You and Me

by Nicola Rayner

  A couple looks out – a man in black who resembles Vladimir Putin and a woman in a rich green dress with her hand on her protruded belly. There’s a small dog at their feet and a circular mirror between them, in which you can catch a glimpse of the artist, Jan van Eyck.

  ‘I don’t think I know it,’ Charles says on our way there.

  ‘You do,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll recognise it.’

  When we get there, he does.

  ‘She’s pregnant, isn’t she?’ he asks.

  ‘Actually, they’re less sure these days. They think it may just be her dress, the way she’s standing.’

  ‘She looks pregnant to me,’ he says stubbornly.

  I concede the point to him. I suppose, with two children, he would know more about that than me. It’s hardly my specialist subject. When Ellie first told me about Rose, I’d had no idea.

  ‘I don’t want you to freak out and go all … but I have something to tell you,’ she’d said on her way out to work.

  Looking back, I’m sure she timed it that way, so that the conversation wouldn’t go on for too long.

  ‘Go all what?’ I asked, irritated.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, Ellie.’ I got to my feet. ‘How? Who?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I need to explain the process to you.’ She laughed. ‘But it’s someone I know from work. A customer.’ She was working in a cocktail bar at the time. ‘But he’s married, so he won’t be part of all this. You can’t mention it to anyone. It’s kind of a secret.’

  ‘A secret baby.’ I was shocked, but excited. I couldn’t stop looking at my sister’s belly.

  ‘I guess she won’t be a secret when she comes out.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘I don’t know that yet.’ She smiled. ‘But I have a hunch.’

  She looked so pretty and carefree that day, leaning against the counter. You would never guess that she was cooking a baby. Rose. As big as a raspberry.

  ‘What will you call her?’

  ‘Christ, Fran.’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Please,’ I asked. ‘Call her Rose. After Mother.’

  In response, she came over to where I was sitting and pressed a kiss on my head. ‘Don’t freak out,’ she called over her shoulder as she left the flat for her shift. ‘You promised.’

  I remember thinking I had done no such thing.

  Charles and I stop in the café again afterwards, sitting peaceably together, looking out at the room. A melancholic mood takes over me after all my thoughts of Ellie. Charles, of course, can sense it. He moves his hand to the small of my back and strokes me there, almost imperceptibly. A private place that no one can see. It’s a tiny circular movement, no bigger than a two-pence piece. It’s nothing much – just the small motion of a digit through two layers of clothes, but for a few minutes it’s as if the whole of me resides there.

  If you were passing by, you wouldn’t look at us twice. You wouldn’t know that everything has changed between us or that I’ve been waiting thirty-seven years for this. That my waiting has finally paid off. That lives can alter course in a few moments in the National Gallery café in this way. To anyone hurrying on their way, we’d just look like a pair of old friends catching up over a cup of tea.

  37

  After so much happiness, it catches me unawares. These sorts of things always do. I wake up thinking I’m going to have a normal day – busy, no doubt; it’s the run-up to Christmas after all – but not a day that will stay with me, stirring up dark feelings like silt at the bottom of a riverbed. If I had known what was to come, I wouldn’t have gone into work at all.

  We have to be very organised in December, with a certain number of us on the tills at all times. A great deal of thought goes into organising our shifts, our breaks and so on. It’s a military operation. I like it, though. The busyness, the sense of purpose. I’m on the late shift, so Caroline and I have planned to meet at three when I have my lunch break. It’s a Friday, her day off, but when she arrives, she’s come alone, without Daisy.

  Caught at the till with a customer, I wave at her when I spot her waiting by the Crime table and I’m so pre-occupied that I don’t really notice that she doesn’t wave back, that she keeps standing there with her arms by her sides, watching me the way she did a couple of months ago in the street before I knew her.

  ‘That’s my friend,’ I tell Ingrid. ‘I’m off on my break now.’

