by Karen Perry
‘Oh? Where?’
‘Back in Pennsylvania.’
‘Is that where you’re from?’
‘Sort of. We travelled all over.’
‘Your family?’
‘Me and my mom. I don’t have any siblings. My dad wasn’t in the picture.’ I say this like it’s no big deal. Which it isn’t. ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’
‘Donegal,’ she tells me. ‘In the north-west. But I’ve been living in London since I was twenty-one, so …’
‘What brought you here?’
‘A boy,’ she says ruefully, but doesn’t elaborate, sipping her coffee instead.
I know all about it, of course – the doomed relationship with some second-rate comic, played out in minor columns of the tabloids. I’d googled it already.
‘So, how are things at work?’ she asks, changing the subject. ‘I imagine it’s strange, after what happened.’
There’s a formality to this conversation that I don’t like. She’s being nice and everything, but it’s as if she’s put a wall of politeness up around her, preventing any intimacy or warmth, so different from how it was when we were last together.
‘Yeah, kind of. Actually, I’m not working there any more.’
‘Oh?’ Her face changes, surprise with a trace of concern entering her expression.
‘It was just a temporary arrangement,’ I explain quickly. ‘Just while my family were away. I mean the family I work for.’
I give her a big spiel about how I’d been the live-in nanny for a family for the past year, and how the job in Pret was just for the summer while they were abroad. I can tell she’s interested so I lay it on a bit thick about how close I was to the twins – four-year-olds, Kai and Lily – detailing all the excursions we used to do: kids’ tours at the Tate, boating on the Serpentine. Deep in the tunnel of my ear, I can hear the ghostly echo of Connie’s laughter.
‘But during the summer, Peter – that’s the father – he got a job in Stockholm, so they’ve moved. They’ve asked me to move out there too, so I can still mind Kai and Lily, but I don’t know. There’s the language barrier for a start. And the winters.’ I give a little shiver, then smile shyly at her. ‘I’m still deciding.’
‘Did you go through an agency?’ she asks.
‘No. We had a mutual friend. It’s better that way, I think, don’t you? With agencies, well. You never know how well they vet people, do you?’
I smile at her again and sip my latte. I amaze myself, sometimes, with the bullshit I can come out with at barely a moment’s notice. Ever since that text, that half-apologetic smile – ‘Childcare issues,’ she’d said – a winding thread has been set off in my head. There’s an opportunity there and I intend to exploit it.
‘So where are you living, if you’re no longer with the family?’ she asks.
‘With Sean.’
‘Sean?’
‘He’s kind of my boyfriend, I guess.’
‘Really?’
The surprise in her voice is unmistakable and instantly, my defences rise.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Nothing, I just –’
‘Did you think I was gay?’
She laughs then, embarrassed, and tries to bite down on it. ‘I’m sorry, Amy. I don’t know what I was thinking.’
It’s there in her eyes, her nervous giggle. I’m not a dyke and I don’t want anyone thinking that I am, especially not her. Dykes are people like Connie’s mother, Elaine, butching around in a lumberjack shirt, tripping over herself to mention the gay community within ten seconds of meeting you.
‘It’s my hair,’ I say gloomily, touching it half-heartedly. ‘It was a mistake. I’m growing it out.’
‘So where does Sean live?’ she asks, changing the subject.
‘He shares a house with other students over in Clerkenwell.’
‘Do you like it there?’
‘It’s alright. I don’t really fit in. I’m not a student, for one thing.’
I tell her about the house, music always pumping from some corner, the kitchen constantly a mess of spilt cereal and abandoned dishes. The living area where the guys sprawl on cinema seats, legs splayed and crotches on display as they drink beer and make jokes. Or girls playing the slot machines, draping themselves over the pool table, tossing their Kate Middleton hair. Shouty, opinionated girls with names like Cressida and Jemima. I know I’m not like those girls. I don’t fit in.
‘It sounds just like Olivia’s digs,’ she tells me, my attention snagging on the name.
‘Your stepdaughter,’ I say, to clarify. ‘The one you told me about?’
‘That’s right. She’s at Oxford.’
‘Pretty handy, right? Seeing as how you don’t get along.’
She laughs then in an embarrassed kind of a way.
‘Did I say that?’
I shrug. ‘Sort of. Not really. I was just reading between the lines.’
The skin on her neck has grown blotchy with nerves or regret, and I can almost see her thoughts tracing back over what she had told me about the first marriage, about Olivia and how difficult she makes things.
‘I wouldn’t really say we don’t get on. We try our best, but it’s not always easy.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty-one. She was sixteen when Jeff and I married.’
‘That must have been difficult.’
‘You have no idea.’ She gives a brief laugh but it dies quickly and so too does her smile. Beneath the facade there is a nub of disquiet. And I can tell, somehow, that there is trouble there.
‘What happened to the first wife?’
‘Ovarian cancer.’
‘Wow. That sucks.’
‘Yes. It was very difficult for them. Olivia especially.’
Then, as if anxious to change the subject, she continues. ‘How long have you been going out with Sean?’
‘A couple of months, I guess.’
‘What’s he like?’
