by Abigail Dean
After several months, I realized that I had been wrong, although I knew that JP appreciated the assumption. It was, after all, a testament to his life’s work. His mother lived in Leeds, and he visited her three times a year, returning sullen and withdrawn. Her house was cluttered with kitsch ornaments and kitchen paraphernalia, and he couldn’t stand it. He had been made to watch whatever came onto TV next. He had lost brain matter. But he was simple to appease. I waited for him on the sofa or at his desk, sometimes in the position which he requested and sometimes intending to surprise him, and when he walked into his flat he smiled, dropped his bag definitively upon the floor, and unbuckled his belt. ‘There’s no place like home,’ he said.
When I found JP looking at me – returning to our table from the bar of the local pub, or grinning over his shoulder from his desk – I wondered about his own misapprehensions. I had told him everything about Mum and Dad. He knew the layout of their cottage, the best of Dad’s stories, my teenage grudges against them. To somebody else, it might have seemed strange that my memories started at fifteen, but JP’s reluctance to discuss his own childhood made my omissions much easier. We had his cases, and Olivia’s on-off relationship with his senior colleague, and the impending start of my job, and which books we should take with us to Croatia, in order that we would both be happy to read any one of them, and Christopher’s new boyfriend, who was earnest, which we both agreed was one of the worst things you could be. The past was one of the few foreign countries which neither of us wished to visit. There was always so much else to talk about.
My lies ran out when I realized that he would have to meet my parents. It had been over a year, and we planned to leave our separate flats and to move together, to somewhere new. I was pretty sure that Mum and Dad would lie for me, if I asked, but when I pictured them in the garden in Sussex, nudging one another to remember the facade, I didn’t want them to have to.
‘If you’re going to do it,’ said Olivia, ‘then just do it, before you drive yourself crazy.’
‘But doesn’t it have to be the right moment?’
‘Come on, Lex. There isn’t a right moment for something like this.’
Now that the decision had been made, the thought of it loomed over my desk at work, and sat beside me in the taxi on the way home. It stood beside our bed at night, glancing at its watch.
I waited until a summer Bank Holiday. A Friday-night train to the Lake District, with cans of gin and tonic. We reached the bed and breakfast after midnight, and by the morning, the landscape had emerged, bright and textured from black silhouettes, as if it had been finished overnight.
I waited a mile into the first walk, when we were off the road and beginning the ascent. I recalled Dr K’s old adage, about the difficult things being easier to say when you don’t have to look at somebody, and I waited until a narrow path between bracken, single-file only.
‘I think that there’s something which I should probably tell you,’ I said.
‘This sounds like a good start to the weekend.’
‘I’m adopted.’
‘OK. By your parents in Sussex?’
‘Yep.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Older than you would expect. Fifteen.’
‘God, Lex. So – you know who your birth parents are?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and felt the shift in the comfort between us. Here we were, on the edge of it, together.
I told him only what he would have been able to read in a news report from the time. When I had finished, he was silent for a moment, and in my head I implored him to turn around, so that I could see his face. ‘God,’ he said. ‘Lex, I’m sorry.’ And, at ten a.m. and because he could never stand to be serious for very long: ‘You should have told me later in the day. When we’ll be closer to a drink.’
He turned to me and gathered me up towards him. ‘We can speak about this whenever you want to,’ he said. ‘But I don’t mind if you don’t.’
We staggered together for a time up the little path, until it became too narrow for two, and he was ahead of me again. That was JP: walking away from me, with his forward-lean and a light pack, towards the skyline. Following my months of indecision, he was able to discard my revelation back there on the path, a fruit skin, or else its core. By the summit, he was talking about lunch.
That night, after sex, we lay on top of the sheet in the inn, as far away from one another as we could be. Just our hands touching. Silence extended in every direction, so that the little human noises of our room – the toilet flush, or music from his phone – seemed loud, and embarrassing. I closed my eyes, and started awake with the sense of something missing. ‘Here,’ I said, and collected the bed covers from the floor. Beneath them, he turned to me.
‘I feel worse,’ he said, ‘about the things that I do to you. That we do together. After what you told me.’
‘Why? It’s what I want.’
‘Yes. But still.’
‘You know – for what it’s worth – they’re not connected. And even if they were—’
‘Yes?’
‘Would it matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
It was too dark to read him. I reached for his face and found hair, then the notch of an ear. He shifted closer.
‘When I’m away,’ he said, ‘and I need something to think about. You know? I think of you very early on. We were in my flat. You looked at me, and – you told me what you wanted. The way that you said it. It was more than I could have hoped for. And I was terrified, of course.’
‘Good,’ I said.
We were a few seconds from falling asleep.
‘There’s a lot that I’m ashamed of,’ I said. ‘But not this.’
I had assumed that JP was being disingenuous; that in time he would be curious, and begin to ask his questions. I was wrong. JP – who was so boundlessly fascinated by matters of morality, or of the law – had little interest in old suffering. His acceptance of my confession, without any disquiet or judgement, lulled me into a sense of absolute security; not just that he loved me, which he had already said, but that it was possible to overcome the past as comprehensively as Dr K had promised. I, too, could be happy.
