‘I meant Frieda,’ I said. ‘I thought she was with you.’
‘Frieda?’ he replied. ‘No, why would she be?’
‘She’s not at home.’
‘What is this? Are you worried?’
‘Mummy.’
I felt a cool hand on my arm and found Louisa there.
‘Lou, I’m sorry.’ I smoothed her hair across in a way I knew she would barely abide. ‘Frieda isn’t here. I made a mistake.’
‘Hello again,’ she said, looking up at Adam.
‘Oh. Hello Lou. Louisa. Yes. We met at your mum’s office, my office, didn’t we? The other day?’
She didn’t reply. Her gaze slipped off behind him.
‘Can I stroke your cat?’ she said, and I saw it at the back of the room, a saunter in its step, its only acknowledgement of us a shivering at the tip of its tail.
‘Of course. He’s Bob,’ replied Adam and bent down, clicking his tongue. The cat stopped and watched, but didn’t come any closer.
‘My feet are damp,’ Louisa said. ‘And you’ve got carpet.’
We all looked down. She had come out shoeless from the car and her socks, bunched around her ankles, showed a dark rim of wet.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Take them off.’
‘Don’t worry. Really. Don’t worry at all,’ Adam said, still kneeling awkwardly, but she pulled each one off cleanly, straight from the toe, and laid them, like pelts, across my arm. She walked past Adam and sat before the cat. It lowered its head to her and she scratched it expertly about the ears.
‘He likes you,’ Adam said, coming to stand. Louisa didn’t reply. ‘So, Frieda,’ he said. ‘Is she—? What made you think she was here?’
‘Oh I don’t know. I was expecting her back. I’m sure she told me. I just couldn’t think.’
‘She’s home now,’ Louisa called from across the hall. ‘She texted. You must have got mixed up.’ She pulled my phone from the pouch in the front of her hoodie and held it towards me. I took it and read: At home Mum. Been at rehearsal. Duh.
‘For God’s sake, Louisa, why didn’t you say?’
‘I just did,’ she replied. She brushed the cat’s back now and it bowed its spine into each long stroke.
‘Louisa, don’t be rude. I’m sorry,’ I said to Adam. ‘She’s not usually like this.’
‘Like what?’ Lou said. ‘Be careful, Mum.’
‘What?’
‘You’re very close to this cat. She’s allergic, you know,’ she said, twisting her head towards Adam, her eyes still on the animal. ‘She shouldn’t go near them at all.’
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. Will you be OK, Nancy? Maybe come inside a bit. His basket’s just there. Shall I get you a tablet?’
I followed him into their kitchen, a little cluttered, rather folksy. He switched on a lampshade resting on the countertop and poured me a glass of water from the tap. Two cocktail glasses drained next to the sink. A huge flat oval lapis ring lay on the windowsill. Magnets attached the corners of a child’s drawing to the fridge’s door. A face rendered in violent crayon strokes.
‘Nancy,’ he said, in a whisper, and took a step towards me. From the hall, I heard Louisa’s mutterings to the cat. Adam’s face showed loss.
‘I don’t understand you in this place,’ I said.
‘I love you,’ he replied.
‘I love you too.’
He pressed his forehead to mine and I closed my eyes.
‘I need to go,’ I said, and he nodded. We left the room but the hall was empty now.
‘Lou,’ I called, higher and shorter than I’d intended.
‘In here,’ she replied lazily. ‘I followed the cat.’
‘Is it—? Can I go in?’ I asked.
‘Oh, Nancy, of course,’ he said, hopelessness in his tone.
I found myself in a beautiful room, an almost gothic space of colour and texture, of statement and counter-argument. It was full; layer upon layer of things, carefully accrued. I saw meaning and sentiment everywhere. An anecdote behind each piece. I felt my own threat to this place. I was a bomb in the house.
Louisa stood at the back before a large set of bay windows, her hands clutched behind her like a child from some old painting. Two wingback chairs faced each other across a spindly-legged card table. There was an old tin ashtray on it, a butt wedged down into one of four grooves.
