‘That’s fine, don’t worry,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t matter at all. Thanks for ringing back.’
‘Your selfish sister. You’d think she would be able to put herself out for once.’ My chair is tipped and I can hear Zach so loudly it’s as if he is crouching next to me. ‘After everything you do for her.’ He stood up for me, he always did. He had, has, my best interests at heart. What am I doing, allowing myself to feel relief in his absence, allowing myself to forget that?
I down my drink and grab Howard and my stuff.
I think about Zach waiting outside this pub the last time I came here. ‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been ages. What have you been doing?’
‘Just drinking.’
‘How much?’
His voice was full of concern, edged with panic. He couldn’t bear other people drinking. I knew that. The memory of what it did to his father tortured him.
‘Not much. You should have come in. Joined us.’
‘I didn’t want to ruin your evening.’
I kissed his face. ‘You wouldn’t have done. Next time we go to the pub, come!’
‘Or next time,’ he said, when he had kissed me back, ‘don’t go.’
I say goodbye to everyone at the table. When I kiss Pat, she throws her arms around me, tries to make me stay; I wriggle to disentangle. I’m in a hurry now, desperate to get outside. I have an ache in my stomach, like flu or the first quiver of food poisoning. I’ve been sitting here as if nothing is happening and the disloyalty is unbearable. He might think I’ve forgotten, that I don’t care.
Outside, it’s still raining – that steady flat stream of wetness that seems peculiar to London suburbs. The pub awning drips. Once, on a different night like this, Zach came up behind me on Bolingbroke Grove and forced me against a lamp post. He thrust his hands under my jumper, tore at my bra. I tried to push him away, his fingers twisting my nipples, his mouth biting my neck. But the shock I had felt, the fury, darkened and twisted, plummeted and turned to something else. I kissed him back, yanked my own hands into his hair, felt the rain on my exposed skin.
That’s the thing I find hard to admit. I liked his obsession. I thrilled to his need for possession. I willed it on. His jealousy – it made me feel loved and needed.
‘Nasty night,’ says a voice at my shoulder. ‘You’re going to get soaked.’
I turn. It’s Sam. I feel a flood of fury. He must have followed me out. He lets out a small laugh that has embarrassment built in. I breathe in sharply. He’s standing so close, I catch soap and pencil shavings and hops.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say crisply. ‘I don’t mind getting wet.’
‘Come on. Share my umbrella. Let me help you – you’ve got a lot of clobber.’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it? Dry-cleaning?’
‘Oh . . .’ I’m flustered. ‘It’s Conor Baker’s blazer – needs a mend.’
‘Come on. I’m going your way.’
For the second time this evening, someone takes my arm against my wishes. It’s not my fault. I am not in control of this. I don’t want to be here, but I don’t know how to get out of it. I hide my head under his umbrella so that my face is hidden. All these people – Sam, Jane, Pat – they are holding him back. I have the horrible, uncomfortable feeling of having to extricate myself from a situation I didn’t engineer in the first place. This is what I’m like, what Zach told me to fight against. I go along with others. I do what they say, not what I want. ‘Stand up for yourself,’ he used to insist. Is he waiting for me to do that now?
‘Poor Pat,’ Sam says, stepping out of the way of a puddle. ‘She’s at the inappropriate-disclosure stage of separation, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I say shortly. ‘She is.’
‘It’s as if she’s lost her social and emotional bearings. I remember feeling a bit the same when my wife and I split. Kept finding myself offloading on people I hardly knew. You feel so raw, it’s all you can think about, and you forget that even your close friends aren’t that interested in the fine details, not really.’
I ask him, keeping my voice low, if he has been divorced long and he says, ‘Four years – actually, five.’
‘That’s a good sign,’ I say. I look over my shoulder. The pavement behind glimmers. No one is following.
‘What is?’
‘That you can’t remember.’
‘That’s a positive way of looking at it.’
