At Clapham Junction, I take the underpass by mistake. It’s a shorter walk if you take the bridge exit, and it’s brighter up there. But I’m not thinking straight. I feel as if things are falling off me. I stop in the middle of the dank tunnel, commuters jostling past, to check I’ve got my wallet and my phone. What else am I supposed to have? Keys. A moment of blind panic before I remember. Onnie. The dog.
I’m in a hurry then to get home.
Leaving the station at the lower exit, between the supermarket and the flower stall, I become convinced I’m being followed. Up St John’s Hill, past the kebab shop and Admiral Carpets, and left to the South Circular, edging round the big houses at Spencer Park, an electrical current at the back of my neck, a tingling. I look over my shoulder every few paces. On the second turn, a red-headed man in a shiny black puffer stops abruptly and stares through the window of a shop selling modern furniture. Not Zach. Has he set someone else on my trail? Have I found out more than I should have? I’m shaky from not having eaten. My eyes aren’t to be trusted.
I run the last stretch of Trinity Road, over at the pedestrian crossing and down into my turning. Adrenalin is pumping as I ring the bell – an eerie feeling, ringing the bell to your own house. I wait. Silence, no footsteps. I look through the front window – the sitting room is empty. I ring again and then I bang on the door. No answer. The flowerpot: I told her to leave the key there if she went out. I shift the base of it to one side. A wad of root clings to the bottom. Woodlice seethe. No key.
I stand up and peer through the letter box. I can see through into the kitchen. The back door is shut. No dog comes trotting to lick my nose. No welcoming bark. In the distance, above the steady squeal of traffic, the beeping of a vehicle in reverse, a police siren.
I try to stay calm, but my thoughts are racing. What had I been doing, giving my house key to a girl I barely knew? Why on earth did I think I could trust her? I have no judgement, that’s the problem. She might have just gone, disappeared, taken off with my keys, my dog. The car key was on the ring too. I scan the street. The Micra is still there in its spot. At least she hasn’t taken that.
I walk to the other end of the road and stand on the corner. No footsteps behind. If the man in the shiny puffer was following, he’s waiting now, hanging back to see what I’m doing. I listen. The prison is quiet today. An elderly man is reversing out of the prison-warder car park. An official in uniform, key chain hanging from his trouser pocket, is talking on a mobile phone at the gate. Overhead, the clouds are darker, shifting, thickening. Big drops of rain begin to patter.
I turn left so that I am on the road that runs at a perpendicular angle to the gardens of my street. My house is halfway down, but I strain my ears harder here in case I can hear Howard barking, sniffing in the undergrowth. I call his name. Nothing.
I keep going and cross Magdalen Road, on to Lyford Road, past the scout hut where Peggy and I went to Brownies, and the big posh houses belonging to pop stars and TV presenters. I’ve just crossed the next road when I notice the car following me, driving slowly, clinging to the kerb. I look over my shoulder. A red Ford. It jerks to a halt, and then, as I continue to walk, begins to accelerate. Two figures inside. I pick up my pace and then I start to run.
The pavement is empty. No one in sight. I run as fast as I can, out of breath almost immediately. I reach the small patch of common on this side of the main road, and dart to hide under a tree. There is a dead end, just beyond. I see the red Ka approach. When it reaches the no-entry side, it idles. A man is behind the wheel; an older woman in the passenger seat. He seems to be looking around, but he doesn’t spot me. The car pulls out into the middle of the road, and then stalls. It fires to life and then lurches, jumps, eventually completes a three-point turn, and drives off.
A learner, a young lad out practising with his mother. Leaning back against the tree, I let my breath out.
I turn then on to the narrow path that leads through the trees to the main road. It’s a little spare handkerchief of common, this bit, an island cast adrift, overgrown, a nest of trees and brambles and litter bins, holes to burrow in, an umbrella of branches. It is quiet, though – only the rustle of small birds in the undergrowth. No sign of anyone.
