I shush her, lean my chin on her hair and stroke the back of her neck. ‘Why do you think it’s going to end, honey?’
‘Because everything ends!’ she wails. ‘Everything!’
‘But I’m not going anywhere, Harriet. You’re my friend for life.’
And then she flops about a bit, and looks up and puts her hand on Henry’s poor bashed-up little head.
‘Look what they did to him,’ she says. ‘That’s what. Look. He’s only tiny and he never did anyone any harm, and look what they did! He’s little and trusting, and they used him like a football and they shut him up in a box to die!’
My own eyes start to brim with this, and I begin to gulp along with her. ‘But he’s okay now,’ I blubber, ‘he’s got us now. There will never be a cat in the world who’s as loved as Henry Tudor.’
We both know we’re not just crying over Henry, though I’ve shed many tears in surgeries up and down the city. You know, you suddenly find yourself responsible for something so small, so damaged, and your defences crumble one by one. The first time Henry came voluntarily out from behind the kitchen unit where he spent most of his time hiding and rubbed his scrappy little cheekbone along the length of my extended finger, I fell besottedly in love. I can’t bear the thought that someone could hurt my baby.
But we’re crying because, if you’re damaged yourself, you can’t bear to see someone else go through the same thing. That’s the tie that binds the two of us together. Don’t think we’re so unaware that we don’t know that.
‘But what if …?’ she says. Now that I’m crying, she’s slowed down herself.
‘Don’t do what ifs, Harriet. We can’t do what ifs.’
‘Yes, but,’ she says, ‘this can’t last. Something will come along that will destroy it all. We could get ill, or we could start to hate each other, or you’ll go and settle down with some man—’
I interrupt. ‘What the hell are you on about? I’m not going to leave you for some man, Harriet.’ And then, because I’m more of a realist than that, I correct myself. ‘Do you think I’d ever swan off with some man who didn’t understand what you meant to me?’ And as I’m asking it, I’m thinking about all the times Godiva did just that: called from New York to cancel an access visit because luurve took precedence. ‘My daughter wants me to be happy,’ she would crow to the press. ‘She understands how hard it’s been for me.’ And Harriet, on the payphone from her boarding school, would echo her, ‘That’s fine, Mummy,’ she would say dutifully, ‘you know I want you to be happy’.
‘You think that now,’ she says, ‘but men always get in the way. You love them. You’re bound to want to be with one some day.’
And I say, ‘Harriet, let’s not think about that now. Let’s just enjoy ourselves. We’ve finally found somewhere where no one can touch us, where no one can come in without our say-so, where we’re totally safe. Just try to be happy. Don’t spend your life waiting for it to end.’
Henry, finished with my ear, emits a little peeping miaow – he still talks baby-talk – and hops from my shoulder onto hers. She puts a hand up and wipes her tearstained face on his coat, something he doesn’t seem to mind.
‘Besides,’ I add, with that sunny optimism borne of friendship, ‘we’ll probably end up a pair of mad old cat ladies quarrelling about your art supplies when we’re seventy.’
She sniffs, gives me a watery smile. ‘We’ll never get a Stannah up the stairs,’ she says.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Really Drowning
And I keep crying. There’s nothing I can do to control it. All the tears I haven’t shed come bursting to the surface and won’t be stopped. I cry myself to sleep, I wake up and cry at the bathroom mirror as I’m brushing my teeth, I cry in front of the TV. She doesn’t come in to work again, and two or three times a night I have to take off for five minutes or so to hide in the cellar and let the tears roll. I stop going out, and instead I cry as I prepare my solitary late-night suppers, I cry when anyone calls to see how I am, and I lose it every time Henry climbs up and pushes his worried, mournful face into mine.
I stop answering the phone because I don’t want to run the risk that I might pick up and find it’s her, then I cry some more because whenever the machine clicks on, it never is. It’s as though she’s vanished off the face of the earth. It’s as though she’s died: one minute she’s there, filling up my life, irritating me and entertaining me and giving me worry and hope, and the next minute: nothing. Only, dying’s not a betrayal. If someone dies, it’s not stupid pride that takes them away from you. If someone dies, you can’t blame yourself.
