The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  ‘Just write with the passion you feel,’ Malachy told her. ‘Most students will regurgitate the teacher’s slant, play it safe. They don’t think for themselves. You’re different. By the way, you are going to do English A level, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, if I must. But I’d rather run off with the circus.’ She sighed histrionically. She used to do that a lot, back then. ‘Yes, Malachy, I’ll be following in your footsteps,’ she said. To emphasize her point, she made much of dropping his hand, dropping behind him, linking her fingers lightly over the waistband of his jeans and stepping balletically into his footfalls as they walked on.

  ‘When do you get your results?’ she’d wanted to know.

  ‘A week before yours,’ he’d said over his shoulder.

  ‘Jed’s going to get ten A-starreds.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hate him. I’ll probably get four A’s. Then a B for French. C’s for biology and geograwful. And my maths’ll be Unclassified.’

  ‘If you pass maths, I’ll buy you a present.’

  ‘If I fail, do I have to pay you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Ten quid? Ten pee?’

  ‘Ten of these.’

  And Malachy had turned suddenly and pulled Oriana close, his body pressed achingly against hers as he stroked her hair away from her face, his cool violet-grey eyes darkening with desire, holding her in an intense caught moment. The still point of the turning world – moments like these, that’s what he called them, because he’d done T. S. Eliot for A level. Dipping his face, finding her lips, brushing them gently with his until the kisses came true; instinctive, loaded, meaningful, crazy, urgent. Eighteen and fifteen.

  When Malachy kissed Oriana and Oriana kissed Malachy, their age and inexperience stood for nothing. And when he touched her, wherever he touched her, the pleasure she felt sent a charge through his fingers, right through his body: skin, fibre, bones, organs. There was nothing more thrilling, more maddening, than her hands swooping over his back, holding on tight to his arms, slipping lightly down to dally over the mound swelling in excruciating desire behind his jeans.

  ‘I love you, Malachy,’ she whispered, her lips touching his ear lobe. But he pulled her hand away because the temptation, the insane feeling of pleasure locking with pain, was a bullet heading straight for regret and danger.

  ‘No, Oriana. Not yet,’ he said, enfolding her in his arms, her head tucked under his chin as he stared at the patterns on the black pine to avoid the subject that every neurone was screaming out for. ‘We just can’t.’

  ‘We so can,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s so stupid – sixteen! Who says! Who decides! The stupid government? Some frigid medical busybody? I’m in my sixteenth year, for God’s sake. I love you. It’s right. Hamlet – think of Hamlet, he was thirty.’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ he whispered.

  They clung to each other.

  ‘Think of Ophelia!’ Oriana protested. ‘She was only fifteen.’

  ‘Actually, we don’t know her precise age,’ Malachy corrected.

  And suddenly Oriana softened. ‘Well, Juliet was fourteen. And Polonius refers to Ophelia as a green girl. So I’m saying she’s fifteen – and you’ve just told me that my opinion counts.’

  Back at the gallery, Malachy can see it again now, so vividly – how Oriana stuck out her tongue and stropped off ahead, lightly hitting the tree trunks with a stick as she passed.

  Acting her age. Fifteen. With so much ahead of her.

  Sitting at his computer, staring at the screen without seeing a word of his novel, Malachy felt the disconcerting welling of the ghost tear. He rarely cried, even as a child. Jed was the one far more at ease with emotion. But since losing an eye – it was the weirdest thing. His good eye remained dry and yet the sensation of tears in his left eye – the prickling buzz of them forming, the hot oiliness of their passage from the duct down his face, the release, the relief, the physical manifestation of feeling so much – was overwhelming. He slipped his finger up under his patch. Dry. Nothing. Nothing there at all. He’d never once cried for himself, for the half-light that had been his world for almost half his life. But today, at this vividly beautiful yet terrible taunt of a past that had promised so much, the secret tears came.

  Agitated and unnerved, he went to the kitchenette at the back, splashing cold water on his face, through his hair. He held on to the sink and watched the water eddy away. He felt hot, despite a thick frost still clinging to parts of the window. Spring wasn’t to be taken for granted. The weather could still be harsh.

  ‘We never did.’ He dried his face, his hands. ‘We never made love.’