I shrug. I could tell her that I like his smile – the warmth and shyness of it. I could tell her that when I first met him, I thought there was a clean, laundered look to him, like he had grown up in a home of hot dinners and clean sheets. But I don’t tell her any of this. It’s an effort to talk about him, now that she’s made an assumption about me. About my orientation. It’s hard to get past it.
‘Well …’ She glances down at her watch.
I realize that I’ve made her uncomfortable with my gloominess. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I guess I’ve been a little off-centre, since, you know … since the attack.’
Her expression changes – that tightness re-entering it.
‘I guess that’s why I wanted to speak to you. There’s no one else I can really talk to about it.’
‘What about Sean?’
‘He says I’m lucky to have gotten out of there alive. That I ought to be grateful. That I should put it behind me and look forward.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think it’s easy for him to say that. He wasn’t there –’
‘By the way,’ Cara interrupts. ‘What happened to you that night? I was herded by the police into a coffee shop with all the others, but when I looked around you were gone.’
There’s a sharpness about the look she’s giving me, an edge to her question. Nerves announce themselves in my throat, and I take a swig of coffee.
‘I don’t know. I guess we just got separated.’
‘Did they take you someplace else? The police?’
‘Yeah, they did,’ I say quickly. Then, changing the subject, ‘So, what does your husband say?’
‘Jeff?’
‘Do you talk to him about that night?’
‘Of course. And to friends. Most people are sympathetic. Horrified, of course. Some have suggested counselling.’
‘Right,’ I say, feeling the puff of indignation rise inside. ‘Like that’s gonna help.’
‘You don’t think it would?’ she ask
s carefully.
‘Spending a hundred bucks to talk to some stranger who wasn’t even there? Who cannot even begin to feel what it was like?’
‘Jeff has been gently pushing me towards it,’ she tells me. ‘He’s concerned I’m not sleeping. That I’m jumpy. That I’m overly worrying about things.’
‘But that’s natural, right? I mean it only just happened.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Jesus, what does he expect, that you’re going to see bodies lying on the street and then just carry on like normal?’ Despite myself, the words come out more aggressive than I intended.
‘Have you had therapy, Amy?’
‘Yeah, I have. So I know what I’m talking about,’ I continue, my voice still punchy. ‘It’s a crock of shit, let me tell you – some goon in a sweater-vest droning on about guilt and moral luck and being kind to yourself, but it’s all just words. It doesn’t come close to what’s going on inside. Not even in the same ballpark.’
The anger flares inside me, rearing up so suddenly, heat in my chest, screaming in my ears. A woman at the next table looks over. My hands tighten around my coffee cup.
‘Was this after your mother died?’ she says gently, the question throwing me.
I’m still trying to get a handle on this anger, trying to push down on it. ‘Huh? Yeah. Anyway, I guess I wouldn’t recommend it, that’s all.’
Her cellphone erupts suddenly on the table between us. We both look down – the name ‘Jeff’ is lighting up the screen.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ she says, and takes the phone while getting to her feet.
And then I’m left here alone, watching her through the window, wondering what it is she is talking to him about, what he’s saying that’s making her frown like that, press the heel of her hand to her forehead.
She’s only gone a couple of minutes but it’s enough time to do what I need to do. Her bag is on the chair where she left it and, discreetly, I take it on to my lap, reach inside my pocket for the plastic fob, slot it inside a tight fold of leather, making sure it’s wedged there. By the time she’s coming back in through the door, breathless and apologetic, the bag is back where she left it, and I’m draining my coffee.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she tells me, dropping her phone into the bag, checking for her security badge, ‘but I really do have to go.’
‘Listen,’ I say quickly, ‘there’s gonna be a service for Neil. Sometime in the next few weeks. I’m not sure when yet, but I was wondering … I thought, maybe, you might be interested in going.’
She seems to recoil from the suggestion.
‘Sorry, Amy. I kind of feel about funerals the way you feel about therapy.’
She’s making a joke of it, but still I persist.
‘Why don’t you give me your number anyway? I can let you know the details, and then you can decide.’
I give her a sunny look, holding my phone ready to punch in the numbers, and feel her resistance battling with the dilemma of appearing rude. She caves gracefully enough, and I put the numbers in, then send her a text.
‘Now,’ I say, pushing down on my delight, ‘you’ve got my number too.’
When I look up, there’s a strange expression on her face, like she’s about to broach an awkward subject. I’m still seated, and she leans over the table, the fists of her hands pressed against the tabletop.
‘Amy,’ she says, keeping her voice light, but the way she holds my gaze tells me this is serious. ‘What I told you the other night, when we were alone together – all those things I said about … Well, I was upset. I didn’t mean it.’
‘Okay.’
She keeps looking at me in that serious manner, not quite satisfied.
‘I hope you can keep it to yourself. Or better still, forget about it. There are people close to me – my family – who would be hurt, and I just … Well, it seems unnecessary when there was no basis of truth to what I was saying. In fact, the truth is quite, quite different. Do you understand?’
‘Sure,’ I say, like it’s no big deal.
She nods her head and gives a brief smile, but I can tell she is still uneasy.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep your secrets.’
