by Camilla Way
Once he’s passed me a large glass and turned back to his chopping, I take a big gulp, and then another. As he cooks he chats about this and that, but every question he asks I can only seem to answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, and as hard as I try, I can’t seem to think of any conversation of my own. It’d been different in the pub, after the show; there’d been something between us, a connection. But here, now, I’ve no idea what I should say or do. And I can’t quite shake the thought of Heather from my mind. Had it been her on the phone earlier? I feel the old, nagging unease.
‘I’m making a lamb tagine,’ James tells me. ‘Do you like Moroccan?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know, sorry. I’ve never tried it.’
He laughs. ‘Stop apologizing.’ In the following silence I drink more wine and as my eyes follow him around the room I try not to think about how attractive I find him. At last, in desperation, I pick up a book from one of the piles lying near me and ask, ‘This one any good, is it?’
He glances over. ‘Haven’t started it yet, but I love his other stuff so I hope so. How about you? Read any of his?’
I take another gulp of wine. ‘No. I’m not much of a reader, I’m afraid.’
He nods and begins stirring something. ‘Won’t be a tick.’
I finish my glass and, while he’s not looking, help myself to more. I realize that I’ve begun to feel quite drunk. When he brings the food over and sits down, he fills both of our plates, and raises his glass. ‘Cheers,’ he says. ‘I hope you like it.’ We eat in silence for a moment or two. ‘This is really nice,’ I tell him, taking a large bite to try and steady the fresh wave of nerves I feel.
He smiles. ‘You look lovely, by the way. It’s good to see you.’ And there’s something in the way he says it that makes me feel he means it, and I begin to relax a little. The low hanging light above the table illuminates the two of us, the rest of the room in darkness beyond its warm glow.
‘Is your son asleep upstairs?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘Stan’s at his mum’s. We split up not long after he was born and he stays with her half the week, me the rest.’
‘Must be hard.’
‘Nope. Not really. We parted on pretty good terms.’ I nod, and wonder if anything has ever been very difficult for James.
‘Were you with Maya’s dad long?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘Ah, that’s a shame. He’s involved, though?’
‘He doesn’t know about her.’
He looks shocked, his fork poised in mid-air. ‘Really?’
I shrug. ‘He was someone I worked with. I didn’t tell him I was pregnant.’ James nods and looks away, but not before I’ve seen the disapproval in his eyes. I try to think of something else to talk about, but, glancing around at the books, the exotic food, the music and art, feel once again entirely at a loss. The silence lengthens.
In the end it’s he who speaks first. ‘I don’t even know where you’re from,’ he says, his voice light again. ‘Can’t quite place your accent.’
‘Manchester originally.’
He nods. ‘So your family’s still there?’
I take a swig of wine. ‘We kind of lost touch.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
This time the pause stretches and stretches and I know that I should fill it, should say something else, anything at all, but the fact is I’m no good at this: I don’t know how it’s done, what I should say. I should give him something of myself, I realize: share something, anything, so I force myself to continue. ‘No, it’s OK,’ I say, and make myself smile. ‘I was a bit of a nightmare teenager, to be honest. Bit of a handful. I fell out with my mum. Don’t blame her at all …’
‘Misspent youth, huh?’ He narrows his eyes, grinning. ‘Always thought there was something mysterious about you – a few skeletons in the cupboard maybe. In a good way, of course.’
He refills my glass and, thankfully, changes the subject. As we finish the meal he talks about what it was like growing up in London, and about being a student at Saint Martins. He’s funny and takes the piss out of himself and the more I laugh, the more I relax.
‘And that,’ he says, finishing his story, ‘is why I can’t even smell Jack Daniel’s now without wanting to go and lie down in a very dark room.’
I smile, ‘I’m a bit like that with vodka,’ I say, then try not to think about the last time I’d drunk it. Our eyes meet, a silence falls, a new intimacy lingers in the air between us. He has refilled my glass and as I take another sip he says, putting down his spoon, ‘I seem to be doing all the talking. You’re very good at listening to my rubbish, but I don’t know anything about you.’
