After the time I thought I saw her in the library at St Anthony’s, I bumped into her with Jane. It was the summer term – the end of my first year at university – and I had been seeing Jane for a couple of months. She was a third year with a pale, round face. Jane took over my life at a time when I felt I needed that, needed someone else to make decisions for me, but then it got a bit much – she wanted to do absolutely everything together. I began to fake visits to the library to get away from her, or I’d pop off to the cinema on my own for an afternoon. I caught a matinee performance of A Matter of Life and Death in the town’s tiny ancient cinema and wept all the way through it, longing for something that I couldn’t quite put into words.
I didn’t say much to Ruth about it: I knew what she would say. Ruth thought Jane was a control freak. At that time, in the months before she went, she got rather obsessed with control, with the idea of it. She started spending a lot of time with Kat, who would come to the cottage and sit holed up in Ruth’s room talking intensely. They’d go quiet when I came in.
‘Talking about boys, are you?’ I would tease. ‘You can do that in front of me …’
‘Well, we know they’re not quite your thing,’ Kat would say in that affected way she had.
And I suppose she was right.
I met Miss Wick again in an old bookshop just off Cathedral Square. She was ahead of us in the queue, but her hair had changed – it was shorter – so I didn’t realise it was her. Jane was a couple of people after her in the queue and for some reason, when she got to the till, she got quite heated about the book she was looking for. Jane had a habit of rubbing everyone up the wrong way, being rude to waiters, people who served her in shops. And during the low-level kerfuffle, I felt the lightest of touches on my waist. ‘Naomi, I thought it was you.’ The same low voice, the same hands.
I looked at the door, out to the square, but my feet were fixed to the spot. I said: ‘Why are you here?’ And, because it was the first thing that came to mind, I added: ‘You left me.’
‘Naomi.’ I’d forgotten exactly what her voice was like, how that was always one of my favourite things about her. ‘I had to. I was your teacher. Someone had found out.’
I wanted to say: ‘You broke my heart.’ I wanted to say: ‘I never got over you. Because of you I didn’t get into Cambridge, I had a sort of breakdown, I ended up here, with an awful girlfriend and a sense of grief that I will probably carry with me forever.’ But instead I said: ‘Your hair is different.’
Miss Wick put a hand to her head. ‘I needed a change.’
‘You look like a boy,’ I said spitefully.
She didn’t seem bothered by this. ‘Are you here with someone?’
‘Yes.’ I looked at the counter, where Jane was shaking her head crossly. ‘Are you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘There hasn’t been anyone since you.’ She took a step closer to me and I could feel the heat coming off her body, smell the woody scent of eucalyptus.
I wondered what it would feel like to run my fingers through her hair now it was so short and I remembered an afternoon I’d bunked off school – it had been the only time I’d ever done anything like that. It had been warm outside, but we had spent the afternoon in Miss Wick’s flat, drinking wine, having sex. And as I stood in the hot little bookshop waiting for Jane, I had a very clear memory of Miss Wick’s head between my legs, the feel of her hair under my hands.
She took another step closer.
‘You’re not my teacher any more.’
‘No, I’m not.’
She raised a hand to lift an eyelash off my cheek. Such a tiny thing, but she knew that I would let her, knew I wouldn’t fight it, probably knew, too, of the lovely heat that would flush through me at the contact.
And then there was Jane, breaking the spell, saying, ‘Hello, I’m Naomi’s girlfriend.’
‘I’m an old teacher of hers.’ Miss Wick smiled. ‘Well, not teacher exactly.’
We chatted for a while. She told us she was doing an MA at St Anthony’s the following year; that she was in town to sort out her accommodation. I just stood there, blushing to the roots of my hair, saying little as the pair of them talked.
‘I might be able to help you. I’m good friends with the housing officer,’ said Jane, as if this was something to be particularly proud of. Poor Jane. Not just for that. For all of it. For the way I was in Miss Wick’s arms by that very evening.