‘Who smokes?’ she asked Adam.
‘Louisa,’ I said.
‘It’s me,’ Adam replied and she nodded and moved on slowing, looking everywhere, taking inventory. She seemed to borrow some sort of assurance from this room. I wanted to drag her out of it but suddenly felt afraid.
‘Is this real?’ Lou asked, pausing at a box set into the wall.
‘Don’t touch the glass,’ I said. ‘You’ll leave a print.’
‘It is,’ replied Adam.
‘Yuk,’ Lou said.
‘Do you not like owls?’ Adam asked.
‘Not in boxes, I don’t,’ Louisa replied.
‘We need to go,’ I said.
She crossed the room now, her feet deep in a thick cream Berber rug. I could see her toes flex and dig into the pile as she went, the pleasure travel up and take its place on her face. Her walk was different here, too.
‘I like the way this carpet changes,’ she said, and she was right. Where I stood, a loose honeycomb pattern had been picked out in black, but it ended at the midpoint and just two thin columns of hexagons travelled on to the rug’s far edge. The effect was unmade, as though the weave had come unpicked. Now and again were short, straight lines of black wool, like offcuts of the main design, and splats of mustard, orange and blue. Louisa hopped from one burst of colour to the next, her free leg tucked behind her, until she landed, with a bounce, on a chaise. She dropped on to her knees.
‘Is this the dress-up trunk?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied. I heard his fingers drum on a console table behind him.
‘Frieda’s told me all about it, you know,’ she said, looking up at us through her tatty fringe.
‘That’s in Tara’s room,’ he said. ‘I—We don’t go in when she’s not here.’
‘So what’s this, then?’ Louisa asked.
From the hall, the clock began a busy whirr. A sequence of clicks and grates and it finally chimed.
‘It’s a tuck box,’ Adam said.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, although she knew full well from books.
‘It’s for children when they’re sent away to school,’ he replied.
She viewed him with a brief new interest and turned back to the box. She lifted the old brass latch and let it drop with a clank.
‘There’s nothing inside,’ he said.
‘Is that your name? ABR Fitch?’ she asked.
‘It is.’
‘What does it stand for? Wait. Let me guess,’ she said.
‘Louisa. We’re going now. Your sister needs feeding.’
‘Adam Boris Rupert,’ Louisa said. She got up to her feet.
‘No,’ replied Adam.
‘Adam Benjamin Robert,’ she said. I put my hands on her shoulder blades and moved her on.
‘Closer,’ he replied.
And then from somewhere in the room came the noise of material ripping, a long, slow teasing shriek.
‘What’s that?’ I said, and felt a terrible, illogical culpability, as if my malice had somehow found form and vandalised the room.
‘Oh, Bob,’ said Louisa.
The curtain, a thick rough linen, trembled, and the cat came down to land at its foot. The last half-metre was shredded, fibres everywhere, the bottom torn and jagged like something left over from Halloween.
‘Don’t worry,’ Adam says. ‘He does that.’
‘And you let him?’ Louisa said, looking from him, to me, to the tattered fabric in plain astonishment. I finally got her out.
‘Cheerio,’ called Adam, at the front door in his best and brightest voice. ‘Bye, Louisa. See you tom
orrow, Nancy. At the office, that is. Be safe.’
On the path, she shrugged off my touch roughly.
We drove home in self-conscious silence, Louisa humming a tune I couldn’t recognise. She played with her hands inside her hoodie’s pouch, then took to grooming herself, tweaking skin from the sides of her fingernails, pulling down the vanity mirror to examine her face. I didn’t believe a second of it.
22
Marie in her chair, in her suit, looked bland and non-specific, in disguise for the workaday week, or maybe me. I’d fought with Adam before she got there and wished I’d lit a candle. The room was thick with bullshit and old problems. I’d have liked to start again.
