Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

  Arlette stared at her in surprise. She had often wondered at Mrs Stamper’s lack of children and had not liked to mention it in case it were to upset her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, registering Arlette’s surprise. ‘It was unexpected. After ten years of marriage myself and Mr Stamper had rather thought that it wasn’t to be. But now, well, I am terribly happy to say that it is. I have offered my resignation to the directors and they have accepted, and asked me to work out a four-week notice period.’ She paused and appeared to swallow down a wave of nausea inside a large cotton lawn handkerchief that bore her own initials. ‘They have also asked me to put forward a suitable person to take over my position. And I have put you forward, Miss De La Mare.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Arlette, her eyes widening.

  ‘Over these last six months I have found you to be both reliable and sensible. You are also bright and have a way with numbers that most of these other girls,’ she gestured beyond the curtains, ‘do not appear to possess. It is a harder job, slightly longer hours and fewer holidays, but you will be recompensed, I feel, more than satisfactorily. I will leave Mr Jones in the accounts office to tell you exactly what that will be. And, of course, a much increased responsibility. But I know you can take it on board. You are so very mature and have such a lovely way with the clientele. So ...?’ She stopped and looked at Arlette.

  Arlette stared at the table top.

  ‘Would you consider it?’

  Arlette looked up at her and beamed, entirely uncontrollably. ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘Yes. I would like that very much. Very much indeed. And congratulations, Mrs Stamper. I’m delighted for you. I really am.’

  Mrs Stamper smiled softly at Arlette and said, ‘Thank you so much, Miss De La Mare. And, please, call me Emily ...’

  ‘Whatever happened to your lovely friend Godfrey?’ asked Minu.

  They were lying together on a silk-covered bed in the Mayfair apartment of a man called Badger. Badger was an absurdist who drew cartoons for Punch and wrote a rather strange column in the Illustrated London News about his social life, which had a cult following. Being referred to, however obliquely, in one of his columns was something of a badge of honour and all the socialites would pore over it religiously every Monday morning to see if they had merited a mention. As a result, Badger had become one of the most popular men in town, in spite of being overweight and a rather uncharming drunk, so when he invited everyone back after the Cygnet closed on this Friday night at the tail-end of May, everyone automatically said yes.

  ‘I believe he is in Manchester,’ Arlette replied, ‘but I can’t be sure.’

  She was being disingenuous. She knew exactly where he was, but she did not wish to give the impression that she cared too much either way. Godfrey’s tour of Great Britain had resumed itself shortly after their last sitting at Gideon’s studio and Arlette had not seen him since. He’d taken Arlette’s address and sent postcards every couple of weeks, addressed not to Arlette, but to Arlette and Lilian. The postcards were perfunctory and light-hearted: ‘My dears, I am waving hello to you both from Liverpool. We play here for three more nights and then we take the train to Lancaster. Liverpool is wet and windy and I do not understand a word anyone says to me. I should be in London again in a few weeks. Please pass my regards to Mr Worsley. Your friend, Godfrey Pickle.’

  Lilian would shriek with excitement every time one of these cards landed upon the doormat and read it and reread five, six times, as if the more she read it, the more it would reveal.

  Arlette did not display her feelings. She would pluck the cards indifferently from Lilian’s fingers and say, ‘Hmm.’ Or, ‘How nice.’ Or, ‘Where on earth is Bradford?’ Then she would pass them back to Lilian, who would store them somewhere, tied with ribbon, as if they were irreplaceable love letters or tear-soaked odes.

  In Godfrey’s absence, Gideon and Arlette had become something more than just friends, although it was hard for Arlette to know exactly what it was that they had become. He painted her still, apparently far from being tired of the lines of her face and the angles of her bone structure. And together they visited all the newest and most exciting clubs in London. They danced together at the Cygnet and they laughed together at the Criterion. And without Godfrey Pickle there to swallow up her attentions, Minu McAteer had become a friendlier proposition, drawing them into her own circle of friends: artists, poets, novelists and eccentrics, people with names like Bunny and Boy, people who Arlette liked but did not understand. People like Lilian, who came from backgrounds of wealth and advantage, tennis clubs and boarding schools. They welcomed Arlette into their sanctum, not because she was one of them, but because she was pretty, and because she knew Minu and Gideon; because they assumed that she was one of them.

