What She Left: Enhanced Edition

by T. R. Richmond

  But I hadn’t imagined it. You were sunk to the nuts most of the weekend with that girl from Dartmouth. This guy obviously hadn’t realized Luke and I were an item – or that we definitely weren’t when they’d been in Prague. Luke briefly twisted round to me and smiled an artificial, forced smile, his whole demeanour screaming, ‘Did she hear?’.

  Yes, I heard all right.

  Then he sat through the rest of the meal – even insisted on ordering a dessert – and acted as if it hadn’t happened. Had coffee, still said nothing. Even a liqueur.

  How many other trips away had he lied about? He’d been on loads since we’d met – with the rugby club, lads’ weekends, birthday bashes, a stag do or two. Dublin, Newcastle, Brighton, Barcelona.

  Then all the way home, those ten stops on the Tube, nothing. Maybe he was working on the principle that if I didn’t raise it then he’d have got away with it. There was a calm, calculated steeliness about him I’d never witnessed before.

  Those ten stops on the Tube were his opportunity either to deny it or confess. The man I thought I loved wouldn’t have sat for ten stops and not raised it. At Oval, he even had the balls to suggest we went to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy because there was a poster for it, but I shrugged off the suggestion; I was calculating exactly when the Prague trip had been – and concluded it must have been a good couple of months after we met because it was definitely after Emily T’s wedding.

  It occurred to me that I could pretend I hadn’t heard. I had that choice. It would actually be simple to pack it away at the back of my brain, ignore it. Some women go through their entire lives like that, holding the truth at bay – but bollocks to that old bollocks. He’d messed up and now we had to deal with it.

  I’d been apprehensive of tempting fate, but Luke was different. Meg said I shouldn’t get carried away. ‘There’s got to be something wrong with him – he’s a man!’

  ‘If there is, I haven’t found it yet,’ I always responded. ‘And I’ve had a pretty good look! There again, my judgement’s hardly bombproof when it comes to men, is it?’

  ‘No, but it’s impeccable when it comes to friends!’

  When we got back to the flat, Soph and Alex were in the lounge with friends, so we went to my bedroom and I blurted it out. ‘That rugby weekend you went on in Prague – did you sleep with someone?’

  He denied it initially but soon changed his tune, perching awkwardly on the edge of the bed, like a schoolboy who’d been caught out.

  It was nothing. He was drunk. The two of us were barely an item. Blah blah blah. ‘I’m the same person I always was,’ he claimed.

  ‘That’s the problem – maybe I hadn’t realized who that was.’

  I’d been so determined not to cry, but of course I did. It was the mini Christmas tree that set me off, the lights twinkling, and I remembered how the most random stuff used to make me upset – an old photograph, a child walking a dog, a sink full of saucepans – and I despised Luke for making me feel that again. ‘I’m not fucking stupid,’ I screamed and someone in the flat next door banged on the wall.

  ‘No one said you are.’

  ‘And don’t patronize me.’

  He rubbed his forehead.

  Maybe we’d simply never been compatible. The way he’d wittered on about that movie at Oval – how stylish it was, how classy, how clever – I’d been listening thinking, Yes, but probably boring, and what kind of man rattles on about a spy film and Gary Oldman when he’s slept with another woman?

  I saw the picture of flowers on the wall, left behind by the previous occupant. I’d come back here because I’d needed to be on my own territory, but this flat wasn’t mine; this room wasn’t. We were supposed to be getting a place together. ‘I want us to not communicate for two months. No phoning, no texting, no nothing.’ And the stupidest thing came to mind – that that was a double negative.

  ‘But we’re getting a place together,’ he said. ‘It’s only a fortnight to Christmas.’

  I so wanted a hug, to nestle my head into the crook of his neck, breathe in that smell: alcohol and smoke and the remnants of shower gel, then collapse into bed – me on the right, him on the left.

  ‘I like being near the door,’ he’d said the second night he stayed. ‘In case I need to make a speedy getaway!’

