The Secrets We Left Behind

by Susan Elliot Wright

  Afterwards, bodies slick with sweat and hearts pounding, they lay still until their breathing slowed to normal. They were lying along the flat part of the roof now, just behind the parapet. Jo’s knee was stinging; she must have scraped it on the concrete without noticing. Scott lay heavily across her and she tried to shift him to the side so that he wasn’t squashing her quite so much.

  ‘That was fantastic,’ he said into her hair.

  There was no doubt that sex with Scott was proper sex; real, grown-up sex, man and woman stuff, not the incompetent and unsatisfactory teenage fumblings she’d had with Rob. But the joy and exhilaration she’d felt moments before was now rapidly evaporating as the sheer enormity of what she’d done started to sink in. Eve. No matter what Scott said, she didn’t really believe that Eve would be ‘cool’ about someone else sleeping with her boyfriend while she was away for one night. Eve; lovely, kind, generous Eve. Jo felt tears beginning to spill over her lower lids. How could she have betrayed their friendship like this? She let out a half-sob and heaved Scott away from her. She was completely naked; how had that happened? Scott had taken her shirt off, but she didn’t remember him taking her hot pants or her knickers off . She sat up to look around for her clothes, and felt suddenly dizzy as she did so. God, she was stoned; probably pissed as well. No wonder she didn’t remember some of the details.

  ‘Hey.’ Scott reached out lazily towards her. ‘Relax. There’s no hurry. Let’s stay up here all night.’

  ‘No! I don’t want to stay here all night.’ She started to scrabble around for her clothes, pulling them on clumsily so that her shirt went on inside out and her hot pants back to front. She couldn’t find her knickers at all but then had a sudden memory of tossing them joyously over the parapet and then giggling as she imagined them sailing down and landing on someone’s head. Although that was unlikely, given that the part of the roof they were on mainly overlooked the garden, and anyway, it was rare for anyone to be walking past, especially in the middle of the night.

  She swayed as she stood up and put a hand out to steady herself on the chimney stack. She had to get down-stairs; she began stumbling along, looking for the door they’d come through, but the roof now seemed huge and with multiple slopes and stacks and recesses, and she had no idea how to get back down.

  ‘Jo, hang on,’ Scott said, pulling on his T-shirt and getting to his feet. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going back downstairs,’ she called over her shoulder as she walked along a flat part between the slope and the parapet. ‘I shouldn’t have come up here.’ She was crying now. ‘Shouldn’t have smoked so much.’

  ‘You’re going the wrong way. Don’t go past that stack—’

  But she already had, and now she froze. Just ahead of her, a large section of the parapet was missing. One more step and she’d have no protection if she slipped or stumbled. Her hand still held onto the stack, and the parapet wall came way up past her knee; she tried to tell herself that it was all right, that she was perfectly safe, but six inches in front of her an open gap yawned to the left. She didn’t know how high up she was, but it was a four-storey house, so it had to be at least fifty feet. Despite the heat of the night, a cold, sick sensation started to creep through her body. She became aware of the crumbly feeling of the chimney stack bricks and the softness of the moss under her fingers. She recognised the beginnings of a shiver and prayed that it would not be a violent one that would jolt her body forward even so much as an inch. She wanted to call out to Scott but what if using her body to produce a sound caused her to move inadvertently? Scott was not far behind her, she could sense him moving nearer, but did he know about the missing section? What if he didn’t and he tried to barge past her? She had to tell him not to come too near, but her voice had vanished and she found herself unable to produce even the smallest sound. She half turned towards him but in doing so looked down and felt a cold lick of fear. Oh my God, she thought; I could fall; I might actually die tonight. Her fingers were sweating; what if they became so slippery that she lost her grip on the chimney stack? But then she realised she didn’t actually have a grip on the bricks, her fingers were just resting against the mossy surface. Scott stopped a few feet away and she knew he’d seen the gap and realised what was happening, that she had suddenly and unexpectedly been paralysed by abject terror. The air was still incredibly warm, given that it must surely be one or two in the morning by now, but the sweat on the skin of her bare arms had turned icy. Just go back, she told herself; it’s perfectly safe as long as you don’t go forward. But she simply could not move. The expression scared stiff popped into her mind; she understood it now.

