‘There is a moment,’ she holds up a finger as if giving a soliloquy on stage, ‘when something stops being a source of pleasure and becomes a source of pain. It is so precise, so exact, it could be plotted on a graph.’
Kat doubts somehow that the specifics of love, or lust-gone-bad, really, would work on a graph, but she suspects it would be best not to argue. She and Ruth are drinking their way through a box of wine like the kind their parents bought in the Eighties. They start getting ready for the evening early, at around five, though outside, of course, it is already inky black. There’s a festive atmosphere in college with all the end-of-term exams and papers completed. Gangs of girls in those awful sexy Santa outfits strut arm in arm across the quad, their heels clacking, earrings occasionally flashing like Christmas decorations. Kat shudders. She’s never been a girl comfortable in a gang, more of a lone wolf, she smiles, or at least she had been before she met Ruth.
The wine is horrible. The acidity hits the back of her throat and causes her stomach to churn, but it helps Ruth with her jitters. Things have started going wrong between Ruth and George in the way Kat always knew they would. It started subtly, gradually. An argument. A missed date. At parties now Ruth looks across the room at George more than he glances back and the way he looks at her is different, too: still cheeky, still knowing, but more cursory, almost polite – as if it would be rude not to ogle a bit, though the ogling has become almost perfunctory.
‘Is there anything more irresistible,’ asks Ruth, ‘than someone who no longer wants you?’
Kat shakes her head. Ruth has a point there. ‘No,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing like it.’
She had thought Richard wanted her that first night. ‘I keep waiting for something to happen and it doesn’t,’ he’d said. And she’d smiled and said, ‘Maybe it will.’ And he’d smiled back. And that had been it, she’d thought: everything starting.
‘That’s how they get you,’ says Ruth. ‘They chase you, they make you like them – and we, silly girls, are so flattered, so excited that an actual living, breathing man could want us that we fall for it. And then they move on.’
After their most recent fight, a matter of hours, really, Ruth had caught sight of George from her window walking through the quad with a girl. It was no one she knew, no one from college as far as she could tell. George had thrown his arm lightly around the girl, laughing as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
And she’d seen him with a fresh pair of eyes. ‘A portly Sloane, as puffed up and pleased with himself as Mr Toad,’ she’d told Kat. Since then, the subject of George seemed to have become the source of a fluttery, low-level anxiety. ‘Not the good kind – the kind you have before an exam you know you’re going to fuck up.’
The best thing to do now would be to walk away, to get an early night, to leave it alone. So instead, of course, she is standing in Kat’s room, half-cut, painting her lips with Kat’s reddest lipstick and planning battle tactics.
It has become, and Kat recognises it, less about George, more about winning. She looks at her friend closely.
Ruth takes a breath as if she’s about to start saying something, then stops herself.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right tonight?’ asks Kat. ‘Do you want me to come with you? It’s the last night of term – I don’t like the idea of you being at this party on your own when things are so weird with George.’
Ruth shakes her head. ‘No, it will be fine. You go on your course thing.’
Kat had plans to go for supper with the other people in college doing English – largely, though she hasn’t told Ruth this bit, because there’s a strong chance that Richard will be there too.
She watches as Ruth applies more red lipstick then smudges it off on cigarette after cigarette, then reapplies it again.
‘When I used to showjump, I would always know the days when my luck had gone bad,’ her friend says suddenly.
‘You used to showjump?’ Kat smiles. ‘You’re full of surprises.’
Ruth ignores this, blots her lips on a piece of tissue. ‘Anyway, maybe I’d snap at my mum over breakfast – she was always trying to make me eat before these things and I never felt like it – or maybe my pony’s plaits would come undone in the horsebox.’
Kat suppresses a snigger at the phrase ‘pony’s plaits’, but again Ruth ignores her.
