I meant it, too, in that moment.
‘We could,’ she said. Her eyes lit up. And then she laughed, to cover. ‘You said you wanted a new car. I thought we were saving up. You can’t buy a soft top with home-grown veg.’
‘I could sell a picture.’
She folded the paper and stood up to leave. ‘But for now, until we make our millions, why don’t you go alone? It will probably do you good.’
We’ve only been married a couple of months. She shouldn’t want to let me out of her sight. I could feel her, treading around me – watchful of my moods. What’s happened? Is it Angus who’s made her change?
I thought I’d test her. ‘Bunk off for a few days,’ I said, ‘tell them you’re sick.’
She was halfway out the door, but again she just smiled. She said something about being late home – she had a meeting after school and she’d go straight from there to visit her mother.
The dog yelped. ‘Sorry, Howard,’ I said. ‘Did I tread on your paw?’
Back she came, checking he was OK. I pretended to be contrite – got down on my knees and gave him a good tummy rub. When I stood up, she wrapped her slender arms around my neck. ‘You know I adore you,’ she said.
My fingers were tight on the waistband of her jeans. ‘I adore you too,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t live without you.’
I buried my face in her hair, pushed the dog away with my knee. My fingers were digging in so tightly I could feel the warmth of her flesh beneath my knuckles, her blood pulse. She would have to tug hard to free herself. ‘I couldn’t live without you, either.’
I’ve got as far as the studio. White noise. Bolted door. Tubes of paint lined up in the right order, lids tight. The square of kitchen paper they rest on kept wrinkling, but I changed it for a drier piece and it’s straight now. Flat.
One of the electrical sockets isn’t parallel to the skirting – an inch out. Shoddy. I’m trying not to look, but I can’t stop myself.
The Slovakian knitter heard me come in. Her eyes met mine and she looked surprised. I don’t normally show emotion.
I shouldn’t have answered the phone. I was angry with Lizzie, scratchy-eyed with exhaustion. My guard was down. Is it insurmountable? Does it ruin everything? Just when it was all going so well. I WAS FUCKING HAPPY.
No. Nothing is insurmountable. It’s a question of thinking it through, finding a plan, a strategy.
Charlotte has had a scan. ‘You can see its little hands and feet,’ she said. ‘Are you there? Zach, are you still there? I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Is it a shock? I’m sorry. A chance in a million. I didn’t even realise. Will you come and see me? I’ve taken the week off work. I know you need your space, but if you want to be part of the baby’s life . . .’
Part of the baby’s life? Who is she fucking kidding?
I asked if she used my sperm the moment I could get a word in and she said, ‘It must have been when we made love that last time.’
Made love: fuck off.
I told her she had to get rid of it, and she started crying. ‘It’s too late for that. We need to talk. When can you be here?’ She thinks I’ve got a job working for an arts collective in Cardiff (‘too good an opportunity to turn down’). I was going to wait for the calls to dry up and then write to her. That would have been the end of it. Job done. I hadn’t banked on this.
‘Perhaps at the weekend,’ I said. ‘Rest up.’
Improvisation, I’m good at that. Adapting to circumstances. I just need to use my brain.
Lizzie will be back late tonight. She is visiting her mother after work and then ‘nipping in’ to bathe Peggy’s kids. The fact that the Slovakian knitter noticed me come in is good after all. At 1 p.m. she’ll join the others in the kitchen for their communal Pot Noodle. I’ll leave then. The window in the corridor is rotting. I can be there and back without anyone noticing that I’ve even downed tools.
It was so much easier than I thought it would be. I try not to feel depressed about that.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve seen sense now.
A no-scalpel vasectomy is carried out under local anaesthetic. The doctor feels each vas deferens beneath the skin of your scrotum and holds them in place using a small clamp. A special instrument is then used to make a tiny puncture hole in the skin of the scrotum. A small pair of forceps is used to open up the hole, allowing the surgeon to tie the tubes without the need to cut the skin with a scalpel.
