by Jemma Wayne
It was the lack of consequence that ate at her. Bad actions were supposed to come with penalties. That’s what the law prescribed. Even if it took three months to get a judgment, careering unbidden into an unrelated day, the judgment always came in the end. The beautiful order of this is what had made law so attractive to Sarah. It was what, at the bar in her mid-twenties, had finally set her free from sealed wood: justice. Designed neatly, if not always clearly, in the spirit at least of fairness and right. In court, she’d grown bold in her defence of this. Not that she’d been timid before. ‘Spitfire’, her university friends had called her, ‘Sarah Spitfire’, because she was inevitably the one who went to rallies, the one who called out the lecherous professor and in clubs slapped men’s hands away from bums, the one who started protests – a natural evolution of her family-ingrained sense of Right. Not daring at all.
Veronica wouldn’t have a clue what was ‘right’.
Sarah steadied herself with a deep breath and repaired Amelia’s reading book into her bag. Glancing over to the table, she found David watching her. David valued Right.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
When she and David had first met, he still wore his bar mitzvah ring. At Caius, they had both, individually, made the inevitable university discovery of a different sort of ring – crests worn on pinkies (usually by somebody named Figgy or Aubyn or Octavia) – the mark of the aristocrat, the Anglo-established, the land-entrenched. Until then, the only person Sarah had known who owned such a trinket was Veronica. Sarah had remembered her then, as she embarked on her university adventure, thinking how well she would have fitted in there, how quickly her slim limbs and blonde hair and magnetism would have enchanted and fooled them all. It was an apt time to remember her friend. Their shared, long ago summer had been the last time that boundaries seemed to blur, but now here Sarah was, away from her family and their mantras, away from the community she had been a part of, away from everything she thought she knew. Unchained and free.
Unlike some of the other North London boys who had come up to Cambridge with her, David did not disown the gold-embossed capital letters that spelled his initials and looped around his finger. It didn’t matter that next to the intricately engraved Oxford ovals of their new peers, his band seemed nouveau and gaudy. To David, it signified a choice he had made and an identity he had chosen – choosing to be one of the chosen; a semantic that Sarah of course loved. Back then, however, sitting in the Caius bar sometime during their second term, all she had observed was an interesting looking guy she had never noticed before. She remembered describing David this way to her friends – an interesting guy. It was a murky period of transition in which she was never sure whether to call people girls or women, boys or men, so she often landed on ‘guy’.
This guy was sitting alone, entirely unembarrassed by his solitude, wearing a t-shirt and jeans instead of a linen shirt and chinos, drinking a coke instead of something alcoholic, and wearing a kind of ring that Sarah recognised. Her own parents being a mixture of non-believing Jewish (her mother), and culture-clinging half-Jew (her father), Sarah herself had never had her own day of reckoning in synagogue; but she had tried getting drunk via invitation to a drinking society, and couldn’t, she had tried fitting in with her jolly hockey-sticks sports teams, and didn’t, she had tried joining the naked run around the quad, and returned fully dressed to her bedroom. Here at last was a frame of reference that she recognised, poised upon the hand of the most arresting ‘guy’ she had ever encountered, his strength immediately startling in its softness. Brown eyes crept out from beneath an unkempt head of floppy locks, earnest words followed; and she was his. Two true-blooded Jews finding each other long before either could collect the usual university dalliances, and in their union pleasing hordes of dead great-grandparents, despite the best efforts of rebellious intervening generations.
Found, with David, perimeters erected themselves around her again. It had only been a brief interlude of aimlessness, a matter of weeks really, and now Sarah began again to soar. That was the thing about David: he was so substantial, so constant, so unwavering in his faith in her and in himself, that it was impossible not to feel secure in his arms. He made her laugh, and he laughed with her, getting her jokes, noticing the small witticisms she’d thought were only funny within the confines of her family who had created them, making her feel entertaining and shiny and seen. Validated, she was able to take this shininess and radiate it outward. And his roots were so deeply dug, so firmly fixed, so akin to her own, that protected by the borders of their relationship, no matter the condescension she encountered elsewhere – what does your father do, where do you summer – Sarah felt safe, free.
“Are you okay?” David asked again. “Is it Veronica?”
That was the other thing about David, he had a knack for seeing through to a person’s soul. Many times now since Veronica’s visit to the museum, he had urged Sarah to breathe, to not worry, to realise it was all just a petty attempt to annoy.
But David didn’t know Veronica, not properly. He didn’t know what she had done that summer, or the lasting impact it had had. He didn’t know what she was capable of. He didn’t know how Veronica had hurt Eliza. And the thing about David’s perimeters, was that though strong, they were never enforced by him, never imposed, not a court-ordered requirement, only there, without pressure, without threat, to shield those that chose to reside within them. Amelia. Harry. Her. A force-field of principles, just like the ones Sarah’s family had wrapped her in so tightly and which she hugged against her chin.
“Don’t obsess,” he cautioned now, again, across the room “Just be present.” He nodded his head meaningfully at the children.
