by Helen Kitson
‘My last shot at what? Love?’
‘Wouldn’t you risk everything for love? Even your life? Wouldn’t you?’ He reached out to touch me, his hand travelling from my neck to my breasts, lingering there, his expression blank. ‘Aren’t you?’ I felt his thumb press against my nipple and couldn’t repress a sharp intake of breath.
He smiled, his eyes glittering with contempt. ‘Your life,’ he whispered.
Chapter Eighteen
The end was in sight. I had written a scrupulously accurate account of everything that occurred from the time Madeleine went to university to her death. How Simon chose to interpret the facts was up to him. Only one piece of information really mattered: I hadn’t written the book. In publishing it under my own name I had followed Madeleine’s wishes as I interpreted them, but the reading public – had I cheated them? The book would be the same no matter whose name was on the front cover.
Why had I gone through with this? For one reason and one reason only. And now that it was nearly done, I had to face up to the fact that Simon could renege on a promise that had been unspoken, implied. Of course he would renege! He’d got what he wanted, had proved the extent of his power over me. He knew as well as I did why I’d gone along with this nonsense.
I loathed what I saw in the mirror Simon had held up to me. The fact that I recognised my flaws meant nothing. I was old enough to know better yet I was behaving with as little sense as I’d had when I was sixteen. Was I really still that girl? Simon was right – I should have moved away. I should have grown up, but I hadn’t.
‘Why do you care so much?’ I asked him. ‘What is Madeleine to you?’
‘The truth is important, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Look, you’re tired. Why don’t I fix us some delicious drinks? Pink grapefruit juice mixed with lemonade. I could add a dash of vodka, but it’s a bit early in the day.’
‘Much too early.’ He made the drinks with vodka and sat next to me. ‘So, you want to know why I’m so keen for you to write down the story of The Song of the Air.’
‘You said something about truth.’
‘Yes, but a particular kind of truth. Fiction is a bunch of lies about people who don’t exist, right? But even a made up story has to convince the reader. It has to feel as if it’s real.’
‘Yes—’
‘Maybe I think it’s important that people understand where the line is between real reality and fictional reality. Once you’ve dealt with actual reality, it will give you freedom.’
‘Freedom to do what, though?’
He looked me in the eye. ‘To write your own books.’
‘Madeleine had the talent. All I had was ambition.’
‘Sometimes that’s all you need. If you want something badly enough.’
‘But I’m not sure I do want it, not any more.’
‘That’s my point!’ He leaned towards me, the ice jangling wildly in his glass. ‘I want you to get that desire back.’
‘But what does it matter? Even if I did write a book, I can’t reinvent myself. The Song of the Air exists – anything I write will be compared with that.’
‘Only by other people.’
I laughed. ‘Yes – by publishers, readers, critics – all the people who matter!’
‘But with the length of time that’s elapsed since the book was published, it would be like starting over.’
It was possible. I thought of Jean Rhys – all those novels in the 1930s about flaky women on their uppers, and then Wide Sargasso Sea in the ’60s, completely different from anything she’d written before.
‘All you have to do is be a bit mysterious about why you stopped writing after the first novel,’ he added. ‘People expect writers to be weird and arty with all kinds of personal demons. You’d get away with it.’
The phrase made me shiver. Did I want to “get away with it”? Was that what I’d been doing all these years? Except, of course, getting away with it hadn’t taken me very far. The Song of the Air had thrown a loop around my neck. The smallest attempt to fight free simply tightened it, preventing me from doing anything worthwhile.
‘And you – how would you react if I wrote and published a book? Would you be there beside me with your hand held out for the cheque?’
‘For agreeing not to sell my story to the press, you mean?’
‘Well, the literary press. I doubt The Sun would be interested.’
He took a sip of lemonade. ‘It’s true I was disappointed when I found out you hadn’t written the book. But you’ve suffered for it, haven’t you?’
His hand, cold from the lemonade glass, placed lightly on top of mine.
‘Don’t patronise me,’ I snapped.
His hand squeezed mine with the gentlest of pressure.
‘I’m not after sympathy – God knows, I brought it all on myself – but all that damn book brought me was guilt and a kind of awful blankness.’
‘Then you’ve learned a valuable lesson, haven’t you?’
Something in his eyes gave me pause. I felt he’d said one thing but meant something quite different. He hadn’t, after all, promised that he wouldn’t reveal my confession to anyone. I couldn’t begin to imagine how knowing the truth would affect Madeleine’s parents. What I’d done would seem to them truly despicable. They would go to the press if Simon didn’t, and from the perspective of grieving parents it would doubtless make a good human interest story.
‘Are you really writing a novel,’ I asked, ‘or was that just a blind?’ Another lie, another element in the strange game he was playing with me.
He stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle, the glass of lemonade resting on his crotch. ‘Once I’d got it all plotted out I lost interest. If I can’t write something that’s perfect, I’d rather not bother.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘Go back to uni, knuckle down, try to get a job. I’ll probably end up teaching – what else do you do with an English degree?’
‘You seem prepared to give up very easily.’
