‘What would you do without your dog?’
Onnie is standing above me. Her voice is flat, and odd.
‘God, you gave me a shock,’ I say.
‘I was in the front room. I dozed off. I heard you talking.’
She’s wearing a jumper above bare legs and she pulls the sleeves down over her hands, rubbing her face with the wool at her shoulder. It’s pale blue, baby soft, and bears the small embroidered symbol of a pheasant.
‘You’re wearing Zach’s jumper,’ I say.
If you hold it to your face, it still smells of Acqua di Parma Intensa. Close your eyes and you can imagine the warmth of his skin. I can smell him now.
‘Do you mind?’ she says, in a little girl’s voice. ‘I hope you don’t. I was cold.’
I want to snatch it off her, wrestle it over her head. ‘Of course, that’s fine,’ I say, hoping to sound bright. ‘I’m sorry. The heating is timed to come on twice a day. It must have been freezing. Poor you.’
‘I turned the heating to constant,’ she says.
‘Oh. You found the timer then?’
‘Yes – in your wardrobe.’
I take a moment to register this – the control panel is concealed at the back of a shelf, behind some clothes. She would have had to search the house to find it. I turn my attention again to Howard. ‘Did the vet really say he was OK? He doesn’t seem it now.’
‘God . . . he’s fine. The vet said it was nothing. We went for a literally massive walk when we got back. I think he’s just tired.’
‘Which vet did you see?’
She shrugs. ‘I didn’t catch their name.’
‘The man or the woman?’
‘The man.’
I study her carefully, and then look down again at Howard. ‘And they really didn’t want my credit card number?’
‘No. I told you. We were in and out in seconds.’
‘OK. Thank you.’ I look at Howard again. He is licking a patch of skin on his side, the same patch, worrying at it. She’s lying, I’m almost sure. I could confront her, but if she is telling the truth and I’m over-reacting, then I am the one who will seem unhinged. I have to check first. I’ll ring the vet without her knowing. I stand up and stretch to give myself time.
Onnie doesn’t seem to have noticed that anything is up. She is sitting on the counter, swinging her bare legs. ‘People are funny about pets. I don’t get it,’ she says conversationally. ‘A man died in Cornwall last November. He went into the river to rescue his dog. The dog lived, the man drowned.’
‘It happens a lot. I’d probably do the same. Climb down a cliff, jump into a river. At the time, I don’t expect you give yourself time to think.’
‘Pity you don’t have a baby,’ she says. Zach’s jumper is stretched over her knees. ‘You’d make a good mum. It’s a shame, isn’t it, that you won’t be one?’
I turn away – try to rise above the casual callousness, put my hand out for the kettle. The kettle isn’t where it’s supposed to be. She’s moved it again, back over to the fridge. I click it on.
She leaps to her feet. ‘I’ve done more tidying today,’ she says, throwing open the cutlery drawer with such force the knives and forks jangle. ‘Tra-la!’
I feel a fresh wave of resentment. If she’s done all this and not taken the dog to the vet, she isn’t just hopeless, but insane.
‘And there’s more. Follow me!’
She slips off the counter and heads out into the hallway with a dramatic flourish of her arms. I follow, and she throws open the sitting-room door. ‘I’ve feng shuied,’ she says.
My eyes scan the room. She’s moved the furniture. The sofa is no longer in the window but along the wall facing the fireplace. The table is in the bay again, with the lamp on it.
‘Where’s the rug?’
‘I’m sorry. I spilled a cup of coffee and tried to get it out, but it just spread. I basically just kept making it worse. I’ve rolled it up behind the sofa. The polished boards are so nice, though, aren’t they? Do you like what I’ve done, or have I been presumptuous? I think it’s better this way, don’t you?’
Zach’s jumper has slipped off one of her shoulders. I’m transfixed by the smooth ball of fresh skin, the sinew and the bone beneath it.
I am aware of a strange tingling at the back of my calves.
Onnie calls my name as I reach the landing. ‘Wait!’ she says. ‘It’s a surprise.’
‘Just a minute.’