‘Or maybe there would be something in the air that the animals would pick up on. You know how they do that? They would skit across the yard at imaginary spooks. Or maybe they weren’t imaginary … Anyway, deep down, I would know – though I would do my best to conquer the feeling – that there was no point driving to the competition, because it wouldn’t go well. It wouldn’t go well at all.’
She lights another cigarette.
‘Please don’t go,’ says Kat.
‘What?’
‘Tonight. Don’t go. Or let me come with you.’
Ruth shakes her head. ‘It won’t be as bad as falling off a horse,’ she laughs.
An hour or so later, when only the dregs of the box of wine remain and the atmosphere in college is reaching fever pitch, Ruth says, ‘Perhaps you could come with me, just to his room.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ asks Kat, sure that it isn’t. She stands up to close the window, blocking out, at least partially, the caterwauling of someone singing along to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’.
‘If we speak before the party, that might be a better idea than discussing things when we’re there,’ says Ruth. ‘Maybe I should just end it before he does.’
As they start climbing the stairs to George’s room, Ruth practises the sort of thing she’ll say. ‘How about something along the lines of: “We’re both adults. Let’s call it a day. I wish you well.”’
‘Not that last bit,’ says Kat firmly. ‘Don’t overdo it; keep it low-key.’
‘Aye aye.’ Ruth salutes drunkenly and knocks.
Kat, who has had less of the box of wine than Ruth, eyes the closed door with misgiving.
A girl answers, wearing a vest top and tiny shorts.
‘George isn’t in,’ she says in a singsong voice. She is cherubic, doll-like: porcelain skin, white-blonde candyfloss hair. She wanders back into the room and perches on the edge of the bed, picking up a satin dressing gown that is crumpled on the floor and draping it around her shoulders. She looks young, years younger than Kat and Ruth, but her breasts, pushed up in a Wonderbra underneath her vest, are like peaches.
‘Where’s George?’ asks Ruth.
‘Who the hell are you?’ adds Kat.
The nymph begins to powder her nose with infuriating nonchalance. ‘I’m George’s sister.’
Ruth is gripping the door handle tightly. ‘George doesn’t have a sister.’
‘I can assure you he does.’ There’s a twitch at the corner of the girl’s lips, as if she is enjoying her lie. ‘Who are you again?’
‘I’m Ruth Walker.’ It is a bad moment for one of Ruth’s heels to give way – she is leaning on the door too heavily and she staggers for a couple of steps into the room.
‘OK, Ruth Walker.’ The girl smirks as she closes her compact with a snap. It is a gesture that belongs to someone much older: the knowingness of the smile, the finality of the closing. ‘I’ll tell him you dropped by.’
‘It’s bullshit, isn’t it?’ says Ruth as they make their way down the stairs.
‘Complete bullshit,’ agrees Kat, lighting a cigarette for her friend.
They go to regroup under a huge oak in the middle of the quad.
‘I’ll show her – I’ll get him back right in front of her.’ She snorts. ‘His sister.’
Kat sighs. She knows she should say something but she doesn’t know how to start. The truth is it doesn’t matter what Ruth wears now or what she does or says. She could saunter over to George tonight and whisper something sexy in his ear, suggest something outrageous, and he might come with her, or he might not, but Ruth has
lost the upper hand and that’s a very hard thing to get back. Kat knows, too, that she should probably be with Ruth tonight, but she thinks again of Richard and how, with Ruth out of the way, they might finally have a chance.
‘I say this with love,’ she says eventually, ‘but I think maybe you should go to bed.’
‘You don’t think I can get him back?’ Ruth blinks. ‘You think he’s too good for me?’
Kat sighs. It’s too infuriating. ‘I think the opposite, my darling. But I do think you’re tired and emotional and have had the best part of a box of wine.’
‘Fine,’ says Ruth sharply.
‘Fine what?’
‘Fine, I’ll be a good girl.’ She grinds her cigarette out with her heel. ‘I’ll go to bed.’
