Ness did what she had to do in Bristol and I wandered around, had a sandwich by the canal, read my book with a coffee. And then we left to go back home. We could probably have made it in time for supper. But on the way, we got completely pelted by rain on the M4 and one of my windscreen wipers broke. It was quite dangerous – I could see nothing and we were in the fast lane at the time – but she was cool-headed, flagging the cars around us until I got us safely on to the hard shoulder, my legs a-tremble. She put her hand on my thigh and soothed me. I can’t describe it, Dr R, but I felt looked after with her, in a way that I didn’t with Karl. Yes, if I was a man, she was just the sort of woman I would fall in love with.
We called the AA and our partners and waited in the rain.
Looking back, what happened next seems entirely random. The AA arrived quickly and towed us for miles to some garage in the Bath countryside. It turned out they would have to order a special windscreen wiper (who knew such a thing existed?) which wouldn’t turn up until the next day – if we were lucky.
So, there we were, stuck in the middle of nowhere. We had an empty slate. So we made the relevant phone calls home, organized the necessary childcare, and then found a surprisingly pleasant inn on the edge of the village recommended by the mechanic – an establishment favoured by walkers: low beams, flagstone floor, roaring log fire. The only room they had available was a double, which neither of us was bothered about. So we found ourselves drinking pints of local ale sitting by the log fire, feeling rather elated at the surprising turn of events. We were on our second round when Karl’s texts started beeping through: Where are Josh’s shin pads? Annie can’t find her blue wig? You haven’t bought any washing tablets. How do you switch the dishwasher on?
Ness was utterly incredulous that he didn’t know how to use the machines. I wasn’t. I saw it as a deliberate ploy. Karl was a grand master of lethargy; he’d made uselessness a tool in his bid for idleness. Most insultingly of all, he must have thought I didn’t see through it. How, after years, could he still not manage to load the dishwasher with the plates at the right angle so the branch didn’t get stuck? (Can Si Hubby do that, Dr R?) Or take the washing out of the machine immediately, so that it doesn’t smell of old drains, and hang it out on the line in such a way that it won’t need ironing? How could he not master these tiny, simple things when I have mentioned them four thousand times? I’ll tell you why: because his overriding aim has been for me to have to redo everything, so that he can throw his hands in the air, flagellate with hurt and despair, and cry, Whatever I do, Connie, it’s never quite good enough for you, is it? As if it were my fault for wanting our fucking clothes to be clean and for him not to stink like a damp dog. He and I had always brought equal amounts of money into the house. At what stage during our relationship did I sign up to be the domestic slave?
You asked me if I was ever jealous? I’ll tell you what makes me jealous: the sharing of domestic tasks. Imagine this: walking past the chest of drawers where you’ve left a pile of clean laundry and to find that someone else has put it away! That is foreplay in my book. To return home to a wiped table! That is nigh on orgasmic. You know what? Leah doesn’t leave pee on the toilet seat, she tidies up the sofa before she goes to bed, and she reads the fucking news on the BBC. Yes! I’m jealous!
I’m working myself up into a state but you must understand, Dr R – maybe you do: it is these little slacknesses that kill relationships; that are the steady crunch of the woodworm, eating away at what might have been a sound structure.
We carried on drinking beer, ate a hearty meal – interestingly, Ness and I (unlike you, with your horse-food calorie-controlled nut bars) are in that minority of women who have never weighed ourselves or been on diets, which automatically eliminates an awful lot of those deeply tedious conversations I hear other women have – and crashed out, bloated and bulging, in the pillow-plumped four-poster bed.
