I was in the bath when I heard Lizzie talking on the phone. Her voice had an eager lilt to it. Angus, I thought, sickened. That cunting NQT. But no – a different problem altogether. Not her mobile. Mine. I’d left it on the kitchen table and she’d picked it up. I’ve been letting her get away with too much.
It was Pete, she told me. He and Nell were about to get a train from Victoria – they’d been up for a party the night before – and, knowing I was in London, were ringing me ‘on the off chance’. Lizzie had invited them over. She’d given them the address.
‘Here?’
‘For lunch,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. It was so sad they couldn’t make our wedding. I can’t wait to meet them. I said I’d pick them up.’
She was wearing the designer jeans and a slim-fitting Breton T-shirt I bought her, from the new boutique on Northcote Road. She’s only had them a few weeks but the jeans were stained at the knees and the top already had holes in it – a rash, a cluster of pinpricks. She followed the direction of my gaze. ‘I know,’ she said, glancing down. ‘I don’t know how it happened. Aren’t I stupid?’
‘Yes,’ I said, watching her face. ‘Do you know how much time I took choosing that top, working out what would suit you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Do you know how expensive it was?’
But she didn’t crawl away, as I thought. She looked up at me with a defiant jut to her chin. ‘Of course I know how expensive it was,’ she said. ‘I paid for it. If you don’t want Pete and Nell coming here to the house, that’s fine. I understand. We can go to the Italian instead. But just say it. Don’t pick a fight about something else.’
Wrong-footed, I said: ‘I don’t like my phone being answered. I need—’
‘It’s fine,’ she said firmly. ‘I understand. Now pull yourself together and ring them back.’
Weird thing is, as soon we were in the restaurant, I stopped worrying. I seem to be able to get out of any situation if I need to. People have so much less curiosity than you expect. Half the time they can’t even be bothered to dredge their own memories. Lizzie cottoned on pretty quickly that I hadn’t actually invited them to the wedding. ‘Hitched already?’ Pete said, slapping me on the back. ‘You’re a dark horse, mate!’ But she gave me a small wink as if it didn’t matter.
I could see Nell, a little Roedean snob beneath the hip clothes and the dropped ‘h’s, looking her up and down. But Lizzie won her over. She can be funny, that’s the thing you don’t realise when you first meet her. She told good stories about training as a librarian – the employee who had a nervous breakdown and stuffed all the reservation slips down the loo; the secret place in the bowels of one of Wandsworth’s libraries where you can only borrow books by ‘special permission’. She talked about her mother, and how improved her health is since she’s been receiving proper care at the Beeches. ‘I have Zach to thank for that,’ she said, smiling at me. Ironic really – it was never her mother’s well-being I was concerned about – but I’m glad it has made her happy.
Nell couldn’t keep her curiosity in any longer and said: ‘When did you meet?’
‘A year—’ Lizzie began to say, but I interrupted: ‘We were just friends at first, weren’t we? It was a long time unravelling.’
Lizzie smiled – she thought I was being doubly gallant, referring to her early modesty and protecting her from the Internet stigma.
Nell said, ‘But, Zach, when did you actually leave Brighton?’
‘You disappeared, mate!’ Pete added.
I apologised and took Lizzie’s hand. I told them I’d left in May, which was a lie. It was actually the end of June, but Lizzie thought I had been at Gulls and it covered me for . . . well, whatever else was coming. I said I’d had things on my mind, that I’d . . . I gave them a loaded look, hoping they’d realise not to mention Charlotte.
Nell nodded as if she were relieved, as if I’d cleared something up.
She turned to Lizzie and asked, with a directness some women seem to feel they can deploy on matters of other people’s fertility, if we were thinking of starting a family. Interesting moment: Lizzie went bright red. She’s desperate now. I’ve noticed she’s buying special ovulation kits. Nell ploughed on, regardless. ‘I’m hoping I might be pregnant myself. We timed it right and I’ve been feeling a low ache, not really period pain, but . . . anyway, I haven’t done a test yet.’
Pete caught my eye and we exchanged a blokeish look.