‘Can I take your jacket?’ I said from somewhere off behind her, delaying the moment when I’d have to sit down under her stare. I felt distracted and unprepared, her issues distant and complex.
‘I’ll keep it,’ she replied, ‘I feel the cold,’ and gave a little tremor to prove it.
‘Oh I do, too,’ I said, which wasn’t true. I felt her watching me, inquisitive, like a bird might from its tree.
A row broke out in the street below. ‘You’re kidding me,’ a voice said. A car door slammed, hard enough to shake my window in its fittings. ‘Yeah just fuck off,’ the man called again, over the sound of fast wet tyres. He must have kicked the car as it moved away, for there was a tinny kind of clunk, a cartoon noise that must have disappointed the kicker. We shared an acknowledgement of it, Marie and I, and something loosened between us.
‘OK,’ I began.
‘Actually, I’ve got a question,’ said Marie. ‘Something I’ve been thinking about.’
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Go on.’
‘I’ve been wondering how much happiness I should expect. How much is reasonable, for someone ordinary, like me.’
She pushed herself deeper into her chair. I looked down into my notebook where I’d plotted the arc of last week’s discussion.
‘Keep going,’ I said, to buy myself time.
‘I mean, how do I know if there’s more?’
‘If you made different choices in your life?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps,’ she said.
‘Well part of that is coming to recognise your own wants and needs. I think we touched on that before. Can you think of a time in your life that felt particularly good?’
‘Not really,’ Marie said, thoughtfully. ‘Not long periods, anyway. There were moments, I suppose.’
‘What sort of moments?’
She watched me carefully through the sides of her eyes.
‘Times when I’d done well.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘I won a prize at school for reciting a poem in French. I had to go up and collect it on the stage. Everybody clapped.’
‘So you’re someone who is motivated by achievement but also, perhaps, by recognition from others,’ I said.
‘You’re making me sound shallow,’ she replied.
‘Not at all. You know, you need to give yourself permission to want things,’ I said. ‘For yourself. That isn’t wrong.’
She gave that nod I’d come to recognise, a scepticism not quite hiding a curious girl.
‘I want us to look at this page together,’ I said, on a hunch.
In my drawer was a slim file of worksheets. I reached into it, straightening an old photo of David and me, come un-wedged from the casing of my computer screen.
‘We call this the Personal Bill of Rights. Have a read-through. Some of the statements might seem odd at first, but we’re working towards an acceptance of each of them. Let’s start by picking out any that seem interesting to you, in whatever way.’
She began to read. ‘Number one. I have the right to ask for what I want.’ She paused. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get it, now, does it?’ She gave an awkward laugh and ran her finger down the line.
‘So we’re always told,’ I said.
‘I have the right to express all of my feelings, positive or negative,’ she said.
‘You do,’ I replied. ‘Those are the rules in here, of course, but it’s about taking that idea out of this room—’
‘I have the right to change my mind.’
Next door Adam laughed, the sound reaching me easily, the tumble of it, even and rhythmed, like something out of nature, the collapse of a mountain or an approaching storm. I wondered if I was attuned to it, like a dog and its master’s whistle. The air thickened in my throat.
‘I have the right to make mistakes and not have to be perfect.’ That one made her laugh.
‘How about we start with the statements that—’ I said.
‘Oh here’s a goody: I have the right not to be responsible for others. You’re a mother, Nancy, how does that work for you?’
I had a sudden flash of my children, a tiny vision of each, tucked into their creases of London and the efforts and subterfuge it took to merely hold your place each day.
‘I think, to be honest, the idea there is more about—’
‘I have the right not to give excuses or reasons. Really? So it’s a question of just doing what you want, then, is it? This reads like a psychopath’s handbook, Nancy.’
I glanced down at my copy. The ideas seemed to have changed in her mouth.
‘Well, if that’s your response, then we certainly need to do some more work in the area of assertion—’
‘I have the right to change and grow.’ Her voice bounced through the syllables now, openly mocking. ‘Where does everyone else fit into this? Because it all impacts on others, doesn’t it?’ she said.