When I get back to the house this time, I’m convinced Onnie will be there. It’s a replay. I will ring on the bell and she will open the door. I’ll have to hold on to the door frame in case Howard tries to bowl me over. The kettle will be on. Onnie will have nipped out to get milk. She will be eating toast. (Teenagers eat a lot of toast.) I have time to run a little fantasy through my head – of a meal on a stove, and a warm kitchen, of a welcome, of how it used to be, a year or two ago, when Zach lived here.
Nothing has moved. The flowerpot is still felled. Poor flowerpot. I haven’t done any gardening this year. Normally, I would have planted it out with winter pansies, or pink cyclamen. Now it’s just dead, spilled earth. The letter box, rusty in its hinges, is stuck open an inch from when I pushed it earlier. No one comes to the door when I knock.
I ring directory enquiries for the Office of Economic Thought and Development. I am put through to a voicemail for Victoria Murphy and I leave a message, explaining who I am, and asking her to call.
I sit on the kerb opposite my house after that, in the semi-shelter of dripping ivy, knees up to my chin, and wait.
Later, I will look back and realise it was only fifty minutes, not even an hour from start to finish. When I do see her, walking down the road, Howard padding along behind on the lead, her expression is blank. She has zipped up her leather jacket and her hair is half tucked in at the back, artfully arranged. She doesn’t seem aware of the rain. I want to shout. I want to punch her.
But I don’t.
‘Hello there,’ I say, standing up. ‘Where have you two been?’
Howard pulls free and bounds over, trailing his lead, jumping up and licking my face.
Onnie has stopped in the middle of the road. High spots of pink in her cheeks. Her mascara has smudged, a violet streak blooming high across her cheekbone. ‘I came to meet you,’ she says. ‘I literally walked all the way to Clapham Junction. You said two o’clock. You weren’t there. You must have walked straight past me.’
I’m checking Howard over, running my hands over him. Wet. A matted patch on his back where he’s rolled in something. A dank smell of pond, a tang of unfamiliar perfume. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I came a different way back.’
‘Didn’t you think I might come and meet you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that.’ Sometimes the more disturbed kids are rude to me at school – I don’t have the authority of a teacher. I think again how Onnie isn’t in control of her own tone – too spoilt, or too unloved, or both. She’s just echoing how people have spoken to her. I have to force myself to be patient. I feel less understanding and more irritated this afternoon.
I extricate myself from Howard. ‘Have you got my keys?’
‘Yeah.’
She hands them over and I open the front door. Howard darts from behind my legs into the kitchen. I hear him slurping water from his bowl. Onnie hovers behind me in the doorway. I don’t look at her. Throwing my waterproof over the bannister and joining Howard in the kitchen, I decide that I will ask her to leave. I bury my head in a clean tea towel, rubbing my wet hair to give myself time. I do feel sorry for her. She’s clearly troubled, but in my current state I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t have the resources or the strength. I need to think through what I’ve discovered today.
‘So? Are you pleased?’ she says behind me. ‘Do you, like, like it?’
‘What?’ I take my head out of the tea towel. She makes a gesture with her hands, encompassing the room. I look around me. The mess I left behind this morning – the pools of spilled milk, the piles of cereal bowls, the half-finished drawings, the furled-up nappy – has been cleared. The surfaces are scrubbed clean, the draining board empty. Bucket and mop lean against the wall.
The air is tight with a sharp chemical smell of antiseptic and lemon. The kitchen table, which was covered in papers, is clear.
‘Gosh. How kind,’ I say, touched and dismayed, turning to smile at her. ‘You’ve cleaned up.’
She is holding my waterproof across her arm, smoothing it, shaking it out, looking around for a proper place to hang it. ‘It was really dirty in here,’ she says.
‘How lovely . . . I’m quite taken aback.’
Her eyes catch mine and she juts out her chin as if she is trying to narrow the space between us. ‘Zach hates mess,’ she says. In the light from the back door, the smudge of her mascara looks like a bruise. ‘He says you’re a slut. He asked me to do it. I did it for him.’
