Expectation

by Anna Hope

  At home that evening, Lissa told her mother about it and Sarah turned to her with a strange smile.

  I painted them. Caro and I. We went out, in the early morning, while you were still asleep. They were all that was left. Of the children. In Hiroshima. We painted them so that people would understand.

  She remembers the way Sarah spoke, the pride, the particular smile she had, as though she had done something good. When really, Lissa knew, she had done something terrible. She had no words to tell her mother how those pictures made her feel. The hollowness of those children who had disappeared.

  The day stretches ahead of her, with nothing in it till she must be at the theatre at six o’clock. She heads down to the South Bank, to the BFI, where they are showing a Bergman season. She gets tickets for the longest of the films, then buys coffee and a slice of cake and sits in the window to wait for the cinema to open, watching the faces of the people as they pass. Perhaps he will appear. It is not, surely, beyond the realm of possibility that Nathan might treat himself to an afternoon film. Perhaps that will be how it happens – to bump into him, to let coincidence take care of the plot. Or she could text him again. Tell him where she is. Invite him down.

  But of course he doesn’t come. He is a busy man. It is only people like her who can sit in a cinema on a weekday afternoon, tasting the equivocal pleasures of time on their hands. She should make a joke of it, she thinks, of Bergman on a birthday. But there is no one to make the joke to.

  She is the first into the cinema when it opens, handing her ticket to the usher, sitting in the darkness before the thin safety curtain rises, before the adverts come on.

  Hannah

  She searches for a hotel in Whitstable for the Friday and the Saturday night, finds one that has only recently opened but has good reviews on TripAdvisor. There is the requisite mention of Egyptian cotton. There are driftwood mirrors in the bedrooms. A neutral palette of white and grey. She calls them up and a pleasant-voiced woman tells her she is in luck, they have had a last-minute cancellation, a room is free but there is a shared bathroom. It is either that or the Travelodge so Hannah takes it. As she hands over her credit-card details she pictures wide skies – walking on the beach on Saturday morning. She books lunch at a restaurant she has heard of further along the coast, an unprepossessing pub with a reputation for spectacular food. She looks at the menu: oysters, salt-baked celeriac, Aylesbury lamb. They will eat oysters. They will walk on the beach. It will all fall into place. She has been wrong. It is the controlled, clinical side of things that has brought them to this. Nathan is right, Lissa is right: they should take a break – let things happen naturally. Maybe everyone is right. The message boards are full of people’s stories of conceiving after IVF has failed. It is not the end. It is only the end of the beginning. She has been holding too tight. There is still time, there is still a chance – she just needs to relax. To be spontaneous. It will do them good to get away.

  Bras

  2008

  Hannah is getting married. Nathan has proposed in a cottage in Cornwall. They have been a couple for ten and a half years. She is having a little gathering at the new flat to toast the announcement, with her best women, Lissa and Cate.

  It is February, but sunny and mild as Cate and Lissa walk the small distance from the big house, down Broadway Market towards Hannah’s flat. They stop at the off-licence on the way. Cava? says Cate, lifting a bottle. Champagne, says Lissa. Let’s get a bit of Veuve.

  At the bottom of the canal they turn right, where they announce their arrival at a plain metal door and Hannah buzzes them inside. The flat smells both earthy and clean – the interior staircase has been newly covered with sisal. Hannah appears, smiling at the top of the stairs, dressed in simple trousers, a silk shirt. Cate and Lissa take off their shoes and walk slowly up the stairs, the sisal pleasantly rough beneath their feet. The stairs give on to a large, open kitchen and living room, where a long blue sofa lies along one wall.

  Cate has seen this flat before – visited often since Hannah and Nathan moved here last year – but tonight it looks different; it is as though the definition has been turned up. Her eyes graze the details of the room: the elegant sofa, a table of lightest wood, a brown jug placed just so upon it, knives arranged by size on a magnetized strip on the wall. They seem to look back at her, these objects, with a cool judging gaze. They seem to ask her how she measures up.

