of note, a rip in the back of the tent where they had pushed their way out, leaving a handful of fag butts in a considerate little pile and four empty cans riding deep inside a hedge.

  Stef ran through his emails. Jake was back downstairs now that the house had emptied and had retaken his spot before our largest TV. Frieda sat in the kitchen, quiet, hugging her knees, high on fresh sex. I picked up my phone and went back through to the dining room.

  I dialled Marie’s number. She had told me that she didn’t sleep. That she liked to be the last to bed. It was only just after ten. The phone rang and I readied myself. She didn’t pick up, so there was that middle phase when I waited for the answer machine instead, planning my message, then we had passed that moment too and I saw her, heaving herself up from the bath, or raking through her things to find her phone. I was prepared for her voice, out of breath or even cross and then it came, but it was recorded, and if she hadn’t said her name at the start, I wouldn’t have believed that this was Marie. I heard, in her accent, that childhood that she’d denied to me, right there, in a bright thread of estuary. The modulation in her voice, its easy journey, and the pitch – much lower than she presented in our sessions; I recognised none of it. Everything was new and I saw that she had been in disguise, those bright blue eyes a mirror, blinding me with my own reflection. I spoke. A cracked whisper, at first, that fitted my status, crouching, wrong-footed, in the dark, which I expanded across the sentences into something better, more true.

  I told her that I hoped she was OK, that I looked forward to speaking with her next week. I acknowledged that perhaps I shouldn’t have called, but I wanted to reach her and that seemed the bigger thing. That she was in my thoughts. That we could start again on Monday and I would do my best. I rang off and went to the kids. I took Frieda in my arms though I thought she wouldn’t take it, but she hugged me back with her eyes shut tight and I felt the risk she’d taken and her vulnerability.

  ‘I’m getting off soon, Mum,’ yelled Jake when he heard me at the back of the room. ‘I promise you. I just need to do this,’ he said, so I left him fighting zombies and went to say goodnight to Lou.

  She had suffered a strange spate of night terrors a few years back. A floorboard would most often give her away and we’d find her creeping around the house in the grip of her vision. If she saw us, she would scream and flail, panting with terror, so we learnt to let her be and tracked her from a distance, two frightened parents tiptoeing behind, communicating in looks. When the noises stopped, we knew that she had come to rest and Stef would pick her up from wherever she lay and carry her back to bed, bone-light. She remembered nothing the next morning but was changed by the month’s end, I felt sure of it. More grown-up, somehow; the experience marked her, though we rationalised the spell as part of some kind of neurological leap.

  So when she wasn’t in bed, I thought: this again. I tried the children’s rooms first, but nor was she there. I did the rest of upstairs – we had found her once asleep in the bath – but still no sign. I set the other two to looking, racing each other as though it was a game, but they came back to me empty-handed.

  ‘She’s gone,’ I said to Stefan, when we met in the hall, fighting a rising wall of panic.

  ‘Nancy, please,’ he said. ‘Keep calm. She’ll be here somewhere.’

  There are other places a sleeping child might hide, so we checked those next: under the table, behind a curtain; our inventiveness was horrible. I began to call her name, which broke the rules – the sleeping child should never be woken – and acknowledged that what was happening tonight was something else. I became more rash, more manic, turning back into the same room again, the children keeping close now; quiet and obedient, their faces changed. I opened the front door and listened. I tuned out my thumping heart. The entire sheet of my skin began to tingle. My hair rose with the effort of it and I felt sure that if she was out there, I would know it; sense some disturbance. I listened for change, for dissonance, but there was nothing and I had the idea that she had slipped through a crack in the planet. Then the wind slammed the side-gate against its latch, bouncing it wide open, and the possibilities this seemed to suggest escalated my fear to the point that I thought I might scream. I heard Stef’s voice.

  ‘She’s here, Nancy,’ he called. ‘Out the back.’

  I found her in Stef’s office, in his swivel chair, wrapped in her blanket that I hadn’t seen was gone, white and silent with the mad hair of the recently wakened. Behind her, in an arrangement like a formal family shot, stood David.

  ‘Hello, Nancy,’ he said.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

  ‘At Alice’s,’ he replied. ‘How’s things?’

  28

  Alice’s house was beautiful, a home of straight-forward London dreams. Brickwork like royal icing, a strip of chequerboard tiles unrolling from the front door and railings lacquered so thick and black they looked like they were dripping. David opened the door barefoot in old jeans and waited for me to say something.

  *

  We hadn’t talked the previous night. I cried after we found them, a decent stretch of sobbing that motored along under its own steam, and they left me to it. I texted David later to see when we could meet and he suggested this morning at Alice’s house, which he described as a neutral space.

  *

  ‘Come in then,’ he said, in the end, with a sweep of his arm. ‘Welcome to my lovely home.’

  I followed him through. The floorboards were bleached, the walls a chalky pinkish white.

  ‘Where is everything?’ I asked. ‘I thought she had kids.’

  ‘Oh Nancy,’ he replied. ‘You should see the storage.’

  We went into the sitting room, a room too huge for any standard domestic purpose, which had been split in two and decorated identically with pale squared-off sofas and low polished tables made of slabs of varnished tree. At the far end, raw steel screens opened to a couple of feet of balcony and below, I could see the kitch
en through the roof of a matching extension. At the end of her garden, a wooden pirate ship had been set into the earth, its prow raised as though it broached a wave. Beneath, a patch of imported sand showed where a corner of tarpaulin had come loose in all this wind.

  ‘Is that actually beach, out there?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never seen it in the summer.’

  ‘You here is ridiculous,’ I said, which was a lie, he looked amazing in that house; born to it, louche and entitled.

  ‘How so?’ he replied. ‘I’m staying at my girlfriend’s for a bit. Is that so strange?’

  I walked away from him, into the other half of the room. A massive pop art pool-scape hung above a bare mantelpiece; a woman, face-down on a lilo, the pool a camouflage print of three contrasting blues, her arms and backside pink and mottled and outsized and her face hidden in shade.

  ‘And that is truly shit art,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘You know nothing about art.’

  ‘I know when something’s shit,’ I said. ‘Where’s Alice?’

  ‘At her office,’ he replied.

  ‘On a Sunday?’ I said, and thought of Marie, tomorrow; her blanched face across my room. I’d heard nothing from her. I remembered my phone, charging in a socket in the hall.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ David said.

  On the table lay a book of architect’s blanks and the pencils he preferred.

  ‘Been working?’ I asked.

  ‘Just scribbling down a few thoughts,’ he said.

  ‘So it’s new then, is it, you two?’ I said. The wood beneath my feet was warm. I could feel heat rising through the floorboards into the wet soles of my favourite flats, reserved for evenings. I should never have worn them to cross town this time of year.