I Thought I Knew You

by Penny Hancock

  I think about Saffie in her make-up and short skirt. ‘How is Saff? She’s grown up so much recently.’

  ‘Ha! You honestly wouldn’t believe the grief she’s been giving me this week. Throwing hissy fits about the slightest thing – usually to do with the way she’s dressing. Or wanting to stay and hang out with friends after school. And that’s not the half of it. Her moods! Slamming doors. Shouting. And it smells like a bloody fin de siècle bordello in her room! Plus she’s slapping on that make-up for school. She says all her friends do it. It’s such a fine line, letting her fit in and, on the other hand, attempting to preserve what’s left of her childhood.’

  All of a sudden, my worries about Saul fade into insignificance. Dealing with a girl must be so much harder. The pressure they’re under from social media to look a certain way, versus giving them the confidence to believe they’re fine just the way they are.

  Jules continues, ‘Meanwhile Rowan’s fixated on that show – what is it, Child Genius or something? Saff’s not got that kind of IQ. It’s unfair on her.’

  ‘He’s not the only dad to have aspirations for his kid.’

  ‘He’s got this crazy idea she’s Oxbridge material. He wants her to go to every extra lesson on offer. But the more he lays down the law, the stroppier she becomes. I tell him it causes her unnecessary stress, but he won’t listen.’

  ‘It’s tough, Jules, I can see that. Achieving the right balance. But you should be glad Saffie at least has a social life. I’d love it if Saul joined a crowd. Had a bit of fun. I worry he’s developing some kind of social phobia. That I shouldn’t have moved him out of London.’

  ‘That’s nuts, if I may say so,’ Jules says, as we draw into the pub car park.

  ‘Is it? He hasn’t any friends. It was understandable at first, when he was the “outsider” here, but it’s been two years and you’d have thought he’d have made at least one mate. I’m afraid there’s something else going on with him. That it could get worse. It’s such a worry having a child who’s a misfit . . .’

  ‘Saul’s not a misfit!’ Jules laughs. ‘That’s a ridiculous exaggeration. The way he is has nothing to do with moving here either. You mustn’t blame yourself. Saul lost his dad when he was ten. He’s getting used to your new relationship. He’s a sixteen-year-old struggling to find an identity, completely normal. He’ll be fine. I forbid you to worry about Saul anymore.’

  ‘Then you mustn’t worry about Saff.’

  She puts her arm round me and kisses my cheek. ‘Try not to overthink. Saul’s lovely. He’s handsome and sweet and generous-hearted, as he always was. But he’s an adolescent, and we all know how tough that is, even for kids who haven’t been through what he has.’

  It’s an unspoken rule that Jules and I stand up for the other’s child. Especially when we’re at our wits’ end with our own.

  ‘You matter too, you know,’ she adds, after we’ve paid the cab driver and are making our way across the pub car park to the entrance. ‘You need a night off.’

  Jules waves, spotting Tess and five other women on the far side of the pub in an alcove. I recognize some of them from Jules’s parties or from around the village.

  ‘Sixteen, in the playground after the end-of-term disco,’ Donna Browne is saying. Jules and I drop into a space on the soft leather sofa. Donna’s the village GP. I’ve been to her for antibiotics, and she saw Saul about his school refusal when we first moved here, and when he was bullied.

  ‘I hope you won’t be vetting our units?’ I smile as she pours me a glass of Prosecco.

  ‘Ha! You’re all to behave yourselves while there’s a doctor in the house,’ she laughs. ‘I was just saying . . . my first time was with Paul Mayhew. I was sixteen.’

  ‘Paul Mayhew? Get you! The school heart-throb?’ Tess says.

  ‘Yes, but it was awkward and unpleasant. For both of us probably. We never spoke again. I often wonder if anyone had a good first shag.’

  ‘My first love was a boy called Jozef back in Poland,’ Jules says. ‘I was fifteen but totally and completely in love. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but we did it somehow. It was messy, let’s say. Then he buggered off with my best friend and there followed a series of disastrous one-night stands. Until I met Ro.’

