The Girl Before You

by Nicola Rayner

  Alice thinks of the postcard in her handbag. She wants to show it to him, but not here.

  ‘There’s more,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if you have time for a drink?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Richard nods. ‘There’s somewhere just around the corner.’

  They walk companionably along Farringdon Road to the pub. It’s a pleasant spring evening, with couples on dates wandering on their way to supper, small clusters of smokers outside bars with their end-of-day drinks. Alice already feels more cheerful.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ she says. ‘But for me it’s nice to talk to someone about all this.’

  ‘Tell me about it!’ Richard laughs darkly. ‘I never married, you know. Funnily enough, women don’t like you being obsessed with a missing ex.’

  ‘You say “missing”, don’t you?’ says Alice. ‘Other people say “dead”.’

  ‘It’s a personal decision,’ Richard says, pushing open the door of a tiny pub on the street corner. ‘I understand why her family have made the decisions they’ve made. I don’t suppose you’re drinking alcohol,’ he says, heading for the bar.

  ‘Elderflower,’ Alice calls after him. ‘Or fizzy water.’

  She has the brief, and deeply inappropriate, feeling of being on a date.

  When Richard is back at the table with their drinks, Alice plunges in again: ‘Do you remember Dan Vaughan? You mentioned him in your book. He was the last person to see Ruth alive.’

  ‘Yes, I knew Dan,’ Richard says curtly. ‘What sort of person he was.’

  Alice tries a different tack. ‘Did he have a thing for Ruth?’

  Richard frowns. ‘What do you mean?’ The tone of his voice has changed. The friendliness is eking away.

  Alice hesitates. She doesn’t want to risk losing what might be her only ally. ‘It’s nothing,’ she says quickly. ‘Just a hunch.’

  ‘A hunch based on nasty rumours?’ Richard takes a swift gulp of his beer.

  Alice shakes her head. ‘No, it was just an idea. And I saw some red hair in a photo of him and George.’

  ‘George?’ Richard’s voice wavers.

  Alice hesitates, wishing she hadn’t said anything. George’s name sometimes had that effect. She knew he hadn’t been friends with Richard, but what had George said? That Richard couldn’t stand him?

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘My husband – George Bell.’

  ‘You didn’t say that,’ Richard says angrily, getting up.

  ‘You didn’t ask.’ Alice gets up too, flustered. ‘We didn’t exactly do introductions.’

  ‘No,’ says Richard. ‘You just came to find me to say you’d seen the ghost of my dead girlfriend, with precisely no explanation of who you are.’

  ‘Missing,’ says Alice lamely. ‘Not dead.’

  ‘Do you know how hard this is?’ Richard hisses.

  He is pale with fury. Alice glances around them to see if anyone else has noticed. She feels glad for a moment that they’re in a public place.

  ‘Do you know how hard it will always be?’ Richard continues. ‘I’m trying to move on. I stopped writing about it. It even stopped being the first thing I thought about every single day when I woke up. Do you know what that’s like?’

  ‘I do a bit,’ says Alice. ‘Not in the same way, of course,’ she adds hurriedly. ‘But I can’t sleep, I can’t concentrate at work. I feel terrible – all the time. I have a baby on the way – and my husband actually thinks I’m going mad.’

  Richard snorts. ‘Well, I wouldn’t worry about what he thinks.’

  ‘Look,’ says Alice. ‘I saw her – I really saw her. And …’ Her hands are shaking as she fishes the postcard out of her handbag and smacks it down on the table. ‘It’s a postcard. To George. From St Anthony’s. It was a rhyme Ruth used to say.’

  Richard glances down. He gets out a pair of reading glasses and sits again to look at the postcard.

  ‘She did say that,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Is it the same writing?’ Alice asks. ‘As the package?’

  Richard picks it up. ‘I can’t tell. I could ask my friend to check.’

  Alice nods. ‘Maybe.’ She hesitates. ‘No, on second thoughts, let me keep it for another couple of days.’

  ‘Do you need to talk to George?’ Richard sneers.

  ‘I’ll get back to you about it.’ Alice decides she’s had enough. ‘Can I find you at the office?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage. You seem to be good at finding people. It’s creepy.’