  He’d made me laugh a lot that day.

  ‘I’m not going to let this happen. I won’t, I can’t,’ he said.

  Carry on, I thought. You keep going. You’re merely digging your own grave.

  Article on Your Place, Your People website,

  20 October 2012

  Academic fighting to ‘keep Salmon name alive’ is dying

  The popular professor undertaking a ‘touching tribute’ to former student Alice Salmon is dying of terminal cancer, we can reveal today.

  Professor Jeremy Cooke has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, the most common form of the disease among men in the UK.

  The leading academic is believed to have privately vowed to continue living a normal life, despite his illness, which became public after an anonymous post on a forum by someone referring to themselves as ‘Lone Wolf’.

  ‘Survival statistics for prostate cancer have been improving for thirty years and, if it’s caught early, a sizeable majority of patients can live for five-plus years,’ a retired surgeon from a Southampton Hospital explained. ‘The outlook is far bleaker if it spreads to other parts of the body, such as the bones.’

  Students and staff have rallied to support the man known fondly as ‘Old Cookie’. Former colleague Amelia Bartlett said: ‘He’s a terrific academic with a fierce intellect. I hope he’s able to apply his trademark philosophical wisdom to this awful situation.’

  Ex-student Carly Tinsley said: ‘He was a bit of a legend – happy to play squash with us or join us for a beer in the union. He consistently went the extra mile in providing mentoring and support. He even gave me vitamin tablets when I had freshers’ flu. I wish the press would stop hounding him.’

  In a recent anonymous review-form feedback from students, one declared: ‘His lecture on Melanesia was amazing. It’s made me totes determined to visit that part of the world – that’s got to be about the ultimate accolade for an anthropologist.’

  Another said: ‘At school the teachers parroted what they’d read in other books, but at least he’s been there done that. His knowledge on sociolinguistics is second to none.’

  A long-term resident of Hampshire, Cooke first came to public prominence in 2000 when he featured in the popular BBC documentary The Making of Us.

  The recipient of a clutch of high-profile awards, including the coveted Merton Harvey Award for ‘Inspiring Young People in the Field of Anthropology’, he’s well known for his strong environmental views.

  Educated at the respected Glenhart School near Edinburgh, and a stalwart supporter of several local charities, he famously vowed in a BBC radio interview five years ago to ‘ditch the bloody car and cycle wherever the bloody hell I can’.

  Letter sent by Professor Jeremy Cooke,

  21 August 2012

  Dear Larry,

  Alice slung the contents of the glass into my face and screamed: ‘You pervert.’

  I dabbed at my eyes with my handkerchief; the place was so busy no one gave us a second glance. In the din we stood stiffly, but one of us had to speak, so ridiculously I enquired: ‘How’s your reunion going?’

  ‘Shit, that’s how, the worst day of my life. Any more stupid questions?’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Actually, it’s the second worst day of my life. You’ll remember the first, you were there – you made it the worst, you creep!’

  You’ll never guess what she did next, Larry? By golly, she slapped my face.

  ‘There. That’s for what you did when I was eighteen.’

  The last person to have hit me was my father, five-plus decades ago, and her contact had the same blunt, mechanical quality. Bizarrely, in the commotion, no one noticed. ‘I de
served that,’ I said. ‘If it’s any consolation, I regret what I did with every fibre of my being.’

  ‘Very poetic, but no it’s not.’

  ‘I haven’t come to hurt you. I’m here to explain.’

  Her look reminded me of a near dead weasel I’d once encountered in a snare.

  ‘There’s no need to be frightened.’

  ‘Not. Not frightened of any man.’

  ‘Should I get you some water?’

  ‘Water?’ she replied, as if I’d suggested we booked a restaurant. ‘It’s alcohol I need.’

  I scuttled across to the bar and bought her a drink – opted for a gin and tonic, because that was her mother’s tipple, a double – and when I returned she was struggling to breathe, puffing as if fresh from a bout of exercise.

  ‘Just go,’ she said. ‘If you go now, I can tell myself this is a coincidence.’

