To Dare

by Jemma Wayne

  “Okay,” she agreed, thankful for this sturdier, more medical ground.

  “And in the meantime,” he winked. “Try to scratch that itch. You might even want to talk to it, find out what it wants, give it a name.”

  Now Veronica couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows once more – her legs itched at that very moment, physical, real. He wanted her to name it? The man was clearly deranged. Still, she couldn’t resist the warmth in his eyes and as she stood up, conceded to a sceptical smile.

  “May I hug you?” he asked as they reached the door.

  She smiled again, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all, but, as his arms wrapped around her shoulders, firm and engulfing, and not straying anywhere they shouldn’t, the tears that had been threatening earlier saw their chance for escape. Within a minute, the doctor’s shoulder was flooded. Coincidentally, the itching stopped.

  The clinic was nestled in a converted church in a leafy crescent of St John’s Wood. It was only a few streets away from the school where Veronica worked and was today absent, so she cycled quickly. Name the itch. Name the itch. What a ridiculous suggestion. What should she name it? Immediately, names tumbled through her mind – Rosie, Matilda, Sophia, Oliver, William – names that she realised at once had been on her premature list for the never-meant-to-be baby. As she pedalled, the names rolled like noisy spokes around her mind and the subdued itch began to start up again as though demanding a decision, so she settled on Rosie. Rosie clearly wanted her attention. Rosie was incessant. Rosie was consuming and infuriating. Perhaps she did want to be ‘named’ after all, acknowledged, talked about, released.

  Veronica knew that already. She hadn’t needed Dr Shirazi to tell her that she and George needed to talk about the miscarriage, the baby, the absence of it. She had longed for that communication, she had longed for them to unload like they used to, to tell each other how sad and disappointed and thwarted and exposed and powerless and guilty and vulnerable they felt. But it had been easier to believe in the freshness of the house. It had been easier, in the move, to pack her problems with their belongings in carefully sealed boxes.

  Only, boxes need unpacking eventually.

  The neighbours were a beginning. One problem at a time. One box. One memory. One fear, one confession.

  Coming to a stop next to a bike rack, Veronica locked the frame of her bicycle to the street-side metal bar, and scratched the itch.

  She had no idea where she was. The maps app on her phone had directed her back through Primrose Hill, past Chalk Farm and to what seemed to be a housing estate somewhere in Kentish Town. Supposedly, this was where Primrose Hill’s social housing offices were located, but she’d been imagining an official-looking building on a main street, not a maze of difficult to distinguish towers. In the morning’s spirit of boldness, she’d told George she would meet him there, but in hindsight she should have waited in St John’s Wood and shared an Uber. On the corner of the estate, a group of teenage boys gathered, hooded despite the summer heat. They hadn’t seemed to notice her yet, but there was something forceful and threatening about their sheer multitude and youth. It was probable, she realised, that the boys were simply spilling out of school, loitering here for a game of football, but she left her bike and walked quickly away from the estate, round the corner, and out onto the main road. She was half an hour early anyway, she told herself, why not grab a coffee and get George to meet her at a café?

  Had she not been wearing red, she may have felt entirely differently, but as she walked along the row of shops, the boldness that had inspired such wardrobe choice transformed into a sense of conspicuousness. On the other side of the street, she noticed a man in tracksuit bottoms and a bare chest. Veronica’s chic midi dress and pointy pumps felt highly out of place, and she became convinced that the people around her knew what she was about to do, knew she was about to snitch on the neighbours, one of their own. As soon as this thought entered her mind, she dismissed it reproachfully; there was nothing to say that these people were anything like her vile neighbour. Still, anxiety snaked beneath her strength. Gratefully spotting a café, she located herself on her maps app and sent it via text message to George.

  The social housing officer was, Veronica guessed, about a decade older than they were. Everything about him was greyed around the edges, but he possessed that earnest, vital passion that some people have about them, even if worn slightly. People used to tell Veronica that she possessed such an energy, a charisma, but in her heart she knew all the time that hers was false and born only from two sources: Either, it was counterfeit confidence, pilfered from others. Or else it was the yet more shallow thing: the good fortune of having been born blonde and slim and curvaceous.

