The Girl Before You

by Nicola Rayner

  Their hallway smells, as it always does after Mrs T’s visits, of old-fashioned polish, which she applies by hand, inch by inch over the floor. Mrs T, who has worked for her mother-in-law since George was a boy, cleans their house twice a week. Her nickname was given to her by an infant George while Thatcher was in power. Her regular visits strike Alice as a little profligate for the two of them, though she’s good at ironing George’s shirts, not a task Alice has ever taken to and one for which she is particularly grateful at the moment.

  Even after all these years, she is still not entirely comfortable with someone working for her at home. She always tidies up for the cleaner and avoids being in the house when the older woman is working. She doesn’t like to see her on her hands and knees smoothing the wax on to the wooden floorboards. George never has such qualms and somehow, unfairly Alice feels, Mrs T much prefers him to her.

  That was George. He could tease, or flirt with, almost any woman he came across. Almost. ‘Got some shirts for you, Mrs T,’ he would say, depositing a huge armful by her ironing board, and she would smile and say: ‘That will keep me out of trouble.’

  But when Alice politely, ever so politely, asks her to handwash one of her dresses, or to clean their bathroom that week, she always says: ‘No problem, Mrs Bell,’ in a manner that suggests somehow it is.

  Alice has always found managing people difficult. It’s something she has had to learn at work, but somehow she can’t quite apply the lessons she has learned to her own home – a key point being you can’t get too caught up in whether people like you or not. It matters to her that Mrs T doesn’t and the more she tries, the cooler the older woman’s manner seems to become.

  She’s home early today after a doctor’s appointment and she can’t tell if Mrs T has left or not. Alice always knows when George is at home. Not just for the lights glaring from every room or Radio 4 drifting up from the kitchen, but also for the presence of him, the solidity of George. Conversely, he can crash around the house for ages before coming across her in the bedroom or kitchen. ‘Hello, darling, I didn’t know you were here.’ As if her presence were somehow an insubstantial thing.

  Mrs T has neatly stacked the post on the hall table, which Alice had regarded with dread when George was still an MP. Most of it went to his constituency office, but the odd nutter would have made that extra special effort to find his personal details.

  She picks up the post and wanders through to the living room. Although she wants, more than anything, to make a cup of tea and take it up to bed, she isn’t keen for Mrs T to witness this kind of indolence. She drops the post on the coffee table in the centre of the room and lies down on the sofa without turning any of the lights on, blindsided by an unexpected wave of fatigue.

  She had finished Richard’s book now but she hadn’t learned much more about Ruth. He had moved on to other cases, coming briefly back to Ruth in his conclusion, but nothing more than that. There had been no response from Naomi on Facebook and none of her other searches on social media had yielded anything. The case was cooling, as they said on TV.

  Christie hadn’t been much help. Her energy altered whenever Alice brought it up. She couldn’t put her finger on how Christie changed exactly, but she could just feel her friend’s focus drift away. Instead, Alice found herself confiding in a friend at work, who had listened carefully to the whole story and eventually said, ‘Something similar happened to me. I saw a girl I’d known at school, who had died years before, at Euston. On an escalator.’

  ‘And?’ Alice asked, leaning forwards in her seat, relieved to be able to talk about it like this.

  ‘I remembered later she had an identical twin.’ Her friend laughed. ‘So there was a perfectly reasonable explanation.’

  Alice leaned back, disappointed. ‘Ruth had a sister, but she wasn’t a twin.’

  ‘I’m just saying: there’s usually a rational answer,’ her friend said kindly. ‘It’s like those mad people filming poltergeists. It’s always the cat.’

  Alice smiled faintly. ‘That’s my equivalent.’

  ‘There will be a logical explanation. You just don’t know it yet.’

  She just didn’t know it yet. She looks down at the post on the table. The one at the top of the pile is addressed to George Bell, MP. Alice finds she still isn’t used to the idea of George not being an MP. The day before he resigned, before he read the letter in the House of Commons, there had been a sort of summit meeting at their home: a couple of people from his team, who kept themselves diplomatically out of the way in the kitchen or the study when matters got more personal, and Christie and Teddy, who didn’t.

