‘You used to, too.’ Kat can hear the petulance in her tone. ‘You used to come out drinking with me and pull boys, and just be more …’
‘More what?’ Ruth’s mouth tightens.
‘Fun,’ says Kat. ‘You used to be more fun. Until Naomi came along.’
‘Until Naomi came along?’ Ruth repeats. A cloud passes across her face.
‘She’s just a bit …’ Kat pauses. ‘Square,’ she settles on. She still sounds like a schoolgirl. ‘A bit lesbian,’ she adds quietly. Which makes it worse.
‘She’s my sister,’ Ruth hisses, throwing Kat’s coat back at her. The force of it makes Kat stumble back a step. ‘She’ll always come first.’ Ruth turns to go back up, but stops for a moment to add: ‘You always act like you know everything. When actually you don’t know anything at all.’
Kat is silent for a moment. She’s never been on the receiving end of Ruth’s temper before.
‘About people,’ Ruth continues. ‘About the important things.’
Kat’s own rage, which has been simmering on and off all morning, boils over. Ruth doesn’t know. She doesn’t fucking know anything. And if she had been a friend, a proper friend, she would never have stolen Richard from her. Because what had come from that? Nothing but a whole lot of fucking trouble.
‘Well, maybe it was your innate wisdom that Richard fell in love with,’ she spits. ‘It certainly wasn’t your sense of fun.’
‘Kat!’ Ruth calls after her as she marches out of the house. Which is hard to do with a broken heel.
Kat won’t look back. She won’t look back at her.
‘Why do you have to make everything about that?’
Kat turns: Ruth looks small, rather forlorn. Afterwards, much later, she would remember Ruth like this – alone at the doorway of that funny little house on Top Cliff. Kat could go back, should go back and make nice, but she just doesn’t want to.
‘Because everything is about that, Ruth,’ she says instead. ‘And if you don’t know that, you’re the one who doesn’t know anything.’
Naomi
When Ruth returned from St Anthony’s at the end of her first year, she came straight up to my room, where the curtains were drawn and I was dozing in the middle of the afternoon like an old person. My mother must have said something.
She climbed into bed next to me. ‘It’s just an exam.’
Lying on my back, I looked up at the ceiling. The black cat that had come in with Ruth pounced on the bed and padded up to me. ‘I choked – I couldn’t write.’ I ran my hand along the cat’s spine. ‘It was so hot. Unbearable. I really fucked it. I don’t think I’ll get into Cambridge now.’
‘Well,’ she smiled. ‘You’ll just have to come to St Anthony’s with me.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘What’s going on?’ Outside, a child shrieked in the garden. ‘Mummy thinks it’s a boy.’
I sighed. ‘I fell in love.’
It sounded melodramatic, ridiculous. The kind of thing Ruth herself might say. She plucked at the tassels of a rug on my bed, but she was still listening. I could tell.
‘And he broke up with you?’
I was silent for a moment. They were playing Bob Marley in the kitchen. Damien’s tuneless voice could be heard singing along to ‘No Woman, No Cry’. He loved to sing as he cooked. Ruth giggled but I found I couldn’t smile.
‘She,’ I said at last. ‘She left.’
Ruth didn’t seem surprised. She took my hand. ‘Who was she?’
And I told her.
Everything had gone off the tracks after that phone call. Or the absence of a phone call. My thoughts seemed to go off kilter. I tried to revise that night, but I found it very hard to concentrate, finally switching off my lamp at around two in the morning. Usually, to relax last thing at night, to reward myself for a day well spent, I allowed myself to luxuriate in unrestrained thinking of Miss Wick, replaying bits from the last time we had been together. Sometimes it was just a conversation, a compliment, a smile; at others it was more physical: Miss Wick’s bare arms or something we had done in bed together earlier. Sometimes my hand wandered between my legs, but that wasn’t the primary objective. It was a sort of daydreaming to send me to sleep. But that night every time I thought of Miss Wick I couldn’t escape the memory of the ugly sound of the phone off its hook.
