by Abigail Dean
‘OK,’ he said. He wrapped me into his arms and kissed my forehead. ‘The welcome drinks,’ he said. ‘Promise me you’ll go to those, Lex.’
‘OK.’
The welcome drinks were tea and squash, which didn’t seem especially welcoming. A student from an older year, appointed to put us at ease, asked me a series of polite questions. Where was I from, what subject would I study, how had I spent the summer. Over his shoulder, a girl in a denim jacket had just said something to make the surrounding group laugh.
I excused myself. I would shower and prepare for the first week of lectures. That was a whole five days away. In the still of the strange new room, with the sounds of the reception stretching out across the gardens, it seemed like a very long time.
I was at my desk, reading about old laws, when somebody rapped at the door. I tiptoed to the keyhole and watched the girl in the denim jacket lean against the wall and fold her arms. She waited for one beat – two – and, bemused, turned away.
I opened the door.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the greatest introduction, but I think that we share a bathroom.’ She stuck out a scrawny hand. She had vampiric dog teeth and crooked dimples, so each time you realized that she was good-looking, it surprised you.
‘The whole welcome thing,’ she said. ‘It’s a little awkward.’
Olivia was studying Economics. She had spent the last year as au pair to the children of an Australian oil executive, which had made her realize that money really, truly, genuinely doesn’t buy you happiness. One of the daughters faced her down on her very first day and told her that she would be gone within the week. ‘A year later,’ Olivia said, ‘she cried when I left. So that was a real triumph.’ She had already met the guy living below us, who was called Christopher and was studying architecture. His mother had sent him with brownies for the whole staircase, and he was stockpiling them under his bed, mortified. She looked past me to the little pile of belongings in the middle of my room, bunched together like there was safety in numbers.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Great duvet.’
Olivia met me in the champagne bar at Romilly Townhouse, and hugged me carefully. She wore aviators and a suit and a fine silk scarf, embroidered with ants.
We talked about Italy and the wedding, and the torta al testo which the couple served at midnight. ‘Truly,’ said Olivia, ‘the finest fucking thing that has ever been in my mouth.’ We talked about genealogy and genomics, in a broad sense; Devlin’s deal was confidential, and Olivia worked for a rabid investment outfit. ‘My dad tried it,’ Olivia said, ‘in a sort of start-of-retirement crisis. I think he found out that we were from Wales – where my grandparents live.’ We discussed the weather. We debated shopping in New York versus shopping in London. ‘But,’ Olivia said, ‘don’t you start to find the flattery grating?’
‘Your mother,’ Olivia said, as the fourth round of drinks was served. ‘Oh, Lex. I’m not going to pretend like I know what to say. But she brought you into this world.’ Olivia raised her glass. ‘So. Cheers to that.’
At the beginning, I would try to tell Olivia and Christopher all of the time. We would be walking to the college bar, or drinking in the gardens in the rusty October afternoons, and the words would rush up to my throat, tasting of bile.
They knew that I was adopted and that I was older than I should be. I wonder now about all of the other strange aberrations which they left unquestioned: the photograph of me and Evie on my bedside table, and my insistence on showering at inopportune moments, and my fortnightly journeys to London, where I walked through Fitzrovia, past the stern townhouses and the rainbow mews, to see Dr K. Did they consider whether they should ask me for an explanation? Did they debate exactly what the first question should be, in order to secure the highest returns?
If they ever did discuss my oddities, they concluded that they wouldn’t raise them with me. Term was passing, and my history had become like an acquaintance’s name: there was a point after which it became impossible to ask for it. I didn’t mention Mother and Father until our final year, and then, it was only because I had to.
It was late October, and the week of Halloween parties and dinners. Each evening, mist seeped in from the Fens, like autumn’s great party trick. Olivia and I recycled the previous year’s outfits, which had been highly acclaimed: we were the dead twins from The Shining, with pale blue dresses and just the right knee-length socks, which we had found in a back-to-school sale. We walked into the college bar hand in hand, looking serious, and Christopher turned to see us. A plastic knife was protruding from his skull.
