After You'd Gone

by Maggie O'Farrell

  They waited, Ann in the doorway, Ben standing by the table. The noise had stopped. All Ann could hear was Ben breathing and that monotonous grind of traffic you seemed to be able to hear everywhere in London. They stood together in this sudden calm, side by side, barely moving. Then Ann thought about the light that was still burning in the room above their heads, and realised they were both afraid to go upstairs.

  Alice staggers through the door with three bags of shopping, kicking the door shut behind her. She transfers all the bags to one hand and bends to pick up the post with the other. On the way to the kitchen she looks through it idly. A letter for John. A shiny envelope addressed to ‘The Occupier’ telling them to ‘Play and Win Today!’ and a postcard for John in sloping black handwriting. She knows even as she starts to read it that she shouldn’t be reading it but something goads her on until she’s finished. Then she goes back to the beginning and reads it again. Then she reads it again and again and again, after which she puts the shopping down on the table, switches on the kettle, still holding the postcard, sits down, places it squarely in front of her and reads it again: ‘Dear John,’ it begins, ‘It was, as always, great to see you last weekend. Thanks for coming over. I only wish I could see you more often, but you seem so busy these days. Thanks also for sharing with me your dilemma. My only wish is for your happiness, and I know that you cannot be happy in the long term with someone who isn’t Jewish. If you want to have affairs with a few non-Jewish girls, it is no concern of mine. But if you marry this girl, or live with her as if you are married, I will no longer be able to think of you as my son. I know your mother would have felt the same. Fondest love, Dad.’

  Alice sits for a long time with the card on the table before her. She reaches into the carrier-bags for an apple, which she rolls between her palms, staring at the card for so long that the black letters blur into tiny black dots that jump about like ants. Then she looks away and presses the cool green skin of the apple to her forehead. With her fingertips, she turns the card over: on the other side is a picture of Brighton pier in a distinctively seventies tint, with a violently turquoise sky and lurid orange windbreakers on the beach. She wonders if Daniel Friedmann chose this view deliberately or whether it was the first card that came to hand.

  Then she gets up and roots in her bag for her address book, walks over to the phone and dials a number. ‘Rachel? Hi, it’s me. Listen, 1 can’t talk now, but can I come and stay? . . . No, it’s not that . . . Kind of ... I know . . . Look, I’ll tell you all about it later . . . Yes . . . No ... I just don’t know at the moment ... It won’t be for long, I promise . . . No, I know that . . . Thanks . . . See you in a bit.’

  She hangs up, goes through the living room and up the stairs. On the landing she pauses, as if she’s lost her way, but then she goes into the bedroom and pulls a bag down from the cupboard.

  John has been anxious — over-anxious, in her opinion — that she should make as many changes to the house as she needs to make it feel like her home as well as his. He keeps telling her to move whatever she wants, paint rooms, and insisted that they go shopping last weekend to buy furniture for her. She hadn’t really thought it necessary — John’s house seems amorphous to her; fluid, comfortable, normal. There is nothing that grates on her, nothing that feels alien. But, to keep him happy, they had driven furiously from second-hand shop to second-hand shop, cramming the car and, when no more would fit, strapping on to the roof-rack a chest of draw'ers, an armchair with a sagging seat and a piled brown cover, a bookcase, another bookcase, a small bedside table. At the cheval mirror, she had tried to persuade him to stop. ‘Might come in handy, though,’ he’d said, raising his eyebrows at her, ‘somewhere in the bedroom. Don’t you think?’ Alice had burst out laughing. The shop-owner had a fit of coughing.

  She pulls open her chest of drawers. It had taken them three goes to get it up the stairs. John’s friend Sam had come round in the end to help. Alice had stood on the landing as the tw’o men swore and shunted and cursed as they heaved it up, step by step.

  Into her bag she shoves a jumble of whatever comes into her vision — underwear, shirts, a pair of jeans. She can’t think logically. She leaves her new chest, bookcases and table and goes into the bathroom, where she sweeps all her things into one of the bag’s side pockets. She stands a moment looking at the axolotl hanging as usual in its tank; it gazes back at her morosely, then she clatters down the stairs. If she is really going to leave tonight, she needs to be gone before John gets back: if she sees him, it will be impossible to walk through that door.

