The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  ‘No. We don’t have much in common any more. I – I hardly even want to spend time with her.’

  ‘Well, that’s not so surprising, is it, if you think about it? This was a friendship that met your needs as a twelve-year-old. Why should it still meet them now? Why does it have to?’

  ‘Meeting my needs?’ I said. ‘It’s not like I’m buying a new washing machine, or some life-insurance policy.’

  ‘Why would you compare your friend to an insurance policy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why would I compare her to a washing machine?’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He let a long silence fall. He looked at his watch.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said in icy tones. ‘Am I boring you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. A bit.’

  ‘Well. Maybe you should go then.’

  He looked me straight in the eye. ‘I was wondering if we’re going to talk about what’s really on your mind.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s as if there’s something else you’re thinking about, almost all the time. Sometimes I think it’s Hattie, but at the same time it’s not Hattie. It’s like a script running constantly in the background. Or a song on repeat. It’s exhausting just watching you.’

  What?

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I know you arty types probably like to sit around on beanbags analysing each other but—’

  Steve rose to his feet. ‘I should go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not interested in playing games, Janey.’ Unfolded, he looked alarmingly big against the wall.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You draw me in, with your words, and those looks you give me, like you want to be real with me, and then you kick me out. You want me to be the sensitive, arty type when it suits you, and then you turn it around and take the piss. What’s that all about?’

  ‘I was just . . . That’s unfair. You caught me off guard, that’s all.’

  ‘Talk straight, Janey. Talk straight or not at all.’

  He was shrugging on the leather jacket. He was rooting in his pocket for his keys. He was turning. He was leaving.

  No.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  He stopped, his back outlined in the frame of the door. As seconds slipped past I found myself wondering about the expression on his face: would it be impatience, sympathy, professional concern? For a horrible moment I was convinced that when he turned round, his face would be nothing but a blank, an oval of smooth skin.

  But when he did turn, he merely looked worn, and tired. He came and sat down beside me.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  So I told him about the knife, and the glove. I told him about the baby monitor, hissing and shrieking while Pip lay upstairs asleep.

  ‘Oh, Jay,’ he sighed. The shortening of my name felt so intimate, sent shivers over my skin.

  He looked at me for a few moments, his eyes heavy.

  ‘I didn’t mean to take the piss before,’ I said. ‘You just . . . I just . . .’

  ‘Come here,’ he said.

  He pulled me into his chest. I could feel his hands, one spread high on my back, the other reaching right round me, spanning the side of my ribcage. He held me as I might have held Pip, containing me, as though I was infinitely precious. As though he needed me, somehow, like I needed him.

  But when he spoke his voice was matter of fact. ‘You don’t have to go through this on your own. There’s help if you need it.’

  What sort of help? I wondered. A priest or a medium? A psychiatrist? Social workers? Assessments? A whole army of other problems. But for now, it felt so good just to be held.

  ‘Who’re you gonna call?’ I murmured. ‘Ghostbusters?’

  He laughed. I felt it as well as heard it, a throaty vibration where my ear was pressed against his chest. He dropped a kiss, an affectionate little kiss, onto the top of my head.

  I had to have this. I had to have more of this. I pulled him against me. Decisively, so there’d be no mistaking my intention.

  Then he was kissing my forehead, and my face. Tentatively – like it was a question – finding my mouth. And I was kissing him back.

  The rush of it drowned everything else out, swept me clean. I didn’t want his concern, or his taskforce of helpers. I wanted him inside me. The sooner the better, the harder the better. I stood up, took his hands and pulled him up. Standing so close, he seemed to tower in front of me. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of his jeans.

  He exhaled, a deep, shuddery breath. ‘Oh God, Janey. Oh God, do you want to do this?’ He pulled back to look at me. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Let’s go to my room.’

  But when we got there, it started to go wrong. He pulled my T-shirt up over my head, skimming his hands down my sides, and then moved in to kiss me again, pressing his weight against me so that I moved backwards and let myself drop onto the bed.

