by Wendy Clarke
‘Not long. Just over a month.’
‘Is that all?’
‘We knew straight away that it wasn’t going to be just a flash in the pan, and I asked her to marry me pretty much straight away. Got down on one knee on the quayside and that was that.’ He rubs imaginary mud from his left knee. ‘We went and chose a ring that very afternoon. There didn’t seem any reason to wait to get engaged as from the moment we met, we both knew it felt right. Does that make sense?’
I don’t know if it makes sense, but it is incredibly romantic. It took years of encouragement to persuade Drew to ask me, and I remember what Sally said about her own husband. My fingers slide to my bare ring finger, and I have to force down my jealousy.
‘In fact,’ Mark continues, ‘I’ve never met anyone like her before. She’s intriguing. Full of life.’
I think of the fun Joanna and I had at university. Falling into our halls of residence drunk after a night out. Holding each other up and trying not to wake anyone as we stumbled along the corridor to our rooms. Playing music at full volume until the girl in the next room thumped on the wall.
‘Yes. She is.’
He twists the stem of his glass between finger and thumb, then puts it down and leans back in his chair, his eyes betraying his amusement. ‘Anything else you’d like to know?’
It’s strange to be here at the table with Mark, asking him questions. In the past, my first meeting with Joanna’s boyfriends would be in some noisy pub or club while the two of them flirted and sparred. I’d sip my drink and watch them, all the while, trying to think what I’d say to Joanna when later she’d ask the inevitable question. Well, what did you think of him? Will he piss the parents off? And it would be impossible not to feel sorry for the guy. Knowing he was just an amusing distraction for her, and that in a few weeks’ time he would, in all likelihood, be cast off for someone even more unsuitable.
This is the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity to really get to know someone and that’s because Joanna’s not here.
I’ve been looking at the congealing strands of spaghetti, but now I raise my eyes to Mark. ‘This place… the area. It’s so strange. So sad. What made you and Joanna choose it?’
Mark throws his napkin on the table and pours himself another glass of wine. His mood has suddenly changed. ‘New Tobacco Wharf is a fucking joke.’
I’m shocked at the vehemence of his words. The feeling behind them. It’s the docks I’d been talking about, not the development.
‘But this building… the apartment. It’s magnificent. I’ve read the brochure and seen how the area will look when the re-development programme is finished. Surely, anyone who could afford it would give their right arm to live here.’
‘Only they wouldn’t.’ It’s said with bitterness.
‘What do you mean? Why not?’
‘We thought we’d got a new St Katharine Docks here, but we were wrong.’
As he speaks, his face darkens, and I notice, for the first time, the shadows under his eyes. He looks older again.
‘Why?’
He pushes his chair back. ‘Anyone who bought up land here found they’d timed it badly. The rush to buy the apartments never came. There was discussion of new transport links to the area, but right before they should have been confirmed, when we’d already bought the land, they were cancelled… delayed indefinitely. Once the early buyers realised it would be years before the area became the next big thing, as they’d been promised, they cut their losses and left.’
It’s properly dark outside now. Despite the steel uplighters that Mark turned on earlier in the corners of the room, the living space seems dark too. The minimal furniture overshadowed by the large expanses of bare exposed brickwork. The iron columns casting shadows across the wooden flooring.
With no carpet or curtains, the air feels chilly too. I give an involuntary shiver and hope Mark hasn’t noticed.
‘So how many people live here?’
‘In New Tobacco Wharf or in Black Water Dock?’
I twist the stem of my glass, watching the candlelight catch its cut-glass surface. ‘Both.’
Mark turns his head to look out of the window. ‘Black Water Dock is more or less a ghost town. You saw the new developments further along, I presume? The ones that look like fucking great liners. They never got finished. Ran out of money. It’s the same story throughout the docks. The whole place is languishing in redundancy. Maybe if it had been a little closer to Canary Wharf…’ He tails off, and I see genuine sadness in his face. ‘It had such great potential, but now it’s just a no man’s land somewhere between ruin and recuperation.’
