Too Close

by Natalie Daniels

  Tonight, though, she had completely forgotten about the dinner party. It had been organized way too far in advance to remember. Hattie was good at cornering people; in the flush of a new relationship, she’d pinned Emma back in July: ‘What are you doing November 28th?’ It was designed to lasso the recipient into commitment. And Emma had not been quick-thinking enough to slip the noose. It was the last thing she had felt like doing but Emma was a reliable person: if she said she would go to something she always did. She got an Uber but the traffic had been so bad around Highbury and Islington that she had got out and walked the last ten minutes, getting severely rained on and thus arriving with make-up running down her face – which Hattie had felt obliged to point out in a room full of dry, perfectly groomed, marginally pissed strangers.

  And now here she sat, at the table on 28th November, having knocked back a catch-up Martini, asking polite questions of her neighbours in the way that she had been brought up to do. So far she had discovered that the gynaecologist was a misogynist and that the producer made salacious reality shows where the aim of the game seemed to be to lure beautiful young people to have sex live on TV. Her name was Alba and she was also a vegetarian who loved animals, but appeared not to be very fond of human beings. Alba and the misogynist bickered across Emma’s pea and mint scallops. She presumed they were married. She was relieved that neither of them had asked her a single thing about herself.

  She caught Si’s eye down at the other end of the table. He was sandwiched between Adrian and Adrian’s girlfriend, whose name she didn’t quite catch. Everyone agreed how nice the pea and mint scallop dish was and Hattie, without any qualms, was going into the details of the cooking of it, although Emma knew for sure that she would have bought it pre-prepared at some expensive eatery, because Hattie’s driving force in life was expediency. She had found the short cut to everything: why exercise when you can have the fat sucked off your buttocks?

  The point of this dinner party was for everyone to meet Blair, Hattie’s new beefcake of a boyfriend, who was a perfect Ken to her Barbie. A long time ago Si and his sister had looked alike but Hattie had changed beyond recognition over the last ten years. She now resembled a doll. Her skin was permanently tanned and waxy, her lips looked puffed and painful, her hair was bleached blonde and of adjustable length, her eyebrows crawled across her ironed forehead, and her lashes flapped like crows’ wings, casting shadows across her double-G breasts. The result of all the nips and tucks was that she had achieved a look of 100 per cent fakery and utterly indeterminate age – she could be anything from forty to eighty.

  As the wine flowed, Emma slipped further and further out of the conversation. She couldn’t focus at all tonight. However, she did notice that a game of musical chairs seemed to be going on around the table: people were up and down and moving about. She became aware of Si mocking his sister and knew he was about to tell the story of when they were kids and how Hattie had dropped his cigarettes down a gorge in the south of France. Emma had heard this story too many times. It wasn’t even that good because Si was not a great storyteller. He was sweet and good but he didn’t have what might be called charisma. Emma’s eyes glanced across the room at the other guests as he began it. She smiled encouragingly. This is the way we have to behave in couples, she thought, we support them in their delusions. She wished she had a girlfriend to go on walking holidays with, to compare notes on their partners, to laugh about sexual positions, to feel part of some sisterhood. But all of Emma’s friends had moved into a different world of parenting, sharing things that she wasn’t a part of any more. They didn’t quite know what to do with her these days, quite what to say. She had felt herself a cause of unease, an eggshell not to be stepped on, her very presence awkward and embarrassing. And nice as they were, they had stopped inviting her.

  Emma stared at her glass. She picked it up and knocked it back. She looked over at Si. Adrian’s girlfriend thought his gorge story was very funny so he was happy. How dare he be happy? She couldn’t think straight; she didn’t mean that. She poured the last of the bottle on the table into her neighbour’s glass, feeling too self-conscious to share the dribbles. Ken, or Blair, or whoever he was, noticed and passed another bottle down the table; she was grateful for that and waited for someone to pour it into her glass. No one did.

