You and Me Page 10

  Caroline returns to us. ‘What are you all talking about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Juliet says, shooting Victoria a warning look. ‘Just reminiscing.’

  ‘Are you going west, Fran?’ Caroline turns to me. ‘Shall we share a cab?’

  As we drive away, I keep my eyes on Juliet, standing on the pavement, smoking. After a moment or two, she’s joined by the figure of Tom Bates. The way they stand like that, side by side, without saying a word to each other, suggests a kind of intimacy. As if they were allies. Or accomplices.

  22

  I wonder if Tom is still married. Juliet always wanted something that belonged to someone else. She was jealous of my study sessions with Charles from the beginning. He aced his Henry IV essay, of course. Mrs Fyson praised him as she returned it to his desk. ‘Well done, Charles. Your best work yet – you really got it.’ To me, she said, ‘Fran, there’s so much passion, as always, but not enough order. You need more distance. Your writing is too hot-headed. Like Hotspur,’ she said, making a little joke. ‘As Charles points out in his essay, you need to be cool-headed as well as passionate. Like Charles said,’ she repeated, a touch unnecessarily. ‘To succeed you have to be both.’

  Juliet and Dickie couldn’t resist the temptation to tease Charles after that and, in Juliet’s case, to win Charles’s attention back. Certain rumours had started about him and me. Rumours I neither confirmed nor denied. But then one evening Ellie and I caught Juliet and Charles together, pushed up against an old horse chestnut on Field, a place where she had done that very same dance with so many others.

  Ellie was furious on my behalf, swearing vengeance again on Juliet. ‘I promise you,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘We’ll get that girl back one day.’ She reminded me of a small terrier we’d known in Yorkshire, straining at the lead every time it saw a bigger dog, curling its dark lips to reveal sharp, pointy teeth.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I reassured her, trying not to think about what it had been like studying with Charles, our heads bent over books together. The way he’d tap the table when he repeated a point I’d made or fold his hands behind his head when he was thinking. ‘It’s like Jane Austen. The hero always sees sense in the end.’

  And I had been right all along, I reflect in the taxi, replaying the moment Charles raised the flag from his lap. It had happened just as I always imagined: he’d had his epiphany. I was the one. As Caroline is quiet, I rewind the moment over and over again until I feel almost nauseous from the repetition of it.

  ‘Charles,’ I say out loud, unsure if Caroline is awake or not. ‘So kind of him.’

  ‘He’s a kind man.’ She gives my hand a squeeze. ‘He knew what it would mean to you.’

  I dwell on her words for a while, allowing Caroline to think it was just charity on Charles’s part. When he comes to claim his prize at the shop, I can finally talk to him about Dickie. The thought causes me to exhale with relief.

  ‘I feel safe when Charles is around,’ Caroline says. ‘You have that quality too.’

  ‘It’s my figure,’ I say mournfully, patting my thickening waist. ‘It makes me look reliable.’

  ‘No.’ She laughs. ‘It’s your personality. You’re not like other people. You don’t try so hard.’

  I don’t correct her on this point.

  ‘Do you fancy coming back for a nightcap?’ Caroline asks suddenly. ‘I don’t like to be alone on a night like this, after thinking about Dickie so much.’

  She glances out of the cab window; the Tesco at Earl’s Court is lit up like a beacon. I wonder if they’re living in the same place: it’s been a couple of years since I waited outside their house in Ealing. That night, Charles was there for supper and Caroline cooked a lamb dish – Dickie posted pictures later on Facebook. I’ve never been inside, though. Perhaps there will be photographs of Charles around the place, intimate traces of his life I could store for the future.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I say.

  ‘Good.’ Caroline squeezes my hand and closes her eyes again. ‘Daisy will be thrilled to see you.’

  It’s the same house, I notice, as the cab pulls up outside. The smell of the hallway is comforting – traces of floor polish and spaghetti bolognese. In the kitchen, a blonde babysitter, with her hair pulled back into a high ponytail, jiggles Daisy on her hip.

  ‘She’s just woken.’

