Her Read online

  That evening, Charles says, ‘Let me guess. You’ve started a new painting, and you’re happy with it.’

  ‘So far,’ I caution, reluctant to say anything more: wary of assuming anything at this point, and also conscious that I mustn’t talk about it yet. As if it might benefit from secrecy, even from deceit. ‘I don’t know exactly where it’s going.’

  ‘I can always tell,’ he says, and I love him for that: for noticing, for minding, for being glad, for understanding that I don’t want to say more about it – that I mustn’t. Sophie is slumped over the kitchen counter, fluorescent marker poised over Alain-Fournier. If I say anything to her, she will slink off to her room, so I don’t address her directly.

  ‘We’ve been asked out to dinner,’ I tell Charles, remembering the text. ‘I’ve put the date on the calendar.’

  ‘Oh, the dizzy woman,’ he says. The one who lost her child. Yes, I say. The new mother. That’s her. I can tell he’s not much taken with the idea, but he’ll go along with it, as he goes along with most things. ‘Charles is so good-natured,’ my friends say, and I smile, thinking: good-natured, or just lazy?

  Over supper, having set her books aside, Sophie says, ‘Weird bracelet, Ma. Where’d you find it?’

  Oh, this piece of tat? I found it at the bottom of a bag, no idea where I picked it up.

  The next day, I leave it in a drawer, but I find my thoughts returning to it as I work: the uneven chink of the beads and buttons and charms, the knots in the string, the cool weight of it against my wrist.

  Emma’s party, when it comes, is an unremarkable affair, the sort of evening that few of the guests will be able to summon up in any detail the following morning. Charles and I walk from our house to hers at the end of a warm spring day: I haven’t dressed up because her girlfriends might interpret that as unsisterly. Demure, that’s the intention: elegant, yes, but tactfully so. She opens the door to us, clutching flowers, goggle-eyed with panic. The stems have left a damp patch on her top. Her face is shiny.

  As Ben manages the introductions, I allow myself to glance around the room, and I can see the effort she has made, all the thought that has gone into all these little decisions: the tea lights and the dishes of almonds and olives; the scent of polish and roses; the music. I know what’s behind it all, of course: I know what’s kicked under the sofa, shut away in those cupboards. But somehow I can’t help being touched by her ambition.

  Ben is standing around, clutching a bottle, too distracted to open it. This is Fran, this is Luke. This is Patience and Rob. Now we must trace our connections to our hosts in the usual way, trying to find common ground.

  ‘Oh, it’s a long stor y,’ I say. ‘One of those funny coincidences.’ Not that funny, says Ben, and I turn to him and say no, of course, but it all turned out OK in the end, didn’t it. Fran is familiar with the anecdote, she was there in the park when Christopher went missing. I see Patience processing the facts, horrified by them, unable not to judge. Eyes like saucers. ‘Oh, you can’t be too careful,’ she breathes. ‘Was Christopher, you know . . .?’

  ‘Right as rain,’ Ben assures her, not as sharply as I imagine Emma would like. ‘Hasn’t mentioned it since. We think he’s forgotten all about it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just as well,’ says Patience, doubtfully. ‘Let’s hope so, anyway.’

  ‘Whereas Emma . . .’ Ben says, with a cheery laugh. ‘That’s another matter entirely. Olive?’

  Over the soup I find myself cornered by Patience who talks and talks, as if she’s frightened of what might happen in the silences. She and Emma used to work together, ‘in a previous life’: a life that she implies was unsatisfactory. ‘One has to make a choice,’ she says, with a modest little laugh. ‘And fortunately, with Rob’s business doing so well . . .’

  The Audrey and Alfred she cites so often – as she tells me stories about her struggles with the council planning department over the kitchen extension, the epic quest for an ‘up to scratch’ maths tutor – are, I quickly deduce, her children: such giants in her emotional landscape that she does not feel the need to introduce them. ‘Goodness,’ I say, when it’s expected. ‘Wow, that must be . . .’