  ‘You can talk about creepy,’ Alice snaps, putting her coat on angrily. ‘Writing a book about your ex-girlfriend.’

  ‘Ask your husband what he thinks happened to Ruth,’ Richard says softly. ‘He and Dan ruined everything that was good between us. I blame them – I blame them for her mental state the night she went.’

  ‘But he won’t tell me anything,’ Alice says fiercely. ‘No one will tell me a fucking thing.’

  Kat

  Kat’s second visitor the day of the break-up is Nicky Crisp. ‘I come bearing news.’ She is at Kat’s door, holding a paper bag full of biscuits.

  ‘OK,’ says Kat. ‘Well, you know what they say: I won’t stand for gossip, I like to sit down for it.’ She puts the kettle on.

  Everyone knew Nicky Crisp – one of college’s party people. She was good fun – perceptive, too. She’d spotted the bruises Dan had left on Kat’s arms and said: ‘I had marks like that after sleeping with Dan Vaughan.’ And something about Kat’s reaction must have given her away, because Nicky said, ‘Oh, I see. That makes two of us. Like a club.’

  ‘More than two, I suspect,’ Kat said.

  ‘Quite,’ Nicky agreed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go back for more.’

  And they hadn’t said much more than that, but somehow it had made Kat feel less alone.

  Kat liked Nicky: she was tough and no-nonsense. She didn’t put on airs and graces, but she didn’t seem to be intimidated by the Etonian crowd, either. She was herself – steely and bright. She didn’t try to downplay her strong Glaswegian accent – Kat envied her that; she’d always felt the need to perform, for almost everyone, but particularly for people with backgrounds like George’s. She started acting as if she were in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

  ‘It’s about our mutual … well, it’s about Dan Vaughan,’ Nicky says once she’s settled with a cup of tea in her hand. ‘I wasn’t there but I was in the Snowman’s room early this morning doing a few lines of Colombia’s best – so anyway, I didn’t see it …’

  ‘See what?’ Kat blows on her tea – talking about Dan makes her feel unsettled, even with Nicky.

  ‘I thought you might be pleased to hear,’ Nicky continues, ‘that he’s in massive shit. Got called to the dean’s office this morning …’

  ‘They can’t do much now, can they?’ Kat shrugs. ‘He’s done his finals.’

  ‘Well, he’s still waiting for his tutor to write a reference for Goldman Sachs, apparently …’

  Kat puts her drink down for a moment. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Mary – you know, the junior organ scholar – went to practise this morning and found Dan shagging a girl in the chapel. Trousers round his ankles.’ Nicky chuckles. ‘Gave her the fright of her life.’

  Kat smirks. ‘That’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Mary’s only seventeen … went running to the porters about it.’

  ‘Well, he’s a prick,’ Kat says. ‘It’s about time he got his comeuppance.’

  ‘Quite,’ Nicky snorts. ‘Nasty piece of work.’

  Kat picks her drink up and begins to sip it again. She’s about to change the subject, ask Nicky what she’s up to over the summer, but Nicky is leaning forwards in her chair. She looks concerned.

  ‘I don’t like to gossip,’ she adds. ‘Well, I do, but I thought you’d know. Or maybe you don’t?’

  She’s not making much sense. ‘What?’ says Kat.

  Nicky looks uncomfortable. ‘The girl in the chapel? They’re saying it was y
our friend, Ruth.’

  ‘That’s daft.’ Kat swallows. ‘Ruth wouldn’t. She’s with Richard.’

  Nicky nods. ‘That’s what I thought. It’s weird, though, she asked me the other day about Dan.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If we’d slept together. I thought you might have said something.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Nicky crosses her legs and then uncrosses them. ‘I’m not scared of that lot. Not exactly.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘If they think she’s started rumours about them. They might do the same about her. Stir things up.’ She sighs. ‘It’s so easy for them, isn’t it?’

  ‘What is?’ says Kat.

  Nicky shrugs. ‘Everything.’

  After she leaves, Kat lights a cigarette and thinks. A part of her feels like she should dash over to Ruth and tell her what is being said about her, so she can defend herself. Another part is cautioning something else: Ruth hasn’t come to confide in her, after all. And there was another thing, too. Something she hadn’t mentioned to Richard or Nicky. Ruth had developed an obsession with Dan, hounding him to admit what he’d done to Kat and possibly to Ruth too, on one of the occasions when she was out of it.