During prayers, I looked up to the teachers’ gallery several times, but Miss Wick wasn’t there. A lapsed Catholic, sometimes she would skip the service, but after the night before, I had been hoping for something to keep me going – a private look, a secret smile.
I spent the day distracted. I wandered from revision sessions to Miss Wick’s room and back again. But she wasn’t answering her door. At break, I tried again, but the corridor filled up around me. I couldn’t just hang around outside a teacher’s room all day.
In the prefects’ common room, which was just opposite, I made myself a cup of tea and found Jess in a buoyant mood, full of her first date with Andrea: what he wore, what he said, the way he smiled, how he put his hand on her lower back as he guided her out of the restaurant. ‘Much more intimate than a touch on the shoulder – a hand on the shoulder just says “friend”, doesn’t it? But the lower back is different.’
I nodded but my mind was racing. The way I felt – it was like when you lose a dog. I thought of Scipio. It’s as if you split in two: the part of you that knows that any second the beloved pet will trot into sight, tail wagging, as if to say, why are you so worried? And the other part, which is more powerful, more seductive than the first. Which whispers into your ear: you’ve seen her for the last time, the very last time, and you didn’t even realise …
When Jess stopped to catch her breath, I asked, as casually as I could, ‘You haven’t seen Miss Wick today, have you? I wanted to talk to her about something …’
Jess frowned. ‘Are you OK? You look a bit pale.’ She took my hand and gave it a squeeze, and I thought that this small act of kindness might just send me over the edge.
‘I am. I’m just feeling a bit ropy.’ I swallowed a mouthful of tea, but it was too hot, scalded the back of my throat. ‘You haven’t seen her then?’
‘Miss Wick? No.’ Jess shook her head. She paused for a moment and said: ‘You can just say it, you know.’
‘Say what?’ I looked at her face. Her large blue eyes; her unwrinkled brow. Did she have any idea? I thought of all the small lies I had told her and some of the bigger ones, too.
‘Whatever you want, whatever’s bugging you.’
‘I would like to talk,’ I said quickly, just as the bell went for lessons to start again. ‘Maybe tonight?’
Jess smiled an easy smile and the prefects’ common room emptied quickly. I felt a temporary sense of relief, but it didn’t take long for the tightness in my chest to return.
By Wednesday, with still no sign of Miss Wick, I started to hear rumours – that she was ill, that she had left in the night – but there were no announcements. We hadn’t heard anything official. That night I went to her flat, but there was no answer and no lights on. And I stood there watching the window from the street until it got dark.
The next day, I broke down in Jess’s arms and told her everything after school.
‘Oh, Naomi,’ she said as we sat in my room surrounded by tear-drenched tissues. ‘What a pickle.’
I hadn’t eaten or slept properly for days and I knew that I was unravelling just weeks away from our exams starting. It was like pulling at a loose thread on a jumper and finding out what kept it together simply wasn’t as strong as you thought. At night I slept in a kimono of Miss Wick’s I had borrowed, which still smelled slightly of eucalyptus. In spite of everything, I found myself going back to her room at lunch break.
‘I know I’m being silly,’ I told Ruth. ‘But I kept hoping that there might be a crack I might slip through: a crack into an alternate universe where Miss Wick hadn’t disappeared.’
Ruth didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile. She said: ‘I used to hope that
about Daddy.’
I didn’t tell her about the last time I checked, at the end of lunch on a Friday. School was quiet at lunchtime, with girls sitting outside in the sun, or quietly revising. There was a soporific atmosphere at that time just before the lessons started again, as if the building itself was postprandial and sleepy.
I thought I was alone in the corridor, but the sound of a sniff made me look up and I realised I was being watched. Lizzie Clark was leaning against a locker, with her school skirt hitched up short, as always. How could she make even a sniff sound like a sneer?
‘Didn’t you hear?’ she said.
I kept very still. I didn’t want to speak to Lizzie. I never said anything, anything at all to anyone, about what happened that night. But it was there still. Like a burning shame. Feigning indifference, I said as casually as I could: ‘She’s off sick.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’ She looked at my face as if reading me for a reaction. ‘I heard she’s been sacked for … well, you’d know.’ She stuck up her index and middle finger and waggled her tongue between the two.
