The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  ‘Okay?’ he said finally.

  I nodded. Looked at my painting again and managed a smile.

  ‘Sorry.’ I stood up. ‘I’m a bit wound up. I haven’t been sleeping very well. I thought I’d drawn a hammer, but look, it’s clearly a stick. That’s what we were doing that day. Throwing sticks. We were playing soldiers. Anyway, I must go . . .’

  ‘We could give you a lift home if you like?’ Jody had sidled up to me, placing a heavy, sympathetic hand on my shoulder. Oh God, she’d seen the whole thing.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. I’m only five minutes away. I could do with a walk.’

  ‘Okay. Take care, babe.’ And they left, Tom nodding awkwardly in my direction.

  I began to gather up the paintbrushes on my workbench.

  ‘I can do that,’ said Steve.

  ‘No. You shouldn’t have to clear up everything.’

  ‘Put them down.’

  I turned to protest but then he was beside me, pulling me round towards him. Adrenaline surged through me, blazing a trail from my chest to my fingertips.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Janey, look at me.’ But I couldn’t. I knew those eyes would see straight inside me. I focused instead on the pores on his nose, and the grooves down to the corners of his mouth.

  I gave a tiny shake of my head.

  Then he folded me tight against him. No, he clung to me.

  I rested my face, just for a moment, against the soft cotton of his shirt. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had held me. Possibly the night Pip had been conceived. Possibly not even then.

  And then came the most extraordinary feeling. Hurt – held in every part of my body, so quietly, for so long – uncrystallised, flowed through me in a sickening tide, then ebbed away into his arms.

  He rocked me. Rocked it all away. Almost . . . almost.

  I slid a hand down, and pulled the full length of his body against mine. I wanted to press him into every curve, every dip and angle, to let my body lose its shape to his. He held me tighter.

  Then I imagined my white, dimpled thighs, wobbling as he thrust into me.

  He lowered his head, breathing into my neck.

  ‘Oh Jesus. You’re trembling. I’m sorry. This is all wrong. We can’t do this.’

  He straightened up and pushed my shoulders back, trying to look into my face.

  ‘You all right?’

  I disengaged myself. ‘I just need a minute.’

  In the bathroom down the corridor, I tried to wipe away my smudged mascara with a bit of dampened toilet roll.

  What are you doing? I demanded of my white-faced reflection. Get a grip. Get a grip.

  *

  When I returned to the room, he motioned to the stool next to him.

  ‘Shall we talk about it?’

  His voice was low, and its gentleness was unbearable. It made me want to spill out my soul; made me want to push against him.

  ‘Well you did it,’ I said petulantly. ‘Maybe you should talk about it.’

  ‘Janey, this can’t happen. I’m an art tutor. You’re a student.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just got upset for a minute.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Look, Janey, it’s probably best you don’t come to the class any more.’

  I felt as though somebody had cut a little cord, a lifeline that I hadn’t even noticed I’d had. And I was drifting out from the shore.

  ‘But I need to.’

  ‘We’ve crossed a line. All sorts of bloody lines. I shouldn’t have even let you do that work today, after what happened last time. I’m not trained in art therapy.’

  His face had gone closed. He sat with his arms crossed, one foot tapping on the ground.

  ‘Well, can we meet as . . .’ I wanted to say friends, but realised how stupid it sounded. As if he’d want me for a friend.

  ‘I can find you another class, if you like. I can give you some leaflets and stuff about art therapy, too. You might find it interesting.’

  ‘I wanted to do more left-handed drawing. What about that? What about Hattie?’

  ‘You’ll get there,’ he said, fixing me with those fathomless eyes. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be part of it. But I’m sure you’ll get there.’

  8

  Hattie’s Diary

  Thursday, October 26th

  Another piano lesson today. We’ve wangled it so that Janey’s lesson is first and mine is straight afterwards. Janey convinced her granny she only needed a short lesson, because she’s not really interested in learning piano. (Well, she didn’t say that to her granny, but said something like beginners only needed short lessons.)

  So when I went there today, Miss F came to open the door, and told me to sit on the sofa while she finished off with Janey. She was wearing her green and olive dress. Bad sign.

