by Jemma Wayne
Not Pregnant stared insolently out at her.
Not.
Not.
The blood had not lied.
It was, as always, only herself that was lacking.
Veronica did not re-wrap the test to save for George in her bag.
She paused, for a moment. She gave herself just a moment, hunched, eyes closed in front of the bathroom mirror. She allowed one, long, deep breath. Then she tossed the test into the bin, forcing the same flippancy she had employed on purchase. She stuck a sanitary pad into her knickers. She checked her make-up. And she went to class.
All day the children were riled by the heat. They loped about the classroom, groaning every time they were asked to fetch a book or put a note into their bags or listen to the ways in which it was possible to spell the ‘ay’ sound. Though she tried, she had no patience for it and her inability to rally them made her feel even more incapable than usual. Her stomach was throbbing now, a constant reminder of its pronouncement, her legs itched, and all she wanted to do was to take a chilled Chardonnay from the fridge and lay on the sofa letting TV waft her mind into happy oblivion. “Is anybody awake today?” she prodded them, but even Amelia lacked concentration, taunting her with her presence, existing for Sarah, where nothing existed for Veronica. Sarah, who didn’t even spend time with her daughter. Sarah who had been given everything. Veronica found herself glaring at Amelia, though existing was not her fault.
She shook herself. Despite the propped open door, and the fan now on her desk, the hot room seemed to stoke everything. When somebody hit their head against the door handle and had to be sent to the nurse for an icepack, Veronica felt herself suddenly on the brink of tears, as though it was she who had been knocked to the floor. Her own head was pounding.
By the time they’d had lunch, Veronica had decided to abandon the day’s lesson plans and in an attempt at decisiveness, she instructed sun hats and water bottles, and then lead the whole class into the playground where they found a shaded tree at just the right angle to the gate to allow the tiniest breeze. She had brought Matilda with her, which she had occasionally been reading them snippets of, and she hoped to encourage an un-taxing discussion of their other favourite Dahl books. But Amelia was so far the only one to raise her hand. Brazenly, overtly there, blatantly being.
“The BFG,” she volunteered. “Mummy read it to me in the Christmas holidays.”
Mummy. Sarah. Veronica had a vision of the two of them cuddled up in bed, Sarah’s arm enveloping the child into her chest, laughing together at the giant’s muddled English. Laughing at her. Veronica had read her own copy of The BFG when she was living in Holland. She remembered because there had been a window in her bedroom that she’d imagined was like Sophie’s in the book, and so that’s where she chose to read it, nestled on a bean bag beneath the sill, every afternoon one half term when her parents were at work. She’d loved that book. She’d loved the idea that a child could be purposeful and important, and listened to, even by somebody so big.
“Anybody else?”
None of the other children answered and Veronica felt exasperation rising. One boy called Ryan flicked the ear of his neighbour, who immediately broke into whiny complaint. Amelia raised her hand again.
“Ryan, we don’t touch other children unless they allow us to, and we certainly don’t flick people’s ears,” Veronica sighed. “Over there please.”
Grudgingly, Ryan shifted himself half an inch in the direction that Veronica was pointing. Amelia reached higher into the air. “Mrs Reddington?”
“Ryan, further away please.”
He moved another half inch. Amelia began bouncing her arm up and down above her head. Sarah used to do the same. Veronica’s stomach throbbed harder. Her bra felt too tight, and sweaty beneath her top. She looked away from Amelia and cast her eye across the group.
“I asked, what are your favourite Roald Dahl books. Has nobody read any Dahl?”
There were nineteen vacant pairs of eyes staring back at her. Two pairs had even closed. Amelia’s danced eagerly.
“Nobody?”
Ryan was to the left of Veronica’s view. He kept his eyes obediently on her, but when he thought she wasn’t watching, shot out his leg to kick his neighbour.
“Ryan.”
He didn’t answer. In her periphery, Amelia was still bouncing her hand. The bouncing made Veronica feel sick. More nauseous than before. She wished the girl would sit still.
