Forget Me Not

by Luana Lewis

  ‘They were married a long time, Rose. All married couples argue. And if it’s any consolation, there was more affection between them than most other couples I’ve seen.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I told DS Cole.’

  The smell of flowers has faded, now all I’m aware of is the subtle, masculine scent of Isaac’s aftershave.

  ‘Did you know Ben’s ex-girlfriend has been visiting him? I bumped into her the other night outside the house. Her name is Cleo Baker.’

  Isaac nods. ‘I gathered.’

  ‘Had you seen him with her, before Vivien died?’

  ‘No.’

  I stare at Isaac’s profile. He doesn’t show much of a reaction to what I’ve said. His calm demeanour, his inscrutability, which up until now I’ve found a comfort, is beginning to irritate me. I get the impression Isaac’s first priority is his loyalty to Ben, and that he’d rather protect Ben than tell me the truth.

  ‘I was wondering if Cleo might have been the cause of their argument.’

  ‘Rose, I really have no idea. I wouldn’t think so, but I really don’t know.’

  I keep my eyes straight ahead of me, on the road, on the back of the black cab in front of us as we crawl down Wellington Road.

  ‘Do you think the police are allowed to just turn up like DS Cole did this morning,’ I say, ‘whenever and wherever they like?’

  ‘I suppose they are,’ Isaac says.

  ‘I don’t want to say anything stupid. I don’t want to give them any sort of ammunition if they’ve decided to dig into Vivien and Ben’s relationship.’

  ‘Ben doesn’t need you to protect him,’ Isaac says. His eyes are back on the road, both hands on the wheel. ‘We were out in Surrey together that morning, on a site survey. He’s not a focus of the investigation.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But whenever I’m with DS Cole, I feel guilty. As though she’s accusing me of something, even though she doesn’t articulate it.’

  ‘Everyone feels that way when they’re being interviewed by a police officer. I had quite a grilling myself since I was the one who found her.’

  Isaac clears his throat and then he falls silent. He looks across at me, only briefly. I sense he wants to say more. He is waiting for me to ask, to give him permission to continue. But I am not ready to know.

  I turn to look out of my tinted window. London is so clogged up with traffic. I worry about Lexi growing up here; no fresh air, no respite.

  ‘I didn’t tell you the whole story at dinner the other night,’ I say. ‘When I said I brought up my daughter alone, perhaps I gave you the wrong impression, as though I was some kind of saintly, self-sacrificing single mother. I wasn’t. That’s part of my guilt.’

  I hear myself sigh. I have such a strong urge to confess, for someone else to know my burden.

  ‘I fell pregnant with Vivien by mistake. I was in the final year of my basic nursing training and the timing could not have been worse. I’d been offered a place on a specialist training course and I was desperate to take it up. The training would mean I could carry out many of the same procedures as a neonatal paediatrician does – inserting cannulas, intubating the babies, that sort of thing. But the course was in Southampton and it would have been impossible with a baby to look after. My mother said she would support me. I think she was quite excited, even, about having a baby in her house. My father died of a heart attack when he was in his thirties, and she was lonely. So I ended up sending Vivien to live with my mother when she was three months old, and I went to Southampton as planned. Vivien stayed with my mum until she was four. She was more of a mother than I was.’

  It’s a relief to say this out loud.

  ‘I paid a price for those lost years. We both did. Vivien came back to live with me when she was starting school but even then she spent more time at the childminder’s than she did with me. I was lucky because Jane – the childminder – was an amazing woman. I felt she was doing a better job than I was anyway, and she was happy to have Vivien to stay overnight if I was working a night shift. In the end, I didn’t even have Vivien with me for that long. She was really gifted at ballet, and when she was sixteen, she asked if I’d send her to ballet school, as a boarder. And once again I was relieved. It wasn’t easy running a neonatal unit and dealing with a teenage daughter.’

  I roll down my window, I want to breathe in some fresh, cold air. Instead I taste the bitterness of this polluted city. Isaac is concentrating on the oncoming traffic as he pulls into the lay-by outside Cambridge Court. It’s almost dark.