  Halfway through an anecdote about Audrey’s school choir, as Patience embarks on yet another witless sub-clause, I look away, slowly and deliberately, and allow my eyes to settle on something over her left shoulder: the back door, a tea towel slung over the taps, it doesn’t matter what it is.

  Will she notice? Will it bother her? There’s a brief but glorious confusion as she momentarily loses her thread; and then, as I press the napkin to my lips, she regains her composure and carries on as if nothing happened. She must have been imagining it, surely.

  In between her remarks, rather than relinquishing control of the conversation, she fills the gaps with obstacles: amused repetitions of her last statement, long complacent ‘umm’s, blithe little giggles.

  She wonders if I’ve seen that new TV drama set in an Edwardian department store, and when I say I haven’t, she starts to describe the plot, quite painstakingly.

  Now and then I am aware of Emma glancing in our direction, watching me out of the tail of her eye. And Charles, too, giving me a secret smile, and leaning in to attract Patience’s attention, showering her with questions, sacrificing himself.

  On the fridge, the coloured magnets spell out harmless family jokes: help, wine, lunatic.

  In answer to a question, Charles is explaining about Jess and Sophie, pushing the heavy-framed spectacles up on his nose with a genial, professorial air.

  Fran, remembering, says, ‘Ah, the babysitter.’

  Patience is taken aback. ‘Goodness, a teenager,’ she says rather disagreeably, feeling a challenge to her authority. She imagines that must be hard work.

  Charles says no, Sophie’s fine, bar the usual.

  ‘Teenage girls, they’re worse than the Borgias,’ I say, helping myself to some of the bedraggled salad. The beef’s not bad, but I can tell Charles isn’t taken with the wine. Out of solidarity with my husband, an ally in this room, I say Charles has always been very good with Sophie. I lift my glass, and as I do I notice Emma staring at me, drinking me up: absorbed by my hair and dress, my black jet necklace, the one Cecily liked.

  Charles says the key is not to ask too many questions, and they all take this on board, as if he’s the oracle. I smile down at my plate, avoiding Emma’s hungry eyes. ‘She’s a good girl,’ I murmur. ‘As seventeen-year-old girls go. She could be a lot worse.’

  Of course, Patience has heard all about the drugs scandal at Sophie’s school and is eager to talk about it. And after that, I must listen to complex tales of secondary transfer, and then I must nod and frown as Rob tells me about the marketing strategy he is working on for a digital radio station. ‘What do you do?’ he asks eventually (as his wife has not), so I say I paint. In the baffled silence that follows, I hear Charles telling Emma the story of our meeting; and that leads him to mention the house near Nice. I lean towards them. ‘It’s one of the best things Charles has done.’ And I describe it for Emma: the view of the sea, the arc of the sun, the way the heat releases the fragrance of pine and lavender.

  I can see her imagining it, just for a moment. Caught, irresistibly, in the images and sounds and scent I’ve conjured up for her. The shade under the vines; the crickets’ hush in the heat of the day.

  I excuse myself and slip out of the kitchen into the hall, carefully closing the door behind me. The carapace of order imposed on the sitting room has been dislodged by drinks and snacks, the chaos of our presence: the sofa cushions dented, a heap of pistachio shells loose on the coffee table, the carpet stirred and scarred by our shoes. I go up the stairs, sidestepping the yellow plastic dumper truck, the pile of library books. Oh, she has made quite an effort in the bathroom, too: tidied all the bath toys into a net, lit a lily-scented candle, left out a pair of sand-coloured hand towels, a bottle of hand cream, a spare loo roll. Very thoughtful. I check my makeup and walk out onto
the landing.

  The kitchen hubbub is faint from here, but suddenly Emma’s laugh sounds clear and sharp; and that decides me. I go to Cecily’s door, and turn the handle, and step inside, leaving the door a little ajar so that I can see the cot and hear if anyone comes into the hall.

  They’ve trained her to sleep without any light at all, so perhaps this small disturbance, this open door, will be enough. I stand there for a moment or two, waiting to see if anything will happen; but she doesn’t move.

  As my eyes adjust, details present themselves: the wide-flung arms, the palms open to the ceiling, the soft muslin bunched up against her cheek.

