by Tammy Cohen
But that was okay. Some friendships just asked more of you than others.
‘Have you got any work you should be doing?’ I asked Em, smiling to show I wasn’t nagging.
‘Not really. Well, I guess I have got an English assignment due tomorrow, but …’
Em tailed off, embarrassed. I knew she’d hate to make Frances feel uncomfortable.
‘Please get on with whatever you need to do,’ said Frances. ‘Don’t feel you have to stay down here because of me. I’ve got to leave soon anyway.’
‘If you’re sure,’ said Em, standing uncertainly by the door.
‘Go on,’ said Frances. ‘And remember, any time you need anything, someone to talk to, I’m just on the end of the phone.’
She can talk to me.
At least I didn’t voice the petty thought out loud.
When Emma left I expected Frances to go too, but instead she settled back in her seat.
‘And how are you feeling now, Tessa?’
I stifled the urge to glance at the kitchen clock.
‘Oh, fine. Well, good, actually. Rosie’s still mad at me, but she’ll come around. Stephens has been really quiet. You know, I don’t want to tempt fate, but I feel like this whole thing might finally be over.’
Frances bit her lip, and when she looked up there was an expression of concern in her eyes that her weak smile couldn’t disguise.
‘I hope you’re right, Tessa. But I’m still worried he’s planning some kind of retribution for you getting him thrown off the football team. Men like him don’t tend to let things like that go. And even if he isn’t, it doesn’t alter the fact that he’s right here. Just a few streets away from you, from Emma. Can you ever really feel secure?’
A drawstring was pulled tight across my chest when she said that, but I tried to smile.
‘I just have to put it out of my head. I mean, when you think about it, there’s no tangible difference now from when this whole thing started. We always knew it was a good bet that the man who assaulted Em would turn out to be local. We had a chance to stop him with the ID parade but after that failed we just had to accept there was nothing more we could do. Which is exactly the position we’re back in now.’
I didn’t bring up the failed ID parade to score a point. Honestly. But I could see it had stung.
‘Obviously, you have to do what’s best for you.’
‘That’s just it. This is what’s best for me. I feel normal again, Frances, for the first time in weeks. I feel …’
I was interrupted by the arrival of Nita, who swept in holding a big bunch of tulips and a bottle of wine.
‘Oh,’ she said, stopping short in surprise at seeing Frances. ‘I didn’t know we would have company. How lovely. We met before, didn’t we? Up at the Palace?’
Again, I hoped Frances would take this as her prompt to leave. I wanted some one-on-one time with Nita.
Frances, however, showed no signs of moving and happily accepted a glass of wine, despite what she’d said before about not drinking during the week. I didn’t, although I was sorely tempted. Not drinking was part of my private penance to Rosie and her friends. It wouldn’t be for ever, just until I forgave myself a little more. The conversation around the table was pleasant but stilted, never really dipping beneath the surface. I didn’t want to talk to Nita about what had been going on with Stephens. I needed her to feed back to the others that I was doing well. Stable. So I was on tenterhooks in case Frances gave something away.
Forty-five minutes passed. An hour.
Nita asked me about Nick, and I felt weirdly self-conscious, remembering how Frances had thought he might not actually be real.
‘Things are going well, believe it or not,’ I said now, shy as a teenager. But still there was a twinge of pleasure at having proved Frances wrong.
‘It’s so exciting,’ Nita declared. ‘I adore a good love story, don’t you, Frances?’
Frances smiled tightly. ‘A bit early to call it love, don’t you think?’ she said.
I felt oddly embarrassed then, as if I’d allowed my emotions to run away with me.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s early days and I’m certainly not taking anything for granted. It’s not even two years since I split up with Phil and I’m still not sure I’m completely over it. To be honest, I wonder if you ever do really get over something like that.’
Finally, Frances looked up at the clock.
‘Oh, crikey,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘I should be getting back. Can I give you a lift home, Nita?’
Nita looked taken aback.
‘No, you’re fine, thanks. I think I’ll just hang on here a little longer.’
‘Right. If you’re sure.’
Still, Frances hovered in the doorway.
‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll just nip up to say goodbye to Em and then I’ll head off.’
After she left the room Nita waited a few seconds to give her time to go up the stairs and then turned to me with raised eyebrows.
‘I thought she’d never leave.’
There was a creaking noise then, from out in the hallway, and we looked at each other in panic, Nita’s mouth falling open in an ‘o’.
A few moments later came the sound of the front door closing.
‘Oh my God, do you think she heard?’ Nita had her hand half over her mouth. While Kath would have found the whole thing funny, Nita looked horrified. She wasn’t used to being thought badly of.
Remorse ran through me, warm and sickly as treacle. Frances was only trying to help. And even though she’d never say it, I’d formed the impression she needed these short periods of respite from her home and her mum and her carer responsibilities.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told Nita, ‘I’ll call her tomorrow to smooth things over.’
Still, unease crept like damp into my bones and I could not shake it off.