  ‘Jo.’ Scott’s voice was low and gentle. ‘Come back towards me; you’ll be fine.’

  She couldn’t answer.

  He took a step nearer and slowly held out his hand towards her. ‘Jo, take my hand,’ he said softly. It flirted through her mind that he might wonder if she was thinking about jumping, but no, she was upset, but she wasn’t stupid, and nor was he.

  ‘Jo, it’s cool, okay? You’re going to be fine, it’s just vertigo. You know, like in that Hitchcock film. I’m going to come a bit nearer so you can take my hand and walk back, okay?’

  Still she couldn’t speak, and there was no point in her taking his hand because she knew that there was no way, absolutely no way she could move, not even if he was holding on to her. How long would she be standing here, she wondered? What about when she needed to pee? Or when it got light? Oh, God, it would be even worse when it got light because she’d be able to see clearly just how high up she was. Her stomach shifted again at the thought. Then she felt Scott’s hand rest ever so lightly on her arm and at the same moment something small and furry flew into her. Instinctively she screamed and put both hands up in front of her face, enabling Scott to grab her wrists and pull her towards him. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,’ he said, clasping his arms around her. ‘It was only a bat, that’s all. You’re safe; everything’s cool.’ He walked her back around the other side of the stack, along the flat walkway and down through the door into the house. It was only when he locked the door and Jo could feel the carpet beneath her feet that she began to shake. She sat down on the step, unable to stop trembling. Maybe it was some sort of delayed reaction. Or maybe it was because it was beginning to dawn on her; not only had she slept with Eve’s boyfriend, but they hadn’t used anything – what if she was pregnant?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jo couldn’t concentrate. She didn’t have a shift at the pub today so she was supposed to be painting some shells for Eve, but she’d barely slept and now she was just sitting in the thinking room, going over and over the previous night. She could hardly believe what had happened, and as she relived it in her mind, her feelings swung violently back and forth: one minute, she felt the most delicious thrill at the memory; the next, she was engulfed by a sense of miserable, sickening guilt.

  And what if she was pregnant? She groaned aloud. Seagulls were shrieking outside the window, and for a moment the sound stirred in her a powerful longing for home, for the sandy beach at Newquay with the noisy herring gulls that woke her early every morning. They’d driven her mad there just as they did here, and many people regarded them as vermin; ‘sky rats’, Mr Rundle called them. But somehow the fact that Hastings had this one thing in common with Newquay made her feel nostalgic for her home town.

  She lit a cigarette. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, there was still Eve to worry about. The idea of deceiving Eve was unthinkable, but on the other hand, how could she tell her? She just couldn’t believe what Scott had said, that Eve really wouldn’t mind.

  A seagull alighted on the windowsill and looked in at her with a malevolent stare, as if it knew what she’d done. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. Scott didn’t appear to feel remotely guilty. He’d wanted to sleep with her in her room last night, but she’d refused. He’d looked disappointed but then shrugged, told her to sleep well and loped off to his and Eve
’s room along the hall. When she’d gone down to the kitchen this morning, he was already in there, so she’d crept back upstairs before he spotted her and had only gone back in to make her tea and toast once he was out in the garden sawing wood he’d found on a skip for the box he was making.

  There was nothing covering the many windows in the thinking room, and the sun coming through the glass turned the room into a greenhouse. She picked up her mug and cigarettes and went out into the relative cool of the landing, an instant relief from the relentless late-morning heat. She could still hear Scott working in the garden, and was about to go downstairs when the sound of sawing stopped and she heard voices. Eve was home. A knot of misery tightened inside her. If only she could go back twenty-four hours and start again. She stood on the landing, listening intently, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was a pause at one point, and she had the powerful sense that they were kissing. Then she heard the basement door open and close and the sound of Eve’s footsteps coming along the hall.

