The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  ‘Oh!’ she kept saying, holding her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I whispered. ‘Dad did loads of business with them, so I got a very good deal.’

  She turned slowly towards me, eyes fixed on the ground, then shook her head.

  ‘Do you like it? Will it be an okay size for the flat?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, still looking at the ground. ‘Yes.’

  And she reached out for me, with a stiff, awkward, trailing-sleeved arm, and folded me into a hug, burying her face against my shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got a night out next week,’ she said, when we’d gone back to the café. She said she needed another cup of tea to get herself together after the shock of the piano. She’d even bought another carrot and beetroot muffin for Pip, on the basis that at least he’d touched the previous one.

  ‘Oh, who with?’

  She blushed and looked at me through her lashes as though we were twelve and dissecting the ceilidh with St Simon’s.

  ‘Steve. He’s the person I was talking about the other day. The, er, art tutor type person. It’s just as friends.’

  ‘Shall I babysit?’ I heard myself saying. ‘I’d love to spend some time with Pip.’

  Before I go.

  ‘Do you know, that would be brilliant! I was going to ask Murray but it would be a bit awkward actually. He doesn’t like Steve. He wouldn’t understand that we’re just friends.’

  ‘Fab. Just tell me when and where, hon. Pip and I will have a ball.’

  ‘Did you hear that, Pip-squeak? Auntie Hattie’s going to babysit!’ She ruffled his hair and picked out a dried-up lump of jam.

  ‘I’ve got some news, too.’ I said. ‘James is coming to stay at Regent’s Crescent next week! With his wife, Simone, which is a bit unfortunate admittedly but she’ll probably just stare miserably into her phone most of the time. So what do you think? We could all meet up. It’d be just like old times.’

  I honestly thought she’d be chuffed to bits. She’d adored James when we were little. I suppose I’d even been hoping that, with the three of us together, it might draw him out of himself a bit. Maybe he’d chat with us and laugh and have fun, instead of droning on about investment banking and then drinking himself into oblivion as he normally did at family get-togethers. I might see the old James again. The James that I hadn’t really seen since he got sent away to Ramplings. I had a sudden image of him, standing by the door at Regent’s Crescent with his trunk and his violin case, his legs thin in shorts and long socks, his skull bumpy under a harsh haircut. His freckles standing out on his face as he struggled not to cry.

  ‘Janey? What do you think?’

  She didn’t make any sign of having heard me. I thought perhaps she was annoyed with Pip, who was now throwing chunks of muffin on the floor, and chanting, ‘Don’ like it,’ over and over again.

  I stooped down under the table to pick up the muffin fragments.

  ‘Won’t it be fun, though?’ I said. ‘We could even go on a trip to Glen Eddle, play soldiers in the forest with Pip. What do you think?’

  But when I sat upright again and looked across at her I did a double take. She sat with her arms in a cross against her chest, staring at some point in the middle distance behind me. Her eyes glassy, her face the blank white of a winter sky.

  30

  Janey

  Steve had suggested meeting in a bar in town.

  Walking in, I was nervous to the point of distraction. Which Steve was he going to be? The art tutor turned cautious but well-meaning friend? The Steve who’d stripped my T-shirt off and pushed me onto my bed? Or the one who’d listened to me talking late into the night, the lines of his face creased into an expression that looked like love?

  He was sitting at one of the tables, turning a coaster round and round. He stood up when he saw me, and hovered awkwardly for a moment, before placing his hand lightly on my upper arm. I moved in for a quick hug and he groaned softly as I released him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re just . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Just so gorgeous. Sorry, sorry, I know . . .’

  It felt like the sun itself, flooding my skin with warmth. It was such a long time since someone had wanted me. Since someone had looked at me and seen anything other than a mumsy blob with doughy arms and a worn-out, papery face.