‘And this building? Are many of the apartments occupied?’
He shakes his head. ‘Just this one and a couple of others. There’s a woman who lives in the apartment two floors down and another belongs to a couple who come down from the country on the odd weekend. The others were bought to let out.’
I’m finding it hard to get my head around it. There must be at least forty apartments in the warehouse. Apart from the ones Mark’s mentioned, could they really all be empty?
‘That’s sad.’
Mark stands and walks to the window. ‘It is for those of us who invested. A downright tragedy. No one wants to buy here as it’s too expensive. I told them…’ He turns suddenly. ‘But you don’t want to hear all this.’ Moving back to the table, he pours me more wine. My head is getting muzzy. ‘Tell me about yourself. How did you and Joanna meet?’
‘We met on my first day at boarding school.’ I smile at the memory. Remembering how Joanna had saved me from the loneliness that threatened to overwhelm me. ‘She’d already been there a term and took me under her wing.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t have you down as a boarding school type.’
‘I wasn’t, but I was good at music. My parents could only afford to send me there because I won a scholarship. They were both clever in their own ways but came from families where expectations weren’t high. Neither achieved much at school and ended up in jobs that bored them. They wanted better for me and when they discovered I had a talent, they made sure they did everything they could to give me the best chance to use it.’
‘And did you? Use it, I mean.’
I think of the place where until recently I was teaching and realise just how much I’m going to miss it. ‘Not in the way my parents hoped. I think they imagined me as a classical pianist at the Royal Albert Hall or something. A teacher wasn’t exactly what they’d had in mind, but I do love teaching – especially those moments when you realise you’ve made a difference to someone’s life. I used to have my own class, but I also took all the music lessons, so maybe the music scholarship wasn’t wasted after all.’
I stop, remembering how much I’d hated Mum breathing down my neck. If she wasn’t checking I was practising, she was inviting the neighbours in to hear me play. I used to cringe with embarrassment, but now I’d do all of it again just to have her back.
‘Your parents must be very proud of you now.’
His eyes are on me, but I look away. ‘My mother’s dead, actually.’
I feel my eyes prickle at the thought of her and turn away, not wanting to cry in front of him.
Mark blinks. He leans forward slightly. ‘I’m so very sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed.’
‘It’s all right. It happened a long time ago.’ I think of the clues I’d missed. The way Mum changed the subject whenever I rang her to ask how she was. Saying her recent tiredness was probably due to the extra shifts she’d done at Asda, the muscle aches just a symptom of the cold she’d not managed to shake off. Then she’d turn the questions back on me: was I enjoying my final year at school? Had I made up my mind what university I wanted to go to?
As always, the guilt rushes in. I should have read between the lines when she said that Brighton had a perfectly good music course… that I could live at home. How I wish now that I had followed her suggestion rather than applying to go
to the same university as Joanna – a five-hour train journey away. That I hadn’t been having too much fun to come home as often as my parents would have liked.
‘And your father?’
‘My dad lives in Corfu with a girl half his age. He’s set up a bar and grown his hair. I went to visit him to see if we could build some bridges, but it’s hard to do when he’s sitting with a pint in his hand, watching the sun set over the sea and gloating over how lucky he is to have been able to pull someone young enough to be his daughter.’ I hear the bitterness in my voice. ‘He shacked up with her soon after Mum died. I can’t forgive him for that.’
‘I’m sorry. I can see how that distresses you.’
There it is again. That old-fashioned turn of phrase. I wonder if he’s just being polite.
‘I can’t help it. He says he was lonely and thinks that makes it all right, but it doesn’t.’
Mark looks puzzled. ‘Yet you say your mother passed away some time ago. This relationship isn’t new any more.’
‘I know that, but it’s not something I can forget. It’s like he’s taken Mum’s memory and stamped all over it. Joanna understood.’ I steer the conversation back to safer waters. ‘When I got the scholarship to St Joseph’s, it was like stepping into another world, but Joanna made it all right. She chose me to be her friend.’
