Remember Me?

by Sophie Kinsella

  “Really, Mum, it’s okay,” I say. “I’m afraid we have to dash off-”

  “I’d like a coffee,” says Jon pleasantly.

  He what? Shooting him daggers, I follow him into the sitting room and we sit down on a faded sofa. Jon takes his seat like he feels totally at home there. Maybe he does.

  “So, Lexi was just talking about piecing her life together,” he says, crunching a biscuit. “And I thought, maybe knowing the events that happened at her dad’s funeral would help.”

  “Well, of course, losing a parent is always traumatic…” Mum is focused on breaking a biscuit in two. “Here you are, Ophelia.” She feeds half to a whippet.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Jon says. “I’m talking about the other events.”

  “Other events?” Mum looks vague. “Now, Raphael, that’s naughty! Coffee, Lexi?”

  The dogs are all over the biscuit plate, slobbering and grabbing. Are we supposed to eat those now?

  “Lexi doesn’t seem to have the fullest of pictures,” Jon persists.

  “Smoky, it’s not your turn…”

  “Stop talking to the fucking dogs!” Jon’s voice makes me leap off my seat.

  Mum looks almost too shocked to speak. Or even move.

  “This is your child.” Jon gestures at me. “Not that.” He jerks a thumb at a dog and gets up from the sofa in an abrupt movement. Both Mum and I gaze up at him, transfixed, as he walks over to the fireplace, ruffling his hair, ignoring the dogs clustering around him. “Now, I care about your daughter. She may not realize it, but I do.” He focuses directly on Mum. “Maybe you want to get through life in a state of denial. Maybe it helps you. But it doesn’t help Lexi.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say helplessly. “Mum, what happened at the funeral?”

  Mum’s hands are fluttering around her face as though to protect herself. “It was rather…unpleasant.”

  “Life can be unpleasant,” Jon says bluntly. “It’s even more unpleasant if you don’t know about it. And if you don’t tell Lexi, I will. Because she told me, you see.” He crunches the last of his biscuit.

  “All right! What happened was…” Mum’s voice descends into a whisper.

  “What?”

  “The bailiffs came!” Her cheeks are growing pink with distress. “Right in the middle of the party.”

  “Bailiffs? But…”

  “They came with no warning. Five of them.” She’s staring straight ahead, stroking the dog on her lap with an obsessive repetitive motion. “They wanted to repossess the house. Take all the furniture, everything. It turned out your father hadn’t been…totally honest with me. Or anybody.”

  “Show her the second DVD,” says Jon. “Don’t tell me you don’t know where it is.”

  There’s a pause, then without looking at either of us, Mum gets up, roots in a drawer, and finds a blank, shiny disc. She puts it into the machine and the three of us sit back.

  “Darlings.” Dad is on the screen again, in the same room as in the other DVD, in the same plushy dressing gown. The same charming twinkle as he faces the camera. “If you’re watching this, I’ve popped it. And there’s something you should know. But this one’s not for…public consumption, shall we say.” He takes a deep puff on his cigar, frowning regretfully. “There’s been a bit of a catastrophe on the old moolah front. Didn’t mean to land you in it. You girls are clever-you’ll find a way to sort it out.” He considers for a moment. “But if you’re stuck, ask old Dickie Hawford. He should be good for a bit. Cheers, m’dears.” He lifts his glass up-then the screen goes dark. I wheel around to Mum.

  “What did he mean, ‘catastrophe’?”

  “He meant he’d remortgaged the entire house.” Her voice is trembling. “That was his real message. That DVD arrived in the post a week after the funeral. But it was too late! The bailiffs had visited! What were we supposed to do?” She’s stroking the whippet harder and harder, until, with a sudden yelp, it escapes from her grasp.

  “So…what did we do?”

  “We would have had to sell up. Move to another area. Amy would have been taken out of school…” Her hands are fluttering around her face again. “So my brother very kindly stepped in. And so did my sister. And…and so did you. You said you’d pay off the mortgage. As much as you could afford.”

  “Me?”

