by Lucy Dawson
‘Neither you nor I are saving lives for a living. I think we need to remember that.’ He placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Fucking hell, Charlotte, I’m just touching you. You don’t have to flinch like I actually repulse you.’
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at him.
He let go and when I opened them, he was sat on the sofa in his sweaty gym gear, peeling his socks off, glowering. ‘Well as I said, I’m off tomorrow to Sheffield. I’ll be back late on Friday night, so I can take over then. I’ll take the kids out on Saturday. You can have the whole day to yourself to write. And before you say anything, I’m about to pick those socks up off the floor and put them in the washing basket, OK? They’re not staying there.’
‘You’ve got new gym stuff?’ I noticed suddenly.
He stopped dead and glared at me. ‘Do I need your permission before buying something?’
‘Of course not. I just—’
‘So then, yes, I’ve got a new top and shorts.’ He spoke over me. ‘If I can’t buy myself a t-shirt from time to time, I’m not sure what the point is, to be honest?’
‘Your case of wine arrived earlier today as well. The signature collection apparently.’
‘Our case of wine.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘OK. You know what? Message received loud and clear. You can go to Waitrose. I’ll only mess that up too. You know me – I’ll just come back with foie gras and truffles. I’m such a cunt.’
‘Tris! Please! That’s revolting language.’
‘It’s just a word.’ He shook his head and muttered something I didn’t quite catch.
‘What do you want to eat tonight then?’
‘Nothing now actually,’ he said simply, to which I inwardly screamed loud enough to pierce souls. ‘It’s obviously too much trouble. You sort yourself out. I’m going to bed.’ He stood up but suddenly bent at the knee. ‘Ow What the—!’ He crouched down and peered at the rug, picking up the small piece of Teddy’s Lego that he’d just trodden on, before flinging it violently at the log burner. I jumped as it hit the glass, and he marched from the room – leaving his socks in the middle of the carpet.
I didn’t drive to Waitrose once I was in the car. Heart thumping, I pulled out of our space and drove the other way, to the end of the road, where I undid my window and listened. The party noise was coming from up the hill, several houses behind ours – one of the big ones on a private road. I hesitated and impulsively put my foot down, swinging right, into the lane at the top, ignoring the pompous sign that told me I had no right of way. Typical Sevenoaks – almost entirely constructed of discreet lanes leading to huge detached houses owned by CEOs. I crawled slowly past several multimillion pound homes, listening carefully through my open windows before arriving at a set of open, electric gates. I drove through, as three young girls, probably no more than sixteen, came out of the vast front door holding cans – I couldn’t see in the dark if they were alcohol or not – seemingly about to walk around the side of the house where the noise was coming from.
‘Excuse me!’ I called through the passenger window as I pulled up alongside them. ‘Girls?’
They turned and looked at me smiling at them. ‘This is the house that the party’s at, right?’
One of the three nodded cautiously.
‘Can you do something for me?’ My voice was friendly – and trustingly, they came closer. ‘Could you tell the boys who are shouting that unless they keep it down, I’m going to call the police and tell them I’ve heard screaming here? And then I’m going to tell them I think there are illegal drugs on the premises.’
‘Oh but there aren’t,’ one of the other girls stepped forward earnestly. She was right alongside the window. ‘We’re not like that, we—’
‘It doesn’t matter if there are or not,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’ll tell the police, and then I’ll tell them you’re all underage drinking too.’ I smiled. ‘So tell your friends to shut the fuck up, and let MY kids get some fucking sleep.’
They all drew back and stared at me. ‘I think you need to calm down?’ said one of the girls. She wasn’t being rude, just truthful.
Her responsible bravery drew me up short, but I wouldn’t allow myself to admit she was right. Instead, I merely glared at them, did up the window, reversed sharply backwards and roared off back down the lane – in my sensible Volvo estate, complete with kids’ car seats in the back. Quite the slick getaway car. I looked down at my hand when I reached the main road, gripping the gearstick so tightly my fingers were white. I was shaking. I’d just sworn at and threatened three teenage girls when it wasn’t them I was furious with.