  ‘People don’t like me,’ George had said from his favourite armchair, looking into the fire.

  ‘They love you,’ Christie responded quickly before Alice had had a chance to say anything.

  ‘They love to hate me,’ George guffawed.

  ‘They do love you.’ Alice went to George then, crouched down by his chair, thinking of St Anthony’s, of how people flocked to his room, followed him around, repeated his jokes.

  ‘Not everyone,’ he said darkly. ‘Some of them loathe me.’

  The room went silent, thinking, no doubt, of the woman on telly. Her wild hair tied in pigtails. Her red face scrunched up in disgust.

  He had made a bad joke. A bad joke at a bad time. A time when the party needed modernising, humanising. ‘You are too pretty to do this job.’ A throwaway comment. The kind George’s father might have made all the time. She wasn’t even working on his team – the twenty-something girl in pigtails – but on the team of a colleague. Who knew that one throwaway comment could go so far? There had been uproar – column after column in the papers, women waiting outside his constituency surgery wearing ‘Too Pretty to Work’ T-shirts, a hashtag on Twitter.

  ‘Did you touch her?’ Alice asked that night, not wanting to say it in front of Christie and Teddy but not having much choice. The girl’s anger had seemed out of all proportion.

  ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘I meant it as a bloody compliment.’

  ‘She is pretty,’ Christie said tartly.

  Alice wished Christie and Teddy would go. ‘What were you thinking?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I just said what I thought,’ George said.

  ‘But you can’t,’ Alice said. ‘You can’t – that’s the problem.’

  In television, his colleagues didn’t seem to mind so much. There had been the odd off joke, but compared with presenters punching people, George seemed pretty tame.

  The worst of it all had been the girls – the twenty-somethings, millennials – they looked so furious, so disgusted, so strong. What must it be like to walk around feeling so certain of yourself? The girl with the pigtails cornered Alice once in the ladies’ loo of a restaurant – she’d obviously tracked her down. ‘You’re married to him?’ she spat.

  Alice wanted to ask, ‘Why? Why, really, are you so very angry? Is there more? More to the story?’

  But Christie, who’d been with Alice, had put her arm around her and said, ‘Do you know what my friend does for a living? She defends victims of domestic violence in divorce suits against their beastly husbands. So don’t come here lecturing us about women’s fucking rights.’ And that had shut her up.

  Mrs T comes bustling in, interrupting Alice’s train of thought. ‘Sorry, Mrs Bell,’ she says, not sounding particularly sorry. ‘I didn’t know you were here, sitting in the dark.’ The tone is a touch accusatory.

  Alice sits up. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Not feeling so good.’

  ‘I see you’ve got the post there,’ the older woman says in the same defiant tone. ‘Another one of those postcards arrived.’ She bustles out of the room. ‘I’ll be going then,’ she calls back to Alice and leaves with the front door swinging loudly shut behind her.

  Alice reaches out and picks up the pile of letters to look at them more closely – a few bills, a thank-you note from a friend and then the postcard. It’s sepia in tone, out of focus. Alice has to sq
uint to make out what it is: Cathedral Square in St Anthony’s. It’s dusty and yellowing, like something that has been lying in someone’s desk drawer for years.

  She turns it over. It is addressed to George. The writing is in block capitals: ‘St Anthony, St Anthony, give what I’ve lost back to me.’

  That’s all. It’s not been signed, nor is it a hand she recognises. Alice reads it twice. She remembers someone repeating the rhyme to her at a party. She doesn’t recall who or why. Stories would circulate about the town among the students. In a place that had lost so much to the sea, there were bound to be rumours, ghost stories. There often were in coastal towns.

  Alice fishes her mobile out of her handbag and calls George. He answers the phone a touch breathlessly, as if caught out at something. She says, without introduction, ‘St Anthony, St Anthony, give what I’ve lost back to me.’

