The Body Lies

by Jo Baker

  I told him not to mention it.

  “I thought I didn’t want to talk. But somehow it’s different with you.”

  I told him he was welcome, and I told him good night.

  “Oh,” he said.

  I ducked out from under the umbrella, raced through the rain for the door. I glanced back as I fumbled for my keys; he was still there; he raised a hand to me. I waved back.

  I pulled myself together for the babysitter, complained about the weather and commiserated about homework as she gathered up her books. Sammy had been good as gold, she said. Any time I wanted, she said. I watched her to the car and then closed the door. I imagined Nicholas stepping up onto the grass verge to let the little car past on the narrow lane. Maybe she’d give him a lift.

  The kitchen tiles were cold under my wet stockinged feet. I filled a glass at the sink, leaned against the counter to drink it. The water was good; straight out of the hills. I padded back up the corridor in damp tights, and there was a knock at the door.

  A quiet knock, the kind that seems to expect that it’s expected. I went to open it. I imagined that the babysitter had forgotten her scarf or textbook or pencil case. I cracked opened the door, tired but patient. Nicholas stood there, a shadow against the security light’s brightness.

  I glanced past him. No car: she’d gone.

  “I—” he said. “I needed…”

  I just shook my head at him, already half-asleep.

  “I know,” he said, “you’re tired, I’m sorry.”

  I said that he better get off home; I’d see him some other time. I went to close the door. Night.

  “I can’t. Face it. Can’t face them all. They’re all still there, in the house and I—I should never have. Can I—” He wiped his face with a hand. “Can I just come in for a bit?”

  A swoop of fatigue; a stare at my watch; it was after midnight.

  “No, I don’t think so, no. I’m going to turn into a pumpkin.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I have nowhere else to go. I’ve got. No one.”

  And so. I creaked the door wider, and he slipped through.

  “Be quiet.”

  He closed the door behind him. It clunked shut. I winced.

  “Be quiet.”

  I waved him through to the sitting room, from where the sound wouldn’t travel upstairs quite so easily.

  I offered him a glass of water, cup of tea.

  He perched on the sofa. “Water, please.”

  In the kitchen I glanced at my watch again. Sam would be up in…six hours? I really needed to sleep. I was shattered, and drunker than I would have thought from three glasses of wine. Should I give Nicholas a blanket and let him kip on my sofa? What would Sam make of that in the morning? He might tell his dad, and what would Mark think, Mummy’s new friend coming for a sleepover…And there’d be a student in my sitting room when I staggered down with Sam, bed hair and a hangover in a few hours’ time. And then there was the rest of them, back at the party, and what they might think of him not coming back at all…

  I brought through a glass of water, sat down beside him and handed him the glass. He took it, didn’t say anything.

  “So…” I said.

  He set the water down carefully on the floor, then he put his hand on the small of my back, leaned over me and kissed me. I sank back under the weight of him. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that it would have crossed his…I gave him a still-friendly shove.

  “Yeah. No,” I said. “Sorry. Can’t happen.”

  He cupped my shoulder, held me still, leaned in again to kiss me again. I wasn’t yet afraid. But he was big. There was heft to him.

  “Seriously, Nicholas. No.” I twisted away.

  He pushed me back against the sofa; ungentle now. I pushed back at him, not friendly either anymore. Getting scared.

  “Nicholas, no. Jesus. What’s wrong with you?”

  He was strong, that’s the thing. Bigger than me, and just insistent. There was no one to call out to. No neighbours near enough to hear me yell. Just a little boy asleep upstairs. Who could stumble sleepily downstairs into this. And I didn’t want to get hit. I gave up before Nicholas did. I let it happen, because it was going to happen anyway, and this way it would happen without me getting hit.

  While he fucked me I was cold and sore and tired and also kind of bored. I waited it out. I felt old and fat and ugly and disgusting. I thought about my stretchmarks, my stubbly legs. How strange it is that being wanted can be so horrible, can make you feel so disgusting.

  Afterwards, clothes pulled back into place, he stroked my cheek, and went in to kiss me again. A sticky print landed on my mouth.

  And he said, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He touched my chin.

  It really wasn’t okay, it was very far from okay, but I wasn’t going to say that.

  “I’d better go,” he said.

  I heard him go out the front door and shut it behind him, heard the Yale lock slick into place. I went to the window and lifted the edge of the curtain and peered out. I went to the front door and pushed the bolts into place. I trod my way upstairs.

  Sammy was breathing softly, curled on his side. The floorboard creaked and he stretched out his arms and spread his fingers, turning them with easy grace. Then his arms went soft and his left hand hung over the edge of the bed. I eased myself down to the floor and rested my face against his soft little hand. I stayed like that for ages.

  I wondered whether Mark would be angry with just Nicholas, or with me, or with both of us.

  I ran a bath. I creaked into the bath. I stared at the condensation and the drips and I listened to the rain outside and I felt stupid and already hungover and wondered how I was going to face Nicholas again in class. And the class: what if he told Tim, what if he told Meryl, what if he went back to the party chuckling…Guess what—no, who—I’ve been doing…

  What if they all already knew?