  ‘What’s up?’ he whispered, flipping my belt out of its buckle.

  ‘Nothing.’ I stroked the side of his face, feeling the pull of his stubble against my palm. I wanted him. I wanted him . . .

  But suddenly I was hovering near the ceiling, watching us: my body splayed pale on the bed, his hands, pushing and exploratory. What a strange thing to want to do: to put this body part there, the rubbing, and writhing. A biological function, an evolutionary drive designed to produce offspring.

  Right on cue, Steve paused. ‘On a practical note, I’ve come a little unprepared.’ His voice was deep, and suddenly polite to the point of being formal. ‘Have you got any . . . er . . .’

  Condoms. A memory flashed into my head: easing myself out of the bed in that plush suite at Gleneagles and finding that the condom had burst. Taking the morning-after pill the next day, because I was a responsible adult, wasn’t I? Learning three weeks later that I’d become a statistic. A failure-rate statistic.

  ‘Oh yes.’ My voice had tightened, turning polite to match his. ‘I think I’ve got some. I’m not sure if they’re . . .’

  . . . out of date.

  Did condoms go out of date? Only if you were a sad case who nobody wanted to fuck.

  He was kissing, kissing, kissing, working down my neck, back to my mouth again, his nose digging against me like a beak. I needed air. I was spinning.

  I was going to be . . .

  ‘What? Janey.’

  I ran to the bathroom.

  After a minute, he knocked. ‘Janey? Can I come in?’

  The door handle turned. I’d taken the lock off, because of Pip.

  He’d wrapped my dressing gown around himself: Cath Kidston roses.

  ‘Very fetching.’ I attempted a sparky tone of voice, wishing I was wearing more than a faded old bra and unbuttoned jeans.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just thought I was going to be sick, but I’m fine now.’

  I winced at the way it sounded, given what we’d been doing. But he came and sat down on the floor next to me, against the side of the bath, and put his arm round me.

  ‘Come here, you.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Hey, don’t.’ He rubbed my shoulder. ‘You okay now?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I don’t know what happened there. Maybe it was the wine. I’m not used to drinking these days.’

  He pulled a warm towel off the towel rail and wrapped it around me. I laid my head against his shoulder, feeling the boniness under the padding of the dressing gown.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘No, no, it’s . . .’

  ‘No, I really shouldn’t have.’ He gave a gusty sigh. ‘This is nice, though. We can chat. Would you like to chat?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Would it help if we agree to be friends, and not take things any further? It seems like you, I don’t know, that things are complicated for you. You need some head space, not me wading in. We can just talk, if you like.’

  So I laid my head against his shoulder and
let him in just a little bit more. I found myself telling him about the year when I was twelve, and Grandpa’s death, and Granny’s tight white face, and Mum flying up for the funeral and back again the same day. The long summer with a bright, shining week at Glen Eddle. Then Hattie’s ghosts in the autumn term. And how it had felt when I’d lost her too, like love itself had fallen off the edge of the world.

  And then we went to bed, me under the covers and Steve stretched out on top of them next to me, still swathed in Cath Kidston roses, his big white feet crossed at the ankle. I put on Christiansen, and we watched episode seven – which we both agreed was the best of the series – the Danish voices rising and falling in a perfect, muddled counterpoint to the sound of Steve’s breathing next to me.

  *

  The doorbell woke me.

  It couldn’t be Murray and Pip back already – could it? He’d said he’d drop him off around ten, and it was only . . . oh no! Ten to ten.

  Steve lay on the other side of the bed, frowning in his sleep. I’d gone to sleep – velvety dark and dreamless – with his hand, still and heavy, on my shoulder.

  But Murray! What would he think? My first night without Pip and I’d taken a strange man into my bed.

  Pip flew into my arms when I opened the front door, clinging like a koala as I ushered Murray past the closed bedroom door and into the kitchen.

  ‘Tea?’

  Please say no.

  ‘Thanks. And I’m starving too, if you could make some toast or something.’