  I’m not ashamed to say that I do it with a flush of pride; to show off to Ingrid that I have a friend, someone waiting for me, which is perhaps why I greet Caroline a touch loudly, my voice jollier, brassier than it might ordinarily be.

  ‘I won’t be a moment – I’ll just get my coat.’

  She shakes her head. ‘We’re not going for coffee.’

  And I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to work out that there’s something terribly wrong. Up close, she smells sweet like fermented fruit, something that’s softened and melted in the bowl. After Fiona’s warning, I’ve been looking closely for signs that Caroline has been drinking, never knowing how obvious it would be. Not that she’s slurring and stumbling but there’s a heaviness to her now – a dark energy. Her face is sheet white; her eyes look black.

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’

  There’s a slight tremor in her voice she’s working hard to hide and that makes it worse: that what I’ve done is so terrible she has to make an effort to control herself around me. The intensity of her emotion leaks out at the edge of her words.

  ‘Tell you what?’ I ask, but I know what she means.

  She shakes her head. ‘I trusted you,’ she whispers. ‘I thought you were someone I could rely on.’

  ‘You can,’ I say. ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘You watched my husband die in front of you. You have let me go on about that night for weeks and you never said.’

  Blood rushes to my face. A couple of customers glance up from their Christmas shopping. At the till, Ingrid gives Liam a nudge. I try to work out if Caroline’s fury is simply because I was there or because she thinks there’s a chance she might have been spotted. But I can’t think straight in these conditions. I just can’t tell.

  ‘I thought you would find it weird,’ I mutter.

  ‘It is weird,’ she hisses. ‘I don’t know which is weirder – your being there, or your not saying anything.’

  ‘I was only there for Charles,’ I blurt out. ‘It had nothing to do with Dickie.’

  I’ve said the words without stopping to think. Now they’re out there I feel exposed – there’s no taking them back.

  Caroline folds her arms. ‘That, in itself, is strange. If no one’s told you that by now, you ought to know.’

  I want to remind her how she stood in front of me, her head tilted to one side, saying, I understand addiction, but what I want more – more than anything – is to move this discussion outside of the bookshop, to somewhere I won’t be able to feel the prickle of everyone’s gaze on my back.

  ‘Can we go outside?’ I ask.

  She nods sharply. ‘Fine.’ She slings her handbag over her shoulder, sending a pile of books flying from the apex of Gareth’s carefully constructed pyramid. ‘Fuck it,’ she says loudly and marches out.

  I’m not keen on drunk Caroline.

  We huddle in the street glaring at each other. Caroline’s arms are folded again; her breath comes out in angry little puffs.

  ‘Everyone said you were weird,’ she says. ‘But I didn’t listen – I thought I’d give you a chance.’

  Everyone. I try not to dwell on this. ‘Who told you I was there that night?’

  She shakes her head. ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Was it Meilin?’ I persist.

  I think of Daisy’s Christmas presents already neatly wrapped. I won’t get the chance to give them to her now.

  ‘She promised,’ I say. ‘She promised she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why were you there?’

  ‘I wanted t
o see Charles.’ It sounds pathetic when I say it out loud. ‘I just wanted to watch him, from a distance. I wasn’t doing any harm.’

  How must that sound to someone like Caroline? Someone who has known a happy marriage, motherhood, challenging work, family life. That sometimes I would just go to where Charles was and hang around from a distance. And – what? Not much more than that. Imagine scenarios in which I could bump into him and strike up a conversation. A conversation in which he was finally wowed by me; he finally got it. That I could offer him something Fiona never could: a meeting of minds.

  It hadn’t happened like that, though. It hadn’t panned out. Charles never shared much on social media so I had to follow Dickie’s leads of what the pair of them were up to. Which is what I was doing that night when they met at Charles’s club on Cromwell Road. It was so easy to pop round after work, have a drink in the public bar that night and wait for them to emerge from the private club upstairs. Easy too to remain invisible: women like me – big-boned, of a certain age – often do. Dickie and Charles wouldn’t have been looking out for me. But I wasn’t the only one there that night, was I? I know that much. I know that Caroline was in South Kensington too.