‘What do you want to know?’ I ask, my heart instantly sinking.
He shrugs. ‘How did you come to move to London, did you study here?’
And I don’t know what to say, because I’m not going to talk about why I left Fremton and what I was like when I first moved here – because there’s nothing to tell. I have no funny stories to share, no friends to talk about, no wild anecdotes to recount, none that I could possibly tell him, anyway. I look down at my plate.
‘OK,’ he says at last, getting up. ‘None of my business I guess,’ and he begins to clear the dishes away. And just like that the warm, intimate vibe between us slips away and the awkward, puzzled silence grows and I desperately try to think of something to give him, anything to make him sit back down and look at me the way he had been a few moments ago, but my mind is entirely blank.
And so on a desperate impulse I get up and I go to him and I do what I have always done in this situation, the only thing I know that works: when he turns to me in surprise I put my arms around him and kiss him. For an awful second I think he’s going to resist, but to my relief he begins to return my kiss and I’m so thankful that I respond more passionately, running my hands over his body, pressing myself against him and when, momentarily, through the woozy fog of alcohol Connor’s face swims horrifyingly into view, I kiss James harder, using every ounce of strength I have to push the memories away and with urgent fingers begin to undo his belt, his flies, until suddenly he puts his hand on mine and he pulls away. ‘Um …’ he glances at me, and I feel a hot, stinging slap of embarrassment.
There’s an awful silence. Mortification rises in me. I look away as he does himself up again. ‘What’s the matter?’ I mumble.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I just – I wasn’t expecting it, I don’t know, I …’ He moves away. ‘Do you want coffee? I could make us coffee …’ He goes to the kettle.
I stare at his back. ‘No,’ I say at last. ‘No. That’s OK. I guess I’ll – I better go. It’s getting late.’
‘No, look,’ he says, ‘please stay. Have another glass of wine. Or a coffee. Please, sit down.’
But I gather up my coat and bag. ‘It’s OK. I’d better get back to Maya. I better go. Thanks for dinner.’ And as I hurry off down the hall I hear him calling me one last time, but I don’t reply, just quickly leave and close the door behind me.
When I emerge into the night I pause for a second at his gate, my eyes closed tightly as embarrassment crashes over me. When I open them again a movement across the road startles me. A figure on the other side, half hidden by a parked van, suddenly turns and disappears off down the street. The road is unlit and I can’t make out if the person is a man – or a tall, broad woman. For some moments I stand there, frozen, before the thought of James coming out and finding me jolts me into action and I take off in the opposite direction, towards home.
Later, I lie awake in bed, listening to the night, my thoughts racing. Had it been Heather I’d seen? Had she come back? On impulse I get up, find my mobile and click open the internet. In Google Images I type the words ‘Jennifer Wilcox’ before pressing Search. I’m met with page after page of strangers’ faces. After a few moments’ thought I add ‘Birmingham’ and ‘Methodist Church’, and there she is, on the very first page: Heather’s mum. I click on h
er image and I’m taken to a website for a church in a place called Castle Vale. Next to some information about a food bank is Heather’s mother. She’s wearing large, ugly glasses now, and her hair’s grey and in a shorter style, but it’s still her, those eyes with their expression of pious disapproval unchanged. Below her picture are the words: ‘For more information, email Jennifer Wilcox’, followed by a Gmail address. It’s probably long out of date, I tell myself, but nevertheless I click on the link.
I write quickly so that I don’t have time to change my mind.
Hi Jennifer, I don’t know if you remember me, I was Heather’s friend in Fremton, Edie. I live in London now. I’m sorry to contact you out of the blue like this, but wondered if you’d heard from her recently. We have been in contact, but I haven’t spoken to her for a while and …
I pause, staring at the screen. And … what? I think she might be stalking me? Eventually, I add, a little lamely,
I’d like to talk to you about her.
My finger hovers over the Send button, and then, on impulse, I press it.
