by Lucy Lawrie
Warmth seemed to radiate through my body. I could have cried. This man wanted me, even though I was a louse-ridden, partially possessed single mum, trailing an uptight middle-aged lawyer and his evil stepmother queen in her wake.
*
And later, he lay stretched out on the sofa while I worked out some Adele songs on the piano, his head resting on his hand, his arm making a V against the cushion. His shirt cuff was unbuttoned, the sleeve pulled carelessly up near his elbow.
‘You’re so effing talented,’ he said softly when I’d finished. ‘How can you not be doing this for a living? It’s mad.’
I felt my cheeks turning red. ‘I’m only playing around.’
‘Play me something of yours. I want to hear you.’
I thought for a minute. ‘Okay, well this one hasn’t really got a name. It’s about the sea, and a storm. I haven’t played it for ages.’
But my fingers found the notes, even after two decades. The melody, hidden in some dark corner of my brain, found its way, pushing through the synapses and nerves and muscles, through the keys and hammers and wires, and into the space of the room. When I finished he came over and knelt on the floor beside me.
‘I want you,’ he said. ‘I want to be in you.’
I took his hand and began to lead him towards the door. There were fresh sheets on the bed and Jo Malone candles on the dresser ready for lighting.
‘No. Here.’
He caught me round the waist and leant me against the piano, sending a cascade of Chopin and Brahms off the polished lid and onto the floor. I felt the air cool against my back as he unzipped my dress, and pulled it down over my body. I stepped out of it, kicking it to the side, and in moments he was deep and hard inside me.
The more he filled me up – my body, my mind, my heart – the more I knew, beyond a doubt, that I needed him. He was finding all my emptiness. Changing it into something else. And then I couldn’t think any more at all, only feel.
*
It was only later, when he lay sleeping beside me in bed, with his arm draped across my waist, that I remembered about Hattie’s letters, still there on the bedside table waiting to be finished. I reached for them, careful not to wake Steve.
The tone of the letters seemed to soften a little as the winter gave way to spring, and it sounded as though Hattie was relaxing into her new life a little more, despite numerous, strongly worded complaints about the amount of music they had to do, and the food, the teachers’ hairstyles, and the quality of the biology tuition. I could hear her twelve-year-old voice, funny and affectionate, and it felt cosy to lie there, safe in the warm yellow glow of the bedside lamp and read about her schooldays, with their echoes of the school stories I’d once loved – Malory Towers, St Clare’s, the Sadler’s Wells books. My breathing slowed to match Steve’s and, once again, I nearly fell asleep. Until I reached the last two letters.
38
Hattie’s Letters from Ramplings
Dear Janey,
I want to come home. I want to come home.
I was so lonely tonight that I actually went to see James. He’s in Dartmoor House, on the other side of the woods, but visits by siblings are allowed between the hours of 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.
His room stank of sweat, and he didn’t seem pleased to see me. He said he was busy working on a composition. I said, well that’s good, and he said no it wasn’t, it was f***ing atrocious.
I tried to tell him about being homesick, to get him talking about Edinburgh, and you, and Glen Eddle.
‘Look, sis,’ he said. ‘This might come as news to you, but our family is f***ed up. Dad’s so far up his own arse, with his bloody Broadway shows and his money and everyone fawning over him, that he’s pretty much forgotten we even exist. And Mum’s just as bad. She feeds off it. She needs it. People have got to want to be her, the woman married to the famous composer. If you want my advice, forget the lot of us, forget about bloody music, and get on with your life.’
‘Forget music?’ I said.
‘Don’t you see? It’s a trap. That platform recital the other week: I was note perfect, and all Mr Foulkes could say was that I needed to put more of my own interpretation into it, that I had to find my own identity as a musician. I mean, what the f***? However many hours we practise, however many years of our lives we devote to this, we’re only ever going to be Dad’s children. We’re never going to be good enough.’
‘Well, I’m certainly not going to be. I don’t practise at all.’