  I close the window and look at my bruised hand as it rests on soft pink cashmere. Isaac turns off the engine, and we sit for a few moments without speaking. Then he reaches over and places his hand over mine.

  ‘I was not a good mother,’ I say. ‘I was just going through the motions, and I never found it particularly rewarding. I had to bring up my daughter alone, in a damp-infested council flat. I gave up any social life I might have had. But more than that – I love my job and I always found being on the ward much more enjoyable than being at home. I often thought it would have been better for me not to have gone through with the pregnancy. And now that she’s died, it feels like my fault. I feel so guilty. As though I’m responsible because I wished her away.’

  Isaac squeezes my hand. He doesn’t try to make me feel better, or to deny this horrible, irreversible truth.

  ‘There’s only one way I can redeem myself,’ I say. ‘And that’s to watch over Lexi.’

  I feel he understands me. His hand is warm over mine, his eyes are kind and wise. Or perhaps I’m imagining what I want to see; conjuring up the kind of friend I need.

  I unlock the front door of Cambridge Court and Isaac follows me into the lobby and waits by my side for the lift to arrive. Once inside, under the bright light, we stand with our backs against the mirror, staring straight ahead.

  I stop at the threshold of my flat, holding my keys. Isaac is next to me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his long coat. I wonder if he notices the smell that bothers me so. The sourness of Vivien’s childhood.

  ‘I had a word with Ben,’ Isaac says. ‘He’s not comfortable with you fetching Alexandra from school. Not yet. He’s trying to keep her routine as much the same as possible, and he thinks it will be too disruptive to have a different person pick her up.’

  I turn and brace my back against my front door, stiffening my spine against the surge of disappointment. ‘What if I come over to the house, to meet her when she gets home?’

  ‘It’s too soon, that’s all.’ Isaac looks embarrassed.

  ‘I imagine Ben had a few choice words to say about me.’

  Isaac says nothing. There is a scuffling from underneath the door across the hall. We’ve disturbed Mrs Shenkar’s two Pomeranians. My neighbour is morbidly obese and she is always home, usually in her dressing gown. Sometimes she’ll open her door and peer out.

  ‘I can help Lexi,’ I say. ‘I should be seeing her every day. This is cruel. Ben is punishing both of us. I know I’ve screwed up, but does it count for nothing that I’ve lost my daughter?’

  A knife-sharp pain rips through my temple, and lodges behind my right eye. The dogs across the hall launch into a high-pitched yapping as they hear the distress in my raised voice.

  I cover my face with my hands.

  ‘Let me finish,’ Isaac says. ‘It’s not all bad news.’ Gently, he pulls my hands away from my face. He keeps hold of me.

  ‘Ben wants to take Alexandra to the funfair on the South Bank on Saturday,’ he says. ‘He’s asked me to drive them over there. I suggested we should ask you to come with us, and Ben said that would be fine.’

  ‘So I have to wait until the weekend?’

  I sound churlish and ungrateful, but I resent the fact that I’m reliant on this near stranger, benign as he may be, for access to my own granddaughter. Isaac knows nothing of the days, the weeks, I spent sitting next to Lexi’s incubator. I was the one who stayed with her during the grueso
me eye-testing, to make sure the ventilator hadn’t damaged her vision. Ben and Vivien couldn’t bear to see her suffer.

  ‘I think it’ll be a good place to start,’ Isaac says. ‘On neutral ground, so to speak.’

  The pain in my head makes it difficult to think coherently. I remind myself that none of this is Isaac’s fault. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  But I can’t look at him. I pull my hands away and turn and fumble with my key; finally I manage to fit it into the lock. As I push open the door, Isaac places a hand on my back.

  ‘It’s early days,’ he says. ‘Everything will get better.’

  Chapter 8

  The last of the leaves turn to mush under my boots and the hems of my jeans are damp and flecked with mud as I make my way up the slope to the café in Regent’s Park.