  They take their drinks and go through sliding doors on to a large terrace with a view over Haggerston Park where they drink their Veuve and toast their friend.

  Hannah carries a particular radiance, this springlike evening, as though she herself is the chief exhibit in this backdrop of her own curating, as though all of this – the terrace and the park and her home glowing gently on the other side of the glass doors, were simply there to reflect her radiance, her status as a bride-to-be.

  After a little while Cate excuses herself – she has to go to the toilet. In Hannah’s bathroom there is no clutter, there are no bottles on the bath or in the shower. Instead, in the cabinet, there are matching jars of brown glass.

  In the hall, on the way back out, Cate hesitates, for Hannah’s bedroom door is ajar. Outside there is laughter, the red tip of Lissa’s cigarette carving the air as she talks. Cate steps inside. She fingers the linen throw that lies on the large bed, then goes over to the wardrobe, where she takes out one of Hannah’s simple silk shirts, feels its supple weight between her fingers, then puts it back. She goes to the chest and opens the top drawer, and here she stops, breath caught – Hannah’s bras and knickers are laid out in matching sets. She fingers one of the bras – it is the sort of bra only a woman with very small breasts can wear: two thin triangles of lace with a bright flash of silk on the edge. One is red. One petrol. One is the colour of lightest pink. Cate can feel her heart racing. She did not know Hannah owned bras like this; Hannah, whose exterior is so spartan, whose edges have always been so clear. There is something about the sight of these bras – something insolent and secret and potent – that hits her like a punch to her stomach.

  Quickly, furtively, she takes off her jumper and her own bra (large, nondescript), managing to fasten Hannah’s on its widest clasp. She turns it round to the front, pulls up the straps, and stares at herself in these two triangles of nothing, edged in petrol-coloured silk. She knows then – she has lost. More than the house and the sofa and the engagement and the knives on metal strips and the jug just so, and the successful ten-year relationship, it is the sight of these bras that tells her that in the fierce, unspoken race she and Hannah have been running since they were children, she has lost.

  Over the next days she feels herself slipping, as though happiness were a dance whose steps she has forgotten. She counts her breaths. She counts her blessings, she tries to rationalize – why should it matter what her friends are doing? Why should her happiness be indexed to theirs? But it is. Somehow, it is – she cannot help but take inventory of her life; her lack, at thirty-three years old, of any of the markers that constitute real adulthood. She is beginning to loathe her job, taking the Tube every day to Canary Wharf, going cap in hand to meetings with bankers who believe that in giving you a minute of your time they are changing the world. This job which will never give her enough to buy a home, to buy good clothes.

  And Hannah – Hannah who always said she would do something worthwhile and did – who moved from her management training job at the age of twenty-nine and is now senior advisor in a large global charity on a salary twice that of Cate’s own. She didn’t sell out. She sold in. And it turned out her stock was high.

  Cate, who has prided herself on living simply, finds she wants things. She wants a home of her own, a functioning relationship, a child, or at least the possibility of one, money for decent clothes, a knicker drawer that is not a frantic tangle of odd socks and old M&S briefs. Her wants proliferate, metastasize in the darkness inside her.

  The other two rooms in the shared house are occupied by people
she does not really know. The house, always shabby, feels grotty – the salmon colour of the kitchen, the terrible cheap carpet on the floor. The kitchen is no longer a place to gather. She makes her food and scuttles out again, eats it in her room, at her desk.

  Cate tries to speak to Lissa about it, to spin it into humour somehow, but Lissa is preoccupied, on an upward swing. For Lissa there is hope on the horizon. Last week her agent called her with news of an audition. A feature film. A young indie director. A lead role. The director had seen her in a short film she made for no money last summer as a favour to a friend and called about her availability.

  Lissa has read the script and it is extraordinary.

  Somewhere, she knows, this one is for her.

  Declan is away, and so Lissa practises her speech for Cate, while Cate sits on the battered old sofa in the living room, listening, prompting her when she stumbles, which she rarely does. She is good, thinks Cate, she deserves this. Her career will finally ignite and she too will move up and away.