  Somebody else had already moved on to a funnier story. Emma missed the punchline but everyone was laughing a lot more at this story than the gorge one. She smiled politely; the men seemed to be getting louder and trying to top each other with who could be more outrageous, who could say the most callous thing for effect. There was a sort of frenetic flirtatious vibe in the room that Hattie always liked to create; the safety of coupledom giving everyone a licence to flirt. Only when Emma spotted the white dust that circled Blair’s nostril like a sugared doughnut did the penny drop; she took comfort in her Chardonnay.

  Someone was telling a story which involved nudity and a goat. Emma found herself pulling suitable expressions at suitable moments but she had missed the gist of it and was looking around to see who else had gone off to powder their nose. It upset her – it wasn’t the drug taking itself, it was the underhand manner of it, the exclusivity, the sneaking off from the table. It all seemed so childish. Worse than that, it was just plain bad manners. If you’re going to take it, put it out on the table where everyone can partake or not as they wish. And for that matter, why had nobody offered her any? She wouldn’t have had it (she’d had some once and been violently ill for days) but why did everyone assume that she was so square? She never used to be square. She and Sally Pea used to be quite wild in their teens.

  ‘Sounds like the awful moment I found myself river-dancing in an Irish pub,’ Blair said, and Emma watched as everyone decided at that moment that they liked him despite the fact he ran a battery-chicken farm and had voted for Brexit.

  Emma helped the gynaecologist to some more wine, for courtesy’s sake, then Alba the TV producer, then lastly herself. She was relaxing now. The stresses of the day had receded into the background, she was on to her second helping of bread and butter pudding – the cocaine-takers had all lost their appetites, so it was just her and Si who were having seconds – wondering whether she would draw attention to herself if she put her glasses on to pick out the raisins, when the conversation in the room hiccupped to a halt. Someone clearly said, ‘You are kidding?’

  Emma looked up, raisin on fork. All eyes at the table were turned on her. Her first thought was that they were all marvelling at her greed, or her manners. But something about their intensity said otherwise. Two things struck her: one, she was tremendously drunk, and two, someone was tightly clutching her arm.

  The grip lessened. ‘My God! What’s she like?’ Alba’s eyes were all lit up, her palms clapping. Then silence.

  ‘Who?’ Emma asked.

  ‘The Yummy Monster?’

  ‘No, wait, the kids survived, didn’t they?’ someone else said.

  ‘I think it’s touch and go, that’s what I read.’

  ‘One of them’s certainly in a coma. What’s she like, Emma?’ Emma stared at Alba, aware of a hot flush speeding up from her belly to her face. ‘I mean she was just like a normal middle-class mum who lost it, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yup!’ piped up some scrawny-looking woman in the far corner whom Emma had only just noticed. ‘You know Leah Worthington has left the BBC, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought she’d gone back?’ someone else said, and for a moment they were all distracted by the scrawny woman. ‘I know someone who used to do the park run with the Yummy Monster’s husband. She said she was just a normal mum.’

  ‘She was in a book club with Amanda Lewis’s cousin.’

  ‘Jesus!’ someone said.

  ‘Mind you, I’d kill my fucking children given half a chance,’ said Alba, wiping at her plate with her finger. Several people laughed heartily. Emma caught Si’s eye momentarily, then Si looked away, like he always did.

  ‘Oh, Alba!’ Hatti
e said. Her expression was almost impossible to decipher since the surgery but her hairline moved up and down and her eyes flicked nervously from her brother to his wife.

  ‘I’d love to make a programme on her.’ The TV woman had refocused on Emma.

  ‘Constance Morrison, that’s her name,’ said the scrawny woman.

  ‘No, Mortensen,’ several people corrected, but they were all still looking at Emma.

  ‘Christ Almighty! What’s going to happen to her?’ someone else said.

  Everyone was waiting for her to say something. She took a sip of her full glass of water. ‘I’m … I’m just her … psychiatrist …’

  ‘She should fucking fry, man,’ said Ken, or Blair, the battery-chicken killer, whoever he was. ‘Wait, frying’s too good for that psycho. She should be stoned.’