I read about it first on the NHS website. Little bleeding and no stitches. Less painful and less likely to lead to complications than a conventional vasectomy.
Whether Dr Harris performed the operation exactly as they said, I don’t know. I had my eyes closed throughout the entire procedure.
I am actually quite squeamish.
Chapter Eleven
Lizzie
Onnie descends the stairs with heavy thumps – more noise than you’d expect a slim person to make. Zach, who was a bulky man, stepped so softly around the house I often wouldn’t know he was there. He would creep up on me when I was texting and if I jumped, he would take it as a sign of guilt. I had to show him – ‘Look, it’s to Peggy, she’s asking if I can babysit.’ It was all part of the same insecurity. His quietness was a skill, he told me, that he learned growing up. You’re less likely to get hit that way.
Onnie’s footsteps are belligerent. She is making a point.
‘There you are,’ I say with determined cheerfulness when she arrives in the kitchen, fully dressed. ‘You’ve washed your hair! You should have called me. There’s a trick to the shower attachment. You wouldn’t have been able to rinse it.’
‘I did rinse it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. You get out of the bath and switch on the tap in the basin to get the pump working through the shower.’
‘Oh.’ I gaze at her, surprised. ‘That was clever of you.’
She shrugs, pulling her wet hair back into a loop at her neck.
‘Did you just guess? Or is yours like that at home?’
‘I’m not stupid. OK?’
‘It’s just a peculiar plumbing quirk. I wouldn’t have thought . . . You’d expect you’d have to be shown first.’
She raises her eyebrows very slightly and I have to force myself not to interrogate her further. I turn back to the stove. ‘I’ve made some food. A delicious bowl of pasta. Well, I don’t know if it’s delicious.’ I’m talking too much to cover my disquiet. ‘But that’s what my mother always used to say. Pasta was always “a delicious bowl”, just as a walk was always a lovely long walk and a bath was always a nice hot bath. You could never have a horrible warm bath, even if you were in a hurry.’
‘Whatever,’ she says. Her wrists are covered by her jumper. She gazes down at the floor. ‘My mother’s coming to get me. I’m supposed to be taking antidepressants. I left them at home.’
I read an article recently about the death of rebellion in young people – how teenagers used to rise up against the status quo (politics, parents), but now that anger has turned inward. It explains the surge in psychological problems: depression, self-harming, suicide. I don’t want to think about the scars.
‘Maybe food will do you good.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, do your best.’
I plonk the bowls down on the table. It’s spaghetti carbonara – a new addition to my limited cooking repertoire. Zach would never have countenanced cream mixed with bacon.
We both pick at it. After a moment, I say, ‘Look, I’m sorry if I upset you earlier. It’s lovely of you to have cleaned the kitchen. I’m sorry if I was a bit aggressive. But those comments you made about Zach – they put the wind up me. When you said you’d seen him, I thought you meant—’ I laugh to indicate my own foolishness, but I watch her carefully nonetheless ‘—today!’
She glances up at me. ‘You mean like a ghost?’
‘Maybe.’ A sinking feeling. She hasn’t seen him. She didn’t
falter. It didn’t even occur to her that I meant it literally.
She bites her lip. ‘Everyone thinks I’m mad. It’s why I have to see doctors all the time.’
‘I’m sure they don’t.’
She makes a face like who cares anyway?
‘Everyone thinks I’m mad too,’ I say. ‘It happens to all the best people.’
She studies me for a moment. I can see her thinking hard. ‘I shouldn’t have said “slut”,’ she says eventually. ‘It might not have been what Zach said anyway. He might have said “sluttish”.’
I half smile. ‘That’s a bit better.’
She looks away, twirling spaghetti around her fork. She doesn’t smile.
‘I don’t want to labour the point,’ I say. ‘Forgive me for being an annoying old bat, but could you just explain when Zach asked you to clean up the kitchen?’
‘He didn’t.’
‘But you said he did.’
Her eyes have a glazed, hooded look. ‘It was ages ago.’
‘Here or at Gulls?’
She looks at me and then quickly away. ‘Gulls, probably.’