  Because just a few months later, after he gained two As and a B in his A levels and Oriana five As, two Bs and a monumental fail for maths, that’s when something terrible happened.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Oriana confided in Cat how lacklustre she felt, how dowdy and flat. But Cat, who loved her, said she was gorgeous and sassy and not to be so hard on herself. She had been with Cat for a fortnight, she’d been back now for longer than any vacation she’d ever taken. With some embarrassment, she realized that all her working life, she’d never been away from work so long. Life was starting to feel stultifying. There was no residual stress from Hathersage, she’d given herself a break and the slack she’d cut herself was now dragging on the floor and tripping her up. It was hard to find any further justification for not doing something. After five weeks, it felt indulgent and immoral. And yet the coagulation of anxiety and apathy resulted in a sort of agoraphobia which rendered her unable to do little more than sit on Cat and Ben’s sofa waiting for them to come home.

  What would Casey think? Don’t think about Casey. What would Malachy think? Why are you thinking of Malachy? Jed. What would Jed think? Jed would have something to say about it. He’d say, come along, foolish woman. Get your skates on and let’s go for an adventure.

  In her laptop there was the potential, if not for adventure, then for ventures new. Emails with contacts in her industry, letters of recommendation for her from her previous employers, her own portfolio of work. But the laptop remained resolutely switched off. She felt ashamed of her inertia, she felt unnerved by her status on paper: unemployed, homeless, single. She felt incapable of doing anything about it.

  Towards the end of Oriana’s second week there, Cat thought how she really was the perfect guest because she seldom left any trace of herself. Even in the nursery where, during the day, Oriana folded all evidence of herself and stacked it out of sight, while at night, there was only silence. When Cat and Ben returned from work, it was to a house cleaner and tidier than the one they’d left. There didn’t seem to be any extra washing, the towel pile didn’t go down. There was no longer any need to swill out dirty mugs or spoons because there was always a clean supply of both. Even Ben’s mercy dashes to the garage at ungodly hours for a pint of milk or tea bags or pickled onion crisps or whatever fad was consuming Cat had become redundant.

  A fortnight on, what occurred privately to Cat – with the X-ray vision of old friendship – was that none of it pointed to a particular eagerness of Oriana’s to please, but rather to her absolute need to go unnoticed. This she further facilitated by deflecting attention away from herself and onto Ben or Cat or the baby. Cat thought about it; usually one felt flattered to be asked about oneself, but she might as well be asking Oriana to strip naked and stand in the middle of the street because on the two or three occasions when Cat had asked direct questions – about Windward, about Casey, about Oriana’s decision to come back to the UK – she’d nimbly sidestepped answering and asked pertinent pregnancy questions instead. Bernard and her mother, however, were topics Oriana could converse on ad nauseam. It was surprising how much detail could actually be wrung from a life which appeared on the surface to be so bland. But Oriana could make bland very funny indeed. So, she made their bed and she made them meals and she made Cat and Ben laug
h.

  Roast chicken. Roast chicken with all the trimmings on a Friday night in mid-April. What a treat, thought Cat as she took off her coat and called through theatrically, honey! I’m home! to Oriana. But Oriana didn’t call back, put your feet up, Mumma, and I’ll bring you a cuppa. She didn’t respond at all. The lights were on, the washing machine was mid-cycle and the back door was ajar, yet there was no sign of Oriana. Cat called out again and listened to the silence. How odd. She phoned Oriana’s mobile and heard it ring up in the nursery.

  ‘Oriana?’

  Still nothing. Cat needed to sit down for a while. Her legs felt itchy and her back nagged and actually, she was simply plain tired. Anyway, if the house was empty and Oriana had left her phone here and the back door open, she’d probably darted out to pick up some ingredient urgently needed for the dish. Cat went through to the sitting room. She settled herself in a chair and felt herself being sucked into an imminent doze. She could hear Oriana’s phone ring again, first an incoming call which rang and rang, then the trilling request tone for a FaceTime call. Then there was the dull thud of something like a phone being thrown. Oriana wasn’t at the shops, she was upstairs. Using the banister as a mountaineer might a rope, Cat pulled herself up the staircase.

