by S. E. Lynes
It would mean the world to me to know you forgive me. I know you’re not my daughter, but I like to think she would have been a nice person like you. One day maybe you’ll forgive me, but I’m not asking you to or anything. Sorry again. If I could turn back time, I would. Look after yourself, Samantha – I mean that.
Lottie
xx
Samantha folds the letter and slides it back into the envelope. She puts the envelope in her bag and sits at the kitchen table. She is desperate to cry, desperate. Her eyes and throat ache with the pressure. But Peter’s footsteps thud on the stairs and she knows that in a few seconds he will appear at the kitchen door. Which he does.
‘Coffee?’ he says. He is not asking if she would like one; rather if she’s made it.
‘On the stove,’ she says, getting up to pour a mug for him. ‘I made a fresh pot.’
Thirty-One
She is still sitting in the kitchen when her phone beeps. In front of her on the table lies Lottie’s letter. It has been more than an hour since Peter left for work. She has read the letter over and over, must have drifted into some kind of catatonic state. She lifts the letter. Her phone is underneath, a message from Aisha on the screen.
Hey. It’s been a while. How are things? X
The house is cold. Christ, it’s freezing. Her nose is an icicle, her fingertips red. Shivering, she takes the heating dial from the shelf and sees that the temperature has dropped to 15 degrees. She resets the thermostat to 19, thinking as she does so that 19 is, for her, a little chilly but that Peter has told her it is the correct temperature for the house. She shifts her thumb over the dial, bumps it up to 21.
Her phone beeps again but it is only Aisha’s message re-announcing itself. Samantha reads it again before replying:
All fine, thanks. Don’t think Peter is up to anything dodgy anymore but am keeping eyes open. You OK? X
That should do it. Her life from this moment and what she does about it is no business of anyone else’s. It is Medusa’s face; it is not possible to stare into it directly. Ha! Peter would love that analogy, were he not himself the monster. Samantha is alone. Like Lottie. Poor, bewildered, apologetic Lottie. Lottie, who she has hated for stealing her child, whom she betrayed even when that hate turned to sympathy. Lottie is a schoolgirl ruined, a woman ruined, a life ruined. While she alone has carried the shame and the consequences, the man walked away uncaring, unscathed, unaffected. And that man wants her, Samantha, to be his wife. He wants them to step together into their glorious future in this beautiful house with their beautiful child and every possible material need met.
Everyone has the right to leave the past behind.
Do they?
Do they really?
Her phone beeps. Aisha again.
Just wondered if you’d like to see King Lear at the Curzon next week? 21st? It’s the live feed direct from the Playhouse Theatre in town? Jen not fussed. Spare ticket yours if you want it.
A peace offering. But her head is mince. Her face is sticky. Her bones are old. She is sitting in her home, but the thought of her home makes her sick. There is no home for her back in Yorkshire, not really – her mother’s flat is too small, and she’s damned if she’s going to live like an old maid, end up bitter and brittle. There’s no way she’d knock on her father’s door, face bringing up her daughter alongside her own half-sister, co-exist with a stepmother her own age, endure her mother’s devastated gaze. No, no, no. She should never have let Peter persuade her to trust him, should never have let herself get pregnant, let him get her pregnant, oh God, but now it is too late too late too late, and anyway she would never wish Emily away, would never …
She groans, throws her head into her hands.
‘Idiot,’ she shouts at no one. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid.’
A play sounds like the last thing she should do. But she loves King Lear and real life is unbearable. It would give her something to look forward to while she figures out what the hell to do with her life. She could ask Peter to babysit. No, not babysit. Emily is his child too. Samantha’s not been out in the evening since Emily was born, not once, not without Peter. Peter has been out, been away, worked late, worked weekends. Peter has carried on as if nothing has changed. Even his early-evening red wine has remained unaltered, though Samantha knows now why that is. Jenny had a point. He knows what he is. A narcissist who is clever enough to know he’s a narcissist, who won’t be caught looking in the pool, who won’t be drowned by his own reflection. She thinks of Dorian Gray, the comparison horribly obvious to her now. The man who wears so well on the outside but whose hideous likeness rots away in the attic. In the attic, she thinks, with all the frightened madwomen driven there by men like him.
