by Emma Curtis
Cassie follows me. I don’t look at her, but I can feel her eyes on my profile. I pour water into the kettle, put it on the stand, then lean against the counter and drop my head.
‘Grace …’
‘I need to tell you something,’ I say.
She sighs and puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s OK. I already know about Nick walking out. Lottie told Hannah.’
I turn and stare at her, aghast, the slow heat of mortification spreading from my neck to my cheeks. ‘You knew? You let me carry on with that ridiculous performance … How could you do that?’
Her face contorts in a grimace of apology. ‘Hannah only told me this morning. I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of the others.’
I put my head in my hands. ‘So who’s Hannah told?’
If they all sat there, inwardly smirking, while I babbled on about my invalid boyfriend, I don’t think I’ll be able to face any of them again.
‘Don’t worry, no one else yet – Lottie swore her to secrecy. But it’s only a matter of time. The sooner you talk to Mrs Shaw the better. I’m sure she’ll see you today if you call her.’
I rock back my head with a groan. ‘I’ll go in early this afternoon. Don’t worry about picking up Lottie today. I’ll be there.’
‘There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘It might be nothing.’
‘Cassie,’ I say sharply, and she flinches.
‘OK, but don’t bite my head off. I wasn’t sure I should say anything. But Evan saw Nick last Thursday evening, talking to a woman.’
I shrug. ‘Nick’s always bumping into acquaintances.’
‘Yes, I know, but Evan described it as an intense conversation. He only saw her from the back and from a distance, so he has no idea who it was. Apparently, she touched him, and he jerked away like he’d been burnt.’
The shock hits me like a wall, but I hold it together, trying not to avoid my friend’s gaze.
‘How odd. Actually, he did say he bumped into someone. A woman he knew from uni.’ I blurt out the lie, smiling brightly, but hot with annoyance and shame. ‘Maybe it was an old flame, you know, for him to have reacted like that. Did Evan say anything else about her? The colour of her hair? Her height? Her body language? What was intense about it?’
‘I didn’t mean to imply anything. Really, Grace. I’m sure Nick isn’t, well, you know.’
‘I don’t know, actually,’ I say.
‘Well …’ She pauses, biting down on her bottom lip. ‘Uh … that type, I suppose.’
I wait, my eyebrows lifted.
‘I did ask Evan questions,’ she says. ‘Obviously I did. But you know what men are like. They don’t clock things the way we do. So annoying!’
As the women leave, chatting in the front garden while Kit settles the baby into the pram, Douglas, my ex, walks up to the door and greets them all by name. He knows them as the parents of Lottie’s friends, and they think he’s marvellous – even Cassie, who understands a little more about our relationship than the others do, can’t help getting a little giddy round him.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, once everyone’s gone.
‘Can I come in first?’
I shrug and move to one side.
‘I had a text from Lottie.’
‘I told her not to tell anyone at school. I should have …’ I stop, realizing too late where this is going.
‘You should have told her not to tell me?’ His expression hardens. ‘Do you often ask her not to tell me things?’
‘No,’ I flounder. Because of course I do.
I walk ahead of him into the kitchen so that he can’t see my face. Tears irritate my ex.
‘Grace?’ His voice is sharp.
‘Give me a moment.’ I splash my face with water and wipe it on a clean tea towel, then turn to face him, back in control. ‘I didn’t want to make it into something it isn’t, in case he comes back. What did Lottie say?’
He pulls his phone out of his back pocket, man-oeuvres it with one hand and shows me the text.
Hi Dad. Something weird happened. Nick’s gone missing and Mum’s really upset. I don’t know what to do. Lottie xx
‘Who else have you told?’ he asks.
‘No one except Nick’s parents and the police.’ It’s a small fib, but he’ll only be offended if he discovers I confided in Cassie and Anna rather than him. ‘You know what people are like round here. They’ll think he’s left me.’
‘And he hasn’t?’
I glare at him. ‘No, course he hasn’t. Not on purpose at least.’