  I sink back into the sofa, my mind reeling with shock, trying to fit this into the picture. I agreed to pay off Dad’s debts.

  “Is it an offshore mortgage?” I say suddenly. “Is the bank called Uni…something?”

  She nods. “Most of Daddy’s dealings were offshore. Trying to avoid the tax man. I don’t know why he couldn’t just be honest-”

  “Said the woman who kept her daughter in the dark!” expostulates Jon. “How can you even say that?”

  I can’t help catching some of his exasperation.

  “Mum, you knew I couldn’t remember the funeral. You didn’t tell me any of this. Can’t you see how it might have…made things clearer for me? I had no idea where that money was going.”

  “It’s been very difficult!” Mum’s eyes are swiveling from side to side. “I’ve been trying to keep it quiet for Amy’s sake.”

  “But-” I break off as something else even darker occurs to me. “Mum…I have another question. Was Dad ever in prison?”

  Mum winces as though I’ve trodden on her toe.

  “Briefly, darling. A long time ago…It was a misunderstanding. Let’s not dwell on that. I’ll make some more coffee.”

  “No!” In frustration I leap to my feet and stand right in front of her, trying to get her single-minded attention. “Mum, listen! You can’t just live in a bubble, pretending nothing’s happened. Amy’s right! You have to break out of this…this time warp.”

  “Lexi!” Mum says sharply, but I ignore her.

  “Amy heard about Dad going to prison. She got the idea it’s cool. No wonder she’s been getting in so much trouble… Jesus!” Suddenly the pieces of my life are slotting together like a Tetris puzzle. “That’s why I suddenly got ambitious. That’s why I was so single-minded. That funeral changed everything.”

  “You told me what happened,” Jon says. “When the bailiffs arrived, she went to bits.” He glances scornfully at Mum. “You had to hold them off, Lexi; you had to make the decisions. You took it all on yourself.”

  “Stop looking at me as though it’s all my fault!” Mum suddenly cries out, her voice shrill and quivering. “Stop heaping blame on me! You have no idea about my life, none! Your father, that man-”

  She breaks off, the words hanging in the air, and I catch my breath as her blue eyes meet mine. For the first time that I can remember, my mother sounds…true.

  The room is totally still. I hardly dare speak.

  “What about Dad?” My sotto voce whisper still feels too loud. “Mum, tell me.”

  But it’s too late. Already the moment’s over. Mum’s eyes are shifting sideways, avoiding me. With a sudden pang I see her as though for the first time: her hair girlish in its Alice band, her hands wrinkled, Dad’s ring still on her finger. Even as I watch, she’s feeling for a dog’s head and starting to pat it.

  “It’s nearly lunchtime, Agnes!” Her voice is bright and brittle. “Let’s see what we can find you-”

  “Mum, please.” I take a step forward. “You can’t stop there. What were you going to say?”

  I don’t know what exactly I’m hoping for-but as she looks up I can tell I’m not going to get it. Her face is opaque again, as though nothing just happened.

  “I was simply going to say”-already she’s regaining her old martyred spirit-“that before you start blaming me for everything in your life, Lexi, that chap had a lot to answer for. That boyfriend of yours at the funeral. Dave? David? He’s the one you should be accusing.”

  “Loser Dave?” I stare at her, thrown. “But…Loser Dave wasn’t at the funeral. He told me he offered to come but I turned him down. He said…” I p
eter out as I see Jon just shaking his head, his eyes raised to heaven.

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “He said we broke up that morning, and that it was beautiful, and that he gave me a single rose…” Oh God. What was I thinking, even half-believing him? “Excuse me.”

  I march outside into the drive, fueled with frustration at Mum, at Dad, at myself for being so gullible. Whipping my mobile phone from my pocket, I direct-dial Loser Dave’s office.

  “Auto Repair Workshop,” comes his businesslike voice down the line. “Dave Lewis at your service.”

  “Loser Dave, it’s me,” I say, my voice steely. “Lexi. I need to hear about our breakup again. And this time I need to hear the truth.”

  “Babe, I told you the truth.” He sounds supremely confident. “You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

  I want to wallop him.

