Too Close

by Natalie Daniels

  Karl is a kind man. Despite everything, he is a good man. I hold his hand and squeeze his fingers.

  ‘I brought you some things,’ he says eventually, unlinking his fingers from mine, getting busy, rifling through a paper bag. He pulls out a Twix and a pile of books and some crap magazines. He always buys me crap magazines. I have never been a reader of them but he has always bought them for me. It used to be a joke and then it became a habit. There are no jokes now.

  I can tell he wants to go and I feel strangely low. That’s the other thing that happens after you and your partner split up – it’s hard to remember quite where you are in your relationship, which rules you are living by. Then I remember that I have no rules any more. Only it doesn’t feel quite as liberating as it did earlier.

  ‘When am I coming home?’ I ask him weakly. I really do flit. He stops arranging the pile and pointedly scrunches up the paper bag with unnecessary force. (Although technically, I’m the one who should be scrunching up paper with unspoken anger, not him, but there you go.)

  ‘Home?’ he says. ‘There is no home.’

  He’s prone to melodrama. He can’t just have a headache or wind; he has to have a brain tumour or stomach cancer. I take a step towards him and he moves away from me, his hands held out as if I am going to attack. I am not a violent person. I see how much of a stranger I am to him; he can’t even look at me. The sadness tugs at me; I wonder where all our love went. It must be somewhere – in the bits-and-bobs drawer to the right of the sink, perhaps. One day someone is going to open that drawer and say, Oh! Look what I’ve found! A whole load of love!

  As he gets to the door he turns around. He looks about a hundred and two, a weary old coelacanth. ‘Get a fucking grip, Connie,’ he says.

  I stand there after he’s gone and feel his anger whirling around me, but it doesn’t get through me. I try to let it permeate me, touch me, but no. Nothing gets through me. I am quite numb.

  I wander over to the pile of books and magazines he’s brought. I flick through them and sit down. I separate the books from the magazines. I recognize the cover of one of the exercise books. It is Annie’s diary. On the cover it says Annie Mortensen, aged 9 and a halve. Private. Keep Out. She’d be furious if she knew he’d brought me her diary.

  I remember her first diary; I gave it to her for her seventh birthday present. She was sitting at the table, still in Josh’s camouflage dressing gown when she opened it. She wanted to start immediately. She wrote down: Got up washed my face brushed my teeth and then she looked at me and said, ‘Aren’t diaries a bit boring?’ So we talked about how to make it interesting, so that one day she could look back and actually enjoy reading it. She suggested she could write down some things that were going on in the world. I said that was a great idea. I said she could just write down moments, maybe ‘the best moment of the day’ if she liked, rather than what she did every minute. From that day she has kept a diary religiously. ‘I’m always going to tell the truth,’ she said, and I agreed that the truth was vital in a diary. Polly started one as well, of course – Ness bought her it – although they were never ever allowed to look at each other’s. Instead they would spend hours reading out agreed random dates – which was crazy really, seeing as they lived in each other’s pockets and every moment was spent together anyway; just like their mothers. Annie now keeps her diary in a locked box, so how the Weasel got it I don’t know.

  I used to be a stickler for privacy. Not any more.

  I pick it up and randomly start flicking through it. Various pages are stuck together, sticky sweet-smudged fingers. She has actually stuck in sweet wrappers in case she should ever forget her favourite sweets: Toxic Waste, Millions, Chocolate Oreo, Maoam, Fangtastic. Some of the days have both headings and dates. I smile. Annie has always had a grand sense of occasion. April 7 How the Ipad really broke. March 1 Alarm Bells. I glance down the page – she and Polly seem to have gone to a shop on the high street and set all the alarm clocks to go off at once. March 21 The real reason Josh broke his nose. She’s a good little writer; I feel a familiar swell of pride in my gut.

  I take the diary over to the window and sit down, settling myself in for a proper read. I open it randomly on Feb 1 The lost swimming costume.

  Mum is v v v cross. She says I have no respect for property.

  The true story is we were coming back from swimming doing the short cut when Polly says DID you know that EVERYTHING in the universe bounces? I said no it doesnt and she said yes it does (she is such a knowall). I said not elephants. Elephants DONT BOUNCE. She says yes they do. I say not HOUSES. Houses dont bounce. She says yes they do. There is no POINT in argewing with Polly.