Still not satisfied, she opens her mouth to say something more, then changes her mind. She leans away from the table, checks to see she has her belongings and then holds out her hand for me to shake.
‘It’s been nice knowing you, Amy,’ she says, giving me a stiff sort of smile. ‘And thank you again for everything you did for me on Friday night. I’m very grateful.’
She takes her hand away, but keeps standing there, as if waiting for me to respond. But I can’t think what to say. Her formality has thrown me.
‘Well. Best of luck with everything,’ she says, before turning away.
The bell above the door rings as she exits. I stay sitting in the window, watching her walk up the street. I keep my gaze focused on her, the straightness of her back, the way her reddish-blond hair catches the light, until she’s lost from view. I sit back in my chair, the last remnants of feeling fizzling away to nothing. The long afternoon that stretches ahead, alone, empty, seems suddenly unbearable. And I think to myself of the finality of her handshake, her parting words, how cold and impersonal they had seemed. Is that really how it was to her? After all we had been through together, is this really how we part?
7.
Cara
The problems in my marriage began on the eve of the wedding day itself.
We were not having a traditional wedding, just a small gathering of our closest friends at Somerset House, preceded by a low-key registry office ceremony. No photographer, no big white gown, no flowers. I spent a small fortune on a Stella McCartney cocktail dress and Christian Louboutin heels, telling myself that I was only going to do this once in my lifetime so why not splash out a little. Because we had chosen to go down the less traditional route, it seemed a little silly for us to spend the night before apart. Olivia had gone to stay at Jeff’s sister’s house – she would meet us at the registry office with the others. I had left Jeff in the kitchen to iron his shirt, while I took possession of the bathroom to perform my final pre-wedding day grooming. I can still remember being perched on the side of the bath, in my bathrobe, dabbing red nail polish on to my toenails and wondering why I was bothering as my shoes had closed toes, when the door opened and Jeff stood there, grey-faced.
‘Something’s happened,’ he said.
Such was the limit of my imagination, or rather the narrow sphere of my experience, that the first thing that came to mind was some vital disruption to our big day. I was right, I suppose, but not in the way I’d thought. I expected him to say that there had been some mix-up with the restaurant – a double-booking, a misunderstanding over dates. So when he uttered the name of his teenage daughter in a voice so broken with emotion that it sounded scraped from the bottom of his lungs, I couldn’t for the life of me understand what he was getting at.
‘Olivia? What about her?’
And then I saw the shake in his hand as he ran it over his face, drawing down on his features, and I knew that it was bad.
‘She’s missing. That was Laura. Olivia never turned up at her house. And now she’s sent a text message saying she’s run away.’ He was backing out of the bathroom as he said it.
I hurried after him, dropping the nail polish in my haste, saying, ‘Wait. Where are you going?’
‘To the police station.’
‘Let me get dressed and I’ll come with you.’
‘No. You stay here, in case she tries to get in touch.’
‘She’s probably just holed up in a friend’s house or –’
‘I’m meeting Laura down at the station. I have to go.’
I watched him running around the apartment – locating keys, phone, wallet – feeling exposed in my bathrobe, inadequately dressed for this shock. When he kissed me on the lips and hurried out the door with a promise to call with news, I still didn’t quite reg
ister what it meant. And then he was gone, and I was left alone in the apartment, my thought processes beginning to catch up now that the shock was fully absorbed. I went back into the bathroom, saw the spill of varnish in the bath, a scarlet daub hardened on to the enamel, and I got down on my hands and knees and with a nail scissors’ blade I began to chisel away at it, gently at first, but then harder as I thought more about what had happened, forming my hypothesis, becoming angrier and angrier as I realized the true extent of what she’d done.
Olivia. Jeff’s darling girl. Sixteen years old and already tipping over the cusp of adulthood. It’s not that she didn’t like me, she just didn’t want him to like me – didn’t want him to create room for any other woman in his life. It was understandable – up to a point. She was still hurting from the loss of her mother. I was careful not to intrude on her relationship with Jeff. I had tried my utmost to create a space where she and I could have our own friendship. But her feelings towards me were by turns scornful and indifferent. She made it very clear she considered me to be nothing more than a rebound, a temporary fling her father was having in reaction to his loss. She tolerated me with a patience that suggested I would pass – this relationship would pass – and it was just a bit tedious for her waiting for it all to blow over.
‘Just give her time,’ Jeff used to advise, ‘and she’ll come around.’
I should have guessed she’d pull something like this – she’d made no attempt to hide her contempt for our engagement – yet still, even I had not expected her to go quite so far.
It was after ten the next morning by the time they walked through the door. I had already been up for hours, and I was in our bedroom, make-up and hair done, getting into my dress when they came in.
‘Oh, thank God,’ I said, coming towards her with my arms outstretched, relief washing over me.
She moved straight past me to her room, slamming the door shut and locking it.
I turned to Jeff, my questions coming out in a rush: Where had she been? How did he find her? What did the police say? He looked shattered, drawn. I thought to myself that I should put an apron on over my dress, and fry an egg for him, make coffee and toast – the wifely duty already coming out in me, the need to provide him with some kind of sustenance to revive him, then get him into his suit and to the registry office.