Too Close

by Natalie Daniels

  *

  Sep 30

  I hate school. Phoebe B is a cow. Every time I went near her today she started holding her nose and waving her hand around and people started laughing. When we were waiting outside for cooking she said my mum was mentally insane. I said her mum was so fat it would take a space ship 3 years to circle her. She said that the harvest festival was delayed because my mum threw bleech over Pollys mum. Polly said it didnt get her. I said she didnt throw it it was an accident. She was cleaning and she tripped. Phoebe B said my mum was arrested for swimming in the river with no clothes on and they put her in a strait jacket and took her off to the mental home. We were outside room 6 so I pushed her down the stairs and she cried like a baby.

  Miss G sent me to the headmaster. He told me to wait in his study with him so I sat there while he talked on the telephone and drank a coke. I told him coca cola had 8 spoonfuls of sugar in it. And he said yes it was very bad of him and asked me not to tell anybody. He told me I shouldnt have pushed Phoebe B down the stairs WHATEVER things she was saying. So I said what are you supposed to do when someone is saying nasty things about your mummy. You come and tell me, he said, which to be honest isnt very practical. He said there is a lady at school who is very helpful to talk to. Then he asked me how I was doing and he asked me if I had any questions. I couldnt think of any. Then I asked him if he knew what a strait jacket was. He said it was something to wear that stopped you hurting yourself. Like armer I suppose. We are studying knights. He kept looking at my school uniform. I couldnt find mine this morning so I was wearing one of Joshes shirts and I took my socks and skirt out of the washing machine but everything was wet and crinkled so I have been letting them dry on me. I tell you what, he said. Why dont we have a look in lost property and see what we find and then he took my hand and we went to look in the box. He kept saying I dont think anybody will be needing this and giving me clothes to put on. Strickly speaking he is a thief.

  Oct 4

  Me and Granny and Daddy and Josh went to see Mummy in the place where she is staying. Its a sort of hotel called Milton House where they give you pills and jelly. I ate Mummys jelly. I didnt like Milton House except for the vending machine with crisps and chocolates in it. Mummy was in a room with another lady who had a HUGE belly and was about to drop a baby out of her urethra. Mummy was wearing her tracksuit bottoms and her nighty at the same time sitting in a chair in a room watching an old episode of Tracy Beaker on telly. Mummy HATES Tracy Beaker but she didnt complain AT ALL. She was all sleepy and her voice was different like she was forign or something. She smelt funny. Granny told me and Josh to give Mummy a hug. To be honest I didnt want to give her a hug but I did and she wouldnt let go and my hair hurt and she had a bracelet on with her name on it. WHY would she need that? Afterwards I asked Josh if he thought that she really was our mummy. He told me to stop being a retard.

  Daddy told me to give her my card which I drew of me wearing new clothes pushing Phoebe B down the stairs and she stared at it for a long time but didnt ask me what it was about. First she was smiling but tears came out of her eyes without her crying from her mouth. I said whats wrong but she kept looking at the card. Then I started crying too and Granny took my hand and we went and got some lucosade sport from the vending machine. Granny was very rude to a lady saying theyd turned Mummy into a BLOODY ZOMBIE and what the hell was going on and she wanted to see the manajer. When we went back to say goodbye Josh had changed the channel to football and they were all watching the telly apart from Mummy who had gone to sleep and it was only 3 oclock. In the car on the way home Granny was crying. She had a headache. I dont like it how things are at all any more. Maybe Mummy is a zombie which means shes dead. I want to go to Nesses.

  Chapter 17

  The sun was shining and the snow had turned to a dirty sludge as Emma made her way down the high street. She was feeling excited, slightly nervous; Si had no idea she was coming. She had a lot of making up to do with him. They had both been neglectful of their relationship and let things slip. Her plan was to turn up after practice and take him out for supper; she had booked a table at their local Italian and afterwards a late showing at the old picture house. She was unusually early; orchestra didn’t finish until five and it was only twenty to. She decided to wait for him in the pub across the road from where she would see the crypt doors.