As Kat hugs Ruth goodbye, she wonders again if she should stay with her friend. And yet she doesn’t, not even when she sees Ruth walking determinedly in the direction of the music pumping from the next quad, clearly with no intention of going to bed at all. So it serves her right that the evening is a complete washout. It’s one of those nights when you know, as soon as you get there and the only seat left is among the dullest people in an inaccessible corner of the table, the sort of evening it’s going to be.
Fragments of conversation about the girl in the year above who’s shagging one of their tutors keep drifting down from her friend, Jenny, who’s at the fun end of the table, as Kat tries to focus on what the guy opposite is saying about one of their set texts. And all the time, she keeps one eye on the door, waiting for Richard to walk through it. But he never does.
Walking back to college, she wonders how Ruth’s evening has gone. The wind is wild, whipping up their dresses, causing their hair to lash against their faces.
‘What a dry evening,’ she sighs, trying to smooth her dress down.
‘I know,’ laughs Jenny. ‘You got stuck with that boring lot at the other end.’
‘I thought you said Richard Wiseman was coming.’
‘I said he might,’ Jenny laughs. ‘You’ve got it bad.’
‘Yes,’ says Kat. She doesn’t feel like joking about it. Not tonight. She should have stayed with Ruth. ‘You fancy finding out what everyone’s up to?’
She squints across the quad to see where the afterparty might be. There’s a noise, some shouting, coming from the other side.
‘What’s that?’ Jenny shakes her foot where the wind has wrapped a dark piece of cloth around her leg.
The shouts get louder as they get closer to a small cluster of people gathering. Someone’s throwing something from one of the upstairs windows. Pieces of dark fabric flutter down like birds.
‘You’re friends with Ruth Walker, aren’t you?’ someone says as Kat reaches the group.
Something about the accusatory way he asks makes Kat hesitate. ‘Yes, I guess,’ she says after a moment.
‘Looks like she’s totally lost it.’ He looks above them to the top floor. ‘She’s cutting up all of George’s clothes.’
If she squints, Kat can make out Ruth’s long red hair hanging down from the window of George’s room. She is shouting something, though Kat can’t quite make out the words. Ruth has scissors in her hand and a pair of George’s trousers; the process of cutting them up looks oddly laborious, almost comical. Kat catches the word ‘prick’ and, despite the wind, the trousers make a rather heavy landing moments later sans crotch. Fragments of shirts and jumpers follow next.
Kat looks down at the ground, where the slivers of material start to gather at the students’ feet. She picks up a piece of cricket jumper and resists the temptation to giggle. The pieces of material keep falling, occasionally picked up by the wind and tossed around, landing softly like blossom.
There’s a shout behind them. The sound of running footsteps.
‘Someone’s called the porters,’ says Jenny.
The cluster of students begins to shift, disperse.
‘Ruth!’ Kat feels as if she is waking from a strange dream. ‘Get out of there.’ Her words get swallowed up by the wind.
It somehow feels important, imperative, that Ruth isn’t found in George’s room. She reaches the staircase before the porter, kicks off her heels and starts to make her way, for the second time that day, to George’s room at the top of the building, her calves burning.
When she gets there, lungs tight, still panting, she pushes the door open and switches on the light. The room is in complete disarray, the contents of George’s expensive wardrobe strewn everywhere, over the bed and the floor: ties, suits, cashmere sweaters, blazers. Kat even spies, and she is surprised that it’s survived the massacre, a satin dressing gown. But Ruth herself has disappeared.
Naomi
How to put it? When I try to access my first memory without her, there isn’t one. There isn’t memory without Ruth. She was the one person to whom I could say: ‘You know that ballet teacher?’ And she would know whom I meant, or ‘Remember that boy on holiday in Crete, with the burnt skin?’ And a web of memories, too, would link to that: how she liked him but couldn’t have him because she was with someone else at the time; how he liked her too, really liked her, but, pragmatically, went for the girl in the blue bikini instead because she was available. And we never knew her name, so years later I could still say, ‘Remember the girl in the blue bikini?’ And she would share all the memories that went with the image of her: that strange night out with the boy with the burnt skin and his sister, who was a little unhinged and had tried to seduce the taxi driver on the way back from the club by telling him she was really good in bed, and how he, in perfect English, replied, ‘Self-praise is no praise,’ and we both laughed.