The bedroom door is shut but I push it open and close it behind me. I lean back against the wood. The old familiar scent is here – Acqua di Parma. Intensa, not Assoluta. It’s not lingering, but strong and astringent, freshly sprayed. Zach hasn’t been in the bedroom today, not necessarily. But Onnie has. She came in to search for the thermostat, and she put on Zach’s jumper, and anointed herself with Zach’s aftershave. I think about her questions, the way she wants to pry me open, her knowledge of Zach’s ways. A jangling has been set off in the deepest unlit depths of my heart, a dark suspicion I don’t want to examine.
I cross the room quickly and open the cupboard. My side is in its usual chaos, but Zach’s portion has been gone through. His shirts are lined on their hangers, in colour order, his jeans separate from his suits. On the shelves his sweaters and T-shirts and underwear are in neat piles, the socks coiled in pairs. The rack underneath has been swept and his shoes – a pair of brown suede lace-ups, washed-out Converse, old trainers, still bearing the imprint of his feet – are lined up, dusted and polished.
Her hands have touched all this, these clothes that have hung on his body. She has sorted and caressed them. I slide a pair of jeans off their hanger and drop them to the floor. I tug at the pearly buttons of a Paul Smith shirt, scrunch the fabric to my face. I think about the things Onnie said about Zach, the knowledge of his character. He kept the tutoring secret from me. Why would he have done that unless there was something to hide?
I sit down on the bed until my head has stopped swimming, and then I go back downstairs into the kitchen. She’s sitting motionless at the table, her knees hunched up to her chin. She turns her face when she sees me. Do I see hope, vulnerability? I don’t know.
‘Thanks for all the tidying,’ I say. ‘Though I’m sorry, I have to say it, but I’d rather you didn’t touch my things, or Zach’s.’
She glances away. ‘I was just trying to be helpful.’
‘It just feels invasive.’
She scratches her palm, head bent. ‘Sorry,’ she says finally, but not as if she means it.
In a minute, I’m going to ask her to leave. Nothing she says will sway me. In a few minutes, she will be out of my house and I’ll be alone. I won’t have to deal with her oddness. I won’t have to feel inadequate any more, or suspicious, or angry. I feel better now I know that, and more bullish.
‘Could you just tell me,’ I say, ‘where Xenia fits in? Is she one of your friends? Or are you lying when you say you know her?’
Her face suffuses with colour. Her mouth hardly opens. ‘No,’ she whispers.
‘No to which bit of that?’ I am not bullying. I am just speaking firmly and clearly. I’m very aware of the way I’m standing, my legs apart, arms crossed.
‘No. I’m not lying.’ She still isn’t looking at me, but she makes an abrupt movement with her fingers, brushing something away from under her eyes. ‘Anyway.’ Her voice is cracking. ‘I meant it for the best.’
‘What?’
She gazes up at me. Her dark blue eyes have filled. It was a tear she brushed away. ‘The tidying. I wanted to make it up to you, to make amends.’
‘For what?’
She throws her arms out towards me, and then, seeing something in my expression, lifts them to her head. ‘I miss him so much.’ Her voice trembles. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here.’
I don’t move.
‘Was Zach more than a tutor to you?’ I ask. The words feel bulky in my mouth.
She doesn’t answer.
‘
More than friends?’ I’m still trying to hold it at bay. It was a crush, that’s all. She was fixated on him, obsessed – he did that to people. He did it to me. And he wouldn’t have taken advantage, even Zach in his darkest moods wouldn’t have done that. No. She is young for her age now. She would have been a child when he died.
She sinks her head into her shoulders and looks at me with a different expression, from under her lashes. A grown-up expression I want to wipe off her face.
‘He could be such a charmer,’ I add after a beat. ‘Much older than you, of course.’
‘That didn’t matter.’
She answers too quickly. Her head is bowed so I can’t read her face, but I don’t need to. My insides have turned to red. I have a sharp pain across my shoulders as if someone is leaning on me from behind. I feel as if I might pass out. Zach and Onnie. He thought he could do anything he liked. How could he?