  I lay awake in bed for hours—flashes of earlier in the evening, flashes of the walk home, the crook of my arm around his arm, the way I’d felt then—patient, trusted, a little bored. The moments when I could have done things differently and it would not have happened. I must have slept a bit, because when I woke Sammy was standing at the bedside staring at me, and I squeaked in fear, and that made him jump, and then I reached out and wrapped my arm around him and hugged him close.

  That morning I put on normal like I used to put on my mum’s shoes when I was little. I jollied my little boy along. I got him dressed and gave him Weetabix and juice and helped him brush his teeth and pack his bag for nursery and I stayed out of the sitting room. I threw my toast crumbs out onto the path and the birds swooped in from the hedge; the blue-and-pink bird swayed on a branch, then dropped to the grass and picked its way around the edge of things.

  We went to catch the bus and I was afraid that Nicholas might also be there, but the bus was empty when we got on and stayed empty for the first few miles; I got Sam settled on my knee and then we were on campus and walking to nursery and I was handing him over to Jenni and telling her he was in good form today, and she took my word for it, and was all smiles.

  Then I was walking in the rain across the perimeter road towards the tipped-out-toy-box of the university. One foot landed in front of the other foot and the bag knocked against my hip and the doors heaved themselves open at me, which meant that I or someone at least was there, and a passer-by caught my eye and said “Morning,” to me which confirmed it, but I did not feel that this thing moving through the world was me. I heard myself say hello Patrick, hello Chris, hello Mina; and then doubt the truth of even that. Then in the corridor, Lisa stopped and frowned, and reached out a hand as if to still me there.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, fine, thanks. Nice jumper.”

  I smiled at Lisa’s sweet face with her
freckles and her almost auburn almost curls and her clean hands with the sweet pearly nails, her soft green jumper, and I thought how nice she was, and how clean, and that I would never be as nice or as clean as she was again.

  I opened up the Safeguarding and Harassment document she had sent me earlier in the term, that I had shared with the MA group. I confirmed that even if I made no complaint or accusation, I was still obliged to report the events of last night to my Head of Department at the earliest opportunity. My Head of Department, Christian Scaife.

  Later, in the campus pharmacy, I asked the pharmacist—a lean, sallow man in his fifties—for the morning-after pill, and watched the shift in his expression as he tried hard not to judge me.

  It cost thirty-five quid. I paid and took the little paper bag and left and would never go in that pharmacy again, even if it was the only health care available for fifty miles. I’d sooner sew my own severed leg back on with a darning needle than go back through that door. And thirty-five pounds: I couldn’t afford thirty-five pounds. I couldn’t afford any of this.

  I bought a coffee at Greggs and locked myself into the ladies’ loo near University Reception, so as not to be near the department. Beyond the doors I could hear the receptionists chatter and the phones ring, and whenever someone came into the loos the outside noise flared louder; women came and went and peed and flushed and washed; hand dryers roared, and there were voices. I read the instructions and read them again and read them again just to be sure. I dabbed the little tablet onto my tongue and swallowed a swig of coffee. The pill was a dot of almost nothing. It was already dissolving in my swallowed coffee, in the slosh of spit and stomach acid. The hormones would be tugged into my blood and be shunted round my body, through arteries and veins and capillaries, letting my uterus know it ought to get a shift on and shed all that accommodating blood, so that if there happened to be a drifting cluster of cells falling through that inner darkness, quietly multiplying, it will be waved along on its way, and wouldn’t settle down and find a home in me.

  And I had a meeting to get to. I dropped the packaging into the sanitary disposal bin and flushed the loo because it seemed odd not to, and let the cubicle clang shut behind me. I caught my own eye inadvertently in the mirror when I washed my hands. I saw the hollows underneath my eyes. I got out my concealer, and smudged it on.

  I thought, You fucking idiot.

  I thought, Fuck you, Nicholas. Lumbering me with this.

  In the meeting, I nodded and noted things down, but I could feel a separate layer of thought, like fresh water flowing over salt water, flowing over the everyday of it all. Flashes of that night. Of the blue corduroy of the sofa cushion, his mouth on me, my face turned away. Of the shove of him into me, the tear of it. The time it took. The time he took to come.

  “It’d be good to hear what Creative Writing has to say about that.”

  And I was back in the room, Christian and Patrick and Lisa there taking minutes. Patrick was looking at me, brow creased. I tried: “I don’t foresee that that would be too much of a problem.” And Christian said, “Well, if it’s alright with you then…,” and I nodded and returned to the shallow drifting waters and my hand drew spirals on the page.

  “Hey.”

  It was after the meeting. I was unlocking my office door. Patrick jogged up to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I touched my face, wondering what I was giving away. “Didn’t sleep well, that’s all. How are you?”

  “But what you agreed to back there.”

  I looked at him, drew a blank.

  “I thought you were up to your eyeballs already?”

  I just looked at him.

  “You’ve just agreed to update the postgraduate handbook.”

  I swallowed. “Well, I expect it needs doing.”

  “Yeah, but by you?”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Simon should be back next term; he could look at it then.”