  She was making Janey do finger-strengthening exercises, going up the keyboard with her left hand, playing three notes up and down again with her pinkie, fourth and third fingers. NB: when she was right at the bottom of the keyboard, it was the same sound that comes from our piano at night.

  Janey slowly stuck out her right hand, so it was just below the level of the piano stool, and made a ‘thumbs down’ sign with it, raising it and lowering her fist three times. It confirmed what I already knew: Miss Fortune was in a bad mood.

  ‘Since you’re both here, let’s talk a little about harmony. We need to understand music from the inside, girls.’

  She started playing some sort of piece, all hoppy and skippy like a Scottish reel or something. It’s amazing how she can play quite well, even with her withered hand, but if you look, she’s only using two of the fingers. ‘Hattie,’ she said loudly, without stopping, ‘I want you to tell me what key this is in.’

  I looked at Janey in alarm but she just bit her lip anxiously.

  ‘I – I don’t know . . .’ I said. Her fingers were touching as many black keys as white.

  ‘Ah, but how can you find out?’

  ‘Er . . .’

  She suddenly stopped in the middle of the piece, and told Janey to sit down and finish it off.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know this piece.’ She’d gone bright red.

  ‘So make it up,’ said Miss F, flapping her non-withered hand. ‘Improvise.’

  Janey sat down and picked out the melody with her right hand. She even managed to add in a few left-hand chords. I was amazed – she’s only been learning a few weeks. Then she lost the tune but made up another bit, a bar or two perhaps, and then stopped.

  ‘Tell me which chord you’ve finished on.’

  Janey looked down at her fingers. ‘It’s G major.’

  ‘Exactly,’ purred Miss Fortune. ‘You’ve found your way back to G major because the key of the piece is G major. You may have noticed the modulation into D in the middle – a little flirtation, if you will – but you’ve come back to G, which is the tonic note, in this piece. The G major chord is the triad formed from the tonic note.’ She spoke all in ups and downs as if she was reading a nursery rhyme.

  ‘The tonic chord is the root chord, or the home chord. A tune will always find its way back to the tonic. Melodies behave just like us. They always find their way back home. Let’s sing it, girls, let’s sing geeeeeeeee.’

  ‘Geeeeee,’ sang Janey, her voice quavering.

  I pressed my chin onto my chest and frowned deeply. ‘Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.’

  Janey’s G turned into a giggle. ‘Geeeeee-he-he-hee.’

  Miss Fortune sighed heavily, and sent Janey away, telling her to do finger-strengthening exercises for twenty minutes each day. This was a kind of punishment, as she usually says ten.

  Then she made me play that awful pavane thing. After I’d finished, she took a deep breath, and sighed it out very slowly. She made me sit down on the couch and then she spoke to me in a voice that started off very quiet.

  ‘Tell me, my dear,’ she said. ‘Because I’m interested. What is it about you that makes you so special? So worthy of attention? What is
it about you that means I should waste my time, week after week? Why should I make every effort to bring you on when you clearly take on board nothing that I tell you?’

  I was itching to take out my notebook and record what she was saying. I could smell raw meat on her breath.

  ‘Is it your father, is that it, Hattie? You think, perhaps, that because your father is the famous Emil Marlowe, you have the right to waste my time? Not to practise? To assume that different rules apply to you than to everybody else?’

  ‘No,’ I said in a small voice. ‘But it’s actually James who’s the musical one. He’s got a scholarship at Ramplings, you know, the famous music school.’

  It felt like we were having two conversations at once. A weird sick game, when we both knew I’d seen TL.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of Ramplings,’ she said. ‘Well perhaps you could bring James to see me one day, when he’s home for the holidays. It might relieve the godawful tedium of having to teach you and your mousy little friend.’ She laughed a high, tinkly laugh and patted me on the knee.

  ‘Now, I’ve got some custard creams just opened. I’ll bring them through. Shall we do listening for the rest of the lesson?’

  Dinner: sausages again.

  9

  Janey

  ‘Now, Richard . . . Richard!’ Miss Margot was trying, but failing, to sound firm over the din of the music.