They were trying to behave normally. Beneath the surface I began to sense snakes seething – a shake to Pete’s hands, a feverish light in Nell’s eyes. They hadn’t simply tracked down their old mucker Zach Hopkins to find out what he was up to. They had a purpose. They had a mission.
I found out the moment Lizzie went to the loo (‘toilet’, she called it; I watched them to see how they reacted; Nell gave a patronising smile).
‘We’re so sorry,’ Nell said. ‘I didn’t know if you had heard. We wanted to tell you ourselves. I didn’t want to say in front of your lovely new wife – she’s sweet by the way – but . . .’
I just kept repeating ‘Dead? Charlotte. Dead?’ It seemed better to pretend I didn’t know. In fact, Jim had already rung. He was keyed up about the drugs – the diazepam and the Xanax – worried they might be traced to him. Had I left any in the flat?
‘I’m sorry, mate.’ Pete was looking increasingly uncomfortable.
‘How? Was it suicide? I know she was unstable.’ (I’d asked Jim the same question. ‘Headfuck, that’s what it was,’ he said.)
‘A terrible accident,’ Nell replied, enjoying every minute. ‘She slipped down those stairs of hers. You know how steep they were. And seagrass carpet is so slippery – I told her, when you were redecorating last year, it’s unsafe for stairs. She’d been drinking. The police say she had taken some pills. It wasn’t suicide. No note. But they found a lot of balled-up tissues in her flat, as if she’d had a bad cold . . . or been crying.’
I kept saying, ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. When?’
‘Last month, I think,’ Nell said. ‘I wanted to ring, but we thought it would be better to tell you in person.’ Of course she did: the delicious pleasure of passing on bad news.
‘Thank you.’
Interesting that they didn’t mention her pregnancy. Did they not know?
‘When did you last see her?’ I added.
‘Not for a while.’ Nell shook her head. ‘I feel bad. She was so upset when you left, and I went out for drinks with her a couple of times after that, but there was only so much I could say and . . .’
You see? No one cares. You’re on your own in this life. Nell didn’t stand by Charlotte when she needed her. She became a drain and she dropped her like a used tissue.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said again.
‘Can’t believe what?’
Lizzie had come back from the loo without us noticing.
I pulled her on to my knee. ‘I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen these guys. Mustn’t let it happen again.’ She put her arms around my neck and rested her chin on the top of my head. Quietly, into my ear, she said: ‘What do you think? Are we brave enough to invite them back to our hovel for coffee?’
‘I doubt they’ve got time,’ I said loudly.
‘Oh—’ Lizzie had remembered something. ‘Our new walls!’ She turned back to the table. ‘Borrowed Light. We’ve painted the downstairs this gorgeous cool grey and apparently we have you to thank for it. Zach said it was the colour of your flat in Edinburgh.’
They creep up, these moments, tie your ankles to a chair, set your pulse racing. How could I have let that detail slip out?
Pete frowned. ‘Borrowed Light. That’s right. We did. Farrow & Ball. Me and my expensive art-student tastes.’ He thought. ‘But Zach, you never came to the flat in Edinburgh, did you? I don’t think we even knew you back then, not when we were decorating.’
‘Must have told me a
bout it, mate,’ I said.
‘He’s such an anorak when it comes to his colours,’ Nell informed Lizzie. ‘It’s the graphic designer in him.’
‘It’s not snobbery, Nell. It’s the quality of the paint, the opacity, I like.’
The moment passed. I got away with it. Just as I got away with my unofficial visit to their apartment in Leith. It was their flatmate I was interested in. What was her name? Margot, was it? I had hardly even registered Nell and Pete at that stage. Strange feeling of power, thinking back. After I broke in, I dipped a wet finger in the breakfast crumbs on the kitchen table, buried my face in their crumpled sheets, inspected Nell’s contraceptive cap in the drawer. The tins of paint were in the half-finished hallway. I slapped a bit on the door frame just to see, let it dribble on the floor.
Tombstoning, we used to call it – that feeling when you leaped into the Solent from a high harbour wall. The adrenalin, the rush of air, the surge as you hit the water, the release as you surface: there’s nothing else like it. It was the risk that made it worthwhile. Hidden rocks, unexpected shallows – mistime it and you could break your neck.