I’m upstairs, on the landing, with my back against the wall. My mouth feels full of chalk; my head thuds. I can hear her below me in the kitchen, cupboards opening and closing. I don’t know what she’s looking for. I have been thinking of her as a distraction, but now I don’t know. Is she the link I’ve been waiting for?
I can’t get her to tell me the truth. I asked her what she meant, but she clammed up. ‘When did he say that? What do you mean? What are you talking about? Why are you here?’
She slunk back from me, slipped into a chair as if trying to make herself small. She said she was sorry. ‘I shouldn’t have said it. I was on my own here. I started imagining things. I’m talking rubbish. I always do. Don’t be angry.’
I wanted to push her, to squeeze the truth out of her. She’s only a teenager, young for her age – not much more than a schoolgirl, I had to force myself to remember. ‘I’m not angry,’ I said. ‘Just tell me. When did he tell you to clear up the kitchen?’
‘Ages ago,’ she said.
‘What did you “imagine” today?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But you just said you were imagining things. Did you see him?’
‘Who?’
I fixed her with my eyes. ‘It’s just you said . . . You said you imagined . . .’
‘I was on my own for ages,’ she mumbled.
She drew her head into her neck and started fiddling with the skin around her fingernails.
I told her I needed a minute and came up here, to pull myself together.
She might have meant nothing by it. It might have been a clumsy attempt to show how well she knew him, to justify having turned up on my doorstep. But ‘slut’? He called me that before – the night of the staff party. She used the present tense. I think about the Hunter wellies in the rack at Sand Martin. And her presence outside Gulls, loitering. She’d been watching me. She knows something.
The back door opens and closes. I go into the bathroom and peer out of the window. She is standing down there, in the rain. She’s not wearing her jacket. She’s found a tennis ball and she’s throwing it for Howard. He is barrelling in and out of bushes, scattering earth.
She looks up, her pale face glistening. She’s seen me. I push open the window. ‘You’ll catch your death,’ I call.
She doesn’t answer, but her body gives a shudder. Oh God, I’ve made her cry.
‘I’ll run a bath.’
I close the window and turn on the taps. When the water is nearly at the top, I hear her footsteps on the stairs. I’m kneeling down to adjust the temperature and I try to think of something normal to say. ‘There you go,’ I say. ‘That feels hot enough.’ She doesn’t answer, but I can hear her taking off her clothes. One plimsoll, muddy and sodden, hits the side of the bath. I can hear her breathing heavily.
‘Towels on the back of the door,’ I say, standing up. ‘I’ll be downstairs if you need me.’
Closing the door, I lean against it. Not much more than a child, I think to myself again. I mustn’t forget that.
My phone is ringing in the kitchen. I get to it just in time.
‘Victoria Murphy,’ says the voice on the other end.
I begin to say, ‘Hel—’ but she interrupts.
‘You called? I’m not sure what I can do to help you.’ Her voice is strained. It’s as though the words are being pushed out from behind closed teeth. I don’t think she even remembers who I am.
I remind her – I’m her teenage friend Zach Hopkins’ wife, the annoying woman who delayed their lunch. And then I launch into an explanation. Onnie has come to visit me. She’s safe now, but she wandered off for a bit; I stupidly panicked and I’m sorry to have disturbed or worried her.
Victoria is silent during my rambling speech and then she asks me to repeat things. Yes, Zach had given Onnie the address and she travelled to London to find me. Yes, she left for an hour or so and came back. ‘Can you be clearer: you’ve lost her or you’ve got her?’ Her manner is similar to that of a science teacher at school, Joyce Poplin – sharp in the playground, but kind in the classroom. Her brain works too fast for niceties.
‘I’ve got her.’
‘So she’s with you?’ she barks. ‘Now. In your house?’
I explain that she got wet and is now having a bath to warm up. I’m about to suggest Victoria comes to collect her when she interrupts. Her voice gets louder, more rhythmic – how inconsiderate Onnie is, how hopeless, how she throws their money back in her face, how she never listens to a word, the trouble they have gone to sort her out, all those fucking schools, she probably hasn’t even brought her medication, she is just so contemptuous of all the doctors who have tried to help . . .
