Good Girls

by Amanda Brookfield

  ‘Dad’s died,’ she said thickly, snatching the tissue and struggling into a sitting position to blow her nose. She had stopped crying, but her body had stiffened, a warning, it seemed to Nick, that in spite of this wretched information no further patting would be welcome. ‘Howard had phoned to tell me just before I got stung. Somehow I had forgotten.’ She thumped the bedcovers, shaking her poor swollen face, even redder now from her distress. ‘Until just now. How could I have forgotten?’

  Nick started to answer, but she cut across him.

  ‘I loathed him. For how he was with me. For what he did to Kat. I don’t even know if he was properly nice to Mum and now I’ll never find out. But I’ve lost all of them. It’s just me now. Do you see? I’m the only one left.’ More tears were seeping down her cheeks.

  ‘Would you like me to call Trevor?’

  ‘No,’ she said crossly, ‘I would not.’

  ‘Or perhaps a nurse—’

  ‘A nurse?’ She managed a withering glance.

  Nick stood up with a sigh of defeat. ‘Okay. Well, I’m guessing you’d prefer it if I left you in peace, at any rate.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t,’ she snapped. ‘You have been… are being… so unbelievably kind. Thank you. Though I think that might be making things worse.’ She plucked out a fresh tissue. ‘Kindness makes me cry, you see. So no more of it, do you hear?’ She buried her face in the tissue, making small trumpeting noises as she blew.

  Nick hovered by the bed, peering at her doubtfully. ‘So you don’t want me to go?’

  Eleanor raised her head, looking at him properly for the first time. She sighed slowly and heavily. When she spoke, it was in a voice softened with tender resignation. ‘It isn’t a question of what I want, Nick.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Nick was aware of all the hairs up and down his arms and on the back of his neck standing upright. ‘What is it a question of then, Eleanor?’ He folded his arms to steady himself. The room seemed to quiver and then grow very still around them. ‘Tell me anything you like, Eleanor. Anything.’

  ‘I still like you.’ The words seemed to float out of her mouth. She sounded defeated. ‘I mean, really like you,’ she repeated bitterly. ‘A lot. Too much. As bad as before. I thought it was done with, but seeing you again has made me realise that it is not. I can dress up what I did last year – letting you think I was Kat – and, like I said in my letter, it did help distract me from the awfulness of her being so sick, but the bottom line, I can see now, in all its pathetic, despicable glory, is that it was the chance of some contact. With you. I suppose it’s in my genes, or something,’ she muttered. ‘Most people grow out of girly crushes, but not me apparently.’ She blew her nose again sharply, before adding, much more matter-of-factly, ‘There, at least that’s done with. Better that you know. And I can only apologise. But don’t worry, just as soon as I’m out of this place I shall steer well clear…’ She broke off as quick purposeful footsteps sounded outside the door. Somehow Nick just had time to lunge across the room and put the light on. A moment later Peter Whycliffe, ruddy and bespectacled, blustered in.

  ‘Ah, someone told me that you were still here. Not interrupting, I hope.’ He threw Nick a slightly quizzical glance before smiling broadly at Eleanor. ‘Hello, I gather from my colleagues that you are progressing very well indeed. I’ve just overtaken Doreen on her way with the late supper trolley, which I can assure you is good news. Unlike some of our fellow institutions, we have rather splendid food. Nick, could I have a word? Now? If it suits?’ He held the door wider by way of an invitation.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Nick turned in the direction of Eleanor, offering her a nod of farewell but not really seeing her. What she had said was still exploding inside his head, each word pinging separately, not making sense.

  ‘Arrived this afternoon and we can’t get rid of him,’ Peter quipped, pulling a face at Eleanor over the top of Nick’s head as he ushered him outside.

  Eleanor had just spotted the stick leaning against the end of the bed when Nick hobbled back in. He appeared to be breathless, as if he had covered a great distance at considerable speed, instead of just a few yards. ‘Don’t speak,’ he commanded, pushing out his jaw in a way that she had forgotten he did and which someone else – not Eleanor – might have interpreted as hostile. ‘I forgot this.’ He seized the stick and brandished it like a sword. ‘And to tell you that I like you too. Very much indeed. And the reason I am job-hunting in England is because my wife and I are divorcing and I have come back to live here permanently.’ He reached behind him as he spoke, hunting for and missing the door handle.

