I shrugged and sat down. ‘That’ll do.’
‘Did you do any writing?’
‘Some. I met great people.’
‘Yeah. Cool. Invite them to stay.’
I took a long slug of my beer and sighed. He looked so earnest, standing there, doing something with aubergines, happy to have me here again; happy with his unconventional life that I no longer wanted to share. I’d never dumped anyone before. I didn’t know how to do it, to stand there and watch someone hurt and hurt and know it was because of me.
I began to think I probably wouldn’t be able to.
By eleven, I hadn’t done it. We’d eaten the aubergine mess, shared two spliffs and drunk some cans of Stella. Now, because I’d been away for a week and so far failed to dump him, I had to go to bed with him and endure reuniting sex.
He set to work on me. I pretended not to notice the extra porn cutouts by the bed, or the balled-up tissues that reeked of spunk, the general seediness of the room. Bo, I felt sure, would not be having reuniting sex in a room like this. She would be having reuniting sex on washed, pure-white linen, with a man who did not grunt like a pig or scratch her tender flesh with the bristles of his beard, and who made her sigh and gasp and part her thighs and buck with pleasure against him and…
Oh God, I thought. Oh, God.
Her Majesty’s Prison for Women
Yorkshire
I’m on good terms with the guards here, but even so, they won’t let me write to her. They asked the judge, and he said she doesn’t want to hear from me, though I don’t believe that for a minute. I’m sure she’d want to know what I have to say. I don’t suppose he even asked her. It’s probably too modern a concept for him. I’ve read about it. They call it restorative justice, where the criminal writes an apology letter to the victim, showing all their remorse. I still can’t really think of myself as a criminal, though; I was just deeply troubled. I hadn’t planned to love her like this, and it took my breath away, and my sense. But I can see that the impact of a remorseful criminal is not to be underestimated. It has deeply healing properties for the victim.
But they won’t let me write, and there’s the end of it.
Perhaps it’s just as well. I can hardly hold a pen, my hands are so chapped and reddened from gardening. They gave me gloves, but cheap ones. Prisoners have the worst of everything, although it’s true that there are some in here who prefer it to life on the outside. It’s the first time many of them have ever had a steady roof over their heads, for a start, or enough to eat. They don’t care that the baked beans are grey and the bacon mostly fat. There’s enough to fill their withered bellies, and that’s all that matters.
I don’t complain about the state of my hands, and never will, not even when I get out of here. There’s a general belief out there in the world that a decent pair of gloves for a criminal would be a squandering of public money. The guards, I’m sure, think criminal hands are tougher than non-criminal hands and less in need of protection. But this is a misunderstanding, another example of the root of everything that is wrong in the world – that endless failure of nearly everyone to grasp the fact that other people are as real as they are.
But still, there is no space for that sort of thinking here. If I am to survive this I must concentrate only on me. I’ve done eight months so far. They gave me eighteen, but there’s talk of letting me out after a year because I’m quiet and obedient and know how to behave. This is a women’s prison and, as such, is not subject to categories of incarceration the way men’s prisons are. Men who are really dangerous are sent to Category A prisons; less dangerous ones go to Bs or Cs. The others – though there aren’t many of them – are lucky enough to head for an open prison, where they can be trusted not to escape and they’ll be allowed out for weekends to visit their families.
We women are not ascribed a sliding scale of dangerousness. We are classed only according to whether we need to be in an open prison or a closed one. I don’t know why this is, but I suspect it is a quaint reluctance on the part of the world to accept that women can be dangerous, too. The hand that rocks the cradle is not the hand that holds the knife.
But I am not dangerous. It was passion, that was all. And love like I have never known.
Part Two
LOVING
ALICE
1
I was useless. I’d been home from Northumberland two weeks and still I was here, in Jake’s house, in his bed, still living my life as his girlfriend. Every day, I woke up and resolved to end things with him, and every night, I went to bed having failed to do it. It was hard, knowing the only way to end your own misery was to cause someone else’s; but also, I didn’t want the drama of it. I’d seen what happened when people finished relationships. They became trapped in the debris for months.
I turned my attention to work, as I’d promised Bo I would. But it was a long slog. I had no real ideas for a story, just a few observations I’d made about how stupid people could be; they were probably more suited to Facebook status updates than a novel. It was a couple of years now since I’d decided I really wanted, more than anything else, to be an author. Someone told me I’d make a good poet – probably because of my ancient tendency toward bleakness and obsession – but no one could make a living through poetry. No, I was going to be a great woman writer of the twenty-first century. I would say subtle yet meaningful things about the world and the people in it, and one day someone would hand me the Nobel Prize for my ground-breaking insights into human nature, insights that would help steer the course of the future.
