When I finally manage to set a date for lunch with Katie, I find myself looking forward to it much more than I normally would, a little bright flag in my otherwise blank diary. Even so, I find myself a bit jangly on the morning of it, for some reason.
As I walk to the station, I wonder whether to tell Katie about the note I found in Rory and Serena’s bathroom. Katie is good at digging around, finding information. She’d be able to work out what Rory was up to.
As I walk past the bookshop I see Katie coming out of the station in her leather jacket, her headphones in, a coffee cup clutched in one hand and a faraway expression on her face. Katie is only eighteen months younger than me – the same age as Charlie. She was his little friend from down the road when we were growing up, and then she became mine, as the gap grew to feel less and less important in our teenage years, then university and beyond.
But looking at her now I have the sudden sense that she is much younger than me again. After all, there is so much more than a year and a half separating our ages – a marriage, a house, the babies, the pregnancy. Looking at her now, I feel old.
I wave and her face breaks into an astonished smile. She bounds over and hugs me.
‘Jesus, Helen. You’re huge!’
‘Oh, thanks!’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You look great. It’s just … I suppose it’s been a while, hasn’t it?’
The observation feels heavier than it should. I try to meet her eye and smile, to tell her it’s all right. She smiles back, a look of relief on her face.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ she says. ‘I’m starving.’
We walk through the park, where the giant horse chestnut trees are just starting to shed. An early smattering of golden leaves have sailed out of the iron gates and onto the pavements, collecting in rusty pools in drains and doorways. Some people are sitting on the outside tables at the pavilion, bathing in the disappearing warmth. They sit in coats, but with their faces to the sun, eyelids closed, enjoying every last drop. A waitress weaves around them, clearing the tables, balancing coffee cups and crumb-strewn plates on her tray, her pale grey apron tied in a little bow at her waist.
The inside looks full. I ask, but the waiter shakes his head. No tables free. Do we want to wait? Katie says she doesn’t mind. My feet are hurting, my stomach starting to groan. I cast my eye over the inside tables, try to work out if anyone will be leaving soon.
When I see her, my first instinct is to quickly avert my eyes, pretend I haven’t. But it is already too late: our eyes have met, and Rachel is grinning at us. She is sitting by the window, a newspaper spread out in front of her. She starts waving frantically.
‘You again!’ Rachel folds the newspaper up and rushes over, still carrying it, bumping into the backs of people’s chairs. She is wearing a gold sequinned skirt, oversized black T-shirt and green trainers. ‘How funny!’ She launches herself at me with a hug. I feel myself go slightly limp in her grip. Katie looks at me, expectantly.
‘This is Rachel,’ I say, when she releases me. ‘Rachel, this is my friend Katie.’ They smile at each other. I pause. ‘Rachel and I met at our antenatal class.’
‘And now we just seem to keep bumping into each other!’ Rachel laughs loudly at her own joke. In the cafe, heads turn to see what all the fuss is about. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We were planning to have lunch,’ Katie says. ‘But it looks like they’re full.’
‘Come and sit here, with me!’
I glance at Rachel’s table. She has bagged the best spot in the cafe, right by the window, exactly where I had hoped we could sit. But the thought of her joining us makes my heart sink.
Rachel looks at me and her face clouds over, as if she has read my thoughts. ‘Oh, I’m sorry – I’m barging in.’ She forces a fake laugh, looks down at the floor, starts to fold the newspaper up in her hands. ‘Here,’ she says, gesturing jerkily at the table. ‘You two take it. I was going anyway. I can pay at the counter.’
Rachel keeps folding the newspaper until it is too thick and won’t fold any more. There is something about her movements that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Katie takes a step towards her, places her hand lightly on her arm. ‘Don’t be silly, Rachel,’ she says warmly. ‘It would be lovely to have lunch together. If you are sure you don’t mind us joining you?’ She looks at me. ‘What do you think, Helen?’
Rachel looks at Katie, and then at me.
‘Will I be in the way? Say if I will.’