  Emma stared at him. The flush burned on her cheeks.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Hattie said to her boyfriend, gently slapping him on his arm. ‘Seriously though, Em, is she a monster?’

  The room began to spin with their hatred.

  ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘She’s obviously insane …? What will she get?’

  ‘It’s no use, Emma can’t talk about work,’ Si said, coming to her rescue. ‘It’s strictly confidential. I’m not allowed to ask her anything. Every time I walk past her computer, she slams down the screen as if she’s having an affair!’

  Adrian, the joker, the charmer, then took up the comedy baton and ran. ‘I mean, attempting to murder your own child is bad enough. But someone else’s! Can you imagine making that phone call to the parent?’ He mimed being on the telephone. ‘They had a lovely sleepover, super-fun, lots of crisps and pop, but just one tiny little thing …’

  Everybody laughed and turned to see whether Emma was laughing. She hated Adrian then. Adrian, the caring barrister who defends trafficked women but visits prostitutes. She knew this because Si once let it slip by mistake.

  Slowly, she got up from her chair; her voice was low and calm. ‘Yes,’ she said, looking at Adrian. ‘Just imagine that.’ She wiped her mouth with her napkin and put it down, tucking her chair in to the table. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I’m just going to the bathroom.’

  She hadn’t meant to make a statement with it, but, nevertheless, she was aware of a momentary silence in her wake. She could hear the conversation pick up again by the time she got to the stairs. She went up slowly, hand on the banister. Hold yourself together, she said to herself. She got to the landing and opened the bathroom door. She went inside and locked the door behind her and leant against it, her heart punching fists against her chest. She went to the sink and clutched hold of the rim. She looked up at herself. She had drunk too much. Her hands were trembling.

  A knock on the door startled her. She cleared her throat and turned on the tap.

  ‘Just a moment!’ she cried.

  She flushed the loo for effect. She sat down. Pull yourself together, woman. She took a deep shaky breath. She could hear mocking laughter from directly beneath her and she hated them all. There was another knock on the bathroom door.

  ‘Em?’ Si tried the handle. ‘You all right? Let me in!’

  She thought about it and then got up and unlocked the door. She let him in and locked the door behind him.

  He stood there looking at her. She felt foolish. She hated making a scene.

  ‘Come on, Em …’

  ‘Come on what?’ She was torn: she didn’t want to ruin the party but she was spoiling for a fight. ‘They sit there, that bunch of bloody hypocrites, Hattie in all her fakery, with the meal she hasn’t cooked, the hair she didn’t grow, that moron of a boyfriend, making these judgements.’

  ‘Woah!’ he said. She knew he would defend his sister.

  ‘They think everything is there to be joked about, to be mocked. Well, it’s not, Simon. Everything is not funny. Some things are not funny.’

  ‘That’s just Adrian. You know how he is.’

  ‘They’re a bunch of frauds.’

  ‘Right … Well, who’s being judgemental now?’

  She hated him, him and his stupid sister. ‘She’s worth ten of that lot.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Connie.’ She corrected herself. ‘Constance Mortensen.’

  He was looking at her in the same way she tried not to look at her patients. ‘What did you say?’

  Emma couldn’t repeat it. She shouldn’t have said that. She didn’t even know what she meant. She had to do something decisive rather than continue in this vein so she went over to get some loo roll, snatched it off and blew her nose.

  ‘You should be careful what you say,’ he said.

  ‘I’m always careful what I say! That’s my fucking job!’ she shout-whispered; even in this state she still worried about being overheard. ‘I want some of that cocaine downstairs.’

  ‘What? No you don’t.’

  Si sat down on the edge of the bath and stared at her.

  She too sat down on the edge of the bath, knocking over a row of Hattie’s expensive products as she did so.

  ‘You’ve drunk too much,’ he said.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Obviously, she had.

