Forget Me Not

by Luana Lewis

  Cleo steps outside and beckons to me to join her. I walk over, and take a look down over the railings. Below me is the roof of the fire station.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I say. My words come out sounding rather acidic.

  ‘Ben and I used to sit out here and drink coffee and read the papers on weekends. It was our perfect little nest.’ Her smile is sad. ‘For the first time in my life, I wasn’t lonely. My life was just unfolding, in a way that was beyond anything I had hoped for. Ben was kind and smart and destined for big things. I should have known it was too good to be true, shouldn’t I?’

  The day is an iron grey and it’s cold out here.

  ‘Ben and I have not been having an affair,’ Cleo says. ‘If that’s what you want to know.’

  We stand only inches apart out on the small balcony. Cleo looks me straight in the eyes and I can see no sign that she’s lying or hiding anything from me.

  ‘Then why?’ I say. ‘Why would Ben hold on to this property? Why does he let you live here? What’s the connection between you?’

  ‘Ben feels guilty.’

  ‘About what? I understand he broke off your relationship, but that was so long ago. You weren’t married. Relationships end all the time.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted a chance to tell you my side of the story,’ Cleo says. ‘I don’t know what Vivien may have told you.’

  ‘Vivien didn’t say anything. She never talked about what happened between the three of you.’

  I’ve always known my daughter had done something she wasn’t proud of. In a way, I was relieved she spared me the details.

  ‘The night Vivien broke up with Sebastian, she called me,’ Cleo says. ‘I was the first person she told, even though we’d barely seen each other in ages.’

  We are side by side, looking out at the rooftops below. The sound of traffic is a distant hum. Cleo stands very close to me, closer than she needs to be, and I feel her breath on my face as she talks softly and urgently.

  ‘She asked me to meet her, at Browns, the one on the Thames next to the Design Museum. It’s only a few blocks away from here. It sounds ridiculous now, but I remember I felt so happy that I was the first person she turned to. It was like some kind of honour. I was glad to have my friend back. And I remember the bar was full of people and the windows were all misted up so you couldn’t see out, you couldn’t see the river at all. And I remember exactly what she was wearing. A really low-cut vest, with sequins along the neckline, and tight white jeans. She didn’t usually dress that provocatively. Every man in the place was salivating over her. Every single one of them.’

  Salivating. I don’t like the way Cleo speaks about my daughter. I shiver as I feel the cold cut through my coat.

  ‘I did wonder if Vivien was using me, to fill the gap left by Sebastian and his disposable income and their over-the-top wedding plans. But I actually didn’t care. I thought, even if she was using me, a bit, we were such old friends. Vivien reached out to me when she needed help, and I knew I could do the same, I knew she’d step up if I was in trouble. Or that’s what I thought, anyway.’

  Cleo grimaces as she sips her tea, as though she’s tasted something bitter.

  ‘Vivien could have had any man she wanted,’ she says. ‘I had no doubt new candidates would soon be lining up. I just didn’t expect her to be interested in Ben. He wasn’t good-looking enough and he wasn’t nearly rich enough. So when she asked me if she could stay with us for a couple of weeks while she got herself sorted out, I said yes.’

  I have to force myself to look at her, because I don’t want to see the pain that’s still fresh. I don’t want to hear that my daughter was a thief, that she stole from a friend.

  ‘There were moments when Vivien first moved in with us,’ she says, ‘when I was so happy. Being together with Vivien again was like coming home. I was with my two favourite people in the world, the two people I loved most, and I so wanted them to like each other. As usual, I was desperate for Vivien’s approval. I wanted her to tell me I’d done well, with Ben and with our new home. And I suppose I got it, though not in the way I expected.’ Her laugh is dry and cynical. ‘Vivien saw something in Ben. She knew where he was headed.’

  ‘It’s cold out here, Cleo, let’s go back inside.’

  I turn away from her and go back in to the living room, and she follows. I watch as she shuts the door to the balcony and locks it. I sit down on the red and gold brocade sofa that’s really much too big for this small room. The fabric is rough under my fingertips as I run my hand up and down the cushion.