  Daisy’s chubby arms rise at the sight of her mother and Caroline scoops her up, dropping kisses on her hair. The intimacy of it does something funny to me, and I ask for directions to the bathroom. The walls of the loo have been painted bright blue and there’s a framed print – ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift – that is why it is called the present.’

  I look at it for a long time – it doesn’t seem like the kind of quote Dickie might have appreciated. In fact, I can’t imagine him in this house at all. It’s too sleek, too grown up. The things I associate with Dickie – team photographs and sweaty trainers, teasing girls and ironic dancing at discos. None of them fit here.

  When I return to the kitchen, the babysitter has gone and Caroline has a saucepan of milk on the hob.

  ‘Look, Daisy, it’s our friend Fran. Do you want some hot chocolate?’ she calls over her shoulder to me. ‘I’ll put her down and then we’ll have a cup in the sitting room.’

  Caroline’s hot chocolate is delicious – rich and sweet. After a couple of sips, I feel a wave of tiredness wash over me. Caroline perches on a pouffe, while I take the armchair.

  ‘Please stay,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you’re exhausted and the guest room is all made up.’

  ‘Actually, I’d love that, thank you.’

  I stare at a photograph of Dickie in his winter coat, propped up on the table behind Caroline. His face is heavier – not fatter, but more substantial than it was at school. I can’t see any photos of Charles, at least not in this room.

  ‘I’m not sleeping well,’ says Caroline, looking into the fire. ‘I keep reliving the moment Dickie died. Over and over again. Charles said it was quick – do you think it would have been?’ She sighs. ‘I hope so.’

  Glancing at the photograph of Dickie behind her head, I try not to think about the look on his face. That half-smile. The way he fell. I remember Juliet instead – her earlier discomfort. I wonder again what she is hiding. ‘I’m sure it was,’ I reply.

  ‘I’ve been thinking more about the possibility of suicide,’ Caroline says quietly. ‘Looking back at everything, every stage of our relationship. When we were first dating, we used to chat late into the night. Dickie would talk sometimes about a relationship in his life. Something dark. That made him want to drink to escape it. It wasn’t until much later, when I met Juliet, that I thought it might be her, though he never confirmed it. He was loyal like that. But I think she brought out the worst in him … I don’t know why he couldn’t have dropped her altogether but he was too soft in that way.’

  Juliet brought out the worst in me, too. She always had – always knew how to taunt me until I snapped. Was she there on the platform too? But why would she hurt Dickie? Unless the relationship was as toxic for her as it was for him.

  Holding the cup close to my chest, I’m aware of the beginnings of a terrible headache, like something crouching in wait for me.

  Caroline sighs and gets to her feet. ‘I suppose I should leave it to the professionals – we have a date for the inquest now, did I say?’

  I shake my head and drain the dregs of my drink, unsure how to respond to the news.

  ‘It’s in January,’ she says. ‘I’m dreading it, but …’

  ‘It’ll give you answers,’ I say, finishing the sentence for her. I stand up too to shake off the guilt, to stop myself saying anything more.

  The guest room is simply decorated and spotlessly clean. Caroline has left a T-shirt on the bed for me to sleep in, as well as a tracksuit for my journey home tomorrow – not the sort of thing I’d usually wear. I look around at the double bed – white linen, beige cushions
– desk, cupboard and chest of drawers, as well as a neat en-suite bathroom.

  Hearing the tinkle of music from Daisy’s room, the sound of a mobile playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’, I wait until Caroline has gone to bed before having a more thorough search. First, I check the cupboards, but there’s nothing terribly interesting: some formal clothes – winter coats and evening wear – in the main cupboard, with piles of bedding neatly folded in the alcove above. In the chest of drawers, there’s more bedding and some towels. I’m about to give up when I decide to check the desk. Its drawers are stiff as they open. There’s a modest pile of papers and an old sketchbook. I begin to flick through it casually but I find I can’t look away. The images are horrifying – drowning women, with huge eyes and tiny limbs, scenes of violence and cruelty, dismembered body parts, and eyes. Eyes always watching. There’s one image in particular – a girl with candyfloss blonde hair being sucked into the depths of a whirlpool. I shut the book and shove everything back into the desk drawer.