“Ryan, do you think you are invisible?
Silence.
“Mrs Reddington,” begged Amelia, still bouncing.
“Ryan, I am asking you a question. Do you think I didn’t see you kick Ishaan?”
“It was an accident,” he whined. “My foot just moved by mistake.”
Veronica stared at him hard. The itching in her own legs had become unbearable in the dry grass and she wished she could kick out as he had. Her stomach continued to throb. A pool of sweat gathered on her upper lip. Ryan held her stare.
“Mrs Reddington, Mrs Reddington, I have another favourite,” enthused Amelia. “It was Mummy’s favourite too and—”
And that was the moment that, despite her intentions to the contrary, despite her desire not to pilfer, despite the years in which she had grown and evolved and become, Veronica Reddington rounded on Amelia Beckham, calling her a ‘relentless irritation’, and docked three of the golden oval stickers that she, and her ‘mummy’, so treasured.
At the museum, the air conditioning pumped freshness onto grateful visitors. It was two o’clock, a couple of school groups beginning their retreat onto coaches, heat-weary mothers just surfacing with sweaty, post-nap toddlers, a few lone men, nodding earnestly at military displays. Standing beneath an air vent, Veronica regarded David Beckham’s surrounds. Under the guise of ‘not feeling herself’, she had asked the headmistress to cover her class, and she had come straight here. It wasn’t a lie, she wasn’t herself; the deceit was only that she hadn’t been herself for a long while.
Now that she stood in the great lobby, aeroplanes lining the space with a feeling of flight grounded, she didn’t know why she had come. She had exited the school gates, and taken a taxi, and here she had arrived, as if there was no agency in it, seemingly remembering only as she walked through the doors that on Fridays, David worked until three. Where would he be? Veronica consulted the lady at the information desk and headed as instructed to the Battle of Britain Hall where David was readying a display. She called to him from the doorway and he hurried over at once, understandably anxious as to why Amelia’s teacher was appearing at his place of work in the midst of a school day. Why was she appearing?
“Is Amelia okay?” he rushed, before hello.
“Yes, she’s fine,” calmed Veronica, shaking her head slightly as though he was the crazed one, rather than she. “The headmistress has my class this afternoon.”
“Oh. Okay. Thank goodness, I was worried for a moment.”
“Nothing to worry about.”
Now that he had been assured, David’s expression altered. Still holding a stack of papers from the display, he looked down at them, and then carefully up at Veronica. “Are you, were you just visiting the museum?”
“Not exactly. I did want to see you.”
“Oh?”
Veronica smiled. She reached out and put her hand over his, still clasping papers. “Don’t worry, Amelia’s fine. It was a fun evening the other night, wasn’t it?” She paused, but David said nothing. “Delicious to see Sarah again. And getting to know you a little was, unexpected. We should do it another time soon.”
Awkwardly, David moved his hand. “I don’t mean to be rude, Veronica, it was a lovely evening, but actually, I’m not sure you’re the best person to be around Sarah right now.”
“Oh?” Veronica flinched. She’d been sensing this reluctance all week, but people usually had the manners to pretend otherwise. She wondered if the hostility was Sarah’s, or David’s, or both. Surely it wasn’t David. Sh
e’d always been able to magnetise men. “Did she not like my question about kissing George?” she recovered, winking with, she thought, just the right amount of sass. “Sarah always was a bit straitlaced you know, I shouldn’t have teased her. You can tell her I’d have kissed you too though, in that situation of course.” She smiled irreverently now, with a daring openness she hadn’t employed in years. David took a step back.
“I think it’s best just to give her some space.” He shuffled his papers, then half-turned towards the vast room behind him. “I’d better get back. Not long till pick-up, as you know.”
“Of course.” Veronica smiled, but inside her, rejection raged. And mingled there with something else. Suddenly, her stomach throbbed more acutely than ever, her head pounded, her legs itched. She scratched at them and wondered if through the thin cotton she had drawn blood. She wanted to sit down. Desperately. And, she wished George was there – old George, the George who had loved her irreverence and learned her heart and was the only person to whom she had ever been able to unfold everything. And had not yet told about the pregnancy. Or lack of it.
