You and Me Page 5

  After the service, which is mercifully short, we file out to a neighbouring room for wine and a buffet. Meilin and I stand next to each other, eating quiche and murmuring observations about the gathered assembly.

  ‘She looks nice, doesn’t she?’ Meilin nods at Dickie’s wife, Caroline.

  ‘She does,’ I agree.

  I’ve been in two minds about saying anything to Caroline. On the one hand, I’m interested to see what she’s like up close; on the other, I don’t have anything particularly kind to say about Dickie.

  Meilin takes a gulp of wine. ‘Why are you here?’ she asks.

  ‘To pay my respects,’ I say primly, pushing salad around my plate.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ she says. ‘It’s not like you were close.’

  I spear a cherry tomato and pop it in my mouth.

  She laughs darkly. ‘To check he’s definitely dead?’

  I swallow back my own laughter, but I realise, in that moment, how much I have missed her and feel a touch of sorrow that we have drifted apart over the years.

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she says. ‘My only wish is that Tom Bates were in a coffin next to him.’ She drains her glass.

  She goes to fetch more wine, without looking back to see how I react to Tom’s name. It brings on the cold sweat of a nightmare. I glance around the room again to confirm his absence. I’d scanned the congregation in the Empress Hall for his balding head earlier, but I couldn’t spot him – and it would have been easy. He still stands head and shoulders above everyone else from what I can see on Facebook. A taciturn giant. The First XV’s secret weapon. Another face scratched out on that team photograph.

  10

  Meilin returns with two large glasses of wine. ‘Well, you can’t just be here to catch up with me,’ she says, pushing one into my hand. She’s always been terrier-like. ‘We don’t need to return to this godforsaken dump to do that. I never visit the Peak District out of choice now. Too many memories.’ She gives a dramatic shiver. ‘You know they asked me to come back and give a talk about women in leadership. I said, “Over my dead body. Or at least not until you have a headmistress in place.”’ She sighs. ‘It’s like everywhere else – the women in the lowly caring roles – the matrons and teachers – and the men in the top jobs.’

  Meilin has done well for herself and I’m pleased for her, but sometimes I wonder what she thinks of my own lowly job. Out of habit, my eyes skit to Charles as she rants and it occurs to me how strange it is – the way we see the people we’ve loved since childhood. As if they don’t look any different. When I notice how Charles has aged around the eyes, or grown the slightest of bellies, well, it almost comes as a surprise that I’m looking at a man in his thirties. I still need to speak to him but it’s going to be difficult with Fiona sticking to him so closely.

  ‘Of course,’ Meilin says in an aggravatingly knowing tone. ‘That’s why you came.’ She sighs into her wine glass. ‘You’re not going to start up all that again.’

  She caught me once. I was sitting by his trunk, before they were all put into storage at the beginning of term, running my fingers along the letters CM Fry, daubed in white. Meilin liked Charles too – a lot of girls did – but she told me, ‘Don’t degrade yourself, Fran.’ It was a choice of words I thought about from time to time over the years. It made me think of Wuthering Heights.

  I blink away the memory. ‘I wondered if Ellie might come,’ I say. ‘I thought there might be a chance.’

  It was a daft hope, really, Ellie’s relationship with Dickie being what it was.

  ‘You two still not speaking?’ Meilin’s tone softens. She likes Ellie.

  ‘It’s been almost three years.’

  ‘You should patch things up,’ she says. ‘She’s the only family you have.’

  I’m quiet, listening to the murmur of the room. The catering staff are beginning to tidy away the food, carrying in trays of teacups in its place. It was true: Tom’s was not the only head I’d been looking for in the room. And Ellie’s would have been easy to see, too, with her distinctive blonde curls. But I don’t want to talk about Ellie – about her, or Tom, or any of it. A waitress carrying a large cafetière puts it down too sharply and a spurt of dark liquid shoots out, staining the pristine white tablecloth.

  ‘I was there,’ I whisper. ‘The night Dickie died. I saw it happen.’

  Meilin looks from the waitress back to me.

  I’m as taken aback by this confession as she is. I haven’t thought it through. It’s a kneejerk reaction to being asked about Ellie. A distraction technique. And probably the wine.

  ‘What did you see?’ she asks.

  I falter, unsure how much more to share, remembering the scrum of the crowd on the platform. The heat and the smell of so many human bodies packed up against each other. The flicker of panic as the train approached. The shift in the group of women. The way Dickie looked before he fell. I need to talk to Charles. My eyes return to him. Fiona remains at his side, her slim arm around his waist.