  ‘I married my first love, of course,’ another woman says. Samantha. I remember meeting and liking her at one of Jules and Rowan’s parties. She’d asked me about applying for an English degree and I’d promised to email her the details, then completely forgotten.

  ‘We used to like the fact Harry was exactly twice my age,’ Samantha’s saying. ‘We were crazy about each other. Still are. And he’s nowhere near twice my age anymore. So numbers are arbitrary in the end.’

  ‘All the school mums fancy Harry Bell,’ says Tess. ‘We were green with envy when we found out you were together.’

  ‘Mr Bell? Oh! Your husband’s Saul’s form teacher?’ It all clicks into place.

  Samantha grins, and flushes. ‘That’s the one.’

  I’m only just fully appreciating what a very small world it is here.

  ‘So, come on, Fiona. How old were you?’

  ‘It was on my eighteenth birthday with my boyfriend. Bobby. Remember him? We were engaged. In my box room while my parents were out. I wasn’t ready. It hurt. We split up after that. My real sexual awakening came later. When I finally came out.’

  ‘Ooh, tell all.’

  ‘Another tale for another time,’ says Fiona, smiling and squeezing the hand of the woman next to her, whom I don’t recognize.

  ‘What about you, Holly?’ they all chorus. I knew this was coming. I could try to wriggle out of it, but the women are all looking at me expectantly, and so I say, ‘I’m afraid my story’s a bit tame. My first time was very lovely. And then I stayed with him.’

  ‘That’s good, though,’ Donna says.

  ‘What I want to know is, are you still together?’ Jenny asks me.

  Jules fills in for me. ‘Holly’s widowed.’

  There’s an awkward silence.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Please. Archie died six years ago. I’ve met someone else now. And yes’ – I look around at the stunned faces – ‘the sex is also good. Don’t hate me!’

  There’s a pause, and then a hesitant ripple of laughter.

  ‘Shall I get another bottle?’ I pick up the fizz that’s left, refill everyone’s glass and go to the bar for another. By the time I’ve returned, they’ve moved on and are discussing fundraising for a multi-sensory room that’s being built at the secondary school, planning an Auction of Promises in the Baptist Chapel Hall. Death, I’ve learned since I lost Archie, is always a far more awkward subject than sex.

  *

  ‘I enjoyed that.’

  We’ve called a taxi back to Jules’s house, later than we meant to. It’s nearly one by the time we stumble through Jules’s door. Jules says she’ll make me a camomile tea and disappears into the kitchen. Saul appears at the top of the stairs and comes down, clothes crumpled, hair dishevelled.

  ‘I thought I might as well go to bed,’ he snaps. ‘I didn’t realize you’d be all night.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know we said elevenish. I thought you might have given up on me and gone home. We’d better go – you look shattered.’

  ‘I see you got through a couple of beers, Saul,’ Jules says, coming out of the kitchen with a mug in each hand.

  He hangs his head.

  ‘Don’t look so worried. You know I like you to feel at home here. I made you a tea, Holl. You can’t go till you’ve drunk it.’ She kicks off her shoes and sways over to the sofa.

  ‘Saul’s exhausted. We should’ve got back earlier.’

  ‘Stay. Have a little nightcap – don’t be such a bore.’ She collapses onto her voluminous corner sofa, curling her feet in their glossy tights under her. An echo of her daughter earlier. ‘Did Saffie behave herself, Saul? I hope she wasn’t too late to bed. She tries it on, my daughter. Especially when her dad�
��s away. You have to be firm with her.’

  I wonder if I imagine that Saul’s gone pink again.

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ he says, looking down so his hair falls over his face. ‘I left her to it.’

  ‘You’re a good boy,’ Jules says. ‘I’ve always loved you like my own son. You know that, don’t you, Saulie? Do you know, I was the first person ever to hold you? Before your own mother even?’ Jules’s words are slurring into one another. ‘Such a cute newborn, you were.’

  Saul doesn’t know where to look at this. I sense his embarrassment, but Jules is too far gone to notice.

  ‘Come on, Saul,’ I say. ‘Let’s get back. We’re all in need of some sleep.’