Mark looks amused by what I’ve said. ‘Chose you?’
‘Yes, there were two other new girls. When the head teacher asked the class for someone to befriend us, Joanna picked me.’
While I’ve been talking, Mark has got his phone out. He checks it before putting it back in his pocket. ‘That sounds like her.’
Unable to tell whether he thinks this is a good thing or not, I plump for the former. ‘Yes. From then on we were inseparable.’
I smile to myself, remembering what it was like to bask in her attention. Her way of making you feel like you were the centre of her world, if only for a few minutes. ‘I was over the moon when Joanna’s mother invited me to stay for part of the summer holidays. It was meant to be just a few days, but Joanna persuaded her to let me stay a whole week. I loved it there. From her bedroom window, you could see right across the fields to where they grazed the horses. I’d never known anyone with a horse before, and they had three. The only pet I’d been allowed to have was a rabbit.’
‘Did Joanna ever stay at yours?’
I try to imagine it. Wondering what she’d have made of my little bedroom with its view of the side of next door’s pebble-dashed house or the living room with Dad’s socks drying on the radiators. We’d have had to eat off plates balanced on our laps as the table was always piled with the stuff Mum planned to sell on eBay to make some extra cash. And where would I have taken her? The rec at the end of the road? Burnside Shopping Centre where half the shops stood empty, and the ones that were left, I knew Joanna would hate?
‘No, she never came to mine.’
How could I have introduced her to the friends I’d had in junior school before I moved to St Joseph’s? What would they have had in common? I burn with shame at how I’d dropped Kylie, my best friend since playschool. And Chelsea. And Tanya. It wasn’t that I’d preferred the girls at the boarding school, in fact some of them had been mean to me that first term, picking up on my accent and laughing when I couldn’t play tennis. No, it was just that I had Joanna now.
‘We realised we didn’t need anyone else,’ I say, even though I haven’t voiced my thoughts. ‘Having each other was enough.’
Mark clears his throat. ‘I see. But things change. I’m proof of that.’
My smile slips. His words have dragged me away from a time when I felt stronger. Funnier. Invincible. ‘Yes, of course. I’m not talking about now, I’m talking about when we were kids. She was the one who comforted me when I was homesick in the first few weeks. The one who told the girls who picked on me to fuck off.’
I see the amusement in Mark’s eyes. ‘That sounds like her.’
‘She was pretty fearless. Told them they were stuck up and only did it because they were jealous of my hair.’ I place a hand self-consciously to my head. ‘It was very long then, even though I had to keep it tied back most of the time.’
Mark smiles. ‘I can see why. It’s a beautiful colour.’
‘Thank you.’
Embarrassed by this unexpected compliment, I stand and pick up the plates. I take them into the kitchen and stack them in the dishwasher, my head still full of Joanna.
Tomorrow I will be going back home to my empty house and my empty life. It’s a darker place without Joanna in it.
Eleven
It takes me a long time to get to sleep. I shouldn’t have let Mark refill my wine glass, and I have a raging thirst. Also, with no curtains to close, just the horrible electric blinds, the tall warehouse windows are backlit by the moonlit sky. Squares of light from the small panes, patchworking the wooden floor. My bed. My face.
As I lie awake, I think of what Mark told me and imagine the empty apartments in the building. Layer upon layer of corridors where no one walks. The subterranean vaulted car park, with its hundreds of empty spaces, where my car waits in the darkness. What did Joanna think about when she slept here? Did she ever think of me? Why was our photo on the fridge? Had she just recently moved it there? After she texted me, perhaps?
In the other bedroom, Joanna’s fiancé sleeps beneath her naked picture. Or maybe he’s lying awake too, wondering how he’s ended up with a stranger in his apartment. Thinking of what he’ll say when Joanna gets home. How he’ll describe the ordinary-looking girl with the red hair who’s in the guest bedroom. Will he quiz her about me? Or will I be forgotten by the time she gets home? It’s only now I realise I never asked Mark what course she was on.