‘She’s a sweet girl,’ I hear myself say, with a spurt of defiance on behalf of all eighteen-year-old girls who have messed up their exams and are a disappointment to their mothers.
‘I need to speak to her,’ she says crisply. ‘Please put her on.’
The bathroom door is closed and I knock quietly, holding the phone against my shoulder to mask the sound. ‘Onnie,’ I hiss.
‘Come in,’ she calls.
The window is wide open. A small squall is blowing through. Rain has pearled on the window sill and lies in puddles on the lino floor. The tree outside seems to lean in.
I’m expecting Onnie to be in a towel by now or even dressed. But her clothes are in a pile on the floor. Zach used to fold his clothes like that. She’s still lying in the bath, her thin body distorted beneath the ruffled surface, pale and white. Perhaps it’s to keep warm that she’s keeping her limbs under the water, her arms close by her side, her hands tucked under her mottled legs.
‘Your mother,’ I say, holding out the phone.
The water ripples. Onnie shakes her head at me. ‘Make her go away.’
‘I can’t,’ I mouth. She stares into my face, scrunching her nose in hostile fury, and then reaches for the receiver. The bath erupts. Drops scatter. I turn away quickly, but not before I have seen the livid red scars on the inside of each wrist.
Zach
September 2010
Term has started and I want her to give up work. It was so perfect in the summer. I liked the way we passed our days. Food. Garden centres. Sex. It’s the secret of happiness. Someone should write it down in a self-help book.
She says she loves her job because it allows her to meet so many different people: students, parents, teachers. I don’t think that’s healthy. I should be enough for her. I’m trying to make that obvious. She goes on about the new kids: how adorable they are in their overlarge uniforms, how proud they are of their diaries and pencil cases. They don’t see her as I do. They don’t understand. Soon they’ll be sneaking into the library to use their phones and stuff their faces with sweets. They know she won’t tell. They just use her, take advantage of her kindness.
Yesterday, she told me she was worried about one of the NQTs on the Fast Track programme. She’d found him weeping in the stacks.
‘Him?’ I said.
‘Him. Yes. Angus. He’s never taught a class before.’
I said: ‘You’re not paid enough to be a psychiatrist. In fact, he’s probably being paid more than you.’ I expected her to flinch, but she just laughed. ‘Too true, chum,’ she said. ‘Lucky I don�
��t do it for the money.’
‘“Too true, chum”?’ I said. ‘Is that really what we say?’
This Angus lurked in my head for the rest of the evening, stewing up there. I started thinking about Polly Milton – her infidelity didn’t end well. I had to bite my lip not to warn Lizzie. What did the French call an orgasm in medieval times? A little death. In bed, just as she was about to come, I pulled away. I sat on the edge of the bed until I felt her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off and retreated to the bathroom. I heard her outside the door softly calling my name, but I ignored her. Jerking myself off, I tried to think of other women – the sexy knitter along the corridor at the studios – but it was Lizzie’s face I kept seeing, the way her eyes crinkle shut when she kisses me, her hair frizzing damp against her flushed cheek.
When I came back to bed later, she was asleep.
She didn’t wake either. I was the one who tossed and turned, unsatisfied. Charlotte rang in the middle of the night; I’d left my phone on silent. At breakfast, Lizzie was humming behind her newspaper as if nothing had happened. Angus’s cissy-boy snivelling, Lizzie’s nonchalance: it all rose inside, melding into a seething red three-headed beast. It came into my mind to tell her I was going to go to Gulls for a while – I’ve hardly been there this summer – and instead of complaining, or crying, she said, ‘Good idea.’ She didn’t even put down her newspaper.
I flicked it with my finger. It crackled. She lowered it just enough to look over the top. I said something about how she could come with me, if she gave up her job, and she said, ‘And what would pay the bills?’
‘We could sell the house.’
‘It doesn’t belong to me. It still belongs to my mother. And when she dies, it’ll belong to Peggy too.’
I pushed down a twinge of anger. I said: ‘We could grow our own food. A simple life. We could have a baby.’
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