The next morning we sat at the bleached wooden breakfast table, the whiff of toast in the air, the clink of white crockery and the rustle of newspapers. It was all Gucci, as Josh would say. At ten-thirty we rang the garage to be told that the windscreen wiper wouldn’t be arriving until the following morning. After a minute or so of disbelief that our journey should be hindered by a windscreen wiper – it was technically illegal to drive without one, according to our mechanic, and it was looking like rain – neither of us actually minded that much; we were on an unexpected and welcome break from the old routine. My deadline for an article was not for another few days and Ness’s boss was very amenable. We made the necessary calls home, got talking to a couple on the next table, and decided to go on a walk – a proper walk. Ness, as ever sensibly clad, was already wearing her walking boots and I had some trainers in the back of the car. So we took photos of the couple’s Ordnance Survey map and pored over the route as we ate our porridge and boiled eggs. We decided on an eight-mile circular route to the lake and back. This was fun. In a way, I felt like I’d been waiting for Ness all my life: an accomplice, an adventurer, a partner in carpe diem.
The proprietor of the inn lent us a backpack and offered us some wellies, which we refused. I watched the way Ness efficiently packed the bag: water bottle, some Kendal Mint Cake that she’d bought at the counter, the way she carefully rolled up her blue Norwegian cagoule (the type that people die in on Mount Everest) and neatly stuffed it down the side. She methodically figured out how all the compartments worked. She was thorough. ‘If I’d known I’d have brought my compass. Have you got a waterproof?’ she asked me. I saw a new side to her: she was the tiniest bit bossy but I really didn’t mind; in fact I was enjoying being bossed. Besides, it was a rarity for me not to ask three hundred times whether everyone had been for a pee, brought a jumper, etc. I only had myself to ask today.
I didn’t have a waterproof.
‘Not in the back of the car?’ she asked me, surprised. I bet at home she had a proper hiking bag with a first-aid kit and a pouch where she kept her compass, a flare and a couple of crampons; unlike me with my strappy handbag, lippy and a couple of tampons.
We stopped at the garage, where she exchanged pleasantries with the mechanic while I put on the trainers and my Topshop bomber jacket, looking like an idiotic townie. Pathetic really – but in the event of an air ambulance rescue service at least I would look good.
Luckily for me, the weather turned out to be glorious (which actually meant we could easily have driven home). And the Bath countryside was magnificent.
We’d met each other late in life and we had a lot of catching up to do, so we decided we would tell each other our stories, interview each other, cover every stage of life, not necessarily in order. Whatever the interviewer wanted to ask they could ask; no questions were out of bounds, nothing was sacred. What was said in the Bath countryside stayed in the Bath countryside. That was our motto. I was to be interviewed until we got to the lake and she was to be interviewed on the way back.
We followed the river along the flatter land. Ness was so sure of herself and her map reading and I continued to enjoy being led. She knew about the Jurassic rock and the evolution of the land itself (her father was a geography teacher). We marvelled at the trees, which were shrieking reds and golds at us. It felt more like June than September and soon it became so warm that we stuffed our jumpers into the backpack. She checked her phone with the pictures of the OS map every time we came to a stile or a fork in the path. Already I was dependent on her; why was she the one carrying the backpack, holding the phone? But I liked the way she was a bit nerdy, the way she referred to the map, knowing what all the symbols meant, her finger following the dotted red line. Initially I wanted to double-check every decision made – I was used to being prime navigator of my tribe, after all – but I soon surrendered entirely to her control. And it felt good being dominated; a new and perhaps feminine feeling that I wasn’t quite used to. I was giving myself over in a way I hadn’t for many years.
So, I was the first to tell my story. Once we�
�d crossed the river, we began in earnest. She wanted to start with the meeting of my parents, so a couple of hours later, by the time we’d got to the top of the peak, I’d gone through the birth of my brother David, my own entry to the world, my early schooling, the important characters from my childhood, friends – she asked me a lot of questions about my greatest friends, Grace and Ally – the teenage years, my brief first marriage. Her questions were poignant but sensitive, her curiosity sharp. She was a great interviewer, able to keep the flow going, pull it back on track, create links and point out patterns, all the while handing me little bits of Kendal Mint Cake and glugs of water.