We have reached Bolingbroke Grove. The path crossing the common glistens under its low lights. Streatham, where Sam lives, is in the opposite direction, and I think I will be able to get away from him now, but he has still got hold of my arm, his fingers gripping above my elbow. He pulls me over the road to the common. I tell him he doesn’t have to come any further, that it is no distance from here, but he says he will see me ‘safely back to civilisation’.
It’s dark and blustery. I don’t know how long we have been in the pub. I look at my watch. It’s eight. Ages. It’s hard to tell if it’s raining or whether it’s water shaken by the wind from the trees. My eyes dart all over the place. On the bare stretch of empty common the football posts stand like sentries. A woman with a black Labrador walks towards us and passes. Two kids on bikes cycle ahead. Sam is filling the silence, trying to make me laugh. He has begun a story about a boy in year seven who sticks his chewing gum behind his ear at the beginning of each lesson ‘for laters, sir’. He leaves the shelter of the umbrella to execute an impression of the head teacher’s rather queenly walk.
‘You’re getting wet,’ I say.
He rubs his hand across the top of his head. ‘One advantage of having very little hair. You dry off quickly, a bit like a duck.’
‘Though it’s trying to keep her hairdo in position that makes her walk like that, so I’m not sure your impression really does her justice.’
He laughs.
On the other side of the railway, we hit the commuters heading home from the station, a drip-drip feed of men in suits and women in clippety heels. They come in waves, like cars through the traffic lights. I watch each face as it passes. The rain has eased – you have to look into the orange glare of the street lamps to tell it’s raining at all.
On the corner of Dorlcote Road, we wait for the lights to change. I let Howard off the lead earlier, but he is still at my side and now he lies down and rests his head on my feet.
‘You all right, boy?’ Sam says, bending to scratch the back of his neck. ‘Not quite himself, is he?’
‘No. He must have eaten something that disagreed with him. I’ll get him home.’
‘Listen.’ Sam touches my arm. He leaves his hand there for a moment. ‘I’m really sorry if I embarrassed you earlier. Jane put me up to it. I quite understand if you’re not really “one for the cinema” . . .’
I look away, wanting to tug my arm free. Zach used to tease me about being a ‘world traveller’. If I went to the supermarket the other side of the river, he would say, ‘Oh, not further today? Is our world traveller not venturing into Hammersmith?’
‘I don’t want you to think I’m hassling you. If you fancy going out for a drink sometime, great. But if you don’t, well, that’s great too. I like you, but I’m not desperate. Well, I am . . .’
I can’t help myself. His expression is genuinely funny, both hopeful and self-deprecating, and I laugh.
‘Take the brolly.’
‘No. I’m fine.’
We tussle for a minute. He doesn’t put up much resistance and I manage to leave without it. At the corner of the road, in case I’ve been rude, I turn round to wave, but he’s already gone.
The house is in darkness.
I let myself in and switch on the hall light. A design classic, Zach said when he brought it home. It’s shaped like an artichoke and throws hand-shaped patterns against the walls. I put down my bag and pick up the post – a Bose catalogue for Zach.
And then, from upstairs, I hear the toilet flush.
&n
bsp; A creak, the bathroom door opening. A square of light on the landing.
Howard barks. Once. Twice. His hackles have risen.
A figure. A person. Their shadow ripples across the bannisters. The body moves, is coming closer. I feel the house crack. The top stair shudders.
I hardly breathe. My head is spinning.
‘You’re home,’ says Onnie.
My vision clears. She is halfway down the stairs now, running her hand along the bannister. ‘I didn’t think you’d be this late.’
I stare at her. She is in ripped jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Her feet are bare. ‘Onnie,’ I manage to say. ‘How did you get in?’
‘I got a copy cut when you lent me the key last week.’
‘You got a copy cut of my key?’
‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’ She smiles, biting her lip.
‘You got a copy cut of my key?’ I am so shocked, so disturbed, I can only repeat it. I feel cold inside.
‘I thought it might be sensible, just in case.’ She is helping me off with my coat, smoothing it over her arms. ‘And it turns out it’s a good thing I did as you’re so late back. I thought you’d be much earlier than this.’