  There is a pause, then, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘A postcard arrived for you from St Anthony’s,’ she says.

  ‘Oh?’ says George.

  ‘The thing is,’ says Alice, looking down at the postcard in her hand. ‘Mrs T said “another one”.’

  ‘Darling, I really don’t know what you’re going on about,’ he says impatiently. Behind him, in the background, she can hear other voices, the noises of people going busily about their work. She won’t let him make her feel foolish. Not this time.

  ‘Another one implies it isn’t the first, doesn’t it?’ she says. ‘That someone has been sending you cryptic postcards from St Anthony’s for a while.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ says George as someone interrupts him.

  Alice recognises the voice of one his producers, a no-nonsense blonde in her late twenties.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he says wearily as he returns to the call. ‘Try to get some rest.’

  The following week, Alice waits to catch Mrs T before going to work on the pretence of asking her about the washing detergent they are using, something her skin has started reacting to.

  As she’s leaving, she asks as carelessly as she can: ‘You know those postcards George has been receiving?’

  The other woman’s face is a blank, an unfurrowed brow beneath tight grey curls.

  ‘What’s that, Mrs Bell?’

  ‘The other day,’ Alice persists. ‘A postcard arrived for George and you said, “Another one of those cards”.’

  ‘Did I, dear?’ Mrs T says in a more kindly tone than she normally adopts for Alice. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ says Alice, trying not to let her irritation show. ‘You definitely did. Have you seen other cards like it?’

  Mrs T blinks. Her blue eyes are watery as she concentrates. She looks, in this moment, smaller, more fragile than she usually does, bustling through the house. She says at last: ‘I think he used to get some strange cards before – from his constituents and things.’

  That’s not what Alice means and Mrs T knows it.

  ‘Specifically, like this?’ Alice holds up the postcard as if it’s a piece of evidence in court. ‘From St Anthony’s?’

  Mrs T’s face shifts. She looks away from Alice. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says eventually. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before.’

  Naomi

  After the incident by the train tracks, there had been no need for me to pretend to be ill to avoid Miss Wick. A nasty flu started as a twinge in my throat and developed quickly into a hacking cough, aching limbs, headaches, a temperature and vivid hallucinations. I had almost a fortnight off school, sleeping fitfully through the days, dreaming feverishly of Miss Wick, of trains rattling by in the night, of Lizzie Clark’s kohl-rimmed eyes always watching me.

  I didn’t eat for days. My mother brought in food on a tray, all my favourite treats; she pressed damp towels against my forehead and asked, ‘What’s the matter, darling?’ when I cried, which I did a lot, but I couldn’t find the words to say: ‘I love a woman, I am gay; everything you thought about me, I’m not.’

  Eventually, I regained some strength and dragged myself for walks along the clifftops. I knew I would have to go back to school.

  On my last night at home, my mother, after a couple of strong gin and tonics in the hotel bar, took my hand and said: ‘It’s OK, you know, to rebel a bit.’

  ‘Against what?’ I smiled.

  ‘I worry that you’re pushing yourself too hard – with work, with all your prefect duties. Ruth, at your age, had been hauled up three times for smoking.’

  ‘You want me to be caught smoking?’

  ‘No, darling. I just don’t want you to feel you have to be perfect or something.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that?’ I said tetchily. I got up to look for dirty glasses.

  ‘You used to be interested in boys – there was that one with freckles who used to hang around …’ my mother continued when I returned to the table. She didn’t quite look me in the eye. Maybe she was thinking, like me, that that had been a long time ago.

  ‘Until Ruth saw him off …’ I laughed.

  ‘Well, yes …’

  It was quiet that night – just a handful of regulars. I felt my mum’s eyes on my back as I scurried around emptying ashtrays and wiping tables. At last, I gave up and returned to her, perching next to her.

  ‘Actually, Mum, I have started seeing someone.’ That, at least, was true.