In George’s stead, David hovered. “Are you alright?” he asked her.
Veronica flapped her hand dismissively, but she felt her face draining of colour. David would think it was his effect on her. Or her failure to affect him.
Perhaps it came with infertility, this inability to enchant men, perhaps they could sense it. Perhaps Sarah could sense it too, the waning of her power. Clearly the woman no longer felt compelled to court her friendship. That was, if she had even courted it when they were children. Maybe it had been Veronica all along. Contrived from the very start.
Veronica’s stomach throbbed harder.
David began to back away.
You can’t force somebody to want you, Veronica reasoned. You can’t force love into existence, or something to love, or something to love you.
But, you can force some things. Words spilled.
“Sorry, David,” Veronica began, regaining her composure and raising her hand to halt his departure. “Before you get back, there is something wrong actually. I was trying to downplay it before, I didn’t want to make it a thing, knowing you and Sarah of course. But actually, there was a reason I came. Amelia is not quite fine. She was rather badly behaved today. I had to take away some of her Golden Time.”
“Oh,” David frowned, looking at her suspiciously. “Okay. Isn’t this something you could have told me at school?”
“Yes, of course, and I will, I’ll be in touch more formally to set up a parents’ meeting, I just wanted to give you a personal heads-up, being friends.”
Small manipulations.
“Okay…”
Trifling.
“We’ll do it when Sarah’s available too, of course.” At this, David raised his eyebrow, and Veronica smiled. He knew what she was doing, and she felt an energy pulse through her. Life. Where all day there’d been a lack of it. Still smiling, she began to move towards the door. “I’ll let you get back to your work now. Sorry to have disturbed.”
“Sarah might not be able to make it,” David said suddenly, with what Veronica could see was an attempt at firmness. “But of course, let me know when to come.”
Veronica gritted her teeth and smiled. “The thing is, David, I’ve been noticing rather a lot of things about Amelia lately. You know, some behavioural issues that are, well, unusual, and worth exploring. Today for instance, a lack of awareness of social norms. I’m sure you’ll have observed. And I’ll have to be writing my report soon for the move up to the Junior school next year, so, well I think best if we try to tackle this together first.”
She spoke softly, smoothly, only the glint in her eye betraying anything less than compassion. Eyebrow still raised, David listened to her in silence, watching carefully. She felt sparks ricocheting from his eyes all around the grand room, pulsating inside her, like a secretly bidden strength. Stuff her previous moralising, the manipulations were only small. Trifling. Worth it for this.
She turned. Swept away. As she reached the door, however, David spoke.
“When you see Sarah…” he started abruptly. “At the meeting… Look, she didn’t want to say. But all this talk about when you were kids together, and Eliza, it’s not—”
“It’s not appropriate for school,” Veronica interrupted. “Of course it isn’t. But the meeting’s not about us, is it? I’m thinking only of Amelia.”
Sarah
“What’s ‘material prejudice’?” called Sarah’s leader, a distinguished QC twenty years her elder, spotting her as she strode past his open door towards the stairwell.
Sarah retraced a few steps and stuck her head into his room. Andrew Shonubi was one of the most senior barristers in the chambers and one of the few who still led Sarah on cases. Mostly, these days, she ran her own. “Anything, I suppose, above de minimis prejudice. There must be a tangible effect.”
“But it can never be tested. It’s a hypothetical.”
Sarah entered the room and sat down. Andrew’s office was a high ceilinged, book-lined haven with vast bay windows overlooking the garden in the middle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Just outside of Lincoln’s Inn itself (one of the four Inns of Court), it remained a stone’s-throw from The Temple, and embedded enough to retain the feel of an Oxbridge college. All stone walls and sweeping arches, for Sarah, this had felt a natural progression, but there was a junior barrister new to their chambers who’d joined them from Birmingham University and before that a comprehensive in South London, and he’d remarked many times on the oddness of it all, as though he’d walked through the Narnia wardrobe and found himself in an unrecognisable realm. Was there prejudice in that, in the void between backgrounds? Was it material?
