‘Is anyone hurt?’
‘No, no, I don’t think so. A little shaken maybe,’ Camilla said, typically brushing it off. ‘Annabel’s pride has suffered the worst bruising. If she’s going to enter into a serious debate while she’s driving, she needs to learn to multitask. It’s the first rule of becoming a woman.’
Serious debate. Naomi didn’t like the sound of those two words and didn’t want to pursue the topic at all. Her mind was searching for something else to say, but Camilla spoke again.
‘Maybe you can solve this debate for us.’
Too late. ‘Solve what?’
‘Well, it’ll be a simple enough question for you. Annabel seems to think that there’s no romantic involvement between you and . . . ’
A pause. ‘Nathan?’ Naomi offered, sure that it was more a case of Camilla being unwilling to say his name than having forgotten it already. Bad sign.
‘Exactly. While I was under the impression that there was something quite definite going on.’
‘Definite?’ she said, stalling, madly trying to organise her thoughts.
‘Yes, definite.’
There was a short silence, but Naomi came back quickly. ‘Why do you think that?’
Camilla sighed. ‘Naomi, just answer the question please. Which one of us is right?’
‘I honestly didn’t hear a question.’
Naomi shut her eyes. Her jaw was tense. She couldn’t fathom how Camilla could pin her into a corner like this. Why couldn’t she just tell her mum to butt out like Annabel always did?
Camilla’s voice turned sharp and short. ‘I’ll simplify: have you entered into a relationship with that man?’
Naomi had one hand pressed against her forehead now. ‘He’s a friend, Mum, so of course we have a relationship.’
Camilla panted hard. ‘The last time I had a conversation this ridiculous I was trying to get an answer out of my local MP about plans to erect wind turbines. I’ll be plainer. Has your male friend, Nathaniel Stone, exceeded the boundaries of what anyone would call friendship, and kissed you?’
Naomi could feel the heat travelling up her neck like a furnace. It reached her cheeks. She stood and walked to the window and opened it, glad she wasn’t under the gaze of Camilla’s all-searching eyes. ‘Mum, this is embarrassing. I really don’t feel comfortable answering questions like that.’
‘Which can only mean he has. Oh marvellous!’
Nathan’s words were tumble-drying inside her head. Don’t take any nonsense. Let her know who’s in control of your life. He didn’t know Camilla.
‘Mum, please. It just means I don’t feel comfortable answering personal questions, that’s all.’
Naomi had started to congratulate herself for calmly holding her ground when the next question, disguised as a non-question, threw her. ‘I sincerely hope you haven’t slept with him.’
‘Of course I haven’t,’ she fired defensively. She felt the sting of regret as soon as the words flew out. She’d just answered both questions. Camilla would easily suss what had been left unsaid.
‘Thank goodness,’ Camilla said. ‘In that case, you’re not attached to him. The first time lives in the memory for evermore, Naomi, and with no good reason at all. The emotional entanglements can be a real nuisance. See how you got over the last one so quickly because you kept the relationship . . . simple?’
‘Last one?’
‘You know. Tim whatever-his-surname-was.’
‘Who?’ Naomi wasn’t with it.
‘The string player with the straw hair.’
‘Tom.’ Naomi remembered the months of grieving over what happened with Tom. It was anything but simple. The mention of his name sparked some anger. ‘Butterworth.’
‘Butterworth, yes.’ Her voice softened considerably as if Naomi had soothed an itch for her. Naomi twisted her forefinger into her hair and reluctantly listened. Now Camilla had worked things out and brought Tom into it, Naomi didn’t feel like talking.
‘Now listen to me, this is an important time,’ here goes, ‘a pivotal time, and this is a matter of basic maths. You cannot fit him into your life. There’s no room. If you don’t keep up with the pacesetters, Naomi, you’ll be left behind.’ Naomi could picture Camilla’s hand gestures to emphasise her words. ‘You inhabit different worlds. It could never work. Never.’ She paused for emphasis. ‘Leave him to his sales pitches, yes?’