  Cleo has arrived early. She’s sitting at a table next to the window inside the round, glassed-in building. When she sees me approaching, she springs up and opens the door.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ she says. She kisses my cheek with chapped lips.

  She looks more herself today, with her hair pulled back in a rather severe ponytail, and no make-up except for her pencilled-in brows. She pulls out a chair for me and I sit down. The steel frame is cold and uncomfortable. On the round table between us there are two steaming paper cups and two plates, each with a slice of cake lying on its side.

  ‘I ordered you an Earl Grey,’ she says. ‘Do you still drink Earl Grey? I remember it used to be your favourite.’

  ‘I do,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

  Cleo talks nervously as she levers the lid off her drink. ‘I hate these takeaway cups,’ she says. ‘You can never get the lid back on again, once you take it off.’

  A cloud of steam rises in the air between us. I reach for my drink, leaving the lid on. The side of the cup is scalding hot against my palm.

  ‘Do you remember,’ Cleo says, ‘how I would bring you your tea in bed sometimes, on weekend mornings, when you had a lie-in?’

  I smile as though I do, but the truth is I have no memory of this at all.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed having you in my life,’ she says.

  I take a sip of my boiling-hot tea through the plastic slit and my eyes well up as my tongue burns. Cleo is watching me closely, as though I am some sort of invalid.

  ‘I wanted to make sure everything is okay between us,’ she says. ‘I thought I picked up some tension the other night. I take it Ben hadn’t told you that I’d been over to the house?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I had no idea.’

  I still can’t put my finger on what it is about Cleo that bothers me, but I feel uneasy. Perhaps it’s the sense of disquiet she carries with her.

  ‘Did you and Vivien ever make up?’ I say.

  She shakes her head. ‘No. But when I read about what happened, I wanted to offer Ben some support.’

  I begin to shred my serviette into tiny fragments. ‘How often do you see him?’

  ‘I try to go over there every evening,’ she says.

  Now I think she looks somewhat uncomfortable, or embarrassed, but I can’t be sure because Cleo often looks this way. She has never been comfortable in her own skin. She runs her fingertips along her forehead, back and forth along her hairline.

  ‘You were so kind to me, Rose,’ she says. ‘I’ll never forget how many meals I ate at your place, how many hours I spent at your flat. You were so strong and you worked so hard. You were my role model growing up. I used to pretend that you and Vivien were my real family.’

  ‘That’s generous of you, Cleo. But I’m sure I could have done more for you. You were always such a timid little thing. You didn’t talk much, but whenever you did say something it was always very thoughtful and very grown up. And you were so often wandering around the estate or up and down the high street, with no one watching over you. Maybe I should have contacted someone – the school or social services. But I didn’t know if it would end up making things worse for you, getting them involved.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have,’ Cleo says. ‘And I wasn’t the only one with no one to watch over me. You had to work such long hours. Viv and I looked out for each other.’

  In that moment, I wonder if she’s merely insensitive, or if she’s deliberately trying to rub salt in my wounds. Then I realize she’s simply being honest. It’s not Cleo I’m angry with so much as myself.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like Vivien,’ Cleo says. ‘You never knew what she’d do or say next. Did you ever find out what she’d been doing with the money you gave her to buy food, on the days when you were working late?’

  Again the sense of unease returns. It hurts, to be confronted with the reality that Cleo knew my daughter better than I did.

  ‘No, I had no idea she was doing anything other than buying food.’ My tone is sharp, but Cleo doesn’t notice.

  ‘You always gave Vivien more than she needed. She’d give me half and I’d buy myself a pizza. I always used to order the same thing, Margherita with extra chicken. I can still remember the smell of the melted cheese and the wood-fired stove. I was so starving after school, and she must have been too. But Vivien never ate a thing. Even in the pizza place, with that smell, she’d never change her mind. And then I’d offer her half of whatever I had, and she’d refuse to take it.’

  I don’t look her in the eyes. I stare out of the window at the failing light. The colours in the park are muted, everything blends into one grey palette.

  ‘So what did she do with the money?’ I say.