  ‘You were there as well,’ I say quietly. It’s easier to say it now our friendship is over. I have less to risk. And what’s the worst she can do to me right now on a busy street? ‘I saw your Uber history. You made a journey to South Kensington that night.’

  The colour drains from her cheeks. ‘That was nothing,’ she says. ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘Why were you there?’ I persist.

  ‘I was so worried about Dickie drinking.’ She begins to cry. ‘I had a bad feeling. A premonition. I scooped Daisy up and got into an Uber and then, when we arrived at the club, she started to wail, and I thought, “What am I doing? Spying on my husband?” So I got a black cab back home again, because my phone had run out of battery. Stupid. Just a stupid waste of money – and I wasn’t even there when he died. I could have been and I wasn’t. I walked through the door at home, plugged my phone in and saw I had a couple of missed calls from Charles. Then it rang again. That was him telling me about Dickie.’

  Her face is red and blotchy. People slow down as they walk past us, trying to eavesdrop on the drama.

  ‘Caroline, I don’t know what to say.’ I feel bad for pushing it, for getting it so wrong.

  She seems calmer now she’s wept. She wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. ‘You could start by explaining why you never told me.’

  ‘I didn’t know how to,’ I say. ‘And then after I’d missed my opportunity the first couple of times – at the memorial, when we went for tea – it got harder.’

  I didn’t try that hard, though.

  ‘You were only there for Charles,’ she says disbelievingly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just watching him?’

  ‘Everyone does it,’ I say. ‘Not quite like that, but to an extent. You came to see me at the shop once – I spotted you across the road. And we all watch each other on social media, don’t we? It’s just what we do. It’s not so bad, is it?’

  ‘Now you’re back in his life, aren’t you?’ She ignores my plea. ‘Dickie’s death has been a good thing for you.’

  There are things I haven’t told her – Charles in the National Gallery, his hand on my back. The joy I have experienced in the last few weeks – the heart-thrilling joy. Our cups of tea, our chats. Our time together. Now I think of it with guilt, dark and sticky as treacle. Dickie’s death has been a good thing for me. I’m less alone than I have been in a long time.

  ‘How did Fiona get sick at the auction?’ Caroline continues in a determined manner, as if she has a list of accusations to get through. ‘Jules said that was weird – the timing of it. And then Charles made that bid on you …’

  The idea that I could have ‘poisoned’ Fiona is laughable. But then Juliet knows my dark side better than anyone.

  ‘What did she tell you?’ I ask. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Just what happened,’ Caroline says. ‘How she got those scars.’

  ‘Did she explain what led up to it? What she did? What she stole?’

  Caroline looks at me.

  ‘And I’d never do anything to harm Fiona. As if I could have …’

  ‘As if I could have …’ Caroline repeats, sarcastically.

  I know I’ve offered up the wrong answer again. That there will be nothing I can say to convince her that it’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That it’s something I’m good at. If good is the word. That bad things have a habit of happening around me and I don’t seem to be able to stop them.

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it,’ I say. ‘Her or Dickie. I was a bystander.’

  She looks at me for what feels like a very long time. ‘The fact that you even have to say that …’

  ‘Listen,’ I say, desperate, ‘what do you want to know? Anything. You can ask me anything about Dickie. There might be something … something that could help.’

  ‘I’ve already asked Charles.’

  ‘But I had a different view. I saw …’

  ‘What did you see?’ Her voice becomes fierce. ‘You saw my husband die. I would have given anything – anything – to be there instead of you.’

  She fishes in her pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lights one now, glaring at me, daring me to say something. I am quiet for a long time, breathing in her second-hand smoke uncomplainingly.