And nobody seems to be on my side. Shahin says, ‘Anna, you are motherfuckin’ stupid bastard. You are family. She is like family to you. How can you do this? Why you are so angry? It’s only a man, after all.’
Oh, yes: they all know about that.
And I say, ‘You don’t understand, Shahin, it’s not about a man, it’s about the lies. Everyone has lied to me, my whole life. Until I met Harriet, there wasn’t a single person who told me the truth, about anything. And now I find out that she’s the same as the rest of them, and I can’t trust her any more either.’
And Shahin clears his throat and makes a spitting noise, and says, ‘Anna, you are crazy woman. I know all weemens are crazy, but this is really crazy. You think you’re only person ever got lied to?’
‘No, of course I don’t. But this is different.’
Shahin makes a roar of Middle-Eastern frustration. ‘Of course is not different! What makes you so special? I lie all the time. Everyone lies, all the time. Where I grew up, you had to lie, every day, every minute, because that was only way you stayed alive. Lying’s not the worst thing you can do. Sometime it’s the only thing you can do.’
And I say, ‘It is to me, Shahin. How can I ever trust that someone loves me if they don’t tell me the truth?’
‘Many time,’ says Shahin, ‘people tell lies because they love someone. Are you really so blind you don’t even know that?’
And then he says, ‘You been lying to your mother for, what? Ten years? I hear you all the time, on the telephone. Yes, Mother, library, Mother, being good girl, Mother. Without shame.’
And I say, ‘My point exactly.’
Mel comes over. She says, ‘Anna, Harriet’s in an awful state. Why won’t you talk to her?’
I roll over on the sofa, wrap myself tighter in my blanket because I seem to be cold all the time nowadays, even though it’s only September, and I say, ‘Mel, you don’t understand. Harriet’s got what she wants. She doesn’t give a damn what it does to anyone else.’
Mel says, ‘No, she rang me the other day and she could hardly speak, she was crying so much.’
I shout, ‘Don’t you think I’m crying? Do my tears matter so little to all of you? Why are you so concerned about Harriet’s tears? What about mine?’
Mel leaves, and Lindsey comes round the next day and sits on the futon with her arms round me for an hour while I cry. And she says, ‘Anna, Harriet never meant to hurt you. You must know that. It’s the last thing she’d do on purpose,’ but I can’t listen to her. All I know is that everything is spoiled now, that nothing will ever be good in my life again.
You think I’m exaggerating? Live in my shoes. I’ve nothing left. Oh, for God’s sake, this isn’t about a man. It’s about something important. It’s about trust and respect and deceit, it’s not about some poxy man.
Dom calls, all awkward, says, ‘How you doing, mate?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, good,’ he says. ‘So maybe you feel like coming out on Saturday after work? We were going to go to that new place on Greek Street where you get free drinks all night if you guess the weight of the bouncer.’
‘No, thanks,’ I say.
‘You sure?’ he says, all concerned.
‘Positive.’
He’s a bloke. He’s relieved, though because h
e’s a nice bloke he tries not to show it. ‘Okay, then,’ he says. ‘But if you change your mind …’
‘I won’t,’ I reply. ‘Thanks anyway, Dom.’
After he hangs up I hug a cushion for an hour before I fall asleep.
Roy says, ‘For Christ’s sake sort yourself out with that posh bint. This place is going to go down the tubes without her. Let alone the rent I’m not getting on the flat upstairs.’
I say, ‘Thanks, Roy. I’m doing my best.’
He shakes his head, tuts. ‘Well, it’s not bloody good enough. You’ve got a face like a wet Tuesday and it’s scaring off the punters.’
And I go down to the cellar and have a cry where he can’t see me.
On the eighth day, she sends me a letter.