The letter on the kitchen table is Peter’s portrait.
Yes, yes, yes, so much for all the hand-wringing. There is a child, there are practical issues of money, food, shelter. Again, her mother comes to mind. That first time in the new flat. Sparse, cold, so far from the cosy kitchen at the farm.
‘Put the kettle on,’ her mum had said, sniffing brightly. ‘Small steps, that’s what’s needed. One thing at a time.’
Small steps, Samantha. One thing at a time. A solution will present itself by degrees. She just has to wait until it becomes clear.
She checks the calendar on the kitchen wall. The twenty-first of March is next Wednesday. Peter has written: Dep meeting 8 p.m.
‘Bugger,’ she whispers. Peter’s life: ongoing, undisturbed; everything else fitting around it.
She texts Aisha:
Sorry, but Peter has a meeting. I would have loved to! Thanks for asking. Xx
Aisha must have her phone attached to her hand, because her message flies back seemingly moments later:
Jen says she’ll look after Emily. You can drop her at ours.
Samantha chews her cheek. Replies:
Would love to. But Peter won’t like it.
‘Bugger,’ she says as the text sails away. She should not have added that last bit. The conversation with Jenny and Aisha returns to her. How it took a termination for Aisha to wake up to who she had become. They will see what she has become – subjugated, afraid, cowed. She is about to send another text when Aisha replies:
Peter doesn’t have to know.
No, Samantha thinks. He bloody doesn’t. He will undoubtedly go for a drink after the meeting, as he always does, and it will take him over an hour to get back from central London. And if he does get home before she does, well, she will have to think of Lottie and Aisha and Jenny and the others she doesn’t know about, and Emily for that matter, and stand up to him.
All right, she texts. Send me your address and the time. Thanks.
Small steps.
And small steps are what she takes. In a kind of post-traumatic fog. Life by minutes, hours, days. Texts not calls. No live interface, apart from Peter. Smiling survival. Quiet subterfuge. Days pass. Until one afternoon, something clears. Something coalesces from that thick fog. Samantha stops at a gift shop and buys a card and a book of stamps. Takes Emily out for a stroll down to the riverside and stops at the café under the arches. March, the sun is out and with her coat, scarf and woolly hat on, it is warm enough to sit outside and watch the water. Lulled by the movement of the pram, Emily is fast asleep. Samantha sips her hot chocolate, takes out the card and opens it.
Dear Lottie, she writes. Stops. This is harder than she thought it would be. But Lottie wasn’t trying for elegant prose; she was simply trying to tell her story. The best thing here is to be honest.
Thank you for your letter. It meant a lot to me that you took the time to explain your circumstances and it has helped me to move on and to feel safe with regard to my baby, Emily. I accept your apology, I do forgive you and I am reassured that you won’t try to hurt us again in any way.
I am so terribly sorry that you went through what you did when you were so young. I understand how easy it is to fall for the charms of someone older, who appears to know and understan
d the world and who is more accomplished than one’s immediate peers.
She reads this back. She sounds pompous. She crosses out one’s immediate peers and puts boys your own age.
‘Yep,’ she says to herself and takes another sip of hot chocolate.
I am so sorry that you didn’t get to see your daughter grow up. That must be a terrible source of sadness for you. And of course, words cannot convey how sorry I am that you are not able to have children as a result of a termination that you never wanted to have. I can only imagine how painful that is, and I think that the fact you wish me well now means that you really are a very special person. It takes a big heart to be so generous when you have suffered so much yourself. Thank you.
I wish you nothing but happiness and peace going forward. I hope you can forget about Peter now, get back to your job and move on properly, as you deserve to. Keep writing, if you can. It is a worthwhile form of self-expression and I certainly find that it can be good therapy in difficult times.
Take good care of yourself, Lottie.
I really do wish you well.
Samantha
xx
Thirty-Two
The following Wednesday, Peter texts Samantha at five to remind her that he has a meeting. They will probably head on to the pub. He will be late home. Don’t wait up.