I held on tightly to the door handle. My cheeks were burning. When I felt strong enough, I made my way across the corridor to the prefects’ common room. My shirt already felt damp from the sweat.
I said carefully: ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
Kat
May 2001
The exam had been a disaster. An unadulterated fuck-up. Kat had written reams and reams – she never had a problem coming up with something. But it was style over substance and if she knew that, the markers definitely would. She’d picked up her revision notes from where she’d left them outside the exam room, knowing she’d have to retake and wishing, not for the first time, that she could lose herself in work. But that would involve staying still, sitting with herself, and that was something she had found hard to do over the last year.
St Anthony’s, as the summer term draws to a close, feels like a carnival, with the students who have just finished exams wearing garlands or smeared with flour and eggs. The drunkest stagger around, heads lolling, hands held by friends.
Everyone in the crowded beer garden is talking too loudly, including Kat herself, who shrieks when she finally spots Ruth and Richard, ‘There they are! Love’s young dream! Busy shagging, were you?’
There were no two ways about it: they had forgotten about her. She could tell by the way they were creeping in. Well, she could tell by the way they simply weren’t there when she’d finished her exams. She had come out of the building feeling drained from three hours of concentration, still holding her pen and her notes in her ink-stained hand, and scanned the crowd for Richard’s face. It had reminded her of how you arrive at an airport and always look out into the crowd – past the drivers holding badly written signs – and hope, even when there’s no reason to, that there’s someone there for you.
There hardly ever is, of course. Kat’s father in particular had a habit of promising he’d be there and failing to turn up, so the feeling was familiar but nonetheless deeply unwelcome. And then Luke had pushed through the crowd with a garland for her and arranged it proudly in her hair. Why did nothing ever work out the way you wanted?
Students are packed into the small terraced space, crammed next to each other at picnic tables or standing in cliques, bellowing at friends inches away. The King’s Head boasts about its beer garden, but in truth it’s a concrete yard, enclosed by buildings on three sides, with the river on the fourth. Kat and Luke sit opposite each other at the end of a wooden picnic table. The pair of them watch Richard and Ruth as they approach.
Luke’s mouth is a thin, cross line. ‘What happened to you?’
‘We went to the river after meeting Richard.’ Ruth glances at Richard, who finished his finals at lunchtime. ‘A whole gang of us,’ she adds. ‘I guess we thought you were with us.’
‘Nope.’ Luke shrugs. ‘I suppose someone had to remember to go and meet madam at five.’ He drains the last of his beer from the glass.
‘Kat.’ Ruth puts a hand on her arm. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘No problem, no problem.’ Kat waves dismissively. ‘I’m sure you had more important people – I mean, things – to do.’ She’s not going to make it easy for them. Actually, she might make it easy for Richard. ‘Hello, darling,’ she says, getting up to kiss him and only just missing his mouth. Ruth can put that in her pipe and smoke it. ‘You smell delicious.’
‘I like the hair,’ Ruth says, still trying.
Kat has dyed it since Ruth last saw her. It’s a gothic black, a shade that leeches the colour from her skin, but it matches her mood somehow.
‘Darling, for such a drama queen you’re a terrible liar.’ Kat returns to her seat. ‘Or are you?’ She lights a cigarette. ‘I can never decide.’
‘I thought we were meant to be celebrating,’ says Richard. ‘What are we drinking?’
‘Shots!’ Kat says, getting to her feet again. ‘Let’s have shots!’
‘Great idea!’ someone calls from the next table.
‘Tequila,’ says Kat. ‘No: sambuca. No: tequila.’
‘Not for me – it makes me fight,’ Ruth interrupts, bringing Richard’s focus back to her.
‘Well, something special for you, my love.’ When Richard kisses her before heading to the bar, Ruth closes her eyes as if to block Kat out.
‘How was the exam?’ Ruth asks when he’s gone.
‘Awful.’ Kat looks down at the pile of revision notes on the table. ‘Absolutely bloody awful. I’ll be lucky if they let me stay.’
Ruth sighs. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.’