Soon enquiries are being made about spare seats, tables being shifted, a chair being found and wheeled over the heads of other diners. Rachel and I sit in the comfortable seats, facing one another, Katie takes the rickety chair, another diner squashed up against her back.
‘How far along are you, Rachel?’ Katie asks.
‘Everyone in the antenatal class is due in the same month,’ I answer for her. I can’t stop my voice from sounding defensive.
‘Oh, right.’
‘Don’t worry, some people just carry a lot bigger than others,’ Rachel tells Katie in a hushed voice, glancing at me. ‘So anyway – you must be the journalist! Look – I’ve just been reading your article! It’s such a weird coincidence!’ Rachel retrieves her newspaper and waves it at Katie. ‘Helen told me all about you, about your court case. I literally just bought the paper to check it out!’
She opens the paper to an inside spread, with Katie’s name at the top. There are pictures of the two accused arriving at court, both holding the hands of their pretty girlfriends, flanked by their parents and lawyers. There is no picture of the victim – I suppose they’re not allowed.
Rachel taps on the paper with her chipped fingernail. ‘It’s unbelievable, this stuff. Tell me everything about it, Katie. Seriously, everything. I like to know all the details.’
Hesitantly, Katie starts to talk about the case. I shift in my seat as she recounts the facts of the case, trying not to think too hard about how much it reminds me of what happened before. Rachel is rapt, her eyes wide, mouth slightly open. As I watch her, I try to think whether I told her I was meeting Katie here today. I can’t have done. Can I?
When the waiter arrives, Rachel orders a smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill baguette with a large hot chocolate, followed by a chocolate brownie. She goes out to smoke cigarettes twice during our lunch, situating herself directly outside the window and grinning and waving as she does so, as if she wants to keep an eye on us. We smile back, uncomfortably.
When she returns from her second cigarette break, Katie and I order another coffee and camomile tea. Rachel abruptly announces that she is leaving. ‘I’ve got so much stuff to do, it’s literally crazy,’ she says, as if we have been the ones keeping her. There is a little dusting of chocolate powder on her cheek.
Rachel reaches for her wallet, throws a fifty-pound note down on the table. Katie stares at her.
‘That’s too much.’
‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Rachel grins magnanimously, waving Katie’s objection away. ‘I’ve had such a nice time.’ It feels oddly as if she is tipping us.
Before she leaves, Rachel sucks me into a huge bear hug. The embrace lasts longer than I expect it to, as if she won’t be seeing me for a while. Chance would be a fine thing, I find myself thinking.
‘Thanks so much for letting me crash your lunch,’ she says. ‘You’re both so sweet. Can’t wait to read your next article, Katie.’ She makes an odd gesture at Katie with her thumb and forefinger, the finger pointed, the thumb bent slightly – somewhere between a thumbs up and a gun gesture. Then she turns and pushes the door open, a little too hard, so that it bangs against the outside wall, shuddering on its hinges. And then she is gone, the little bell jangling behind her.
I watch her cross the park, keeping my eyes on her slim outline as she walks past the playground, where schoolchildren in brand-new uniforms are dropping reading folders as they race towards the swings.
‘She seems nic
e,’ Katie says.
I cringe. ‘She’s a bit full-on. I’m sorry. I didn’t know she would be here. Obviously.’
‘It’s fine. It was nice to meet her.’
Both Katie and I are still staring after her, as her figure disappears into the park. For some reason, I feel I want to be sure she is really gone.
HELEN
In the end, I stop trying to arrange to meet my work friends. After one lunch is cancelled at the last minute, then another, I get the message. People are busy, too busy for me, anyway. I’ve already been forgotten.
My appointments are more frequent now, my blood pressure causing concern. Midwives bend to check my ankles for signs of swelling, ask frowning questions about dizziness, shortness of breath. On the way home, I feel the anxiety ebb away a little. Then, day by day, it edges up, and up, until the next time.