  A couple of weeks ago, Kat had spotted them sitting together at a Mexican-themed party in one of the large rooms in front quad. Kat hadn’t been in the mood for the party, so she hadn’t arrived with Ruth, but at the last minute she had thought: what the hell? And come out to join her friend. She couldn’t see Ruth for ages. She always looked out for her hair in a room and it was covered that night with a Mexican headscarf. When she finally spotted her, she saw she was sitting with Dan on a sagging sofa, not looking at Dan but into the fireplace. Dan was talking with his mouth very near to Ruth’s ear, his arm dropped loosely over her shoulders. They were sitting so closely that Kat had wondered for a moment if something was going on.

  Ruth’s dress had ridden up, exposing her thighs, pale, lean and tightly crossed. But she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t seem to be in the room at all. She looked odd, haunted, though Dan seemed to be enjoying himself, teasing her, perhaps. Suddenly, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, full on the mouth.

  The kiss didn’t last for long – a moment perhaps – before Ruth sprang away from Dan, leapt to her feet and marched towards George. Standing behind a first year in hot pants on the Twister mat, George looked up as Ruth approached. ‘I’m going to expose you,’ Ruth shouted. ‘I’m going to let the world know what you lot are like.’ And she punched him straight on the torso. Amid shrieks from the other players, George and the sombrero on his head toppled down on the mat, and Ruth moved on again, pushing her way, white-faced, to the door. When Kat asked her later what Dan had said, Ruth was brusque. ‘It was nothing. An insult. A threat, really.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He said he hadn’t had sex with me yet but that he would one day.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Kat.

  ‘Well, that’s Dan,’ said Ruth. ‘He just wanted to creep me out.’

  So there had been a kiss, but a strange one. Kat sits in her armchair for a long time, mulling it over. Would Ruth ever shag Dan after all that? She didn’t think so, but some girls were strange. Gluttons for punishment. Kat knew more about that than most.

  She doesn’t know how long she has been sitting there, but a scream interrupts her reverie. And she knows immediately, instinctively, that it is Ruth. She goes to her window, where she sees Ruth in her long white dress, shrieking at Richard. He is glowering at her, with Luke standing by with a hand on his arm as if to restrain him. The sounds Ruth’s making are ungodly. People stop – not in a crowd, but individuals at different points in the quad – and stare like statues, as Kat is now. She is watching them again, as she always seems to be; as she watched Richard looking at Ruth for the very first time; as she watched them kiss at Chatsworth. It seems to be her role.

  And then, Kat notices, Dan has joined the bystanders in the quad and Ruth is flying at him, with nails and teeth, and the porters bolt from the porters’ lodge and carry her away with Naomi following, holding Ruth’s red shoes. Kat sits in the darkness and waits. She starts to count. When she reaches fifty-three, there is a loud rap at the door. It’s Richard.

  His hands shake as he lights a cigarette. ‘It was bad,’ he says darkly. ‘She went wild.’ He perches on her bed. ‘Everyone says it was her with Dan: her hair, her legs, the dress she was wearing, for God’s sake – the one she was wearing last night.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She says it wasn’t. That there is a girl who looks exactly like her. And she kept saying, “Just ask Kat.” Because I guess she thought you’d be a witness.’

  ‘A witness?’ Kat tries not to laugh. ‘It’s not a murder.’

  But she gets up, starts to wander around the room to avoid his gaze. Why is your friend ignoring me? That’s what he’d said, the barman in the Two Pheasants who’d thought he’d known Ruth. Had she imagined that? Kat frowns. Or had Ruth lied? And there had been another instance, though Kat can’t remember what, of someone mentioning a lookalike, but does Richard need to know that, if she can barely remember herself?

  ‘Is it true? Could it have been someone who looked like her?’ Richard’s tone is incredulous.

  Still avoiding eye contact, Kat picks up from the shelf a paperweight she inherited from her grandmother, the seedhead of a dandelion preserved intact under the glass. She feels the weight of it in her hand and decides upon a compromise.