  She went in. It was like stepping into a time warp. A few grey heads turned to stare before slowly returning to their pale ales, old addled white men glued to their stools, lined up like babies in high chairs supping from their beakers. There was still a stigma in pubs like this, a woman coming in on her own; their stares made her self-conscious but it was too late to walk out. She would never have had the nerve to come into a place like this as a younger woman; she had always felt threatened by it. At least age brought with it a certain confidence in this respect, a safety. She thought of Connie’s confidence; her sense of self had somehow remained intact. Connie, who was never far from her mind, had become a kind of behavioural barometer for Emma’s own dealings with the everyday and Emma was surprised by how fiercely protective of her patient she had become – in meetings, in her professional dealings, with the press, in social situations, in private. Despite her obvious vulnerability, Connie had a strength to her and some of that strength had rubbed off on Emma.

  She approached the bar and ordered herself a gin and tonic from the pretty eastern European girl behind the counter. The girl failed to understand her so, with misguided intentions, one of the stool-dwellers repeated the order in a loud, patronizing voice with a conspiratorial wink at Emma, inviting her to team up with him against the dumb foreigner, who probably spoke more languages than the pints he’d had so far today. She felt their rheumy eyes on her hips as she took her drink over to a small table by the window where she could see the crypt doors; men like this were largely harmless but their insidious lechery was always disquieting. She leant over to pick up a red top paper that was lying on the bench, flicking a page for want of something to do, and there she was, faced with Minxy Mandy from Manchester and her unnatural attributes.

  Emma put the paper down and got out her Hotel du Lac. She crossed her legs, registering the slinky feel of the silk of her knickers against the smoothness of her waxed skin. She felt a twinge of guilt. For whom had she suffered the agonies of hair removal? She might pretend it was for herself but she would be lying. And yet it was truly lovely to touch – she’d spent a long time running her hand over her own softness in the bath. But that wasn’t the whole truth. She’d invited Si to come with her to the party, of course, hoping he’d say no, and when he did say no she’d felt a small disappointment, but was it only because she didn’t like arriving on her own at occasions? No, I understand, she’d said when he’d dithered. A reunion is always boring for partners.

  Sally Pea had looked exactly the same to Emma. Apart from the fact she now had blonde hair (with purple streaks) and they both used to have black hair. Plus she must be about four stone heavier than she used to be, which came as something of a relief – Emma had been half starving herself since Sally sent the invite. She’d somehow imagined everyone from her past being unravaged by time. But there was much that hadn’t changed about Sally: her bright button eyes, her smile, her laugh, her warmth. She’d squealed with delight when she saw Emma approaching. They were both dressed entirely in black, perhaps subconsciously for old times’ sake. And it seemed to Emma, who was filled with a powerful nostalgia, the craziest thing in the world that they had lost touch. How had that happened? How introverted and serious she herself had become with her small life and her big career. As they held each other at arm’s length to examine the doings of time, Emma deeply regretted her self-inflicted isolation, all because of her inability to express her vulnerability. She had immersed herself in her work when perhaps it was friendship that got you up and down the snakes and ladders of life. Connection was all that really mattered.

  ‘You won the lottery! I can’t believe it!�
�� she cried, clinking her glass against Sally’s.

  ‘I know! I’m a jammy bugger!’ Sally hugged her tightly. She was already pretty plastered. Emma wasn’t far behind – she’d knocked back a few Martinis on her own before coming.

  ‘I can’t believe you came! Mum! Mum!!’ Sally called out behind her, beckoning wildly to a woman with identical hair. And there she was – Mrs Pea, ballooned and lined, but with those same bright eyes twinkling through the generations. They had always been a double act, Sally and her mother. Now they looked more alike than ever. Emma remembered how envious she had been of them as a teenager, the different atmosphere of their houses; the warmth in Sally’s and the chilliness in her own. Sally wrapped her arm around her mother. ‘Remember Emma, Mum? Clever Emma?’ She was shouting loudly into her ear and turned to Emma with a grin. ‘Deaf as a wombat.’

  ‘Ooh! Lordy me! Emma Davis! I certainly do but I wouldn’t have recognized you! You’ve lost a pound or two. What did you do, give it to Sally?’

