Before I Knew You

by Amanda Brookfield

  Locating her youngest daughter in a window seat towards the back of the coach, Sophie immediately felt a little better. She was chatting animatedly to her companion, a sweet dimpled Chinese girl in the year above – famous for being a fiend on the violin. Milly’s auburn blonde hair, a little wild as it always was straight after washing, was pinned off the sides of her face with butterfly clips, one of which was already working its way loose towards her ear. Sophie waved madly. A little too madly. Catching her eye, Milly smiled, offering a flutter of fingers, before resuming her conversation with her neighbour. Sophie turned to seek out Andrew instead, now standing with one foot in the open door of the coach and talking to the head, who had emerged to see the expedition off. Other parents were milling along the pavement, hand-signalling or mouthing instructions and farewells up at the windows.

  Sophie moved nearer the front of the crowd, watching for a chance to catch Andrew’s eye. He had on his old charcoal grey wool overcoat – still smart after well over a decade – and a green tartan cashmere scarf she had given him one Christmas slung loosely round his neck. It brought out the blue of his eyes and made one notice how gingery blond his hair still was, instead of how receded and thin. New York was in the grip of a cold snap, he had reported gleefully that morning, chomping noisily on his cornflakes and punching the newspaper, as if wind-chill factors of minus ten could only add to the joys of the trip. Sophie, altogether less enchanted, had responded by tunnelling in the winter-woollies drawer in the spare bedroom, emerging not just with the scarf for Andrew but a hat for Milly – a knitted one with ear-flaps that she had been very keen to wear the year before. Handing the items over (to an I’d-rather-die look from her daughter), she had found her thoughts skipping back suddenly to the morning of her and Andrew’s departure for Connecticut; her mysterious low spirits, the dark silence between them, the awaiting heatwave – how the world had turned since then. And how wonderful to know that it could.

  ‘You take care,’ she instructed, brusque because they were surrounded, when Andrew came over at last. She dusted a speck off his left lapel. ‘Good luck – break a leg, whatever works.’ They kissed lightly, like siblings.

  ‘Thanks.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets, shooting her an odd, boyishly nervous grin. ‘You should get off – you look freezing.’

  ‘Call when you get there.’

  ‘Yup, of course.’ A moment later he had melted back into the crowd, exchanging handshakes and good wishes as he threaded his way along the pavement.

  When the coach, after a final head-count of its occupants, finally moved off, Sophie ran alongside for a few yards, waving again at Milly who – as if the reality of the leave-taking had sunk in – knelt on her seat, frantically blowing kisses off the palms of both hands. ‘I love you,’ Sophie screeched, glad that her daughter was too far away either to hear the words or to see the tears storming her eyes.

  ‘Hard, isn’t it?’ said a kindly fellow mother, blowing her nose.

  ‘Bloody awful,’ Sophie agreed grimly, hurrying back to the car. On the radio a woman was talking about Christmas, how it wasn’t too late to make a pudding or too early to start on a cake. Sophie did her best to concentrate, determined to shake off a sadness that felt far bigger than the muddle of goodbyes warranted, as if the trip was for months instead of a mere two weeks. Cake and pudding – it could be a project for the weekend, she decided, along with the Christmas quizzes she was planning for her students. She had already bought a couple of bags of sweets to lob round the room as prizes. She would have to watch Harry Stapleton, though – make sure he didn’t hog all the answers, not to mention the confectionary.

  The thought of her new pupil was a pleasing distraction. Harry was shaping up nicely, thank God. What with all the dodgy history – not just Harry’s, but hers with the Stapletons in general – Sophie had felt the pressure of her position keenly. And she wanted Harry to succeed for his father’s sake too. That he was a decent man had become even more evident during the course of their unplanned dinner à deux and William’s ensuing overnight stay. Their talk over camomile tea had ended up lasting hours and seemed, by the end, to have covered every topic that could matter to the world. When Harry was late or difficult, Sophie would find herself recalling William’s exhausted face and frank outpourings at her kitchen table that night, aware of the bite it added to the challenge of keeping the boy on track. She found the physical resemblance between the two disarming as well, especially since Harry’s face had plumped out a little and lost most of its blemishes: the dark hair and chocolate eyes, the strong nose and wide triangle of a face – all of it was so weathered on the father and so striking and clear-cut in the son that the pair could have been a before-and-after duo warning against the damaging business of being alive.