  Cleo sits down next to me.

  ‘I remember thinking that Ben was so patient,’ Cleo says. ‘He never complained about Vivien camping out on this sofa, even though you can see how tiny this place is and there was barely space for the two of us let alone a house guest. He was always friendly to her. He acted as though he’d forgotten all about the time she refused to go out with him.’

  Cleo leans forwards, her elbows on her knees. She’s facing the windows, talking more to herself than to me, I think.

  ‘Vivien was a practical woman,’ Cleo says. ‘She wasn’t getting any younger, and she needed a new source of adoration and of financial security. And by that stage, Ben was on his way up in the world. Vivien quickly put two and two together. She might not have been an academic, but in some areas – like self-preservation – she was an expert.’

  The acrimony in her voice is ugly now.

  ‘You may wish that was true,’ I say. ‘You may wish it was about money, but it wasn’t. Ben and Vivien loved each other.’

  There is a loud crash that startles us both and I nearly jump out of my skin.

  Cleo has left her red mug on the balcony, and the wind has blown it to the floor. The shards are scattered across the bench. Cleo doesn’t move from my side.

  ‘The weekend after Vivien first arrived, I began to feel afraid,’ she says. ‘It started with such a small thing. It was a Saturday morning and Ben got up to make us coffee. Usually he’d bring me my cup in bed, but that day he didn’t come back to me. I heard their voices in the kitchen. Eventually, I got up to see what was going on.’

  Cleo stands up.

  ‘I remember I was so angry when I walked in here. Vivien was always so messy – her bedding and her clothes were spread out everywhere over the sofa, and there were dirty plates and cups all over the coffee table and on the floor.’

  She points at the kitchen tucked into the alcove.

  ‘That’s where they were standing,’ she says. ‘I’ll never forget the scene. It plays like a film, on a loop inside my head. Vivien is leaning back against the kitchen counter, one foot curled up behind the other shin. She’s wearing a short lacy nightgown, and one of the straps falls down her shoulder. She keeps pushing it back up again, but it falls right back down. Her hair is so black, so shiny. She’s laughing, tilting her head to one side. She’s asking him about his job.’

  ‘I get the picture,’ I say.

  ‘I felt like an intruder,’ she says. ‘Like some kind of voyeur as I stood in the doorway and watched them.’

  Cleo is looking at the kitchen now, as though Ben and Vivien are right there in front of her. ‘They didn’t notice me. I was so pathetic, such a fool, standing there in an old T-shirt of Ben’s and tracksuit bottoms. I had no idea how high the stakes were. And even if I did, I couldn’t compete with her, anyway.’

  It’s creepy, and also desperately sad, the way Cleo is still living this fifteen-year-old story as if it had happened yesterday.

  ‘She was a snake,’ Cleo says. ‘Hypnotizing him with her big brown eyes and that husky voice of hers.’

  She falls silent. We both do. The expression on her face is odd, as though she’s confused, or disoriented.

  ‘Cleo?’ I say.

  She snaps back. She looks at me, then she sits down again.

  ‘I knew it was only a matter of time,’ she says. ‘I knew they both wanted me out of the way, even if Ben hadn’t admitted it to himse
lf yet. He would never make a move on Vivien until he’d broken it off with me, because he’s not that kind of person. So I made it easy for them.’

  ‘What do you mean, you made it easy for them?’

  ‘I mean, there was no point delaying the inevitable. So I packed my stuff into a couple of boxes and left one day while Ben was at work and Vivien was out.’

  ‘So you were the one that walked out on him?’

  ‘I could always read Ben like a book. I knew he was so desperate to have her and I also knew he wouldn’t admit it. He’d wanted her first; it was always Vivien he wanted. I was a poor second choice. So really, Vivien only came back to claim what was hers in the first place. Neither of them were to blame.’

  ‘But are you saying you didn’t even talk to Ben about your decision to leave?’