We were walking along the top of the dyke when we glimpsed the lake. It was as blue as the sky and took our breath away. It was wonderful to walk with someone who really felt the force of nature. It was a real connection. Karl was strangely impervious to nature; whether we were watching bursts of lava spewing from Etna, or just the last of the sun going down, I’d have to point the spectacle out, draw his focus. He’d stop and look and try to be impressed, because he knew he was meant to be feeling something. And the gap between us would increase. Then he would bring us close again with a joke, almost apologizing for his lack of wonder. I wish I’d brought my watercolours. We’d found a way that worked: we substituted laughter for connection. And so laughter became our connection, which in its own way is wonderful. But with Ness it was different. She and I spoke the same language: we both stopped and looked at the lake at exactly the same time, just because we both did.
By the time we reached it, we were boiling; we took our socks and shoes off and sat at the edge with our feet dangling in the water, basking in the warm sunshine. There wasn’t a soul about. I splashed the icy water on to my face and hair and we ate the last of the Kendal Mint Cake. Then Ness sat up abruptly, rummaged in the backpack and pulled out her cagoule, unzipped a pocket and produced the remnants of a fat spliff and a lighter.
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I knew I had it! Leah and I smoked half of this last week!’
Weed had gone out of fashion for some reason – parenthood had made cokeheads out of everyone. (Well, smoking’s so bad for your health, isn’t it, Dr R?) She passed it under my nose and then lit up. This was a moment of bliss, the sort you crave for when you’re stuck on a crowded tube.
We lay in the grass in an easy silence, our toes flicking the water, feeling the warm sun on our skin; bees and buzzing things meandering by, dropping in to see whether we were worth pollinating. I watched an eagle hovering above high in the sky and felt Ness shift on to her elbow at my side. She was close; I could smell her. She smelt of me. Me without the body odour. She passed me the spliff.
‘When you met Karl, did you know straight away he was the one?’
I took a drag and softly blew the thick smoke out before turning to look at her.
‘I’m not sure I believe in the one.’
She looked momentarily crushed. I didn’t like myself for it: it’s so easy to make people feel small. Yet my response gave away more than she heard, don’t you think?
‘I was still busy thinking I’d found the one in someone else,’ I said, to make amends. She looked at me in that particular way she had, out of the corners of her eyes. It was alluring. ‘It’s funny how things work out,’ I continued. ‘The decisions you never consciously make. When I met Karl, I certainly wasn’t looking to get involved with anyone. But he was like a breath of fresh air. Then he kind of set me in his sights.’ I smiled to remember how, in those early days, he would turn up uninvited wherever I went. I was unfriendly, my brother was blatantly rude to him – he’d come over from Australia for a family reunion – but Karl never took offence. His pursuit was relentless. (In your profession you might call it stalking, but it veered just to the right side of it.) ‘And he was so funny! I couldn’t not be charmed by him.’
‘Yes, he is charming,’ she said. She had a slight edge to her voice so that I couldn’t tell what she meant by that, whether she was being critical of him. I hoped not. I wanted her to be charmed by him; I wanted her onside.
‘He’d been brought in by this magazine I was writing for; they were hiring and firing at the top. I was asked to show him around. We ended up having lunch together and he asked me out. We went on a few dates and soon it became apparent that we had similar outlooks on life, we both wanted the same things … it was all so easy. There was no reason not to be with him.’ I laughed, feeling a wave of incredible fondness for Karl. (Interesting how we shape our own narratives to fit our stories. You mustn’t take my version for the truth – I’m sure you don’t.) For some reason I failed to mention to Ness that Karl had been a serial Lothario and during those first few months together I discovered at least three other women who thought they were going out with him. (Is this perhaps what kept me keen? Win the competition then let the cup gather dust? I hope I’m not that petty, but I might be.) I know why I didn’t tell her: I didn’t want to see her incredulity or hear her disapproval. I was protective of him, of us.
Ness was leaning on her elbow, facing me, one breast leaning heavily on the other. I took another drag.
‘Then I found out I was pregnant … No, hang on, I’m missing something out. It was still early days when something really shit happened to him and I was just there, you know … it sort of made us a couple in other people’s eyes …’
She was chewing on another piece of grass, her legs tucked forward a little, droplets of water caught on her calves, her hip bones jutting out through her jeans, her slender arms resting against the curve of her body.