  Vichard had shoved one drumstick up his nose, and was bashing a dark-haired little girl around the head with the other.

  Jody, sitting beside me, was oblivious, busy updating her status on Facebook. She was obsessed, at the moment, with building up ‘likes’ for her garden design business page. She didn’t really look old enough to be in charge of such a venture, with her red rosy cheeks, and bunnyish front teeth.

  Behind Miss Margot, another stray toddler crouched over the iPod dock, dripping Ribena onto it from the straw of his carton, his face a picture of scientific enquiry. His mother had nipped outside to take a phone call for work, and I knew I should have alerted Miss Margot to the imminent demise of the sound system, but a big part of me thought it would be a blessing if the music had to stop.

  ‘Okay, boys and girls – ready for the chorus?’ She nodded enthusiastically, a manic grin pasted onto her face.

  ‘The MONKEY jumps to the JUNGLE BEAT! Diddle-diddle-DOO! Diddle-diddle-DOO!’

  ‘Hmmph,’ said the girl next to me, as we were getting ready to leave. ‘I’m more into the classics, I must admit.’ She pulled a face, a froglike expression of doubt. ‘But it was nice and jolly, I suppose.’

  She had a large, beaky nose and crooked front teeth, and her hair was a bushy dark brown that snaked and bounced around her shoulders.

  ‘Are you new?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh! Yes, I’m Cleodie. This is my niece, Rose.’

  ‘Is she okay, after the drumstick incident?’

  ‘Yes, I should think so. Is that par for the course, would you say, for Jungle Jive classes?’

  ‘Pretty much, yes. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh well, not to worry.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to take your niece.’

  She considered. ‘Yes, it is rather, isn’t it?’

  ‘This is Cleodie,’ said Jody loudly, appearing at the froglike girl’s side and laying claim to her with a hand on her arm. ‘And Vose. They’re coming for coffee.’

  We manoeuvred our buggies out of the church hall and across the rain-soaked street into the coffee shop, where we shrugged off our wet coats and released our children into the play corner. There was an almost empty box of Stickle Bricks, a squeaky giraffe and one naked, rather raddled-looking Barbie doll.

  ‘So,’ said Jody when our coffees arrived. ‘We’ve missed you at the art class. Don’t say you’ve dropped out. Steve will be gutted. His funding may be cut.’

  ‘I’m sure Steve will pull through,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I even counted towards the numbers. It’s a class for couples, remember? It felt a bit odd doing it on my own.’

  ‘Oh hon,’ Molly said, squeezing my shoulder. ‘You’ll find someone. Won’t she, Jode?’

  Jody raised a noncommittal eyebrow, taking a long sip of her caffè latte.

  ‘Just look at Paul,’ added Molly, as though this were a case in point.

  ‘Paul from our antenatal class,’ said Jody. ‘A year ago his life was in bits. Bits! His wife, Shona – she’s a high-flying lawyer – ran off with a human-rights barrister. Left him holding the baby, quite literally. They’ve sorted things out now, though: he has Elgin all week, and she swans in at the weekend and takes him away for all the fun bits.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘He was on the edge of a breakdown,’ Molly told me with wide eyes. ‘We had to physically drag him to see his GP. But he’s fine now. He’s found someone! Paul has found someone.’

  ‘Geoff,’ added Jody quietly, stirring more sugar into her coffee.

  ‘I could go with you to the class,’ offered Cleodie. ‘We could pretend to be a couple. I must say, I’m curious. It sounds wild.’

  I looked up sharply. What had Jody and Molly been saying?

  ‘Well, er . . . it’s difficult to get away in the evenings,’ I said. ‘Murray can’t always look after Pip.’

  ‘How is Pip? Any change?’ Molly leaned forward to make this enquiry, with a slightly pained expression, as though Pip was an elderly aunt who was not long for this world.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jody, holding up a finger. She pulled something out of her rucksack and pushed it across the table. It was a recipe.

  ‘Fish fingers?’