  I stand by the cot, my hand on its pale-painted gate. The colourful letters run around the walls: either holding it together, or crushing the life out of it. A is for acrobat, B is for bear, C is for cloud.

  When I unzip her sleeping bag and tug her feet free, they are warm and soft and a little damp, utterly limp in my hands, like bread dough. I let them fall, but nothing happens. Dead to the world.

  ‘Cecily,’ I whisper, blowing on her face. She flinches a little in her sleep, but resettles almost immediately. I look around. A plastic beaker of water has been left out on the mantelpiece, and I pull out the spout and shake it gently over her face: once, twice. Just a sprinkle. That does the trick. I feel her startle and tense; I hear the squeak of the mattress against the wood, the rasp of cotton on cotton, the gasp as she starts to fill her lungs with air. So I put the cup back on the mantelpiece and quickly move away, out of the room, shutting the door as I go. And then I pause at the top of the stairs, just to make sure.

  When she’s really howling I go downstairs and drop my hand on Emma’s shoulder and bend to let her know. Your party’s over, I think, as she slides her chair back, a look of exhaustion on her face.

  It’s as good as last orders. Spooked by real life, Fran and Luke leave almost immediately, even though it’s not quite eleven; and that’s the cue for Patience and Rob to collect their things. ‘Good to meet you,’ I say, stacking the pudding plates, my hands full of spoons. ‘Oh, really, let me, it’s no problem.’

  Ben says it’s very kind. He seems relieved when I say I wouldn’t mind a herbal tea, as if this suggests the evening still has the potential to be a success. ‘I’ll take one up for Emma,’ I say.

  I find her sitting in the chair, in front of the window. She’s pulled the curtain back. As I go in, a light clicks off in the house opposite and the clouds shake themselves free, and then the gardens are illuminated by the moon, a whey-coloured crescent hanging over the chimney pots. Cecily’s head droops against her mother’s chest. I clear a space on the table and put the cup down so that Emma can reach it, and then I stand behind her, one of Christopher’s Schleich horses in my hand, looking at us both, the weak warped reflections in the black glass.

  She says she’s sorry everyone had to leave so I reassure her: we’re not in any hurry, the husbands are downstairs talking over a whisky. I compliment her on the party. I say, ‘You went to a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Oh, hardly,’ she says, thinking now of the foolishness of ironing all those napkins. Buying those flowers.

  I murmur something about liking Fran, enjoying the funny story she told about losing her shoe on the tube. As Emma reaches for her cup, Cecily settles herself deeper, her head lolling back against her mother’s upper arm. When Emma sips, I sip too. It’s nearly summer, I say. Sophie will be breaking up in few weeks. I ask if they have any plans for the holidays.

  Not really, she says. Money’s tight. Ben’s worried about work, something about a contract. They might visit his family and do a few day trips to the seaside.

  I start to make my offer. I talk about the house in the South of France going begging for August. Cheap flights, even at this time of year.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, very unsure. ‘We couldn’t possibly—’

  As I tell her more about it – the house is empty, my dad’s keen for me to use it, it would be fun if we overlapped, there’s plenty of room – I turn the little palomino over in my hand, feeling the sharpness of its hooves, the prick of its ears. Gift horse, mouth, I think.

  I suggest she talks it over with Ben. She’ll find I’m very persistent, I say with a laugh.

  In the darkness, I lean down to place Christopher’s horse on the table, and now I’m very close to her. Without meaning to I find I’ve put out my hand to touch Cecily’s head. Beneath the cap of soft flyaway hair, there’s a delicate warmth, like an egg. The porcelain fragility of her skull, and the sudden soft shock of the fontanelle, pulsing under my finger.

  ‘Oh!’ I say, not quite meaning to, a bit horrified, but fascinated, too. I wait there for a moment, conscious of the strangeness of it, conscious of Emma’s unease as well as her proximity; and then I take my hand away without regret. ‘I mean it,’ I say, moving towards the door. ‘You think about it.’

  ‘I will,’ she says, although it’s more of an exhalation, really; the relieved sigh of someone presented with the solution to a problem.