  We were going past a posh house with railings and some scaffolding up and a pile of bricks in a yellow skip and she leans right over the skip. Anyone can see her knickers. I did not TOUCH the brick. It was only POLLY. Polly climbs TEN FEET high up the scaffolding with a brick and she says to me Watch Annie. Then she throws the brick on the pavement HARD. It smashed into ten billion peaces and one of the bits broke the window.

  A man starts shouting and we RUN AWAY as fast as we can and hide in the bushes by the bus stop. Polly is tired. I am not I can run for ages. She says DID YOU SEE THE BRICK? It BOUNCED didnt it JUST BEFORE IT BROKE?? And I think she was right but I didnt say so.

  PS the point of the title. When I was running I dropped my swimming costume with blue dots on it and we didnt dare go back for it. I told Mum it was at the pool and she made me phone the pool and listened while I pretended someone had stolen it.

  I laugh out loud. Not a sarcastic laugh, a real laugh. I sound like a dog barking. I am grateful to the Weasel for bringing me this. How I miss my naughty little Annie. I’m not allowed a phone in here. If I had one I would call her. Even if she doesn’t want to talk to me right now, I would ring her up just to hear her voice. It is husky and always ready with a joke.

  Despite the warmth in this place, I feel a little chilly. I pull the blanket off my bed and take it back to the chair and make myself comfortable; I start at the beginning.

  Jan 5 Unfortunate events in the swimming pool

  Today Polly and me went to the inside pool with diving boards where Josh did a poo when he was a baby (he says he never did but Mum always pulls a face behind his back). The lifegard with the pop belly and the black glasses was there. We played the DEAD game. You can play the dead game anywhere. In Scotland we do it on the sand dunes. Its best with makeup and ketchup. NOT IN THE POOL OBVS. We did scisser paper rock EVEN THOUGH it was my idea and I am a better swimmer but she says she is a better actress. She wins scisser paper rock so she gets to be the one. She swims out into the middle of the pool and I hide by the edge. When she is sure that the lifegard is watching she starts flapping her arms and doing a few spasms like she is having a fit like Phoebe B in netball. She goes on for ages then just did floating with her face down. It was a v good death I must say. The lifegard JUMPS off his chair and DIVES into the water with all his clothes on. His glasses fell off. Polly very dramatic rolls on to her back (she is not as good as me at holding her breath). She has her tongue sticking out and has made her eyes go all boggly overdoing it if you ask me. The lifegard looks really scared which makes me a bit scared. He picks her up and swims to the edge and plops her on the tiles. I must say she looked really dead, all floppy with her mouth hanging open. I did some crying which was sort of real. Then the lifegard turned her face up and HE TRIED TO KISS her on the mouth!!!! She screamed and jumped up like a FLASH. She looked at me and I couldnt help laughing and she started laughing. He started shouting at us. He said we were BANNED for life from the swimming pool which means never aloud back. We bought 2x millions on the way home and Polly dropped hers.

  Jan 12 BEST DAY EVER

  Me and Polly tried to get into the pool. We gave false names and had sunglasses on but the woman said you two arent allowed here. I pretended I was french and didnt understand her but Polly started laughing. I can fit twelve hubbabubbas into my
mouth. Then the BEST THING EVER happened. We walked past this hotel called Holiday Inn and Polly said maybe it had a pool. So we pretended we are staying at the hotel. It turned out they DID have a pool. It was OK. But the BEST thing was we went up in the lift and found one of those trolleys that was full of free shampoos and little bottles of wisky which is DISGUSTING. Outside the rooms people left food on trays so we collected all the tomato ketchups and on the way home we did begging. We sat on the pavement near Rymans and put ketchup on our legs and pretended we were dying drinking wisky. To be honest Polly is not such a good actress as me. We begged 3 pounds 55p and had to stop because we saw Miss Major coming down the road arm and arm with her lesbian. We brought some more sweets (we got 3 cadbury dairy milk for 3 pounds and on Monday we will sell them at school for 20p per peace).