  ‘The thing is,’ I say to Meilin, my gaze still tugged to the other side of the room, ‘I’m not sure it was an accident.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know – it’s a hunch.’ I look into my wine glass, deciding if I should say more. I realise I’m quite drunk.

  Meilin takes a strangely long time to respond and when I glance up I see that Dickie’s widow has come to join us. I stare at her, wondering how much she has heard.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m Caroline. You must be Ellie’s sister.’ She places a small hand on my arm.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, puzzled. Ellie and Dickie weren’t friends, after all. ‘I was in Dickie’s year,’ I add. ‘We were in the same English class.’

  ‘I imagine he wasn’t much good at that.’ She smiles and takes a sip from the cup of tea she’s holding.

  ‘No,’ I agree. ‘Not really.’

  ‘He was good at rugby, though,’ adds Meilin tactfully.

  ‘And art,’ I say, remembering a picture of his in the summer exhibition in fifth year. A charcoal sketch of a life model – a skinny old man, his flesh slack and veiny. Everyone else got the giggles in life-drawing classes, but Dickie, in contrast with what one might expect, took it seriously, retreating into quiet concentration as he drew. I wonder if this was a side of him his wife knew too – a secret self kept hidden from the rest of us.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ she agrees. ‘He sketched me when we first got together. It was very flattering.’ She laughs. ‘But I suppose it had to be.’

  I realise I haven’t offered my condolences, but already it feels too late. ‘How did you and Dickie meet?’

  She smiles benignly. ‘At AA.’

  It takes me by surprise. ‘I didn’t know,’ I say. Though why would I? That was hardly something he’d have boasted about on social media. Remembering how unsteady he was on his feet before he went over the platform, it occurs to me he might have been keeping a secret from Caroline.

  She nods. ‘Dickie, well, he wanted to be better.’

  ‘We all want to be better,’ I say.

  There’s another silence. I’d forgotten this about funerals – the awkwardness, the standing around, thinking about what to say next.

  ‘Do you want a tea?’ Meilin asks me. ‘I’m going to get one.’

  I shake my head and, as she slips away, Caroline says softly, ‘You work at that bookshop, don’t you? On the Kings Road?’

  I look at her dumbly, recalling the figure standing in the rain, staring.

  ‘I saw on Facebook,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t really put anything on there,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I saw it somewhere.’ She takes another sip of tea.

  She’s looked me up then. It shouldn’t make me feel unsettled – I’ve looked her up too, after all – but it does.

  ‘Could I come and see you there?’ she asks.

  My heart begins to thud faster. Did she hear what I said earlier? I rewind the c
onversation, trying to work out when she arrived, silently, next to us.

  She returns the cup to the saucer carefully. ‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’ She seems to have taken my silence as consent.

  It’s at this juncture that Juliet joins us, dropping a jangling hand onto Caroline’s shoulder.

  ‘Caz, darling,’ she drawls. ‘How are you holding up?’

  It gives me some satisfaction to watch Caroline step neatly away.

  ‘Fran,’ says Juliet. She tilts her glass at me. It looks like we’re not the only ones making the most of the free-flowing Pinot.

  ‘Juliet.’ I nod, without smiling.

  ‘It’s Jules now,’ she says.

  I ignore this.

  ‘I’ve got to catch the chaplain,’ says Caroline.

  Juliet shakes her head sadly as she watches her go. ‘Poor woman. It can’t have been easy with Dickie.’

  ‘I thought he was your friend,’ I say pointedly. ‘One of the good ones.’

  ‘Did I say that?’ Juliet slurps her wine. ‘Nice to know you’ve been keeping an eye on me. Mind you, you were always good at keeping an eye on things.’

  A festering silence falls between us. I glance over to the table, hoping to transmit to Meilin the urgency of her return.

  ‘Did you hear about the psychopath test, Fran?’ asks Juliet, tracing her scars with her fingertips.

  ‘The book?’

  ‘No, the test,’ she insists.

  ‘It goes like this.’ She gestures as if she’s telling an anecdote on television. ‘A woman goes to her mother’s funeral and she meets a man she likes – a stranger, someone she hasn’t met before. A few days later, she kills her sister. Why?’

  There’s an acidic taste in my mouth. All that wine, and being back at Chesterfield. It’s too much. From the other side of the room, I can see Meilin start to chat to Fiona. That means Charles has been left unguarded. I have to speak to him, to escape Juliet. I don’t know what she’s getting at with her stupid story, but I’ve always felt, with Juliet, that she can see through to the darkest heart of me.

  She is still looking at me, though I haven’t given her an answer.

  I wait for her to explain, knowing she won’t be able to resist.