Jake said, ‘Just write a story that people want to read. Put some sex in it, a murder, someone beautiful. Write about that woman you used to be obsessed with.’
‘What woman?’
‘The lecturer at York. The Shakespeare woman.’
‘I wasn’t obsessed. I admired her. I enjoyed her company.’
‘You used to talk about her all the time. Send her letters and stuff.’
‘Probably because you are so profoundly unstimulating, Jake.’
I hadn’t meant to say that, but he laughed. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m not good enough for a woman of your intellect. But I have a better idea than you and your Shakespeare-loving friends do about what the world wants to read.’
He was probably right. I would settle for knocking out a bestseller, if I could ever think of one. (I thought that was all you had to do to become a bestseller – just knock it out. I had no idea how many other people were doing this, too.)
I sat on the bed and jotted down some ideas in my notebook: ‘Child goes missing. Assumed kidnap. Later turns out mother did it. Why?’
None of my characters had motives. It was a problem.
I let my mind drift to Bo. I’d gone to the library and emailed her the morning after I came home.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 15 May 2015, 11:22
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hello
Hi Bo
Here I am, back in Brighton with my layabout boyfriend and my damp bedsit, missing everyone from the course and wishing we were all still there. It was a privilege to meet you, Bo. I hope you won’t think me gushing if I say I think you have changed my life.
Alice
I read back over it and grimaced. I sounded like an idiot. Bo was only doing her job. She wasn’t on a mission to change lives. I clicked away from the page and didn’t send it. I needed to put Bo in the past. She was a writer. A teacher. She’d returned to her exquisite mountain home and our paths would never cross again. A woman like her had no reason to be friends with a woman like me. That was the end of it.
But then I heard from her that very evening, when we’d barely been out of Northumberland for a day. I opened my inbox, and there it was:
From: [email protected]
Sent: 15 May 2015, 21:43
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hello
Hello,
How are you? Did you make it
back to Brighton in one piece? It must have been a slog on all those trains. I’m glad to be home with my girls again, but it’s quiet here. I went out walking after I’d put them both to bed. The evening was bright, the sun still warm in the sky as I made my way towards Langdale, up the fell. I love it there. From up high, you can look back over the valley and see the blue spread of the lake at Grasmere stretched before you, like a slab in the crevice of the mountains. There was a glassy stillness, I thought, hanging over Grasmere, and everything felt subdued. This sort of deep, deep silence was the thing that first attracted me to the Lakes, but suddenly it felt stifling, infinite, something I could get lost in if I wasn’t careful. You’re a thoughtful sort of a person. Do you ever feel like this?
I’m sure it’s just because I’ve been surrounded by people all week. It takes a while to settle again into everyday life after having such a lively, lovely time.
Anyway, I wanted to say I’m glad I met you. I think you’re a very talented writer. I hope you’ll keep going.
Stay in touch (or tell me to stop bothering you if you prefer!)
Love,
Bo xx
I read it a couple of times, and for a moment I panicked and wondered whether I’d actually hit send on that message in which I said she’d changed my life. Quickly, I searched my sent items. It wasn’t there. She hadn’t read it. Thank God.
I returned to her message. Even her emails were lyrical, I thought. It was the most beautiful message anyone had ever sent me. But it was sad, too, undercut by loneliness. There was no mention of her husband, only her daughters, and now, instead of sitting with him – drinking wine or eating cheese or doing whatever it was that the married bourgeoisie did with their evenings – she was going out alone for walks on the fells, and then emailing me.
I began to picture her then as some kind of ethereal heroine from a Victorian romance. I saw her, mysterious and lonely, wandering over the mountains, waiting, waiting…
I was still sitting on the bed, halfheartedly making notes for a novel, when Jake went out.
He said he was going to find a party.
‘It’s three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon,’ I said.
‘There’ll be one. Someone said last night there was a day party in Hove today. It started at 8 am.’
I found it hard to imagine what went on at a day party in summer. This wouldn’t be a barbecue, with people sitting around on the grass, drinking prosecco. It would be held indoors, windows shut, curtains blacking out the sun in protest against the world’s tedious habit of living according to the dictates of daylight and time. Music would be blaring, the air thick with heat and sweat and smoke. There was no way of knowing when it might end.
‘Are you coming?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘I need to get some work done.’
I watched him go. He was wearing yesterday’s trousers, which had been lying in a heap on the floor all night and were still stained with beer and black streaks of ash from his roll-ups. The sight of him now repulsed me. He was never going to become a world-class painter. I don’t know why I ever thought he would; he’d told me that’s what would happen, and I’d believed him. Being with him was a lesson in disillusion.
I packed up my things and decided not to be here when he came back.