  Eleanor couldn’t take her eyes off his face, so familiar, so longed for. She was glad he had told her not to speak, because she couldn’t think what to say. Her brain was too taken up with the realisation that this was one of the most tremendous moments of her life, a moment she had never expected and which she never wished to end.

  32

  ‘So, basically, you are on the rebound.’

  ‘Basically.’

  ‘An ancient forty-year-old—’

  ‘Almost forty-two now.’

  ‘Thank you for the correction. An almost-forty-two-year-old. On the rebound. All single women should beware.’

  ‘They should. Particularly single women with large brains and long legs and fledgling writing projects about two troubled little girls and Jane Eyre, which they, understandably, do not wish to discuss because it puts them off.’

  Eleanor changed gear, not an entirely straightforward manoeuvre, since Nick’s hand was on her knee. He had asked if he could put it there, concerned it would interfere with her ability to concentrate on her driving. It interfered with her ability to concentrate on her own name, let alone driving, but she had vehemently protested otherwise. At the passing reference to her work, she shot him a look of gratitude, marvelling at the balance he seemed to strike, effortlessly, between support and intervention. ‘You are trouble, in other words.’

  ‘Major trouble. To be avoided. Like that string of bollards, coming up on the left.’

  ‘I see the string of bollards. I plan to stay to the right of them.’

  ‘Excellent plan.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I like how you drive, by the way. It makes me feel completely safe, yet slightly excited.’

  She giggled, sweeping into the bollarded lane and then out of it, past a short line of cars waiting their turn by a makeshift set of traffic lights. ‘That’s an interesting combination.’

  ‘It is a fantastic combination. And a surprise. I thought you were purely a cyclist. That day I visited, I only saw your bike.’

  ‘That’s because this was in the garage.’ Eleanor patted the dashboard of the Corsa, purchased for a rock-bottom price, thanks to its great age and a six-figure mileage, soon after her move to Oxford. ‘It was to be part of my new grown-up life, but I barely use it. Don’t move your hand, by the way. I like it where it is.’

  ‘So do I. The hand isn’t going anywhere.’ He slipped his palm a little lower, so that it cupped her kneecap. ‘I am so glad you once loved me. Have I mentioned that?’

  ‘You have. Once, I think, or maybe twice.’

  ‘And telling me about it in that letter of yours – that was tremendous of you. Brave. Thank you for doing that.’

  ‘My pleasure. However, as you might recall, you didn’t love me back. Not remotely. You loved Tilly, then Kat. You dropped me like a stone.’

  ‘So I did. But I feel bad about that in retrospect, and I certainly liked you. I started to like you twenty years ago and now we are building on it.’

  ‘Building?’ Eleanor giggled again. It was ten days since he had left her hospital room and this was how it had been, the conversation buzzing and leaping, playful, serious, utterly delighting. There was so much to say, it was always impossible to remain on one subject for long. It was as if they knew each other, which they did, but also didn’t know each other, because in so many ways they didn’t. Apart from a couple o
f phone conversations, they had met just twice, once for a walk round the Parks and once for a greasy-spoon lunch in the Covered Market, a brazen request of hers for a jaunt down memory lane, to which Nick had acquiesced with wry amusement. On this third occasion they were returning from the Sussex coast to Oxford, half lost in a mesh of country roads.

  They were driving back from her father’s cremation which had been organised with Howard at a crematorium on the outskirts of Lewes. The outward journey had been quite different, with her subdued by nerves and dread, and Nick tactfully silent. But now, with the job done, even the ashes scattered, a brief thin cloud falling into the sea, she felt as if she was floating, a balloon basket free of weights. The presence of Nick was, she knew, integral to this feeling, and yet when he had first come up with the idea of accompanying her to the service, she had said no.