  Which wasn’t to say Harry was anywhere near a completed project. He was late and sometimes lazy. His essays, though often original, were too short. He liked either to ignore or to dominate the class, parading – if in the latter mood – a blasé intellectual confidence with which he knocked down established ideas with wild but cleverly plausible theories of his own. Sophie had thrown a book at him twice, once asked him to leave the room and on several occasions made him apologize to fellow pupils. It was of no cause for regret to her whatsoever that the friendship with Olivia seemed to have gone into retreat, while Clare, perhaps because she needed Olivia as a conduit, perhaps because she missed the gigs (Harry having declared his musical career ‘on hold’), had apparently transferred her affections to a fellow student called Mickey, whose only musical ability was a reputation for being able to make a passable sound of a saxophone through his nose.

  Sophie wrested her attention back to the radio presenter, now singing the praises of marzipan. ‘Almonds are packed with goodness …’ Andrew and the girls liked the stuff well enough and it kept the cake fresh, of course, but the very thought of it made her gag. She switched the radio off, noting as she did so a scruffy young man sitting on a low wall in front of the riverside pub at the top of White Hart Lane. She had reached the roundabout, one of the small painted white lumps that made it hard to know who had got there first. Slowing the car to a crawl, she craned her neck out of the window to get a better look. He had his hands in the pockets of a padded black coat and his legs stretched out in front of him, showing off what were clearly new, very white trainers. His face was a mere shadow inside a voluminous hood – pulled out from a separate garment worn underneath the coat – impossible to identify with any certainty. And he was larger than she remembered too, larger and longer …

  Sophie sped away, only just managing to slow in time for a reckless mother tugging a recalcitrant toddler across the road. In the rear-view mirror she noticed the youth get up and saunter in the opposite direction, rolling on the thick rubber soles of his new shoes. Maybe it wasn’t him, then. Maybe it wasn’t him and she was an idiot, letting a blue mood get the better of her.

  She worried always about the wrong things, Sophie scolded herself, kicking her front door shut a few minutes later, but then rooting out a Victim Support leaflet anyway. An hour and several phone calls later, clutching crime-reference numbers and yet more leaflets she had unearthed from a drawer, she found herself digesting the news that the young criminal whom she, Andrew and several others had identified at the police station a few months earlier, was indeed at large, his young age having secured him the punishment of community service rather than a custodial sentence.

  ‘Care in the community,’ commented Gareth, drily, once Sophie – for want of any audience at home – had paced his office, expostulating. He poured a glass of water from the jug that lived on his desk and pushed it at her.

  ‘But what is the point? That’s what I want to know,’ Sophie wailed, swigging the water and already feeling a lot better. ‘All that effort to get the bloody child before a judge …’

  ‘You said it – a child, so it would have been a juvenile court –’

  ‘He didn’t look fifteen, I can tell
you.’

  ‘But, then, sometimes that’s the trouble, isn’t it?’ Gareth pointed out mildly, making a steeple of his hands and peering at his employee over his fingers. ‘They are only kids but because they look like men people forget that and mishandle them accordingly. And where would we all be, anyway, if youngsters stopped getting a second chance?’

  ‘Of course, you’re right.’ Sophie dropped into a chair with a sigh, smiling now. ‘If he’s learnt his lesson it’s the best outcome. I’m just in a ranting mood. I’ve been dying for Andrew and Milly to disappear on their bloody tour – the pair had grown insufferable – but since waving them off this morning I’ve felt terrible. Bereft … something.’

  ‘You must come to ours one evening in that case. Bring Olivia. I’ll get Lewis to call you with a date.’

  Sophie pretended to look pleased, knowing Olivia would hate it.