Annie,
Please talk to me. Please don’t walk away from me. I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart I’m sorry. I haven’t told him anything about this. He has no idea. He never did. I love you. Please talk to me. It’s killing me, having you be so angry with me. I know you have reason, and all I can say is that I am truly, truly sorry. I’ll finish it with him, if that’s what you need; I just don’t want to be estranged from you like this. I never meant to lie to you. I was going to tell you, I swear. Please, please talk to me, let me apologise to your face. We can’t leave things like this.
I don’t know what’s got into me. Maybe I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing. I read it, and I miss her so much. It’s like having had a limb amputated. I feel her presence all the time, turn to tell her something and remember that she’s not there. And then the anger returns, and I screw the letter up, throw it into the bin. Then I get it out and read it again, and cry, and then, ritualistically, I put it in the ashtray and set fire to it, Henry crouching down in a corner, looking nervously at me like I’m going to set fire to him next.
So I think: maybe I’ll go to Australia. Maybe I’ll just bugger off to Australia and live on the beach and never come back, and that’ll show them. So I dial Nigel at three o’clock in the morning and he picks it up at seven o’clock his time. ‘It’s me,’ I say.
‘Annie!’ His voice is happy, relaxed, full of beach life. ‘Annie, how are ya? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon!’
‘I’m fine,’ I lie.
‘Really?’ he asks. ‘And how’s the stalker?’
‘Arrested.’
‘Well, thank God for that. And how’s Harriet?’
‘All right, as far as I know,’ I tell him, and burst into tears.
A worried, kindly voice on the other side of the world says, ‘Annie, what’s wrong? Why are you crying, Annie? What’s going on?’
So between sobs I stammer out my story – well, the edited highlights, obviously, about the safe house and the loneliness and the fact that she’d been holed up with Mike all that time without telling me, not the bit about how I’d wanted him for myself, and Nigel listens like the sweetie he is, only saying the odd ‘Aouh yeah?’ and ‘Go on’ to encourage me. And when I’m done, he sighs and says, ‘Poor old you. You’ve been having a rough time, I reckon.’
‘Yes,’ I sob, ‘I have.’
‘Guess you need a spot of the old TLC,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I reply, then, suddenly shy, I ask hesitantly, ‘So is it all right if I – you know – if I come out and see you? Like you said?’
‘Well, sure,’ says Nigel, ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’ And then he pauses, adds, ‘Once you’ve sorted everything out.’
‘What?’
‘Anna,’ he says, his voice serious, ‘I’d love to see you. You know I’d love to see you. I meant what I said. But I’m not going to help you run away from your problems. I’m sorry you feel let down, but you’ve got to sort this out. I’ve seen Harriet in action, and I believe what she said about not meaning to lie to you. You’re going to have to talk to her. Get things out in the open. If you run away now, you’ll end up being one of those people who runs away from everything.’
‘I won’t!’ I cry.
‘You will,’ he says firmly. ‘I’m sorry, but you will. Strikes me that you and Harriet are the only stable things in either of your lives. If you reject that when things get rough, you’re pretty much saying that you’re the kind of person who’ll run away from anything. I’d love to see you. You know I’d love to see you. But I don’t want to see you if all I am is a bolthole.’
Oh, God. Not one person is on my side. I say nothing.
‘Come on,’ says Nigel, ‘talk to her. She’s a good girl, you know that. And she’s a good friend to you. You love her to death. Just sort it out, Anna.’
‘I can’t,’ I mutter. ‘She won’t want to talk to me now.’
‘’Course she will,’ he says. ‘Come on. Just call her. For your own sake.’
Then he says, ‘I’ve got to go now, Annie. I’m sorry, but I was due over at Scarborough half an hour ago. I’ll call you in a couple of days, yeah?’
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘It’ll be okay, Annie,’ he says. ‘Sort it out.’