  *

  ‘How was it, then?’ I ask as we retrace our steps of earlier up the dark fen road.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your evening?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Get on the internet OK?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Eat anything?’

  ‘Nope. A few crisps.’

  ‘Talk to Saff?’

  ‘Why would I talk to Saffie?’

  ‘No reason. Just wondered if you two had anything in common these days.’

  ‘She’s thirteen,’ he says, as if this explains everything.

  He won’t be drawn. I feel the familiar crushing in my chest. The anxiety that even after our chatty walk earlier, he’s still fundamentally unhappy – depressed even – and that there’s nothing I can do about it.

  ‘Saul,’ I say, when we’re home, and before he disappears into his room. But he’s gone, shutting his bedroom door behind him, shutting me out. ‘Night-night,’ I say, to the air.

  *

  It’s two weeks before I see Jules again and the weather’s turned warm and mellow. The train’s delayed so I’m running late for work. I take the Tube at King’s Cross and emerge into the bright sunshine of a golden autumn day in the midst of London with its bustle and life. I hurry past Russell Square Station’s garnet-coloured walls, and across the gardens. Everything’s gleaming. Silver water jets from the fountain, ebony railings, ivory terraces beyond. New shiny red Routemasters trundle past; amber sycamore leaves are strewn over the grass. Jewel colours. There’s a spring in my step. Pete’s course in Bristol finishes today, and it’s one of the weekends we have the girls.

  Jerome comes back to me with his reworked story. He’s decided to use ‘e’s after all but to replace every noun with the seventh one after it in the dictionary. ‘Another constraint devised by the Oulipo group,’ he explains. I remember Luma telling me about his girlfriend, Giovanna, and as he leaves, I hand him a leaflet about the consent workshop scheduled for the afternoon. I watch him screw it up and toss it into a bin as he walks down the corridor.

  Eleanora, who is seventy-three and taking her first degree, comes to me with her sci-fi novel. In it, people fire embryos to a planet that’s been identified as suitable for human habitation when ours is done for. Robots accompany them, programmed to nurture the babies to adulthood.

  ‘I’m trying to apply Pillman’s theory,’ she says. ‘It’s proving very difficult to achieve his economy.’

  We discuss whether she can shorten her sentences, lose adverbs and still achieve what she wants to say. I love Eleanora’s writing, and tell her so. I don’t say that even she is going to find it hard to publish. After all, there’s always one who will surprise you.

  At lunchtime, I grab a sandwich and a coffee from Kate’s Taxi Kiosk, eat it sitting on a bench in Russell Square. A man with a leaf blower is attempting to tidy golden leaves into heaps, which swirl into the air the minute he turns his back, somersaulting in the wind before freckling the grass again. I watch him repeat his task, blowing, gathering, turning to see his work undone. He doesn’t look frustrated. Perhaps the pleasure is in the task after all, rather than in the end result. Perhaps I shouldn’t worry so much about my students; perhaps the pleasure for them, too, is in the task of writing rather than the end result.

  As I walk back along the English department corridor, I’m surprised to see someone outside my study. I have no more tutorials today, have been looking forward to some quiet time catching up on marking. I get nearer and see that it’s not one of my students at all but Jules. She’s huddled into her black coat on the chair I keep in the corridor for students waiting to see me.

  ‘What a nice surprise. You didn’t say you were in London today.’ I unlock my door.

  She doesn’t return my smile. Her face is pasty, unusual for Jules, normally a picture of vitality. Her hair’s scraped hastily back, her eyes puffy, and she’s not wearing her usual make-up. A small shiver passes over me, barely perceptible, which I would later recall.

  ‘I had a couple of things to do in town,’ she says. ‘Thought I’d combine it with talking to you.’

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  She follows me into my room.

  ‘Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Would you prefer to go out somewhere? I’ve got a free couple of hours, and my office is a complete mess.’ I tuck Jerome’s assignment into my filing tray, drop my coffee cup into the recycling bin. ‘If you like, we could get a proper drink at Pied Bull Yard. I’ve designated the cafe there a UDP.’