  ‘No one looks like Ruth,’ she smiles. ‘She’s one of a kind.’ She places the paperweight carefully back on the shelf. ‘And she hates Dan,’ she continues. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Does she?’ He hesitates. ‘She says she does.’ Richard hunts around for somewhere to tap the ash from his cigarette. ‘That first time we were together – she just went down on me like that. She didn’t know me at all …’

  Kat passes him an ashtray. ‘What are you trying to say, Rich?’ Her voice is cool. They’re all the same, men, in the end.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shakes himself. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I should talk to her. She probably went back to the cottage …’

  ‘Look, why not leave it for today?’ Kat goes over to sit next to him. ‘I think you both need to calm down a bit. We could go for a quick drink?’

  Richard shakes his head. ‘I am not going to the college bar. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Kat agrees. ‘Maybe somewhere in town?’

  He pauses. ‘Yeah, all right then.’ He rests his head on her shoulder for a moment. ‘Thanks, Kat.’

  She feels suddenly, ridiculously, a surge of excitement. She tries to rein in her smile. She says, ‘I’ll buy.’

  Back in her room, sitting together on her bed, Kat realises that, though she is quite drunk, Richard’s alcohol consumption has taken him to another plane.

  ‘Maybe we need to write it all down,’ he is suggesting. ‘Who said what. Have you got a pen and paper?’

  Kat doesn’t want to make notes about the evening before. It seems a bit mad. Nevertheless, she passes a notebook and a pen to Richard, who starts to scratch away at the pad.

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Turns out I can’t write any more.’

  Kat peers at the pad on his lap. ‘It’s your …’ She can’t remember the words – something to do with an engine. ‘Your motor functions. They’re fucked.’

  They’d started on pints. And then there had been whisky and, at one stage, long, refreshing drinks with vodka in them, and Richard had gone on and on about Ruth. And yet there had been a moment, as they’d stumbled out of the heat of the bar, when he had reached for her hand and walked down the street holding it. St Anthony’s had looked different for a short while and Kat had allowed herself a few moments of giddying happiness.

  ‘I’ll try.’ Kat takes the notepad off him, but she struggles remembering the order
of things. ‘We met at 7 p.m.’ It’s very difficult to control the pen. She holds it tightly, tries forming the shapes of the letters, but the words look nothing like her writing, nothing like words at all. She begins to giggle. ‘I can’t write, either.’

  Richard looks at the pad and begins to laugh. ‘What a pair of twats.’ And he kisses Kat quite suddenly, quite roughly. The force of the kiss unbalances her. Then, as quickly as he started, he pulls away. ‘Sorry. I’m so sorry.’ He slumps back on the bed. ‘Fuck.’

  Kat feels a hot rush of joy. This must have been what it felt like to be Ruth all that time. The rush is followed by a wave of incredible calm. She says quietly, ‘Don’t be sorry.’ She stands in front of him and takes her top off.

  ‘Kat,’ he says. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea …’

  ‘Richard.’ Kat smiles beatifically, Zen-like. ‘This is the best idea.’

  She removes her bra and stands looking at him. She climbs on his lap and puts her cool mouth over his inebriated one.

  Naomi

  Perhaps it wasn’t fair to have called Alice a spotter. I know something about spotting myself. I, too, have spied the outline of Ruth in crowds, by the sea, at a station. I have felt that heart-stopping certainty as I shove past people to get to her, or make Carla drive back down a street, as I retrace my steps, or tap strangers on the shoulder. Usually, almost always, she is moving away. It’s the back of her head, her profile. I dream of that, too. I know what it’s about – it’s a longing for certainty. In my darkest times, I wonder if it might be easier if she had died a more normal way, which is to say: left us a body to mourn over.

  The baby shop is warm and brightly lit and strangely busy for a Tuesday afternoon, though I suppose mothers with infants are less tied to working hours. Carla paces around picking things up and waving them at me with a questioning face. I smile back and gesture: whatever you think. We haven’t been very organised about this – we should have a list – but it’s fun to see Carla so happy, bounding down the aisles. She’s ten years older than me – she’s been waiting ten years longer. We were fortunate, really, that I conceived so early – just on the second round of IUI. I’m not used to thinking of myself as lucky.