‘What happened?’ she asked, because she could. These were the rules. I shifted position, leaning on my elbow and mirroring hers.
‘He doesn’t talk about it, actually, so don’t bring it up.’
‘I won’t.’
‘He was driving in north London somewhere and he knocked someone over. This woman. She died later in hospital.’ (You’d have a minefield with him, Dr R.)
‘Oh, good heavens!’ Ness said. She often used rather sweet, old-fashioned expressions. ‘How awful.’ She covered her mouth with her hand.
‘Yes.’
‘How awful for him.’
‘As I said, don’t mention it, will you?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
I passed her the spliff. ‘It wasn’t his fault. It was a young woman. She was having a row with someone and walked out without looking and bam …’
‘My goodness! Poor Karl.’ This was the first time I’d heard her have empathy for him and I liked it. Sometimes I felt that she didn’t really trust him in some way.
‘He went into a kind of shock and then he just refused to speak about it … he still won’t get in a Citroën,’ I said.
‘He’s such a happy sort of person,’ she said, somewhat incongruously. She sat up and folded her arms around her knees. I looked at her lovely smooth back. Her hair was up and some of it had fallen down. If I was a man I’m pretty sure I’d fall in love with you.
She turned and passed the spliff back to me.
‘Is it hard, living with someone like Leah?’ I asked her.
‘You mean the fame? Or Ms Misery Guts?’ She smiled, looking round at me. I meant the latter; she knew that. ‘I suppose I’m so used to it. I don’t think I could bear someone endlessly cheery. They’d get on my tits.’
Again, I took this as a slight dig at Karl, who had a peculiar habit of being relentlessly chipper in groups. He wasn’t really like that in private. It was as though he had two distinct personas. In public he was Mr Joke-A-Minute, filling silences with whistled snatches of lift music. She was absolutely right: it really could get on your tits. I didn’t mind it getting on my tits but I didn’t want it getting on other people’s tits, if you see what I mean, Dr R (maybe because it would reflect badly on me?). I wanted Ness to like Karl. We always want our female friends to like our partners in just the right way.
‘Have you ever been depressed?’ I asked. I was curious.
‘Umm …’ s
he said, but she shrugged her shoulders and had to think about it. No one likes to confess to not having felt depressed because that makes them seem insensitive and superficial, but on the other hand no one likes to say that they’ve been Prozacked up to the eyeballs, waking up wailing every morning at the prospect of another twenty-four hours to live through, because that makes them sound unhinged. You have to have felt just the right amount of misery to be socially acceptable to the Establishment, don’t you agree?
‘I always think of all the people who have it much worse than I do.’
I blew the blue smoke up into the blue sky. Yes, I could believe she did that. There was a slightly Edwina Currie-ish side to her, a no-nonsense, put-on-an-extra-jumper kind of mentality. It was the opposite of indulgent and I liked that, but it showed a thickness of skin that I’d noticed elsewhere in her character. Leah could be openly rude to her and it was like it meant nothing; she never reacted. She’d brush it off, seemingly unaffected. I would have been incredibly hurt or angry had someone spoken to me that way. Other people’s relationships are anathema – face it, Doc.
I was envious of her too: of her mental strength. How wonderful not to have been to those dark places. It probably just wasn’t in her nature. I liked that about her – she was straightforward. You’d know best, but I’ve come to believe that it’s in the DNA, that self-destruct button; you’re either suicidal or you’re not. It doesn’t mean that you’ve gone any lower than anyone else; it’s just the way your brain is programmed to deal with things. To some of us, death feels like an attractive, proactive solution to a problem. And at the time it appears to be by far the more sensible alternative to carrying on. It seems quite obvious to me that risk-takers are more likely to chuck it all in. My first suicide attempt happened at fifteen. I got pregnant the first time I had sex and it truly felt like the end of the world. I went to the bathroom cabinet in my parents’ house and swallowed every pill I could find in the cupboard. Sadly for me, they were old hippies and it turned out I’d OD’d on tree bark and ginseng.
Too Close Page 6