‘OK,’ I sigh. It begins to make sense. He tutored her, probably she came to the bungalow, maybe he was cross with me – that time I missed my train, perhaps – and ranted to her about how untidy I was. Quite a thing to say to a kid who would have been – what, sixteen? – but he wasn’t always in control of his temper.
‘Did you spend much time with him?’ I ask. ‘Those tutoring sessions, I mean. How many of them were there?’
She shrugs. ‘Three times. Four? Still didn’t get an A.’
‘Was he helpful?’
‘He said I had an eye and that I should use it.’
I nod. ‘Well, he was a hard judge, so I hope you took that as a compliment.’
‘I did.’ She moves her uneaten bowl of pasta to one side and looks up. Our eyes meet and something passes between us. I see the emotion she’s holding back and feel a small connection, a stirring of fellow feeling. She cared about Zach’s opinion. She saw the greatness in him. I think that’s all it is. I just need to be sure of a few things first.
‘Did he tutor you at Sand Martin or at Gulls?’
She answers without pausing. ‘At Gulls.’
‘It’s just . . . when I came for a drink last Sunday, I saw some Hunter wellies on the rack that looked just like Zach’s. I’m trying to think how his might have got there.’
A faint flush blooms at the top of her cheeks. She pouts, eyes widened, an almost comic face of incomprehension. ‘Why do you think they were his?’
‘One of them was mended at the top. I did it myself. You don’t know anything about them?’
‘No.’
‘And when I saw you that morning, hanging around outside Gulls, you were just out for a walk?’
‘Yup.’
‘And turning up here today . . . ?’
‘I just wanted somewhere to stay.’
‘OK.’
I push my own bowl away, lean my elbows on the table and rest my face in my hands. It’s all riddles with silly answers. I was right. She is a distraction. It’s all an irrelevance. ‘So many questions,’ I say lightly. ‘So little time.’
She laughs.
‘I don’t suppose you know anyone down in Cornwall called Xenia, do you?’ I add idly.
‘Xenia?’
‘Another little mystery I’m trying to clear up. At the roadside, where Zach had his accident, someone had left flowers. Lilies. The note said Xenia.’
Onnie stares at me for a moment and then quickly stands up and runs herself a glass of water at the sink. She drinks it down and when she turns, she says, in so polite a tone I can only imagine she’s been practising in her head: ‘So, would it be an inconvenience if I came to stay, as arranged, next week?’
I start clearing the plates, not looking at her. ‘Oh, Onnie. I don’t think it’s a good idea. The timing is bad for me. Sorry, but I’m going to have to say no.’
‘I thought you said I could.’
‘I don’t think I did.’
She moves out of the way for me so that I can reach the sink. I sense something heavy in her body, reluctant. She pushes away into the room, almost spins back to her chair. ‘What if I told you that I knew who Xenia was?’ She is breathless, I realise.
‘Xenia? You know Xenia?’
‘I might do.’
I sit down, too. ‘Might?’
‘Yeah. No. I do. I just haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Is she one of your friends?’
‘Not really. I wish I hadn’t said anything now.’
‘For God’s sake, Onnie. Please.’
I’ve raised my voice. She stands up. ‘I’ll need to check with her first.’
‘Can you at least tell me who she is?’
The doorbell rings. I stare at Onnie but she looks away. The bell goes again.
Victoria Murphy is standing on the front step in a black jacket and black jeans, a large black leather handbag in the crook of her elbow. ‘I don’t know what possessed her,’ she says. Her tone makes it sound as if it’s my fault.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I should never have . . .’ What? I can’t think what I should never have done. ‘Sorry,’ I say again.
‘Is she inside?’ she asks wearily. She peers over my shoulder into the house. Her hair is in a ponytail and she puts both hands back to tighten it. A muscle in her cheek is clenching and unclenching. She is tense, like a tennis player about to serve. Her shoes – trainers with high built-in wedges – make her look as if she is on tiptoe, on the edge of flight.
A dustbin lid flops past on the pavement. Rain spatters the step.
