Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  My cheeks sting as I remember how I’d ripped it off the wall in a rage, how I’d torn it in half, right down the middle. Then, I’d taken the Blu-Tack off the wall and shoved it on top of one of the other photographs, over Amber’s stupid head. After that, she was just a floating body. A pale blue blob where her face should have been.

  Now, I hold the photograph in my hands, and look at it for a long time, until the rain stops and my tea goes cold. I hated this picture. I never wanted to see it again. So why has it been smoothed out, stuck back together? Why did I do that? Did I do that? I feel a strange prickle down both arms. I must have done. There must have been a reason. Why can’t I remember?

  31 WEEKS

  HELEN

  How do you unmake a friendship? It turns out it is strangely difficult – especially with someone as persistent as Rachel. I never seem to have enough excuses not to see her. She knows I’m free, all the time. She knows I’m not working, that everyone else is. She knows that Daniel and Serena and Katie are usually too busy to see me, and that I don’t see much of Charlie. She knows my parents are dead. She knows my work friends don’t want to meet up with me. She knows all these secrets now – I have revealed them to her, one by one. She knows I’ve got no excuse.

  Lately, I’ve started trying to fill my diary, so that I can have a reason not to see her, if I want one. I have started feigning even more medical appointments than I really have – claiming more blood pressure and baby movement scares than have actually occurred. I find myself arranging to get my nails done, my hair cut, just so I can tell her I have things in my diary. But the truth is I’m finding it harder and harder to construct my days around clearing cupboards or alphabetising bookshelves. I am starting to get lonely.

  The building work seems to get worse and worse, the foundation dig endless, spewing mountains of rock and soil into the front and back gardens, crushing all Mummy’s flowers and plants. Now that it’s getting cold, dark and wet, it feels increasingly like there is no escape. I trudge through Greenwich like a homeless person, paying £2.75 for a cup of tea so that I can shelter in a pub, or a coffee shop, or a museum cafe. But after a while it’s uncomfortable, and the chairs feel hard under my sit bones, and I can’t concentrate on my book. My heartburn flares, my lower back starts to ache, the edge of the table digs into my belly. And meanwhile, my phone sits on the table next to me, and texts from Rachel keep flashing up. Am I all right? Do I feel like ‘hanging out’? Am I busy? It does get to the point where you wonder if you can keep saying no.

  One day, when the rain finally clears and an autumn sun emerges, I decide to go for a walk in the park. I’m in the hallway pulling my shoes on when I hear the knock on the door. Even through the cloudy glass, I can see it is her again. Her wobbly outline shrinks and balloons in the panels in the front door as I turn the key in the lock. I have come to recognise her form, her height. Her way of knocking. Three blows, evenly spaced. Deliberate.

  Rachel is standing on the doorstep, grasping one of the grey paper bags from the Italian deli on the hill. It is overflowing with meats, cheeses, olives, a loaf of ciabatta, some shiny green and red apples. She holds it out in front of me, like bait.

  ‘I should have called first, I know.’ Rachel is grinning. ‘Have you got plans already? I just thought … you said Daniel was away.’

  I hesitate. She knows, because I told her when I last saw her two days ago, that Daniel is away for a few nights. She knew I’d be alone. The thought makes me uncomfortable.

  ‘To be honest, I’m sort of exhausted, Rachel,’ I improvise. ‘I was planning on having a nap this afternoon.’ It’s a pathetic excuse, and we both know it. Rachel’s face falls.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh, OK then.’

  Rachel is shifting the handles of the bag between her fingers. As I watch her, I notice her smile seems a bit off today, as if she is straining to keep the corners of her mouth upturned. She starts to transfer the bag from one hand to another, and as she does so, it falls. Peaches and apples tumble out, followed by a round of cheese, bouncing down the steps at the front of the house like a toy cart wheel.

  I sigh, bend down slowly. ‘Here, let me help.’

  ‘No,’ she says sharply. ‘Don’t, Helen.’