When we got back to the hotel that night the unhinged sister ordered rounds and rounds of ham and cheese sandwiches, but we didn’t eat them because we were teenagers and we weren’t eating much back then.
And that’s just one memory out of thousands … Ruby the hamster, who ran away and died roasted to the side of the oven, though our mother never told us until years later, or Midas and Scipio, our childhood dogs, or the old woman who scared us at the Llewelyns’ farm, where we went to stay when our father was ill. Every shared experience – not just the good ones – every teenage humiliation, every crush … we share genes, we share memories, how can I be a whole person without you?
I take Nunny to Tim. He’s just finishing a phone call as I get to his office, which is small and messy like him, with its door propped open for most of the day unless he’s speaking to relatives, in which case he pushes it to, turns the radio off, gives them his full attention.
‘What’s this?’ he says smiling as I walk in with Nunny and place him carefully on the desk.
‘It was Ruth’s,’ I say. And he stops smiling. ‘It arrived in the post this morning.’
He picks Nunny up. ‘Who sent it?’
I realise my legs feel strange, unsteady. I pull up a seat. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘Naomi.’ He reaches out to touch my hand.
‘I know.’ I swallow, let the wave of emotion pass. ‘He was her favourite childhood toy,’ I say. ‘You can probably see from how battered he looks.’
‘Where was it sent from?’ he asks, quietly businesslike. He takes the package from me.
‘St Anthony’s.’ I show him the postmark.
‘Could someone at the university have found him in a cupboard or something?’ Tim asks. ‘Sent him to you?’
He is good at this – plausible, rational solutions, bringing things back from the land of ghosts and ghouls.
‘There wasn’t a note,’ I say.
He takes control, gets on the phone to the college, and I stay in the room as he is put through from the porters to housekeeping and then finally, through his insistence, to the Dean’s secretary. He works hard to keep me involved, repeating phrases for my benefit, but the long and short of it is that no one knows anything about it.
‘What about your mother?’ he checks when he’s off the phone.
‘No, sh
e’s as shocked as I am. And neither of us can remember the last time we saw him.’
He shakes his head. ‘He must have been somewhere safe and dry all these years – he’s not mouldy or damp.’
‘He still smells of her,’ I say. ‘Of coconut oil.’
‘Naomi,’ he says warningly. ‘It’s probably not that.’
He’s not an unkind man, Tim, just wary of the peaks and troughs of hope and despair, has learned only to work from the evidence in front of him.
I swallow. ‘Could someone have imprisoned her?’ I ask, knowing he can’t possibly answer that question.
I think of a recent case: a woman escaping from her captor after being locked away for decades – the sort of story that fills you with horror and hope all at the same time.
‘Naomi,’ he says again. ‘It could just as easily be trolls.’ A catchall word these days for those who feed off the misery of others, like creatures in a dark fairy tale.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Should we tell the police?’
‘Probably,’ he says. ‘But I’m not going to make you, if you can’t face it yet.’ He turns to a notebook. ‘Let’s make a list of everyone that you know who could have sent him. Friends. That ex-boyfriend of hers. And you can sit in here and make the calls in private while I get us some coffee.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, clutching Nunny to my chest as I get up. ‘It’s really very kind, but I think I’d rather do it from home tonight.’
Richard sounds shocked at the sound of my voice. I forget sometimes how much I sound like Ruth. My voice is lower, quieter, but the cadence is the same. I had wondered for a moment whether it was too late to call – just before ten – but then I remembered that he was a night owl himself, not averse to making a late-night call back when we were in touch more regularly, his voice urgent with coffee and nicotine.
The Girl Before You Page 9