At one point, I think I hear footsteps on the wooden boards outside my door. The sound of the front door opening, then closing. Distant voices on the quayside outside my window. But when I get up to look, there’s nothing to be seen except for the moon reflected off the dark water. The silhouette of a crane.
Shaking the pillow to plump it, I lie on my back, letting the phosphorescent moonlight wash over me. Hearing Joanna’s words in my head. I’m never getting married. What’s the point? Something had made her change her mind. Made her decide to marry a man she’d only known a few weeks. What was it about Mark Belmont? Was it money? Was that her motivation?
I think of the school holidays I spent at her parents’ large gabled house in the country. The gravelled driveway with the separate double garage that housed their expensive cars. Joanna’s bedroom that looked over the paddock where she kept her pony. Drifting off to sleep in the bed next to my best friend’s, I’d pretend that it was my house, imagine her glamorous mother and her handsome father were my parents. And as I listened to Joanna’s gentle breathing, I’d try to think of ways to put off going home.
Twelve
I’m woken by a knock on the door. Sitting up, I look at my phone and see that it’s nearly nine.
‘I didn’t know if you drank tea.’ Mark’s voice comes through the door. ‘There’s a mug out here for you. Or maybe you’d prefer coffee?’
‘No, tea’s fine,’ I call back. ‘Thank you.’
Pulling a jumper over my nightdress, I go to the door and open it a crack. Mark has left a tray on the floor outside, on which is a mug of tea. He’s nowhere to be seen. I pick up the tray and take it back to my room, then sitting cross-legged with my back against the headboard, I phone Joanna’s number. It rings once. Twice. Three times. Then the voicemail clicks in just as it did before.
‘Joanna. Where are you? I’m at your apartment. Mark says you’re on a course. Did I get the wrong weekend? Are you back tonight? When you get this message, please ring. If your course ends today, maybe I can delay going home until you get back.’
Taking my clothes with me, I open the door to the en suite and go inside. I hadn’t paid it much attention last night, but now I realise how white it is – in total contrast
to the bedroom. White ceiling. White tiles. White bath and toilet. Even the square bidet that projects from the wall is white.
Leaving the door ajar, I turn on the shower. While I wait for it to heat up, I lean towards the mirror, the lights positioned around its edge, reminding me of something you might see in an actor’s dressing room. My face stares back at me, and I’m surprised at how tired I look, how drained, tension showing itself in the fine lines around my eyes. I turn my head from side to side trying to gauge what Mark would have seen when I’d appeared on his doorstep. My appearance certainly wouldn’t have knocked him out. In fact, no one would give me a second look if it wasn’t for the colour of my hair. That’s something that’s always been commented on.
As I stare at my reflection, I feel again the deep-seated shame. The humiliation. Remember how Joanna had turned me away from the laughing girls in our dorm. Hear her voice. Ignore them, Alice. You don’t need them anyway.
But I’m not that thirteen-year-old any more. I’m a grown woman.
The glass door makes no sound as I slide it open and step inside the shower cubicle. The showerhead is huge, a stainless steel disk that drenches the white tiled floor with rainforest-like water. I don’t use my own meagre toiletries but unscrew one of the little bottles that are lined up on a glass shelf. I read the labels: shampoo, conditioner, body wash. They smell of jasmine. They smell of spa days and expensive holidays, not that I’ve had many. Most of all, though, they smell of Joanna.
Flipping open the lid of the body wash, I squeeze some onto the palm of my hand and lather my body. The shower cubicle fills with a scent that’s exotic and heady. The fruity undertones sweet and warm. It’s like Joanna has wrapped her arms around me, and it’s comforting.
By the time I’ve showered and dressed, scraping my hair back in a band as I don’t want to ask Mark if I can borrow Joanna’s hairdryer, the enticing smell of bacon is coming from the other room. When I open my door, I see Mark, a striped apron around his waist, a spatula in his hand.