Chapter Twelve
Lizzie
The storm on Thursday night has battered the garden. I stand and look out on Friday morning at the lawn strewn with broken twigs and stray debris. A branch of the apple tree beyond the shed is hanging half off, like a fractured limb. I should spend the day out there, tidying and nurturing. A year ago that would have been my first instinct. But my instincts have changed, and I turn away from the window and leave it as it is.
I spend the last three days of half-term largely alone. Weekends are hardest when you’re a widow. People tend to fill them with families and loved ones. I try not to intrude. I can’t help wondering, sitting at the kitchen table on Saturday morning, how different it would have been if Zach and I had had a child together.
I visit my mother and babysit Peggy’s kids. I buy food at the supermarket and force myself to eat it. Normal activities. But my brain turns constantly, searching for places to look, ways to draw him out. On Saturday morning, I hover in the hall with the front door open and speak loudly to estate agents based in North Cornwall. It’s a depressed market, I am told. Can I wait until spring?
I move to the doorway. ‘Not really,’ I say. ‘I’d like Gulls sold as soon as possible. Perhaps by auction? I’m not that fussed about price.’
A local estate agent visits, on my invitation, to value my mother’s house, too. The mortgage I raised to pay for the Beeches was never a long-term solution. The capital is running out. I know all that. Peggy has been giving me time to grieve before a summit meeting on the subject.
I stand in the street with this freshly shaved man in a suit and discuss side returns and square-footage. He takes photographs with his phone.
‘Do you need to buy?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m looking to rent. A short lease. I don’t know when I might be moving on.’
At night, I paint my face carefully with blusher and lipstick and slip into his favourite clothes: the tight jeans, the silky top I’ve mended with a fine thread. I think about the first night I wore them – our sixth-month anniversary. We ate at a restaurant high above the river, on the South Bank, the lights of London twinkling at our feet. We laughed at the poshness of the menu – the food that came in toppled layers, how many of the ingredients listed (‘crispy leek’, ‘blanquette sauce’) hardly figured (a fragment! a dribble!). Zach ordered champagne. In the taxi home, my head on his shoulder, feeling his breath in my hair, I was as happy as I’d ever been.
Now I stand on tiptoe at the bedroom window and stare out across the ravaged garden.
I try not to feel anything too clearly; my body has its own ideas. No single person inhabits my skin, no simple emotion sets up home in my head. I swerve almost hourly. At times, I am crippled, bent over with a sense of self-protection. I want to clutch my arms, curl into a ball, close up. At others, I feel like breaking through brickwork, striding out into the world, screaming to the sky, my arms outstretched, my heart exposed.
I veer between dread at something happening, and disappointment that it hasn’t.
I can’t decide if he wants to love me, or to kill me.
On Sunday, I take the dog for a long walk around Wandsworth Common and through a knot of backstreets all the way to Tooting Common, its wilder sister further south. Both commons are still battered by Thursday night’s storm – many of the paths unpassable. It’s a good five-mile round trip. We’re soaking wet when we get back, footsore. Howard curls up in his basket and I sit at the kitchen table. The room is untidy. Newspapers are piled by the sink. My sewing basket is open on the floor. I left the milk out.
I check my mobile phone.
Onnie hasn’t rung.
I fetch my laptop from underneath my bed and open Facebook. I search ‘Onnie Murphy’. In her photograph, her mouth is pouting, her hair a blurred curtain – any one of a million teenage girls. Her privacy settings won’t let me access her timeline, or her list of friends. My fingers flex. I probably shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t be encouraging her. I don’t need Onnie in my life. Xenia may well be irrelevant. But I just want to know. I press ‘Add Friend’.
Friend request sent.
In the corner of my screen, I have one notification. I click on it.
It’s from Fred Laws. He has written, Hello stranger. And left a number for me to ring.
I lean back in the chair.