The sense that I would find her again never left me – on buses, walking through London – it sometimes felt overwhelmingly strong: the feeling that she would be waiting for me, to call me back with the lightest of touches, just like she did then.
Kat
April 2016
The vibration of her mobile against the hard ceramic of the sink makes Kat jump. She climbs out of the bath carefully, picks it up with a damp hand and reads: ‘Are we still on for tonight?’
How long has it been since she last saw him? Two years? Or is it three? Kat frowns as she tries to remember. She places the phone back on the sink and returns to the heat of the bath. She’ll answer later. He can wait for once.
For years after university, Kat would find herself, at times when she wasn’t concentrating properly on being busy, caught unawares by the telephone. Just for a second as she lurched to pick it up, her heart would tighten at the thought it might be Richard. Sometimes, on quiet Sundays, the doorbell had the same effect. Or on seeing an unopened envelope flashing on the screen of her mobile, she would allow herself to think – just for a fraction of a moment – that it might be him. This April afternoon is not one of those times.
The news at the hospital that morning had not been good. It hadn’t been good at all. What had been the word they used? Metastatic. It had spread to her bones now, too. She had called the office to say she’d be taking the rest of the day off. Which was rare for her. She’d have to tell them at some stage. There would be so many people to tell. She should write a list. First, of course, there was her mother. Kat closes her eyes. She doesn’t feel strong enough for that yet. There would be tears, and endless cigarettes, and wine, no doubt, and a fight. ‘They’re more likely to get it, aren’t they? Women who don’t have children?’ her mother would say as she had said before and she would pour herself another glass of wine. ‘Why didn’t you settle down? You never looked after yourself. All those cigarettes, all those men.’ And she wouldn’t see the irony.
Even today, of all days, Ruth was managing to take the limelight. A skeleton had been found near her old house in St Anthony’s after all these years. A sordid ending for her family but, it looked very likely, an ending nevertheless. She and Richard had arranged to meet up to talk about it, perhaps to say a sort of goodbye to Ruth.
Ghastly though it is, it looks likely that Ruth died at someone else’s hands. She thinks of the last time she’d seen her friend at the memorial ball. It wasn’t a happy memory. Ruth hadn’t spotted her at first: she hadn’t seen her because she was only looking at Richard, as usual, kissing him passionately before he went on stage with his band.
Kat had wondered if Ruth might return from Wales, where she’d fled after the break-up, for the last night of the year – Richard’s final night in college. Kat was dressed in white that night, in an elegant evening dress she’d borrowed from her mother. ‘No man can resist a woman in white,’ her mum had said when Kat paid her a visit to borrow it. She’d remembered it from photos of her parents in the Eighties, but it had aged well with its simple, clean style and an elegant high neck. ‘I’m sure he will fall in love with you,’ added her mother, who had, admittedly, only heard part of the story.
‘Don’t do what I did,’ her mum had advised her as they both admired her reflection in the white dress. ‘Don’t let yourself go.’
But dressed in white, holding two glasses of champagne – one for her, one for Richard, which she’d picked up to give him before he went on stage – Kat felt like a jilted bride.
To be fair, Richard hadn’t made an
y promises. The night he and Ruth broke up, Kat woke a couple of times, frightened to move in case she should disturb him, break the spell. It wasn’t the most romantic of scenarios – the room reeked of alcohol and Richard was a fitful sleeper, his skin clammy to the touch as he sweated out the booze – but Kat had an irrepressible sense of wellbeing. Waking at dawn, she was worried he might disappear if she fell back to sleep, so she lay very still, eventually only extracting herself carefully to go to the loo, brush her teeth and put on just a touch of make-up in the bathroom.
She opened a window while she waited for him to wake, considered popping out to get them coffee and croissants. But, no, she decided, she wouldn’t leave him. She sat up guarding him like treasure, trying to look casual for when he woke, but he slept and slept. When he did eventually wake, he looked so crushed as he remembered the night before that she almost wished he were still asleep, keeping the fantasy alive.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his head, muttering, ‘Christ, oh Christ.’