I find myself stretching out mundane activities into hours, sometimes whole afternoons, in order to fill up my time, try to take my mind off the baby, off the endless nag of doubt. If the sky is clear, the sun shining, I might go out into the garden and peg sheets to the washing line, radio on, trying to ignore the drilling, the builders traipsing through the kitchen. Some days, if the noise is bad, I walk across the park just so I can sit in a cafe, read my book, have a cup of tea in peace, and walk back again. I take time preparing elaborate evening meals, chopping vegetables into neat multicoloured piles.
Today rain is hammering at the rooftops, staining the slate tiles a dark, slippery grey. I decide to spend the morning tidying the upstairs of the house, the parts the builders aren’t attacking – an attempt, I suppose, to re-establish some vague sense of order, of control. I tackle the wardrobes first, bagging up old clothes in bin liners to take to the charity shop to make space for the baby. Then I start to sort through drawers and cupboards. I am starting to quite enjoy tasks like this, the hypnotic nature of them. I sit on the bedroom rug, a mug of camomile tea at my side, listening to Woman’s Hour on the radio, an old box from the top of Daniel’s wardrobe wedged between my knees, the sound of the rain lashing at the window glass.
At first I think it’s just a box of Daniel’s old university stuff – course notes, essays, architecture textbooks – most of that can go in the bin, I think. I linger over the pages, trace my finger over his notes in the handwriting I know as well as my own. The rows and rows of words in blue fountain pen, the only thing his father ever gave him. I smile as I remember how, when we were at university, he always had a smudgy tideline of blue fountain pen ink from his little finger to the heel of his palm.
I remember the first time I climbed the winding staircase up to Daniel’s room, a tiny attic overlooking King’s Parade. Knocked, shyly, tried to sound casual as I asked if he wanted to come to the bar. How he looked up from his textbook, the evening light from the window on his face, and pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled, as if it was the first time he had ever seen me. As if he knew what I was really asking. And he said, ‘Sure,’ and I remember how it made me catch my breath, how easy it had been, after all that time.
I try to think back to those days, two students in an attic room. How I used to watch him sleep, just to drink him in, like a drug. His breath going up and down in his chest. His curled hand resting on the pillow. Are we really the same two people? Is it possible to be? I think of how we used to laugh, at everything. How we used to talk until the early hours. How we used to touch each other, even when there was no need to, just because of the way it felt. It used to make me gasp to look at him, the lines of his eyebrows, the hardness of his body, the smile that came only when he really meant it. I mean, I still love him. We love each other. But sometimes I struggle to remember when we last touched just for the sake of touching. When I last looked at him, when we last really looked at each other. Is that normal? I wonder. Or is it not?
Under the essays, I find a load of documents to do with the inquest. There’s even a copy of Mummy and Daddy’s will. I wonder how all that got into his university stuff? I sort the papers into piles quickly, trying not to look too closely at anything, to think about the nightmare of all that – the will, the probate, the life insurance, the endless paperwork that felt like it was going to consume us all forever.
Shoved down one side, though, I find something else. An old photograph of me, Serena, Rory and Daniel at Cambridge. Serena is in the centre. She is wearing a scarlet-hooded cape, hair tumbling down one side. I recognise it immediately – it is the outfit she wore in our college play, in which Serena had the leading role. The play had been odd – a surrealist retelling of some old fairy tales. Serena had gone in for all this am-dram stuff at university. I’d never really understood it. She’d even talked the boys into taking part. Both of them are in costume, too – costumes I helped to make: Daniel in his tall, pointed wolf ears, Rory with a tinfoil axe swinging from his hip. He’d been the woodcutter – the hero. And then there’s me, leaning in from the sidelines, the only one without a speaking part.
I pick up the photograph carefully. It is lined with deep creases, as if it’s been screwed up into a ball, and then flattened out again. In fact, when I turn it over, I see that is has actually been torn up, then stuck painstakingly back together. On the back, there are four oily pale blue marks, one in each corner. And it’s this that makes me realise where it is from. It must be the photo I ripped from the wall at Serena’s hen weekend. How on earth did it get here?