We lived as I had only secretly hoped that I might live. During the week we worked, arriving home at ten, eleven, midnight, and talking together in bed, in the precious last minutes of that day, and sometimes over into the next one. A lost hour of sleep – the denser fogginess in the morning – seemed like a relatively small price to pay. At the weekend we saw friends, or travelled to Europe late on a Friday evening, landing weary and excited in Porto or Granada or Oslo. I bought postcards for Evie, and wrote them at my desk when I was back. Usually something dull or hideous, chosen to make her laugh. Highways of Norway, or a llama drinking port. Other times, my sentimentality won over. I picked a shot of the Alhambra at dusk, just as they lit the walls. Do you remember, I said, when we saw it in the atlas?
Foolish: to assume that we would live that way for ever. Two years in, JP’s mother visited us in London. His history on the doorstep, wearing coral lipstick and mid-heels. He booked dinner for the three of us at a sleek basement bar in Mayfair. There was a sake list, and small plates. I knew as soon as I met JP’s mother that it was a terrible choice. At the restaurant, she complained about the comfort of her chair and the complications of the menu and the lighting at the table. ‘It’s ever so difficult,’ she said to the waiter, ‘to see what I’d like to eat.’ The waiter returned with a small torch which could be clipped to the menu, and JP winced.
When the food arrived, she took fussy little spoonfuls from each dish and moved them around her plate. JP ate in silence, enjoying nothing. ‘This is great,’ I said, and went for seconds.
‘You’ve got a big appetite,’ JP’s mother said, and I shrugged.
His mother was staying at a bed and breakfast by Euston, and we hailed a taxi and stopped at the address. JP and I came out of the taxi to say goodbye. It had rained while
we were eating. Puddles of light beneath the streetlamps. The building was a dirty cream, and flower baskets drooped on either side of the entrance. ‘It’s perfectly fine,’ JP’s mother said, ‘although the room’s a little warm.’
‘Happy birthday,’ I said. We watched her totter across the street. At the hotel door, she stepped onto a loose paving stone, and a puddle lapped over her shoe.
We ducked back into the taxi, and JP lay across the back seat, his head in my lap. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘She’s not that bad.’
‘She’s terrible,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to say it.’
‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘You know, there was a time when ordering from a menu was the most stressful thing that I could think of.’
‘But not any more.’
‘Well, no. Not any more.’
JP sat up. ‘And I love you even more,’ he said, ‘for that.’ He extended one of his hands and bent me towards him. ‘You know – one day,’ he said, ‘together – we’re going to have the family we both deserve.’
There it was: the gut punch of it. Harder than anything I’d ever requested. His words spread under my skin and into the tissue, so that later, when he watched me undress, I was surprised that he couldn’t see the mark of them. That to him, I was unchanged.
Here is an old legal principle: Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. You are selling a property. The walls are solid; the roof is new; the foundations are strong. You know all of this: you built the house yourself.
Each spring, fleshy roots infest your garden. They grow fast. Canes emerge, bloated and purple. Their leaves are like hearts. Through summer, the canes grow at a rate of ten centimetres each day. You attempt to cut the plant at the canes. Within a day, it returns. You attempt to cut the plant at the roots. Within a week, it returns. You seek consultation.
This is Japanese knotweed. By now, its roots will have penetrated the foundations of your house. They will have nestled three metres deep. In time, it will destroy your property. If a single stem is left in the ground, reinfestation will occur. Its removal is prohibitively expensive.
Should you disclose this invasion to your buyer? If they ask you: yes, of course. But how specifically must the buyer ask? If, for example, they enquire about environmental problems, or contaminative materials – what then? Shouldn’t the buyer have been more explicit? How should you respond? How will you feel at the thought of them unpacking their lives in your empty rooms, with the plant stirring beneath them?
For a second, JP looked at me as a stranger. Then I half waved, and his face softened.
I had selected my outfit with great care, and following two consultations with Christopher. (‘Promise me,’ he had said, ‘that we will never be above such things.’) I wore a golden silk vest (the one item in my suitcase that I remembered JP had liked: I thought of him), a leather skirt with a heavy buckle (did he recall the feeling of the material in his fingers, and the resistance of pulling it up to my waist, when he didn’t want to fumble with the belt?), and quilted Chanel pumps (I was richer than I had been when I last saw him, and was, generally, doing well).
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘And sorry I’m late. This client – well. Let me tell you with drinks.’
Our conversation was more civilized than I had expected, although I shouldn’t have been surprised. Neither of us enjoyed deep and meaningful disclosures, and we had the benefit of having a lot in common. It was the kind of discussion you have with a former colleague, with genuine questions to ask and enough gossip to be entertaining. He talked about his client, who had a penchant for shredding documents, and meetings in international waters. He asked, politely, about Devlin, whom he had always considered crude, and not quite as clever as she thought she was. One of his old law professors had died. JP returned to university for the funeral, and at the dinner afterwards, when he was asked about his career, somebody said: You know, I always thought you looked more like a bouncer than a barrister.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m boring you.’