  On the walk home, I tell Charles what I’ve done, and I can tell he’s not delighted.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I say, my hand on his arm. The sound of our footsteps chases up ahead along the quiet streets; we stop to let a pizza-delivery scooter pull left. ‘They’re rather sweet. I think Emma’s a bit lost. You know, adrift in the baby bit. It’s nice to be able to help.’

  ‘Well, of course, if you’re sure,’ Charles says.

  ‘You won’t be there all the time, anyway,’ I remind him. ‘I’ll want some company. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask Bridget and that lot?’ he’s saying, and so I tell him Bridget books her summer holiday right after Christmas: Croatia or Greece, I can’t remember which she has gone for this year. It’s true, or true enough. ‘Anyway, you can’t stand Fred.’

  He protests. Fred’s not that bad. He means well. ‘But the point is, darling, this lot: they’re kids.’

  ‘Well, Emma’s my age – almost exactly,’ I say, but he pats my hand, reprovingly: ‘You know what I mean. Where they are. Babies. Naps. Nappies. I don’t quite see the fascination.’

  ‘It’s not fascination,’ I say, taken aback that he has noticed.

  I can usually depend on Charles not to notice. ‘There’s something about her. Something I find . . . affecting. She seems so, so . . .’ I hunt for the right word, the word that will do, but I can’t quite find it. ‘. . . It’s nice to be able to help.’

  ‘Seems to me you’ve helped her quite enough,’ says Charles. ‘Returning her wallets. Handing her toddler in to the police. Seems to me you’ve done quite a lot of good work here already.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tease me,’ I say, a little crossly. ‘There’s something about her. It takes me back.’

  ‘I do wonder what you were like then,’ Charles says, folding my hand in his; and for a moment I can’t think how to respond, and I’m frightened of saying the wrong thing, of giving myself away. And then I see what he means and, while he releases my hand and feels again for his keys, I compose myself. ‘What, when Sophie was tiny? Oh,’ I say, as he goes up the stone steps ahead of me and opens the front door. ‘You wouldn’t know me. I was someone else then – someone quite different.’ And it’s true enough, though the real transformation had happened long before, when I first met Arnold, who for all his faults saw in me the things I barely knew I possessed, and drew them out, letting the bad habits fall away behind me, liberating me from the awkwardness and the doubt rather as he liberated me from my father. I remember Arnold in his earliest incarnation as a dealer, walking around my first studio, being surprised by the work: ‘Oh yes, I think we can do something with these,’ he said, glancing over at me with a speculative expression, just before he invited me for a drink.

  Sometimes it felt as if Arnold, with his confidence and generosity and taste, had willed me into existence, suggesting as much as fostering the characteristics that are now so much a part of me. He turned my shyness into rese
rve, my guardedness into self-possession. He brought me out of the shadows. All this talk about ‘finding yourself’; often, other people show you yourself first. Of course, I was grateful to Arnold for what he did for me; but I also resented him for it. In the end, he knew too much. He’d seen both sides. That was why I had to leave.

  In the hall, we step over a pile of parkas and hoodies, dirty cream hi-tops the size of boats. I look into the sitting room, and they’re lined up on the sofas and sprawled against the kilim cushions: seven or eight of them, eyes and teeth and empty pizza boxes bright in the fish-tank illumination of the TV. On the screen a woman is being chased through a wood. Crying and panting, the tell-tale snap of undergrowth, panicky strings. ‘What’re you watching?’ I ask, and someone shushes me; and then some of the girls giggle. Sophie takes shape, an apparition in the gloom, brushing past me, heading for the kitchen.

  They’re all invited to someone’s eighteenth in Dartmouth Park, they got sidetracked by this crappy horror thing on Netflix, it’s nearly over.

  Beneath the smell of soda pop, her breath, when she speaks, is punchy with spirits.

  ‘Whose party?’ I ask. ‘Won’t it be over by the time you get there?’ She shrugs, standing in the glow of the fridge, helping herself to two cans of Diet Coke.

  ‘Back by one-thirty at the latest,’ I say as she walks away, towards the darkened room. ‘I’ll wait up for you.’