‘Well, as I’m sure you know, before we can really succeed in relationships, we need to take care of—’
‘Oh Nancy,’ she said. ‘Stop pretending, will you? We none of us live alone.’
She turned her face away. In profile, she was beautiful – I hadn’t seen it until then – beaked and elegant. I pictured her sometime after the war, at a fireplace, in a grand house, with a cocktail in a hand-blown glass. She held that position and I wondered if she knew her face from that angle; if this impression was her intent.
‘I have the right to be happy. Do I though?’ she asked. ‘Do any of us? Is that really a right?’
‘Well, you tell me,’ I said. ‘What do you think, Marie?’
‘Do you live by all of this?’ she said.
‘This is not really the environment—’
‘No. I know,’ she said. ‘I know. Don’t worry.’ A new, tired smile. ‘Isn’t time just about up?’
‘Almost. It’s fine. If you get a moment—’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll look through them again at home.’
‘I understand this process can feel frustrating, Marie. It’s not unusual and it often peaks just before some kind of breakthrough. Next time—’
She took a long slow breath in and her eyelids bounced shut just for an instant.
‘It’s OK, Nancy,’ she said, and when she looked at me again, her face had resumed its usual aspect, her disappointment tucked away. She stood, though there was ten minutes to go, holding the page in a pinch at its corner and when she turned, a freak breeze from the window pulled it back towards me in a languorous ripple and I wanted to reach out and snatch it from her. She moved away slowly and her shape, in her tailored skirt, her fluent, unhurried movement, the weight of her shifting from one side to the other, was oddly provoking.
‘You’re not God, you know,’ Marie said, at the door.
‘Of course not,’ I replied. And yet you’ve come here, I thought, to be absolved, haven’t you? To be told that you can start over.
‘See you next week,’ she called back at me. ‘Take good care.’
I watched the weather from the train. A sudden massive dump of water then the first sun in a long time, flashing snags of light at me off the wet fronts of everything; shop windows, cars and hyper-green leaves. When I got off, the rain rushed in a helix through the gutters with a noise that seemed
too huge, and at the storm drains, where it should have poured away, it surged up onto the pavements, soaking my shoes. At home, the effort showing on the face of our house – its apple-pie smile shining out from between our shattered neighbours – seemed somewhere between dishonest and an out-and-out lie. Inside, like some weird extension of that thought, I found Jake, Free and Louisa arranged up the bannisters, sit-com style. Only the dog told the truth, acknowledging the artifice with a fixed and anxious swiping of his tail.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
‘Date night!’ cried Free, in pitch-perfect American high-school. ‘To cheer you up, Mum.’
Lou held one of my old handbags. ‘Take this,’ she said.
‘Where did you find that?’ I asked. Inside were a long-lost lipstick and an ancient theatre ticket.
‘And these shoes,’ she said. The Jimmy Choos I’d worn on our wedding day and later dyed so they’d get some use. They looked dried up and wonky, one heel tip gone.
Stefan stepped out from behind Jake, halfway up the stairs, with a little show of presentation. He smelt newly showered and wore a fresh-pressed shirt.
‘I thought we could get out?’ he said. ‘Just an hour or two. I know you’re knackered.’ Behind his standard smile showed hope, a little doubt.
‘And I’m in charge!’ called Free, flinging out one arm.
‘That’s so not fair,’ creaked Jake, in his recent adult’s voice. Lou bent to his ear, presumably setting out the advantages of flexible bedtimes and un-policed treats.
‘And when was that decided?’ I said.
‘I’m nearly fifteen, Mum, you know,’ Frieda replied, her enthusiasm making her seem younger. ‘One week to go!’ She was humouring me; in no doubt that her daddy’s word would be upheld.
‘This feels like an ambush,’ I said, though that was unkind; they were only trying to be nice. ‘We’ll be local, I suppose. I need to shower. Give me five minutes,’ I said and they scattered.
Love After Love Page 17