  TOP SECRET Polly and I saw Josh and Evie kissing we were using Evies deodorant in the top loo and they came up so we had to hide. They sat on the bed and stuck their faces together. REVOLTING. We tried to work out what that means if they get married and we think it makes us sisters. Sort of.

  Josh asked me to be his model for his art project. I dont know whether I am pretty or not yet. Dad says I am pretty. Mum says I have an interesting face, Josh says that means ugly. I have done my first SITTING. Its v boring actually and Joshes room is smelly. Portrait sitting is just doing nothing with Josh being bossy. Dont move. Chin up. Stop blinking. He wont let me see the picture until it is finished on Friday. He thinks hes Piscasso or someone the way he holds his pencil out and shuts one eye.

  Jan 26 Worst day EVER

  I HATE my family. Most in the world I HATE JOSH. I wish he was dead. I would be happy if he was dead. I have done sittings ALL week for Josh and his stupid project. I have done 4 hours for him. Tonight he had a private view of his portrait. He stuck it on the wall and hung 2 tea towels like curtans on either side and Mum and Dad, Ness and Leah and Evie and Polly came to see it with red wine and ribena in wine glasses. When the curtans went back instead of ME he has spent the week drawing a hairy gorilla sitting in a chair in my school uniform. Everyone laughed. I HATE Mum the most because she laughed so much that tears were running down her face. She said the funniest thing is, Josh, you have caught something about Annie and they ALL started laughing all over again. Even Leah who is never laughing was laughing. I shut them all up when I said Josh and Evie were sticking their tongues in each others mouths and making mmm mmm mmm noises.

  I look up at my leaf. It has stopped fluttering. Suddenly I miss Annie so much. I have an ache in my stomach. When she was born, when I first held her in my arms, it was like I already knew her. I can’t explain it. I didn’t feel that with Josh – he was brand new to me – but Annie, it was as if I’d known her for ever. We are like peas in a pod; everyone says so. My mother calls her Connie all the time.

  I need to see my daughter; I feel the lack of her. She needs her mother. Who is looking after her? The Weasel? My mother? When can I go home? I love Annie, I love Josh with every fibre of my being. My eyes sting and my throat hurts.

  I cannot read any more.

  Chapter 4

  Dr Robinson sighs and leans forward on the little table. We have a session this morning and then she’s coming back for another session in the afternoon when DS Allen gets here. Dr Robinson has told me that it will be a difficult day for me. But she is on perky form. Perhaps she lives for difficult days – she can go back home to Si Hubby and the kids and feel that she’s really doing something with her life. She is more colourful today. She’s in a different kind of uniform, very straight but trying not to be; she’s wearing a dress with a jaunty design on it. She looks as if she’s stepped out of a Boden catalogue. She might be a French teacher or a shop assistant. I like to watch her contained and measured movements. And there’s something else about her that’s different today. I’m still trying to puzzle out what it is when she smiles at me.

  ‘Thank you, Connie, for the document. I found it very interesting. And you write very well.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Dr Robinson. And may I take this opportunity to say how well you do your job too.’ I have always had a problem where I sound sarcastic even when I don’t mean to be. This time I do though. It all seems suddenly ridiculous.

  I am smoothing out my magazines. I’ve read them all and the sum conclusion I have reached is that big bottoms are in. What a relief, I can let mine out. I’ve hidden Annie’s diary; it is my secret. When Annie does decide to come and visit me, I don’t want her to think I’ve been reading it. And I certainly don’t want Little Miss Boden forensically examining Annie’s business.

  Dr Robinson screws up her face. ‘I was intrigued,’ she says, all Miss Marple now, closing in on the cracked vase. ‘I wanted to know what happened next.’

  ‘Ah, well, kind of a prerequisite for a writer’s work, I suppose.’

  ‘How are you today?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’

  ‘You’re looking better,’ she says. I’ll take her word for it; I don’t look in the mirror.

  ‘And so are you,’ I reply. It’s not exactly true. Her eyes are puffy – she had a few last night – but she has a renewed energy about her, a skip to her step. Then I get it!

  ‘Ahhh!’ I say, Hercule to her Marple. I chuckle knowingly, cross my arms and lean back in the chair so that the front two legs come off the ground. I give her a cheeky-chappy wink.

  She makes the mistake of looking quizzical.

