Maybe I should have just gone to the funeral anyway. I wish I had gone now, but I was too hung up on my sense of rejection. And Simon was right, I did just disappear. I thought it was everyone else, but looking back now, I see that it was me.
I sit there at the bottom of the stairs and am flooded with a wave of regret, not just about the funeral, but over the loss of all those friends: Vanessa, Leanne, Tristram, Annabel . . . And for the loss of myself as I was back then; so free and alive under the light of so much fun. It all came to a stop so suddenly. It came to a stop and what did I do? I went to college, to university, I worked hard, I travelled, I married, I had a son . . . I did a lot. But I don’t think I ever really had fun again. Not real, pure fun, like I did back then when I was a teenager, before I became aware of how quickly the good things can be snatched away. I feel as far away from the girl I was then as it is possible to be. I feel the loss, like an imprint inside my bones.
In the dining room Jono slams his books shut and scrapes back his chair. I stand up quickly and, like a guilty child, I hide my phone behind my back. The dining-room door flings open and he almost walks into me. He stops short, as though faced with something unpleasant. I see the shutters come down in his eyes.
But still I force a smile. ‘Finished your homework?’ I ask in my good-mother voice.
‘I’m going on the PlayStation,’ he says by way of an answer and manoeuvres around me, to run off upstairs.
‘Okay,’ I call up after him. ‘Not too long now, though; it’s getting late.’
Then I walk back to the kitchen, taking my phone with me, and close the door. I sit down at the table and store Simon’s number in my phone. And then, before I have time to change my mind, I press the call button. His phone rings for quite a while, for much longer than mine, which switches to voicemail after just seconds, and I sit there with my heart hammering, panicking suddenly. I try to picture him in a home environment, with his wife, with his children. I try, but I can’t.
And then he answers. ‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t want to speak to me.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I just didn’t get to the phone in time.’
‘It was good to see you today.’
‘It was good to see you too.’
My heart is pounding. I feel like a teenager, stuck suddenly for words.
‘I’m sorry I had to rush off,’ he says. ‘You must think me so rude.’
‘Not at all, really.’
‘I feel very bad for abandoning you like that.’
‘Really, it’s okay.’
There is a pause. In it, I notice the silence of the background at his end, and I wonder where he is. Then, ‘Are you always this forgiving?’ he asks and there is something in his tone, in his choice of words, that disturbs me, but then I remember suddenly that he said the same thing to me once before, or something similar. At one of those parties, at that stage in the night when everyone was drunk and crashing out, he tripped me up. Not deliberately; he was sitting on the floor near the door to the den with his legs stretched out, and as I stepped over him he moved. I tripped, and would have landed on my face, but he sat forward, caught me and steadied me. ‘Forgive me,’ he said dramatically, his voice thick with beer, and when I laughed he leant back again. ‘Of course you will,’ he said. ‘Rachel is always so nice. Rachel is always so forgiving.’
These memories. These abstract little things, forgotten for so long, spinning back now to life.
‘Rachel,’ he says now, ‘can I see you again? Soon? I’ve got a case on this week, but Monday maybe, or Tuesday? We could meet after work perhaps; would that be possible?’ He talks fast, nervous now. ‘I feel so bad that we couldn’t talk longer at lunchtime. And . . . I really do want to talk to you, Rachel.’
I sit there at the table in the oppressive silence of my kitchen, and my heart slows to a hard, dangerous thump. ‘Tuesday should be okay,’ I say.
And he says, as though he really means it, ‘Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.’
When we hang up, I go straight upstairs, switch on the computer and look up Kingham. And I see it there, with all its tourist-board photos. An idyllic village in the heart of Oxfordshire. There are photos of the pub and the village green, and an abundance of Cotswold-stone houses, complete with rose-filled walled gardens and golden thatched roofs.
This is where Simon lives, with his wife, and his daughter called Charlotte, and his two nameless sons. Which is his house? I feel I am looking at it on the screen, I feel it is one of these buildings. I feel it must be. I stare all the harder. In some pictures there are people, and so I search for him. I find a photo from a couple of years ago of a village fair. He’s there, I know he is. I stare and I search. It’s a hell of a commute to London. At least an hour and a half to Paddington, and then on from there by Tube. So two hours, I reckon, at least, door to door. And another two hours back home again, to his wife, his daughter and his sons and their rose-covered cottage in their idyllic Cotswold village.
There is even a residents’ notice board. I scrutinize the messages. Some dispute over parking around the pub, another over the removal of a bench on the green. There is a fete planned in May, with an invitation for children to come forward for the parade. I see messages posted by Harriet, Louisa, Clare and Jane. Which one of these is his wife? Which one? I look up everything I can about this place, which I had never heard of until now. I look it up on Google maps. I trace the route by road to London, to Kew, to Surbiton.
I stare and I search until my eyes burn. And then the voice of reason snaps into my consciousness: What am I doing? I shut down the computer. I turn away from the screen and look at the window, at the black of the night and the rain still beading against the glass. From the spare room I can hear the fuzzy roar and blast of a million aliens exploding at will on the PlayStation, long after he should be in bed. I wonder if Andrew is sitting at his desk still, with his tie loosened and his jacket slung over the back of his chair, frowning over the importance of random, faceless numbers. Or will he be making his way home now, standing on the platform at Guildford station, sheltering from the rain? I picture him, huddled under his umbrella, wrapped up in his silence. And I picture him bringing that silence home.