‘We had a connection,’ she says.
‘You had a connection? You mean you had sex?’
She lets out a small, alarmed laugh, as if I have shocked her. How dare she force her way into my kitchen, with her callous self-obsessions, her petty concerns about whether her parents love her or not, knowing that all the time she slept with my husband? Slept with my husband. It is almost unbearable.
‘OK.’ I’m so calm on the surface. She has no idea. ‘I thought you had. When did it start?’
She begins to speak in a high little girl’s voice. If she’s doing it to make me feel sorry for her, it doesn’t work. ‘The day I got my GCSE results. August 2011.’
‘And where did you do it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Where did you fuck?’
She makes a face, jutting out her lower lip.
‘Here then? In my house?’
She nods. I think, in a detached way, that explains how well she knows her way around it, the workings of its plumbing system, the location of the heating controls, the whereabouts of the kitchen towels.
‘OK. And how long did it last?’
‘We only did it a few times. He ended it because of you. He told me he loved you. I promise.’
‘And how many times have you seen him since?’ I’m unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
‘What do you mean, how many times? Of course I haven’t seen him since.’ She’s frowning, shaking her head at me.
I stand. I shouldn’t have let that out. I’ve slipped up.
‘What do you mean?’ she says again. ‘Why are all his things in your wardrobe? You keep talking about him in the present tense. It’s like he’s still living here.’
Howard gets to his feet, turns a circle in his bed and collapses down again with a groan.
‘Did you take Howard to the vet?’ I say. ‘Or were you lying about that?’
She covers her face and peers out at me from behind spread fingers.
‘Oh, fucking hell, Onnie.’
She is weeping again, but more quietly this time, into her hands. ‘I make a mess of everything,’ she says. ‘That’s why no one loves me.’
I don’t want to prolong this. I don’t want to start feeling sorry for her. I am too angry, too upset. There is no room in my head for anything else. How dare she? How dare he? All those accusations he levelled at me, his suspicions, and all the time he was the one who was unfaithful. Not me. Him.
I realise I am twisting my hands, screwing up my mouth, and that Onnie is watching. She looks scared, suddenly diminished, as if she doesn’t know what I am going to do next. Her shoulders are trembling. Goosebumps pucker her slim young legs. And I do feel sorry for her. I can’t stop myself. None of it’s really her fault. She wasn’t in control. He was. It’s what he did, does. He draws you in until there is nowhere to go. He is all you can think about. She knew him and she loved him. She is as obsessed as I am. She’s the only other person except for me who knows what that feels like. It’s only a couple of steps and I give her an awkward hug.
She says something into her hand that I don’t hear.
‘What did you say?’
She lifts her face, thrusting her arms at me. ‘I cut myself sometimes. I get these feelings that rise and rise, and it’s the only way to break the tension. It’s been much worse since Zach died.’
I take her wrists and inspect the red ridges. ‘You should get help,’ I say.
‘I’ve already got help. The latest doctor has given me those antidepressants, but they don’t work. It’s all my parents ever do – pay for help.’
‘Well, you should start helping yourself. Work out what you want from life and do it. You’re young and talented, picked for an internship at Shelby Pink above hundreds of others.’
She rests her head on the table. ‘You’re very kind.’
‘I’m not really very kind.’
‘I suppose I can’t stay, now you know?’
I could shout, No, of course you can’t. But I don’t. I shake my head.
Onnie nods.
She gets up and collects her things from upstairs. I’m waiting for her at the front door when she comes down, clasping her rucksack in both arms.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘You know the way to the station?’
‘Yup.’
‘You’ll be OK?’
‘Yup.’
As she turns to go, she does that gesture I’ve seen before: she rubs the skin between her eyebrows with her left forefinger several times quickly. I put my hand on her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘What for?’
‘For Zach, for the damage he’s done.’
She tilts her small, perfect face towards me. ‘I wanted to find out what he saw in you,’ she says. ‘That’s why I came.’
‘And did you?’ I ask, but she has already turned into the street, and if she has an answer for me, I don’t hear it.