‘What did the police say?’
‘That it’s too early to send out a search party. They thought I was being hysterical. If he hasn’t reappeared by Thursday, that’s when they said they’d take it more seriously.’
‘Big of them,’ Douglas says, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder against the wall. Douglas always wears black: black jeans, black jacket, black shirt. It suits him because he’s so skinny, but it also makes him look like a drug dealer. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘You could take Lottie somewhere fun this weekend; distract her.’
‘Sure. No problem. What about money?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, have you got enough?’
I fizz with irritation. ‘I do earn a living, Douglas. I’m fine for the time being, and Nick will be back before it gets to the stage where we’re in trouble.’
‘So, when did he go? Did you argue? There must be a reason why he’s disappeared.’
‘Of course there’s a reason. Don’t treat me like an idiot.’
‘Calm down.’
‘I’ve got to go to work, Douglas.’
He comes closer, reaching past me to take a glass from the cupboard. He fills it with water and drinks it in one go, before rinsing it and placing it upside down on the drainer.
‘Are you picking Lottie up from school on Friday?’ I ask, pointedly moving towards the door. Sometimes he has to come here instead, if he’s running late.
‘Can we take a rain check on that?’
‘Fine.’ He touches my shoulder briefly, before strolling out into the warm April morning. The door shuts behind him, but not firmly enough to engage the lock. I give it an aggressive shove.
Sometimes I hate Douglas. I see him regularly because he has Lottie every other weekend and for part of the holidays. She idolizes him, and that’s a worry. When I was with him, it was made abundantly clear I could be a better version of myself, and that that was something I should desire and work towards. Every day I failed a little bit more. I don’t want that for Lottie. Nick’s influence is healthier. It wouldn’t occur to him that I could be anything other than the woman he wakes up to every morning, with her mussed-up hair and smudged eyeliner; the woman who wears his Chelsea T-shirt to sleep in and refuses to buy her own socks because men’s are better; or that Lottie could be anything but Lottie: imperfect but beautiful, funny and wise.
My job is to mitigate my ex’s influence on our daughter; to ensure that she knows it’s OK to fail, important even, and that she doesn’t have to be anything other than herself to be loved.
I put on my leather jacket and zip it up, frowning. For all my detachment, my constant analysis of his character, my efforts to stay one step ahead, he can still get under my skin. It’s hardly unexpected, given our history, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
When I was sixteen, after a year in care, I found myself slipping through the cracks. Gran was dead, Mum was dead. I had made a handful of friends in the children’s home but when I left I wanted to draw a line under that phase of my life. I didn’t have a job, I hadn’t had much of an education, but I knew that I had a brain, I just didn’t know where or how to use it. I ended up homeless, sleeping in shelters if I was lucky, on the streets if I wasn’t. Then I met Douglas.
He was training to be a lawyer and, in the little spare time he had, he volunteered at one of the shelters I freq
uented, dispensing free advice. He must have seen potential, because he went out of his way to help me and later, once I was more or less on my feet, we became involved. He seemed so sophisticated even though he was only twenty-five at the time. I understood that he liked the idea of moulding me, but at that point, he was all I had, and I clung to him. It fell apart the first time because he was unfaithful.
But that’s only half the truth. My reaction crossed a line. I don’t know why he took me back, unless he took pleasure in knowing I was cowed. I had put him in hospital, after all.
I drop my face into my hands, unable to relive those events without catching a wave of humiliation and pain. I was a shell, someone who absorbed everything thrown at her, who lived for and through another person. I belonged to Douglas.
It was only when I got pregnant that things began to change.
Douglas took the news badly. I didn’t expect that at all, and I panicked. I considered an abortion, couldn’t go through with it and almost gave Lottie up for adoption, but something stopped me, some inner strength that I hadn’t been aware I possessed. Douglas had encouraged me to be better. Well, I would be better. A better mother than I had been blessed with.