  ‘And talking of youngsters and second chances,’ Gareth continued, ‘I’m halfway through signing off on the reports and so far your lot are looking pretty good, including Harry Stapleton.’

  ‘Yes, I’m pleased with him.’ Sophie drained the last of her water. ‘The only real worry I have is our Spanish friend.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Gareth slipped on his glasses and studied a row of marks across the top of one of the pieces of paper among the orderly piles arranged across his desk. ‘But it’s early days and the parents are happy and money is money …’

  ‘Except it almost doesn’t seem fair to charge, does it, when he tries so hard and gets nowhere? I say a word one way and he repeats it another. It’s as if he’s deaf as well as stupid.’

  Gareth burst out laughing. ‘My dear Sophie, if I’m to consider taking you on as a business partner, you’re really going to have to be (a) more ruthless and (b) more tactful about the fodder by which we earn our bread and butter.’

  Sophie started to laugh and then stopped, forgetting for a moment to close her mouth. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘Less easily dumbfounded would be good too. I’ve been dropping enough hints, for heaven’s sake.’ Gareth chuckled, getting up from his chair and giving her a companionable pat on the shoulder as he crossed to the window. ‘You knew I was entering the bid for next door. Well, as of yesterday, that bid has been accepted.’ He turned his back on the window to face her, looking, with his arms clasped behind his back and his steady gaze, like a life-sized version of one of his family portraits. ‘The college is going to double in size and I need someone to help me run it. Someone I can trust. Someone who’s bright and efficient and – I hope very much – now in a position to consider working full-time …’

  ‘Ohmygod.’

  ‘Hmm. Still not the most promising of responses, but it’s a start. Look, think about it, okay?’ Gareth cast another fond glance at the garden of his new property, a jungle of abandonment swamping a rusted swing, before returning to his desk, where he leant against the front edge with his legs crossed, facing Sophie. ‘It’s very early days, of course – a long-term plan – but, honestly, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have at my side. I would be more in charge of the business side of things and you would be head of studies. It goes without saying that I’d need you full-time and your earnings would escalate considerably …’ Gareth hesitated, studying his immaculately manicured small hands. ‘Sophie, I’m painfully aware that a few months ago I was leading the charge not to put too much strain on you. Yet here I am – selfish bugger – throwing all that to one side, because … well, frankly, you seem so beautifully recovered, so impressively on top of things –’

  ‘I am,’ Sophie cried, finding words at last. ‘I am, but –’

  ‘As I have said, the idea is at its earliest conception,’ Gareth continued hastily, fearing a refusal. ‘In due course, if you’re amenable, there will be contracts, small print, numbers – a proposition to get your teeth into and bully me about.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, Gareth, stop there. Thank you, but I need to think. Thank you.’ Sophie got up and squeezed both his hands in hers before hurrying from the room.

  She took her time after leaving WFC that afternoon, dawdling in the supermarket for something a little different for her and Olivia’s dinner and then speed-walking for two of the six bus stops on her route home. She didn’t think about what Gareth had said so much as let it wrap itself around her – so unexpected, so warming and wonderful, to be wanted like that, to be thought worthy and useful. Accepting it or not felt, for the time being, beside the point. Although, once she had waited for a bus, then succeeded in leaving her shopping bag on board, she did find herself wondering if the sort of upgraded full-time role Gareth envisaged would entitle her to a parking space – a treasured perk currently reserved for Gareth and Alain (who walked with a stick), thanks to council restrictions on the number of parking permits granted per household in residential roads. She could wave goodbye to buses and envying Andrew bouncing off to work in the Volvo. She could buy her own little second-hand car, a Beetle or a Mini – she had always wanted one of those.

  ‘Cool,’ was Olivia’s response, a verdict delivered with endearing wide-eyed enthusiasm, but then abandoned so quickly for other, apparently more pressing, matters between her laptop and the television that Sophie found herself facing up to the fact that Gareth’s proposal had come at a highly suitable time. Her daughters’ need of her – in any concrete sense – was shrinking. As it had to. As it should. On hearing of the lost shopping bag, Olivia went on unwittingly to reinforce the point by offering to take charge of supper that night, proudly rattling off a stalwart pasta recipe (tinned tuna, tinned sweetcorn, chopped ham) that Clare had apparently taught her the previous weekend.