Fred Laws. My old boss. Zach’s old school friend. It’s years since we last met up. It was an easy progression, letting him slip out of my life. I got my job at the school, and he moved to Durham to take up a post in the university library. Zach had no interest in seeing Fred again and I knew he didn’t want me to either. He was possessive. Stupidly so. He was threatened by the least likely people. Rob, Peggy’s husband, who I know used to refer to me before I got married as ‘Peggy’s spinster librarian sister’ – he only had to compliment me on my new haircut to convince Zach he was trying to get me into bed. ‘That slimy bastard, his eyes were all over you,’ he said on the way back from their house. I laughed and told him he was silly; it took me a night of kisses to persuade him. Perhaps I should have minded more, made a stand then.
The phone is answered by a very small child. There is a clatter as the small child drops the phone. ‘Dada!’ the small child pipes. ‘Dadaa.’
Listening to the muffled clumps of his house, I walk into the garden. The wind feels as if it is holding its breath out here, though in the tops of the trees it is going berserk.
‘Hello. Sorry about that. Fred Laws.’ He was always on the formal side.
‘Hello Fred Laws,’ I say. My voice doesn’t travel as far as I’d hoped it would.
‘Lizzie!’
We each ask how the other one is three times while we are dealing with the embarrassment of speaking to each other after all this time, and finally I say, ‘You’ve got a child!’ and he tells me, his stammer much less noticeable than it used to be, about Penny and how they met in the library three years ago. She was a postgrad, ‘little bit younger’, he says, ‘not that that matters. All good.’ I can just see him poking the air with his finger. Zach’s impression made it seem pompous, but I thought it was sweet. I’d forgotten how he made me feel, too: young and hopeful and on the brink of possibility.
‘God, it’s nice to hear your voice,’ I say.
‘I was so hoping you’d come to the wedding. We sent you an invitation, but I quite understand why you didn’t make it. It’s a long way to lug yourself . . .’
An invitation? ‘Did you? How brilliant, but I never got it!’
‘Buggering Royal Mail. I knew I should have rung to follow it up. Although, actually, didn’t I ring? Didn’t I leave a message?’
‘Gosh, Fred. No.’ A rustle in the viburnum. I can make out Howard’s dark form chewing on the grass. He raises his head, alert. A flurry of wind begins to build. My arms are suddenly very cold. �
��I didn’t get it.’
‘Bugger.’
‘If I had, I would definitely have come. I’m so sad I didn’t.’
‘Bummer.’
I laugh. I’d forgotten how funny I found it when he swore; it was sort of unexpected. ‘You still say bummer and bugger – even though you’re a parent?’
‘Only very quietly.’
I laugh again. Howard darts into the viburnum to investigate.
‘Any kids, Lizzie?’ he adds.
‘No.’ And then, because that sounds too gaping, ‘Not at the moment.’
‘Dare I ask? Any nice man?’
‘Oh Fred . . .’ I lean over the garden table, dip my finger in the raindrops that have collected in inky patterns on the metal top, and explain that, yes, I did meet somebody, and I did get married – just a small wedding – but that sadly, there had been a car accident and . . . Fred is trying to say things, ‘How sor—’ and ‘Oh poor Li—’ and he wishes he had . . . but I keep talking because I want to get to the end. I shiver a bit. I finish with, ‘The thing is, I think you knew him when you were a child.’
‘Oh Lizzie. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d known. What was his name?’
‘Zach. Zach Hopkins.’
A short pause. ‘Jack?’
‘Zach.’
‘Yes.Yes, yes, yes. Of course, I know who you’re talking about.’
I’d been holding my breath, and I let it out in relief. ‘Oh, good.’
‘He lived in the village. Small place.’ I’m waiting for Fred to echo his initial enquiry, to say ‘nice man’ in a confirming tone, but he doesn’t. His voice is strained.
‘Tough childhood, I think,’ I say. ‘His father was impossibly cruel to his mother.’
‘Was he?’ Fred sounds vague. ‘Didn’t know him well. Just from being around, you know.’
‘This is an odd question, but does the name Xenia ring a bell?’
‘Xenia?’ He is quiet for a moment. ‘I didn’t know many of his friends.’
Remember Me This Way Page 17