  It’s only when she sits down on the tube that she bursts into tears.

  John returns at about nine. The house is dark. He fumbles for the hall light as he wipes his feet and shakes the rain out of his hair.

  ‘Alice!’ he calls. No answer. ‘Alice?’ He listens for her answering voice. Nothing. Was she going out tonight? He tries to remember if she said anything about it this morning, but doesn’t recall her mentioning it. The answerphone is on but there are no messages. In the living room he sits down, kicks off his shoes and yawns. He feels a little disgruntled and wishes she was in. He was looking forward to seeing her and bought a bottle of wine on the way home. Was this what life was like before he met her? Returning home, tired, to a cold and empty house? Although she’s only been living here permanently for a week, he has become rather hooked to the surge of pleasure he gets from coming back to find her curled up in the bedroom reading, or talking to the axolotl while running a bath, or watering the seedlings she’s planted in an old sink just outside the back door. He goes into the kitchen, sees some bags of shopping on the table and is puzzled. She must have been in and gone out again. When he reaches for the kettle to boil water for some tea, he finds it full of still hot water.

  He wanders upstairs to the bathroom, fills the basin with water and splashes it repeatedly over his face. As he is humming to himself and lathering his hands with some fancy-smelling soap that Alice has put there, he stops dead. Her toothbrush has gone. His own toothbrush lolls on its own in the mug. He hurriedly rinses his hands and wipes them on his trousers, darting paranoid glances around the room. Don’t be silly, he tells himself, she’ll have left it somewhere in the house. But her moisturiser has gone, her hairbrush has gone, her towel has gone.

  John rushes across the landing and wrenches open the chest of drawers they bought a few days ago from a junk shop on the Holloway Road. Has anything been taken from here? It’s hard to tell. There are still loads of clothes here, all neatly folded one on top of the other. He spins round to the bed. All her books are still stacked up on her side. It’s OK. She’s just out somewhere. And taken all her make-up and her toothbrush with her? But she hasn’t gone. She can’t have gone. It is then that he sees the top of the cupboard behind him, reflected in the mirror above the bed. There is a large space where she had previously stored her rucksack, the one that had been all round the world with her, she’d told him proudly. He flops down on to the bed. Why, why, why has she gone? He racks his brain to think of anything out of the ordinary that happened that morning. Did he say anything to upset her? They had had breakfast together, like they did most mornings, and she kissed him goodbye before she left for the tube. Nothing awful in that. They had talked about going to the Czech Republic in the summer after she had seen a picture of Prague on the back of a cereal packet. Had he said anything outrageous enough to make her want to leave him?

  A note. She must have left a note. Maybe she had had to go away unexpectedly and had been unable to contact him. Maybe one of her family was ill or something. She would never have just left without saying anything, would she? He bolts down the stairs and scours the living room for a piece of paper with her handwriting on it. Nothing. He goes through to the kitchen and searches desperately through the shopping. Perhaps she left a note in there — avocados, pasta, aubergines, yoghurt. Nothing more. It is then that he sees something on the table. He snatches it up and for a moment he is so hyped up that he can
’t read it. It’s a postcard from his father ^ Why is he sending him a postcard? He never sends him postcards. Ever. He is just about to fling it aside and continue the search for the missing Alice when he catches sight of the words ‘non-Jewish’. His heart closes in dread and he reads it through rapidly, his eyes darting across the closely spaced words, one hand clamped to his forehead. For a few moments afterwards he can only stare at it blinking. How could his father be so cruel, not only to him but to Alice? He must have known that there was a strong chance that she would read this.

  He lowers himself into a chair and tears the card in two with deliberate precision. He then tears the two halves into two equal parts, and tears those two halves into two and continues in this way until he has a small heap of black, white and shiny seventies Brighton sky-coloured confetti.