  ‘Oh, darling, I’m so pleased.’ Our mother is small but her grip has a steely strength to it. ‘And are you in love?’

  I thought then of Miss Wick, of how I had sat up all night after it happened, shaking with shame. With excitement. ‘I don’t know – I’ve certainly never felt like this before.’ And that had been true as well.

  Of all the things I had been expecting from Miss Wick, concern hadn’t been top of the list.

  ‘Naomi.’ She stood up as I came through the door for our one-to-one session. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Much better.’ I always felt very British around her. Buttoned tight. ‘How are you?’

  Miss Wick waved the query away. She came round the other side of the desk and took my hand. ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’

  Without warning, my eyes filled with tears. I looked past Miss Wick to the view outside, the sunlit quadrangle with a single horse chestnut in the centre of the immaculate lawn. The view, the tree, looked as it always did, but everything had changed for me. I wondered, if I thought about it enough, if I could move the tree just through sheer willpower. There is so much I want, I thought. Eventually, I said: ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘This is the first time for you, isn’t it?’ she said. Her hand was warm. ‘Are you sure about it?’

  I stopped looking at the tree. I looked at Miss Wick’s face. Her high cheekbones, the turban wrapped around her head, her lovely hands. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Alice

  After Mrs T leaves, Alice descends to the kitchen and spends a long time turning the postcard over in her hands. She still can’t let it go. Who would send such a card? And why would they send it now? There’s something so personal about this picture, this view of Cathedral Square, the anchor there from one of the ships that had gone down in the bay. St Anthony was the patron saint of lost things, but he was also the one you prayed to when you wanted to get something back.

  What did Alice want back? She could hardly bear to list it all. She thinks of how, on her wedding day, she’d woken early in the house she’d grown up in in Leamington Spa, how her mother had come to lie next to her in bed before they got up and they’d shared a few quiet minutes before the busy day started. She longs for that sort of tenderness and hope in her life again. Perhaps it’ll return with the arrival of her own daughter.

  She thinks of the way she used to laugh with Christie and how it feels as if she hasn’t, not properly, for a really long time. She thinks of how she used to believe that her work would change the world, or change someth
ing. Anything. She thinks of how it might feel not to wake up exhausted, her skin dry and creased, her hair requiring constant attention, and a new part of her body – her eyelashes, her eyebrows, her ever-growing belly – always needing attending to. She thinks of George when she first met him. The smell of him, the click of his leather shoes as he approached, the way his eyes would meet hers across a crowded room and he’d grin.

  He’d badgered her for weeks to sleep with him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but Christie’s advice not to do it straight away rang in her ears. And she’d enjoyed the early days of their relationship – the cocktails and the dressing up – and was worried about what there would be on the other side. She hadn’t asked too much around college about him, but she didn’t need to. People smirked when they saw George and her hand in hand. Girls she used to be friendly with drifted away from her at parties.

  ‘They’re jealous,’ Christie reassured her. But Alice wasn’t sure if that was it.

  There had been weeks of George coming back to her room and their sharing a bit of flirtatious chat over a cup of tea or a glass of wine, which would inevitably end up with them on the bed wrapped around each other, with George’s hand creeping inside her dress and Alice batting it away.

  ‘Alice, you’re killing me,’ he’d said on the day they’d finally done it, when she’d batted his hand away for what felt like the thousandth time. ‘Why are you being like this?’

  Alice had thought of Dan’s cold eyes on her, the chuckling of George’s friends, the weird reaction of other girls in college. She couldn’t say the words aloud – ‘I don’t trust you’ – so she tried a different tack, asking: ‘If we sleep together, will you talk about it with everyone?’

  He laughed. ‘Are we at school?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alice said, sitting up crossly, straightening her dress. ‘Are we?’

  ‘Look,’ he took her hand. ‘What happens between us is just between us. I promise.’

  Alice ran a hand through her hair. She was a bit hungover that day, a little out of sorts. ‘I’m sorry,’ she frowned. ‘I should probably be getting on with some work.’