I left him, moving into a rented one-bedder in Catford. It was above a Balti restaurant and the cheapest thing I could find. Below my bedroom window the air-conditioning unit rumbled and the smell of curry drifted in. There were rats too, in the space behind the building where the bins were kept; I’d hear their squeaks and scurrying when I woke in the night. I remember sitting in that place, in the summer heat, breathing in stale spices, Lottie fast asleep in my lap, her eyelashes fluttering, her cheeks pink – my perfect child in this shitty place – and when I found a rat under her cot, I knew I had to get us out before she became aware of her surroundings, even if it meant crawling back to Douglas.
This third attempt at a relationship faltered because although I was grateful, I was no longer submissive; Lottie had put fire in my belly. Douglas didn’t like that and said he was bored. That stung, but it made things easier. Despite his initial reluctance to be a father, he worshipped Lottie so, as long as I shared her with him, he appeared to be content to let me go. I met Nick nine months later.
But it wasn’t as simple or unstrained as it first seemed. Nothing ever is with Douglas. He knows the worst of me and thinks it gives him permission to retain that paternal familiarity that infuriates Nick, who is no fool. It’s as though Douglas allows me to be with Nick while he retains ultimate ownership. As he demonstrated today, it’s in his body language and it’s in the subtle nuances of what he says or doesn’t say.
And yet, when he left me just now, it was like a cold breeze blowing through my house.
NICK
July 2000
HE’S LYING ON A RUG, LISTENING TO THE CLIPPED TOCK-TOCK of ping-pong balls coming from the barn. The sun is beating down on his bare back, hopefully doing his spots some good. The book Angus has loaned him, The Prince by Machiavelli, isn’t quite the distraction he needs, but he’s determined to read it anyway because he doesn’t want Angus to think he’s a lightweight. He lives for the evenings, when they’re all gathered around the big table on the terrace and Taisie has no power. He’s surprised at how long she’s been able to keep it up, not to mention maintain her sway over the others. And he’s beginning to wonder about himself. Is he who he thinks he is, an ordinary boy, or is he the way she seems to see him? Like the kids that get bullied at school because they’ve made the mistake of showing weakness. He’s never felt that doubt before, the kind that eats away at your confidence. It feels like a sickness, not a mental state. It’s not that he’s upset, though of course he is; it’s something that goes deeper, that feels like it’s growing into him, like scar tissue.
A shadow falls over his chest and face, and he turns his head, squinting into the sun. It’s Taisie.
‘What do you want?’ he asks.
He raises his eyes to the frayed denim shorts and the halter neck top. Her hair is tied up messily.
She doesn’t answer, just wanders off. He watches her feet in the grass, crushing daisies, her bare tanned legs, the tie-string that hangs between her shoulder blades bouncing. Does she want him to follow her, or what? How is he supposed to interpret the message? She’s The Prince and the rest of them are her Dominion. Probably best she doesn’t read the book. It might give her ideas.
He refuses to react to her crap and turns the page, and then dozes for a while, waking up to feel something tickling the backs of his knees. He lifts his shoulders off the ground and twists. Izzy is sitting next to him. His legs are strewn with daisies. He sneezes and half of them jump off.
‘You were fast asleep,’ Izzy says.
‘Where are the others?’
She shrugs. ‘Somewhere. Taisie’s being weird,’ she says after a pause.
‘Are you supposed to be speaking to me?’
She leans back on her hands and raises her face to the sun. Izzy is nothing like her big sister. Where Taisie is obvious, with her generous lips, ski-jump nose, large eyes and thick, shiny hair, Izzy is small and inward-looking. It’s hard to describe, but where Taisie’s presence fills a room, Izzy’s barely touches it. He’s known her since she was a baby, though, so he knows that there’s a mischievous side.
He jumps up and pulls her up with him. She executes a perfect cartwheel.
‘Piggyback, Shrimpy?’ he says.
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Why not, you are a shrimp.’