  I don’t say so out loud, but I wonder what kind of relationship Ben and Cleo really ever had, if she couldn’t talk to him about her jealousy of my daughter, about her insecurities. But then, perhaps I’m trying to excuse Vivien, by putting the blame on Cleo.

  ‘At first, when I moved out and I left them alone together,’ she says, ‘I hadn’t really given up. I still had hope. I thought there was a chance they would tire of each other and realize they weren’t truly a good match. Once lust had run its course.’

  I can’t help but feel for her. I sense the emptiness of her life, the regret, the loneliness. Because I’ve known all of these things too. I reach out and squeeze her hand. But only briefly. Because something about her touch sets me on edge.

  I find it difficult to understand how Ben can find Cleo’s company a comfort. Perhaps she is different with him. Less bitter, less fixated on the past. But that, too, I find difficult to imagine.

  ‘I got a letter from Ben’s solicitor when they moved out,’ she says, ‘confirming that half the flat was in my name, and saying that Ben would continue to pay the entire mortgage.’

  Cleo manages a wretched smile, but tears are so close to the surface. ‘Neither of them ever tried to contact me. When Vivien wanted Ben, it suited her for me to disappear. It suited both of them. I lost all of you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘We should all have been kinder.’

  ‘I never understood,’ she says, ‘how it could be so easy for all of you to erase me from your lives.’

  The horrible truth is that we have meant much more to Cleo than she has to us.

  ‘I turned a blind eye,’ I say. ‘I was so happy that Vivien was going to have a different life to the one I’d had. A life with financial security and a loving husband. I suppose I didn’t want to know that she’d hurt you. Even though I suspected. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell me.’

  My daughter caused harm. And there have been times when I have stood aside and watched her as she has damaged other people. I never did take a stand for right and wrong when it came to Vivien. I think Cleo knows this. She sees through me. I am neglectful. I am a silent witness. I am guilty by association, by omission. I accept my own culpability.

  ‘But after all this time,’ I say, ‘after all these years, surely you must have moved on?’

  ‘In some ways,’ she says, ‘yes, I have. I carry on. But in other ways, my life stopped the day I walked out on Ben and Vivien.’

  She’s dead serious..

  ‘But now everything has changed,’ Cleo says. ‘She’s gone. And everything has begun all over again.’

  Her words are chilling.

  I cannot bring myself to respond. Whatever I say will make no difference, anyway. Cleo has made up her mind and she’s not open to reason.

  I stand up. I cannot wait to leave. This flat is a tomb full of old and unhappy memories.

  As I walk out of the living area, I find myself looking into a small room, a study, which I didn’t notice when I came in. I stop when I see the photographs on the wall. There are nine of them, all in black and white, all framed in simple black wooden frames. They hang in rows of three.

  Cleo stands silently beside me. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ she says.

  And in some ways, they are. But they are also sinister.

  I step into the room to get a closer look, examining each of the portraits in turn. The photographs have been taken over several years and they are a record of my daughter’s life. A testament to her, a twisted love story. On the top row there are two close-ups of Vivien’s face, taken when she was a teenager. In the first, she is wearing a pair of sunglasses I remember well, pointed cat’s-eyes with a gold frame. She is laughing, pleased, it seems, to be the subject of the picture. In the second photograph, Vivien is at a ballet recital, she wears a black leotard and a thin film of a skirt that brushes the tops of her thighs. Her hair is slicked back into a bun and she looks back over her shoulder at the camera, intense and unsmiling.

  ‘Did you take all of these?’ I say.

  Cleo nods. ‘I’ve become something of a keen amateur photographer. I’ve invested in some amazing equipment, and I’ve been on quite a few courses. Sometimes I think about trying to make a career out of it. I love portraits. I work only in black and white.’

  Cleo is talented. The photographs are quite stunning, artful and full of feeling, and they cut right to the heart of my daughter’s sensuality, her vulnerability. But, with the exception of the first two early portraits, I don’t think Vivien knew she was being photographed.