  Lissa gives up drinking for the week before the audition, makes sure she drinks plenty of water, sleeps as much as she can. She takes herself off to yoga classes and returns radiant. The day of the meeting arrives. The director seems as excited to meet her as she is to meet him. He tells her he loved her in the short. She already knows one of the speeches by heart, and she delivers it on camera without looking at her script.

  Wow, he says. That was awesome.

  She does another speech, equally well. When she gets up to leave the director envelops her in a hug. See you soon, he says.

  A day passes. Another. And another. Lissa checks her phone constantly. She checks that it is on. She turns it on and off. Cate watches her face cloud and darken, elation turn to doubt. By the Wednesday she is quiet, by Thursday belligerent.

  It’s gone to someone else, she says.

  Cate watches her take a call from Declan, who is filming somewhere in Scotland.

  I’m going to go and see him, says Lissa. I need a break.

  Lissa leaves on Friday afternoon. She takes the plane from City Airport to Edinburgh, where Declan has sent a car to pick her up. She sits in the back of the car and watches the city slide by. It is grey and raining. They drive out, up into the countryside, until they reach a castle in large grounds. Behind it there is a large loch. There is no mobile reception. She is relieved.

  Cate comes home from work at half past five, locks up her bike, climbs the stone steps and lets herself into the house. There is no one else there. She feels the harsh, grainy texture of her loneliness.

  The landline rings. A rare event. It rings and rings and rings and rings off. Then it rings again and perhaps it is an emergency, so Cate goes to answer it; a woman’s voice, hectoring, asking for Lissa, who Cate informs her isn’t there. Where is she? says the woman, who speaks to Cate like she is shit on her shoe. I don’t know, says Cate truthfully. Somewhere in Scotland, I think.

  Well, her mobile’s not working, says the woman. Tell her, she says, tell her she needs to come back to London. He wants to see her. Again. Monday morning. First thing. Tell her to come back as soon as she can.

  Cate puts down the phone. She honestly does not know where Lissa is. She could find out. She could make it an emergency. She could call Sarah, Lissa’s mother, who would probably know. She could go into Lissa’s room and search the chaos of her desk for a piece of paper which may or may not contain the name of a hotel. Her diary. Her computer. Cate knows the password. It may be in there. She could do any or all of these things, but she does nothing.

  On Sunday night she is sleeping when Lissa arrives in the house. It is gone midnight. She barely wakes, she goes back to sleep.

  On Monday morning Cate rises and showers and dresses and leaves for work.

  When Cate comes home that afternoon Lissa is sitting at the kitchen table, a ball of damp tissues in her hand. Did you get a call from my agent?

  Who?

  My agent. She said she called here, on Friday. That he wanted to see me for the audition. It was this morning, first thing. She begins to cry. I was asleep. I missed it. It’s gone.

  Can’t you get in touch? Get him to see you again?

  Don’t you get it? Lissa hisses. It’s gone to someone else. It’s fucking gone.

  Lissa spends the next day in bed with the curtains closed. Cate knocks on her door, but she does not answer.

  She does not speak to Cate for weeks.

  And Cate is queasy with guilt. She has done something, or not done something – she is not sure which. She should have done more.

  But if Lissa had been made to get the part, she would have done so, wouldn’t she? It was Lissa’s decision to go away to a place in the middle of nowhere. It was Lissa’s destiny, wasn’t it – to lose out?

  2010

  Cate

  Dinner. Friends for dinner. A dinner party. Supper. Friends for supper. A gathering. However Cate frames it to herself, the thought is excruciating – she is no good at such things. But Sam seems happy about the arrangement. On Sunday, his day off, he brings out his knives and pans. He hands Tom a milk pan and a wooden spoon and Tom sits on the floor, happily playing with them both as Sam flicks through cookbooks.

  ‘I want to do something Kentish,’ he says. ‘You ever eaten whelks? I could do a ceviche with shallots and tomatoes and lime. And then something with dabs. I could get fish from that place on the coast. They supply the restaurant.’