I think back to that awful weekend in Cornwall, years ago now. I had never been to a ‘hen party’ before that. I’d never thought to have a party like that for myself. It would never occur to me to ask people to pay all that money to celebrate my life, my marriage. I remember I’d been pleased to have been invited, even if the emails about it had been rather bossy. I hadn’t really known what to expect. Perhaps there would be five or six of us, I had thought – just her very closest friends, a private chef, perhaps a few after-dinner games?
I’d brought along a special bottle of wine to give to Serena, her favourite, the same vintage we’d drunk on her twenty-first birthday. It had taken me weeks to track it down. I’d surprise her with it. I had imagined the moment while I was sitting on the train, as I held the bottle, the neck of it smooth in my hands. How touched she’d be. How her eyes would glisten with appreciation.
Of course, as soon as I’d got there, I had known straight away that I had made a mistake, that I hadn’t understood things properly, that my elaborately planned gift had been a terrible waste of time. I had stood for what felt like ages on the doorstep, my incessant ringing drowned by the stream of whoops and catcalls from within. I waited and waited, my hands getting cold, the wine bottle heavy in my bag. Eventually, the door was answered.
‘Amber. I don’t think we’ve met.’ The girl had a long, equine face, a nylon sash with the words ‘Maid of Honour’ emblazoned across it.
‘Sorry,’ I’d said, although I wasn’t sure what for. ‘I’m Helen.’ I held out the wine. ‘This is for –’
I was silenced by a burst of laughter from inside. Before I could say more, she had taken the wine from my hand and we were headed for the kitchen.
‘Thanks,’ she’d said distractedly. ‘We were out of red.’
Everyone had been in the sitting room, talking noisily in groups. There wasn’t any space on the sofas for me to sit, so I sat on the floor. When I’d first caught Serena’s eye, she’d made a charming expression of delight and surprise, smiled and waved, but then returned immediately to the conversation she’d been having. She had barely known I was there.
I spent that first night perched on sofa arms and kitchen sideboards, trying not to take up too much room or stand in front of cutlery drawers. I clutched my lukewarm cava, trying to be helpful, pretending to have a good time. Later, I found my wine bottle lying empty in the recycling bin. I don’t think Serena even had any.
For the rest of the weekend, I mostly remember being left on my own, while everyone else was either out drinking, or in bed, curtains drawn, nur
sing hangovers. All the activities that had been organised seemed to involve a lot of drinking. I was trying, desperately, to get pregnant. I could see my very presence was a downer. Most of the time I decided it would be better to simply take myself elsewhere. No one really seemed to mind.
On the Saturday night, they’d all gone out, and it was raining, so I just wandered around the house. It was huge, with long hallways which were, inexplicably, covered with clocks that ticked out of sync with each other. The walls had been covered with old pictures of Serena, from her glossy, blonde-pigtails childhood to the present day, which one of her bridesmaids had taken the trouble to print out and stick up.
The pictures, someone told me, were supposed to be ‘embarrassing old photographs’, which Serena would find ‘hilarious’. As far as I could see, though, she looked beautiful in all of them. It must have taken hours to stick them all up with Blu-Tack. I had secretly hoped they would leave marks on the walls, and that Amber would lose her deposit. Her horsey face had featured prominently, leading me to suspect the gallery had been her idea. Rory was in a lot of the pictures, of course. I even spotted Daniel in a few. But my face was nowhere.
Eventually, of the dozens and dozens of photographs, I had found this one. The single photograph that featured me, stuck outside the downstairs toilet. I presume it counted as an ‘embarrassing’ photo because Serena was in a costume, even though she looked, as usual, extraordinarily beautiful. But it wasn’t that that made the tears prick at my eyes. It was the sight of myself, before Mummy and Daddy died. I was pretty. I never knew it, but I was. And my face. So young and soft and full of hope. Grinning into the camera, into my future. Before I knew what it would bring. I couldn’t even look at photographs like that. I hated them.
Greenwich Park Page 7