  “He’ll need easing back in though, won’t he?”

  Patrick pulled a sceptical face.

  Then I was in my office and I sat down, and then got back up again and turned the snib so that the door was locked. Patrick had gone; I wondered if I’d been rude. I felt a bit bad about that. And I felt uneasy too about the door being locked because people can still see you through the glass panel, and if they can see you then they can try the handle and find out that it’s locked, and then why are you sitting there in full sight in your office with the door locked like a madwoman?

  I dragged my chair so its back was up against the wall beside the door, parallel to it, so that I was out of the line of sight and the office looked empty. I put my face in my hands. Swallowed back a heave of acidy coffee; I had to keep that tablet in me. I took a few shaky breaths, then I unlocked the door, went to my computer and switched it on. The rain fell on the window and dripped from the tree and the room grew dark.

  My phone pinged. I jumped. A text; the generic alert, not Mark’s double ding. I scooped it out of my bag.

  It was Nicholas.

  Hey there you.

  I dropped the phone. It hit the floor, lay there glowing. The screen dimmed and blinked out. I leaned out of my door, glanced up and down the corridor. It was dark, so I came out completely and waved my arms around, waking up the lights. They rippled on in sequence, fizzing: the corridor was empty, greasy breeze block and worn carpet from end to end. I slipped back into my office, peered out of the window and scanned the quad. Patches of orange lamplight, the glow from the porter’s window. Dark arches, doorways. Nobody visible, but that didn’t mean there was nobody there.

  The phone pinged awake again. I scrabbled it up. Just the reminder. I fumbled to delete the message, deleted too the back and forth about babysitters that came before. That first Hey there you, and my chummy reply. As if deleting that changed anything. His fingertips on my cheek. His mouth on my throat.

  I gathered up work to take home with me. I locked up. I passed the college bar, heaving with end-of-term festivities, the sound of Slade blaring out over yelled conversations. I kept a determined profile. I walked fast. I ducked past the porter’s lodge, and there were a couple of girls in the passageway there, in team hoodies and leggings, drinking from plastic pint glasses and laughing.

  Term was over. I was going back to London.

  * * *

  —

  The blood started the following day. I felt it come, and took myself off to the drippy little bathroom in the cottage. I sat there with my pants around my knees, and blew a breath and laughed a little bit and teared up too. It wasn’t a guarantee I wasn’t pregnant, but it meant that things were probably headed that way.

  On Sunday, we got the bus into town, and then the train down to London.

  Our train was overcrowded, smelly, running half an hour late by the time we got on it. I managed to get our stuff stowed and find us a seat. We were diverted via the Midlands due to theft of signal wire on the West Coast Mainline. I was bleeding heavily. I had to take Sammy with me to the loo, and distract him with talk and pointing out the poster in the little room while I swiftly changed my tampon. Back in our seat, I persuaded him to put his head down against my chest and have a little sleep. I put my hand over his exposed ear, to block out the noise. He blinked slow blinks. I got out my phone, was going to text Mark. But there was another message waiting there.

  You busy? Thought we could meet up. Go for coffee.

  And then a blink later:

  Bring the boy.

  I deleted the texts. My face went red.

  I waited for a patch of signal as we chuntered through Rugby. I texted Mark.

  Can you meet us at Euston? Expect to get in at 4ish.

  I’d just clicked Send when I remembered that school didn’t break up till the end of
next week, and his phone would be on silent anyway, till home time.

  My son slept on my lap. My tampon swelled inside me. Time, and the train, inched on.

  * * *

  —

  In the ladies’ loo in Euston, I left Sammy in his buggy outside the cubicle, kept his little foot and the pushchair wheel in sight under the door. I made him sing to me the whole time too, so that we both knew that he was safe and wasn’t being stolen.

  By the time we got back to the flat, he had fallen asleep. The fried-chicken eaters stood up to let us pass, and I bumped him up over the threshold and lifted him out and left the pushchair in the hall, and clambered up the stairs. Mark closed his laptop and got up, and I put the boy in his father’s arms, and slid my backpack off my shoulders, and lifted up the neckline of my top to peer in at the red marks where the bag straps had pressed and chafed. Mark carried Sam through to the bedroom, then came back and put his arms around me. I closed my eyes, and smelt the familiar smell of him and leaned against the familiar flesh and breathed there.

  “I missed you,” I said.

  “I missed you too.”

  We just stood there, arms around each other, my head resting on his shoulder. I could feel his heartbeat. I could smell him; coffee and school and skin and a faint remainder of the morning’s cologne.

  “Sorry I couldn’t come and meet you,” Mark said.

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “You must be tired.”

  “Shattered.”

  “Sam seems to have settled anyway,” Mark said. “So that’s good.”

  He let go of me, and went through to the kitchen, and started to open a bottle of wine.

  “We’ll have to get him up later and put him on the loo,” I said. “And get his PJs on.”

  “Okay, no problem; I’ll do that. You hungry?”

  “Always.”

  “We’ll have to order something, sorry. Mad time at work.”

  “It always is, coming up to Christmas.”

  “Shall we get a Chinese? Or Indian? Pizza?”