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ I say, pulling away from her. ‘I was waiting for you to ring. We didn’t make a plan. And . . . and yes, I do mind about the key. It’s not really the sort of thing you should do without asking. It’s presumptuous.’
‘Is it?’ She steps back, flushing. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. My mum’s always having extra sets of keys cut for builders, and cleaners, and people who come to do the garden. I should have mentioned it last week, but she came to get me and it went out of my mind. You said you’d lost your spare key and I meant to give it to you. I thought I was being helpful.’
‘I see.’
She hangs my coat over the bannisters. ‘Is that all right, then, or are you still cross?’
I smile weakly and move carefully past her into the kitchen. I put water and food down for Howard, but he sniffs at it and curls up, with a small noise, in his bed. I’m trying to remember the last conversation I had with Onnie about staying here. I’m sure I didn’t say she could come, but it’s hazy. Maybe I wasn’t clear. This is what Zach was always on about. I’m no good at saying what I mean. I let people walk all over me.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘You can’t stay. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. It’s not a good time for me.’
‘What?’ She is standing next to me now. She is wearing heavy eyeliner, smudged along her lower lids, and it makes the whites of her eyes stand out. They look magnified, or as if they are filling slowly with tears. ‘But you said.’
‘I don’t think I did.’
‘You friended me on Facebook!’
‘That was—’ I break off. ‘Sorry.’
She wrinkles her nose, makes a hopeless gesture with her hands. ‘But I told my mother I was staying here. It’s the only reason she let me do the Shelby Pink thing.’
She is looking at her own outstretched palms, and I wonder if she won’t meet my eyes because she’s lying. It is all too complicated for me. I’d send her packing right now if I didn’t want to find out about Xenia. I run my hands through my hair, give myself a mental shake. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ I say. ‘Now you’re here.’
I turn to put on the kettle. It’s not where it should be. It’s been moved – away from under the shelf to the socket by the fridge, where Zach used to like it. The sight sets a small chill up my arms. ‘You’ve moved the kettle.’
‘No. I haven’t.’
‘Well, you have.’ I point to it.
She slides into a chair at the table. ‘Wasn’t it there before?’
‘No.’
She frowns slightly. ‘Well, maybe I did then, without thinking. It’s better by the fridge, isn’t it?’
‘You’re the one with the eye,’ I say tartly and then regret it. I laugh quickly. ‘Unlike me. Zach used to say I put furniture and things in all the wrong places. He said I had no innate sense of style.’
She is sitting with her hands folded in front of her. She seems to be waiting for me to make a decision.
‘Did you alphabetise my books the other day?’ I say suddenly.
‘Yes, I did,’ she says, looking up at me. ‘Was that all right? Or was that presumptuous too?’
She is sharper than I realised, or more sensitive to slight. Zach was like that. I once told him he was imagining things. He fixated on the phrase. He forgot my apparent transgression – that I’d been flirting with a teacher at school – in face of this affront. ‘Am I imagining this?’ he said, when I turned away from him. ‘Am I imagining these?’ he said, flicking away my tears.
I bite my lip. It must be the kettle that’s brought that back. ‘No, it was kind of you,’ I say.
I make a pot of tea and open the fridge to see what food there is, moving around the kitchen as slowly as I can to give myself time. I find a loaf of bread and some cheese, which I put on a plate, and place both on the table. I pour two cups of tea.
‘How old are you?’ Onnie says suddenly.
‘Forty-one.’
‘Are you older than Zach?’
‘No.’
‘He seemed younger.’ I am aware of her eyes moving across my features. ‘Did he seem younger to you?’
‘No.’ I bend to stroke the dog.
‘Were you too old to have kids when you met?’
‘No,’ I say again, and then straighten up. I hope she can’t see how red I am. ‘Would you like some food?’
‘Not really.’