I burst into tears and sobbed in the car. I had to pull over until I was able to drive away again. I could feel the tightly bound pain and anger bleeding out within me: old scar tissue barely holding together, in danger of ripping wide open. I felt bitterly ashamed of what I’d said to those poor girls and disgusted with myself.
And it’s not even as if the occasional misdirected lancing over the last couple of weeks has relieved anything. It hasn’t. This is eating me up from within. The nice, kind bits are almost all gone. I am not myself.
I take a deep breath and open my eyes as I feel the train slowing again and look around me. Inni Funni and her boyfriend have gone. We’re pulling into Sevenoaks. I carefully lean forward, pick up my bag and make my way to the doors.
There is a massive queue for the taxis, so although I know I shouldn’t, I start to walk home. I’m too tired to wait, the fresh air will clear my head – that train was unbearably hot – and there are plenty of other people around. A lot of them are male commuters late home from the office. I walk briskly and with my head up high, to make it clear I am not drunk – should any of them be thinking of attacking me. My stance makes it clear I will put up a fight. In my current state I would probably kill them.
I begin to feel less confident as the further we walk, the more people drop away… until it’s only two men walking behind me. I can hear the sharp tack of my heeled boots striking the ground and echoing up the still, residential street. The temperature has significantly dropped – the Indian summer has well and truly ended – and even though I’m walking fast, I’m now cold. It’s also hard to march and keep up any pace when I’m worried about slipping on the carpet of damp leaves. Lots of the houses still have last nights’ pumpkins on display, no longer lit. When I put the kids’ efforts in the garden waste bin this morning, one of them was already covered with creeping green fur inside, escaping through the mouth and dotted with small flies. We carved them too early. Peaked too soon.
I glance behind me and find that it’s now just one man. I speed up as I walk right under a streetlight – exposing me completely – and wonder if he’s aware of the effect of his presence. Or do men just walk home, oblivious? It’s not that Sevenoaks is a particularly dangerous area, it isn’t, but I am now moving so fast I have to pick the skirts of the dress up, as if I’m in a costume drama. That reminds me of Mia’s comment about Dangerous Liaisons earlier, and I pant round the corner of our street as if I am being pursued by John Malkovich himself, smirking in his periwig, gaze fixed upon me. Except of course, I am no longer that young, attractive girl. He wouldn’t bother. I clatter up the steps and our path, before rapping on the curtained sitting room window, my breath coming in short gasps until a shadow appears in the lit-up hallway, behind the fleur-de-lys etched glass panels of our front door. I hear the lock turn and it opens to reveal Flo’s tired but smiling face.
I push past her and shiver as the warmth hits me, while she closes the door and shuts the rest of the world out. She frowns. ‘You’re freezing.’ Her expression changes to one of disbelief. ‘You didn’t walk from the station?’
I sit down on the stairs and start to take off my boots. ‘There were no cabs. I didn’t have a choice.’
‘You always have a choice. What you mean is, you couldn’t be arsed to wait. That’s really dangerous, please don’t do it again – it’s almost midnight. Anyway,
how did you get on?’
I stand up and kick the boots away. ‘I need a wee. Two seconds and I’ll be right back.’
I pad upstairs and, en route to my bedroom, pause and stick my head around Teddy’s door. The stars are still swirling on his ceiling, so I tiptoe in, turn off the nightlight and they vanish as quickly as if they were never there in the first place. I move over to the bed. My small son is squashed right against the wall – Clara taking up the rest of the space as she snores. They are both fast asleep. I’ll move Clara back when I come up – or put her in with me. Heaven forbid we should all spend a night in our own beds. I cover them both and hold my breath as they stir slightly, escaping back out before either of them wakes.
In my room, I peel off the dress, glancing at my reflection in the wardrobe door with morbid fascination. If anyone had told me that I would drop several dress sizes effortlessly in a mere two and half weeks, I would have hugged them, but it’s true. The weight has fallen off me. Incredibly, I’m in danger of starting to look too skinny. I really must buy a new bra. This one doesn’t fit me anymore, which is a shame because my boobs were one of my best features. Now, I look like a little girl dressing up in her mother’s underwear.