  Sally realigned a stray strand of her mother’s hair. ‘That’s rich coming from you, Karen Carpenter.’

  Mrs Pea wheezed a smoker’s chuckle. ‘What are you doing with yourself these days, Emma?’ she asked. She meant marriage and kids, of course, the only female destination for her generation. ‘You married?’

  ‘She’s only a frigging psychologist!’ Sally yelled.

  ‘A gynaecologist?’ The unimaginable horrors of such a profession visibly passed across her features and Emma and Sally laughed.

  ‘Not a gynaecologist, Mum. A psychologist.’ Sally rolled her eyes at Emma. ‘She doesn’t know one end from the other …’

  ‘Psychiatrist, I’ll have you know, not psychologist,’ Emma said, flicking back her hair, taking the mickey out of herself, so happy to be here. How on earth had she let the years slip by without Sally? She reached out and squeezed Sally’s hand, overcome with fondness for the both of them.

  ‘She’s famous! She’s doing that case in the papers, Mum.’ Sally had bent forward to shout in her mum’s ear again. ‘You know The Yummy Monster? The acid attack woman?’

  Emma flinched. The Yummy Monster. She hated that moniker. It had been splashed across the front page with two photographs of Connie. The ‘Before’: Connie at the school ball, a glamorous trendy yummy mummy. And the ‘After’: Connie looking dazed and confused in the psychiatric unit, her peculiar tufts of red hair sticking up on end, the grotesque scars on her neck and arms.

  Although she smiled at Sally and her mother, she felt suddenly profoundly hurt for Connie, who would be sitting in that chair by the window with no idea that she was the subject of such careless gossip up and down the country.

  ‘Oh, her? Albert’s brother went to school with her brother!’

  Why did everyone need a personal connection with tragedy? Sally turned to greet some late arrival with a whoop.

  ‘Nasty piece of work,’ Mrs Pea said to Emma. ‘How’s your mother, Emma?’ And Emma was glad she had moved on so quickly.

  ‘Oh, she died a good few years back, actually.’

  ‘She died? I’m sorry to hear that. I always thought, if you don’t mind me saying, dear, that she was a bit hard on you. It seemed to me that nothing you ever did was quite good enough for her. And you were such a good girl.’

  Emma felt a jab at those words. A jab of validation. ‘Well, thank you for saying that,’ she said. ‘That was exactly how it felt.’ A passing waiter filled up her glass as she had hoped he would.

  ‘And you not having any siblings to take a bit of the flak … I always thought how lonely that must have been. You got kids?’

  Emma took a long swig. ‘Nope,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, what a shame.’

  ‘Hey, listen to that!’ Sally shrieked, necking back her glass, cupping her ear theatrically and then grabbing Emma’s hand to pull her over towards the disco end of the room, where a silver ball spun slowly in a purple light. A couple of slightly younger women were enjoying themselves on the dance floor, exuding a physical self-confidence that normally would have left Emma feeling depleted – they were rock-chicky, slinky and sexy, blonde hair with dark roots, clothes slipping off smooth shoulders, tiny tattoos in erogenous places, oozing ease as they moved to the music.

  But she had no choice: Sally was whispering to the DJ and soon their teenage years were beckoning. She laughed. ‘Billericay Dickie’. She remembered the days spent in Sally’s room working out dance routines to Ian Dury songs (before they embraced Gothdom and stopped moving altogether, and instead clung to dark walls in dark venues). It was amazing what the body could recall. The younger cooler women stepped aside, fans of Sally Pea, enjoying these old-timers and the snatches of remembered routines. Emma couldn’t remember the last time she had danced. Let alone like this; she shed the years like skin from a snake. She was no longer old, square and past it, she was herself again. She and Sally strutted stupidly for song after song. And Sally’s DJ just kept those old classics coming – Siouxsie, the Cure, the Clash – and they danced with all the exuberance of seventeen-year-olds and all the limitations of forty-seven-year-old bodies.

  Then she spotted him, standing at the bar. He was watching her. Strangely confident with this new Emma reclaimed, she stopped dancing and went over to greet him. She was sweating, shining, happy.