  “Listen, you fuckhead,” I say in slow, furious tones. “I’m at the neurological specialist’s office right now, okay? They say someone has been giving me wrong information and it’s messing up my neural memory pathways. And if it isn’t corrected, I’ll get permanent brain damage.”

  “Jesus.” He sounds shaken. “Straight up?”

  He really is stupider than one of Mum’s whippets.

  “Yeah. The specialist’s with me right now, trying to correct my memory circuits. So maybe you want to try again with the truth? Or maybe you’d like to speak to the doctor?”

  “No! Okay!” He sounds totally unnerved. I can just picture him breathing harder, running a finger around his collar. “Maybe it wasn’t exactly like I told you. I was trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what? Did you come to the funeral?”

  “Yeah, I came along,” he says after a pause. “I was handing out canapés. Being helpful. Giving you support.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Then I…” He clears his throat.

  “What?”

  “Shagged one of the waitresses. It was the emotional stress!” he adds defensively. “It makes us all do crazy things. I thought I’d locked the door-”

  “I walked in on you?” I say in disbelief.

  “Yeah. We weren’t naked or anything. Well, obviously a bit-”

  “Stop!” I thrust the phone away from me.

  I need a few moments to take all this in. Breathing hard, I crunch over the gravel, sit down on the garden wall, and look at the field of sheep opposite, ignoring the “Lexi! Lexi!” coming from the phone.

  I caught Loser Dave two-timing me. Well, of course I did. I’m not even that surprised.

  At last I lift the phone back to my ear. “So, how did I react? And don’t say I gave you a rose and it was beautiful.”

  “Well.” Loser Dave breathes out. “To be honest, you went ballistic. You started yelling about your life. Your whole life had to change, it was all crap, you hated me, you hated everything… I’m telling you, Lexi, it was extreme. I tried to calm you down, give you a prawn sandwich. But you weren’t interested. You stormed out.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I didn’t see you again. Next time I clapped eyes on you, you were on the telly, looking totally different.”

  “Right.” I watch two birds circling in the sky. “You know, you could have told me the truth, first time around.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, I am.” He sounds as genuine as I’ve ever heard him. “And I’m sorry I shagged that girl. And I’m sorry for what she called you, that was well out of order.”

  I sit up, suddenly alert. “What did she call me?”

  “Oh. You don’t remember,” he says hastily. “Er…nothing. I don’t remember either.”

  “What was it?” I stand up, clutching the phone tighter. “Tell me what she called me! Loser Dave!”

  “I gotta go. Good luck with the doctor.” He rings off. I immediately redial his number, but it’s busy. Little sod.

  I march into the house to find Jon still sitting on the sofa, reading a copy of Whippet World.

  “Hi!” His face lights up. “How did it go?”

  “What did the waitress call me at the funeral?”

  At once Jon looks evasive. “I don’t know what you mean. Hey, have you ever read Whippet World?” He holds it up. “Because it’s a surprisingly good-”

  “You do know what I mean.” I sit down beside him and pull his chin around so he has to look at me. “I know I told you. Tell me.”

  Jon sighs. “Lexi, it’s a tiny detail. Why does it matter?”

  “Because…it just does. Look, Jon, you can’t lecture my mum about denial and then not tell me something which happened in my own life, which I deserve to know. Tell me what that waitress called me. Now.” I glare at him.

  “All right!” Jon lifts his hands as though in defeat. “If you have to know, she called you…Dracula.”

  Dracula? In spite of myself-in spite of the fact that I know my teeth aren’t snaggly anymore-I can feel my cheeks staining with mortification.

  “Lexi-” Jon’s wincing, as he reaches for my hand.

  “No.” I shake him off. “I’m fine.”

  My face still hot, I stand up and head over to the window, trying to picture the scene, trying to put myself back in my own chewed-up, flat-heeled Lexi shoes. It’s 2004. I didn’t get a bonus. It’s my dad’s funeral. The bailiffs have just arrived to bankrupt us. I come across my boyfriend screwing a waitress…and she takes one look at me and calls me Dracula.

  Okay. Things are starting to make sense.