  He scanned the bar, seeming unsure whether to sit back down. The door from the street swung open with a burst of noise: a crowd of office workers coming in for their after-work drinks.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked. ‘Or do you just want to, you know, walk, talk? Drive somewhere?’

  Back to his place?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a hint of a raised eyebrow. ‘I know we’ve got to behave.’

  ‘Let’s drive, then.’

  We walked down to where he’d parked his car in Heriot Row, and we drove away out of town, through Corstorphine, out onto the city bypass then the motorway. He’d put Leonard Cohen on the stereo, quite loud, and it didn’t seem right to speak, only to let it flood over me. I laid my head to the side and closed my eyes.

  When the engine stopped, I found that he’d driven to the coast, to the tiny village of Blackness. He’d parked just along from Blackness Castle, a great block of a fortress on a rocky promontory jutting into the Forth.

  ‘What do you think?’ He stretched out his legs a little, but made no move to get out of the car.

  ‘It’s a gloomy sort of place,’ I said, pulling my coat around me. The car was cooling quickly, now that the heater had gone off with the engine.

  ‘It’s called the ship that never sailed,’ said Steve. ‘If you see it from the seaward side, it looks like a huge stone ship that’s run aground.’

  His words – the way he said it – set something aching inside. A ship of dreams, petrified in this cold sea.

  ‘So,’ he said finally.

  I found, to my panic, that I didn’t know what to say. We had no comfortable in-jokes, or shared history to fill the gaps. Only that cut-open connection, whenever he looked me in the eye.

  ‘Why did you bring us here?’ I asked. Then softened it with, ‘Do you know this area well?’

  Do you come here often?

  I cringed at myself.

  ‘Not really,’ he said softly. ‘Though I’ve always quite liked it.’

  ‘We came here on a school trip, once,’ I said. ‘We stopped on the way back from P5 Camp. We had to sketch the castle so we could write a pretend newspaper article when we got back. Then it rained, so we had to sit on the coach to have our sandwiches. We all ended up in hysterics, because someone said they’d seen a white shape at one of the windows. Mrs Peston had to get Maddie Naylor to breathe into a paper bag.’

  How come I knew, beyond a doubt, that he wouldn’t respond with any of his own school reminiscences?

  ‘Was that with Hattie? Have you seen her again?’

  ‘She’s babysitting! God knows how she’s going to cope with Pip.’

  ‘Is he being a handful?’

  I sighed. ‘He seems a bit fragile at the moment. He keeps going on about his imaginary friend. He insists I lay out clothes for Dend each morning. Last week in Sainsbury’s he had a screaming fit because I wouldn’t buy a Rapunzel costume that Dend wanted. I had to abandon my trolley and carry him out to the car. It took half an hour to calm him down. He actually went blue.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I followed the advice in one of my parenting books.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Er, use a loud, excitable voice to match his, and exaggerated facial expressions, and try and reflect his emotions back in, um, in a loving way.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘Pip very angry! You want dress! You want it nowwww!’

  Steve raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes. Over and over again. There’s no use just saying it once.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Yeah. It was an interesting shift for the ma
n collecting the trolleys.’

  Steve gave a soft laugh and fidgeted in his seat.

  Was there anything I could talk about that didn’t make me sound like a neurotic, haunted wreck or a struggling single mother? I tried to think of a safe subject. The history of Blackness Castle, perhaps. With effort, I cast my mind back to my newspaper article. It had been very thorough, I’d got three house points for it, whereas Hattie only got a tick.

  ‘Did you know that the Earl of—’

  ‘And what about you? Are you sleeping? Still dreaming?’

  It was as though he’d reached a hand into my chest and taken hold of my heart.

  I looked away. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Still don’t want to talk about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, Jay,’ he said, his voice deepening into my name.

  I stayed very still, the air tight in my chest.

  ‘I think the dream is just . . . I think I’m a bit tense at the moment, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’ He spoke so softly he was almost whispering.