  It takes me a long time to fall asleep – my head pounds; my thoughts spin from Juliet and the conversation I overheard to the menacing presence of Tom Bates and the woman retching in the cubicle next to me. It had probably been Fiona. I hadn’t caused that, had I? Or should I have mentioned her allergy to wine to the cocktail waiter? Had he splashed in some Prosecco when I wasn’t paying attention? Had I deliberately looked away?

  Your mind can play tricks on you. I know that much.

  To cheer myself up, I return to Charles raising his flag in the auction, but every time I begin to drift off, it’s Dickie’s creepy drawings that come back to me, infecting the hinterland between waking and sleep, so that everything twists and corrupts. Each time I return to that moment on stage all I can see is Tom Bates and his eyes like dead fish. It feels as if I’ve only been asleep a matter of moments before I wake up abruptly, with Caroline standing at the end of my bed looking down at me.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asks coldly.

  I sit up, drawing my knees to my chest. Her eyes are open, but her tone and demeanour are different, as if someone else is occupying her body. She’s sleepwalking. A girl at Chesterfield used to do that, walk into your cubicle and start talking utter rubbish.

  ‘You should go back to bed,’ I whisper, remembering you’re not meant to wake sleepwalkers up.

  ‘This is my bed,’ she says. ‘Get out! I don’t want you here. Always creeping around.’

  I glance guiltily over at the desk, seeing with relief that I’ve tidied away Dickie’s sketchbook. Surely she didn’t hear me rummaging through his things.

  ‘Did you come for Daisy?’ she asks. She takes my arm tightly, her nails digging in. ‘Are you going to take her away?’

  I struggle away from her grip and ease her off the bed to guide her back to her room.

  ‘No,’ she says, pushing me off. ‘You can’t have her. I don’t trust you,’ she adds darkly. ‘I don’t trust you at all.’

  She strides for the door and pulls it firmly behind her. I stand for a moment or two, my teeth chattering, my arm still tingling from where she dug her nails into my flesh.

  23

  The next morning, I wake nauseous, badly rested. My eyes are gritty, my mouth dry.

  In the kitchen, Caroline is cooking eggs. The smell causes me to swallow a couple of times.

  ‘There she is,’ she says pleasantly to Daisy, who’s in her highchair, stirring mashed avocado into a pulp. ‘How did you sleep?’

  ‘Not so well,’ I say, avoiding eye contact, gripping the kitchen counter. ‘Do you remember coming into my room?’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head.

  ‘You were sleepwalking.’

  She goes quiet for a moment, pushing the egg around the pan thoughtfully. ‘Was I talking nonsense?’

  ‘Well’—I try to smile reasonably—‘a bit, but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, dolloping a ladleful of scrambled eggs into Daisy’s bowl. Her brow is unfurrowed, her green eyes clear. It’s like looking at a different person from last night. ‘What was I saying?’

  I smile at Daisy waving her spoon in the air. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  After breakfast, the three of us go for a walk, splashing through puddles left by rain in the night. Caroline asks me again about her sleepwalking.

  ‘You were being a little threatening,’ I say in the end. I don’t really want to go into it.

  ‘Oh God.’ She brings a hand to her mouth. ‘I’ve always had this horrible side that comes out. I hosted a party once in my twenties and, after passing out, I sleepwalked into the kitchen and threatened to kill all my guests. Alcohol was the worst for it.’

  ‘You didn’t threaten to kill me.’ I laugh. I don’t add what she said about Daisy – I don’t want to ruin our morning together. But the incident has left me with a fluttering sense of unease, like the feeling you have after a nightmare. I can’t quite forget the version of Caroline I glimpsed. Is she really someone I can trust?

  ‘Let me get you a hot drink before you go,’ she says, taking my arm. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  We squeeze into a crowded café full of Ealing mothers and their offspring. The kind of place with posters on the wall about where to park your buggies (pushchairs, I correct mentally) and babycinos on the menu. The kind of place I usually give a wide berth.

  Once we’re settled with our drinks, Caroline fishes Daisy out of the pushchair. Daisy is in a good mood today, beaming happily.