He lowers himself and she wraps her arms around his shoulders, her skinny legs around his waist and they take off up the garden, Izzy shrieking and Nick laughing. It’s the first time he’s laughed since he got here, if you don’t count the fake laughter. When they come round the house, Taisie is standing in the doorway with the twins and he feels the sudden tension in Izzy’s body, the cold front coming from her big sister. Izzy wriggles, and he allows her to slip from his back. She leaves him with a smile of regret that barely makes up for it and goes to them. They walk back into the shadowy darkness of the house, leaving him standing there feeling like a plonker. He closes his eyes and imagines himself under Westway, standing on the lip of the half-pipe waiting his turn, before dropping over the edge, knees bent, arms out, looking over his right shoulder, one hundred per cent focused, rocketing round the inside of the curve with the sweet clatter of wheel bearings filling his ears.
GRACE
Tuesday, 17 April 2018
AND NOW, AFTER DOUGLAS HAS LEFT, I’M IN SOUTH Kensington showing prospective tenants around a house: a French couple with three small daughters. It’s the kind of house that makes your mouth water, with a white stucco facade, pillars and a big, shiny door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. I tell them about the area, the schools, public transport, where to get the best coffee. They love the high ceilings and classical coving, adore the fireplaces, love the kitchen, and coo over the bathrooms. They need somewhere immediately, which is great for Rupert, but means added stress at my end.
As they confer, in their own language, my mind strays back to Saturday, trying to remember every word we said, every fleeting expression on Nick’s face. Apart from his proposal, the most significant thing that came up was that his work no longer made him happy. He was fed up with the treadmill, with making money for money’s sake. Could that have had something to do with it? Was there something more to his mood, something that happened at work to trigger a change in his thinking, that perhaps opened his eyes? Maybe he had already decided to walk away. I shouldn’t have allowed the conversation to end there. I should have dug deeper.
I wrap up the viewing quickly, anxious to get to the school by three, in time for my appointment with the head.
Mrs Shaw comes to pick me up from the school office, where I’ve been sitting on the chair normally reserved for sick children, my phone in my hand, listening to the secretary and Mrs Shaw’s PA gossiping. The headmistress of Cedar Heights could be a politician or a newsreader w
ith her bright, boxy jackets, obedient hair and unflappable eyebrows. When I arrived, the admin staff had been overly familiar, calling me Grace, their eyes alight with interest, from which I understood that the grapevine had been working overtime. They couldn’t quite bring themselves to ask direct questions, but I fielded several indirect ones before resorting to my emails. I zone out their voices and the sound of a netball match going on in the playground and try to focus.
Cedar Heights is a popular, two-class-entry primary school. The building is red-brick and two storeys high, with an enormous hall that does service as gym and dining room, the trestle tables and benches stacked away after lunch. The head’s office is up one flight of stairs, next to the girls’ loos. A child bursts out as we pass, stopping to gaze up at us before running downstairs.
‘Walk, Amelia,’ Mrs Shaw admonishes her.
Amelia walks, so slowly she could be on her way to the guillotine. She reaches the bottom, jumps the last step and skips off.
Mrs Shaw’s office is sun-filled and too warm. At her invitation I take a seat on the sofa and she sits down on the matching armchair. This is where parents are coaxed, seduced, rebuked and reassured.
‘Now,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what’s happened?’
After I’ve explained the situation, we discuss how the school is going to support Lottie. She asks me whether I’d like her to refer the family to social services to see what support they can offer, but I decline the invitation, trying not to let my horror show.
I’m relieved when the bell rings to signal the end of the day. Mrs Shaw stands up and we shake hands. She opens her door, says something encouraging, and I go back out to where the classes are lining up; row upon row of little girls in pale-blue gingham dresses and white socks and little boys in shorts and blue shirts. As I cross the playground, towards the gate, children and teachers turn to watch and I don’t think it’s me being hypersensitive, but it feels like the walk of shame. From the street, the other parents are watching me too. Everyone is, even the dogs tied to the railings.