  ‘She’d save up and then buy herself something she knew you wouldn’t let her have. I remember one time she bought this leopard-print jumper.’ Cleo laughs. ‘She was very secretive when she was a teenager. I don’t think you had any idea what she got up to.’

  I don’t want to hear about the way Vivien deprived herself, about her loneliness, or her propensity for deception. There are things I don’t want to know, knowledge I would prefer to be spared. But this is no less than I deserve.

  ‘I got you a piece of lemon drizzle cake,’ Cleo says, pointing at my plate. ‘Or do you have Vivien’s iron will when it comes to boycotting white flour and sugar?’

  Again, this feels like a dig. I don’t respond. I break off a small corner of the cake with my teaspoon and taste it. It’s bland and dry. I cut off a few more small pieces but I end up leaving them scattered around the paper plate. Cleo has nearly finished hers, but I have no appetite.

  ‘Do you remember how Vivien let me tag along with her to the eisteddfods? I was her personal valet.’

  I smile now, an easier smile. ‘Yes, I do.’

  Cleo and I share many of my daughter’s childhood memories and this one brings with it a rush of pride. I see Vivien, standing on stage, smiling from ear to ear, her hair scraped back into a bun, with a winner’s sash draped across her leotard and flowers in her arms. And poor Cleo, in her tracksuit, content to bask in the glow of Vivien’s reflected glory and not needing to be centre stage.

  ‘I felt so important,’ she says, ‘when I was allowed to go backstage to help her get dressed. It was all so magical to me, the way Vivien would sleep in ringlets, or you would tease her hair and spray in ten tons of hairspray and then arrange it into a bun. Her tutus were so beautiful and so pink, with all that tulle. I remember you would put glitter on her cheeks, and make it stay on with Vaseline.’

  I’m grateful to her, for reminding me I was there for Vivien, sometimes. Sometimes I was present, even if it wasn’t often enough.

  ‘You had your talents too, Cleo. You were top of your class, right the way through school. I don’t think Vivien would have made it through as far as she did without your help.’

  ‘I loved school. It was so much better than being at home. My parents couldn’t stand the sight of me.’

  ‘What did you do,’ I say, ‘afterwards?’

  ‘A degree in languages. It was my dream to work as a translator for the UN. But instead, there was Be
n.’

  We both fall silent. I can’t help but feel sorry for her.

  A gust of cold air from the door blows all the little white pieces of serviette to the floor. I try to gather the remaining shreds from the steel table top and, not knowing what else to do with them, I shove the scraps into my pockets. I leave my ice-cold hands deep down inside my coat.

  Cleo’s fingers dance restlessly across her forehead as she pulls strands of her hair loose from her ponytail.

  I’ve never known what happened, between the three of them. All I know is that Cleo and Vivien stopped speaking. I always suspected that Vivien had interfered in Ben and Cleo’s relationship and that she was the cause of their break-up. I didn’t want to know the details. I didn’t want to see that my daughter might be capable of hurting someone weaker than she was.

  We both reach for our paper cups. The tea has cooled down and I take a few more sips. I do still like Earl Grey.

  So far we’ve had the café to ourselves, but now a group of teenage girls bursts in through the glass doors. They’re all black-rimmed eyes, long hair and short skirts.

  Cleo bites down on the rim of her paper cup. She leaves teeth marks all around the edges. Her fingers creep up to her hairline again and she scratches at the skin of her forehead. I remember now, how she used to have a nervous habit of pulling at her eyebrows. There was barely anything left of them by the time she was in secondary school.

  As I watch her, awkward and fidgeting, I find it hard to believe she had anything to do with the argument between Vivien and Ben. I simply cannot imagine Ben choosing Cleo over Vivien.

  ‘Cleo,’ I say, ‘we’ve known each other a very long time and I hope you don’t mind if I’m direct.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What exactly is the nature of your relationship with Ben?’

  ‘He’s in shock and he’s lonely,’ she says. ‘I keep him company. He doesn’t want to be alone.’

  ‘Do you understand how vulnerable he is?’