  ‘Oriana?’

  The nursery door was ajar and Cat could see Oriana crouched small in a corner of the room. She looked unkempt and distant, like one of those occasional pictures in the paper of a feral child brought up by wolves then thrust into a human environment. She was just sitting there, scrunched up and dishevelled.

  Gently, Cat knocked. ‘Oriana?’

  She eased the door a little wider and Oriana looked up, furiously wiping away any vestiges of emotion as she scrambled to her feet, though her face remained blotched with distress.

  ‘Oh. Hi. I must have – nodded off or something. Shit – sorry. Have you been back long? Shall I make a pot of tea?’

  Her phone was Facetiming again. It was nearer to Cat than Oriana.

  ‘It’s Ashlyn!’ Cat said. ‘Can I answer it?’

  ‘No, don’t!’

  Hoarse, desperate. It was years since Cat had heard that tone of voice from Oriana.

  ‘But it’s—’

  ‘Leave it – please.’

  Cat looked at her. ‘What’s up?’ Nothing. ‘You OK?’

  Oriana slumped down into her corner again, her fists grabbing onto her hair either side of her temples. Gingerly lowering herself next to her, Cat tried not to emit the grunting sound that was too much of a pregnancy cliché even to her own ears. Ignoring the force field of introversion radiating from Oriana, Cat placed her hand on her friend’s knee, rested her head against the wall and waited. Despite the longevity of their friendship, decades of shared secrets, she realized she hadn’t an inkling what this could be about and that made her sad. She looked around the room – Moses basket, changing table, gentle hues and soft smiley images. She wished they were sitting somewhere else – this was the baby’s space, nothing must sully it. No bad vibes. She nudged Oriana.

  When they were children, teenagers, that’s how they’d always communicated. A nudge had always led to a silent meeting of eyes. The upturn or downturn of a corner of the mouth. Nudge. A sniff or there again, a snort. Nudge. A giggle or tears. Whatever the emotion, whatever the issue, whatever the revelation, a nudge had always been both the key and the balm.

  Everything’s all right. Your friend’s here.

  Cat nudged her again, raised her eyebrow and waited. Oriana swallowed, the sound audible in her dried-out throat. The word, when it finally came, was crackled like glass shards.

  ‘Casey.’

  ‘Is he OK?’ Cat asked. He’s dead, she thought. Casey is dead. Please don’t let him be dead. And then she thought, my imagination is as out of control as my hormones.

  ‘Oh, he’s very OK,’ said Oriana and the sound of bitterness scorched her distress. ‘He’s going to be a dad.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cat thought about it. Blimey. ‘That was quick,’ she said. ‘Some kind of gunshot conception?’ That wasn’t right. Pregnancy had done strange things to her vocabulary. ‘Shotgun,’ she corrected. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘His wife,’ Oriana said flatly. ‘His wife. Who else?’

  Cat’s confusion had nothing to do with her pregnancy and everything to do with what Oriana had told her in the past. Cat had assumed waitress, bimbo, one-night stand. Not wife. That didn’t make sense. ‘His wife?’

  ‘His wife,’ Oriana confirmed in a whisper taut with despair.

  Cat stole a glance at Oriana. ‘But – he left her for you? Ages ago?’

  Oriana’s eyes said it all and her voice came in a whisper. ‘The truth is, he never left her.’

  It took a while for Cat to digest this. It didn’t taste nice. ‘But when you came to Boulder – for that weekend?’

  ‘He snuck away.’

  ‘But you told me – you said –’ Cat paused. ‘You told me.’

  ‘I know.’ The shame of it was legible in the slump of Oriana’s body, audible in the rasp of her voice.

  ‘And in San Fran – when we visited?’

  Oriana shook her head. ‘He was never mine. I just – pretended.’

  It was like desperately trying to chew down gristle that was too far back in the mouth. The truth, something unsavoury enough to have made Cat gag at the time, was now doubly unpalatable by being coated in a lie for so long.

  ‘They were never even separated,’ Oriana said slowly, out loud to an audience, for the first time. ‘I just had him when I could. For two and a half years.’

  ‘He had an affair for two and a half years?’ Cat hated him.