‘On writing? I liked the fantasy. You know, like Ernest Hemingway – bumming around Paris, swigging whiskey from the bottle, occasionally crouching over a typewriter to churn out some muscular prose.’
‘I’m surprised you’re a fan of his.’
‘I’m not, particularly. I can be any kind of writer I want, can’t I? Unlike you, lumbered with Madeleine’s book. You couldn’t write anything else without having that story in the back of your mind. You’d feel obliged to mimic her style. Unless, of course, you decided to set the record straight.’
‘You know I can’t do that. I’m not prepared to do that.’
‘You should think about it. Don’t her parents have a right to know?’
‘But you said—’
‘I did, didn’t I? I can’t help wishing you had the guts to tell them the truth. I’d love to see the looks on their faces.’
I shivered. What he would relish was my disgrace, my complete humiliation.
After lunch, Simon made another attempt on his novel. ‘This was supposed to be my all-or-nothing, now-or-never crack at being a writer, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’m not a quitter.’
I didn’t know what he was. There were times when it seemed he genuinely cared about me, or at least about my writing. At other times he was cruel, taunting me, meting out the punishment I felt I deserved. He was slippery, mercurial. I couldn’t read him. I made excuses for him because he was young; because I preferred to see the best in people. Because I wanted him. Because that always got in the way of everything else, no matter how hard I tried to see him objectively.
I read for a while, but the non-muscular prose of Virginia Woolf was too rarefied to suit my agitated mood. I located the scrap of paper on which Lisel had written her contact details and rang her.
‘Gabrielle, how nice to hear from you.’
I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t very well invite myself round to her house, which was what I wanted.
‘Are you
busy?’ she asked. ‘Silly question – you’d hardly have rung me if you were.’
‘I very much wanted to speak to you again.’
‘Why don’t you come round? You can try one of the frangipane slices I baked this morning. Posh Bakewell tarts without the icing, really, but they turned out quite well.’
‘Only if you’re sure.’
‘If I didn’t want you to come, I would say so. I might have concocted a plausible excuse, but I’ve made it a rule, now that my time is my own, never to do anything I don’t want to do.’
‘Is that possible?’
She chuckled. ‘Not always. But more often than you might imagine.’
When I told Simon where I was going, he rolled his eyes.
‘Jesus. Lavender and mothballs. She’ll probably want to talk about the war and how plucky everyone was during the Blitz.’
I ignored him.
The interior of Lisel’s house was surprisingly modern.
‘I dislike this trend for eulogising old things simply because they’re old,’ she said. ‘If it’s very old we call it antique; if it’s within living memory, it’s vintage or retro. It’s a little fetishistic if you ask me.’ She presented her frangipane slices on a plain white plate. ‘Do you like old things, Gabrielle?’
‘I’m afraid I do.’
‘You’re young. I suppose they seem quaint to you. They remind me too much of my stuffy childhood. Tell me what you think of the cake.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Baking is something else that has become fetishised. What’s the phrase? Food porn! My, my—’ She shook her head, stirring tea in a brown china pot. ‘In my day—’ She chuckled again. ‘That dates me, doesn’t it? And it’s an awful phrase. As if “my day” has been and gone. As if I were already six feet under.’
She was the kind of older person I liked best – sharp, interested in life, more invested in the present than in the past.
‘We ought to have got to know each other before this, Gabrielle. I admired your novel enormously.’
I couldn’t hide a wince.
She smiled. ‘Perhaps you don’t care to be reminded of it?’
‘No, not really. I was a different person then.’
‘Well, of course you were! Do you hate the book very much?’
Here was an opportunity to unburden myself. And she might understand. But wasn’t it too big a gamble?
‘I think I understand,’ she continued. ‘A big success relatively early followed by – excuse me for speaking bluntly – nothing. It must have been galling, the expectation that you should write something equally brilliant, if not more so.’
No. She had no inkling. I couldn’t disabuse her.
‘Something like that,’ I muttered.
‘Tell me… The young man who lives with you – Simon, isn’t it? Viv mentioned him in that coy manner of hers that sits rather oddly with her bullish physical presence. Excuse my candour, but I prefer to call a spade a spade.’
‘She believes Simon and I are lovers.’
Lisel poured out the tea. ‘Would you like to be?’
There’s a fine line between candour and rudeness.
Instead of answering, I said, ‘At the book group, you mentioned something about having little secrets and wondering if I’d discover yours. A deliberately enigmatic statement?’
A little shrug of her thin shoulders. ‘Silly of me. You’d been speaking about your English teacher, the one whose fiancé was tragically killed.’
‘You think that was untrue?’
She held up a hand. ‘My dear! The young are so callous. Perhaps it was true about the fiancé. Many women would feel unable to get over such a loss. But if you and your classmates had thought she might be a lesbian, for instance, would you have been kind to her?’
‘No. Different these days, of course, people are a bit more civilised. I’m ashamed to say we would have taken the piss without mercy.’
‘Precisely. And that’s the reason why so many people keep secrets – not because they’re ashamed, but because they can’t be bothered to deal with idiots. And who can blame them?’
‘Your secret, then?’
‘And yours?’
I shook my head.
Lisel grinned and passed me another frangipane slice. ‘Some secrets are better shared, but most are better kept.’