‘Would you like me to get you coffee?’ Kat asked, chastened.
He shook his head, croaked, ‘Maybe some water.’
Kat went to get a glass from the kitchen, glad to have this task to do, at least, and that was how the day went, and the days that followed. It wasn’t that they were together, exactly – you wouldn’t call it that – but he hadn’t told her to go away either, to leave him alone. He seemed to like her popping by with a sandwich from the bar or the day’s newspaper to distract him. And if largely all they talked about was Ruth, then, Kat told herself, that would change. That would change eventually.
A few days after Ruth had left for Wales, a letter arrived for Richard. It was very long and tear-stained, swearing over and over that she would never be unfaithful to him, that it must have been someone else, the girl who looked like her. She scrawled, more than once, ‘Just ask Kat,’ underlined lots of times.
‘Not that again,’ Kat tutted when Richard showed her. Which was another way of avoiding the question about the lookalike, of avoiding lying again.
After the first night, there had been the odd moment when it had seemed like more than a friendship. An occasional lingering look. She held his hand once or twice as he wept, kissed the tears off his face as they hugged, enveloped by the breath and the heat of him, until he stopped her gently.
‘Don’t you want to?’ she asked.
‘It’s not that,’ he said.
No need to ask what it was. That was the only time she cried. ‘Please don’t say for sure,’ she said, becoming the begging woman she never wanted to be, ‘that that was our only time. Please just let me hope that it’s possible.’
And he hadn’t taken that away from her.
‘If you were mine,’ she said, promising herself this would be the last she would say on the matter, ‘I wouldn’t look at anyone else. Ever.’
She had taken her kicks where she could, burying her face against his neck or resting it against his chest when they hugged, feeling his heart thumping against her ear.
When Ruth returned to claim him, it was the first time Kat had genuinely given in to hatred. Looking at the back of her friend’s head nodding along to Richard’s music, she had wondered for a moment what it would feel like to crack the champagne glass across it. The thought gave her a moment of satisfaction at the time, but now the memory of it makes her feel sick with guilt.
When the bathwater has cooled, Kat nudges the hot-water tap on with her big toe and breathes in the steam. Has she ever had a friend quite like Ruth? Kat’s not sure that she has. She’s always thought of herself as a sociable person. She’s never found it difficult picking people up with a smile, a one-liner. There were parties and dates throughout her twenties, though she found, with Ruth gone, that she had to work at keeping her life full. She had transformed, in a way, into one of those try-hard girls at college: everything effortful, all the lists, the rushing around. There had been no time for lying in bed, smoking joints, quoting Dorothy Parker to each other and perhaps, because of the lack of time invested in her friendships, none of them had really endured.
As for men, it had begun to feel that every encounter was a permutation of one that had gone before. There had been lots of Richards: men who resembled him in one way or another. Maybe it would be the messy hair, or the dark eyes, or the certain way they would hold a guitar, or look up from a book. But the patterns of the relationships – they were similar, too. A fair few of the men had been infatuated at first – there would be nights of sleeplessness and endless shagging, and the sense of chasing moments that blotted out the past. Moments when she would think: this is it; this can mean a fresh start.
But then one day he – the paler version of Richard, whichever one it was – would wake and get dressed a bit too quickly. Or they would be at lunch and she would notice him give a particularly winning smile to the pretty waitress, and she would know that that magic thing that kept them together would be on the wane. It was so wispy, so insubstantial, this thing that if you tried to pin it down, you would make it vanish all the quicker. And no toss of your hair or artful smile could ever make you seem the same way to him. Because it had gone and you weren’t new any more.
A ridiculous part of her still feels excited at the thought of seeing him again: a glimmer of blind hope against years and years of experience. It feels hot and bright, the hopefulness, and it makes her want to cry, because she knows she will never quell it; that it will always be disappointed. But perhaps she needs the distraction today of all days. She sighs and gets up again, knowing already how she will answer: ‘Yes, of course. Coach and Horses at six?’ She didn’t add any kisses.