‘A girl’s got to eat,’ I say lightly and sit down opposite her. I don’t think she means to be rude. She is tactless and clumsy, but perhaps she’s just trying to make conversation. I cut two slices of bread and put one on a plate in front of her. ‘So tell me about Shelby Pink.’
She shakes her hair back from her face. ‘Loads of people wanted to be an intern. They chose me out of, like, hundreds. It’s the only good thing that’s happened to me since . . .’
‘Since?’
She looks away. ‘Since I got kicked out of that stupid Swiss finishing school.’
‘That’s great.’ I push the cheese towards her. ‘You should be proud of yourself.’
She ignores it. She hasn’t touched her tea. ‘Tell that to my parents. I’m like this great big fucking disappointment. They’re only interested in Tom, my brother. He’s at Oxford. I didn’t even get into Cheltenham Ladies’ College. And I was never in any teams at school. I was in a play once, but neither of them could be bothered to come and watch.’
Outburst over, she breathes in deeply and then rubs the point between her eyebrows with her forefinger, a small, clumsy gesture like a child rubbing out messy work.
‘They’re both very busy,’ I say. ‘With their jobs and everything. It doesn’t mean they’re not proud of you.’
Onnie rolls her eyes. ‘They think I’m dim. It’s because I’m dyslexic, that’s why I’m rubbish at exams. But I passed my driving test first time, theory and practice. I’m not stupid.’
‘And you got picked for this internship!’
She presses her hands together and looks at me pleadingly. ‘Can I stay here? Tonight at least? Please?’
I tear off a small piece of bread and stab it with cheese. I eat it. I’m going to have to let her stay; I feel the possibility of anything else diminishing. It’s late and raining and I haven’t managed to find out anything about Xenia. Also she seems so pathetic, sitting here, so ill-equipped for life, the way she swings from aggressive defiance to a sort of pitiful dependency. I can’t just reject her like everybody else has.
‘You can stay tonight,’ I say.
I think she might jump up, or say hurrah, express delight of some kind. But she considers me quite carefully. ‘OK,’ she says, nodding. ‘That’s good.’
I let a beat pass. ‘Did you manage to get in touch with Xenia?’ I say. ‘I wondered if you’d had a chance to ask
her if she would talk to me?’
Her eyes slant away. ‘No. I will, though.’ She raises her chin. ‘I’ve got to track down her number. Tomorrow – is that OK?’
I consider her as carefully as she has been considering me. ‘How did she know Zach?’
Onnie stretches. ‘From Cornwall.’
‘And how do you know her?’
‘Just from around.’
‘Were they friends? Is she your age, or older?’
‘About my age.’
I try and smile. ‘Are you going to tell me any more?’
She closes her eyes slowly and then opens them. I think about the heart on Xenia’s flowers, the possibility he was having an affair. Onnie cracks her knuckles – one hand and then the other.
‘Sorry if I’m making you feel awkward,’ I say.
‘Were you faithful to Zach?’ she says quietly.
I feel something clench and plummet inside. ‘Yes. I was.’
‘Because you loved him?’
‘Yes.’ Is this her gauche way of telling me he wasn’t?
She tilts her head. ‘So who was the guy this evening?’
I stare at her in incomprehension. ‘What guy?’
‘The guy you were with on the common? I saw you.’
I laugh, shocked. ‘Someone from school. We’d all been out for a drink.’
‘So he’s not your new boyfriend?’
‘Sam Welham? No! He’s not my new boyfriend! He walked me home. He lives . . . round the corner.’
I stand up and start clearing away the plates. I place mine in the dishwasher and scrape the uneaten contents of hers into the bin. I collect the mugs and tip her cold tea into the sink. My hands are shaking slightly, though – the hints about Xenia and her questions about Sam have set my nerves on edge. I spill a bit of tea on the floor.
I hear Onnie stand up and open the cupboard where the kitchen roll is kept. She unravels one, two sheets and then puts her hands on my shoulders to move me to one side. She bends down to mop up the spillage and then she returns the kitchen roll to the cupboard. ‘He wouldn’t like you seeing other men.’
Remember Me This Way Page 19