“Is this for the Dewer case?”
“Yes. It’s a hostile takeover, but the effect is hypothetical since it hasn’t happened yet, so the material effect can’t be proved. Material being the opposite of hypothetical.”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully. She liked Andrew. Born in Uganda, he retained a gentle shape-shifting of certain vowels, and she liked to listen to the sonorous hum of his voice. She liked his sureness. She especially liked this unpicking of words he often invited her to join, and the speed at which her mind leapt gratefully into action, forgoing the distractions otherwise tugging. It was easier here. Eliza had never existed in chambers, so there was no absence to wrestle with, no collection to be made. Not that her latest foray into collection had been the slightest bit successful. It had been foolish to entrust Veronica with it, to trust her with anything. Prejudice, when it came to Veronica, was material and clear.
Or was it? She still wasn’t sure if it was possible for one person, one moment, to really make such an impact. More likely, Sarah was fixating, as she’d always done. Sometimes it was on the Latin roots of words, sometimes it was on ethics and principle, for a long time, and still, it was on Eliza. That’s what her counsellor had suggested anyway. And now Veronica had seeped into her consciousness. A new subject to scrutinise.
What were the facts? They’d only been girls. And there was just one dinner party.
Sarah had never told David how the summer with Veronica ended. It seemed so trivial now, unworthy of the posited impact. David knew only about the distance that Sarah had recalled between herself and Eliza that year, sisters momentarily bound to different sides of adolescence: one, contemptuous of a childish abandon that had slipped suddenly away; the other envious of ungraspable, un-gettable teenagedom. Even without knowledge of Veronica, this was enough for David to insist she not make too much of that summer in her mind. Willingly, he would talk about Eliza. He would recall the first time he’d met her – when Sarah brought him back from university for the weekend and Eliza had flown in from Milan, failing to tell them anything about her past month singing gigs in Italy but insisting on knowing everything about ‘Sarah’s beau’. Just as willingly, David would retell for Sarah the number of times – thirty-eight – that Eliza had ca
lled to be updated on Sarah’s progress during Amelia’s birth. He even took a photograph from Eliza’s last birthday – Sarah and Eliza in candid, uncontainable laughter – and in a rare yielding to suppressed talent, he painted it for her on canvas. But he would not humour relics. No staring at rusted tennis rackets. No worship of cast-out necklaces found in her parents’ attic. Those things did not possess Eliza, he said. Active memories were one thing – she was alive in them, real – but there was no point in collecting things inanimate, or distorted. A necklace cast out meant that Eliza no longer saw herself in it. People evolved. It was not fair to tie their memory to something that was just a meandering, just an experiment, unrepresentative of the whole. The summer with Veronica for example, he said, was exactly that. So what was the point in collecting it?
Sarah had already explained to David her theory of collection. Not atonement, she insisted. She had explained too why that drew her to Veronica: the lure of relearning any part of her sister. And David had sympathised. He knew that Sarah had a void inside her; but, he said, Veronica was not the one to fill it.
Sarah’s phone rang. David. With another quick word on prejudice, she excused herself from Andrew’s office and ran past the chambers lift, down the three flights of stairs to the street.
“Don’t get worried, we know Amelia, so I’m sure it’s all a mistake,” David began through the phone line, immediately sending Sarah into panic. “Apparently Amelia’s been acting out at school, and we’re required to attend a parents’ meeting.”
Sarah stopped at the pillar outside her chambers and placed one hand on cool stone. “The school called to tell you that?”
“No.” There was a hesitation to David’s voice. “Veronica turned up at the museum.”
“What?” Instantly, Sarah couldn’t breathe. “Veronica came to see you?”
“I think she wants to see you.”