  ‘But it isn’t. I knew you were here from Twitter.’

  ‘You followed me?’

  ‘The over-sixties can use the Internet.’

  ‘Yes clearly – to email my mum! What the fuck –’

  ‘About 2004,’ I interrupted. ‘You need to hear.’

  ‘No, you need to get out of my face.’

  But it was bravado. Not dissimilar to how I’d repeat the mantra: I’m not scared of dying. A sense of exigency pressed in on me. ‘I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude. For your discretion. My life could have panned out very differently.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for you. Is that what you think? You stupid old fuck! I kept quiet because I didn’t have a clue what went on. I wasn’t confident enough to do anything else. If it was now, I’d have you strung up.’

  No lies, Larry, we said no lies, and I’m aware I’ve never told you exactly what did occur that night. It was 2004: the anthropology community had been ablaze with chatter about the discovery of fossilized hominid remains in Indonesia, Homo floresiensis. It dominated conversation at our little bash: how this hobbitesque species could have existed as recently as 12,000 years ago, their skeletons like Homo erectus, but their bodies and brains tiny. I’ve never told you how afterwards, safely ensconced in my office, Alice had virtually collapsed into me.

  ‘You could barely walk,’ I said.

  She shivered, a look of horror passing across her face.

  Yes, I may have locked the door, but not for any malign reason, but because she’d made a spectacle of herself at the function and I was anxious to prevent anyone else witnessing her in that state. The inalienable fact remains, however, that no student – regardless of gender – should have been alone with a member of the faculty while that intoxicated. Certainly not for an entire night. Even disregarding the Liz component, it was a gargantuan transgression.

  ‘I put you to bed,’ I said, but she didn’t hear, so I repeated it more loudly, and my declaration had the same bizarre ring as it might were I to have proclaimed: I live on the moon.

  She went to turn away, but clearly couldn’t. ‘How?’

  ‘There was an element of manhandling.’

  ‘When I woke up I was … I didn’t have all my clothes on.’

  ‘Your top was covered in wine, Alice; it was drenched. You wouldn’t have been able to sleep in it.’

  ‘So you took it off?’

  ‘I helped you remove it.’

  She shuddered and peered over my shoulder at the throng of Saturday-night revellers. That’s where you want to be, isn’t it, sweetheart? I thought. Out there in the middle of all that untarnished and optimistic life.

  ‘I made sure you were comfy,’ I said. ‘I tended to you.’

  ‘You could have got a female colleague to do that.’

  ‘Indeed, and with hindsight, that’s what I should have done. The student–staff relationship is predicated on trust and I violated that.’

  But, Larry, I didn’t engineer events to unfold as they did. I didn’t choose to see her slim, pale body or the shaded pinch of her navel or the startling bright purple of her underwear.

  I should have left the pub then, but it would be the last opportunity I ever had to speak with her; I wasn’t intending to leave her with questions. ‘It was the same with your skirt,’ I said. ‘You were snatching at it, complaining you wouldn’t be able to sleep in it. I assisted you out of it.’

  ‘You slimeball, you should have been fired.’

  I’d come to make amends, but it was running away from me, my carefully crafted lines swept aside by her momentum. ‘We have a code and I breached it. I acted unethically.’

  ‘I should have gone to the authorities. I could have had you prosecuted.’

  ‘For what exactly? I acted irresponsibly, immorally, but legally my conduct was unimpeachable. I transgressed one boundary, but there are others I would never cross.’

  Larry, I didn’t elect to smell her sugary breath or feel her limp limbs concertina against me or have to stand back and stare detached and abstractedly at the unadulterated Liz-like gorgeousness of the woman prostrate in my office.

  ‘You’re disgusting, you’re virtually a paedo.’