Inside my heart is a dark and secret place. I close my eyes and imagine myself trapped within a vast cave, and in that cave there is a deep and still lagoon. I pick up a pebble, I throw it, and I watch it disappear. I watch as the black surface of the lagoon ripples open and then closes again. I see myself, standing at the edge, ready to dive.
TEN
On Saturday I take Jono to Oliver’s house. He’s been invited for a sleepover, and I drop him off there, mid-afternoon. Jono is anxious, I can tell, and it strikes me that there is something wrong about being nervous to see your friends. It’s as if he’s stressed at having to perform and is worried that he’ll get it wrong somehow. He’d never admit anything like this to me, but that is the impression I get, and it seems to me to be very sad. I think back, and wonder: was I ever like that as a child? And the answer is: no, I’m sure I wasn’t, not at that age.
Now maybe. But now things are different, every social interaction a weighing-up and a judgement, a laying-out of assets to be displayed. I have a handful of real, close friends who I have known forever, but they live in Yorkshire and Buckinghamshire, and Bath now. I hardly ever see them. We speak on the phone. We meet now and again, and I love them as I have always loved them.
But it is the people you see every day that shape and colour your world.
Jono isn’t the only one sleeping over. Oliver has room for Isaac and Luke, too. They are there already; Amy tells us so when she answers the door.
‘They’re in the games room,’ she tells Jono. ‘Go on and join them.’
Jono looks at me. It’s the same look he gave me on his first day at school.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, darling,’ I say. ‘Have a good time.’
The look in his eyes breaks my heart. I see
how much he needs me, and yet how he wishes that he didn’t. He tries to appear nonchalant and starts walking down the hall, his body stiff and awkward.
‘You’re going to be busy then,’ I say to Amy, with a big, forced smile. I feel her watching me watching Jono. I feel her making notes.
‘Not at all,’ she says breezily. ‘We’ve people coming later; friends, with their children. It’ll be quite a party, I think. The children will have a ball.’
She smiles her polished, confident smile and I suppress a flicker of irritation that she didn’t tell me before that there would be other people here. Isaac and Luke I knew about, because Oliver told Jono, but a houseful? I picture poor Jono, stuck in a house full of strangers. We’re not like that, in our family. We’re just not like that. We don’t surround ourselves with people, we don’t just gang up – the more, the merrier. We’re quiet people, however much we may all wish that we weren’t.
But still.
I take from my bag a piece of paper on which I have already written my mobile number, and hold it out to her. ‘Andrew and I are out tonight, but you can call me on my mobile,’ I say. ‘If there’s any problem.’
She slowly unfolds her arms, takes the piece of paper without looking at it and folds her arms again, so that my phone number dangles carelessly from her fingers, soon to be forgotten, soon to be misplaced. Her smile is a little less benign now.
‘Why would there be a problem?’ she says.
I am loath to leave. Every fibre of my body is screaming to see Jono one more time before I go, to ask if he really wants to stay, to take him home with me if given the chance. But I am fussing. And social mores dictate that I must leave my child in this house full of unknown people, and trust that he will be fine.
I walk away from there, worried that he will be thirsty, hungry, homesick, shy . . . I worry as though he were a three-year-old. I worry because it is my duty to worry, my purpose, the very essence of myself. My love and fear for Jono wrap themselves snake-like around my throat and squeeze. It is all I can do just to keep walking. Panic spots an opportunity and sends out its spores, shooting prickles into my hands. What would I do without Jono? What am I without Jono?
And there is the real fear.
I fold my arms across the front of my body and walk. My car is parked just a short way from Amy’s house, but I walk slowly, in no hurry to go home. I need some apples, and maybe some bread, things I could buy from the shops near the station. And so I have an errand, something to do. A distraction.
And into my head suddenly comes this bizarre image. Last summer we went on a short holiday to Cornwall. We stayed in Fowey, and while we were there the regatta took place. The village was packed with people night and day and there were all sorts of celebrations going on. Most of the people were from London; they had descended on Fowey in their hordes. And the thing that I noticed most was how they all knew each other, these people. There were literally hundreds of them; boaty types with lean, tanned legs wearing shorts and sailing jackets in blue or red or yellow, and rubber shoes on their feet. I remember how the women called to each other and to their kids, standing tall as they did so, one hand sheltering their mouths, as they bellowed out their instructions in crisp London accents: Posy, Ned, Hugo, we’re off to find some lunch now. Not at all afraid of their own voices. Not at all afraid of being heard. They acted as though they owned the place. And I remember their children, mucking around on the shingle, dragging boats and dinghies in and out of the water as though they’d done it all their lives, which they no doubt had.
We watched them, Andrew, Jono and I. We watched them from our spot in the shade down at the water’s edge, and in the streets, and again in the restaurants. They moved through the village en masse, filling every space with their presence.