  ‘Hello there, Mr Thompson.’

  ‘Nice moves,’ he said, kissing her cheeks.

  ‘I was wondering when you were going to turn up,’ she said.

  ‘Is your husband here?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Is your wife?’

  ‘Ex-wife. Yeah.’ He nodded towards the rock chicks. Ah, of course he would have married a woman like that; he was Dougie Thompson, after all.

  She was feeling fantastically drunk, unusually reckless. ‘Thanks for giving Sally my number, Dougie. It’s great to be here.’

  ‘I’m glad you could come. Other side of London. Babysitter and all that.’

  She shook her head. ‘Actually, something’s been bothering me since I bumped into you. I lied to you and I don’t know why. Well, I do know why. My daughter … I told you my daughter was nine. I told you Abigail was nine. She’s not. Sometimes I just say she is …’ She was floundering, but she didn’t want his pity, she just wanted to explain. ‘Abigail died six years ago. She would have been nine, now.’

  His face dropped. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Emma. I had no idea.’

  ‘Of course not. Why would you? You just kind of caught me at a moment … I don’t—Oh my God! Is that James Storm?!’

  He looked around. ‘Yes, it is!’

  A large bald man was approaching them. ‘Hey, Dougie! How goes?’

  ‘Jim! Look who it isn’t!’ Dougie said, putting his arm protectively around Emma’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh my God! No! Emma Davis!’ James said. ‘Wow! You look … great!’ It was the weight loss, he meant.

  ‘Hi, James,’ she said. ‘Actually, I was just remembering the other day a party at your dad’s house … we’d all finished our mocks or something. Do you remember it?’

  ‘I certainly do. So does my dad: Mickey Gray puked in his bed.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I remember that party,’ Dougie said. And she found that she couldn’t quite look at him.

  ‘I saw your name in the papers. You’re on that case, aren’t you?’ James was looking at her excitedly. ‘The Yummy Monster. Is that right?’

  ‘Yup, that’s right,’ she said.

  ‘Fucked up!’ he said. He was glowing.

  Emma nodded. ‘Do you know, I’m pretty sick of that name … just because she’s white and middle-class ….’ There was an awkward silence and Emma felt obliged to fill it. ‘What do you do these days, James?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m an estate agent.’

  ‘Fucked up!’ she said, and Dougie laughed, caught a passing waiter and handed her a glass of bubbly, a gesture befitting a partner. She took it without thanks, like a partner might.
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br />   ‘I’m just going outside for a quick smoke,’ Emma said, getting out her cigarettes. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  It was really cold outside and strangely silent because the snow had settled; at least, it had in this garden – not much, but enough to quieten the city by a decibel or two. In fact, she could see a few snowflakes, or perhaps they were just ash, swirling up in the warm yellow glow emanating from the Christmas bulbs in the tree. They were in Battersea somewhere, a warehouse in a back street. There were other people outside smoking and she went a little way off and sat at a table beneath the tree under a little awning. Her tights were thin and the metal bench was icy against her soft, hairless thighs. She shivered.

  She felt exposed in all senses: the cold, the Yummy Monster, Abigail. She never talked about Abigail. Only twice had she ever spoken of her death in detail – once with Si and once with her psychiatrist in the months that followed. It was in the past now. She couldn’t help thinking of Connie sitting there in her room being forced to remember, and how generous she was with her honesty.

  ‘You OK?’

  She looked up and smiled. Dougie sat down beside her and she offered him her cigarette.

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ he said, and took it from her fingers.

  She laughed. ‘That’s right. You’re action man, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am a bit,’ he said, taking a drag and passing it back.

  ‘You were always sporty.’

  ‘I liked sport. Still do.’

  ‘You were so clever, Dougie. Why are you working in boring old IT?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s not that boring. Not as exciting as your work, no doubt. So you’re fed up with everyone asking you about that case?’

  ‘Could you tell? Was I rude?’

  ‘It’s bloody freezing,’ he said. ‘Here, have my jacket.’ She let him put it around her shoulders. Were her generation the last that were allowed to enjoy such gentlemanly gestures?