Kat glares at her. ‘What would you know about it?’ She inhales her cigarette angrily.
They sit there in silence. Ruth lights a cigarette of her own.
‘I know a bit about it,’ Ruth says eventually. ‘You know about my sister.’
Naomi had had some sort of meltdown during her A levels and fucked them up. It was all because of a love affair with a teacher. Kat smirks. She hadn’t found it funny before, but now, several pints in and furious with Ruth, it struck her as amusing that buttoned-up Naomi had been at it with a teacher.
‘Your sister’s problems aren’t the same as mine though, are they?’ Kat interrupts. She feels that warning flicker like the dart of a snake in the grass before the words spill out – barbed words that would hurt the listener. ‘Naomi was shagging a teacher during her A levels,’ she tells Luke with a smirk. ‘A female teacher.’
‘Huh,’ says Luke diplomatically, clearly keen not to get involved.
‘I know.’ Kat pulls at a thread on her sleeve, refusing to meet Ruth’s eye. ‘It caused quite the stir.’
‘It didn’t, actually. It’s a secret. As well you fucking know.’ Ruth’s voice comes out low with just the thinnest crack in it. ‘Why would you say it like that, like it’s just another joke?’ She gets up suddenly and heads for the bar.
Kat looks into her drink. It’s oddly deflating being so horrible to someone.
‘I know, I know,’ she says, feeling disapproval emanate from Luke. ‘I went too far.’
‘Go and tell her you’re sorry,’ he sighs. ‘Otherwise today’s going to be a washout.’
Inside, the barmen are working quickly, keeping their eyes down on the beer pumps to avoid the rolled notes waved to catch their attention, the bray of the students. Kat spots Ruth and Richard at the other side of the bar, which curves in a horseshoe around the room. They have a couple of shots in front of them. Kat thinks she’ll push through the crowd to join them, but they are already knocking back the drinks quite happily, as if they’ve forgotten her. And then they kiss. A long, lingering smooch. They’re always at it, thinks Kat angrily, watching them hand in hand disappear through the crowd to the back of the pub for a hasty fuck in the toilet, no doubt.
Kat hasn’t cried for months, but suddenly she knows she’s going to. She feels the hot rush of it arrive at the back of her throat, prickling at her eyes
. But not here, not in front of everybody.
Outside the cubicle, Kat can hear someone say: ‘She’s been in there for ages. It’s a bit selfish – there are only three cubicles.’ There’s a loud passive-aggressive sigh.
She looks down at the damp wad of loo roll in her hand. Perhaps the girl’s right, perhaps it was time to vacate the area.
‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘I don’t think so.’ It’s Ruth’s voice.
‘Yes,’ the other girl says insistently. ‘We got drunk together in the Two Pheasants. We were playing poker with a group of geography guys – you won all our money.’
‘No,’ says Ruth again. ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘If you say so,’ says the girl in a tone that suggests she doesn’t, for one moment, believe Ruth.
There’s rap on the door of Kat’s cubicle.
‘Come on – there’s a queue out here.’
Kat dabs her eyes a final time, flushes the wad of paper away. ‘Can you wait just a fucking second?’
‘Kat?’ asks Ruth tentatively through the door.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ Kat snaps, aware of the ridiculousness of communicating like this.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, brilliant. Fucking brilliant.’
‘Do you want to talk?’
Kat opens the door. She catches sight of herself in the mirror beyond Ruth. She looks shocking. Her eyes are swollen; her eyeliner has stained trails down her face.
‘Why would I want to talk to you?’
Ruth speaks quietly. ‘Kat, whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Just act like a proper person.’ Kat’s voice rises in pitch. A girl at the sink washing her hands slows down to watch the show. ‘You forget to meet me and then you drink my drinks and just go for a bonk …’ She sighs, world-weary. ‘I imagine that’s why you disappeared to the toilet together.’
Ruth’s face is burning. She looks down at her feet. ‘You don’t seem to want us here anyway.’
Kat moves to the sink. Her rage softens, appeased by the drama. She begins to wash her face. When she’s finished, she says: ‘What I want is for it all to go back to normal.’
The Girl Before You Page 18