  Chapter 18

  On the way back, I sit in silence for a long, long while. I’m clutching the blue folder tightly on my lap as if it might try to run away. The fields are whizzing past outside. Jon glances at me every now and then but doesn’t speak.

  I’m going around and around it all in my head, trying to digest everything I’ve just learned. I feel like I’ve done a degree in Lexi Smart, in the space of half an hour.

  “I still can’t believe my dad left us in trouble like that,” I say at last. “With no warning or anything.”

  “Oh no?” Jon sounds noncommittal.

  Kicking off my shoes, I draw my feet up onto the seat and rest my chin on my knees, gazing out at the road. “You know, everyone loved my dad. He was so good-looking, and fun, and sparky, and he loved us. Even though he fucked up a few times, he really did love us. He used to call us his three girls.”

  “His three girls.” Jon’s voice is drier than ever. “A dog-obsessive in denial, a teenage extortionist, and a screwed-up amnesiac. And all of them in debt. Good work, Michael. Nicely done.”

  I shoot him a look. “You don’t think much of my dad, do you?”

  “I think he had a good time and left the pieces for all of you to deal with,” says Jon. “I think he was a selfish prick. But hey, I never met the guy.” Abruptly he signals and pulls into another lane. His hands are gripping the wheel tightly, I suddenly notice. He seems almost angry.

  “At least I get myself a bit more.” I chew on my thumbnail. “Did I ever talk to you about it? The funeral?”

  “Once or twice.” Jon gives me a wry smile.

  “Oh, right.” I color. “All the time. I must have bored you to death.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He takes a hand off the wheel and squeezes mine briefly. “One day, really early on, when we were still just friends, it all came out. The whole story. How that day changed your life. How you took on your family’s debt, booked a cosmetic dentistry appointment the next day, went on a crash diet, decided to change everything about yourself. Then you went on TV and everything became even more extreme. You rocketed up the career ladder, you met Eric, and he seemed like the answer. He was solid, rich, stable. A million miles away from…” He breaks off into silence.

  “My dad,” I say eventually.

  “I’m no psychologist. But I would guess.”

  There’s silence. I watch a small plane he
ading higher and higher into the sky, leaving a double trail of white smoke.

  “You know, when I woke up, I thought I’d landed the dream life,” I say slowly. “I thought I was Cinderella. I was better than Cinderella. I thought I must be the happiest girl in the world…” I break off as Jon shakes his head.

  “You were living your whole life under a strain. You went too far too soon; you didn’t know how to handle it; you made mistakes.” He hesitates. “You alienated your friends. You found that the hardest of all.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I say helplessly. “I don’t understand why I became a bitch.”

  “You didn’t mean to. Lexi, give yourself a break. You were thrust into this boss position. You had a big department to run, you wanted to impress senior management, not be accused of favoritism…and you floundered. You did some things the wrong way. Then you felt trapped. You’d built up this tough persona. It was part of your success.”

  “The Cobra,” I say, wincing. I still can’t believe I got nicknamed after a snake.

  “The Cobra.” He nods, a smile pushing at his mouth again. “You know, that was the TV producers’ idea. That wasn’t you. Although they had something-you are pretty cobra-like when it comes to business.”

  “No, I’m not!” I lift my head in horror.

  “In a good way.” He grins.

  A good way? How can you be like a cobra in a good way?

  We drive on for a while without speaking, golden fields sprawling into the distance on either side of us. At length Jon turns on the radio. The Eagles are playing “Hotel California” and as we zip along, sunlight glinting off the windshield, I suddenly feel like we could be in another country. Another life.

  “You once said to me, if you could go back in time and do everything differently, you would.” Jon’s voice is softer than before. “With everything. Yourself…your job…Eric…Everything looks different when the gloss is gone.”

  I feel a sudden sting at the mention of Eric. Jon’s talking like everything’s in the past-but this is now. I’m married. Nor do I like what he’s implying.

  “Look, I’m not some shallow gold-digger, okay?” I say hotly. “I must have loved Eric. I wouldn’t just marry a guy because of the gloss.”