by Lisa Jewell
“Tiff?”
“Yeah. Her name’s Tiffy.”
“Tiffy?”
“Short for Tiffany.”
“Tiffany.” He absorbed this. The woman who’d come to his flat did not look like a Tiff or a Tiffy or a Tiffany.
“Tiffany Melanie Martin. To be precise. Though I think she might have changed her name when she got married.”
“Changed it to . . . ?”
She shrugged. “No idea. Wasn’t invited.”
“Right.”
“Why? What did she tell you she was called?”
“Jane.”
“Jane! Well, that’s exactly the name you’d say you were called if you were lying, isn’t it? What the hell is she up to?” She groaned and leaned forward again. “Listen,” she said, “there’s a lot of shit under the bridge between Tiff and me. I wasn’t the best mum in the world. I wasn’t a mum at all, truth be told. She was brought up in care. I didn’t see her from when she was eight until she was twenty-six.” She sniffed and leaned back again. “So, there you go. We’re more like strangers than mum and daughter.”
Adrian sat back to allow the delivery of his sandwich to the table, slices of radioactive yellow egg on thick white bread, fat discs of cucumber and tomato and lots of salad cream. “When did you last see her?”
“About a year ago. Roughly. She came for her brother’s fourth birthday. Would have been around July time.”
Adrian tried not to let his shock at the fact that Jean was young enough to have a four-year-old child shine too clearly from him. He’d subconsciously placed Jean at mid to late fifties.
“And have you been in touch since? Recently?”
“No.” She shook her head and laughed drily as though the idea were preposterous. “It’s not like that with me and her. I only sent her that text last night because I was feeling guilty. You know. Coming up for a year since I’d seen her.”
“So, what was she up to, last time you saw her? She was married?”
Jean broke off from the conversation to order herself a cup of tea. “Yeah, that’s right. Newlywed she was. Looked like she might have done all right for herself. Brought Harry a lovely present, a computer thing, must have cost a bit. And was all tanned, from her honeymoon. Where’d she been? Maldives? Malta? Something like that. Yeah . . .” She sighed and stared into the middle distance.
He paused, wondering if what he was about to say was entirely appropriate. “She didn’t seem to me to be what you’d call married. I mean, no ring. Well, not that I was looking, but I certainly didn’t notice one. And the third time I met her she was . . .” He paused again. “She was on a date.”
Jean laughed out loud, and then began spluttering; she held her hand against her chest. “Sorry, sorry. Stupid cough. Well. There you go then. Never did think she was the marrying type.”
Adrian wiped a dribble of salad cream from the corner of his mouth and said, “So, the question is, do you have an address for her? A number?”
“Nah.” Jean shook her head slowly. “Nah. That number.” She nodded at the phone. “That was all I had of her. So,” she said, drawing herself back to the present. “How was she? How’d she seem? When you saw her?”
“Well, you know, I only met her a couple of times, really. And as strangers. So I don’t really know what she’s normally like. But she seemed like a normal, happy person.”
She nodded approvingly. “And how did she look? Did she look good?”
“Er, yes, I suppose. Nicely dressed, beautifully turned out, long blond hair.”
“No no no. I think we’re at cross purposes here, then. Tiffy wouldn’t have blond hair. Never.”
“Well, you know, it was probably dyed.”
“What, really?” She shuddered. “Can’t imagine it.” She looked faintly appalled. “Don’t think Afro hair really takes to bleach, you know. Goes sort of yellow, doesn’t it?”
Adrian blinked at Jean and said, “What? What do you mean, Afro?”
“Well, you know, hair like Tiffy’s. That curly hair.”
“The woman I met did not have Afro hair. Her hair was straight and blond.”
“Oh God, she’s relaxed it, too! Not sure I’d recognize her!”
“No. I mean, the girl I met wasn’t black. She was white.”
“Well, Tiffy’s quite light skinned. More of a café au lait. Her dad was only half and half, you know, so she’s hardly black at all really.”
“Right. No. This girl was properly white. She had blue eyes. Well, blue with a bit of gold in one of them.”
Jean shook her head then and blew out her cheeks. “Nah then,” she said. “Nah. We’re talking about different girls. Definitely. Looks like your girl got hold of my girl’s phone somehow. Nicked it off her. Most probably.” She sniffed and smiled knowingly at Adrian, looking quite happy with her theory.
Adrian was about to say, No, not the girl I met. She was far too classy to steal a phone. But then he thought about the way she’d taken those cigarettes out of her smart handbag as she left his flat that first time, and had lit one inside cupped hands like a man. So he didn’t say anything. Instead he said, “Yeah. Probably,” and smiled.
“By the way,” he said as he stood up to leave a few seconds later. “Your daughter. Tiffy. You say she was brought up in care. Where was that? Was that in London?”