And then there’s nothing but me and a dead line. And I go back to the futon and crawl under the duvet and cry some more, because no one seems to be on my side, because I don’t want to face life on my own any more, and because, deep in the very fabric of me, in the place that tears easily and never mends, I can’t bear to be without my best friend.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The Silicone Saviour
And of course, I don’t do anything. Stupid pride keeps me crying in the miserable flat above the miserable restaurant, and my tips go down because Harriet and I, however much we annoy Roy, were a good team, and one of the others and I simply don’t cut the mustard to the same extent. I give up going out. I just wander upstairs from work and sit on the futon with Henry eating leftover toad-in-the-hole and watching telly until I fall asleep. No one’s heard anything from Harriet, or so they tell me. Mel says she’s gone underground too. More likely living in her love bubble without a need for anyone else, I think uncharitably, steal several portions of bread-and-butter pudding from the restaurant and shove three helpings in my gob with cold custard before I throw it all back up again.
And then Godiva reaches out from beyond the grave once more. Three weeks after I last saw her daughter, I’m up early for someone who rarely goes to bed before three; Rise and Shine is still on when I turn on the black-and-white telly Mel’s loaned me while I get my life straight. And the first face I recognise is Leeza Hayman’s. There she is, bold as brass and twice as blonde, power suit and 15 deniers, legs crossed at the knee on the comfy sofa. I leap forward, turn up the volume to hear her say ‘… just as I’d always said all along. I’ve been saying for years that there was something fishy about the whole thing, so it hardly comes as a surprise to me.’
No, I think: nothing comes as a surprise to you. Surprise is a rare commodity among those who have the luxury of twenty-four hours in which to register their prescience.
‘But Leeza,’ protests Mandy, the forty-something co-host who seems to be chairing this segment, ‘you’ve been one of the most vocal figures in support of her over the past few months.’
Leeza, evidently unrattled, replies, ‘Yes, well, I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in the end enough is enough.’
We cut to camera 2, and I see that, along with Leeza on the sofa, which is one of those corner jobbies that allow the maximum number to be seated within the narrowest camera angle, are what looks like a Church of England vicar, the Shadow Spokesperson for Contentious Issues and a woman in black who looks remarkably like she might belong to the Solemnity of the Occasion Brigade. No, Goddamn it: she is one of the Solemnity of the Occasion Brigade. She’s the woman who told me off for taking a picture of the drag queens in Parliament Square. I sit down to watch.
Mandy turns to Solemnity. ‘Mavis Rogers,’ she says, ‘you’re a long-standing member of the Godiva Fawcett Trust. Would you say that there was some truth in what Leeza is saying?’
Solemnity colours, clears her throat and begins, ‘Absolutely not,’ she says. ‘Whatever Ms Hayman’s opinion may be, there are millions of people in this country who regard Godiva as a saint, and nothing the likes of the press can say is going to change our minds. She was a good, lovely lady, and any smear stories people like you’ – she spits the last word at Leeza – ‘may dredge up are nothing but that: smear stories from petty and jealous people bent on dirtying anything good to make themselves feel better. She will always be a saint in my eyes, and in thousands of other people’s. I think they should carry on and deify her anyway—’
Leeza leans forward to get her face into shot, interrupts. ‘That’s just the sort of ignorance that’s getting this country into trouble,’ she snaps. ‘It’s not deify, for a start, it’s beatify, and in case you didn’t know, there are rules about this sort of thing. And aside from the fact that it’s well recorded that she was hardly a model of virtue, the rules say that a body must remain uncorrupted, and I think it’s been proven pretty conclusively that hers is not.’
‘Yes it is!’ cries Solemnity. ‘I’ve seen it myself! She looks exactly as she did the day she died!’
‘She died from a blow to the back of the head,’ says Leeza. ‘Hardly disfiguring. And as for the rest, it’s all in the autopsy if you weren’t too fat-headed to read it. Half her body was stuffed with silicone and the rest had been sucked so free of fat that there was nothing left to rot. It’s hardly a miracle. It’s called cosmetic surgery, dear.’
Shadow Spokesperson grabs at what he perceives to be a cue. He looks like a schnauzer and wears a well-ironed spotted handkerchief in his – horrors – blazer pocket. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘that if ever there was one, this stands as a metaphor for the kind of government we’ve got at the moment. Godiva Fawcett’s life was like the life of this parliament: government by spin, government by public image, all performance and no substance.’
Virtue Page 37