Camilla left a gap. Naomi didn’t fill it, but she was listlessly searching for an excuse to get away by now. The speed of her thinking had slowed right down.
Camilla carried on. ‘Have you tried the jumper on I brought for you?’
What? ‘Er, no, not yet.’
‘It will look very nice,’ she said in a more optimistic tone, as if her second hand black jumper had saved the day and was a suitable replacement for Nathan. ‘Wear it when I see you next.’
Naomi, utterly stumped for words, heard herself saying, ‘I’m not wearing it for my birthday party, Mum.’ Naomi released all of her breath, silently.
Camilla chipped in quickly. Small talk always bored her and the main business had been dealt with. ‘Well, I’ve things to be getting on with. Will you tell him sooner rather than later.’ There was no hint of a question. ‘A clean break is best. Maybe I’ll let Annabel know I was right on both counts.’
‘Both counts?’ Naomi stressed both, because she didn’t understand.
‘I was right about the relationship, and I was right that you’d see sense and end it before he starts to mean something. Annabel said you wouldn’t listen. She doesn’t understand you like I do. I’ll ring at the usual time on Friday. Make sure you’re free. I can’t concentrate on a conversation if there’s background noise.’
Camilla said her goodbyes and rang off, leaving Naomi staring blankly outside. She realised she was looking at static spheres of raindrops on the window.
It took time to muster the energy to even switch her phone off and redirect her focus out of the window. She leant against the windowsill and looked down at Siobhan’s window. Snugpooh, the ragged bear, was slouched on the blue pillowcase.
Before he starts to mean something. Didn’t she get it? Nathan already meant everything. She wouldn’t end it. No way. Stuff the consequences.
<><><>
The day after, Naomi was back at her window in the same spot, churning the same thoughts. On the ground below, Siobhan’s wide hair caught her attention. It was like a big orange flying carpet. She was running. Siobhan’s usual speed was a slow to medium plod and never varied. Naomi watched Siobhan disappear around the corner.
After carrying her feelings for an evening and a morning they felt heavy. Naomi needed to offload. Lorie worked for Camilla full time, but she was sometimes available for a chat. Naomi dialled her number. Her phone was switched off.
She glanced at her watch. Nathan would be at work. She’d talked to him the night before about her conversation with Camilla and decided she needed female advice. She thought about ringing Annabel and decided she wasn’t ready. With her mood so low, thinking of Annabel only brought flashbacks of her flirting with Nathan.
Naomi stood by the window for a long time, lost inside her head. She remembered she had an essay to be in for Friday, the first written assignment. She hadn’t given it much thought. The work was piling up. She needed to practise several pieces, one of which she’d be playing in the main concert hall in two days’ time. She was only accompanying a violinist in front of a class of about fifteen, but the thought still freaked her out. There was work to do on the difficult sections of the piece so she didn’t look an idiot.
Naomi sighed. When she looked down at Siobhan’s window again, Snugpooh had vanished, which could only mean that Siobhan had picked him up. Next thing, Siobhan’s curtains snapped shut. Naomi checked the time. It was ten-twenty. She stepped back from the window and wondered what Siobhan was doing.
Two days later when the curtains were still closed and Siobhan hadn’t been seen, Naomi started to wo
rry.
<><><>
Wednesday. Naomi woke up early from a nightmare. She’d walked onto the concert platform in a white blouse clutching her music, and looked down to find she was wearing only her knickers. Her feet were bare. The wooden floor was cold and sticky. The violinist hadn’t shown up and Naomi had been shoved out alone to play solo. The only music she was carrying was the accompaniment to the piece they’d practised which would sound senseless without the violin. She looked out at her silent audience and noticed Nathan on the front row, smiling, giving her the thumbs-up. Lorie was beside him. Camilla sat behind them, stone-faced. Naomi looked down at her exposed legs and prayed for a way out. Her prayer was answered quickly.
She woke up in a panic. Any relief that it was only a dream was steadily replaced by the realisation that it was performance day. The only image in her mind was the small speck of a grand piano that she’d seen from the raised stands of the concert hall. In a few hours, she’d be playing it with a top-class Japanese violinist who seemed incapable of playing wrong notes. It was as though she and her violin had been programmed to avoid them.