“No. She was in Southampton. That’s where she was born. That’s where I met her dad. She went in when she was eight or so. Funny. Can’t imagine it now. Now I’ve got Harry.” Her gaze lingered on a spot just beyond the café window. “Can’t imagine how I could have let her go.” She looked up at Adrian sharply, as though he’d just accused her of something. “I was too bloody young, that’s what it was. Too messed in the head. I’m doing it right this time. I was forty when I had Harry. And I’m doing it all right this time. Do you hear me?”
She looked angry and Adrian decided to end the encounter before it escalated into something unpleasant. He smiled at her, reassuringly, paid for his egg sandwich and for her porridge and headed home.
10
Cat changed into joggers and a tank top, pulled her dark hair back tightly into a ponytail and pouted at herself in the mirror. She jabbed at her reflection with bunched-up fists, bambambambam, and then high-kicked at herself. She laughed. What an idiot she looked. She turned to check her rear view. The joggers were low-rise with the word HOT spelled out across her buttocks. They were kind of 2008 called, they want their trousers back, but they were the only vaguely athletic item of clothing she owned and no way was she going to spend actual money on clothes to do sports in. She stared at all the new bits of herself that seemed to arrive daily, the flesh that spilled from between her bra strap and the armholes of her tank top, the swell of her belly—someone had asked her the other day if she was pregnant—and the meaty squash between her thighs. She sighed and decided to love them. She had to love them. If she didn’t love them she’d have to go on a diet. If she didn’t love them she would not be able to wear trousers with the word HOT on the bum.
This was her third kickboxing class in as many weeks. She was aching and hurting and elements of her interior physiology felt as though they were on fire even when she was sitting down. There were a surprising number of kickboxing classes in the Highgate area. Six in total, at various locations and times. The last two classes had uncovered nothing beyond the fact that she was almost fatally unfit. No women with mismatched eyes. No women called Jane. No women called Tiffy. But still, two down, four to go, she was getting closer every week.
She aimed one more kick at her reflection, checked her shoulder bag for her travel card and deodorant, put on an extra layer of mascara and headed to Highgate.
The class was held in a community center in the heart of a sprawling estate. It was the
kind of place where a grasp of the martial arts probably came in quite handy, Cat thought, clutching her big bag against her body. A group of young boys in baggy clothes approached. She tried looking like the kind of girl who’d been brought up on an estate instead of the kind of girl who’d been brought up in a cottage in Hove. The four boys swiveled around as she passed, taking in the pure everythingness of her, making appreciative noises with their tongues and their teeth.
“Hot,” said one, reading from the back of her trousers. “That you are. That you are.”
She turned and said, “I’m old enough to be your mother.”
“Ha, yeah, if your boyfriend was a pedophile.”
The boys laughed and so did Cat. She walked away, backwards, holding up a hand in what felt to her like a very street kind of gesture. The boys blew her kisses. Then she smiled, feeling the love again for her own flesh, turned round and walked straight into the path of a blond woman carrying a gym bag. “Sorry!” she said.
“No problem,” said the woman.
Cat looked at the woman curiously. There was something about her. Something that seemed familiar. And then she inhaled sharply at the realization that the woman had one blue eye and one blue and amber.
“Jane?” she gasped.
“Sorry?”
“Are you Jane?”
“No,” said the woman. “Sorry. My name is A . . . Amanda.”
“Oh,” said Cat. “Right. Sorry. Are you going to the kickboxing class?”
The woman looked at Cat and then at the hall behind her. She nudged her gym bag slightly so that it disappeared behind her back. She cleared her throat and said, “No. No. I’m not.”
And then she walked away. Cat stood still for a moment. She felt torn between conflicting urges: the urge to chase the woman and shout into her face that of course she was Jane and why was she lying about it; and the urge to stay where she was and let this perfectly innocent woman called Amanda walk to her destination in peace. Then she saw the middle-ground option. She could follow her. At a discreet distance. She was dressed for it, after all. She pulled her mobile phone from her hand and dialed in her dad’s number, holding it to her ear as she walked.
“Dad,” she whispered. “I’ve got her! I’m following her!”
“Who?”
“Jane, of course! She was just about to walk into the hall where the kickboxing class was. I bumped into her. She had the eyes, like you said! She told me her name was Amanda. But it’s her. I know it is!”
“Where are you?”
“God, I don’t know. Some estate in Highgate.” She was approaching the same group of teenage boys. They smiled as they saw her and one of them shouted out, “She just couldn’t keep away! Come and talk to us! Come on, Miss Hot!”
She smiled and waved at them apologetically and they catcalled after her as she hurried by.
“Who was that?”
“Just some boys.”
“Christ, Cat, be careful.”
“They’re just kids, Dad. Look, I’ll call you when I find out where she’s going!”
Cat followed the blond woman through the estate and back through the metal gates onto Archway Road. Then she saw the woman begin to run, her gym bag bouncing up and down urgently against her back. At first Cat thought she was running from her. Then she saw that she was running for a bus which was already letting on the last person in the queue. Cat touched her fingers against the edges of her travel card and began to run too. Cat didn’t do running as a rule. Generally she would rather miss the train, miss the bus, than turn herself into a jelly on legs, but this called for a change of style. And she was, at least, wearing a sports bra. She saw the blond woman leap onto the steps of the bus just as the driver had been about to close the door. She pushed herself harder. She could feel the meat of each individual buttock lifting and dropping with every stride. She tried to catch the driver’s eye as she got closer. But it was too late. The doors hissed and folded, the bus changed gear, and by the time she got to the bus stop it was nothing but a belching, farting box of fumes hurtling away from her down the bus lane.