  ‘Mackerel fish fingers. Vichard can’t get enough of them. You wrap the mackerel in spinach leaves before coating in egg and breadcrumbs. I say breadcrumbs, but they’re made of rolled oats and crushed bran, with some flaxseeds for extra crunch.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’ I pretended to study the recipe. ‘Thank you, Jody.’ No need to say that Pip was unswervingly loyal to Captain Birdseye, and now insisted on pulling the packets out of the freezer cabinet himself, after the dark day that I’d attempted to serve up Sainsbury’s own brand.

  ‘Oooh, lovely,’ said Molly. ‘Could I copy that down?’ There was a long interlude while she searched in her bag for a pen, then we all searched for pens, then Molly went up and asked the counter staff if they had pens. Finally, she typed the recipe into her phone, laboriously with one finger, muttering each ingredient under her breath.

  I was itching to donate the hard copy of the recipe to Molly, but knew this would be frowned upon when I’d been singled out as the deserving recipient. Instead, I placed it reverently in my bag.

  Cleodie, sitting across the table, raised an eyebrow at me.

  ‘But he eats jam sandwiches?’ said Molly brightly, finally tucking her phone away into her bag. ‘Oh well.’ She shrugged, and smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At least he’s getting the benefit of the strawberries.’

  Silence, as we sipped our drinks. Molly looked round to glance doubtfully at Pip.

  And then she said, ‘Have you thought of making courgette jam?’

  *

  Afterwards, I walked home with Cleodie – Molly and Jody were going straight on to a baby sign-language class. It turned out her flat was in the next street along from mine.

  ‘God, I thought I was going to die of boredom in there,’ she said, swaying to the side as though she was about to expire. ‘All that yummy-mummy chat. At one point I nearly told Molly I couldn’t give a fuck about colloidal oatmeal. I nearly shouted it out loud. But you seem a bit more fun. Come in for a coffee. This is me here.’

  I stood for a minute, twisting the strap of my bag.

  What? Fun? I should probably decline, terminate the encounter while she still seemed to think this was the case.

  But Cleodie didn’t look to me for confirmation. So I lifted Pip out of his buggy and followed her inside.

  ‘I’ve got a main-door flat too,’ I said. ‘It’s so nice not to have stairs to worry about.�
��

  Cleodie led me into the kitchen, where the work surfaces were covered in dirty dishes and there was a strong smell of overripe bananas. She poured water into the kettle, holding it nearly horizontal because a large saucepan and a wok were soaking in the sink. ‘See, that’s the problem with parenthood. You start worrying about stairs and things like that.’ Turning to me, she did the frog expression again and pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. ‘I don’t. Which is not very good, since I’m looking after Rose full-time just now.’

  ‘Does her mum . . .’

  ‘Oh! She’s got this terrific job. Her big break. A part in an STV drama thingy. So I’ve stepped in to help with Rose. But she’s going to start nursery soon, which is just as well, because I need to get on and finish my novel.’

  ‘A novel? How exciting.’

  ‘It’s a drag at the moment, I can tell you. Full-time childcare knocks every creative impulse out of you. I always put it off all evening, then end up writing well into the wee small hours and being shattered the next day! Quite often,’ she added, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘we just slump in front of Dora the Explorer in the mornings.’

  ‘Oh, everybody does that,’ I said with a wave of my hand.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not great with kids,’ she said. ‘I could never be a mother. I like being able to hand Rose back and get on with my own things. How on earth do you do it? Spending all your time with Pip, I mean. Day in, day out.’

  She carried the mugs through to the sitting room and placed them on a battered stool that served as a coffee table.

  Had I found someone, I wondered. Had I found someone who wouldn’t judge me if I were to confess how lonely I felt most of the time?

  ‘The days can feel quite long,’ is all I said.

  ‘Oh well, you and Pip can always hang out with me,’ she said in a dull, puddleglum sort of voice. ‘And Rose,’ she added by way of an afterthought.

  ‘She’d be a nice friend for him,’ I agreed. Rose was kneeling on the rug, bent over some toy farm animals, feet sticking out behind her, wiggling her toes. Just like Pip. With their milky skin and fine, nut-brown hair, they could almost have been twins.