‘You’re right, Hattie. You’re so right. You’re the least f***ed up of all of us.’
That’s when it happened. He looked up to meet my eyes, and a fly, a black bluebottle, crawled out of his right nostril. It stopped to rub its legs together, then it buzzed and flew off.
And then. Oh God, Janey. Another one climbed out of his ear.
He didn’t sniff, he didn’t brush at his face.
I wondered for a second if it had been real. If the buzz was something to do with this headache.
But something made me glance at the ceiling, and it was crawling with them. Flies. As I watched, they formed themselves into one black mass, buzzing and seething around a hatch set into the ceiling above his desk.
I grabbed his arm and told him to look, but they’d gone.
Maybe it’s time to start taking those pills after all. I wish you were here to advise me. Or we could go to the library and look it up.
Wish, wish, wish you were here.
All my love,
Hattie xxx
Dear Janey,
There’s no easy way to say this. My brother tried to kill himself last night. He climbed up into the roofspace, through the little hatch in the ceiling of his room, and drank a bottle of vodka and swallowed a load of pills. They found his violin there too. He’d burned holes in it with a cigarette.
They wouldn’t have found him in time, except that I knew where to look. When Mr Foulkes asked round at breakfast if anyone had seen him, my legs just kind of slid off the bench and started running like I was in a dream, out of the dining hall, straight through the woods, into Dartmoor House, past the games room, the music room and the laundry. Up the stairs and past the doors of the empty dormitories, my dream-shoes pounding on the rubber floor.
And a little song singing in my head, gleeful and sly: You know, you know, YOU know!
It’s time to start taking the tablets. I’m going to have to start a new me, or I’m not going to survive. It’s okay. I know what I need to do. Thomasina has asked if I want to join the lunchtime madrigal group. I think she’s sorry she got me into trouble about the Coke. If I do that, I’ll probably be able to make friends with them, and I’ll be able to hang out in their dorm and look at pictures of Tom Cruise and spend hours doing make-up and perfecting my hair-tonging technique. They smoke out of the window sometimes, but I won’t do that. Remember the horrible lines around Miss F’s mouth?
So, my dearest friend. This is it. Goodbye. I’m going to put these letters away in a little black box. Remember that box with cherry blossoms on it that you always liked? I wish I could curl up in there, too, and go to sleep. And dream of the time when we were friends and talked in the fire escape, and made Shapiro plans, and wrote notes on each other’s jotters, and walked during cross-country when we were meant to be running and, oh, everything like that. The time when my heart was in its right place.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about it all.
Hattie xxx
39
Janey
We were standing in the queue to meet a life-sized butternut squash. Mr Greenfingers – a TV hero for the under-fives – had been visible when we’d first joined the queue forty-five minutes before, but he’d drifted away, bored, perhaps. Hattie had bought the tickets for the show – Mr Greenfingers and the Veggie Crew (LIVE!) – and we’d taken the train through to Glasgow, which had practically made Pip expire with joy. Hattie said that now she was back for good, she wanted to plan lots of ‘memorable days’ with Pip
and me.
‘You make it sound like we’re all about to die.’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s just that I’ve neglected you. I think you need some fun and some company. You’re looking a little peaky.’ She frowned and poked my arm.
‘So you thought live vegetables might help.’
‘Seriously, I’m worried about you. Have there been any more’ – her face moved in closer to mine – ‘incidents? With knives moving, or jars of jam?’
I couldn’t help smiling at her earnest expression. I still couldn’t believe the difference in her, since she’d come back. Today she was wearing a red and navy striped T-shirt, and jeans that were raggedy at the ends where the heels of her boots had caught.
‘No.’
‘And what about Dend?’
‘Oh, Dend’s still around.’ I leaned down to Pip. ‘Is Dend here today, darling? Or at home?’
‘Dend is asleep I fink. Dend not like veggies.’
‘He’s got a rather active imagination,’ I said wryly.