  ‘You’ve got work tomorrow.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Not till Friday.’

  They sat there for about a minute, side by side, both staring at the floor tiles. Her hair had slipped forward and he couldn’t see her face, but she sniffed loudly.

  ‘It’s awful,’ she said, her voice deep and angry. ‘It’s just awful.’

  ‘What’s awful, love?’

  ‘Those little girls …’

  Slowly, he stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. ‘You know you don’t have to do this case? You could have it reassigned.’

  Emma ignored him and stood up swiftly. She went to the little window above the toilet and opened it. She got out her cigarettes and lit up. She stood there, her back to him, and took a long soothing drag as she pulled herself together. ‘I saw the forensic photographs today,’ she said, turning around, glancing at him. ‘We showed them to her. You know what she did when she saw the photograph of her daughter lying there in a coma?’

  They held each other’s gaze for a moment. ‘She laughed, Simon.’

  Emma looked back out of the window where a gust of wind was hurling the rain against the neighbouring brick wall.

  ‘She’s not of sound mind, love,’ he said. He was ever the lawyer. Everything was so black and white for him.

  ‘But she seems it. She seems far sounder than any of us.’

  ‘Facts are facts,’ he said.

  ‘Those idiots downstairs,’ she said quietly, so that the idiots wouldn’t hear her. ‘Are they dead? Are they in a coma? They don’t care, do they, as long as they get some gossip out of it …’

  Emma blew the smoke in a steady stream out into the wet night and listened to the rain without moving, her eyes looking through the brick wall into a bleak beyond.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, more to herself. ‘A dead child is just a dead child.’

  It was a cruel thing to say. She didn’t turn but she heard him make a strange sound, an audible exhalation, like a punctured ball slowly releasing its air. As usual, she felt the distance between them.

  Chapter 8

  Feb 10

  Leah was going out to play tennis and told me and Polly to be good for a few hours. Polly asked her for some money but she told Polly to stop being so bloody cheeky which was good because there is a swear box that Leah has to put money into. She put 10p in then we both did begging noises and got on our knees and tried to make her swear again. I like it when Leah laughs. She said Polly had no understanding of the valew of money (because she had given her 20 quid last week and she dropped it out of her pocket. It must of been when we were doing chalk circles round the dog poos in the park). Leah said if we wanted money we would have to work for it and told us to tidy the house while she was out. She looked silly going off down the street in white napp
y nickers tennis costume. We collected all the money we could find in the house. Down the sofa. In the pencil pot. In the desk. By the bed. We found LOTS of interesting stuff in the draw by the bed. They have an ENORMOUS plastic toy willy on a short lead thing that buzzes and dances on the floor!! Polly strapped it on her back and we put an egg cosy on its head and we pretended it was a baby.

  Then we got bored and decided to make a shop. Polly said Ness has loads of things she never uses so we had a look in her cubbard and found lots of stuff. Some gold boots that she only wears at Christmas. And a whole see threw zip bag full of clothes. Then we found Leahs golf sticks, Polly said she will never notice if a couple of them went missing and some nice big books from the top shelf. Polly says no one EVER looks up there. And we took the dancing willy. ANYWAY we found so much that we ended up borrowing a trolley from Sainsburys and we put everything in it and pushed it to the park and we made a stall by the market. Some boys from year 7 bought the willy for 2 pounds!! And Sashas mum came by and bought Nesses leather jacket. She was modelling it all like a model and we were going yeah it looks really good on you, although to be honest it didnt because she is not the slimmest of people ahem ahem if you know what I mean, but you have to lie in shops if you want to be a seller.

  We made LOADS of money. 46 pounds 35p (minus 10 pounds because Josh and his smelly friends came by and said theyd snitch on us).

  Anyway when we got back to Pollys Ness and Leah were having a row. We could hear Leah shouting from outside the house. At first we thought it was because of us and our shop but it wasnt. They didn’t even hear us when we came in. So we tiptoed up the stairs and they carried on argewing.