11
On the weekend after his meeting with Jean, Adrian got a phone call from Susie in Hove.
“Darling,” she said. He couldn’t remember Susie ever calling him Adrian. “I need to talk to you. Are you free today? For a chat?”
He put down his coffee mug and said, “Yes. Sure. What’s up?”
“I’d rather not talk on the phone, darling. Can you come down? To the house?” Both his ex-wives referred to their homes as “the house” as though theirs was the definitive one.
“Today?”
“Please. If you can. Bring a child if you need to.”
“No, they’re away this weekend. I’m unencumbered.”
“Good. When can you come?”
Adrian considered the time and his state of readiness and said, “I could leave in about half an hour. Actually, I could leave now.”
“Oh. Good. Thank you, darling. You are such a good boy. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
Adrian arrived at the house in Hove just before lunchtime, carrying a bunch of lilac stocks. The sky was a uniform blue and the sun was high, casting brightly off the stucco buildings and the shingled beach. Moving down here had been Susie’s idea. She, like Adrian, was a Londoner, but unlike Adrian she had no emotional tie to the city and couldn’t get used to living there after three years at Sussex University. She’d secretly taken the train down to Brighton twice a week after she’d discovered she was pregnant. Apparently she’d seen more than thirty properties. And then one day, about seven months into her pregnancy, she’d brought Adrian down to the coast for “lunch with friends” and walked him briskly away from their friends’ house in Brighton, along the seafront to Hove and right up to the front door of the little Edwardian cottage where they’d lived for the next ten years. Adrian had mixed feelings about the area now. This was the place where he’d become a father, the trendy young dad, carrying his fat babies along the beach in a sling, pushing them along windswept pavements to nurseries and childminders. This was where his grown-up life had started. But it was also where he’d felt stifled and wrong-footed. Where he’d woken each morning thinking: When did the party end? Why am I here knee-deep in nappies living with a scatty, badly dressed woman who calls me “Daddy”? And what happened to London? Yes, for most of his ten years in Hove, Adrian had dreamed of London. And he still wasn’t sure whether it was Caroline he’d fallen in love with when he was thirty-five, or whether it was the promise of a return to his beloved city.
But still, he thought, as he turned the familiar corner to the house he’d once lived in, it had been a golden time in many ways. It was hard to look back on the early years of living with any of his children without being filled with a sense of wonder and awe. And it was such a pretty house, the prettiest on the street. He paused to admire Susie’s hard work in the front garden, a little parterre area in the middle, beds of campanula and amaryllis around the sides, a laburnum tree in full weighty bloom growing lasciviously over the entire front of the house.
“Darling,” Susie greeted him on her doorstep wearing a droopy sundress and Velcro-strapped sandals, her graying hair tied back with a scarf. Susie had been like a mannequin when he’d met her. He’d felt compelled to touch her, just to confirm that she was indeed flesh and blood. But she’d never been comfortable with her flawless beauty and had begun covering it up within weeks of getting together with Adrian. She’d more or less embraced the degradation of her body brought about by pregnancy and childbirth and was happier now in these early stages of mi
ddle-agedness, the color leached from her hair, the lines riven through the plastic-perfect skin, the general falling apart of herself like a vacuum-packed bag of rice punctured with a knife.
She took the stocks from him with an extravagant display of appreciation and led him into the room at the back of the house that they’d always called the sunroom, even when it was dark.
She had tea set out in anticipation, and a bowl of fruit salad. The doors opened out onto the back garden, another riot of tasteful planting and heavy late-spring blossom. Everyone had told him he should sell this place when he and Susie had split up. Split it half and half. Take back what was rightfully his. And even though Susie had admitted to sleeping with half of Hove during the last year of their marriage, she’d only done that because she was being neglected by her husband, who was too busy fantasizing about an unattainable statuesque blond window dresser from Islington called Caroline to pay her any attention at all. It was the garden that had stopped him. Susie’s garden. He couldn’t take that away from her, too. So he and Caroline had lived in a house-share for two years, saving for a place of their own, the “oldest flatmates in town” as they’d called themselves.
“Where’s Luke?” he asked.
“God knows,” said Susie, pouring them both tea. “I haven’t seen him all week. I need to talk to you about him. Actually I need to talk to you about you, too. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since Cat’s birthday at Caroline’s. I’ve been worrying about you.”
Adrian stopped spooning fruit salad into a bowl to groan. “Oh God, Suse. Please don’t. I can’t bear being worried about.”
“Bollocks,” she said, taking the spoon from him and putting fruit into her own bowl. “You’re a big baby. You love being worried about.”