  She sounds close to tears. She drops the rest of the bag, starts chasing down the road after the cheese. When she returns, she is sniffing.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Ignore me. I’m just, you know. Having a really bad day. I thought you might … I thought maybe …’ She rubs her eyes with a vigour that is slightly alarming, using the heel of her palm, so that her elbow jabs towards me at an odd angle. When she has finished, a half-moon smudge of dark make-up is left under one eye. Oh God, I think.

  ‘Rachel, I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you come in? I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Once inside, Rachel seems much happier. In the kitchen, she switches the radio on and hikes up the volume, pulling knives from the knife block seemingly at random, hauling out the heavy marble boards we save for best and clattering them against each other. She slams down the bread and starts sawing off great hunks of it, so that the knife scrapes against the marble. My fingers twitch. Those knives were a wedding present. They’ll be blunt by the time she’s finished.

  ‘I’ve got enough food here for an army! You don’t mind if I change the station, do you?’

  Before I can answer, she has retuned the radio from Daniel’s sports coverage to some poppy station I don’t listen to. She bops around the kitchen, her bump bouncing with her. I am out of touch with music and can’t place the song. It is the sort of music they play in bars, hairdressers, coffee shops. It always gives me a headache.

  ‘Got any chutneys or anything?’

  Rachel is rooting around on the top shelf of the fridge. Jars of mustard and mayonnaise clunk loudly against each other. She pulls a few out, piles them up between her arm and her chest, decants them onto the worktop. Before she closes the fridge door, she plunges her hand into an open punnet of raspberries, helps herself to a handful, and tips them into her mouth.

  ‘This will be great,’ she announces, through a mouthful of smashed red fruit. ‘A proper feast.’

  Rachel turns to rummage in one of her bags, leaving a knife wobbling on the edge of the board. I’ll just move it out of her way, I think. Before it falls, hurts someone. But just as I’m about to close my fingers around the knife, Rachel snatches it up and spins around, the metal glinting.

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’

  The knife flashes in her hand. I feel hot and cold at once.

  ‘I’m doing all this, silly!’ she cries, chuckling and waving me away. ‘I told you. My treat. You sit down, relax.’ She turns back to the board, starts hacking at the cheeses. Clack, clack.

  I lower myself down on a stool. I realise I have been holding my breath; I let the air out of my lungs, slowly, so she doesn’t notice.

  ‘Is Daniel into football, then?’

  The comment throws me. What is she talking about now?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The radio,’ she says. ‘It was on 5 Live.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes, he is.’

  ‘Which team?’

  ‘Newcastle United.’

  ‘He from up there, is he?’

  ‘Um. No. His parents are. Do you want a cheese knife for that?’

  ‘No, this is fine.’

  Clack. Clack.

  ‘Rachel – are you all right?’ I say eventually. ‘You seem a bit … you said you’d had a bad day?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says, with a manic shake of the head. She turns back to the board and begins to pile up sticky slices of ham and pastrami, which she pulls from cellophane packs. Doesn’t she know we can’t eat that?

  ‘Just, you know. Men,’ she mutters.

  My curiosity returns, like an itch I can’t scratch.

  ‘Did you decide to tell him, in the end? The father?’

  Rachel doesn’t seem to hear. Having carved up an
entire wheel of Brie, she now appears to be moving on to another.

  ‘Rachel,’ I tell her, ‘that’ll be loads. I’m actually not all that hungry.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ She drops the knife. It clatters down onto the marble block. She turns to me, rubbing her eye. ‘You know what? Let’s forget it. Let’s forget the whole thing,’ she says. She shoves the block away from her, so that it slams into the wall with a bang. ‘It was a stupid idea.’

  ‘Oh no, no,’ I say, alarmed by her rapid mood change. ‘Not at all. It was a lovely idea. Let’s take it out to the end of the garden, shall we? Away from where the builders are. We can, um … graze.’

  Rachel eyes me suspiciously.

  ‘Really, Rachel. It’s fine.’ I glance at the knife, hear the sound of my own breathing in my ears.

  ‘OK.’ She smiles. ‘Great! I’ll make you a tea though. You always like a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh. Yes,’ I say. ‘Lovely. Thanks.’