I turn away from myself, unhook the back and let it drop to the floor. You can’t have it all. A thigh gap or boobs, but not both. I pick up a creased sweatshirt and shove it on before stepping back into my yoga pants from earlier. Folding up the dress carefully, I carry it back downstairs and, having collected my mobile from my bag on the way, go into the sitting room to find Flo curled up on the sofa watching Saturday’s Strictly on catch-up.
‘Here you are.’ I pass the dress over to her as she sits up. ‘Thank you for lending it to me. You were right – it made a difference. I felt a little less the woman who works home alone in sweatpants and a little more the old me.’
‘You’re very welcome. When everything settles down a bit, we’ll get you some new clothes. You’ve just got out of the habit of shopping for yourself. You’ll get your mojo back – don’t worry.’ She looks at me steadily. ‘So how was it?’
I shake my head. ‘We don’t need to do this now. I can tell you everything in the morning. I’ve got a bit of a headache, to be honest, and you must be knackered. I feel really bad that you’ve waited up. Can I get you a glass of water? Did the kids wake, by the way? I see Clara got in with Teddy as usual.’
She pretends to narrow her eyes at me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I was hardly going to go to bed, was I? The kids were fine. I didn’t hear a thing. I’m also going to need to be out of here by 7 a.m. tomorrow, so come on – let’s do this. Did you see her?’
She is not going to be dissuaded. I take a deep breath and cross the room to sit down on the sofa opposite her, putting my mobile down next to me. ‘Yes. I did.’
‘You watched the play?’
I nod, and then everything goes. The control I’ve kept in check all evening since I kissed the children goodbye, smiling brightly to skip out of the door as if everything was normal – just breaks. I crumple from inside out – tears flood my eyes, snot pours from my nose, I close in on myself and start to sob.
Almost simultaneously I feel Flo’s arms wrapping around me. She’s already jumped up and is pulling me into a hug. I lean my head on her shoulder and moan with such pain that I hear her voice waver as she says: ‘You are so brave! You are so, so brave!’ She kisses my hair fiercely and I can tell without even looking at her face that she’s crying too, because she wishes more than anything in the world that she could make all of this go away for me. She can’t bear to see me hurting like this, when all she can do is hold me. She rocks me gently as I do big, ugly, noisy gulps and try to get a grip – but instead start shaking violently.
‘I should never have told you,’ she says after a moment more. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I made the wrong decision. She definitely is the girl from Edinburgh then?’
‘Yes,’ I admit, my voice cracking again, and Flo groans, hugging me tighter.
‘I’d forgotten how young she is,’ I gasp ‘and…’ I draw back from my sister and meet her gaze head on, ‘you’re right. She looks exactly like me. More so than I remembered.’
Flo hesitates and then nods slowly. ‘I told you, it was the first thing that struck me when she walked into my room and sat down. I was blown away. It could have been you. Well, you when you were still blonde and before you cut the fringe in.’
I swallow. ‘I spoke to her, Flo.’
My sister’s eyes widen and she shrinks back away from me, horrified. ‘But you promised me. You swore that you wouldn’t. Charlotte! What did you say? I could lose my job over this! You know that!’
I hold my hands up. ‘Don’t panic. I didn’t say anything that could link her to you. I would never do that.’
‘Not intentionally, no – but the brain works very differently in high stress situations, you don’t recall things in the same way. You can let slip details you don’t think are that significant but are a dead giveaway. I can’t believe you did this!’ She jumps up off the sofa and puts her hands on her head in panic as she looks at me. ‘Even the fact that I told you about her and where to find her would see me struck off for breach of patient confidentiality. You get that, right?’
‘Of course I do, but you’re not her therapist anymore. You said you stopped seeing her?’
‘I have, it was complete conflict of interest, but that’s not the point. She’d already told me more than enough sensitive stuff about herself by the time I’d realised who she was. What did you say to her? Tell me exactly what you discussed. I need to be certain you haven’t said anything that might compromise me.’
‘How could I? You haven’t told me any details at all!’