‘Talking of boredom,’ I said. ‘I have a legal question. For you.’
‘A legal question?’
‘I’m not joking.’
‘I’m sure you’re not. Can you afford me?’
‘I don’t know. You’re pretty overpriced.’
I reached for my drink, but it was already finished.
‘Let’s say you were the executor,’ I said, ‘of a will.’
‘Your mother’s will? For example.’
‘For example. And a house has been left to this person’s surviving children. But one of those children – they were adopted when they were tiny. Years and years ago. They were too young to remember a thing. Technically, they’re a surviving child. But they don’t even know it.’
‘Lex,’ he said, and shook his head.
‘Do you need to tell them?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that question.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What would you do?’
‘You want it to be watertight?’ he said. ‘Then yes. You do.’
‘But.’
‘But what?’
‘But that isn’t what you think I should do.’
He gathered the glasses and stood over me, with his body turned to the bar and his face turned to mine. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is beyond the scope of my retainer.’
I had seen JP in court once, although I had never told him. He had always resisted any suggestion that I might attend one of his hearings. It was a minor case by his standards, and pro bono: he was acting for a young mother whose divorce lawyer had failed to explain her basic rights. The woman was left with nothing, yet still expected to pay the fees. I had little on at work, so I caught a bus from the City to a miserable courtroom in East London. I had brought a notebook in the guise of research, but now that I was here, it seemed to make me more conspicuous. But JP didn’t even look at the gallery. He was cutting and concise, polite to the judge and to his learned friend. I awaited his every phrase with an exhilarated terror. I thought that you have to care about somebody very much to have the energy to hope that they don’t stumble over a word. I guessed that it was the kind of caring that most people save for their children.
He set down new drinks. We touched glasses. ‘Tell me about New York,’ he said.
I had been select in my reports to colleagues, and even to Olivia and Christopher. But JP really did want to hear about New York. I told him about my runs in Battery Park, which had to be early: everybody got to work so fucking early in New York. I had my own office overlooking the Statue of Liberty – ‘So, you really are a big deal,’ said JP – and my favourite places for coffee; ramen; books; tacos; pastrami. The New York bar exams had been easier than I expected. I spent many weekends in Long Island, where Devlin owned a house. On certain summer evenings, a rich bronze light extended from the horizon across the ocean and the sky, and landed on the long metal table in Devlin’s kitchen, where we worked. ‘It’s the champagne light,’ Devlin would say, and would pad to her cellar to fetch a bottle. Sometimes, if it had been a long week and the champagne light was tenuous, Devlin determined that it would soon be on its way, and visited the cellar early.
‘Do you have many friends out there?’
‘Not many,’ I said. ‘Some people from the office, I guess.’
I thought of the early weekends, when my voice would catch in my throat on a Monday morning, after two days of disuse. I thought of recent weekends. There is a boutique hotel, I thought, in Midtown. I know the smell of the rugs. I know where to kneel, if they want to watch us in the mirror. I meet friends, there.
‘Devlin and I drink together,’ I said. ‘And I have an elderly flatmate called Edna.’
‘Edna?’
‘She’s good company.’
‘Oh, Lex.’ He grinned, but it fell fast. ‘We were going to go there,’ he said. ‘Weren’t we? Just before—’
‘The hotel was booked. But we got our depo
sit back, I guess.’
I remembered us at the table in our flat, laptops up, sharing Lonely Planet. He planned a precise route for our days. Williamsburg; Harlem; Beacon, on the Hudson. Places we had planned to see together, which I had ended up liking alone.
‘Perhaps we’ll visit you someday,’ he said. The sting of the plural.
He cleared his throat.
‘I have to tell you,’ he said. ‘Something—’
He loosened his tie further from his neck. I dipped my head, craning for his eyes, but he looked to the bar. The lamps around us had been extinguished as each table departed, and it was very dark.
‘I’ve got some news,’ he said, ‘that I didn’t want to tell you on the phone. But I know that you’ll be back in New York any minute, and I suppose it may be – it may be some time before we see one another again.’
Even drunk, I was practised at impassivity. I steadied my gaze and waited.
‘Eleanor and I are going to have a baby,’ he said. ‘I’ll be honest with you in that it wasn’t necessarily planned – I think that we both might have liked to marry first – but she was excited about it, and we’re lucky enough to be in a position where we can manage it, we think. Although I suppose that you don’t know, do you, until it arrives—’
I had watched videos of filibusters in the Senate – I liked the sheer bloody-mindedness of the concept – and I wondered if that was what JP was attempting; maybe, with the drinks and his dread, he would be able to make it through until morning.
‘So, you see,’ he concluded. ‘I hope that you understand.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. Of course I do.’
I hauled up my smile.
‘It’s wonderful news,’ I said. ‘But I wish that you had told me at the beginning. It might be too late for a toast, now.’