But she was meandering from the edges of his protectorate. Hiding things. He could see it. Even before she’d done anything. And Sarah could see it, and she could feel it. Not confiding in him was like suddenly being devoid of oxygen, or holding one’s breath.
“What are you even looking for?” he asked her.
Sarah shrugged. She couldn’t answer. But she couldn’t stop. Only that afternoon she’d looked like an idiot needing to ‘go to the ladies’ instead of accompanying a senior partner and an important client downstairs in the chambers lift. Panic had mingled with fury. Thoughts of Veronica had become consuming. It was as though she’d finally realised that this one childhood injustice was the source of all injustices in her life. The reason for all losses. Hers and Amelia’s too. It was the reason they’d lost Eliza.
There had to be a consequence. There had to be. She could no longer cower behind blurry ‘right-made’ walls. Not when the transgressor remained so juvenile, so brazen and untouched. Not after twenty years of cold sweats, and a racing heart, and avoiding things. Not now that Amelia was being dragged down by it too.
She just needed a little leverage. Something to entrap Veronica with.
Sarah closed Amelia’s bag and smiled apologetically at David, lifting her phone up to feign a sudden message. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to go back into the office.”
“Now?” he asked.
“No!” moaned the children.
But Sarah left. And nearly an hour later, she found herself walking through the city: watching the commuters rushing atop hot pavements; watching young professionals drinking outside bars; watching time tick by and the heat still rising. Watching grand Elizabethan architecture give way to royal gardens and pastel homes. Watching urban villagers navigate pretty, tree-lined streets. Watching red-robed cyclists with flowing Hepburn skirts dismount from blue pedals, and hastily enter their homes.
Simone
There is nobody to phone. For hours at the gym, Simone thinks about this. If only there was a friend she could call upon to pop into the flat and check that Terry was there, looking after Jasmine. A friend, or a neighbour, or her mother even. But after Noah died, most of the friends he’d once shared with her seemed to dissolve into the shadowed stairwells of the estate, as though she was a burni
ng flame who might turn them, like Noah, to ash. Once Terry was on the scene, the few that had remained soon vanished too in a puff of disgust or disappointment. One of them, Fiona, tried to pull her aside around that time, making one last attempt at anchoring her, on behalf, Simone presumed, of Noah’s tribe, or as part of his legacy. Fiona was a few years older than they were and already finished a course in film studies at Middlesex University, now a production secretary at a TV company with trendy offices in Camden. She had arrived in a cloud of purpose and whisked Simone out of the flat to a café. Over tea and cake she’d spouted something about the strength of women, and the specific strength Noah had seen in Simone, and the different kind of power that only pretended to be strength in Terry, and the strength that was needed now. But Simone hadn’t wanted to hear any of that then. She’d eaten the cake, but barely nodded at the young, together woman opposite her, and after a while Fiona had resorted to appeals about what was good for Dominic; but Simone still hadn’t nodded, or agreed, or been suitably reformed or inspired, and Fiona never called again. She spotted her occasionally on the Concourse, but Fiona was always hurrying. Away. Not long after that, Simone and Terry had pushed her parents into the same oblivion, and she had seen to Lewa’s departure herself long before. As far as childhood friends were concerned, she still had the phone numbers of a few from school, but she’d never been popular, and those that she’d once counted as loyal were not the type to envy or admire a descent into poverty and recklessness, nor wanted it to rub off on them. So there was nobody. There is nobody.
Except Terry.
She can’t phone Terry. The not knowing is exactly what he intended for her, and she can’t go home in case he’s there, waiting for that. But all morning, with every smile she gives to a gym member, with every swipe of their cards, every tap of a keyboard, she feels the betrayal she has chosen, the treachery she’s inflicted upon her daughter, leaving Jasmine with Him.
The crystallisation of this thought comes as a surprise to Simone. She’d understood a long time ago how volatile Terry could be. She’d realised that the anger beneath his skin sometimes exploded out of him. She’d seen that he had always to be right, which meant she would spend her life wrong. But she had also always believed that he didn’t mean to hurt her, them. It was only because he was so hurt himself. And besides, he loved her, he did. It all came from a place of care. Jasmine in particular was his blood. Is his blood. He dotes on her, sometimes. But suddenly, the thought of leaving Jasmine with Terry fills Simone with dread.
Why? Simone has no idea: why she is questioning him; why her mind is racing to crazy ideas – that he might not be with Jasmine, that he might not have gone home; why she has never worried about this before. Yet even the thought of returning home herself, makes her lungs constrict.
Dominic at least is at school, away, but all morning at the gym, Simone imagines Jasmine screaming, wet and hungry in her cot, or worse, wondering alone around the flat where there are things she shouldn’t touch, or worse still, making too loud a noise at a moment inconvenient to her father. Is this why her daughter has learnt to freeze, to become invisible? As she works, she finds herself touching her fingers to her throat, where a thick layer of make-up masks deep red imprints in her flesh.
It is well past lunchtime when she finally makes it back down the canal, up the steps just beyond the Nash arch, and to the flat where she both fears and hopes that Terry is waiting.