  ‘I wonder how it would feel,’ said Minu, looking at Arlette mischievously.

  ‘How what would feel?’ she replied, half knowing in her heart the path her friend was leading the conversation towards.

  ‘To be with a man like Godfrey. A coloured man.’

  Arlette bristled slightly. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, to feel a mouth like that against yours,’ she breathed. ‘To touch that hair. I mean ...’ she rolled onto her side and propped her head against her hand, staring into Arlette’s eyes. ‘I think it would be rather dreamy, don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it,’ Arlette replied drily.

  ‘No,’ sighed Minu, ‘of course you haven’t. You have eyes only for Gideon.’

  ‘That is not true,’ she huffed.

  ‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Gideon is lovely. And he’s also very eligible. And it is clear that he utterly adores you ...’

  ‘Oh, nonsense.’

  ‘Not nonsense. He would marry you tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve only known him for six months, barely that.’

  ‘Yes, but he is twenty-five and I have never known him to be close to a girl before. He needs to marry and it is clear to me that he would like to marry you.’

  ‘Well, I am only twenty-one and I feel I hardly know him. Marriage is not on my mind.’

  ‘And that, Miss De La Mare, is exactly what makes you such an attractive proposition. Well, that and your lovely accent and your creamy complexion and your tiny waist and big blue eyes and your little feet that look like they’re shod by fairies in the night ...’

  ‘Such silliness,’ Arlette tutted playfully, and Minu laughed.

  ‘You’re the silly one,’ she retaliated, ‘having no idea how lovely you are, sitting around like a maiden aunt when you could be taking London by storm. I mean, Arlette, what do you really think of us all, with our crazy ways? You’re here every night, you join in, but you always seem to be ... I don’t know ... more of a spectator than a participant, like you are studying us, possibly for some sort of anthropological purpose. I mean, do you even like us?’

  Arlette laughed. ‘Of course I like you!’

  ‘But do you ... do you approve of us?’

  Arlette paused. She was in a world that she would not have chosen for herself, but did that mean that she did not approve? She nodded and smiled and said, ‘But of course I approve. We are all young, we have all lost people we love. I should be more disapproving of people who locked themselves away from a world of freedom that was so hard won.’

  Minu smiled. ‘Such wisdom. And there I was thinking that all I was doing was having lots of silly fun.’ She paused and took a sip from a tumbler of something brown and ice-filled on Badger’s bed-stand. ‘So what do you think will happen to you, Arlette? Will you stay in London? Or will you go back to your little French island and think wistfully of your wild days in London?’

  ‘I think I shall stay,’ she replied. ‘Unless I am called upon to return. I have a good job and now I have a promotion and pay rise I can afford to rent a room of my own. I have friends and a social life ...’

  ‘And dear Gideon ...’

  ‘Yes. I have dear Gideon.’
r />   ‘And you have me.’

  Minu curled an arm around Arlette’s shoulder and rested her head against the crook of her neck. Arlette smiled. ‘Yes. I have you.’ They lay like that for a moment until the bedroom door opened and two men burst in, both clutching champagne flutes and with their arms around each other’s shoulders. One said, ‘Well, well, well, beautiful Minu and beautiful Arlette, in an embrace ...’

  And the other said, ‘Almost Sapphic, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Spellbindingly so,’ replied the first. ‘I don’t suppose, ladies, that there is room on that bed for two more?’

  Minu sat up straight and sighed dramatically. ‘Foolish boys,’ she said, ‘Arlette and I clearly have eyes only for each other. Isn’t that so, Arlette?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she rejoined. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Well, then. Perhaps we might just stay and watch?’

  ‘Strictly no spectators, I’m afraid, boys.’