The class began at two o’clock that afternoon. They had a final rehearsal booked for ten. That thought drove her out of bed and onto the toilet. She returned to bed, took hold of her necklace and gabbled a few words of prayer that she’d survive. Eyes closed, she pictured herself when it was over, accepting the thanks for the job like it had been no big deal. If only she could skip time and arrive magically at that moment now.
Camilla hadn’t rung since Sunday. No doubt she expected that Naomi had spoken to Nathan and cut him out of her life like he was the rotten part of a potato. No doubt she thought she was being completely reasonable. Truth was, Nathan had rung every day. The texts had flown between them, making her practise disjointed and her essay a non-starter. He’d started calling her Naims. Every time Naomi thought of him, she found herself smiling.
It was a dazzling Wednesday morning. The sun was rising cheerfully without any sympathy for the fact that Naomi was sick with nerves. She still hadn’t written a single word of her two-thousand word essay. A bit of research was all she’d managed. She’d be glad when the week was over.
The clock set off at a charge that day and never let up. The rehearsal at ten came and went. No worries. The morning evolved prematurely into the afternoon. At twelve-thirty, Naomi found herself in the kitchen chomping mindlessly on one quarter of a ham sandwich. It was sticking like glue to the roof of her mouth and she couldn’t break it down. Bridget, the singer, came in looking in need of a chat. Naomi didn’t have the time. Not in the mood for her boyfriend problems with Max, Naomi exchanged a few words and escaped to her room.
Nathan texted at one-thirty to wish her luck. It was enough to pack her off to the toilet again. The final moments were spent in her room at her tatty upright, focussed, pumped with adrenaline, running over the difficult sections, marking the copy in pencil with anything that would remotely help; fingering, accidentals, stars and arrows at points where she needed to go back to a repeat, or shift her eyes a few bars ahead. Previous lessons learned: take no chances.
She bent the pages at the bottom where she needed to turn quickly. She was ready, except she wasn’t. There was no such thing. At one-fifty, she grabbed her music and keys and headed for the dreaded concert hall.
What am I doing here?
<><><>
Two hours later, she slumped at her laptop in her room, tired and useless, trying to write the introduction to her essay with her mind still in the concert hall. She was thinking about the two wrong notes she’d hit during twelve pages of music that had obliterated the thousands of right notes. Her mind kept replaying the two passages and she was struggling to move on. After all the panic, they’d both happened during easy sections that she hadn’t bothered to worry about or over-prepare.
It had happened like this before – unforgivable slips in unexpected places. It usually took a few days to stop reliving the horror. Logic told her that no one really cared and that in the grand scheme it didn’t matter. People the world over were starving to death weren’t they? Her ego argued that it featured among the worst disasters in the history of mankind. Wrong notes were like personal earthquakes. The two today, combined, had reached about six on the Richter Scale. The only consolation was that by tomorrow it would be five, and so on. It would affect her confidence next time. Aftershocks were inevitable.
After four attempts at an introduction to her essay, she read back the latest one and decided it would have to do. At this rate, it would take a month. She had two days. One hundred words down, only one thousand nine hundred to go. She started to search for the handwritten scribbles she’d made during her research. Madeline was on her clarinet next door, not helping, repeating the same few bars. Groundhog Day!
While she was up and looking, Naomi glanced down at Siobhan’s room at the closed curtains. She stared for a long moment, wrong notes and essay finally leaving centre stage. Something wasn’t right. It hit her suddenly and forcefully. She needed to go and see Siobhan and ask why she’d been living behind closed curtains for two days. She grabbed her keys and phone and took the lift.
Naomi could hear muffled noises from inside Siobhan’s room. She knocked and waited a while, reluctant to be pushy. She cleared her throat as she stood, listening, wondering whether to call Siobhan out loud. After a small argument with herself about shouting or not shouting and leaving or not leaving, she raised her hand to knock again and a small voice came from behind the door.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me. Naomi.’