All of our favourite people were there, and ‘Thriller’ was playing on the jukebox. Olivia’s new boyfriend had cycled over with a college friend whom I knew from the university running club and liked well enough. The early darkness still surprised us, as though the evening was going too fast. Soon we would be in spring term and close to examinations, and there would be no more nights like this one. We left the bar later and drunker than we had intended, still holding our plastic glasses, and started to walk along the courtyard towards the college gates. The fog lingered over the grass; through it, I could see the distorted lights of the buildings across the quad, but not if anybody was watching from the windows.
Halfway to the gate, I heard the sound of footsteps just before us – about to meet us – and from the mist came a collection of grotesques. There was Ian Brady, with his suit and his hair just so, and a drag Myra at his side. There was O.J. Simpson, his face a mask on a slight, white boy’s body, and the black glove dangling – ill-fitting – from his hand. There was Shipman, with a fake beard and a real medic’s coat. And then, towards the back, were Mother and Father.
They had captured Mother’s white, white hair, the wig askew on the boy’s head, and the odd, grey dress she was wearing when she was arrested. In the mugshot, it fell from her shoulder, and you could see the slash of shadow cast by her collarbone; they hadn’t got that. Father was even less accurate. The tallest boy in the group has assumed his role, but he wasn’t tall enough. The haircut was too good, and the eyes were too mild. That, I thought, wasn’t really the imposter’s fault.
‘Tasteful, kids,’ Olivia said, as they passed.
The plastic glass fell from my hand. The mist was thickening; now I couldn’t see Olivia or Christopher, or my own hands. ‘Liv,’ I called, with the idea that I could do so quietly, before anybody else noticed, although I was already on my knees, and the grass was soft and wet between my fingers.
Ted Bundy, whom I recognized from the law society, helped Olivia to carry me to my room. She had dismissed her boyfriend. She ran two glasses of water and lay down beside me on top of the night sky.
‘It was some kind of sporting dinner,’ she said. ‘“Fuck-ups and Felons”. Creepy as hell, though.’
She rolled over to face me, but I stayed on my back, following the cracks on the ceiling, trying to travel along them from one wall of the room to another.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe the drinks.’
She snorted. ‘Come off it, Lex. You? It was the start of the night.’
‘Then – I don’t know.’
‘Lex,’ she said. ‘I never asked – there were lots of things that I didn’t want to ask. I guess I thought that you’d say them when you were ready. Maybe you never will – I don’t know. And I don’t really care. But you have to tell me if you’re OK.’
I could feel the words sputtering up my throat, as they had done when we first met.
‘If I tell you,’ I said, ‘can you promise me – that whatever questions you might have – and whatever you might think – we never have to talk about it again?’
‘Oh, Lex,’ Olivia said. ‘Of course I can.’
‘Do you remember,’ I said, ‘the House of Horrors – you would have been about thirteen …’
When we left the Romilly Townhouse, the evening escalated quickly. Olivia was a mem
ber of a whisky society with a bar nearby, and Christopher could meet us there. His new boyfriend was trying his hand at stand-up comedy, and Christopher couldn’t bear to watch him; this was a good excuse to miss an evening show. ‘It’s not that he’s bad,’ Christopher said. ‘It’s that I’m on edge. I keep waiting for somebody to heckle. And if they do, I’ll have to tackle them to the fucking floor.’
‘Can you look into retorts?’ I asked. ‘That might be a safer bet.’
‘We’re working on it,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I preferred it when he was the funniest accountant I knew.’
‘He wasn’t that funny,’ Olivia said.
‘Olivia’s in a dreadful mood,’ I said. ‘Ask her about the air conditioning.’
‘My mood’s improving. I just can’t see him on stage.’
‘You two are about forty drinks ahead of me,’ Christopher said, and ordered another round. ‘I had no idea that you liked whisky, Liv.’
‘I’m not wild about it. But I like having somewhere to take people. You should always have somewhere to take people.’
‘And somewhere with so much atmosphere,’ I said. There was only one other person in the bar, an old man in a houndstooth suit: ‘Is he dead?’ Olivia had asked, when we arrived.