  It was amazing what she had been able to accomplish with that one power, with the simple understanding of her formidable, reductive, hazardous sexuality. Of course, it would disappear one day. She’d looked at her mother and known this. But she had never imagined the reality – that it would hit her from behind like a truck, not from a gradual creep of age, but from the instantaneous vanishing of a very specific part of her womanhood, the ability to bear a child, the one thing that all that beauty and sensuality and flesh was there for. The thing that even a stupid, abusive man and his stupid, doormat wife could do without even trying.

  Inviting them into a small meeting room, the officer opened a thin folder and consolingly asked them to sit. Between the café and this office, she and George had discussed the reaction the council might have to their complaint. They had done this in engaged, united tones, boosting Veronica’s optimism and recapturing a little of the day’s thrust for action. But it wasn’t simple. The issue was sensitive and threefold: first, the noise; then the hostility; and then the most delicate matter, which was the safety of Simone and the children. About the latter, after much, much discussion, they had decided to say only what they knew for sure. Focussing on the noise had to be the main issue, for them. Besides, George had pressed, they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they ignited a process that ended up removing children from their parents. Both he and Veronica knew what that was like.

  She could not, however, quite dislocate her mind from the flat she’d entered that afternoon, nor the fear that had washed over Dominic’s face at the creak of a wall, or her own panic. George had been horrified. Despite her obvious survival in standing there next to him, he had clutched her shoulders with both hands, as though to check that she was not in fact dismembered. “I’m alive,” she had smiled at him, and he had smiled back, their eyes locking for a moment while the world continued around them, like the early days.

  Smiles, however, had turned to disgust when she described the state of affairs next door. But they couldn’t act on it, George had worried – how could they without detailing her unsanctioned visit? How could she have told her father about his friend in Oman without mentioning her own flirtations? How could she have blamed her English teacher without blaming herself? George was probably right. They might still have the wrong idea anyway. And if they overstepped, they could well make everything worse.

  Nevertheless, indecision twisted Veronica’s veins. Untethered threads tangled. Dread stomped upon boldness. Rosie itched.

  The housing officer asked them to begin. His expression seemed understanding, but Veronica worried. Council workers were usually socialists, weren’t they? What if he thought them simply privileged complainers? What if through the shine of their watches and the polish of her nails, he couldn’t see how terrified and vulnerable she and George were, how crucial for them this moment of action, how mammoth coming to see him had been?

  “I’m very sorry you’re having to deal with this,” the officer said when George had finished his initial explanation, Veronica chipping in every now and then to add her impressions and some details from the encounters she’d had. “I can’t give you much information at the moment, but we are aware of this family. We’ve had another complaint already.”

  George and Veronica
looked at each other.

  “In fact, more than one. Now, what would be helpful is if you could describe to me exactly who you’ve seen going in and out of the flat. It’s registered to a Miss Milly Peck. Is she somebody you’ve met?”

  Veronica shook her head in surprise. This was not at all what she’d been expecting. They weren’t the only complainers! The result wouldn’t only be their doing! At this, relief and hope trickled through her, untangling. Next came intrigue: “No. Who’s Milly Peck? There’s nobody called Milly living there.”

  “You’re sure?” asked the officer.

  “We can hear everybody,” confirmed George. “We’re sure.”

  The officer nodded and made a note in the file, but before he could ask anything further, George redirected.

  “What can you do about the noise?”

  Now the officer sighed heavily. “It’s a process, I’m not going to lie. It would begin with a warning, and could ultimately end up in court.”

  “I’m quite worried about increasing hostility,” Veronica ventured, glancing across to George. “I presume they’d know a complaint had come from us?”

  “It would be anonymous to start with,” said the officer. “But then yes, if it progressed to court, it would become clear. After your encounter last night, and the man’s threat, I imagine he’d expect it came from yourselves anyway, though of course there have been those other complaints.”