Silence a beat. ‘What do you want?’
‘I was just wondering . . . look, Siobhan, can you open the door please?’
Siobhan did so, slowly and grudgingly. Naomi stepped inside. The curtains were closed so Siobhan’s expression was initially unclear. An ineffective lamp burned meekly from her desk. Siobhan stood in front of it now, blocking what light there was. The room, like most student rooms, was a mess.
Naomi assessed Siobhan. ‘What’s wrong? Your curtains have been closed since Monday. I haven’t seen you in lectures.’
Siobhan shrugged. The silence hung a while. Naomi didn’t know what to say, so she thought hard.
‘Are you ill?’
Siobhan shook her head. It was the way she tensed her lips tightly that gave Naomi a clue.
‘Has someone upset you? Is it me?’
Siobhan measured her words carefully. ‘It isn’t you.’
‘So someone has upset you?’
‘Upset isn’t the right word.’
‘What then?’
Siobhan dried up. They stood, looking at each other.
‘D’you want to give me a clue here? I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘I promised I wouldn’t tell.’
‘Promised who?’
Siobhan froze. Naomi watched her carefully. ‘You’re afraid,’ she said, ‘aren’t you?’
Siobhan didn’t speak or move.
Naomi softened her tone. ‘Sit down. Tell me what’s wrong.’
Siobhan plonked herself down on the bed and grabbed Snugpooh and clutched him to her. Naomi sat beside her. ‘He’s going to get me,’ she blurted out.
‘Who is? Take a breath, come on. Tell me what happened.’
After a few moments of quiet, it spewed out, how Siobhan had seen a man loitering outside the accommodation doors looking shifty, trying to slip in.
‘No one else noticed him,’ she said, head down. ‘Groups of people walked past him, busy laughing and talking, but I was by myself. He saw me watching him, so he did. Came over to me. He had a knife. A really big knife under his jacket.’ Siobhan went quiet again. ‘He told me he wanted to get in to the block. I told him I wouldn’t help him. I was shaking really badly, couldn’t have walked if I’d tried. He told me he’d be back, had important business to see to.’
Naomi, too shocked to speak, put an arm around Siobhan. Someone was
playing a violin next door. ‘That’s horrifying. Why didn’t you text me or something? We have to report this. We need to involve the police.’
‘No,’ she said, sharply. ‘See, this is why I’ve kept my trap shut. He said if I told anyone, he’d be back and he’d find me. Promise me you’ll say nothing.’ There were tears in her eyes. Her hands shook as she wiped her eyes.
‘OK, I promise. Look, Siobhan, I wish you’d rung me. I could have helped. A problem shared and all that.’
‘You’ve been distracted, away with the fairies for weeks now. I didn’t know why until I saw you with him last week.’ From her tone, she’d been thinking about him quite a bit. ‘He’s coming between us.’
Siobhan saw Nathan as a threat?
‘Siobhan, we’re friends, OK? Nathan is my boyfriend, but that doesn’t change anything with us. If you need me, I’ll be there without question. That’s what friends do.’
‘Is that right?’ Siobhan said, without a hint of sarcasm. She sounded more relieved than anything. ‘I’ve only ever really had one friend and that’s my mammy. I don’t know how things work. I don’t get girls.’
‘Well it works like this. We’re friends, so we look out for each other. OK?’
For the first time, Siobhan looked up. ‘OK.’
Naomi stood up and decided to try and lighten the atmosphere. ‘Are you free next Saturday?’
Siobhan shrugged. ‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘Would you like to come to my birthday dinner? We can take up to five guests each and I’ve only invited Nathan so far. Might be nice for you to get out and have a bit of fun.’
A long hesitation, until, ‘I suppose so, yes.’
Naomi turned and headed for the door. ‘You know, this guy, he was probably just a drug addict or something, needing money for his next fix. I’m sure it wasn’t personal. Chances are you’ll never see him again. I’m sure there’s no need to hide.’
Either Side of Midnight Page 14