She Chose Me

by Tracey Emerson

  Tonight’s conversation would not be so pleasant.

  ‘I don’t think you realise how much pain you’ve caused,’ I said. She sat still, said nothing. ‘Not just to me. There’s Isobel and Quentin… and plenty of others.’

  The Mrs Lockhead incident came to mind. I told my mother about William Lockhead joining my class at the village primary school when I was nine and how, one morning, during dropping-off time in the playground, I’d noticed his mother kissing him goodbye at the gate. One of the other mums called her name, and she looked up and responded with the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. I noticed she had the same colour eyes as me and wondered if she might be my mother too. Why not? My real mother was out there somewhere. Scared and excited, I approached her and introduced myself. She laughed when I flung my arms around her waist. A nervous laugh. Her red fingernails dug into me as she tried to free herself.

  ‘That was just the start of it,’ I said to my mother, who offered no apology in return and showed no sign of remorse. These rehearsals had shown me our future conversations could prove challenging. What else did I expect with our difficult history? At least Emma could have fun with my mother and get to know her slowly, so that when the time came our reunion would stand a better chance. The thought of dropping Emma and showing myself to my mother terrified me. She’d rejected me once, why not again?

  Your mother didn’t want you.

  Isobel had flung this insult at me during our last ever conversation, her face all hollow fury. I’d never seen her like that before. Quentin had warned me that the sprawling tumour on her brain would alter her behaviour, but I never thought she’d hurt me like that. At that moment I’d hated her. I’d wanted her to die.

  Ryan touched my shoulder, making me jump.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Can’t sleep.’

  ‘I’ll help you sleep.’

  The emptiness swirled inside me. ‘You snore.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said, indignant.

  ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa.’

  ‘Christ, Cass. Might as well be in bed at home on my own.’

  ‘Off you go then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you’d rather be at home, why don’t you just leave?’

  ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘Get your stuff and get out of my house.’

  His hurt expression didn’t fool me. He stormed off into the bedroom and returned minutes later, fully dressed and clutching his cycle helmet. He couldn’t have been that upset because he remembered to snatch up his dope tin from the coffee table.

  ‘I’m so sick of this shit,’ he said, as he opened the front door.

  ‘You’re the one who’s leaving,’ I shouted after him.

  ***

  I watched him cycle away into the night.

  ‘Loser,’ I whispered, but a strange ache blossomed in my chest. Returning to bed, I lay awake, restless, missing his warmth. Traces of the Calvin Klein aftershave I’d bought him rose up from his pillow to haunt me.

  I ventured into the kitchen in search of something to help me sleep. The cupboard beside the steel Smeg fridge contained my medicine box. A clear plastic tub full of the anti-anxiety tablets and anti-depressants prescribed by Dr Costello. My chemical pick-and-mix. He’d also given me sleeping tablets. I broke one in half and swallowed it with a gulp of water.

  The chalky bitterness of the pill on my tongue took me back three years to the Five Oaks private hospital. Flat on my back, insides pumped clear of paracetamol, fluid from an intravenous drip seeping into me. Resting, rehydrating, replenishing. Dr Costello at my bedside for our first meeting. His manner comforting but firm.

  ‘Cassie,’ he said, ‘if you’re honest with me, I can help you. Will you be honest with me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ll need to talk about your mother,’ he said. ‘How do you feel about that?’

  I’d summoned as much of a shrug as the tubes trailing out of me would allow. ‘It’s complicated.’

  25

  Wednesday, 6 September 1995

  Royal Edinburgh Hospital

  I did shag Dan just like that. Took him from the pub to the poky terraced house I lived in and fucked him on the stairs. Jeans round our ankles, carpet rubbing the base of my spine raw. He grabbed my long hair and pulled my head back, gazing into my eyes in wonder. You’re something else, he said.

  I told him I wasn’t on the pill. He said not to worry; he came from Irish Catholic stock so the withdrawal method was in his blood. When I offered to get a condom, he paused mid-thrust and looked at me with disappointment. He said he didn’t wear condoms. Said they ruined sex for him, and I wanted him to look at me with wonder again so I said, okay, just be careful, and he laughed and pushed himself in deep. Trust me, he whispered, last thing I want is a kid.