‘Well, you should always have somewhere where you know that you’ll get a seat.’
‘Tell us about New York, Lex.’
‘I moved house,’ I said, ‘to this loft. It’s huge. Near the water, in Brooklyn. But it’s shared.’
‘I couldn’t share,’ Olivia said.
‘It’s me and this old woman. The old woman who owns the loft. There’s a partition in between our spaces, but sometimes the partition falls down, and there she’ll be, in bed, or watching a documentary. She’s called Edna.’
‘Edna’s ripping you off,’ Christopher said.
‘Yes. Spend some more money, Lex.’
‘I don’t mind it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got used to it. She’s very quiet. I’m never even there.’
‘Leave Edna, and come back to London.’
‘Well, I’m here now.’
‘And you have to stay for my birthday,’ Olivia said. ‘It’s the big one. Twenty-eight. I’m having the party two years early, before I’m too tired.’
‘I’m exhausted,’ I said.
‘New York was a good excuse, but that isn’t.’
The bartender collected the glasses. ‘Which one did you like?’ he asked. There had been tasting notes, but we hadn’t read them.
‘I liked them all,’ Olivia said, ‘and this one the best.’
‘What about JP?’ Christopher asked.
‘What about him?’
Christopher looked at Olivia, a drink beyond subtlety.
‘Will you see him?’
‘I don’t think there’ll be time,’ I said. ‘I’m working for a psychopath.’
‘He asks about you whenever I have to see him,’ Olivia said.
‘That’s nice.’
‘I say that you’re doing great. I say that you’re beautiful and rich.’
‘Thanks, Liv. To be honest, I don’t think about him too much. Just on and off. I’m OK.’
‘If there’s anything you’d like to know, I can find it out.’
‘Well, I’d like very much not to talk about it.’
We tried to get into Ronnie Scott’s for the later show, but there wasn’t one on Sundays, and the club was about to close. ‘Go home,’ the doorman suggested. Christopher needed to meet his boyfriend; the stand-up hadn’t gone well. I implored Olivia to join me for one final drink.
‘Twelve fifteen,’ she said, and recoiled from her watch. ‘I’m out, Lex. I’m out.’
When her taxi arrived, she climbed in and lay down on the back seat, and looked at me upside down, through the open window.
‘It’s too hot for any of this,’ she said, and then, laughing: ‘Is it really Sunday?’
‘It’s the new Thursday.’
‘So long. So long, my friend.’
The driver, bored with us, began to pull out. Olivia sat up and waved. ‘London!’ she shouted. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ I nodded: yes, yes, it was good to be in the city. The taxi trundled into the night traffic. I stood on the kerb for a few minutes, considering a man I used to see in Marylebone, after JP. Only a short walk away. I had met him online according to his discretion, and I thought of him often, when I was listless in New York. It was a terrible idea. For all I knew, he could be married now.
I walked past the dark restaurants and the doorways, and back to the hotel. There was a freestanding bath in the middle of my room, which I hadn’t bothered to run during the week. Now I sat on the chequered floor and watched it filling. When I was swaddled in the water, I reached for my phone. Ethan had messaged. Wesley won the cricket game. It was good to see you, as ever. A transmission from a whole different time. I squinted at the screen. Excellent news, I replied. Then, because I was soft and drunk: Honduras?
One last task for the day. I found the number I was looking for, and again there was the breathless voicemail, as though you had interrupted her in tears, or in bed. ‘Delilah,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you ring me the fuck back.’
Mother was finally examined more than a week after Ethan’s birth. In the first few days, jubilant with the baby, the pain had felt like an accomplishment. On the seventh day, she was cowed by fever, and she prayed with her eyes on Father, imploring. He relented when Ethan was ten days old, and Mother was shaking too hard to hold him. She hadn’t prayed hard enough.
After the infections were treated, and the tears stitched, the doctor informed my parents that if Mother decided to have more children, there was a significant risk of complications, and she should do so only in a hospital bed. The doctor must have been the kind of man whom Father tolerated: powerful; self-assured; difficult to argue with. I was too young to remember Delilah’s birth, but I recall our visit to hospital to meet Evie, who was born late on New Year’s Day.