  ‘Jo.’ Eve smiled and put her arms around Jo in that familiar, comforting way. ‘Scott told me what happened, and I know you’re feeling bad about it, but don’t, Jo. Please don’t.’

  She didn’t say anything. Eve’s hair smelled hot, and not of the sea like it usually did, but of trains and traffic and Trafalgar Square. ‘It’s only bodies, after all. Why shouldn’t we share our bodies for pleasure?’

  Jo pulled away and looked at her. ‘But don’t you feel. . . betrayed? I mean, I’m supposed to be your friend.’

  Eve laughed. ‘Betrayed? Of course not, you silly thing! I might feel that way if you’d lied to me, but how could I feel betrayed by the truth? And you are my friend. It’s like I keep telling you, me and Scott, we don’t . . .’

  ‘I know, you don’t own each other.’

  ‘That’s right, we don’t. Jo, sex is a beautiful thing; it’s something we should share. I’m not saying we should sleep with any Tom, Dick or Harry who comes along, but why not share it with special people in our lives?’

  ‘I just . . . I’m not . . .’

  ‘Jo, what are you so upset about? It’s okay.’ She reached up and wiped away the tear that had leaked out of Jo’s eye. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  Jo turned and ran out of the kitchen and up to her room. They were mad, Eve and Scott; absolutely crazy. They were just like those hippies that used to come to Cornwall for the solstice, with their Afghan coats and bells around their necks and flowers painted on their skin. She remembered walking through the park once when the hippies were having a picnic; they were all bare-chested, even the women, and one of the men was sitting between two of them with an arm round each one, his fingers idly playing with their breasts as he kissed first one, then the other. The young Jo had been shocked. Peace, man; make love, not war. But that was 1969; it was all a bit outdated now, wasn’t it? She crawled onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling, watching the dust motes dance in the sunlight. Was it possible that Eve really, truly didn’t mind? Even if she didn’t, surely she was a little disappointed? Like her mum had been disappointed in her when she’d been unable to stop herself from taking one of the butterfly cakes from the table half an hour before her birthday party started. She must have only been about eight or nine, because there hadn’t been many birthday parties after that, and although she knew now that it had more to do with her parents splitting up than with her own behaviour, she’d always felt that there must be something intrinsically greedy about her, something that compelled her to take things to satisfy her own desires, whether she had permission to take them or not. She fell into a fitful, sweaty doze. When she woke, her shirt was stuck to her back and sweat was trickling down her chest. The thought of going downstairs made her stomach flip. She couldn’t stay here now; she felt exposed, dirty; embarrassed. She could go back to London and find another squat, start again. Eve found places to stay easily enough, so why shouldn’t she? And if she was pregnant, then she’d find a mother and baby home. There were bound to be plenty of those in London. She’d have to make it clear that she didn’t want her baby adopted, she just wanted some support until she got back on her feet. She didn’t know quite how she’d manage, but other girls her age did, so it must be possible. She stood up and started tearfully shoving things into her duffle bag. How had she managed to acquire all this stuff in just a few months? There was so much here that she could hardly bear to leave behind. All the clothes Eve had given her, for a start. She’d grown to love the cheesecloth shirts, the peasant tops, the long, floaty skirts. Now her hair was growing longer and Eve’s was shorter they were starting to look more and more alike, apart from the fact that Eve was getting a bit pudgy. In fact, the man in the corner shop had taken to calling them Tweedledum and Tweedledee whenever he saw them together. She started to feel tearful again as she looked at the shelf full of books, the red lava lamp, and the other bits she’d found at jumble sales or in skips. She didn’t want to leave it all behind, but how could she possibly stay? She put her duffle bag down and sat on her bed with a sigh. There was no hurry, she supposed; she could aim to leave by the weekend.