  George put his arm around Veronica’s shoulders. “We can’t be afraid,” he said solemnly. “That’s not us. We have to take control of the situation.”

  Through her fear, Veronica nodded.

  “It may be,” interjected the officer, “that we don’t actually have to go that route at all.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We may be able to move the family on, you see, if they’re not the registered tenants, who of course is supposed to be this Milly Peck. From the sound of things, they’re not a suitable, family, for this, property.”

  George raised his eyebrows and exchanged a glance with Veronica, both of them noticing the slight, knowing inflection in the officer’s words. Not, apparently, a socialist. But it was true, they weren’t suitable. There was drugs, and they drank, and they fought, and they screamed, and they didn’t work, and they were dirty; these were not the kind of people she and George and the rest of the residents on the street had paid millions to live next to. Now, here was a chance to move them on without personal dispute, without culpability.

  Nevertheless, “Move them on to where?” asked Veronica. “Where would they go?”

  “That’s to be determined,” said the officer.

  “And what about the children? The woman?”

  George shot her a warning look. “As we said, we can’t be sure about what’s going on, with the children, we didn’t actually see any violence,” he hurried.

  “But we do hear things,” pressed Veronica, patchwork pumping her blood. “And the boy did have a cut. And was alone looking after the toddler when he should’ve been at school. I don’t think it can be a very, wholesome, place for them.”

  “Yes,” said the officer. “Yes, that’s all noted. It’s not so unusual in some families I’m afraid, but I’m going to pass it on to our team and if they determine that there’s a critical threat, then they’ll act immediately. Otherwise we’ll tread more gently, perhaps through the older child’s school.”

  “Okay,” said Veronica.

  “And meanwhile we’ll look into the tenancy issue.”

  “Okay,” she agreed again.

  “We weren’t actually sure whether to say anything at all,” said George.

  The officer nodded understandingly. “It’s always better to say something.”

  She should have felt invigorated, assured, but Veronica padlocked her bike quickly and checked the latch twice as she closed the door to their house. Despite leaving the council building at gone five, George had had to return to the office, so here she was again, arriving home alone. Throughout the afternoon, the temperature had risen even higher and the windows of the kitchen begged to be opened. If she unbolted one at the back of the house as well, she might just harness a cross-breeze to temper the stickiness of her skin. But Veronica left the windows shut. Instead, she half-filled a glass with ice, plunging water on top of it, and only after a deep, fortifying sip did she consider the window again. In all of their design meetings with the architect, they had talked in length about maximising light, and letting the space flow outwards, but never once had they mentioned the opposite current – the way that the street could spill in.

  Despite the day’s action, and her enduring conviction that power must be reclaimed, Veronica couldn’t escape the dark feeling of dread that crept into her as soon as she was inside this house, near to Terry. He was there now, probably, a matter of feet and bricks away, so close that she could almost smell him. When she’d come in, she had set the house alarm immediately, and the panic button sat now on the coffee table next to her, but how quickly could the police respond?

  Veronica took a sip of her water and let the cold liquid run through her. Perhaps she was being overdramatic. Perhaps Terry wasn’t as volatile as she was imagining. It was possible that the previous night’s rage had been exaggerated by the simple fact of his having been drunk. Perhaps he didn’t even remember it. Perhaps he wouldn’t care that she’d been in his flat that afternoon. Perhaps it hadn’t occurred to him that she and George might snitch. Perhaps he wasn’t even home. Veronica was relatively certain, however, that he was home. Although she hadn’t yet heard him, when she’d arrived at the house – locking up her bike, finding her key – she’d had a strange, compelling sense of being watched. It’s a specific feeling that, not easily confused. She’d looked up and found the neighbours’ curtains drawn, but who knew if somebody was peering out from behind them.

  Veronica took another long, measured sip of the icy water. It could have been Dominic looking. Or little Jasmine.