Father had left us with Mother’s sister, Peggy, who had married one of the boys from the grammar school. She was pregnant at the wedding, although she tied a great bow of chiffon low around her waist, and nobody was allowed to talk about it until the couple returned from honeymoon. By the time Evie was born, Peggy had two loud, gormless boys, one Ethan’s age and the other a little older, and spent her days cleaning the new home her husband had purchased. Tony Granger was an estate agent in Manchester, and seldom seen. Ethan called him the Faceless Man: we only ever seemed to catch a glimpse of navy suit or polished shoes, disappearing into one of the rooms of the vast, white house.
Ethan liked to torture our cousins, the way that some children like to torture the household pet. He told them fanciful stories: if they could hold their breath underwater for one minute, then they might be recruited by the same secret society to which he belonged; there was a serial killer in town who was targeting small boys as they slept, and the only proven way to avert him was to stay awake for three nights on the trot. He would place a prized belonging from Benjamin’s room beneath Michael’s bed and await the ensuing tantrum, or knock one of the boy’s glasses from the table, casually, when the adults were in another room. ‘You’re so clumsy, Benjamin,’ he would say, continuing to eat, and Ethan – being slighter, and younger, and with my unwavering support – would usually be believed.
When Father came from the hospital to collect us, it was bedtime. Ethan and I had fought over who would read the bedtime story, and Peggy had deemed that we would take it in turns, in age order: first Michael, then Benjamin, then Ethan, and then me. Delilah, three and bored, ran from one room to the next, delighted to be awake. The book concerned pirates, and was significantly more dramatic than any of Father’s bedtime tales, even if Michael read in a stilted monotone, and Ethan rolled his eyes (‘Alexandra can read better than this’) until it was his go.
I was nervous and excited about the opportunity to read in front of an audience, and as Ethan neared the end of his pages, my
heart pattered faster. I really could read better than Benjamin – and maybe even better than Michael – and here was the chance to prove it. I cleared my throat, and had wrested the book from Ethan when Father knocked at the door.
‘Another girl,’ Father said to Peggy, then shouted for us.
‘It’s late,’ Peggy said. ‘Eight o’clock, Charles. They’re in their pyjamas. They can just stay here.’
Ethan and Delilah had joined Father at the door, but I stayed on the sofa, holding the book. ‘It’s my turn,’ I said. ‘It’s my turn to read.’
‘Come here, Alexandra.’
‘It’s outside visiting hours anyway,’ Peggy said. ‘They can meet their sister tomorrow.’
‘I’ll decide when they can meet their sister. Let’s go, Alexandra.’
‘There are only a few pages left.’
Ethan looked up at Father. ‘Come on, Alexandra,’ he said.
‘But it’s my turn.’
Father held out his arm and brushed Peggy aside. He came into the living room without taking his shoes off and picked me up. I was still holding the book; he took it from my hand, easily, and threw it against the wall. Over his shoulder, I saw the faint footprints of dirt in the cream carpet, and Peggy and her children, standing in their light, bright hallway, becoming smaller in the night.
Mother had been opened up, Father said, once we were in the car. The baby couldn’t get itself in the right position. They had cut her out. I looked to Ethan for an explanation, but he, too, was confused. Delilah started to cry.
At the hospital, I didn’t want to leave the car. I thought of Mother on a cool, silver table, her torso splayed across the room. You could see each of her organs operating, as on the face of an expensive watch. The new baby crawled from the viscera, slippery with blood. In the car park, I reached for Ethan’s hand, expecting him to ridicule me; he was eight, now, and above such gestures. But he held my hand and squeezed it.
Of course, it wasn’t like that at all. We travelled along the vast, bright corridors, trying to pronounce the names of the wards. In maternity, a nurse spoke to us gingerly, the way that you might speak to a wounded and vicious animal, and took us to Mother. She lay on the bed, asleep, with her skin and flesh intact. At her side, in a small plastic cradle, was the baby.