  He must think about this logically. He now knows why she’s gone but the question is where would she have gone to? Out of everyone she knows, who would she have run to? She’ll have most likely taken her address book with her, otherwise he could have gone through her friends alphabetically. Who might she call after reading this? Her family! Her sisters! Of course. He starts up and reaches for the phone. ‘Raikes,’ he mutters, ‘Raikes of North Berwick.’

  Directory Enquiries gives him the number, which he scribbles on the back of his hand with the biro he has tied to the phone. He is just about to punch in the number when he receives a warning nudge from his common sense. What is he going to say to them? Hi, it’s John. You don’t know this yet but your daughter has moved in with me. Yes, it’s great news, isn’t it? Anyway, she’s gone missing. I think she’s left me. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you? No? Oh well, never mind. I’m sure she’ll turn up.

  John replaces the receiver. She must be somewhere in London. She’s due at work tomorrow, after all. For a split second — and a split second only, as he prides himself later — he entertains the notion that she’s gone back to Jason. Don’t be ridiculous, John. Get a grip.

  He paces up and down the living room, as if searching for clues, but all he can think is, Alice has left me, Alice has left me. Is this what happens in a crisis? Your brain offers up only the most mundane information. Who, who, who is she with?

  It is only after he has done his fifth circuit of the room that it hits him. Rachel. Who else? All he has to do now is remember her surname and he can get her number from the phone book. Rachel . . . Rachel . . . Rachel . . . who? It’s no use. Alice has probably never even mentioned her surname.

  He knows she lives somewhere in south London, Greenwich, maybe, but has no idea where exactly. He quells an irrational urge to get in the car and drive through the streets looking for her, and hurls himself despairingly on to the sofa, gazing at the phone. Ring me, Alice. Go on. Pick up the phone, wherever you are, and dial this number. Don’t do this to me.

  Suddenly he sits up, revitalised with an idea. The last redial button. Surely she would phone whoever she was going to before she set out? Thank God for technology. His hand trembles slightly as he presses the button and he clamps the receiver to his ear, as if desperate not to miss a sound. The other end rings once, twice, three times before he hears the unmistakable click and hiss of an answering-machine. Damn, damn, damn. Then he hears, ‘Hi, this is Rachel’s machine. I can’t come to the phone right now but leave me a message and I might call you back.’ Brilliant! He knew it, he knew that’s who she’d call. He clears his throat nervously. Whoever’s side Rachel was on, it certainly wouldn’t be his. ‘Hi Rachel, it’s John here. I was wondering if you had heard anything from Alice tonight. Could you please give me a call on . . .’

  The machine clicked off, beeping angrily as someone picked up the phone. ‘Hi, John.’

  ‘Alice? Is that you?’

  ‘No. It’s Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel, have you spoken to her? Do you know where she is?’

  There was a pause from the other end.

  ‘Rachel, I know you’ll know. Please tell me. I’m desperate.’

  ‘She’s here. She’s fine. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Can I talk to her?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Hold on a sec.’ Rachel covers the phone but he can just about hear her say, ‘Al, it’s him. I’ve told him you’re here . . .’ There is an unintelligible expostulation from Alice, presumably, then Rachel says, ‘Come on, Al, he has a right to know, the poor bugger. He wants to talk to you.’

  He can hear the timbre of Alice’s voice talking, but can’t make out what she’s saying. He feels as if every nerve and fibre in his body is straining, on the point of snapping. Alice, please. Come to the phone.

  Then her voice, right next to his ear. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Alice.’

  ‘What?’ She sounds very small and very far away.

  ‘Alice, please come back. Don’t do this.’

  ‘I had to.’ He hears the slightest quiver in her voice. ‘There was a postcard . . .’

  ‘I know. I saw it. I ripped it up.’

  They are both silent. John wants to shout come home, come home, please come home.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asks.

  ‘The appliance of science. Last-number redial.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Another pause. John winds the springy wire round and round his fingers. ‘I also spent a good while running through the list of your friends and family, wondering who you’d be with. I thought of Rachel but couldn’t remember her surname.’ ‘Saunders.’