  ‘Why don’t you give Auntie Fran a cuddle?’ Her mother smiles and plonks her unceremoniously on my lap.

  I don’t think I’ve held a baby since Ellie was an infant – and I’m not sure if I’m doing it right – but I keep both hands firmly on her waist and she tips her head back at me and smiles.

  ‘There you go,’ says Caroline. ‘You’ve made a friend. Actually’—she looks from me to the door—‘there’s a call I have to make for work. Will you two be all right if I pop out for a few minutes?’

  ‘Of course.’ I feel a swell of pride in my chest. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  Daisy’s eyes follow her mother to the door, her lip trembles for a moment and I remember something Ellie liked as a child. I begin to sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ – the song I heard coming from her nursery. I whisper it quietly so the words are just for her and she thinks better of crying and tips her head back again to smile at me. I put my face to her hair. It’s everything I imagined it would be: candyfloss, milk and biscuity sweetness. My earlier jitters melt away.

  Ellie and I are too close in age for me to remember her being born, but I still have a photo of me as a toddler watching her sleep in her Moses basket, a lollipop in my mouth. ‘You were so gentle with her,’ Mother used to say. ‘Your first friend in the world.’ In all the early photographs of us, we’re always holding hands. I’m taller, sturdier, darker. Ellie was bald until she was two. When her hair came, in white-blonde curls, strangers would come up to us in the street and comment on her angelic looks. But Mother was careful not to let me feel any less special. I was still the older sister, the protector. The one who did things first.

  Ellie was never far behind, though. By the time I was four and she was two, she insisted on doing everything I did – following me to the top of the climbing frame in the playground or on to the bouncy castle at the village fete, where the big boys hurled themselves at the walls. Her first words were ‘me too’, as she followed me around, before that phrase lost its innocence. Once, when Ellie was three and I was five, her shrieking on the see-saw brought Mother tearing from the cottage, mistaking my sister’s exuberance for fear. ‘My mum always said little girls were tougher,’ she told me years later, at Chesterfield. ‘It never made sense to her that they sent the boys to war.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I was of a generation where none of us had been sent to war, and I was thankful. I’d long since ceded the physical advantage to Ellie and retreated to my books. I thought our roles had rev
ersed at school; that she was the one who could protect me now. I didn’t know that that pact between us could switch back again. That I’d always be her protector, just as she would always be mine.

  Daisy wriggles in my lap. My singing has become dreary and I pick things up with a rendition of ‘Under the Sea’, regretting the choice when my mind returns to Dickie’s drawings. Outside, Caroline is perched on a chair, her face animated as she chats on the phone. Daisy chuckles as I jiggle my lap in time to the music.

  ‘Aren’t you lovely?’ An old lady, on her way to the counter, stops to admire Daisy, reaching out to touch her cheek. Daisy smiles coyly and nestles into my chest as if she belongs to me and I understand, in that moment, with the warm weight of her against me, a happiness I haven’t experienced before: a door opening in my heart.

  ‘Having a lovely time with Mummy, aren’t you?’ the woman continues kindly. Her white hair is curled and she’s wearing pink lipstick for her trip to the café, a smattering of it stuck to her teeth. The sight of it makes my heart ache.

  I’m going to correct her, to tell her I’m not the mother, just a friend, but Daisy drops her toy giraffe and I lean over instead to retrieve it. I think then that she’ll move on, but she doesn’t. Perhaps we’re the first people she’s spoken to all day.

  ‘How old are you?’ It’s clear the question is for me to answer, not Daisy.

  I open my mouth and shut it, trying to remember when she was born exactly. Earlier in the year. Spring maybe. Not the kind of thing a mother would forget.

  ‘Thirty-three weeks today,’ says Caroline’s voice behind us.

  The woman turns around to make way for her. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she says.

  My face flushes hot. Caroline has done nothing wrong, just helped me out of a sticky spot. Then why do I feel cross and ashamed?

  ‘I’ll let you all get to it,’ the woman says kindly and makes her way to the counter, but she can’t hide the look she gives me. It’s not reproach, I realise: it’s pity.