Keep You Close

by Lucie Whitehouse

  It took Jacqueline a second to work out what she was talking about but then a huge smile spread across her face. Really, a beam was the word: it was all light and shine and warmth. With a jangle of bracelets and a flurry of red silk shirt – Rowan thought of a Chinese dragon – she had given her a sudden hard hug. ‘Brilliant, Ro! Fantastic! God, I’m so happy for you. Not that I ever had any doubt – I’d have gone round there to protest myself if you hadn’t got an offer.’ Another squeeze then she’d stepped away and yelled up the stairs. ‘Marianne!

  ‘What did your dad say?’ she said, coming back. ‘He must be so thrilled.’

  ‘He’s in South America. He’ll probably ring when he sees the missed calls.’

  ‘He doesn’t know?’

  ‘I couldn’t get through.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause. It always bothered Jacqueline, the amount of time Rowan’s father spent away, particularly if he was uncontactable. ‘Well, Seb’s in London tonight, it’s just Mazz and I, so why don’t we go out, the three of us? To celebrate. You two can go on afterwards,’ she nodded to Marianne, who’d just reached the foot of the stairs, ‘but let me buy you supper first.’

  She’d got on the phone straight away and booked a table here, at Gee’s. Another opening door, this one literal. For years, especially since she’d been spending so much time in Park Town, Rowan had wanted to come to this restaurant in the beautiful old glasshouse on Banbury Road. It looked Parisian – the awnings and decorative ironwork; the round-topped wrought-iron archway at the pavement like an entrance to the Métro – but at the same time she imagined it as the greenhouse or orangery of a great English estate, the sort to which Victorians might have brought back exotic plants from the Grand Tour, citrus fruits and succulents. Above a low base-wall, everything was white-painted wood and glass, all light and air. If she walked by at night, when it twinkled with candlelight, it seemed like a carousel, the diners inside bright and happy, turning to silent music.

  Adam, two years older, had been away at university then but tonight it was he who held the door open for her. He’d called at lunchtime to say that the reservation was made for eight o’clock but why didn’t they have a drink first? He was going to stay at the house and drive back to Cambridge in the morning. She’d been in her room when she’d heard his key in the door and then ‘Hello’ called up the stairs. As she’d come down, fastening the back of her earring, there had been an odd moment. He’d turned from the basket of Marianne’s post on the hall table and for a second or two he’d watched her. She grinned and said hello rather too loudly but it hadn’t dispersed the sudden strange tension.

  It persisted now, as they handed their coats to the man at the door and took the two free stools at the little bar in the back room, Adam’s exaggerated courtesy a sign, she thought, that he was as self-conscious as she was, as careful not to bump arms or knees. They ordered gin and tonic and watched the barman make them as if the process were performance art. Adam tipped the rim of his glass gently against hers. ‘Cheers,’ he said, ‘and thank you again.’

  She shook her head. ‘You really don’t have to.’ She nodded at a table tucked into the corner. ‘Your mother brought us here – Marianne and me – the night I got into the university. We sat there and had a glass of champagne before dinner. She was the first person I told – my dad was away – and she insisted on taking us out to celebrate.’

  He smiled. ‘Sounds like Mum.’

  ‘It meant a lot to me, her support.’

  ‘She was a big fan of yours. Still is.’

  Rowan frowned, embarrassed. ‘She felt sorry for me then, I should think.’

  ‘The opposite. I think she was very impressed by you, how self-sufficient you were. And driven. You probably reminded her of herself at that age.’

  ‘No, Marianne was the driven one. And look at me now. Jacqueline had published two books by my age – Mirror, Mirror and Bed, No Breakfast.’

  Adam shrugged, smiling again. ‘You’re the same age as Mazz, thirty-two? I think you’ve got a bit of time.’

  ‘I hope so.’ She pulled a face.

  He took another sip and the ice rattled as he put the glass down. Behind them, the restaurant was filling up, the hubbub of voices and silverware becoming a hum under the giant glass cloche. Rather than easing the tension, it seemed only to emphasise the silence whenever there was a break in their conversation. ‘Tell me about California,’ she said. ‘What were you doing out there?’