  ‘Right. I’ll remember that next time you leave me.’

  ‘John, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to—’

  He cuts across her. ‘He doesn’t mean it, you know. It’s emotional blackmail. Can’t you see? He wrote that card because he wanted precisely this to happen.’

  She is silent again, but he can feel her listening. ‘He wanted you to see it and he wanted you to walk out on me. You’re playing right into his hands. It’s evil and cruel of him, he doesn’t mean a word of it, and please, please, please come back.’

  ‘But he said—’

  ‘He said a lot of old shit.’

  ‘But what if he really does mean it? I can’t let you do that.

  I can’t ... I just thought . . .’He hears her suppressing a sob. ‘I just thought it would be easier for us this way.’

  She starts to cry in earnest and she must be removing the mouthpiece from her face because it’s beginning to sound very distant. Is she going to hang up?

  ‘Alice?’ He grips the phone so hard his knuckles begin to ache. ‘Alice! Are you there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give me Rachel’s address. I’m coming round to get you.’

  ‘I don’t know, John ... I think maybe—’

  ‘This is absolute madness. I love you.’ He hears her sigh heavily and can feel her wavering. At least she’s stopped crying. ‘He doesn’t mean it, I promise you. Look, even if you are going to dump me, we can’t exactly leave it like this, can we?’

  She laughs and then sniffs. ‘I can get the tube back to Camden. It’s all right. You don’t need to drive over here.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Give me the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘OK.’

  Forty minutes later, John is peering at the range of dimly illuminated bells on the front door of the converted town house that Rachel’s flat is in. He tries one at random and gets an irritable German man telling him, ‘It’s the third floor and please would you ask them to label the bell?’ Rachel lets him in and he takes the stairs two at a time. On the third floor, Rachel is waiting for him with her door open. Alice’s rucksack is propped up next to her on the landing.

  ‘Hi, John.’ She gives him a swift kiss on the cheek. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘There wasn’t much traffic and I was probably breaking the speed limit all the way.’

  Rachel smiles. ‘It must be love.’

  ‘Yeah. Something like that.’ John is impatient, craning to look behind her. ‘Where is she anyway?’

&
nbsp; Rachel turns round and shouts, ‘Alice! Lover boy’s here.’ ‘I’m really sorry about all this, Rachel.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. It’s completely fine. She’s seen me through plenty of crises.’

  Alice appears in the corridor, a faint smile on her face, her eyes large and damp. ‘Hello, John.’

  He holds her to him, kissing the top of her head. Her arms are tight around his shoulders and the warmth of her breath soaks through his collar.

  ‘All right, that’s enough.’ Rachel says. ‘I’m getting cold standing here with the door open.’

  Alice gives Rachel a hug. ‘Thanks, Rach. Sorry I couldn’t stay.’

  ‘Never mind. Next time, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t tell me this is going to be a regular occurrence,’ John protests.

  ‘Just remember,’ Rachel says to Alice, as she’s closing the door, ‘he knows where I live now.’

  In the car, he fits the keys into the ignition. Alice pulls down the mirror above the passenger seat and examines her reflection critically. ‘I look awful,’ she grumbles, then turns to him, grinning: ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here?’ John doesn’t answer. She sighs deeply and rubs her eyes. ‘I am absolutely knackered. Let’s go home.’

  Alice sits opposite him in the bath, her knees drawn up to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. They study each other through the steam. John scoops up water between his palms and pours it over her shoulders. It trickles in silver rivulets down her arms, her back and over her chest. ‘Don’t ever do that again, will you?’

  She doesn’t answer but takes a deep breath, filling out her cheeks, and plunges face first into the water. He jerks back in surprise. Water sloshes violently over the sides and on to the lino. Her fingers fasten on to his ribs and tickle them. Hard. He writhes away from her. More water slops over the side.

  ‘Alice!’ He is cross. He grabs her shoulders and pulls her up out of the water. She emerges laughing and coughing, a wet mermaid, her hair and face streaming, her eyelashes stuck into wet spikes. Her face is inches from his and her smile dies when she sees he isn’t laughing.