  The men bumbled drunkenly against each other, giggled and then left the room, shouting, ‘Sapphic Sex Show! Sapphic Sex Show!’ in their wake.

  ‘But listen,’ said Minu, turning to Arlette brightly, as though the preceding episode had not just happened, ‘I just had the most super idea. Why don’t you and I find a room together? Pool our incomes?’

  ‘Our incomes?’ questioned Arlette, because, as far as she was aware, Minu had been writing a novel for the past eighteen months and had no income.

  ‘Well, yes, your income to start with, and of course my mother and father will be happy to pay my half. They despair of me ever getting married and leaving home. And of course, once my novel is published ...’

  Arlette smiled.

  ‘Well, what do you think? I can cook, you know. And I’m relatively neat and tidy.’

  Arlette doubted very much that Minu was neat and tidy, but she did quite like the idea of a roommate. She’d known Minu for only a few weeks, but apart from Gideon and Lilian, she was the closest friend she had made so far in London.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘that is a very good idea. I should like to share a room with you. Very much.’

  Minu clapped her hands together and kissed Arlette on the cheek. ‘Oh, how wonderful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Our own rooms! Can you imagine! They shall be the most popular rooms in town. People will be queuing outside our door to take tea with us! We will have so much fun, Arlette, so much fun!’

  ‘Arlette! Look! Look!’ Lilian scampered towards her clutching something in her hand.

  Another postcard from Godfrey, she wagered. Arlette sighed and put down her knife and fork. It was a fine Saturday morning in June and she was halfway through a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. The newspaper sat open before her, and Leticia sat at the other end of the table with a cold pack clutched to her temples and her breakfast going cold on the plate in front of her. James, the youngest boy, sat upon the table, cross-legged in his shoes, with the cat on his lap, looking at his mother defiantly every now and then to see if she would admonish him. But she did not, just looked at him sadly and released another sigh.

  ‘This weather,’ she sighed, ‘it fills my head with pressure until I feel fit to explode.’

  ‘James!’ said Lilian, the card still held in her outstretched hand, ‘get down off that table immediately!’

  ‘No,’ said James, ‘I shan’t.’

  ‘Well, then, I shall burn your insectarium and every last gruesome little creature in it.’

  ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  ‘Well, then do as you are told, young man, and get down from that table.’

  James sighed and folded his arms across himself, his jaw set tight with annoyance. ‘I hate you,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Lilian. ‘I hate you, too.’

  He flounced from the table and the cat escaped from his arms in a flurry of loose fur that fell upon the table top like snow.

  Lilian took her seat at the table and looked at her mother. ‘Go to bed,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Oh, how I wish I could,’ Leticia sighed. ‘But I have too much to do today, far too much to do.’

  Lilian raised her eyebrows, turned to Arlette and smiled. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look what the postman brought.’ She slid the card across the table to Arlette, who read it nonchalantly.

  My dear girls, here I am in Wales, which has no whales to speak of, but is a very jolly country none the less. On 5 July the Orchestra commences a ten-week spell at the Kingsway Hall in London, and myself and the Love Brothers will be taking some rooms in a house in south London for the duration. I hope that I will be able to meet up with all once again, and I will of course send you both some tickets once they have been released.

  In the meantime, my best wishes to you both.

  Your friend,

  Godfrey Pickle.

  Arlette swallowed some food and read the card again.

  A ten-week spell.

  Godfrey Pickle would be in London for ten weeks.

  And she would have her own room.

  She flushed red at her own boldness, as unspoken as it had been.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, circumspectly, ‘how lovely. I should like very much to see the orchestra playing.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Lilian. ‘So should I. But also, just to see Godfrey again ...’

  ‘Who,’ sighed Leticia, ‘is Godfrey?’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ tutted Lilian, ‘I told you about Godfrey. He is Arlette’s coloured gentleman friend. The famous musician, from the Caribbean.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Leticia batted away the reply absent-mindedly, ‘yes. I’m sure you did.’