  ‘You put your feet up,’ she commanded proudly, opening cupboards and pulling out tins and saucepans. ‘Watch telly or listen to the radio or something.’

  Sophie laughed, remaining in her kitchen chair but pulling up another on which to rest her feet. The gloom of the morning felt a million miles away. Her life was entering a new phase – she could feel it, as clearly as if she was turning the handle on a door. ‘I’d rather talk to you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Olivia eyed her mother suspiciously over the edge of the fridge door. ‘Do we have ham?’

  ‘Half a packet – past its sell-by date, but only just. If it doesn’t smell it’s fine.’

  Olivia pulled a face and handed the packet to her mother. ‘You smell it, then.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘You didn’t smell it!’

  Sophie put her nose near the peeling plastic of the packet and inhaled deeply, pronouncing it delicious.

  The ham spat as Olivia stirred it round the frying pan – far too much oil: Sophie knew without looking just as she knew not to say. She was also a little uncertain about the appeal of combining meat and fish in the same dish.

  ‘Clare and I have decided to spend our gap year in Australia and Thailand,’ she announced breezily, once they were eating. ‘There are these amazing full-moon parties, apparently, when thousands of people gather on the beach. And I was thinking it would be cool to drive across America as well – buy a car one side and sell it on the other.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Sophie declared, suppressing a motherly knee-jerk reaction of pure horror. The pasta concoction was sticky, but very tasty. ‘You’ll need to earn quite a bit of money to manage that lot, though.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Harry’s bar work pays so well I thought I might try and get something similar – starting as soon as my exams finish in the summer,’ she added, with a hasty glance at her mother. ‘With a day-job too, that should earn enough, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘I would think so.’ Sophie smiled encouragingly, knowing that such plans would probably be modified many times during the course of the coming months. She felt, in the same instant, a guilty spurt of relief that Andrew wasn’t there to pour scorn on such wild, hazy travel schemes. Still raw about Olivia abandoning the idea of a conservatoire, he was being as harsh with his elder daughter as she had ever k
nown him, not just at home but at school. One of the essays poking out of her music file the other day had had such thickets of red biro scrawled across it that it had been hard to decipher whatever Olivia had written underneath.

  As for Olivia’s gap-year plans, the time for parental involvement might arrive, but not for a while yet. She was good at parenting, Sophie remembered suddenly – William Stapleton had said so, several times, during the course of their late-night talk over tea.

  They had finished the pasta and Olivia had retreated to the sitting room with a bowl of ice cream when the phone rang. Sophie was washing up – alone at her insistence, by way of a reward for the cooking. Wet-fingered, she plucked the receiver off its wall slot and wedged it between her cheek and shoulder.

  There followed the unmistakable click of a long-distance connection. ‘No lost passports, I hope,’ she quipped, reaching for a drying-up cloth.

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Yes … who is this?’

  ‘Don’t hang up.’

  ‘Carter?’ Sophie grabbed the phone off her shoulder, her voice shrinking from a cry to a whisper by the second syllable.

  ‘I know Andrew’s over here, so I know it’s safe to talk.’

  ‘But it’s not,’ she hissed, peering down the corridor, where Olivia’s elbow was just visible, resting on the arm of the sofa, through the open door of the sitting room. ‘More importantly, I have nothing to say to you. Absolutely nothing.’ Sophie put down the receiver, but the phone rang again. She quickly picked it up, cut the call dead and then left it off the hook. Trembling, she returned to the washing-up. But within a few minutes the hand-set was beeping – an ear-piercing signal cleverly designed to alert its owners to the fact that it had been left out of its cradle. A few more moments and Olivia, surely, would be moved to leave the sofa and investigate. Gently, as if handling an explosive, Sophie replaced the hand-set and folded her arms to wait.