  Rachel flicks the kettle on, flings the cupboard above it open and pulls out two mugs. Dives into another cupboard for tea bags, sugar. She knows where everything is. She hands me a mug then shovels three heaped teaspoons of sugar into her own.

  ‘I’m just going to use your other bathroom,’ she says, heading for the stairs. ‘Then we can tuck in.’ She has left the tea bags in hot wet puddles on the worktop. A pale circle of spilled milk. A dusting of sugar.

  I perch on a stool and listen to Rachel’s footfalls on the stairs, the flush, the sound of the tap. She doesn’t return. Then I hear a scraping noise, the creak of floorboards far at the top of the house. What is she doing? Surely she’s not trying the floorboards again? For a mad moment, I think about the note, tucked in the back of the book on my bedside. Why would you suspect she would go and poke around up there? I ask myself. Because it’s exactly the sort of thing you would do, a voice in my head answers.

  The thought of Rory’s note has been turning over and over in my mind all week, like a leaf in the wind. Each night, when Daniel is asleep, I flick my bedside light on, and slip it out of the drawer. I hold it between my fingers, examine it again.

  Darling RRH

  Wear to show me

  For Ever More

  W

  I can’t make sense of it. To show me what?

  Darling RRH

  I suppose it is wrong of me, to feel so involved. But if Rory is up to something, if he is having some sort of affair with this W, whoever she is, then I can’t help but feel he is violating something that involves me too – the four of us, Daniel and me, Rory and Serena. The only family I’ve got left, unless you count Charlie, but he’s hopeless. My mind leaps ahead, imagines it all coming out, the horror of our family falling apart. Of separation, even divorce. That would spoil everything between Serena and me – all the things I’ve planned. The maternity leave coffees, walks with our babies, yoga classes. All gone. She won’t want to see me now, will she? Not after my brother betrayed her. The thought makes me feel sick, as if there’s a guillotine hanging over us all, and only I can see it.

  ‘Been looking at your photos. You look banging in this one. Was this at your wedding?’

  Rachel is back, standing by the kitchen dresser, holding a photograph in a silver frame.

  ‘That’s right,’ I say carefully. ‘It’s me and my two bridesmaids. That’s Katie on the left, who you met.’ I hesitate. ‘And the other one is Serena.’

  It’s not the greatest picture of me, really. I’d insisted on wearing Mummy’s wedding dress, on doing it in Marylebone Town Hall, like Mummy and Daddy had all those years ago. I thought it would be nice, a sense of tradition. In truth, the whole thing had been so drab. I don’t know what I’d been thinking.

  The reception had been in the Chelsea Physic Garden. I’d imagined buzzing bees, the smell of grass, candelabras of magnolia in bloom. But we ended up taking most of the pictures inside, because of the rain. People kept saying the rain didn’t matter, but it did, of course it did. All the aunties had their husbands’ jackets over their dresses, their shoulders hunched forward, their fascinators wilting in the wet. Not many people had stayed until the end.

  I gave Serena and Katie both silver-framed copies of this picture. I’m not sure where Serena keeps hers. I’ve looked in all her rooms, but I’ve never seen it on display anywhere. On her mantelpiece, she has a picture of her own wedding, her own bridesmaids. It is an informal photograph – professionally taken, elegantly framed – flooded with the sunlight of her and Rory’s beautiful July wedding day. Serena is grinning, and the bridesmaids are laughing, uproariously, at some joke. Some joke from which I have been forever excluded.

  I had just assumed Serena would choose me as a bridesmaid in return for her being mine. But she didn’t. At the wedding, I had made sure to smile delightedly as the bridesmaids passed, two by two, in their floor-length, made-to-measure gowns, clutching elegant wildflower bouquets. Their dresses were duck-egg blue, a colour that has never suited me. She’d have loved to have had you, Rory told me afterwards. She’s just got so many close friends. Unlike you, he might as well have added.

  Rachel hands the picture back, and I set it on the table. ‘Shall we go outside now?’ I say. ‘I could do with some fresh air.’