  ‘What?’ Eve said when Jo told her what she’d decided. ‘Why?’ She was hand-stitching a lace trim to the child’s sun hat she was making. They were selling well on the beach – plenty of day trippers underestimated the sheer power of the sun beating down on their toddlers’ heads, and an inexpensive cotton sun hat saved the day. Eve had bought up lots of remnants of cotton material, then she simply cut circles of fabric and gathered them with sheering elastic to make little mob-caps. She put down the cap she was working on and looked at Jo. Her skin had paled and her eyes glittered as though she was fighting tears. ‘You can’t leave, Jo. Please don’t.’

  ‘I can’t stay,’ Jo said. ‘Not after what happened the other night.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to talk about it in the open and uninhibited way that Eve and Scott did. ‘I’m sorry. I know you said it doesn’t matter, but even if you honestly don’t mind, I still feel awful about it. I feel embarrassed every time I see you or Scott.’

  ‘But there’s no need to feel—’

  ‘I know. But I can’t help it; I do.’

  To Jo’s horror, tears started to spill down Eve’s face. Before now, she’d only ever seen Eve cry over awful things like the Vietnam War, or the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or earthquakes where thousands of people were killed; she’d never made her cry.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Eve quickly wiped away the tears and shook her head. ‘I’m feeling a bit emotional at the moment. Listen, Jo, I need to tell you something and I really hope it’ll make you change your mind.’ She looked down at her sewing again. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘What?’ The momentary shock Jo felt was quickly replaced with the uncomfortable realisation that, now she thought about it, the signs had been there for a while and she just hadn’t taken them in – Eve putting on weight; the tiredness; the sickness she’d had until a few weeks ago. She swallowed. ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘November.’

  ‘November? So you’re . . .’

  ‘Five and a half months.’

  Jo felt her face colour; how could she not have realised? Eve had been getting bigger and bigger every week, her clothes straining at the seams, and Jo had just been grateful for the hand-me-down clothes. It was so obvious now she thought about it. How could she have been so naïve?

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me before?’ She did a quick calculation. ‘You must have already been pregnant when I first moved in.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know I was, not at that point. I was . . . we were going to tell you soon, but. . . the thing is, well . . .’ Eve was shifting about in her seat, looking this way and that as though she wasn’t sure what to say next. ‘The thing is, I wanted to ask you something.’

  For a moment, it flashed through her head that Eve was going to ask her if she thought she might be pregnant. Had Scott told her that they hadn’t used a Durex? She waite
d.

  ‘Yes. You see, I don’t want to have the baby in hospital, and so I’ll need some support here, some female support. Scott’s marvellous, but it’s not the same thing as having another woman around.’

  She’d never been referred to that way before, and she felt a silly little thrill to know that Eve thought of her as a woman rather than a girl.

  ‘You’re my friend, Jo, and I was hoping you’d stick around to give me a hand, not only before the baby’s born, but after as well. I think it would be lovely for the baby to have you around as well as Scott and me.’

  ‘But why—’

  ‘You know I don’t have any family, and Scott’s family is in New Zealand, so there’ll just be us two. And I want my baby to have more people to love her. Or him. You’d be an honorary auntie.’ She looked up at Jo again and her face was a picture of hope and trust. ‘Please, Jo, please stay; I need you.’

  Jo’s thoughts were reeling. A baby! Eve was going to have a real, live baby, and she, Jo, was being asked to be part of it, to be involved. ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I need to think.’ She hurried from the kitchen and ran back up the stairs and along to the thinking room. As she opened the door, the force of the heat coming through the glass almost took her breath away. She sat on the wicker chair and put her feet up on the window seat, then tipped her head back and closed her eyes. The sun was searing her skin, but she wanted to feel its intensity. It helped her to concentrate. What would Eve say if she knew that there was a possibility Jo could be pregnant? Would she still think the whole thing was okay? She sat there with her eyes closed for a good ten minutes, wondering whether she should say anything. She could feel the beads of sweat forming on her forehead, but still she didn’t move. Realistically, she probably wasn’t pregnant, and her period wasn’t due for another fortnight anyway, so there was no point in worrying about it now. But she needed to think about Eve. Eve really was pregnant; there would definitely be a baby.