On my way home, I stopped off at the internet café at the top of the road, hoping for an email from Bo. Over the two weeks since I returned from the course we’d fallen into the habit of a daily message. While they were a small thing, they always brightened my day – so much so that I’d already come to rely on them.
There was no email, but she’d updated her status on Facebook:
‘The woman on the Clinique counter persuaded me to buy High Impact Curling Mascara by saying it would train my lashes, thereby tapping into this pervading sense of failure I’ve had for a long time that I’ve been too busy with my book and not engaged with the important task of training my eyelashes.’
I clicked ‘Like’ and commented:
‘It’s a slow process. The desire to train must come from the eyelash itself. You can’t just impose curl on it. I recommend How To Train So Eyebrows Curl and Curl So Eyebrows Train – a seminal work in the field of facial hair training regimes.’
The frivolity of it lightened my mood a little. I walked slowly back to my bedsit, and wondered if I’d ever see her again.
I’d thought the decision to take my things and head back to my bedsit meant that I’d left Jake, but after he’d been gone for three days, I began to think he’d left me instead. Either way, it was over between us.
I ought to have been upset, and perhaps I would have been if I hadn’t unexpectedly received a letter from a probate solicitor, telling me my mother had left me £5,000 in her will. All of a sudden, the world shifted and opened up for me.
It didn’t cross my mind not to accept the money. I had no feelings at all for my mother and refused to forgive her, even when she was dying, but I wasn’t going to turn down £5,000. I took it as an apology, long overdue.
I signed the form the solicitor had sent me so he could release the money, then went straight to the post office to send it. On my way back, I stopped at the library to tell Bo. An email from her was already waiting for me.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 13 June 2015, 10:43
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hello
Hi Alice,
I was just thinking about you and wondered how you are. Work is going slowly for me today. I have to do an interview about Dorothy Wordsworth with a proper academic and wish I’d never agreed to it. Learn this from me, Alice: Never say yes to a worthy academic-type project. It will kill you in the end.
Anyway, what’s new with you? Send me some of your work. I would love to read it!
Xxx Bo xxxx
From: [email protected]
Sent: 15 June 2015, 13:32
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hello
I think you need to remember that you’re far too important these days to do as you’re told. If I were as famous as you are, I wouldn’t do a thing I didn’t want to do. No, siree. I would tell the academics to go fuck themselves. (Do academics understand that phrase, or would you have to use the actual, dictionary term?)
Anyway, all good here. Jake went out three days ago and hasn’t come back yet. I keep wondering if I ought to call the police, but then if they found him I’d be stuck with him again. Sometimes, simply allowing your partner to go missing is easier than dumping them. Have you ever found this?
Also, another good thing: I’ve just had a letter from a solicitor, saying my mother left me £5,000 in her will. I bought myself a mascara. High Impact Curling Mascara, like the one you mentioned on Facebook, because I thought I would like to train my eyelashes. (My rationale for this is that I can start with my eyes and gradually move to my mind and perhaps one day, my fat arse.) It was £17.50. This is the most I’ve ever spent on make-up and yet I still got £4,982.50 in change. My mind actually buckles at this wealth. I think I will buy some rainforest and save the world.
Better go. I am living life on the edge, wondering if Jake will come home today. Fingers crossed he got pissed and drifted away to France. Sorry I’m such a bitch. You have my permission to hate me for this level of spite, although in my defence, no normal woman can be expected to sustain a relationship with a man who takes acid and then shits himself. I know a lot of people who have taken acid in the past. It didn’t happen to any of them.
Love,
Alice
From: [email protected]
Sent: 16 June 2015, 09:43
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hello
Alice, please tell me you haven’t spent all that money on a patch of rainforest. The planet is not your responsibility and saving it will cost a lot more than five grand. Keep the money. You’ll only be able to buy a couple of yucca plants with that and yucca plants never saved anyone.
I’ve just come into my study to start work and I can’t face it, so am emailing you instead. I like your advice. Perhaps I will say it, though I think it would sound better coming from your mouth than mine. Phrases like that seem to roll off your tongue more naturally.
Has Jake come home yet? What are you going to do about this issue?
Love,
Bo xxxxxxx
From: [email protected]
Sent: 16 June 2015, 11:45
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hello
I am not going to do anything about this issue. He’s still out.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 17 June 2015, 16:24
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hello
What will you do when he comes home?
Also: let’s have this chat on Messenger.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 17 June 2015, 16:26
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hello
Good idea. I am on a library computer and they will chuck me out soon.
Bo Luxton
Well?
Alice Dark
I won’t do anything when he comes home.
Bo Luxton
???
Alice Dark
Seriously. I am a flake. It’s my core trait. I will just live with him until he dies. I am confident it won’t be many years.
Bo Luxton
NO! Do not do that. You have money now.
Exquisite Page 6