She replies that all is fine. Everything is under control. She’ll see him later. In her belly burns a rebellious little fire. It is not unpleasant.
At six she takes an Uber to Jenny and Aisha’s flat on the far side of Richmond. To be honest, the thought of leaving Emily with Jenny makes her chest hurt, but she knows she has to move on and that moving on means learning to trust and to live without fear.
Jenny and Aisha’s flat is supremely tidy and clean, modern white gloss kitchen units, the floors a wood-effect linoleum that is warm underfoot. But, my God, it is small.
Aisha gives her the tour.
‘This is the bedroom,’ she says with a mock-curtsey, and Samantha’s mouth drops into an O.
‘We’re not a couple,’ Jenny shouts from the open-plan living space. She has already unclipped Emily and has her comfortably on one hip. She walks up the little hallway, grinning. ‘We take turns having the couch on a six-month basis. Clean but compromised rather than spacious but scuzzy. London for you.’
They are both a few years older than her, yet this is all they can afford. They don’t even have a bedroom each.
‘If one of us gets lucky, we have a warning system in place, in case you’re wondering. There’s a bit of eye-shielding and ear-muffling but it suits us fine.’
‘You wish,’ Aisha says, laughing. ‘You mean there would be if either of us pulled more than a muscle.’ She smiles at Samantha. ‘Come on, we should go.’
Samantha realises that Aisha has not gone near Emily. Wonders if she ever has or will. Too painful, most probably. Bloody hell.
They arrive at the Curzon a little early. Aisha won’t take any money for the ticket so Samantha insists on buying them both a drink from the cute little popcorn stand. It will appear on her bank statement; Peter will see. So what? She buys two glasses of Cabernet Shiraz, quipping that Aisha shouldn’t worry – she won’t spike it. She is becoming like them, she thinks, beginning to treat the whole thing as some hideous joke, albeit one she is still stuck in. She buys a packet of roasted peanuts, which they eat at one of the little booth seats in the foyer.
‘It’s lovely here,’ she says.
‘I can’t believe you’ve not been. It’s an independent. And you can take your wine in, which is très civilised.’
‘How come you had a spare ticket?’
‘Um, oh.’ Aisha stares down at the tickets, as if confused. ‘I was supposed to be coming with Sally. You know Sally, don’t you? Professor Bailey?’
‘You know Professor Bailey?’
‘I did English, remember? She taught one of the MA modules. We got on well and kind of stayed in touch. I see her sometimes for a drink and a catch-up, but she couldn’t make tonight in the end.’
‘She’s friends with Peter.’
Aisha is still looking at the table. ‘She tried to warn me off him, back when we were … I was defensive, not reading the signs. She tried to tell me, you know, in subtext, that students were his thing, but I guess by then I’d withdrawn. Shrunk, actually, that would be more accurate. And Sally backed off. Well, everyone backed off. That’s what happens.’ She looks towards the film posters, as if to admire them, but she is not admiring them, Samantha knows, simply searching for somewhere to rest her eyes while she gets through what she wants to say. ‘Then afterwards she never said I told you so, which I’ve always appreciated.’ She glances at Samantha but immediately away, to a point behind Samantha’s head. ‘Ah, we can go in.’
They take their seats. The crowd are older, well dressed and most are white. Samantha wonders if she would have noticed this last if not for Aisha, wonders then what it must feel like to always be in the minority, wonders why the hell she doesn’t think about this stuff more.
The curtains scroll back.
‘Oh, how funny,’ Samantha says.
On the screen are rows of seats, as if they are looking into a mirror. But it isn’t a mirror.
‘That’s the Playhouse,’ Aisha says. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? The play is being transmitted live from the West End and we can see it here in Richmond.’
‘Amazing.’
It is. From her seat in Richmond, Samantha watches the theatregoers take their seats all the way over in central London. Some are already sitting, chatting, pointing, whatever, quite unaware of being observed from the other side of the lens. And with no sound at all, the effect is disconcerting.