  ‘But why not?’ he had retorted. ‘It will be an ordeal for you. I would like to think that having me there will make it less of one.’

  ‘Is that so?’ she had countered weakly, disarmed both by his determination to be kind and the closeness of his tall angular body. The café table was small. Inches separated their elbows, their fingers, their knees. Each time he gesticulated she had to resist the urge to grab his hand just to hold it. They had agreed during the course of the week to be friends – good friends – but whenever they met, the air around them, for her at least, seemed to crackle. Before Nick spoke she had just been watching, transfixed, as he ploughed up the last drizzles of his egg yolk with a piece of fried bread. Fried food of any kind had been ‘forbidden’ by his wife, he had remarked casually, plunging his knife and fork into a glistening sausage and responding to Eleanor’s exclamation of disbelief with a rueful headshake that stopped her enquiring further.

  ‘I did once know him after all,’ he had reminded her gently, ‘just as I knew your dear sister. Or thought I did.’ He paused, looking hollow-eyed for a moment, distracted by some conjured image that Eleanor could only guess at. ‘Which means I also have some inkling of why the funeral will be so very hard,’ he went on, threading his hand between their plates and mugs and sliding it over hers. ‘So let me go through it with you. As a friend,’ he added quickly, ‘and because you are not alone.’

  For an instant all Eleanor could feel was relief that he had made some sort of physical contact at last. She had looked down at his hand, loving the vast width of the knuckle span, the way it so easily covered hers. ‘You were always ravenous,’ she murmured, ‘that’s what I remember most vividly about coming here when we were students. And full of clever-talk. I used to think you were such a genius, quite the Mr Renaissance, with his doctoring and his literary knowledge.’

  ‘Like your beloved Keats, maybe?’

  She nodding, smiling at what he remembered. ‘Like Keats.’

  ‘And now what do you think?’

  ‘Now the jury is out.’

  ‘Oh dear. How long does the jury think it’s going to need?’

  ‘A very very long time indeed. In fact, the jury may never return.’ Eleanor had grinned, aware both that she was blushing and that for once she didn’t mind because it was purely from a new brand of happiness that she had no wish to disguise.

  ‘But you were always hungry too,’ he had burst out with gleeful indignation. ‘I’ve just remembered. That first time we met – in the college library – your stomach roared. Hey, does it still do that?’ He peered in the direction of her midriff as if sizing up a dangerous object. ‘And you may as well know,’ he went on, swiping an abandoned quarter of buttered toast off her plate and chewing it as he talked, ‘that way back then, I always thought you were extremely striking. I knew it, but just didn’t fully appreciate—’

  ‘No, Nick. Don’t,’ she had pleaded, serious suddenly.

  ‘Don’t what?’ He dropped the wedge of toast, his strong blue eyes staring out with a hunger that Eleanor couldn’t help thinking had nothing to do with food. He wanted to love and be loved. As did she. As did everyone.

  ‘We must never try and rewrite the past,’ she commanded. ‘For instance, I don’t want you to pretend you liked me more than you did. What happened, happened. We are here now, friends, having this lunch that I am so enjoying. That’s all that matters’

  ‘But you were striking and I did like you,’ he had insisted, sheepishly.

  ‘Good. Thank you.’ She smiled. ‘But, with everything that has occurred, including and especially my own heinous, sisterly deceitfulness – which you somehow really do seem to have forgiven…’ Eleanor paused. Forgiving herself was going to take longer. ‘Because of that, I want – need – us to be absolutely honest with each other. Always. No matter how difficult the subject. Can we agree on that?’

  ‘We can.’ He picked up the toast and set it down again. ‘But please don’t forget I lied to you as well. All that stuff about being happy, you now know it was bollocks. Donna and I had both been the opposite of happy for years. In fact we made each other miserable. And the reason I lied about it when I was writing to you—’

  ‘To Kat.’ Her eyes flashed.

  ‘To Kat,’ he conceded with a sigh, ‘was simply because I wanted you to feel safe enough to continue replying. Though, whatever you say,’ he went on quickly, ‘it was you I was getting to know during those months: your words, your thoughts, your voice. And then you wrote properly anyway… a “real” letter.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘It was so honest, I couldn’t imagine the courage it took. I still can’t.’