  ‘I don’t know if it was an accident, that’s all,’ I say in the end. ‘There was a group of women on the platform. Some of them were in fancy dress – wearing wigs and glasses. Their faces were covered. And they were really close to him.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘Just say it.’

  ‘I had a hunch he saw someone he knew,’ I say. ‘A feeling – from the expression on his face.’

  I’ve finally said it. The secret I’ve been holding on to for so long.

  Caroline rolls her eyes. ‘He probably just saw you.’

  What an anti-climax, after all this time worrying. I shake my head. ‘No, it wasn’t that. It was someone right behind him. Look,’ I continue more urgently, ‘someone could have pushed him in that crush and it would’ve been hard to tell.’

  ‘But did you see anyone do it?’

  ‘No, not that exactly.’

  ‘Then what use is this – or you?’ she snaps.

  Nothing I say is helping.

  ‘You watched him die.’ She looks at me steadily, holding the cigarette still burning in her hand. ‘Someone you knew – not a stranger – and you didn’t lift a finger to help him. You didn’t speak to the police, or leave a witness statement. You just vanished.’

  She’s right: I could have gone to Charles and held him. I could have waited with him. I could have said what I’d seen.

  These might have been things I would have done for a stranger, but I didn’t do them for Dickie. And I want to explain to Caroline the reason I didn’t; I want to tell her the full extent of what Dickie and Tom did to my sister.

  But instead I ask, ‘What could I have done?’

  ‘I guess we’ll never know,’ she says, dropping her cigarette on the pavement and folding her arms again.

  She doesn’t say goodbye, just turns, with her arms still folded, as if she’s holding herself together, and walks away. It’s only a matter of moments before she’s swallowed up by a crowd of shoppers and I can’t see her any more.

  38

  By the time I call Meilin, I’m crying so hard my voice is thick with snot.

  ‘Did you tell her?’ I ask.

  She has no idea what I’m talking about and I have to repeat the question three or four times before she understands.

  I half-shout, at last, ‘Why did you tell Caroline I was there when Dickie died?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Meilin says. Her voice echoes, as if she’s standing i
n a corridor. ‘Why would I? How would I? I don’t know her.’

  ‘You met her at the memorial. And there’s Facebook – did you message her on that?’

  ‘I’m not really on it – I don’t have the time – and why would I?’ she asks again.

  ‘You said I should go to the police – share any information I have.’ The passion of my sobs has subsided now, replaced with a cold clarity.

  ‘Yes, I thought you should, but that doesn’t mean I would take matters into my own hands. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do.’

  ‘You were the only person who knew,’ I insist. ‘The only one. Who else could it be?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that. And if you can’t see that …’

  ‘Things were going well.’ A wave of self-pity washes through me. I don’t tell her about my Christmas with Caroline and Daisy – what it would have meant. ‘They were finally going well.’

  ‘Fran.’ Her manner is so conciliatory, so grown up, as if she is soothing a child. It nudges my recalcitrance into fury.

  ‘You’ve always been jealous,’ I say. ‘You couldn’t bear it – Charles picking me out all those years ago. You couldn’t bear me to be happy.’

  Even as I say the words, I’m unconvinced by them – Meilin knows nothing of my friendship with Caroline, or my Christmas plans. And she’s shown no interest in Charles since school, when most girls had a soft spot for him. But my rage blinds me to all of this: I have a hammer in my hands and I want to smash something.

  ‘I think you need help,’ she says quietly. ‘You need to talk to someone professional about your problems, rather than taking it out on your friend.’

  She doesn’t say your only friend, and I am grateful for that. But she hangs up nonetheless.

  When I return to the shop, Gareth is no more sympathetic, calling me into his office.

  ‘We can’t have that kind of scene going on in front of the customers,’ he tells me.

  I nod, focusing on a strange box of tat in the corner – a bunch of plastic flowers, an old piece of paisley fabric, a bald doll with a vacant gaze.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he adds, more gently. ‘I know things have been difficult between us, but I want you to be OK, you know.’