  ‘Most of these were taken after Vivien and Ben were married,’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you said you had no contact with her?’

  ‘You don’t need to have contact with someone to take their photograph.’

  I cannot read her expression. She’s solemn as she answers my questions, but also rather detached. I would expect her to be embarrassed at the fact that I’ve been witness to her preoccupation with my daughter.

  ‘So Vivien didn’t know you were taking these photographs?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  The next photograph is of the house on Blackthorn Road. It was taken at night. The shutters in the basement are tilted open and Vivien is standing with her back to the window. Next, she emerges from a restaurant, in a cream evening dress and a dark cape; she is laughing, looking at the person beside her, though they are cropped from the picture. She is holding hands with someone, with Ben I imagine, but only his hand appears at the side of the frame.

  ‘I understood why Ben chose Vivien,’ Cleo says. ‘Because I loved her too. You can tell, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I can. I had no idea.’

  In the final row, Vivien bends forward to kiss Lexi’s cheek. They are standing in front of the school gates and Lexi looks to be about four years old.

  In the penultimate shot, Vivien is in a vest, Lycra leggings and trainers and she is running in what I imagine is Regent’s Park. The shot captures her in motion, while the background is a blur.

  I’m not sure what scares me more as I look at Cleo’s shrine to my daughter: the extent of her obsession with Vivien or how emaciated Vivien looks in these photographs.

  I don’t understand how I didn’t see what was in front of me all these years. I didn’t see she was ill.

  ‘Cleo,’ I say, ‘if you’d known I was coming over, would you have closed this door?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t really feel I have anything to hide.’

  ‘You’re not embarrassed?’

  ‘No, I’m not embarrassed. How is it embarrassing to celebrate beauty?’

  ‘Cleo, this isn’t celebration. This is stalking.’

  She doesn’t seem to take offence. In fact, she doesn’t seem to take this seriously at all. Or perhaps she’s relieved, to share this with me.

  ‘There came a point,’ she says, ‘where a computer screen wasn’t enough for me. I needed to see Vivien again. To really see her. In the flesh. I tried for so long not to go to their house, but in the end, I did.’

  ‘So it was Vivien you wanted to see?’ I say. ‘Not Ben?’


  ‘Both of them, really,’ she says. ‘All three of them. But it was always Vivien who fascinated me.’

  ‘When did you start watching her?’

  ‘Soon after they moved in to Blackthorn Road. I saw an article in a magazine about the renovations, about the way Vivien and the architect had worked together to redesign the house. The first time, all I did was stand outside for a few minutes. That was all.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I wanted to see Vivien with her baby.’

  I have no idea whether Cleo understands how disturbed I am by what she’s telling me. She is quite calm, quite casual about it all, as though this is normal behaviour.

  ‘I started going to Blackthorn Road really early in the mornings,’ she says. ‘Ben always left for work at the crack of dawn; it was the same when he and I lived together. So once he’d gone, I’d walk up and down the street, until Vivien came out of the house, with the little princess in her carriage.’

  Cleo is so earnest, her eyes narrow and her forehead creases with concentration, with the intensity of memory. ‘I remember when Lexi started walking on her own,’ she says. ‘It was winter, and she was still so tiny and she had on the most beautiful little tailored coat. It was a bright emerald-green colour, and it looked so pretty against her ginger hair. And she had a little knitted hat on too, with a crocheted white rose on the side. That outfit was so typical of Vivien, so perfect.’

  Cleo is so sad and so lonely. She’s still wrapped up in her relationship with Vivien and with Ben, with relationships that ended more than a decade before.

  ‘They would wear matching gloves,’ she says. ‘Vivien’s were beige leather, but Lexi’s were softer, the same colour, but woollen. And they used to hold hands. Vivien would point at things, showing Lexi everything, all the way to school. Whenever I used to read about something – like Mother’s Day – or if I’d pass a beauty salon and see a mother-and-daughter special offer, I’d think about Vivien and her daughter and I’d want to know what they might be doing together, to celebrate. I was envious.’