‘What did you discuss?’ She’s starting to look angry as well as worried.
‘I went to the stage door afterwards and asked her if she remembered me from Edinburgh; I don’t think she did really. I wasn’t going to say anything at all but she came out and she’d obviously been crying.’ I clear my throat and look around for a box of tissues. I can’t meet Flo’s eye. ‘I wanted to know what had made her upset.’ I find them under the sofa and blow my nose.
Flo starts to pace up and down in front of the fireplace. ‘This is exactly what I was afraid of. I explicitly told you not to talk to her. It’s dangerous and it’s not going to bring you the answers you want. You must see that?’
‘She said she’d had a row with her boyfriend, Seth. They haven’t been seeing each other long and he gets jealous of her being on stage because he’s not an actor himself, apparently. She doesn’t date actors because they’re all gay, mad or married.’
Flo sighs heavily and flops down onto the sofa, opposite me, staring up at the ceiling.
‘It’s OK though,’ I whisper. ‘He texted and they arranged to meet up later tonight.’
Flo doesn’t say anything for a minute, then jerks her head back and looks at me challengingly. ‘Can we just stop for a minute before we go any further into that and discuss how that’s an awful lot of information to get from just asking someone if they’re OK? Lots of people would just say “fine thanks”. At most they might say “I’ve had a row with my boyfriend”. What you’re describing sounds like a full-on conversation.’
I shake my head. ‘She was very upset, that’s all. She just blurted it out on the street in a rush. She was holding her phone as we were talking. I saw the message from him come in.’
Flo looks at me silently. ‘OK – then what happened?’
I shrug. ‘Nothing. I offered her a cigarette; she declined. She left.’ I clear my throat and wipe my eyes with another tissue. ‘That was it.’
‘Bullshit,’ Flo replies without a pause. ‘I don’t believe you. I thought we weren’t doing secrets anymore? You wouldn’t offer her a cigarette! Moreover, you forget I know her. Mia would have come after you – she’d have been curious about the woman who looks just like her, waiting by the stage door to ask her if she’s OK before wa
lking off into the night.’
‘It wasn’t like that. It was dark. You said yourself my hair is very different now. She barely recognised me, if at all – she was upset. I don’t actually think she noticed for one second what I looked like. She was more interested in the dress.’
‘Then you did discuss something else.’ Flo pounces on that. ‘She said she liked your dress?’
‘So what? You didn’t wear it in one of your counselling sessions, did you? No – so I think we’re OK.’ It’s my turn to get up, arms crossed defensively and move to the door, pretending to listen for Clara and Teddy, so I can get off the hot seat under my sister’s unfaltering gaze. ‘Plus I’m pretty sure the designer made more than one.’
Flo points a warning finger at me again. ‘Don’t you dare get arsey when you broke every single promise you made to me. We agreed; just look, nothing else. I understand why you wanted to go and make sure it was her. I totally get that. I’d want to as well – but you did NOT need to speak to her, when you promised me you wouldn’t. I shouldn’t have told you.’ She puts her head in her hands. ‘I absolutely shouldn’t have told you. No good is going to come of this. Please tell me what else you discussed with her, because I know you’re not being honest with me.’ She looks back up at me and waits.
‘I made out like I was there to get Mathew Goode’s autograph along with the rest of the female audience. He was very “good”, by the way. A younger, sexed-up version of a self-obsessed, middle-aged, manipulative and amoral writer.’
‘Great. I’m really pleased for him,’ Flo says flatly. ‘I still don’t believe you.’
I don’t say anything, just stand by the door, arms still folded. ‘I want to go to bed now. Please. I’m so tired.’
‘I know you are. You’re exhausted. You’re not eating properly. This is all you can think about. I understand that totally, but tonight was supposed to be about getting closure. Satisfying yourself that it’s her but then moving on with your life, because you decided two weeks ago that’s what you wanted to do. You told me that you had no intention of letting this change anything, or your family set-up. You know I’m not sure I agree that’s the right path to go down, but I’m not going to influence you either way, other than to remind you that you were adamant you didn’t want to say anything.’