  He described living in Berkeley, his teaching work and the research he’d done for his book while he’d been in the US. ‘I’m looking at how religious extremists – terrorists – structure their networks, fund themselves. What they’ve learned from organised crime. Gangs and cartels.’

  ‘Cartels? Really?’

  He’d spent weeks in Colombia and Miami, he said, and she remembered how he’d taught himself Spanish in Sixth Form, the battered yellow dictionary that went everywhere in his back pocket. ‘But I wasn’t properly fluent until much later,’ he said. ‘I travelled in South America for a year after my doctorate; that’s when it really clicked.’

  She pictured him in Medellín and the maximum-security prisons where he’d visited the gangsters. Someone who didn’t know him would surely predict disaster, this middle-class, hyper-educated Englishman amongst dangerous criminals, but he’d managed to persuade three members of a cartel to talk to him, he said. She wasn’t surprised: he shared Jacqueline’s same air of non-judgemental interest, integrity.

  As they got down from the stools to go through to their table, they bumped elbows and Adam sprang away as if he’d been burned. They apologised at the same time.

  After they’d ordered, he went to the bathroom and she watched him cross the restaurant. His teenage lankiness had become elegance; there was grace in his movements, the way he stood aside for a waitress, dipped his head to avoid the branches of the potted olive tree. The place had been refurbished, the terracotta cushions on the banquettes, pale wooden tables and Moroccan tiles chosen to echo the Mediterranean and North African menu. When she’d come with Jacqueline and Marianne, the atmosphere had been formal, crisp white tablecloths, pre-laid glasses for water and red and white wines, roast lamb and beef in traditional French sauces. To save going home again, she’d borrowed one of Marianne’s dresses that night, a pale green silk shift so short that Marianne had to wear it with leggings though on Rowan it had reached a semi-decent mid-thigh. They’d sat next to each other, facing Jacqueline across the table. She’d ordered a bottle of Chablis to go with the salmon they all had to start, the idea that they were seventeen and not legally allowed to drink either not crossing her mind or dismissed without mention as irrelevant.

  Tonight they had red wine. Rowan knew she was drinking quickly but her hand seemed to be reaching for the glass of its own accord. She wanted to be slightly drunk, to let the edges blur for a few hours and numb the constant throb of anxiety, but she knew she had to stay in control, even if Adam’s glass was emptying just as fast. They talked about her work, and moved on from Catholic safe houses to Julian Assange, Guantanamo. Marianne hovered at their shoulders, the unseen third person at the table, mentioned but not discussed until Adam, soliciting Rowan’s say-so with his eyebrows, ordered a second bottle.

  He was quiet while the waiter went through the whole production, showing the label, cutting the foil, twisting in the corkscrew, but when their glasses were full again and the man retreated, Adam swallowed hard and said savagely, ‘I hate the new pictures.’

  Taken aback by the sudden change of direction, Rowan hesitated to speak.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I know they’re good but it doesn’t matter. I just can’t bear to look at them.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘The mental pain – the anguish. To see it like that, all beautifully painted – I mean, we knew, we had an idea anyway, but to see it from her perspective, to see what it felt like, being inside it …’

  Through t
he alcoholic haze, Rowan struggled to think. Usually her thoughts were crisp, like decisive steps on a hardwood floor, but someone seemed to have put down carpet between her temples. ‘At the time, do you mean?’ she said. ‘When it all happened – your dad?’

  He looked at her and she was momentarily transfixed. Adam’s irises were green, an aqueous colour pale enough to be mistaken for blue in bright light but rimmed with a darker grey-green. They were Marianne’s eyes, and for a dizzying couple of seconds, Rowan felt as if she’d slipped down a wormhole and here she was, her seventeen-year-old self again, looking at the best friend she would ever have. But it was more than that: they were her own eyes, too, because although their colouring had been so different, Marianne’s hair so dark, hers tawny, their eyes, bar the flecks of yellow that circled Rowan’s pupils, had been very similar. ‘Like sisters’ eyes,’ Jacqueline said once.