Before
It’s on a Monday night that everything falls apart. I haven’t heard from Edie all day, and I’m watching telly and picking at some cheese on toast, wondering where she’s got to and hoping she’s all right when the doorbell rings. I jump to my feet and open the door, already laughing with relief, about to usher her in when I notice the expression on her face and it’s only then that the smile freezes on my lips.
She pushes past me into the house, and we stand in the hall as she glares back at me, her eyes bright with fury. ‘Edie?’ I say hesitantly, but I know what’s coming, that the happy, beautiful time we’d spent together is over.
She’s about to speak but the sound of my dad moving about upstairs stops her and she takes me by the arm and pulls me roughly into the kitchen. ‘What’s the mat—’ I begin.
‘Tell me, again, Heather,’ she says, ‘about the time you saw Connor by the canal.’
‘Um …’
‘You could see them clearly, yeah? Him and this girl? You told me what she looked like, what clothes she was wearing.’
‘Yeah …’
‘And it was about seven? At night?’
I nod.
She narrows her eyes. ‘It’s pitch-black by seven, specially down there.’
‘Well maybe it was a bit earl—’
‘And you said she was tall?’
I can feel my heart thudding. ‘I think so. Quite tall. Listen, Edie, what’s—’
She snorts. ‘Oh really? Because now I think about it, you said at the time she was quite short. Shorter than me.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t … I can’t …’ I hate lying. I’ve never been any good at it. I feel confused and panicky. ‘Edie, please—’
Her eyes bore into me. ‘You said it was a couple of nights before we went to the pub together.’
Miserably, I nod.
‘The thing is, Heather,’ she says, and her voice is slow and deliberate, as cold as her stare, ‘Connor was in Overton with Tully that night. He’s got messages on his phone to all the others, telling them to get down there. He showed me them.’
‘Um … maybe not a couple of nights before, maybe three. I don’t—’
‘Well, which is it? Two or three?’
My panicked mind is blank.
Her mouth falls open. ‘Oh my God. He was right. You were lying, weren’t you? Connor was fucking right! You made the whole thing up.’ She takes a step nearer and I shrink away.
‘No! No, I didn’t! Edie, please, I—’
Her voice is suddenly a shout and I jump out of my skin. ‘Tell me now. Did you lie?’
It’s no good. It’s finished. I drop my eyes and nod.
When I next look up the expression on her face makes me burst into tears. There’s disbelief and shock there, but more than that, I have never seen her look so hurt. I reach out my hand to her. ‘Edie I’m so sorry—’
But she bats me away. ‘Everyone at school said you were a weirdo. But I thought they were just bitches and you were all right. I thought you cared about me. That out of everybody, you were looking out for me.’ She shakes her head, ‘Christ. Do you even know what you’ve done? You’ve fucked up everything!’
I can barely look at her, can only stand there, miserably staring down at my feet.
‘Why, Heather? Why would you do this to me? Because you want me for yourself? Is that it? I’ve seen the way you look at me. Christ you’re disgusting. You are actually fucking disgusting. I will never forgive you for this. Never.’
The look of contempt and hatred she shoots me makes my heart shrivel and I sink into a chair, a crushing feeling in my chest as I watch her turn abruptly and walk out of the house, slamming the front door behind her.
I move from clock to clock, taking my time, locating each tiny key from its hook or ledge or cubbyhole and, carefully inserting it, turn it precisely the right amount so as not to overwind. With one finger I gently set each pendulum in motion, adjust the second and hour hands, before moving on to the next. I don’t know exactly when I started doing this, but someone’s got to: I used to hate Dad’s clocks, but I hate their silence more.
As I hover in the upstairs hall I hear him behind his study door as he shifts in his chair, the radio playing something by Bach. I expect he’s doing some marking, or else copying something down from his Bible; he seems to be doing that more and more these days, I find little slips of paper covered in his handwriting all over the house, but I don’t even try to decipher them any more. I finish winding the last clock and slip back into my room. It’ll be time to start dinner soon, but before I do, I find the bottle of vodka I’ve hidden beneath my mattress and take a quick gulp, then one more, before replacing the cap and screwing it on tight. It’s been four months since Mum left, and three and a half since I last spoke to Edie.