33
I took Dotty out to Alexandra Palace and sat on one of the benches that line the top path. This is the path that runs along the top of the hill, directly across the road in front of the Palace. From there I composed an unnecessarily long text to Frances, saying I hoped she hadn’t felt excluded the previous night and explaining that Nita was an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while and we had a lot of things we needed to talk through.
After I pressed send I stayed on the bench, gazing down the steep grassy slope in front of me to the path that ran along the middle of the park, and then over the trees towards the lower path and the bottom park, and then on to where London lay spread out across the horizon like a street trader’s wares. The sun glinted off the glass-pyramid-topped roof of Canary Wharf Tower while the silver needle point of the Shard pierced a cobalt-blue sky.
God, but my city was beautiful sometimes.
Frances’s reply came through a couple of minutes later.
Please don’t worry. I understand completely.
Thank God for that.
Feeling instantly lighter, I called to Dotty and we started descending the steep tarmacked path that led through the grass. Halfway down, I stopped.
On the middle path just below us, bisecting the path I was on, an imposing figure stood, staring up. Her straight hair, neither brown nor blonde but an indeterminate shade in between, was tucked behind her ears and there was a slash of orange around her neck. A shiver rippled through me as I recognized her. It was the woman who’d been watching Frances and me at the café in Highgate Woods.
I called to Dotty, who’d scampered on ahead, and she came bounding back, tail wagging in expectation.
‘Silly girl,’ I said softly, bending to clip her lead on to her collar.
When I looked up again the woman had gone.
I hurried down to where the woman had been standing, at the crossroads where the middle path that was slung around Alexandra Park like a belt crossed over the steep path I was on. There was no sign of the woman in either direction but I noticed, off to the right around fifty yards ahead, a ro
ugh trail through the trees that separated the middle path from the lower one.
We set off down the winding trail, but Dotty didn’t want to go that way so our progress was slow and by the time we reached the lower path there was no sign of the woman.
All the way home I tried to convince myself it hadn’t been the same woman we’d seen before, or if it was, it was purely coincidence. Highgate Woods and Alexandra Park were popular local dog-walking spots; it wasn’t unusual to see the same faces in each location. But still I couldn’t completely shake off that chill of recognition.
As I fished in my bag for my keys, my phone rang. A number I didn’t recognize.
‘Tessa? It’s Joy. Can you come over? Something’s happened.’
Something’s happened. The repeat of the phrase Frances had used on my doorstep that first awful night she’d brought Emma home made the flesh freeze around my bones.
Twenty-five minutes later I was walking up that black-and-white tiled pathway to the wide front door with the stained-glass panels on either side, ducking my head under the low-hanging wisteria. Shame coated me in a damp sheen and I had to stop to run a hand over my clammy face, remembering how I’d been here before in those early febrile days after Phil’s departure. Banging on doors that refused to open to me, convinced that if the people behind them could just see my face I could somehow force back time like a faulty shop shutter, and Phil and the girls would step through and come home with me and none of it would have happened.
Em’s face at the window upstairs, mouthing, ‘Please go home, Mum.’
I closed my eyes.
Up ahead, the front door swung open. There was Joy, barefoot, in a way that spoke of underfloor heating. Wide-legged navy trousers and a matching navy camisole with a long, soft cream cashmere cardigan draped over the top.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘A bit heartbroken,’ said Joy. ‘He didn’t give her any warning, that’s the worst thing. She thought things were going so well, and then he just ended it out of the blue. By text. She’ll be all right. She’s made of strong stuff. But right now she needs her mum.’
My skinny jeans stuck to the backs of my thighs as I stepped forward. I’d never made it this far before. In the past, I’d been stopped at the door or, after Joy’s patience ran out, Phil would cut me off at the gate.
The hallway was wide and square with a staircase of polished wood that swept up around it. Through an open doorway at the back I glimpsed a vast white-floorboarded kitchen with a central island and concertina glass doors along the length of the back wall.
Joy led me into a living room at the front dominated by the biggest, deepest corner sofa I’d ever seen in a vivid pink velvet, piled high with cushions. The rest of the room was pared back in shades of white and cream. I took in the white plantation shutters I’d stared at from the other side all those times, trying to imagine what lay behind them.
As I sat down in a corner of that enormous sofa, a willowy blonde teenager with braces across her teeth poked her head round the door, trying not to stare too obviously. I’d never really given much thought to Joy’s twins, but now I felt embarrassed at the things they might have seen in that fraught period after Phil moved in.
That wasn’t me, I wanted to say to this girl. That was someone else.
‘Fetch Rosie, would you, Izzy?’ asked Joy.
The girl nodded and disappeared.
‘Your girls must think I’m crazy,’ I said, trying to laugh.
Joy didn’t reply.
Rosie appeared, also barefoot, wearing pyjama bottoms and a sweatshirt, even though it was late afternoon. I tried not to mind how comfortable she looked here, how at home.