  ‘Do you think you could ever completely get over it?’ Adam said, pulling her back. ‘When you’ve been so bad?’ He broke eye contact and looked down. Pressing up a small piece of bread crust, he turned it between his fingertips. ‘It has to stay with you, doesn’t it, in some form? Memories – a shadow? You couldn’t forget, not completely. I don’t know – she wouldn’t ever talk to me about it. We were open with each other about so much else, relationships, money, everything, but never that. I think she was ashamed of it, even with me.’

  ‘Ashamed?’

  He glanced up again then dropped his voice. ‘You know she had a breakdown – well, everyone does now. But it was more serious than anyone really knows. She was hospitalised.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘At the Warneford. Not that she could ever say the name – if she had to mention it at all, it was “the nut house” or the “loony bin”, even with the doctors. They thought she was a danger to herself.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘It pains me – it actually physically hurts – to think that she’s gone but those pictures are still here. Like a hideous Cheshire Cat smile. I wanted to cancel the New York show – I still do – but Mum won’t have it. She said Marianne painted them and she wanted them shown. I don’t want people to think of her like that – I don’t want them to associate her with those feelings. That wasn’t her – that wasn’t my sister.’

  ‘I don’t think people will see it like that, Ad. Honestly. It’s embarrassing to admit but even I didn’t, not straight away.’

  ‘Really?’

  She shook her head, remembering how humiliated Cory had made her feel. Did Adam know about him, she thought suddenly, his portrait? She battled the haze in her frontal lobe: had Cory said he’d told Jacqueline about it? She couldn’t remember. If Adam didn’t know, she should tell him, she had to, but the conviction was superseded by the equally rapid recognition that this wasn’t the time. She needed to be sober, clear-headed.

  Adam took a swig of wine. ‘What a waste,’ he said. ‘What a fucking waste. My lovely, lovely sister.’

  Rowan was ambushed by a memory so vivid she saw the exact position of her hands on the damask cloth. The hum of the restaurant around them, the carousel-whirl of candlelight and jazz, glinting silverware, the cascading laughter of a woman on the other side of the room. Jacqueline’s armful of bangles had made a musical sound as she’d fallen back against the banquette and looked at them. ‘Lovely, lovely girls,’ she’d said, shaking her head a little. ‘I’m so bloody proud of you both.’

  Without warning, Rowan’s eyes filled with tears. Mortified, she fumbled for the napkin on her lap only to discover it had fallen to the floor. As she moved to reach for it, however, Adam leaned across, took her hand and squeezed it gently. She expected him to let go, take his own hand back, but he left it where it was, on top of hers on the table. She looked at him, face flushing, and saw that he was crying, too. ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ he said.

  They were almost the last to leave the restaurant and Rowan wondered if Adam had wanted to put it off, too, the moment of standing up and walking outside, forgoing the protection of the glasshouse and its circle of light. As she put on her coat and scarf, she had the idea that she was putting back on the distance between them.

  Outside, the Banbury Road had gone quiet enough that they heard the whirr of an approaching bicycle for some seconds before it overtook them, and when the lights at the crossing turned red – so bright to Rowan in her wine bedazzlement – there were no cars to stop. Frost held the garden of the hotel on the corner in icy paralysis. Apart from an exclamation at the cold as they came outside and a brief remark about how much he’d always liked the violin-maker’s shop two doors down, where the curvaceous wooden shapes of instruments-to-be hung pale and unvarnished in the window, Adam said nothing. They walked eighteen inches apart. She’d been right about the distance being reinstated, Rowan thought: the hand-holding at the restaurant had been about comfort, that was all. But of course: how could it be anything else? And the reason for the dinner had been made plain from the outset, he’d even told her explicitly: a thank you from us both, Mum and me.

  As they passed the Maison Française, however, he reached for her hand again. She remembered the night of the party, the feel of his fingers on hers as they picked their way round the people on the stairs, and she told herself to stop. Even if he was attracted to her – and there was no evidence: he hadn’t flirted or asked if she was seeing anyone – it wasn’t fair. He was grieving, vulnerable. And drunk.