  ‘I, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of my life. That it’s just blankness ahead of me. I’ve got Pip, he’s my life, but he won’t need me forever.’

  ‘Pip’s only two,’ said Steve. ‘He’ll get more independent as he grows up, but with that will come more freedom for you.’

  ‘Freedom to do what?’

  He threw out his arms, palms upturned.

  ‘To do whatever you want to do. Be whoever you want to be. You’re so amazing. You’re ridiculously attractive. I mean, look what you reduce me to – some bloody gawky-eyed teenager.’

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘You’re resourceful. You’ve managed on your own – incredibly well – with Pip.’

  Only because Murray was bankrolling it all.

  ‘And you’re fun. You’ve got that something that makes people want to be around you. Charm. That’s the word I think of when I look at you.’

  For a moment I nearly laughed. I thought of Jody and Molly’s pitying looks, the healthy recipes they nudged across the table to me every coffee time, the way they talked over me in conversation without even realising they’d done so. I thought of Murray, stepping carefully in and out of my life every Friday, drip-feeding me information about his own on a need-to-know basis. And Gretel, trying to stage a hostile takeover of my child as though he was a business interest and I was some kind of underperforming CEO.

  But then, a new picture flashed into my mind, so clear, so unexpected, that I almost forgot to breathe.

  Maybe I was doing a good job with Pip. Maybe I was funny, and warm, and even beautiful, and somebody would want me again. Maybe I could be part of a proper family, a family with me at its strong, beating heart.

  It was as though I’d suddenly caught the other picture in an optical illusion, seen the old crone morph into a beautiful young woman, marvelling that it had been there in front of me all along, marvelling that none of the marks on the page had changed.

  I turned to Steve, trying to find the words to explain what had just happened.

  ‘Relax, I’m not going to make a move,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’m happy just to be here with you. You’re important to me and I don’t want to screw that up.’

  And so we sat there, side by side, staring out of the window into the dark, him telling me how he’d like to paint Blackness Castle, if he could come on a summer evening, in exactly the right kind of light, me aware only of the sound of his voice, and the breath rising and falling in my chest, feeling quite brand new.

  Hattie

  Okay. Just back from babysitting.

  The first weird thing is that the layout of the flat is the same as Miss Fortune’s old flat, except the bathroom’s at the back, between the back bedroom and the kitchen.

  ‘You’ve even got that same odd little side door!’ I said. ‘Do you remember we used to pretend it led into a dungeon where she kept her victims? You heard thumping sometimes.’

  Janey laughed. ‘It only leads into the tenement stair. It’s very boring.’

  ‘Are you suuuure?’

  ‘Yes! That’s the way we get to the back garden. Well, the drying green, really. It’s just a patch of grass.’

  ‘Dog poo,’ said Pip, in the tone of someone relaying very bad news.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Some old lady upstairs lets her dog out there and never picks up after him. Poor Pippy fell over last time we went out there, and he got it all over his trousers and his coat. So we go to the park when we want to play, don’t we?’

  ‘Pa-rk?’ said Pip in a sing-song voice. ‘Now-w?’

  He had a tantrum when Janey said no, we weren’t going to the park, not when it was dark, raining and time for his bath. I was ready to say yes – anything to stop the noise – but she must’ve known what she was doing because he stopped. This mother-child thing is like a dance. He kicks off and all his feelings shoot out everywhere, noisy and bright and kind of nerve-shredding, like fireworks, and she lets that happen but somehow contains him at the same time. She encircles him, moves with him, until he slows, breathes and stops. How did she learn this?

  She took ages fussing around, asking if I was sure we’d be okay, and writing her mobile number on three different bits of paper.

  ‘Oh, and before I go, I thought you might want to take this.’

  She went into a cupboard and brought out a cardboard box.

  ‘It’s all your stuff. Your diary and everything. School bits and pieces. You might as well have it now. Look, I’ll phone you around nine, okay, and check things are . . .’