  ‘So, Si Hubby got lucky last night …?’ I say.

  Dr Robinson actually blushes. And her hair slips. Oh, yes. I know I am right. ‘That is good news,’ I continue. ‘It’s great to think that our little chat had such a positive effect.’

  She has gone scarlet. She has that sort of colouring. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,’ I say. ‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, how our bodies give us away.’

  I leave a therapist pause in case she wants to join in with the topic, because it is a fascinating subject and she will be trained in spotting body language. But no, she is frozen in a parody of control, head cocked, pencil held out for effect, and rather sweetly she is still trying to maintain the eye contact that she prides herself on. She’s unsure how to get back on track, so I plough on. ‘Well done you, for putting in the effort! A little bit of Dutch courage and off you went? I like that about you: you’re a real trier, aren’t you, Dr Robinson?’ I’m hoping she notices my parroting of her questioning technique but now she’s busy pretending to rifle in her bag for something.

  ‘You know nothing about me, Constance,’ she says with a tight-rectum smile.

  Gosh, she called me Constance; she must be annoyed. Yesterday she was trying to be so pally. ‘It’s just it’s surprising to me,’ I say, looking out of the window at my leaf, which is flopping around like a drunk this morning, ‘given your line of work, that there you are expecting the truth from me, almost demanding it, and yet you yourself are content to be … well, there’s no other way of putting it … a bit of a fraud.’

  I want to get a proper grip of this woman who has been sent to assess me. I want to admire her; if her opinions are to have such sway, I do at least need to respect her. And I’m not quite convinced yet.

  ‘I’ll tell you what is interesting,’ she says, cool as a cucumber. ‘How you feel the necessity to transfer your own feelings on to mine.’

  ‘Oh, it is interesting,’ I agree. ‘It’s fascinating … but not unusual in female relationships. We’re always looking for links, connections … And I do believe you and I have some.’

  ‘We are not here to discuss my private life,’ she says, shifting in her seat. Her hair has slipped out of place again and she hasn’t corrected it. She’s not looking quite so perky now.

  ‘Not essentially, no. Yet it might prove fruitful. I think we need to get to the bottom of why we – you, I, so many of us – feel the need to be fraudulent. I doubt your reasons are very exceptional. It’ll be the usual trappings: safety, financial security, better th
e devil you know, mortgage, kids …’

  She gives me a sharp look. She has no idea how easy she is to read, how many tells she has. When she tried to open the window yesterday, her shirt rode up and I saw her belly. It was loose and as creased as a relief map, stretch-marked, just like mine: the scars of child-bearing that no amount of downward dog or sun salutations or whatever the hell she does will rectify. I always like that about Ness; she doesn’t care about her mum tum. I suppose the rest of her is so perfect it would seem ungracious.

  For a moment I lose focus. When I look back at Dr Robinson, I see a shaft of steel in those blue eyes.

  ‘DS Allen will be here this afternoon. Are you ready for that? I warn you, he’s not as nice as me. He’s not going to beat about the bush, Connie.’

  ‘Is that what you do? Beat about the bush? I don’t think that’s fair.’

  She has a light glow on her skin; she is perspiring. It is too warm in here. Her lips are puckered with intent and too many cigarette inhalations.

  ‘Why do you think you’re here, Connie?’ she says.

  I like her like this: hard, flinty. My respectometer goes up.

  ‘You mustn’t be so harsh with yourself,’ I say. ‘You mustn’t feel bad. Everyone fakes it. Maybe the lucky few feel it. I hope so. God, I hope so. I hope someone out there is leading a genuine life. But for the rest of us, faking is so important. I understand that now. I’d go so far as to say faking is vital. It is the foundation we build our worlds on.’

  I glance at my leaf. There’s a silence. She’s thinking. Then she makes a conscious decision to go with me. ‘Are you saying that you believe there is no place for truth in relationships?’

  It’s a good question and it takes me back a year. I’m in bed, our bed – I love this bed: it’s new, it’s huge, it’s so comfortable, it’s like a home in itself – on a Sunday morning. Karl has brought me a coffee and it’s a beautiful day outside. I’m utterly content. I can hear cartoons on the telly downstairs and the thud of Josh’s football hitting the wall outside.