  Trust him I did and spent the next few days sticky with him—his residue on my back, my stomach, my chest. My housemate, Marcie, hammered several times on my bedroom door over the weekend to tell us to keep the noise down, but we didn’t care.

  He stayed for a week. Then he brought clothes to keep in my drawers and left a razor in the bathroom. When Marcie moved out because she couldn’t stand him, Dan moved in. My friends stopped visiting, but I hardly noticed.

  He wouldn’t relent on the condom issue, so I went on the pill. Thought it was the responsible thing to do. Your call, he said when I told him. The pill had never agreed with me, and after a few weeks of taking it I started to gain weight. Sometimes I’d catch Dan looking at my new, curvier shape with distaste. Pity you can’t keep the tits but get rid of this, he would say, pinching my stomach tight between his fingers.

  University finished. We graduated, me with a first class honours, Dan with a 2:1. We made the most of the long, hot summer, filling our days with sex, cheap wine and slightly more expensive drugs. We told ourselves we deserved a break before our busy careers began. We signed on the dole and applied for as many credit cards as we could. I had £7,000 of Dad’s life insurance money lying untouched in a bank account. Money earmarked for paying off student debts and helping me get on my feet. I didn’t tell Dan about it. Deep down, I must have known I’d stretched lust into domesticity with someone I shouldn’t have.

  Summer ended. We auditioned without success for theatre companies in Yorkshire and London and had to take part-time, cash-in-hand bar work at the Three Tuns. Serving students in the pub where we’d first kissed, students who gave us pitying looks.

  Dan got the first break. At the end of September, he signed a six-month contract with Agitate, a theatre company started by Stella Piselli, a girl who’d graduated from NTS the year before us. Stella with the long black hair who drove a white VW Beetle and had a Victorian town house in Headingley, courtesy of her rich French father. Bilingual Stella, fresh from a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival and flaunting a year of Arts Council funding for her latest project. Dan never stopped talking about her. Stella thinks we might tour the show internationally. Stella’s folks said we could use their place near Nice to rehearse. Stella’s met this guy from the Royal Court who loves her ideas. Stella this, Stella that. Stella fucking Stella.

  26

  Friday, 20 November 2015

  From inside the bus shelter, I have a clear view of the entrance to Brighton Central College. A few students pass in and out of the doors of the squat, ugly building. I take my phone from my coat pocket and check the time. 12.23 p.m. When I called the college yesterday, the perky receptionist confirmed that morning classes finished at 1 p.m. and that yes, Dan Thorne would be teaching.

  When he comes out at lunchtime, I’ll follow him.

  A wild burst of wind pummels the plastic walls of the shelter. Overhead, bulky clouds move across the sky like a carnival parade. I fiddle with my puzzle ring, twisting it round. Why would Dan contact me now, after all this time? An attack of conscience? I’m not sure, but he’s a possibility I have to rule out.

  What if he called in sick th
is morning like I did? What if he eats his lunch in the canteen or his office? I could find his office and confront him there but would rather we met in a neutral, public place.

  Resigned to waiting, I light a cigarette and wonder if Dan is leading a workshop today. I remember the excitement of arriving in an empty theatre space, a morning’s exploration ahead, not knowing where it would take me and what I would discover about myself.

  After years spent touring the world with our award-winning theatre company, Agitate, Stella and I returned to the UK to settle down and start a family.

  As well as reading Dan’s staff profile, I looked up Agitate and read about their innovative two-handed shows that had played at UK and international theatre festivals. Not quite the film stardom Dan dreamed of, but he’s done more with his training than I have. He always swore he’d never teach, but at least he’s only doing it part-time. I’m also currently pursuing an MA in Screenwriting. Stella’s dad must still be funding her lifestyle if her husband can afford to study.