  So we sit at the end of the garden. It is sunny, but too cold, really, for sitting outdoors. The lawn is dusted with fallen leaves, the wisteria turning from green to yellow, rustling in an autumn breeze. But it is dry, and the sky is clear, and at least we are away from the building noise. It takes us several trips to take out all the food. Then, I lay out one of Mummy’s old tartan blankets, put some cushions on top of it. I find I’m hungrier than I thought.

  After I have eaten, I bend to check on our four roses, dust the white petals from their beds. I’ll need to prune them soon, but not quite yet. Their blooms are wilting, browning at the edges, but they are still soft, still beautiful.

  When I return to the rug Rachel is sunbathing, taking up more than half of Mummy’s blanket, her legs stretched out on the grass, my cushion under her head and shoulders, stuffing her mouth with raspberries and peach slices. She looks perfectly relaxed. Whatever crisis brought her to my door – if there even was one in the first place – appears to have passed. She has a new pair of sunglasses on today, the lenses heart-shaped, cartoonish against her baby face. She is wearing denim cut-off shorts and a baggy T-shirt. Her bump sits underneath, a little bigger, but still tiny compared to mine. She must not feel the cold.

  ‘When was that other picture taken?’ Rachel asks.

  ‘Which picture?’

  ‘The one you’ve got on your hallway wall, by the mirror. The one with the four of you. In a boat.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That was just one day in Cambridge. We were punting.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought it looked like a punt.’

  I look at her, surprised. ‘Do you know Cambridge?’

  She frowns, shakes her head. ‘No. Never been. I just heard it’s nice.’ She cradles her bump with both hands, her lips berry stained. ‘Did you say Serena took photographs?’

  ‘Yes. Her studio is in the mews just behind that street over there.’ I point, but Rachel isn’t looking.

  ‘What does she take pictures of?’

  ‘Portraits, mostly, I think. Or that’s what she sells most of. She’s got a big exhibition coming up. She’s doing really well.’

  The truth is, I don’t really understand Serena’s photographs. She has them hanging all over the house, some in colour, some black and white. A wrinkled old man she saw in India, glowing-faced children with fishing nets she saw in Bali, a panoramic shot of the floating markets in the Mekong Delta, which she and Rory visited on their honeymoon. I always admire them, obviously. But I’m never sure exactly what makes a photograph good, or bad. I suppose they don’t make me feel anything much.

  ‘You don’t like them.’ Rachel has turned her head and is looking at my face, grinning, a hand flattened over her eyes.

  My head snaps up. ‘S
orry?’

  ‘Her pictures!’ Rachel giggles. ‘Come on, Helen. I can tell by your face.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about art,’ I stutter, but I find myself laughing a little bit. I’m surprised to find how dizzyingly pleasurable it is, this minor act of disloyalty, rebellion. To laugh at Serena. To belittle her passions, her so-called talent.

  ‘To be honest,’ I hear myself saying, ‘I think most of it is a load of nonsense.’

  Rachel throws her head back and hoots.

  ‘I mean, not just her,’ I say, already feeling guilty. ‘Most art, I mean. I’m sure hers is good. I just … I probably just don’t get it.’

  But Rachel is shaking with laughter. She pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, and places one between her smiling lips, so that it sticks up straight from her mouth, like a pencil.

  ‘You crack me up, girl,’ she says, flicking at her lighter with one thumb. She lights the cigarette, inhales, then takes it between her fingers and blows a plume of smoke straight up in the air. She yawns extravagantly, her arms stretching out overhead, revealing gritty stubble in each armpit.

  ‘Maybe I’ll get one of her portraits,’ she says through the yawn.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A portrait. By Serena. Be nice to have some proper photos of the bump. All the celebrities do it now, don’t they?’

  She winks at me, then places her hands on either side of her belly, her cigarette still perched between the fingers of her right hand, and starts drumming gently, as if she is playing the piano.

  I look at her, try to gauge whether or not she is being serious about going to see Serena. The thought fills me with an irrational sense of dread.

  ‘I’m so comfy,’ Rachel says, yawning loudly again. ‘I might have a little nap here. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Without opening her eyes, she gropes around for the raspberry punnet, takes another handful and tips them into her mouth.