  ‘No, that’s not on, I won’t have that.’ My right eye twitched; a vein in my right temple pulsed. I rarely lose my temper, Larry – three or four times in the last two decades, but when I blow, I really blow. Once, after a hospital visit, we’d gone to the park – to ‘decompress’, as Fliss had put it, because the news hadn’t been good – and I’d banged a bench until my hands had bled. What’s weird is how I recall so little of that day now. Exorcized from my mind. One’s memory – one’s brain – works in astounding ways; it’s an artful, self-regulating self-defence mechanism, bolting out the bad. ‘I looked after you,’ I said. ‘I took care of you.’

  She’d been out for the count so I’d draped my sweater over her and she’d emitted little animal noises: my snuffling blind kitten, my harvest mouse. I’d flicked the wireless on and leant in and got the close, uninterrupted look, the examination, I’d so long coveted: black whorls of hair on her neck, a tiny mole on the side of her head, the faintest dusting of hair on her face, like down.

  ‘I watched over you while you slept,’ I said.

  I’d sat beside her all night – her tiny body, my tiny brain – and held her hand and outside a dark breeze had brushed the branches of the elm tree against the window. I did think about sex, I very much did – but it was how ultimately inadequate it was. Not much to wreck a marriage over, is it? A stranger putting one part of their body against yours and moving it a bit. Wet against wet, that’s all.

  ‘You could have done anything,’ she said.

  ‘But, Alice, it would have been an abomination.’

  ‘Are you lying?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  She glanced around for her friends, a shot of loneliness connecting us. ‘You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve nearly confronted you about that night,’ she said. ‘Always chickened out.’

  ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for you. Even when you were a fresher, I felt protective towards you because of your mother. You’re so like her.’

  ‘I saw your email – earlier today, I read it. Is Jem what she called you? The pair of you are gross!’

  ‘Bless you, Alice. We weren’t born old.’

  ‘My dad’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.’

  ‘That I don’t doubt.’ She was driving us off on a tangent, but I had to make my peace, so blundered on. ‘Thing is, thing was, the concern I had for you manifested itself speciously. There is the night to which we’ve been referring, plus you may recollect receiving an anonymous note during freshers’ week. I’m rather afraid that was from me.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  Larry, I’d damped my handkerchief and periodically wiped her brow and held water to her mouth and pulled back her hair when she flopped sideways to be sick. I’d fought sleep – I had to ensure she didn’t choke on her own vomit – and a monotonic presenter had chatted to a procession of callers about the city’s recycling policy and the menace of
urban foxes, and daylight had filtered between the drawn blinds and I’d seen her faded brown skirt on the floor, twisted and rumpled like a rope, and I’d thought: Is this all it is to be a man? All those millions – billions – of years of evolution and this is all it’s made us?

  ‘I’m here to say sorry.’

  ‘Sorry’s not good enough.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ I said. ‘And it’s all I’ve got. I am profoundly sorry.’

  She stared down at the pub table, traced the lines of the wood with her finger. Always amazed me as a boy, how you could age a tree by the rings in the wood, one of the first occasions upon which I appreciated the power of science to yield answers. Other revelations circled in my head: Liz’s drinking, the attempt she made on her own life, but they weren’t mine to share.

  ‘The truth can never be an entirely bad thing,’ I said.

  ‘Why did you email her today?’

  ‘Alice, learning you were in the city brought back lots of emotions. They say the death of an old man can never be a complete tragedy but, damn it, I’m not quite old. I don’t feel it at any rate.’ Fear slithered in at me. ‘Prostate cancer, I have prostate cancer.’

  ‘That supposed to make me feel sorry for you?’

  ‘It’s not supposed to make you feel anything. It is what it is. One of your mother’s favourite expressions used to be “look at your monsters”. You’ve done that tonight. I’m proud of you.’

  We were barely three feet apart but it could have been a mile; it was as if she was regarding me through a body of water. I felt a curious release: letting go.

  ‘I left my mum a message after I read your email – not a nice one.’

  ‘Why don’t you call her, put her mind at rest? One should never let the sun go down on an argument.’

  ‘Can’t, too late, it’ll come out wrong. I’ll ring her in the morning. Not that it’s any of your business.’