  Eleanor had tried to glare but everything he said made her too happy.

  ‘And as for the Kat imposter business, “what’s in a name”,’ he teased, ‘“that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…”’

  ‘Quoting Shakespeare is not playing fair,’ she had hissed, sitting back and wagging a finger. ‘Especially not Romeo and Juliet. It’s a cheap trick. Corny. We are not in a romcom.’

  ‘No we are not. So let me be at your side for the funeral of your father,’ Nick had retorted, suddenly solemn himself, and pinning her with fierce determined eyes until she agreed.

  ‘You were brave today,’ he said, a few minutes after the bollards. ‘You are always brave.’

  ‘No, I am not, but thank you. And thank you again for coming. You were right, it really helped. And now I feel so relieved, it’s almost embarrassing.’

  ‘Good. Don’t be embarrassed. Your relief has been well earned.’

  Eleanor fell silent, seeing again her father’s coffin gliding through the grey silk curtains towards incineration. It had indeed helped having Nick there, filling the space at her side while making no demands on her attention. But the plainness of the surroundings had been strengthening too. In a church she might have wept, for so many reasons, but, somehow, the austerity of the crematorium’s so-called chapel, a square modern room, with fresh white walls and pre-taped organ music, had offered a natural bulwark against heavy emotion.

  She had feared seeing Howard might set her off, because of Kat, but he had arrived on his own at the last minute, taking a back-row chair in the near-empty room and shooting her look of apology. Afterwards, over the tea and biscuits provided as part of the service package, he had stumbled through some small talk with Nick and then bolted with further apologies, thanking Eleanor again, profusely, for their pre-agreement that she would take charge of the ashes. ‘Not near us, or your mother, remember,’ he had reminded her grimly, referring to a phone discussion they had had earlier in the week. ‘I couldn’t bear that. Personally, and no offence, but I hope your father rots in hell.’

  ‘I think he managed to make his own life pretty hellish,’ Eleanor had murmured in reply, finding the thought gave her some solace.

  As to the ashes, she was at a loss and had been planning to defer the matter until Nick had suggested the sea, mentioning a perfect cliff-side spot which he had visited several times with his hearty godfather.

  ‘Would that have been the godfather with the dog,’ Eleanor had ventured, once th
ey were in the car and on their way.

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘The one you had been visiting when you came to take me out to lunch that time. The day we picked up Kat hitchhiking. The day you first met her. The day you fell in love with her.’ Eleanor sighed. ‘God she was glorious, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ Nick had replied softly. He was holding the urn on his lap, keeping it wedged between his knees as he issued instructions for when to turn right and left.

  ‘I saw the two of you in bed that night, you know,’ Eleanor had admitted, ‘the one you wrote about in that last email, when you still thought I was Kat. I had this vague drunken plan of seducing you. I crept along the passageway only to find that Kat had got there first.’ She laughed as Nick groaned. ‘It’s okay. I wanted to die at the time, of course. But it’s what happened. In fact, looking back, I honestly think it must have helped Kat enormously, having you in her life. Dad sort of approved because you were mature and decent. And to have you so obviously smitten can only have boosted the confidence she needed to escape properly and make the break for London.’ Seeing the set of Nick’s face, still faintly pained and studiously staring at the windscreen, she added, ‘We agreed straight talking, remember? You have nothing to be sorry for. Besides, Kat wasn’t exactly plain sailing, was she, for all her gloriousness? I may have kept my distance, but I always knew she gave you a hard time.’

  Nick shot her a rueful smile. ‘Your sister was a nightmare,’ he had conceded fondly.

  There was a small car park and a footpath that ran along a weather-beaten hedge towards a lookout point on the cliff-side. They went in single file, the wind beating at their clothes, forcing Nick to lean more on his walking stick. After ten minutes they had reached a jutting section furnished with a bench and a telescope. A stretch of fencing replaced the hedge, opening up the view of the cliff drop and the expanse of grey choppy water below.