  Still hand in hand, they reached the corner of Fyfield Road and Adam stopped in a pool of streetlight. He turned to look at her. ‘Okay?’ he asked. Rowan hesitated. What was the question? Was she okay now, not still upset? Or is this okay, whatever ‘this’ was? He watched her, waiting for her answer.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He nodded, Good, then moved on, pulling her with him beyond the spot of amber light. No need to look before crossing the road here, nothing stirred, and their footsteps were the only thing that broke the silence as they crunched across the drive. At the top of the steps, Adam let go of her hand to find the keys in his pocket and while he unlocked the door, she watched a ragged moth dance a deadly pas de deux with the carriage lamp. The bottom of the shade, she noticed for the first time, was filled with the bodies of earlier suitors.

  He motioned for her to go in. As she reached for the switch on the inside wall, however, he stopped her hand. She turned, surprised, and the door shut quietly behind them. The faint glow of the lamp through the glass panels cast muted colours on one side of his face; the other side, except for the shine of his eye and teeth, was lost in the darkness.

  He moved closer and along with the wine on his breath, she caught the scent of subtle aftershave, fresh and green, like newly cut wood or the floor of a pine forest. He found her hand again, intertwined his fingers with hers and lifted them into the faint light.

  Rowan felt a surge in her chest, an expansion, and – had he seen it on her face? – Adam stepped forward and kissed her. At the touch of his lips, a shiver went through her, almost a shudder, and he pulled away, startled. ‘God, I’m sorry. I—’

  ‘No, don’t be,’ she said. ‘I mean, nothing’s wrong. The opposite – it’s tension. I …’

  He wrapped his arms around her, her cheek against his chest. She could feel the pulse at the base of his throat. He pressed his lips against the top of her head and, when she looked up at him, he kissed her again. The sensation travelled over her skin, ripples spreading from a stone thrown into water. Fleetingly she thought of the other time, years ago, up in the room that no longer existed, the rush of desire that had taken her by surprise. She hadn’t known then if he’d felt it, too – there’d hardly been a chance before Marianne and Turk came crashing in – but there was no doubt now. The kiss escalated in seconds, a dissolution of boundaries.

  He pushed her coat off her shoulders and it fell to the ground behind her with a soft thud. Seconds later, his fell, too, and he pulled her upstairs. ‘Which room are you in?’ he said on the landing, his hands
in her hair. Strange, she thought dimly, leading him down the dark corridor, to be taking him to her room here. She started to say so but he shook his head, Shhh, and backed her on to the bed. Kneeling at her feet, he unzipped her boot, cupped her heel with his hand then pulled the boot off.

  Encircled by his arm, Rowan had an unpleasant memory of being in the same position with Theo only ten days earlier – not even that. But this wasn’t just a drunken thing, she told herself: she liked Adam, she always had.

  Despite the coldness of the room, there was a light film of sweat on his skin. Turning on to her side, she propped herself on her elbow. She’d seen him in shorts and swimming trunks many times in the garden but his body had changed since then, become stronger and more defined. He’d mentioned over dinner that he’d rowed in California as a way to meet people outside the university, and now he was back at Cambridge, he’d rejoined his old coxless four. He was fit, flat-stomached, his arms and shoulders padded with muscle. The hair on his chest had thickened to become a soft triangle that spanned his pectorals and tapered to a point at his sternum.

  She expected a smile but when he turned to look at her, his face was solemn. ‘It’s bad timing,’ he said.

  Rowan’s stomach plunged. He was seeing someone. ‘Are you … going back overseas?’

  ‘No. I just mean, that this is happening now, that we’ll always associate it with Marianne dying.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘But it is what it is. And I’m very glad about it.’ He pushed himself up and kissed her. ‘And thirsty. I’ll get some water – don’t move.’ He pulled back the sheets and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His back was tanned above a stark white line where his shorts must have begun and she imagined him running along a white American beach in dazzling sunshine. He showed no signs of self-consciousness as he walked naked to the door.

  Rowan lay back against the pillow. She’d slept with Adam – she turned the idea over, feeling the strangeness of it. After the party, she’d thought about him, hoped, for months, but though there had been several gigs and other drunken parties that summer, they hadn’t ever got together again. At Christmas, he’d told Mazz he was in love with a girl called Saira at Cambridge and she’d had to accept that that was it. But now, years later … what did he think this was?