‘They’re just another tribe,’ Andrew said. ‘You get the skiing tribe, the football tribe, and this is the yachting tribe. Some people just go around in tribes.’
I watched them, repelled and envious in equal measure. We three, we have no tribe. We have nothing to protect us from ourselves.
I buy my apples, my bread and one or two other things. I buy a ridiculously expensive string bag in which to carry them and walk out of the shop, feeling just a little like I’ve been had.
I think of Jono, and I hope that he is settling in, that he is happy enough, mixing with Amy’s tribe.
Sometimes, when I was growing up, there were parties across the road at Leanne’s house. Cars would arrive and clog up the street. Music would go on, until the early hours. I’d lie in my little bedroom with the window open, and I’d hear the laughter. The next day Leanne would have purple bruises like thumbprints under her eyes, and she’d feel sick, and shake a little, as though from the cold, never mind that it was hot. It was always hot; they were always summer parties, always spreading out into the long, sultry nights.
And the next day my parents would be tight-lipped and drawn with disapproval. They’d go about their Sunday routine a little slower, a little quieter than usual.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, love?’ my dad would ask my mum.
And she would sigh and say, ‘Yes. Yes, I would, thank you. I’m too tired for anything today.’
‘I think we’d better all have an early night, tonight,’ my dad would say, pointedly.
Later, they’d be out the front, supposedly watering the plants. I’d see them, with their hosepipe and their watering can, each of them with their eyes fixed across the road.
‘Bit quieter tonight,’ my dad might say.
And my mum would add, ‘I should think so.’
And I believe that they were repelled and envious in equal measure, too.
And now, as I make my way along the road like a tourist with my overpriced goods in my overpriced bag, I realize that is how we live, too. I am the child of my parents, as Jono is cursed to be the child of me, and of Andrew. I think this, and my heart is caught with a sharp and scratching anger. I do not want to live my life in a perpetual audience, forever on the sidelines. I do not want it for me, and I do not want it for my son.
I walk fast, angry now. Angry with myself, with all of us. Suddenly I wish that we could be the ones down on the shingle in Fowey, the ones that the quiet people watch. When I met Andrew I knew that he was kind, honest, decent. I thought that I would be safe with him, but I know now that there is no such thing as safe; there is only fear and denial.
We are in denial.
When our baby girl died, we bundled ourselves up and pulled ourselves together as though we could just carry on like before. After all, there never was a real baby, an actual baby that you could see and hold, just a swelling of my belly and an image on a screen. The cot went back in the loft. The buggy went back to John Lewis. We still had Jono. We were just as we were.
Only we weren’t.
I reach the junction where the road curls round to Mrs Reiber’s house, and I look down there, half-expecting to see her. I stop myself from walking down there, but I think of her, sitting in that gloomy house, with just her own denial for company. And again I feel so angry, so frustrated. I think of Simon coming here, to Kew, to visit his mother. I think of him driving around these same streets – walking, probably, along this very same pavement. And I think how dangerously easily life can become stilted and stunted, never moving on, just a series of daily routines running one day into the next. I see the frightening similarities between his mother and myself, and the thought appals me.
Tonight, as we have no Jono, Andrew and I are going out to a restaurant. After all, that is what you do when your child is at a sleepover; you make the most of it. You cannot stay at home; you cannot avoid each other without your child there to hide behind.
So we are going out.
I take my time getting ready. It feels like a big deal, a test almost. In the shower I exfoliate, I condition my hair. I rid my body of excess hair and excess dry skin; I buff and I preen. And then I stand naked in front of my full-length mirror and I look at mysel
f; at the whiteness of my skin with its smattering of freckles, at the roundness of my breasts and my thighs, and at my mother’s tummy: soft, pliant, used. I am the giver of life and the taker away.
I do not like to look at myself. I do not like to be naked. My body is no longer a source of pleasure, but an object of functions; I inhabit it, but it is not me. But now I try to look at myself objectively. I turn sideways, I pull in my stomach. I do not have a bad body, but I have a body that has been neglected. I have a body that has not been loved for a very long time. And when I look at my nakedness I am reminded of that.
But tonight I make an effort, to see what happens.
And what happens is that Andrew drives us to the Italian restaurant out past the golf club, and we walk in and are seated at a small table near the back. At the table next to us, on one side, sits a youngish couple, clearly very much in love. All evening I am aware of the way that they keep holding hands across the table and the way that the man strokes his strong, fine fingers across the backs of hers. And he smiles at her, and doesn’t take his eyes off her. I notice that she is wearing an engagement ring, but no wedding ring. Just wait, I can’t help thinking, just you wait. She sits on the same side of the table as me, and I have to turn surreptitiously sideways to get a good look at her, and then of course I wish that I hadn’t. She is young, and unselfconsciously beautiful, her dark hair sleek and shiny, her olive skin shown off to perfection by her red strappy top. The tables are close together and she is well within Andrew’s vision. He only has to move his eyes a mere flicker to the right and he can look at her properly, and so every time he picks up his glass, or raises his fork, I think that this is what he is doing.
The Child Inside Page 11