  Cate looks at him in the narrow kitchen, in the grey light of the winter afternoon, sleeves rolled up, and realizes she hasn’t seen him so happy for months.

  The day of the dinner she spends the morning cleaning. She moves Tom with her from room to room, putting him on the floor with his toys while she scrubs toilets and sinks and vacuums floors. She has the radio on in the background.

  Parliament has voted by a tiny majority to increase student fees to nine thousand pounds a year. Large protests in central London yesterday.

  When the cleaning is done she turns on the TV and watches footage of protestors on the roof of the Conservative Party headquarters. Placards on fire. Charles and Camilla, their horrified faces as a window of their car is smashed. A close-up of one of the protestors, a young man with his mouth open wide. She knows the look. The war cry. Feels it land in her gut.

  Sam is home after his afternoon shift, carrying a bulging bag of fish and vegetables, which he puts in the fridge, along with four bottles of wine. ‘I got a good Burgundy,’ he says, ‘it was on offer in Aldi.’

  She can hear him singing as he takes a shower. He comes down in a T-shirt and jeans. ‘Come on, little guy.’ Sam straps Tom in the high chair, gives him some carrot to play with, then ties on an apron, pulls out his knives and sets to work on an onion. She lingers, watching him, his wide forearms, his skill with the blade, the flash of the knife. When the onion is chopped he looks up. ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Just – I remember the first time I saw you do that. The first night we met.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiles, and holds her eyes. ‘I remember that night too.’ Then, ‘Hey,’ he says, after a moment. ‘I went to check out a premises the other day. It’s an old warehouse. Victorian. Backs on to the Stour. It was a grain store. I think it would be affordable.’ She can see the excitement in him. ‘But let’s make this meal great first and then see what Mark says.’

  She can hear him chatting away as she moves next door, telling Tom what he’s doing – so you take your onion, and then you sweat it in the oil – and Tom’s burbling responses.

  She flicks on the TV again, but it is only the same rolling pictures as earlier, Charles and Camilla. That same protestor, open-mouthed. She turns it off and texts Hannah: You still OK for tonight? Part of her, she is aware, a large part of her, would like Hannah to cancel – would like everyone to cancel – but she gets a text back immediately: Can’t wait!

  Hannah

  She decides to work from home, so she can pack and get everything ready in time. ‘
We have to pick up the rental car,’ she says to Nathan as he leaves for work. ‘But if we leave at three or so we can get to Whitstable and have some time together before we go to Cate’s.’

  The weather has eased a little. It is not so cold as it was. She works all morning, then takes herself for a run along the canal, and showers and dresses in her best underwear and a dress that she knows he loves, knee-length, supple black silk – bought for their anniversary last year. She takes time over her make-up. She has bought a good bottle of champagne, which she packs in her bag, then goes online, looking again at the pictures of the hotel, of the restaurant, of the beach at Whitstable. Perhaps this is the beginning of something new. Perhaps they can move to Kent. Walk under wide skies. Get a dog.

  At five she receives a text: Just leaving. Which means they are going to be late. To calm herself, she goes into their bedroom and begins packing a bag for him, but as she does so she feels a sense of dread – as though their intimacy is suddenly contingent, fraught with a vague peril. She should have gone to get the car herself – she has had the whole afternoon – but the car-rental place is close to the road that leads to the A12, which leads to the A2, which leads to the M2, which leads to Kent. So it made sense, in that way at least. She finishes packing and goes to sit on the sofa, so she will be ready as soon as he arrives.

  She is still sitting in the same spot when his key turns in the lock at six fifteen.

  ‘We’re late,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sorry. There was an emergency meeting. Industrial action. The tuition fees.’

  He looks tired, irritable.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ she says. ‘A shower? A drink?’

  ‘If we’re late, let’s just go.’

  At the car-rental office there are forms to be filled out, driving licences to be photocopied, excesses to decide upon. It is seven before they leave with an ugly Ford Fiesta, and Nathan drives out of London on the A2.