  I also investigated Stella’s sleek and stylish website, which details her flourishing second career as a writer. As a bilingual poet, I write and am published in both French and English. Bien fucking sûr.

  What if the two of them meet for lunch? The thought of seeing them together rouses an ancient jealousy that should be extinct. Yesterday, I visited a beauty salon and had my eyebrows and upper lip threaded, an effort I knew was for Dan. Looking my best would give me the confidence to approach him, I thought. Nothing wrong with that. This morning, I made rare use of all the contents of my make-up bag. As I applied a swish of blusher, I recognised the urge to please him, the familiar craving for his approval. The old me encased in the new, a sleeper self, suddenly activated.

  ***

  At five past one, a throng of students surges through the main doors. Animated conversations fill the street, conducted at after-class volume. I spot the drama students straight away. They are louder than the rest, their hand gestures flamboyant—look at me, look at me, look at me. As they pass, I recognise the glow that can follow a good workshop or rehearsal. The buzz of the shared creative process.

  The exodus dies down. Just as I consider giving up, the doors open and there he is. Hands in the pockets of a double-breasted black coat, a brown leather satchel over one shoulder. He moves fast, forcing me to speed walk to catch up. He looks fit and lean; no sign of middle-aged spread.

  At the crossing, he doesn’t wait for the green man. He never did. I dart between oncoming cars, wishing as I used to twenty years ago that he wasn’t so reckless.

  He leads me down a series of narrow streets I remember from childhood visits to Brighton with my parents. Streets now lined with cafés, delis and boutique shops selling clothes, furniture and kitchenware. I imagine Dan and Stella shopping here at the weekends, purchasing expensive wines and cheeses and gadgets to use in the kitchen of their beautiful home. Maybe they live in one of the coloured houses overlooking the city. Or maybe they have a flat in one of those white Regency buildings by the beach.

  We pass a sign for the promenade and moments later the horizon is all water. Grey and restless, but not dramatic enough to reflect the state of my nerves. I need giant, foaming waves. A shipwreck sea.

  Dan enters a beachfront café. While he removes his coat and seats himself at the window counter, I slip inside and claim a table nearby. I leave my coat on.

  ‘What can I get you?’ the waitress in the tight black vest asks me. I point to green tea on the menu as if mute, not wanting Dan to hear my voice. The waitress nods and slinks over to him.

  ‘Flat white and smoked salmon bagel?’ she asks.

  ‘Perfect,’ he says, watching her walk away. He takes his phone from his satchel, taps the screen and presses it to his ear. ‘Hey, it’s me,’ he murmurs, ‘got your message and that’s no problem. I’ll pick Holly up when I’ve finished. Love you.’

  I was once pregnant with this man’s child. I don’t want to think about it, but his presence is activating all sorts of memories. They hum inside me, as if I’m a tuning fork vibrating to his frequency.

  The pregnancy came to light on a wet January morning. The instructions on the back of the test read one blue line negative, two blue lines positive. As the second blue line appeared, I heard Dan burst into the house, banging the front door behind him. I pelted down the stairs, brandishing the piss-sodden test stick.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said, at exactly the same moment he announced he was leaving me for Stella. With perfect timing, we released a simultaneous ‘oh.’

  The colour drained from Dan’s face. He pushed past me and stamped up the stairs. I followed and found him in the bedroom, gathering clothes in a frenzy and stuffing them in his rucksack, as if terrified I would give birth there and then and he would never get away.

  The waitress brings my tea. I feel like throwing up in the cup. Coming here was a mistake. My instinct warns me to leave now, to leave the past unprovoked, but anger propels me out of my seat and over to the window counter.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. He turns and fixes his bright green eyes on me. I stare back, mesmerised. ‘Dan?’ I ask, as if not totally sure.

  ‘Yeah, I’m Dan.’ A beat of awkward silence passes. ‘Sorry to be rude, but I honestly can’t place you.’

  He can’t either, I can tell. He was never that good an actor. He has erased me and what happened between us from his mind, and it seems ridiculous now to think he could have sent the cards and the mug.