  Really? I’d imagined them having a leisurely breakfast in their sunny Morningside kitchen, with freshly ground coffee, home-squeezed orange juice and warm blueberry pancakes whipped up by Gretel.

  ‘So how did you all get on?’ I asked.

  ‘Very well. Though, Janey, he woke up three times in the night.’

  He spoke in a slightly accusing tone, as though he was a customer and I’d fobbed him off with a defective product. Honestly, one sleepless night – just one – and he looked grey and exhausted, and clearly hadn’t found time to shave. I had a pleasing image of Gretel, flat-haired and slumped on the sofa in the £2-million Morningside house, too exhausted to plug in her heated rollers.

  ‘Poor Pippy.’ I nestled my face into his neck. He detached himself and when I lowered him to the floor he scurried off to the corner and dragged out his small red plastic table and chair and put them in the middle of the kitchen floor. Then he slipped out into the hall. I was right behind him, praying that Murray would stay in the kitchen. To my horror, the bedroom door was ajar, but – oh, thank God – the room was empty, the dressing gown flung across the back of the chair.

  Pip came out of the bathroom dragging his step-up stool. Absently, I carried it to the kitchen for him.

  ‘Gretel and I have decided to set up a playroom for him,’ said Murray, as though he was announcing a stock exchange flotation, or a joint venture between two multinational corporate giants. ‘What do you think he’d like?’

  Ha! They’d obviously struggled to entertain him, as well as to cope with his erratic sleep patterns.

  Murray screwed up his nose. ‘Gretel wants to get him some wooden gubbins made by Scandinavian elves or something . . . but Lego Duplo’s his favourite, isn’t it?’

  ‘Duplo is good,’ I agreed. ‘But be sure to take out any green bricks. He hates them. They remind him of peas. I found a whole load of them down the toilet the day after his last birthday.’

  Oops. Should I have told Murray that I’d left Pip unattended – even for a moment – with Duplo and the toilet?

  Perhaps Murray saw the shadow of doubt cross my face. ‘It’s not easy, keeping him entertained. I don’t know how you manage on your own.’

  ‘We muddle along, don’t we, Pippy?’

  I looked down.

  He was sitting on his step-up stool, pulled up to the little red table, pattering his socked feet on the tiles and fixing me with an urgent look.

  He’d set the table for two, with mismatched plastic plates and cups pulled out from his toy box in the corner.

  ‘Samwidge,’ he said, gesturing to the empty red chair opposite him. ‘Pip and Dend want samwidge.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Murray. ‘What is this “dend” he keeps talking about?’

  I thought for a moment. I’d heard him say it before, but hadn’t paid much attention. Now there came a hollow sensation in my stomach as I realised what it meant.

  ‘He substitutes “d” for sounds he can’t pronounce, especially at the start of words.’

  ‘So what’s he saying?’

  ‘In this case, I think he’s substituting “d” for the sound “fr”.’

  Friend.

  Pip had a friend we couldn’t see, who was sitting opposite him at the red Ikea table.

  *

  ‘It’s common for children to have imaginary friends,’ said Murray later, when Pip and Dend had finished their samwidges and were playing in the living room.

  ‘I know, I know. Perhaps not when they’re this young. But yes, I know.’

  ‘So what was the matter, just then? You were shaking.’

  I said nothing.

  Murray leaned forward on the sofa, clasping his hands. ‘Are you happy enough, living here on your own?’

  ‘It’s fine.’ I’d already gone through this with Steve last night and simply couldn’t face it again.

  ‘Is it to do with that time when you thought you’d been broken into? Has something else happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said carefully. ‘Sometimes I get the feeling that somebody’s been in the flat.’

  Murray stood up. ‘Get me a list of everybody who’s got keys to the flat.’

  ‘Nobody does. Nobody has got keys. And I got the locks changed, remember? After the, er, glove thing.’

  ‘What about the arty-farty chap. That . . .’ he paused and wrinkled his nose as if trying to remember the name. ‘That Steve.’

  ‘What? No! Why would he do something like that anyway?’