  I told her to leave, to have a good time. ‘He’s only two,’ I said. ‘How hard can it be?’

  There was a wild cackle from the sitting room, and a massive thump.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘He likes launching himself on and off the sofa. Don’t let him do that, will you, Hats?’

  I nodded firmly, trying to look as though I could do that encircling thing if I needed to.

  ‘Don’t go, Mummy!’ wailed Pip, appearing in the hall, knowing by some weird toddler telepathy the exact moment she’d turned to leave.

  After I’d given him a bath, and put him in his cot, I went back to the kitchen to make some tea. But The Box was there on the table.

  I couldn’t have it just sitting there all night. I turned the contents onto the table, just about smashing a lumpy grey squirrel sculpture in the process. I flicked through my school jotters, and opened a page of the diary, when a little hand appeared on my knee and just about made my heart stop.

  ‘Pip! Did you climb out of your cot? That was dangerous!’

  He looked doubtfully down at his Spider-Man pyjamas.

  ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry.’ I didn’t want him bursting into tears. ‘Hey, would you like a story?’

  He knelt down, beside a book of piano music that had fallen on the floor. And he pointed a solemn finger at a photograph of the composer on the glossy back cover.

  Esme Fortune, according to the thick black script underneath. Esme Fortune, with an over-powdered face and a slash of orange lipstick, and that smile.

  I remembered her giving the book to me: a suite of German folk melodies arranged for piano and violin. She’d suggested that James and I could practise them together over the Christmas holidays.

  ‘Owd lady.’

  I shivered. Something about the little soft finger and that face.

  ‘Hungry,’ said Pip, sensing a moment of weakness.

  I told him that it was too late for snacks, that we’d already brushed his teeth. A step I was not in a hurry to repeat.

  ‘Firsty.’

  ‘Let’s get you back to bed.’

  ‘I firsty!’

  So I made him a fresh bottle of milk, but as I was carrying him back through to bed, he clamped the bottle teat in his mouth, and I can’t have put the lid on properly because it came off, soaking me in milk.

  ‘Don’t wowwy,’ he shrieked, scrambling down me and dar
ting off into the hallway.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Get Mummy cloves.’

  I followed him into her bedroom.

  Bursting to show how helpful he could be, he ran for the chest of drawers near the window and pulled one of them open.

  ‘Oh no, Pippy. That’s her underwear.’

  He pulled open the second drawer down. It was socks this time, all folded into neat pairs. But there was a glimpse of blue underneath. I pushed the socks aside and there was a cardboard folder. With ‘Hattie’ written on the front. I shouldn’t have, I know . . .

  But the contents didn’t mean anything to me. They were pictures, cuttings, squares of glossy, filmy paper cut from magazines and catalogues. There was a newborn wrapped in a white, satin-edged blanket from The White Company, and a chubby-thighed baby, asleep in her cot, looking comfy in a Pampers nappy. There was a curly-haired pre-schooler beaming as she sank her sharp white milk teeth into a triangle of Dairylea. There was a series of shots of a dark-haired girl who looked about seven, sporting an array of coats and bright hats and scarves, and cosy woollen sweaters, as she cavorted against an autumn woodland backdrop. There was a smug-looking teenager astride a pony at the Gleneagles riding school.

  ‘Here!’ called Pip. He’d been rummaging in some boxes under the bed.

  He flung a swimming costume at me, and a grey nursing bra that had frankly seen better days.

  When he saw the clippings in my hands, he frowned and pointed to the framed photograph of himself on the bedside table. ‘Pippy. See?’

  I told him he was very handsome. He smiled, as though I’d passed some sort of test, and dragged me out of the room to show me his trains.

  He was still awake when she got in. She’ll probably never ask me to babysit again.

  But, oh Janey. What’s going on?

  31

  Janey

  ‘I’m not stopping – I need to collect Pip at twelve. Here it is.’ I handed the bag over with a hard stare.