Aisha leans close, keeps her voice low. ‘I remember the first time I came here. It makes quite an impression, doesn’t it? They have to rig up the camera for the live feed before the play starts obviously. They’ll do the sound check in a few minutes; you’ll hear the sound come on, and then a broadcaster will introduce the play. Last time it was Emma Freud, I think. Not sure who it will be today. Anyway, it’s weird because we can see them, but they can’t see us.’
‘So it is a mirror,’ Samantha says into Aisha’s ear. ‘A one-way mirror.’
‘Exactly.’
They settle and watch, benign voyeurs. The camera shots change every minute or so. Now the stage: black and bleak; now the audience: chattering, fussing, oblivious. Now the stage. Now the audience.
And there. Live from the West End of London, taking his seat and talking to an attractive young blonde woman, is Professor Peter Bridges.
Samantha’s entire body freezes.
A burst of static, followed by the dull rumbling of inaudible conversation. The audio feed has come on. Now the stage. Now the audience.
Peter has taken his seat. He has a glass of red wine in one hand. With the other, he is offering a packet of something to the girl. She takes a handful, tips back her head and empties whatever it is into her mouth. Peter gazes at her long neck. She glances sideways at him and laughs. He laughs. He cocks his head and continues to laugh before pushing his face to hers and kissing her on the mouth.
Samantha can feel the tension, electric in Aisha’s arm as if it is her own. Aisha has seen. She has definitely seen. White heat. The world suspended.
The house lights dim. Silence. A presenter speaks into a microphone, but Samantha doesn’t hear a word. Another silence, then blackness. Blackness on both sides of the screen. Blackness everywhere.
And so the play begins, Samantha thinks. The play begins now.
Thirty-Three
Outside, the cobbled lane is slick, though the rain has stopped now. Samantha matches Aisha’s silence with her own as together they leave the river at their backs and wander up towards George Street.
‘Amazing, wasn’t it?’ Aisha says finally.
‘Amazing.’
They stop at the crossroads. Aisha looks away, down towards the shops. Peter hangs in the air bet
ween them.
‘I have to go,’ Samantha says, bending down to kiss Aisha on the cheek. Aisha, already petite, has worn trainers this evening. In her mule heels, Samantha is much taller.
‘Samantha—’
‘I’ll talk to you soon.’ She turns and waves. ‘Bye.’
‘Samantha! Emily? Emily’s at the flat.’
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She pivots on her heel, slaps her forehead comically. But this is one act she cannot keep up.
‘Sorry,’ Aisha says, spreading her hands.
Samantha wonders what she’s sorry for: that she ever told her about Peter, that Peter is a bastard, that he has turned them all into these strained, shadowy creatures, afraid of talking to one another?
‘What did Jenny say?’ she says, tipping up her chin. ‘We have to stop apologising.’
Has Peter ever apologised, she wonders then, for anything? In all their time together, she can’t remember him ever saying sorry, whereas she has said that particular word over and over and over again. But no more.
Together they walk towards the station, in silence. Four, five, six paces and already the tension grips at Samantha’s shoulders. Another ten and she stops dead on the pavement.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘I saw him. I saw Peter with the girl. But I don’t want to talk about it. I just can’t deal with the judgement right now, all right?’
‘I’m not judging you.’ Aisha’s brow creases with hurt. ‘I would never do that.’
Samantha closes her eyes, opens them again. ‘I know. I didn’t mean … I just …’
‘But I do need to tell you something.’ Aisha falters, glances up but almost immediately looks back down to her trainers. ‘It’s just that I was talking to Sally and I … I don’t know how you came up in the conversation. I might have mentioned that you were teaching me or something, but anyway she said you’d been in touch about her scarf and asked me if I thought Peter was up to his old tricks. I said I had no idea – honestly I did – but she said she thought he might be because he had told her he was going to see King Lear and when she asked him who with, he was cagey. I guess she put two and two together. She’s known him a long time. I think she only puts up with him because she’s not into men, but I got the impression that this time she was appalled, with him having a baby now. Anyway, it was her suggestion that I take you to see the live feed, said we probably wouldn’t see him, but if we did it might be easier to have the evidence presented in a neutral way rather than having to hear it second-hand.’