  ‘He is terribly handsome and very charming.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Leticia dreamily. And then she winced and said, ‘Actually, yes, I think I may go to bed. I really cannot bear this pain in my head for another moment. Will you tell Sally to take James to the park, and ask Susan to bring me some tea to my room? Thank you, darling.’ She kissed the top of Lilian’s head as she passed by and Arlette recoiled slightly at the overpowering aroma of old alcohol she emitted.

  Lilian rolled her eyes at Arlette and sighed. ‘Foolish woman,’ she said. ‘No wonder Daddy never wants to come home.’

  Arlette said nothing. The unpeeling of the pretty façade that Leticia had presented her with when she first arrived in London nine months ago had been an unedifying process and not one that she felt able to comment upon.

  Arlette turned to Lilian and smiled. ‘I have some news,’ she said. She spoke carefully because she was not sure how Lilian would react.

  Lilian looked at her curiously.

  ‘I have found myself some rooms. I will be moving out next month.’ She drew in her breath and held it, waiting for Lilian’s reaction.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, they are in Bloomsbury. Two rooms and a bathroom. It is heavenly,’ she smiled.

  Lilian’s demeanour brightened. ‘Two rooms?’ she said. ‘Then you might have room for me?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Arlette, ‘well, no. Minu McAteer is to take the other room.’

  Lilian’s face dropped and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘I have upset you ...’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lilian, staunchly, ‘you have upset me. If I were to take rooms with someone you would have been the first person I should have asked.’

  ‘Oh, Lilian. it’s not that simple. You’re only eighteen. Minu is twenty-five. And your mother needs you here.’

  Lilian turned her tear-filled eyes onto Arlette and attempted to smile. ‘My bloody mother,’ she whispered. ‘She is making me grow up before I am ready. She is making an old maid of me. I shall never leave home and I shall never be independent. I shall be stuck here with her for ever.’ Her face crumpled then and she began to cry.

  Arlette put her arm around her shoulder and said, ‘Oh, Lilian, that is not true. Your brothers will be home from school soon. Then it can be their turn to look after everything.’

  Lilian laughed sc
ornfully. ‘No,’ she said, ‘that won’t happen. They will find a way to disappear, to college, to stay with friends. They will not stay here knowing the responsibilities it holds. But please,’ she grasped Arlette’s arm, ‘promise me one thing. Promise me I can come and stay with you and Minu in your lovely rooms, just sometimes?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Arlette. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I will miss you very much. I was so glad when Mother said that a young girl was coming to stay with us, and at first I thought you seemed a little distant, but having got to know you, well, you are nothing of the sort. You are everything that I should like to be.’

  Arlette patted her hand and smiled. ‘You will be much more than I could ever be, Lilian, just you wait and see. Much, much more.’

  35

  1995

  THE FRONT DOOR was painted gleaming ebony and the stucco work was sugar pink. Over the past couple of years, Betty had seen so many photos of this house, of this door, she felt like she must have been here before. She stared into the lens of a security camera and said, ‘My name is Betty. I’m here for an interview with Amy.’

  The door buzzed and Betty pushed it open. The hallway was papered with a violently patterned paisley print in lime green and black. A black velvet chaise longue with elaborate gilt decorations stood beneath a silver-plated bust of a lion with bared teeth. The floor was stripped-back floorboards painted pink and the stairs were carpeted jet black. It was like finding oneself embedded inside an oversized Liquorice Allsort. Amy Metz stood before her in towering boots, skin-tight jeans and a black chiffon blouse. Donny appeared behind her and she tutted loudly as he banged up against the backs of her legs. ‘Watch it, honey,’ she said. Donny spotted Betty standing in the doorway and smiled shyly, burying his face in the back of his mother’s legs.

  ‘Betty,’ said Amy, offering her a hand, ‘come in, come in. We are in total chaos. Total and utter chaos.’ Acacia toddled into the hallway then and banged up against Donny, who banged up against Amy, who turned and lifted her arms in the air and shouted, ‘Jeez, you guys, will you cut it out!’