A small, ungracious voice in my head whispered, No wonder she doesn’t want to live at your house. But I drowned it out. It was time I started taking responsibility for the things that had happened.
I knew that.
Rosie’s hair was greasy at the roots and pulled back into a messy ponytail, and her eyes were puffy. I got up to hug her and, after a moment or two, her arms closed around me and she leaned her head on my shoulder.
‘I’m so sorry you got hurt, RoRo,’ I said, using an old family nickname that stemmed from Em’s early attempts at pronouncing her sister’s name. ‘And I’m sorry about before, thinking Stephens had got to you. I should have given you more credit.’
She nodded and sank down on to the sofa, her expression so much that of the little girl I used to drop off at school or friends’ houses, determined not to cry, that my heart felt bruised with love.
‘I’ll go and make tea,’ said Joy, slipping out of the room. I was grateful for her tact as I sat down next to my daughter, who seemed so terribly fragile.
‘Mum, why doesn’t he want me?’
Rosie’s voice was thick, as if she had something in her mouth, and something inside me ripped apart like an old sheet.
‘Oh, darling. He’s a fool. You’re worth ten of him. Twenty. Thousands. I know this hurts now, but eventually you’ll find someone worthy of you and then you won’t even think about him any more.’
I squeezed her shoulder hard, as if I could force her to share my optimism, but when I looked down her lovely face was pale with misery.
In the end, Rosie came back home with me for the night, wearing a coat over her pyjamas.
I helped her into bed as if she were a child. It had been so long since anyone went into her bedroom I’d almost forgotten what it looked like. After the crash, when she didn’t want to talk to me, it was just too painful a reminder of everything I’d lost.
Luckily, it was all there, just as she’d left it that last time before she went to the party in Stoke Newington. The bed still made up with her favourite vintage-style floral duvet cover, the sheepskin rug on the floor, even a novel waiting on the bedside table, bookmark in place. A pair of battered Doc Martens, so old the leather had cracked across the widest part, sat untouched under the desk.
I pulled the duvet over Rosie and sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her hair.
‘Sorry for being such a wuss,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s good to have you home,’ I said.
When she was asleep, I went downstairs and opened up my laptop and watched my parents for a while on the webcam, to take my mind off everything. Once again, my father looked tired. My mother was telling him off about something. ‘You never listen,’ she said. ‘That’s your problem. You’ll never amount to anything if you don’t listen.’
I wondered who she thought he was. Perhaps some long-distant version of himself.
My dad rubbed a hand over his eyes and suddenly I was consumed with anger at the unfairness of it all. Contemporaries of theirs were still going on cruises and taking up yoga and joining the University of the Third Age. Why my parents? Why were they the ones reduced to this horrendous half-existence? They’d worked hard all their lives, tried to be decent people, and now here was my mum in a constant state of confusion and fear and fury at people who weren’t even there, and my poor dad, not in the best of health, and worn to a thin shaving of his former self, his whole day spent parrying demands and abuse.
A hot rush of despair surged over me. Why was life so bloody vindictive? The last years should be a reward for all the good things you’d done, and instead there was indignity stacked on indignity, like a teetering pile of rotting trash.
Why should people like Stephens, who thought of nothing but themselves and their own selfish wants and pleasures, be strutting the streets in all their swaggering power and virility and vigour while my parents were semi-prisoners in their home?
I clicked off from my parents and rang Nick, leaving a long, rambling message when it went to voicemail.
He texted back almost immediately, saying he was out with one of his colleagues.
Are you OK? You sounded weird, he asked.
Fine, I lied. Then I put my head in my hands and wept.
34
That night I lay a
wake for hours. I was still worrying about my parents, the way my father’s face sagged, as if his very muscles had given up. I picked up my phone to check the Granny-Cam and found a new email from Nick. He must have sent it when he got in, still worried by my voicemail message. I tried to compose a reply but couldn’t find the words I wanted to say. I started telling him how I’d convinced myself that Rosie’s new man was Stephens, but it looked so ridiculous written down. Paranoid. So I told him instead about Rosie’s break-up and my quiet joy at having her home again, but then it felt wrong to be talking about my daughter’s private affairs to someone she didn’t even know and I ended up deleting the whole thing, feeling vaguely ashamed of myself. I was so overwrought with emotion and exhaustion I even found myself questioning whether I should be embarking on a new relationship when my children still needed me so much.
Early in the morning I crept to Rosie’s open door and watched the duvet rising and falling with her breath. In the clear light of the new day my perspective shifted, the soul-searching of the previous night giving way to a cautious optimism. My daughter was back home where she belonged. Anything felt possible.
While I made her breakfast, Rosie admitted she was already regretting dropping out of uni. She’d been feeling unhappy in Manchester for a while because she didn’t feel it was the right course for her, and then meeting Steve had just reinforced her decision to leave. ‘I’m just waiting for a call from the head of the criminology department at uni,’ she said. ‘He’s going to tell me what extra assignments I’d need to do to go straight into year two in the autumn.’