Mum and I meet almost every week, at the café on the high street. We talk about her new job at the health centre and I tell her how I’m getting on at school. I don’t tell her how I only do the bare minimum there now, that I sometimes don’t bother going in, that I’m beginning to fall behind to such an extent I’m worried I’ll never catch up. I want to tell her I’m sorry, that I know her leaving is my fault. But I don’t, and we’re both pretty relieved when it’s time to go home.
I see Edie now and then at school, but we don’t talk. If she sees me, she pretends she hasn’t, turning abruptly away down a corridor or into a classroom, and I never have the courage to chase after her, to stop her, to make her see how sorry I am. I’ve written her a hundred letters, I’ve picked up the phone countless times, but in the end I never send them, I never dial the number I still know by heart. Instead, when lessons are over and I should be at home studying, I catch the bus to somewhere else, I walk around the shops, slipping whatever I can into my bag, stuff I think Edie might like, mostly. Or else I ride my bike to an off-licence on the edge of town, where if I time it so there’s no customers, the man who works there will sell me anything I want, and never asks my age.
After a watery, windy spring the shock of heat seems to come from nowhere, the sun blasting down day after day, biting at my skin as I traipse from shadow to shadow. Dad’s working from home today so I’ve been wandering around pretending to be at school since 8 a.m. I’ve been to the rec, and to the library, across the motorway’s overpass and back again, and I’m cutting back behind the hospital when the battered white car pulls up beside me, its engine growling, music thudding from its open windows, a male voice calling out my name.
I stop and feel an electric jolt of shock to see Connor staring back at me. ‘You all right, Heather?’ he says, his voice a slow drawl, his eyes hidden behind dark shades. Apart from the surprise of seeing him, I am, as usual, momentarily stunned by his good looks, so out of place here amidst Fremton’s greyness, making my eyes flinch as though I’ve looked directly at the sun. Because there’s always been something a little repulsive about his hands
omeness too, something too brutal and cruel in his perfect features. Between his legs sits a bottle of beer and he takes it now and puts it to his lips, but I feel his eyes on me still, from behind the black shades, watching me.
And then I peer behind him to the back seat and see Edie there, with two other lads, and all thoughts of Connor are forgotten. A sensation as though I’m falling – a slipping down, losing grip kind of feeling. She glances at me, a quick, cool, hard stare, before turning away to look out of the window. ‘You getting in or what?’ Connor says, and I glance back at him in confusion. What can this mean? What could they possibly want? But I know I cannot and will not refuse: irresistibly I am drawn to where Edie is, the sight of her after so many weeks like water after endless thirst, and wordlessly I nod.
I have barely sat down in the passenger seat before Connor accelerates and we speed off, tyres screeching. My heart pounds as I pull the seat belt around myself. The air is thick with smoke and the sweet, sickly smell of weed, and I glance back at Edie again but she’s still staring steadfastly out of the window. The two lads next to her are arguing about something I can’t hear above the rap music that’s blaring from the speakers.
Suddenly Connor speaks. ‘You all right then Heather?’ he says. I don’t like his voice with its local accent tinged with something I guess he’s copied from a gangster movie, his mocking, over-confident tone that most lads round here seem to use, as if you’re a bit stupid, or a bit deaf, or both.
‘Yeah,’ I mumble.
‘What you been up to then?’
I shrug. ‘Not much, school and that.’
He glances at me. ‘Not been busy making shit up about people?’
I shake my head, clenching my fists tight.
‘Because I know you like to do that.’
I don’t reply and he laughs, an ugly humourless noise. ‘Cheer up, for fuck’s sake. I’m only messing with you.’ He doesn’t say anything else after that, just continues to drink his beer and take long draws on the joint one of the others has handed to him, its end flaring and crackling as he inhales. We drive through Fremton and out the other side, Connor hitting the accelerator even harder as soon as we’re on the bigger, less busy roads. What’s happening? Where are they taking me? Surely Edie wouldn’t let anything bad happen? I turn to the back seat, but her closed, angry expression makes the words die on my lips.