  Jules and I have our own code for places we rate: ‘Unique Drinking Points.’ We have particular requirements – they can’t be chains, have to be tucked away (so not many people know about them), must sell decent coffee if it’s daytime, wine if it’s night, and be quiet enough to hold a conversation. It helps, too, if they have an interesting history or location. So I expect Jules to relax, smile and agree. Instead, she says, ‘I’d prefer to talk in your study.’ She looks around. ‘It’s ages since I’ve been here.’

  ‘One of the perks of having worked here so long is they’ve finally given me a decent room. With a view of Senate House.’ I wave a hand at the grey facade of the tall art deco building that looms over ours. ‘I can’t decide whether I like it or not, though. Evelyn Waugh described it as “the vast bulk of London University insulting the autumnal sky”.’

  ‘It was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in 1984,’ Jules mutters, pipping me at my literary post – as usual. ‘Orwell’s wife worked there.’

  ‘Ha! There’s always a woman behind a genius idea.’ Again, I wait in vain for Jules to smile. When it becomes apparent she’s not going to, I sit down on my swivel chair and examine her crumpled face.

  ‘What is it, Jules?’ I ask at last.

  She rests her elbows on her knees and bows her head. ‘This is difficult for me,’ she says. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’

  For a second, I wonder if she’s come to tell me she and Rowan are splitting up. I lean forward, lift her hand, give it a squeeze.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to tell you over the phone,’ she says.

  I reach for a box of tissues and pass it to her. I’m thinking, if Rowan has finally pushed her to her limits, it might be a good thing in the long run.

  ‘I’m here for you, Jules, whatever the problem – you know that.’

  ‘It’s not . . .’ she begins, then stops.

  ‘It’s not what?’

  ‘It’s not my problem. Not really.’ There’s a quake in her voice. ‘More, both of ours.’

  ‘You have to give me a clue here.’

  ‘I don’t know how to tell you. It’s to do with that night,’ she says. ‘When we left Saul with Saffie . . .’

  ‘When we went to the pub? Tess’s birthday night?’

  ‘I realize now it wasn’t appropriate to let Saul come. I should have listened to Rowan. And Saff, in fact.’

  Something slams down inside me. Listened to Rowan. What’s Rowan been saying about Saul now? He once made some reference to Londoners bringing drugs into the idyllic enclave of his Fenland village. Which is nonsense – everyone knows drugs are as rife in small rural communities as urban ones. Anyway, Saul has shown no interest in drugs. If Saffie’s got hold of anything,
it’ll be through some other channel. Not through Saul.

  ‘Saffie didn’t want me to tell you. But I decided you had to know. So we can deal with this together. You’re going to find it hard, Holly, but . . .’ She purses her lips, adjusts her position. London seems suddenly to have fallen silent, as if the city, too, is waiting for her to speak. ‘OK.’ She takes a breath. ‘There’s only one way I can say this.’ She looks up at me. ‘He raped her, Holly.’

  ‘What do you mean, “He raped her”? Who raped who?’

  ‘Saul raped Saffie.’

  The ridiculousness of this almost makes me smile. It’s a cruel joke but one I guess might be interesting for Jules. Seeing how I’d respond after expressing my despair that male students, still, in the twenty-first century, believe it’s OK to sleep with unconsenting partners. After being trolled for speaking up for better sex education to protect young people.

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘Saffie, of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes, I mean, why would she say such a thing?’

  ‘She hasn’t made it up, Holly. She gave me all the details.’

  ‘She said Saul raped her?’

  Jules looks down at her fingers, weaved through each other on her lap. ‘She didn’t call it rape. But the things she described . . .’

  ‘What on earth did she describe?’ There’s something wrong here. It makes no sense.

  Jules shifts in her chair. ‘She wasn’t going to say anything. But I insisted when I saw how distressed she was, this morning. It was so clear something was preying on her mind and she didn’t want to tell me. Didn’t want Saul in trouble. But apparently, he went up to her room when she was getting ready for bed. For which I blame myself. I told him to put his head round the door and check she’d gone to bed, didn’t I?’

  I don’t know how to reply to this. Yes, Jules had asked him to check on Saffie, and presumably he had. But that doesn’t mean he would have gone into her room, or tried to touch her, or . . .