  Her upper lip tingled. Although the water was helping, without a breeze, she was still far too hot, and like a muscle memory, recollections of Kenya percolated her pores. By the coast, it had been especially humid, but at least there had been fans. And open windows. She had never felt afraid there – different, conspicuous, but not afraid. Setting down her glass, Veronica reached for the window blind; if she couldn’t open the glass, at least she could shut out the evening sun. On the street outside, she noticed a handsome young couple, arms interlinked; there was an elderly lady pushing a floral shopping trolley, eggs balanced sensibly on top; and a middle-aged man in a suit. Nobody threatening, nobody ominous. For a moment, Veronica felt foolish in her obsessive overthinking. Irrational, and weak. But the very next moment, standing there framed by the window, once again there came that overwhelming sense of being observed, surveyed, scrutinised. With sudden, defiant impulse, Veronica had a thought to throw open the glass and crane her neck into the muggy air. Let them look – she could look back. Why should she cower? Why should she be afraid? The power was hers to take.

  She almost did it. Almost. But in the end, she pulled hastily at the blind, and once closed, encased it further in the white wooden shutters she and George had so carefully had restored.

  In semi-darkness, she sat on the sofa, a brief memory of another time flitting across her eyes – another room dimly lit and sealed in wood, though she had not felt trapped then, but liberated. She should feel liberated now. It was ridiculous to feel so vulnerable. She wanted to shake herself. That was what Dr Shirazi had been getting at though, wasn’t it? The fear? That’s what she had to confront and let out: the ways in which she, and George, were not all-powerful, were not able to control the world around them, and how this failure had rocked their confidence, rocked their cores, rocked the foundations of everything.

  Abruptly, there was a sound from next door – the front door opening and shutting. Veronica sunk further down into the folds of the sofa. She was afraid, she admitted it! She would, if anybody as
ked her to, say it out loud, scream it even! She was afraid of Terry. She was afraid for Dominic. She was afraid of all the things she had never said. She was afraid she had gone too far with Amelia, and Sarah. She was afraid George didn’t love her like he used to, or her him. She was afraid she would never have a child of her own.

  Nobody, however, was there to hear her confession. Screamed or otherwise. Looking at her watch, it would be hours still until George would be home. At least the water was cold, bracing. Sipping it slowly, thoughts trickled.

  She wondered what Dominic and Jasmine were doing. She thought of Amelia and the rest of the class she had abandoned in concession to ‘action’. A number of times she pushed away visions of ‘not pregnant’, and ovulation sticks, and George trying to act strong and un-skewered by them. Twice, she calculated the number of days till she would be ovulating again.

  It was hot, so hot. Suffocating her like unwelcome hands.

  Another sip.

  Somebody slipped something through her letterbox and she flinched at the sound of the flapping metal before reasoning that it was probably just a pizza menu. Terry had ordered pizza.

  With Terry back in her mind, she wondered again and again about Dominic, Jasmine, Simone.

  She waited for George.

  She waited for George.

  She scratched at Rosie.

  She reminded herself to let Rosie out. To take back her power.

  And all the while she felt, even through the blind, even through the shutters, a nagging sense of somebody there, somebody nearby, some malign presence hovering.

  Sarah

  Sarah had not told David about visiting Veronica the day before. Instead, she’d rearranged meetings and turned up at school to collect Amelia that Tuesday not knowing what she intended. She knew only that she intended something. But Veronica wasn’t there.

  On the journey home, she found herself consumed by silent thought, and when they arrived, instead of unwinding with David and the children, she rummaged through Amelia’s school bag, unsure what she was searching for but noting the stark absence of a letter requesting the threatened parents’ meeting. A further taunt from Veronica – making them wait. Sarah rummaged on, and that’s when she discovered a string of barbed comments over the past week in Amelia’s reading record book – tiny, barely-there digs, that David had missed because only Sarah would understand. ‘Amelia read fluently, but is too fixated on the rules of grammar, it is holding her back.’ ‘In choosing longer books, Amelia needs to dare a little.’ ‘I did not have time to hear Amelia read today.’ ‘I’m afraid I did not have time for Amelia again today.’ Now, seeing them, Sarah started spiralling. What else had Veronica done? Was she the cause of all the disappointments poor Amelia had faced that term? Was she the cause of everything?