  ‘Don’t call it an affair,’ Oriana pleaded.

  ‘What else would you call it?’ Cat knew she shouldn’t take it out on Oriana. Two to tango and all that. But two and a half years? With his poor stupid wife at home and poor stupid Oriana in the wings. ‘But I thought –’

  ‘He said he’d leave her.’ Suddenly, in the clarity that a dreary and mundane Derbyshire evening could bring, Oriana realized how absurd it sounded. ‘He said his marriage was over and I believed him.’ She winced – any phrase she used would now sound risible, preposterous, hackneyed. But in the Californian sun, oh, how she’d sipped his words like a lovely Semillon from Napa until she was utterly drunk on them. ‘He said he’d never met anyone like me. They married young. He told me he loved her but had never been in love with her. What he felt for me, he said, was real. He said they hadn’t been physical for years. He said I made him feel alive.’

  ‘He’d been waiting his whole life to meet someone like you?’

  ‘That’s exactly what he said,’ said Oriana, deaf to Cat’s tone.

  ‘You complete me? Did he say that?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Do you remember Jerry Maguire?’

  ‘No? From school? From the States?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Cat stroked up and down Oriana’s arm. ‘Oriana. You of all people – you fell for it?’

  ‘I wanted to believe.’

  ‘What a –’ Cat paused. Then she thought, fuck it, I’m pregnant, I’m giving myself dispensation. ‘What a cunt, Oriana.’

  ‘I kidded myself and fooled all of you and made a fool out of our friendship by keeping all this in.’

  ‘Two and a half years?’ Cat almost marvelled at it. ‘And you clung on, believing?’

  Oriana shrugged. ‘I just kept hoping – because he made it all seem possible.’

  ‘What a criminal theft of your time, Oriana. You’re thirty-four!’

  ‘I loved him so.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Oriana shot Cat a look that said don’t you dare. ‘I loved him.’

  ‘You actually loved someone that behaved like that – to you, to his wife?’

  Oriana nodded. ‘We can’t help who we fall in love with.’

  ‘What complete and utter tosh,’ said Cat. The baby was cartwheeling inside and jabbing little fists in a sort of high
five for its mother. And yet Cat felt depressed that her bright and usually ballsy friend had been that woman. Her own pregnancy made her empathize with Casey’s wife. She was flabbergasted that Oriana had trusted such a man. And, perhaps worst of all, she was angry that she’d been told nothing until now.

  ‘I don’t doubt it was deliciously intense however morally bankrupt it was. Snatched moments outside of real life. All the promises he made.’

  ‘He gave me a dream.’ Oriana was on the verge of tears.

  ‘Oh bollocks, Oriana. He gave you drama, not a dream. And that becomes addictive – you weren’t going to live the dream, you were just acting out a really shit script.’ That was probably a bit harsh but a glance at Oriana’s expression revealed shame but also sudden clarity. ‘Is that why you came back? Was it hard? To finally let go?’ Cat felt mortified on Oriana’s behalf.

  ‘Actually – no.’ Oriana paused. ‘There was one night – when once again he suddenly couldn’t come to me and once again, I was all ready. That particular night I’d planned to perfection. He’d said he could stay – so there were candles and cooking and clean bed linen. I’d lived the details for days. Perfect – I’d made it so dreamy. I’d waxed, tweezered, buffed and I was so looking forward to it. And he texted and said can we reschedule. Can we reschedule, he said because you have to understand that he always had to make any text to me anodyne.’ Oriana shrugged at Cat. ‘I never ever had even a single X at the end of any of his texts. I just had to be content trying to read between the lines. Of texts that were phrased as if I was a work contact.’

  ‘So was that the final straw? The night of the petals and candles?’

  Oriana shook her head. ‘I felt so lonely that night. I was so brimful with all this unspent passion, all this flattened hope. I wanted to be in his arms like he promised, I wanted the world to spin and time to stand still like it did when we were together. Instead I was in this interminable evening feeling utterly crap in stupid new underwear. So I phoned him. It rang and rang. I phoned him again. It went through to answer machine. I felt like I was going mad, Cat – desperate for him. I didn’t want him not to see all the things I’d done that night which would have made him love me all the more.’