As soon as she enters, she knows that he is not there. The TV is on but the air is otherwise unsullied by friction. Frantically she glances around for Jasmine and with a surge of relief spots her quickly, in one piece, on the sofa. She is hypnotised in front of some cartoon, and next to her, arm around her shoulders, is Dominic. He wears his school uniform, but he has clearly not been to school. He catches her eye, and in an instant Simone understands what has happened – Terry left, so Dominic couldn’t. With a deep, tear-tinged exhalation of breath, gratefulness sweeps through her. Thank goodness for Dominic. Thank goodness her son was there for his sister. Thank goodness Jasmine has not spent the day alone. With the same breath, however, there is guilt too, for Dominic has been sacrificed once again. By her. With a nod of her head, Simone tries to convey the shame she feels about this, the remorse, and the thanks. She wants to go to him and engulf him in a hug. But Dominic shakes his head at her, contempt spilling from his eyes like years of untended teardrops.
Simone’s arms ache with emptiness. For a while she busies them in the kitchen, then delivers a snack of toast with jam to each of her children, Dominic accepting his begrudgingly, Jasmine pulling Simone tight towards her until their cheeks are locked and jam somehow makes its way into Simone’s hair. Untangling herself from her daughter to remove it, she notices the pile of pizza boxes next to her children on the sofa, prompting Simone to turn her attention to the other remnants of the night before. The flat is as she left it: the rank stench of stale beer and festering leftovers, bottles and glasses everywhere, overflowing bins, a grimy floor, the lingering smell of smoke that is not pure tobacco. Simone rarely cleans the place properly – there seems little point when each day ash renews its claim on the carpets – and often she stops noticing the grime of it all, but for some reason she feels now that if she can just rid the rooms of the dirt, the ingrained filth, then perhaps when Terry returns he will feel cleansed too, unburdened, washed free of fury. And she will be washed free of doubt.
She cleans with an almost wild passion. It is hot, the heat wave of the last week unrelenting, and stickiness snakes over her in efforts to slow and dissuade; but she strips to a vest and shorts, pulls her hair into a tight ponytail, and carries on. Black bin bags bulge with rubbish, the windows are thrown open despite the breezeless air, the surfaces are scrubbed. It takes three rounds with the hoover to remove the greater part of the ash from the floor, and when she is done, she empties this bag along with the contents of the ashtrays straight into the outside bin. Pausing for a moment by the doorstep, she cannot help but notice the house next door with the newly painted railings. The neighbours’ boxes must all be unpacked by now, she supposes, their quiet, perfect life begun. Except of course for the noise invading their haven through her own wall, a thought that still fills Simone with acute shame, but also just a little triumph. She barely remembers the encounter they had the night before – she had been way past drunk by then – only that Terry had been livid with the man, riled by the ‘smug’ woman, and it had taken a number of drinks more to placate him. She wonders what Veronica is doing now – maybe getting herself dolled up for a party, or maybe, with a real job that lasts all day, giving a presentation in some high-powered meeting, or maybe just strolling somewhere, un-set-upon, unburdened, free.
Locked, herself, in daydream, Simone stares for a moment more at the neighbours’ front window. The blind is down, the shutters closed. Still, she watches the impassable blankness, and as she does so, flashes of other things shut to her, force their way into her mind: her father’s study door, then her parent’s front one; the car with which they used to drive Dominic away; the grief that sealed itself deep inside Noah; the maternal joy that came too late to save either of them.
She is going to send a letter to Lewa. Or an email. The thought comes to her abruptly, but she means it. Somebody on the old estate will have her address, though she doesn’t know what she will say. The truth, she supposes. That Dominic was, always, Noah’s. That Dominic is, still, hers. She will not ask the woman for anything material. She will not even ask for forgiveness. Only for her phone number, in case one day there is need again for a person to call. Everybody needs one number, one lifeline.
Lewa told Simone to stay in school. Lewa told her she was too young to give up. Lewa told her it was her turn.
Simone shakes her head. Guilt is not helpful. It laps around her, tempting, seducing, but she has seen already its paralysing results. Besides, it would be hard for her to feel worse about herself than she already does. It is all her fault and she knows this. She ma
de her bed, as her parents would tell her, and did.
With one last glance towards the neighbours’ closed window, Simone turns back towards her own. In the front room, a shadow darts, but Dominic moves before he can notice her noticing.
In the living room, there is a large clock that Simone presumes was purchased by Milly, or a tenant before her. It is not wooden, nor does it boast intricate mechanics of spinning wheels that can be viewed through glass – in other words it is not like the one that Simone used to spend time gazing at in her parents’ hallway – but it is large and loud, and the ticking of seconds is strident and unmissable. By four o’clock, Terry is still not home. At creaks, and slams, and imagined sounds, she and Dominic take turns in snatching their heads towards the door, but more minutes pass intact. Until at 4.15pm there is finally a ring on the bell. When Simone sees from the window a woman accompanied by a pair of police officers, her constricted lungs give way to the heat, and the activity, and the lingering smoke, and for a full minute she cannot breathe.