She puts the phone back and returns to the bath, sinking her head slowly into the water. Her hair is shorter, much thinner than it was, but she enjoys the feeling, as she leans back, of it splaying out, clouding the water with conditioner. Mildew is eating its way across the ceiling. The bathroom needs work. The window frame is bruised with mould and condensation drips down the tiles. She thinks that now she won’t have to do it. Dying is a pretty extreme way to get out of DIY, says a stupid, chirpy voice in her head. But she doesn’t smile.
Shivering as she gets out of the bath, Kat stands for a moment in front of the mirror, appraising her body. She’s still getting used to the mastectomy scar on her chest, still taken aback by it when she catches sight of it like this. She’s never had much fat to spare and now her pale skin is pulled taut over her ribcage. Her eyes look changed, dimmed.
She puts her dressing gown on, knots a towel around her head and pads through to her bedroom. She dresses carefully: nice lingerie – not that he would see it – a navy wool dress and lipstick. She takes great care with her make-up.
It’s still too early to leave, so she wanders to the living room and sinks into the sofa. Her cat makes his way over to her from his basket. He climbs on her lap, pushing his knotty head into her hand.
There are no photographs on the walls. It had never seemed quite the time to do it. Kat thinks: I’m not sure that I would recommend it though, living. It all comes down to a series of choices and at the time you don’t even know you are making them, or that they will stay with you forever, that you can never go back to the time before you made them.
The cat is purring very loudly now and rubbing his ginger fur against her wool dress. Kat gets up and removes the fur with a clothes brush. She thinks there might be time for a drink before she leaves. She still hasn’t cried.
She had known before she saw him, before she had even washed the hair mask out, that it would be him to whom she told the news. A condensed version of her telling him, and his comforting her and ending up, well, ending up back at her flat, in bed, flashes through her head on the tube but, pleasant though it is, this line of thought, too, needs to be extinguished.
It’s still early evening, not yet dark, but Piccadilly is buzzing with tourists, commuters, theatregoers and large groups of European students. The journey has made her feel particularly nauseous a
nd she takes a deep gulp of air as she comes out of the station. She stops for a second on a crowded pavement looking up at the advertisements and neon lights. The Eros statue, the theatre billboards, the pigeons, a small group of street dancers performing to a scratchy track. All this – the tourist crowds who bottleneck as they pour out from underground, the shrill whistles of the rickshaw drivers, that Tennessee Williams play that has run forever that she still hasn’t seen, which there probably won’t be time to see – all this will still be here when she has gone.
For a second she pauses and looks at him, waiting by the bar, as she goes in. It’s a line from The Age of Innocence she thinks of: ‘Each time you happen to me all over again.’ He looks up with a careful smile. Kat joins him, kissing him brusquely on the cheek. He still smells like Richard.
‘You’ve cut your hair,’ he says.
‘Yes.’ Kat touches her neck self-consciously. She wants a drink before she tells him anything. ‘Have you ordered yet?’
‘Not yet.’ Richard shakes his head, starts intensely: ‘You know something of hers arrived in the post for Naomi?’
Kat doesn’t know why, but the urge to laugh bubbles up inside her. She shouldn’t have had that drink before she left. The young woman behind the bar, with ample breasts straining under her T-shirt, glances up at her.
‘I’m looking into it,’ Richard is saying. ‘Doing some research. Did Naomi call you about it, too?’
‘She emailed.’ Kat wishes he could have waited until they were sitting down. She catches the barmaid’s eye: ‘G and T,’ she mouths, then adds to Richard, ‘I couldn’t help. I couldn’t remember anything about her teddy.’
Richard orders his drink as well – just half a pint, Kat notices with disappointment – and they make their way to a small table in the corner. He takes a gulp of his London Pride and puts it down again.
The Girl Before You Page 23