In bed that night, my mind slides into places it shouldn’t. Her hair in his face, his hands on her body. Did she like what he did to her? His deep, hard kisses? Did he bring her to the edge where desire tipped over into fear?
I knew, didn’t I, in my bones? The week before Christmas, when I came home from school, there were two whisky glasses, unwashed, in the sink. I remember staring at them. I felt a creeping under my skin. The tap dripped, and the water pinged, like a tiny liquid firework. He’d been odd all month, washing his hands even more than usual. He’d upped the drinking. I’d found more pills under his pillow. He had stopped answering his phone in the day when I rang.
He was sitting at the table, tapping manically on his laptop – notes for a painting, he’d told me. ‘Are you seeing someone else?’ I said.
He threw the accusation back at me, said I was paranoid, that it was evidence of my guilt. ‘Who are you fucking?’ he said.
I felt ashamed to have asked.
He should have told me then. It wasn’t too late. The slightest remorse and I’d have forgiven him. I would have acknowledged my own guilt – my failure to look after him. I’d have gone to bed with him right then. I was helpless, powerless in his hands. He only had to touch me and I would lose control.
Well, now I know. Has he been waiting for me to find out? He ended it with Onnie, she said, because of me. And then I told him I was leaving – for no one. He wasn’t enough, or he wasn’t right. I feel a twist of resentment and guilt. He’s certainly had his revenge now. We need to have this out.
One of the curtain pins has come away from its ring and a slice of window gapes at the top. I get out of bed and stand on a chair to refix it, arms outstretched, exposed to the garden, the houses beyond.
Zach
October 2011
Onnie says I’m ‘the best thing that’s ever happened to her’. She’s supposed to be doing retakes at Esher College, but no one notices if she’s there or not. She has been coming to the studio almost daily. I can’t say she’s much of an interruption. I haven’t worked in weeks. Vanilla sex – not bad. It’s just the clichés I can’t take.
I’m ‘the man of her dreams�
��.
I’ve been trying to break it off. Lizzie suspects. I lurch between panic and fury. If only she understood. If she was only ready to give up her own flirtations. I know what she gets up to at that school of hers, seething as it is with sexual tension. We’d be happy if we moved to Cornwall. I wouldn’t need Onnie if I felt safe with her. I’d be the best person I could possibly be – the man who, at the best of times, I see reflected in her eyes – handsome, kind, sexy. Other people ruin it. We have to get away. Lizzie doesn’t – or won’t – understand. My lunchtime trysts with Onnie – well, they’re all Lizzie’s fault. She won’t give up her job. Or leave her mother – which is absurd. She’s so far gone, after that bout of pneumonia, she doesn’t even recognise her own daughters. And Peggy needs her, she says – pregnant again, poor little love. How many children do they fucking need?
Lizzie wants a baby. We’re ‘trying’. I’ve forced myself to ape concern, to pore over ovulation sticks when what I really want is to grip her by the shoulders and shake her. ‘Why aren’t I enough for you?’ I should ask her. ‘What would a baby add to what we’ve got?’ I don’t, though. She needs to reach that conclusion for herself – that’s the pure test of her love. I’ve told her we’ll let nature take its course. I’m waiting for her to realise the mistakes she’s made, how her happiness is in her hands. Things will be better then. If she gets pregnant – that’ll be a different sort of proof. Someone else will pay. And if she won’t drop it, won’t accept our life as it is, then it will be proof of her disengagement.
The dog’s got to go. She doesn’t realise what a commitment he is, how much of her attention he takes up. A cocktail of temazepam and valium is lethal in the long term. (I Googled it.) The mutt’s so stupid, he scoffs his daily sausage as if his life depends on it. So far, he’s just sleepy, a bit wobbly on his feet, but I’m assured that it’s cumulative, and also undetectable. Better this than an outright accident. She’ll learn to live without him so slowly she’ll hardly notice when he’s gone.
Onnie just rang.
‘I’d do anything for you,’ she says. ‘You only have to ask.’
Remember Me This Way Page 22