‘Now aren’t you guilty of being coy?’
‘Perhaps. But I feel no great need to unburden myself, and frankly I’m more interested in you.’
‘In me, or in my relationship with Simon?’
‘Oh, my dear, I couldn’t care less what you do or don’t get up to with him. I lost interest in that sort of nonsense a very long time ago. You seemed uncomfortable at the book group, very guarded when you answered our questions. I don’t think anyone asked anything particularly intrusive.’
‘No, they didn’t. I just didn’t know how to answer them.’
‘It is a brilliant book. Viv’s ordered extra copies for the library. You must be pleased it’s still in print.’
‘I thought that part of my life was over and done with. I rarely thought about it until I met Simon.’
Her smile suggested encouragement and a barely-suppressed curiosity. I kept her waiting. Whatever she wanted to know, she would have to ask.
‘Shall I make more tea?’ she said finally. ‘Or would you prefer coffee? Only instant, I’m afraid, but a decent one.’
‘Coffee would be nice.’
While I waited, I browsed her bookshelves – a thing the bookish always do in other people’s houses.
‘And what is your verdict?’ asked Lisel, returning with two mugs of coffee. ‘Do they pass muster?’
I looked up and smiled. ‘Of course.’
‘There are more in the attic. The ones down here are those I am likely to re-read. I suppose I ought to get rid of books I know I’ll never read again, but one becomes oddly attached to them.’
Her collection was an exemplary mixture of nineteenth century and modern classics and more recent literary fiction, much of which I recognised from Booker longlists.
‘You want to know about Simon, don’t you? Where he came from, what he’s doing here?’
‘I’ve no intention of pressing you for information. I admit to a certain curiosity about him, which I suppose is inevitable in a retired old schoolmarm like me with too much time on her hands.’
‘I expect he’ll be gone soon. It’ll be odd, having to adjust to life without him – without him being there. Back to solitary meals and—’ I took a deep breath, ‘back to pleasing myself.’
‘A double-edged sword, that. Pleasant to be able to do exactly as one wishes, but some things are better shared.’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
‘You’ll miss him,’ Lisel stated. ‘Perhaps you and I might have the odd meal together? I sense you’re not the type who needs someone around all the time, and neither am I. And I could hardly be an adequate substitute for a good-looking young man.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled, taking refuge in the coffee, which was probably less bitter than it seemed to me at that moment.
‘And don’t thank me, please! I haven’t the gift for being able to receive thanks with any kind of grace. If I offer something it’s because I want to, not because I want my ego stroked.’
‘I hope I’m like you when I’m older.’
‘You can say plain old, I shan’t take umbrage. But I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve been called eccentric, even wise, but frankly that’s poppycock. I’ve simply learned that it’s nearly always best to speak plainly if it’s possible to do so without causing pain.’ She winked. ‘Saves a lot of time, that’s all. I’m neither kind nor generous, so please don’t imagine I am.’
‘Would you like to meet Simon?’
‘No, I don’t believe I would. Clearly he means a great deal to you, but I rarely find the young interesting. They haven’t done enough or seen enough or read enough. If you are, as I
suspect, in love with him, you would want me to find him extraordinary, and it’s highly unlikely I would.’
She was more entertaining than Viv, her conversation more piquant, yet I suspected Lisel would not be the sort of person one could depend upon in an emergency. Viv would be the one on hand with sympathy and a blanket. Did that make Viv the better person? Did it make Lisel more heartless or simply more honest?
Idle thoughts, of no great consequence except that I envied people who had a best friend: someone on whom they could rely, someone they’d known since childhood with whom they’d shared all the major traumas of adulthood. Would Madeleine and I have remained best friends if she’d lived? For several years before her death I’d felt her slipping away, and I’d never understood the nature of the demons that had hooked their claws into her skin.
‘What are you thinking?’ Lisel said.
‘Hm? Oh, I was thinking about someone I used to know. A friend. She died young.’
‘Ah, yes – Maddie Anderson.’
‘You knew her?’
‘Not really. I met her and her parents when they came to the school to enquire about bursaries and scholarships. Maddie would have been thirteen or so at the time. I remember when your book came out and noticing that you dedicated it to her. I thought about introducing myself to you – I very much wanted to congratulate you on having written such a fine book at a young age.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Oh, I expect I was concerned that you’d be gauche and inarticulate – writers sometimes are, they make up for it on paper – and it would have taken some of the shine off the book if I’d discovered its author to be an irritating person. It’s a pity,’ she added, setting down her mug on a glass coaster, ‘that our paths have never crossed before. Perhaps it was for the best.’
‘Yes – perhaps.’
‘We must keep in touch, if you’d like to.’
‘Yes, I would.’ We might even become friends – a serious, grown-up friendship that would be enriching but also strangely unsatisfactory. But that would be my fault, my notions of what friendship should be stuck in a groove: friends shared nail polish, moaned about homework, swooned over boys. It was high time I grew up, stopped wanting things I couldn’t have. I needed to learn to accept my lot along with the bulk of humanity for whom life is, on the whole, a series of small disappointments and niggardly compromises.