‘Like me, you mean.’ Hattie looked crestfallen. ‘Is that what you thought, when you read them? The letters,’ she added in a whisper.
It was the fourth time she’d brought up the letters since we’d left Edinburgh that morning.
‘Of course not. God, Hattie, there’s nothing imaginary about your brother trying to kill himself. I just wish I could have been there for you.’
‘Were you shocked?’
‘It was terrible to hear what happened to James. Really awful.’
I’d stayed awake most of the night, going round in circles thinking about James until my own head seemed to be buzzing. I tried to make everything add up: the boyish James I’d worshipped, the eighteen-year-old James with his casual cruelty and blank eyes, and in the middle of it all this despair. A despair over himself that I’d never known about. I wondered about what life had been like for him after the suicide attempt, about what help he’d had, or hadn’t had, what resources he’d had to find to stick it out at Ramplings for another two years and then secure a place at music college. He’d got back on track, and had managed to live up to everyone’s expectations for a few more years at least. But what had been the cost? Had he, like Hattie, had to construct a new version of himself, just to cope?
‘No, I don’t mean about James.’ She shook her head. ‘Were you shocked about my . . . abilities.’
I wasn’t sure what to say. Did she want me to be shocked? Should I say something comforting and risk sounding dismissive? Or the truth: that I’d rather have the old Hattie – sensitive, unbalanced, mentally ill, whatever it was – any day over the shiny, unperturbable Botox Queen.
‘I think you should tell me all about it.’
‘Okay,’ she said, nodding and frowning. ‘Not here, though. Tomorrow night, your place? I’ll bring wine.’
Pip got to have his photo taken with the butternut squash, and Mr Greenfingers even turned up just as we were leaving.
‘Do you think you might like to try some butternut squash soup tonight?’ I said in a coaxing voice, as I led him away from the mocked-up compost heap. Might as well ride on this wave of positive veggie vibes. But Pip looked at me in horror, glanced back at Mr Greenfingers and his eyes began to fill.
‘Aw, Pippy,’ I said, stooping to give him a cuddle. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Jaaaaaaam!’ he wailed.
It seemed like a long way out of the concourse of the exhibition centre, tired families trudging ahead of us, with toddlers trailing from their parents’ arms or being pushed in buggies overloaded with changing bags, rucksacks, coats and bags of veggie merchandise.
I stopped when I saw Steve.
He was just up ahead, walking next to a short, slightly built woman whose blonde hair was tied up in a careless twist. He was pushing a buggy. No, actually, it was a wheelchair. A child’s wheelchair. And as I watched, he reached a hand down and stroked the top of a small blond head.
When they’d almost reached the doors of the concourse, they came to a halt. He stooped down to say something to the child, and then turned to the woman. They looked at one another for a moment, then he closed his eyes and drew her in towards him. He stood with his cheek resting against her hair, his arms tight around her. I could see the tendons of his hand, standing out with the force of the hold. And like this they clung to each other, perfectly still, as people moved around them, flowing past them to the exit.
It made me think of the moment when I’d held twelve-year-old Hattie, on the stairs at Regent’s Crescent, after she’d shown me where the falling woman had landed. Locked in each other’s arms. The still point as the world tipped and spun.
It seemed a miracle that I could reach for her, now. That she could hold tight onto Pip’s hand and mine and lead us past them and out of there, into a taxi. Back to the station, and home.
*
He came over later. Pip was in bed and Hattie had gone. It had taken him five hours to respond to my sarcastic, furious text.
‘What are you playing at?’ I demanded, the shake in my voice robbing my words of all the power I’d hoped for. ‘What is it? Another student you’ve got a bit too friendly with? Or have you got a whole secret little family tucked away?’
He sat down on the sofa and leaned forward, clasping his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. ‘He’s not mine.’
Breathe. In and out.
‘Who is the woman?’
‘Katya. She . . . We used to be in a relationship.’