  His cheeks went pinker. ‘Search me. Maybe he gets a kick out of it.’

  I sighed. ‘How can you possibly say that? You’ve never even met him.’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ he said darkly. ‘Look, just be careful.’

  Be careful who you let near my son.

  The unspoken words hung in the air.

  ‘Fine,’ I said sharply.

  ‘Good. Right, better get back, Gretel’s got a lunch thing. But, er, before I do, there’s something I wanted to mention.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You might get a letter from our solicitor. Mine and Gretel’s, I mean.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a formality, but Gretel thought it might be a good idea to have a written agreement in place. You know, about access to Pip.’

  ‘Access? I let you have him for the night, like you wanted. And isn’t it about time you told her about Friday afternoons?’

  ‘We were thinking it might be good for Pip to spend some more structured time with us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yes. Gretel and me. Maybe every second weekend or something, Friday to Sunday?’ The words came out in a rush.

  ‘Fridays? But you both work Fridays.’

  ‘Gretel’s mother’s keen to have Pip on Friday afternoons.’

  ‘Gretel’s mother? I’ve never even met the woman.’

  ‘Well then, you can meet her, can’t you? What’s the big deal? Don’t get so worked up about it. Gretel wants to do it through the lawyers, just to make it clear.’

  ‘This is about when she saw us on the Thomas train, isn’t it? That’s when it started. She couldn’t stand to see us out together.’

  ‘As I say, it’s just a formality, so let’s get it sorted and move on. Right! Bye Pip-squeak. Hug for Dad?’

  Pip scampered over to him, and tears, hot and stinging, filled my eyes. Tears of anger at myself, for being lulled into a false sense of security with the Friday games of happy families, in
to thinking he might actually have been interested in us being a family. And what could I say? I didn’t have any room to be unreasonable. If Gretel wanted to she’d set an army of lawyers on me and anything could happen.

  But when Murray had left, my anger gave way into something more complicated. Because how must it have felt for Gretel to see Pip, that first day on the Thomas train? To see Murray’s genetic legacy – his hair, his eyes, his chin – expressed in a child that wasn’t hers? Maybe she’d thought of the children she’d never been able to have, with their half-imagined faces she’d never been able to see. Wasn’t it quite possible she’d fallen in love with Pip – my beautiful, newly formed, baby-scented Pip – there and then?

  I lifted Pip and clung to him till his legs began to flail and he told me, in his sternest voice, to let him go.

  29

  Hattie

  I was so happy today, going to meet Janey. I practically skipped down Dundas Street, nearly broke one of my heels.

  When I got to the coffee shop and saw her, sitting there all fresh-faced, in her cream dress and her cardigan with the wool unravelling at the hem, oh God, I felt overdone, like I’d dressed up in my mother’s clothes. Or been snared for a makeover at a department store beauty counter.

  Pip was hanging off her arm, pestering for a sachet of jam. She was saying no because he’d already had three, and she was trying to get him to eat a carrot and beetroot muffin, but also looking like she’d quite like to throw it at the wall. She nodded in relief when I suggested we leave because I wanted to show her something in a shop nearby. I suppose she thought I wanted a second opinion on a coat or something. The sort of girly shopping trip we’d never had a chance to do together.

  They’d moved the piano to the front of the shop, and tied an enormous white ribbon around it as I’d asked. I touched her arm to make her stop in front of it, and she drew in a breath.

  ‘This is for you, Janey. I’ve got a fair few birthdays to catch up on.’

  And it’ll have to cover all her future birthdays too, not that she knows it. I can’t risk staying around, for all our sakes. Because what would I do? What would I do, if I saw something? Something swirling into the glow of her and Pip. Blooming red, like blood in warm water.

  I’d settled on a gorgeous upright, with a satin cherrywood finish. It was for selfish reasons, really. If she isn’t going to be in my life, it will make me happy to think of her playing it, getting lost in a Chopin nocturne or playing ‘Nellie the Elephant’ as Pip thumps around the sitting room.