‘Would you like to come in?’
‘No, thank you,’ she says. ‘If I could just have my daughter.’
I go back into the kitchen where Onnie is putting on her leather jacket. ‘Thanks for supper,’ she says.
‘You didn’t eat anything.’
‘I don’t really like egg.’
‘Nor did Zach. Also it was dry, wasn’t it? Sorry about that.’
She looks up from her zip. ‘You say sorry a lot.’
‘Yes. Zach used to tell me off for doing that.’
‘He used to have a go at me for saying “like”. He said I used it for punctuation and that it made me sound dim.’
Our eyes meet again. ‘He could be harsh,’ I say.
‘He thought people’s words were a reflection of their minds.’
‘It’s not always the case.’
‘Are you coming?’ Victoria’s voice sounds shrill.
‘Onnie,’ I say. ‘I need to know who Xenia is. Please tell me.’
‘I’ll ring you.’
I scribble my mobile number on a piece of newspaper and she tucks it in the back pocket of her jeans.
‘What the fuck?’ Victoria suddenly shouts.
We both leave the room. The front door is open, rain splashing into the hall. Victoria is standing halfway down the garden path.
A red Mini with black arrows down its bonnet is revving in the street, horn blaring. Victoria makes an irritated upward swipe with one arm. ‘Get a fucking life.’ The man in the Mini rolls down his window and begins to yell, his words swept up in the wind and rain. Victoria has left her 4 x 4 blocking the road.
She doesn’t even register my presence. ‘Onnie, hurry up,’ she shouts and turns on her heel.
It’s too late to visit my mother. Now I’m alone, I am both bored and agitated. The street is full of stray howls and rattles, the sense of inanimate objects coming alive, on the move. In the garden, shrubs thrash.
I tell myself to relax, that nothing I do tonight will make any difference.
I go upstairs to the study to fold up the sofa bed which I pulled out for Peggy’s children, but I stand in the doorway when I get there. It’s already put away. The sofa sits squat and neat, its matching cushions in an orderly line, the sheets and blankets in a tidy pile.
The bookshelves along the main wall look different, too. I take a step into the room. I’ve been disorganised in here this year. I’ve just been shoving books back wherever I want, a small relaxing of Zach’s ordered code. But the spines have been levelled. When I look closely, I see they have been returned to alphabetical order.
I sit down abruptly on the chair. The desk has been cleared, too – the pens are laid, parallel to each other, down one side, the pieces of paper piled. And in the middle of the surface rests Zach’s laptop.
Is this Onnie’s work, or was I right? Has he been here? Did she see him? Or hear him? Something alerted her – I know it did.
Why hasn’t he taken the laptop if he was here? Did he plug it in to remind me? What does he want me to find on it? I yank it open. The demand for the password blinks. What do you want from me? I write.
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
I slam the laptop shut, shove it away from me.
Under the desk is a box of photographs. Zach didn’t like being photographed. It made him self-conscious, he said, too many memories of his father knocking him about if he didn’t smile. But I caught him a handful of times: on a headland in Cornwall, hair blowing around his face, laughing, reaching for the camera. Another on the common, kneeling down, his arms tight around the dog’s neck. My favourite, though, was taken on our wedding day, on the steps of Wandsworth Town Hall. Zach is in that suit he wore the first time we met. He is trying to bend down to rest his head on my shoulder. I am laughing, almost tipped backwards under the weight of him, and he is grinning – his grin so broad and honest, a pure sort of happiness seems to shine from his eyes. It was the happiest day of his life, he told me.
I kneel down and begin searching. If I can find it, it will be proof of something – that he loved me, that we were happy, that the torture he is putting me through has a reason.
I tip the contents of the box on to the floor, and sift through them, but the photograph has gone.
Zach
November 2010
Wrong to relax. People like me can’t relax. We may roam outside the boundaries that restrict the behaviour of other people, but we’re never free. Occasionally, the people inside reach out and grab at us, squash our faces against the wire.
Remember Me This Way Page 16