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop shaking. Grasped on to his use of the past tense and held on hard.
He walked over to the window and stood facing away from me, out into the rainy street.
‘There was a disaster, Janey.’ His shoulders curled in, just an incremental movement, and I realised I’d never seen him in pain before. This is what it looks like, I thought. I’m seeing him. I’m finally seeing him.
‘What kind of disaster?’ Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I wanted to walk over and place my hands on his back. I wanted to feel the warmth of him through the thin white cotton of his shirt. To stroke his shoulder blades where they jutted against the fabric.
‘I met Katya at art school – we shared a flat and we just kind of clicked, you know? We were “just good friends”, although I would have liked it to be more. She got together with this guy – a complete arsehole, but they ended up getting married. They tried for years and years to have a baby, IVF and everything. It worked in the end and they had a little boy – that’s the boy you saw. Calum. The dad walked out on them when Calum was only nine days old.’
I thought of Pip at nine days old, the whorls of hair on his head, the scrunched-up red face when he cried. The way he used to sleep so deeply and still, as though he might quietly slip out of this life at any moment. How could anybody leave a newborn?
‘I tried to help out.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Good old Steve, the sensitive New Man.’
I was surprised. Somehow I couldn’t see Steve doing nappies and warming feeds. He’d always seemed a bit awkward around Pip. And caring for a disabled child?
‘At first, we were just friends. I was helping her out, that’s all, collecting him from the childminder and that kind of thing, when she had to work. But we were good together, and we drifted into a relationship. I moved in with them. When Calum was . . . he was just two . . . Katya had to go to a funeral, so I was looking after him for the day. He’d had his birthday not long before and wanted to wear his new Spider-Man suit, so I helped him get into that. Then the phone rang.’
Those last two words – the way he said them – seemed to make the room darken. My hands felt cold with the wanting to touch him. I held them up to my cheeks.
‘I went into our bedroom to answer it.’
I moved towards him now, and stood next to him. I could hear my pulse, pounding through the blood vessels in my head, distorting the sound in the room, whooshing his voice away as he tried to tell me.
�
�I knew that I should have closed the stairgate. I remember thinking it. But I didn’t, because I was only going to be away a minute. But a minute was all it took. It was loud. Louder than you’d think. A thudding, sliding, thumping noise.’
‘Oh God. Steve.’
‘Such a big noise for such a small body. I ran to the stairs and there he was, on the wooden floor at the bottom, in a little red and blue heap.’ He held his hands apart to show me how small he’d been. ‘He didn’t quite die. But he’s . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Spinal damage. He can’t walk. And there are other problems. His cognitive function seems to be impaired. They don’t quite know the extent of it yet.’
He shrugged, and looked at me briefly before returning his gaze to the rainy street outside.
‘Katya was incredible. She didn’t blame me, or said she didn’t. She said it could easily have been her. She said that parents take their eye off the ball all the time. They take risks sometimes, to keep the day moving along, to get things done. The relationship hobbled on for a while. But in the end it was impossible for us to stay together.’
I nodded.
‘She’s married again now. He’s a great bloke, Martin. A joiner, self-employed. They live in Newcastle now. He’s been amazing with Calum. Katya said I could stay in touch with Calum, when she asked me to leave. She knew I loved him. She sometimes calls me up when she’s visiting her folks in Glasgow, to see if I want to meet up. But I’ve only seen him a handful of times. It’s not really fair on the lad. Confusing.’
And today had been one of those precious times.
‘I know I have it easy compared to Katya, and I really have no right to say it, but I always find it . . .’ He gave a shaky sigh. ‘Pretty grim, whenever I see him. When it happened, he was only little. He was so dependent anyway, just like any toddler I suppose. But as he grows physically bigger, his disabilities seem to grow too. The gap widens, you know?’ He looked at me hard now, willing me to understand. ‘All the things he should be able to do. It’s difficult, seeing him. Afterwards, it takes me a while to get myself back together.’