  ‘I’m truly awful at remembering people,’ he says.

  I have my answer. Time to go. Go.

  But I don’t move.

  ‘You really don’t recognise me, do you?’ I say. He responds with his slow, sexy trap of a smile.

  ‘Do you work at the college?’ he asks.

  I cannot speak. All I can do is hold his gaze until I dawn on him.

  It takes a moment. He frowns first and then his eyes grow wide.

  ‘Grace?’

  The waitress appears with his order. ‘Here you go, Dan,’ she says. ‘Enjoy.’

  Still stunned, he forgets to thank her, and she stalks off looking surly.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says finally. ‘I didn’t… Your hair’s totally different… Sorry… I wasn’t expecting to see you here… obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  He stirs his coffee round and round. An actor relying on a prop. Buying time while he gathers his thoughts, hunts for that lost line. When he lays the spoon down on the saucer, I know he has found his place and is ready to go on with the scene.

  ‘What are you doing here, Grace?’ he asks in a low voice. ‘Why do you want to see me?’

  ‘I don’t. I was sitting here having a cup of tea and you walked in.’

  He pales. ‘You live in Brighton?’

  ‘Just here for the day.’

  His face relaxes then. He thinks he is out of the woods, that this meeting is just a coincidence. ‘Great,’ he says, lifting his cup from the saucer. ‘I mean, it’s a great place for a day trip. Have you been to the Royal Pavilion? It’s really worth seeing.’

  Small talk? Seriously? ‘You’ve got children,’ I say, incredulous. ‘Two of them.’

  He places his cup back on his saucer with staged precision. ‘Been looking me up online, have you?’

  I shrug. ‘Who doesn’t look up their exes?’ His disdainful expression confirms he has never searched for me.

  ‘Did you follow me here?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’ A craving for a cigarette comes over me. ‘Of course not.’

  He steeples his fingers together and brings them to his lips, as if contemplating how to reprimand a difficult student. ‘Listen,’ he says eventually, ‘I’m sorry about what happened back then, but we did the right thing.’

  ‘I don’t recall you doing anything.’

  He leans closer. ‘You would have been arrested if it wasn’t for me. Or have you forgotten that?’

  I am standing in a bedroom, a pillow clutched to
my chest. Feathers pool around my feet. I hear Dan on the other side of the door. Sorry you got called out. It’s nothing; we’ll sort it between ourselves.

  ‘Grace?’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you’re feeling guilty, you shouldn’t. You did what you had to do.’

  ‘Luckily for you.’

  He lays a hand on my shoulder. To an onlooker his gesture might appear one of comfort, but I can sense the silent warning his flesh transmits to mine. Stay away from me. Stay away from my family.

  ‘What’s done is done,’ he says, ‘you need to move on.’

  ‘So you can enjoy fatherhood in peace?’ I shake his hand free and march out of the café, tears stinging my eyes. Outside, the wind’s squally temper threatens to knock me off course, but I keep on walking. I don’t look back.

  27

  Wednesday, 25 November 2015

  I found a dead body today. Mr Reeves in the room next to my grandmother. At first, I didn’t notice, too busy opening his curtains and chatting away about the mild November weather and the strong winds forecast for the next few days.

  Then I heard the birds, their singing louder and more vivid than usual. A choir of individual voices rather than a mass of chirping. I realised the room was cold, despite the moderate temperature outside and the heat from the radiator.

  ‘Mr Reeves?’ I said, but I already knew.

  He lay curled on his side, his knees almost touching his chin, like that game where you try to make yourself as small as possible. His eyes and mouth were wide open and his mottled hands had contracted into claws.

  I found Vera two doors down. She hurried back to room five with me and pressed her fingers against Mr Reeves’s neck.

  ‘I haven’t touched him,’ I said, ‘and I haven’t disturbed anything in the room.’

  ‘It’s not a crime scene, love,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Have you seen a dead body before?’

  I nodded. Isobel’s bulging eyes came back to me. Death was not serene, as I’d always been led to believe. It wasn’t pretty.