  ‘She murders her sister in order to meet the man again,’ she says triumphantly, taking a self-congratulatory gulp of wine.

  ‘Interesting,’ I say blandly, only half paying attention, straining to work out where Charles is.

  ‘Her logic is: if she met him at a family funeral, he’ll come to the next one,’ Juliet persists. ‘She kills someone just to bump into the man of her dreams again.’

  I glimpse Charles then, saying goodbye to the chaplain. Fiona by his side again, the pair of them looking sombre and united. I feel a sudden flash of rage at being penned in like this by Juliet, at her stupid story, at how the afternoon has gone to waste speaking to everyone except the one person I came here for.

  ‘I don’t really know what you’re getting at,’ I snap.

  Juliet smiles slowly. She has my attention at last. ‘It’s just strange that Dickie’s death has brought you back into a room with Charles.’ She looks down at her scars. ‘Some people do psycho things for the ones they love, don’t they?’

  11

  On the train, over an egg sandwich and KitKat, I tell Meilin about the psychopath test.

  ‘Typical Juliet,’ she says. ‘Or Jules,’ she adds, smirking. ‘Just trying to make you feel as uncomfortable as she did. It’s pretty clear Dickie’s wife is no fan of hers. Charles’s neither, I should imagine. I reckon she’s lonelier than she lets on.’

  ‘Do you think Caroline overheard me?’ I pull the crust off my egg sandwich. ‘About being there when Dickie died.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Meilin thoughtfully. ‘But perhaps you should mention it to the police? As a witness.’

  For all her dark humour, Meilin is a law-abiding citizen.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ I decide against sharing my plan to speak to Charles first. Meilin wouldn’t approve. ‘I really don’t know what Juliet was driving at,’ I add, unable to let it go. ‘Trying to imply I’m psycho.’

  Meilin snorts. ‘She can talk.’

  ‘Well, exactly.’

  ‘She was always jealous of you.’

  ‘Hardly,’ I reply doubtfully, remembering school.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Meilin peels the lid off her fruit salad. ‘You had your little sessions with Charles. And were always so self-contained. You never seemed to need anyone else.’ She licks the fruit juice off the lid. ‘And then there was Ellie,’ she adds. ‘All the boys liked her.’

  I couldn’t disagree with that. Ellie’s looks have always been her blessing. And her curse. She isn’t vain, isn’t a preening sort of person, but she knows the power she has. I remember leaving a drinks party with Mother when Ellie and I were children – one of the rare times we went out as a family. I clung to my mum’s hand while Ellie was in her arms beaming toothy smiles at the guests as she passed them. ‘She’s going to be trouble, that one,’ said a big, red man, with a cigarette in his hand. And our mother had smiled in a rather strained way and pulled Ellie close.

  The memory worried at me.

  ‘Where is she now?’ asks Meilin.

  ‘Paris, I think.’ I nibble the chocolate from my KitKat as a distraction.

  Ellie was always restless, even before we fell out. Unlike my steadfast years at the shop, she drifted from job to job in the years after school – dancing on podia at nightclubs or, when that got too exhausting, pressing UV stamps against the hands of partygoers, or mixing cocktails. She did a bit of everything and I struggled to keep up. Occasionally, I might happen to be passing a bar where I thought she was working and put my head around the door. ‘Is Ellie here?’ I’d ask and they’d say, no, she wasn’t. Sometimes a man behind the bar, polishing a glass with a tea towel would look me up and down and twist his mouth in a certain way as if there was something he wasn’t saying. It was the same with her friends. People came and went but she didn’t seem to form permanent attachments. She’d get along with those in her immediate vicinity and then move on when her job changed again. Perhaps her dyslexia made it harder for her to keep on top of texts and emails. She is still a sporadic communicator these days, though her writing has improved now – automatic spellchecks must help.

  Another trick of hers when we lived together was the way she’d suddenly vanish on trips abroad. One birthday I gave her a copy of the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and she began to send us postcards from wherever she went saying, ‘Another one off the list.’

  ‘It’s like she’s looking for something,’ I said to Mother once, when the latest missive had arrived.

  ‘Of course she is.’ She took it from me and stared sadly at the Taj Mahal. But she didn’t tell me what it was Ellie was searching for.

  At St Pancras, Meilin hugs me goodbye. ‘It’s been fun catching up,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it again soon.’

  I agree cheerfully enough, but, despite the warmth between us, I find myself doubting it will happen. As soon as Meilin returns to her sleek flat in Canary Wharf, with its smooth granite surfaces and views of the water, back to her women-in-management meetings, spinning classes and after-work cocktails, I suspect that this intention to stay in touch will flicker and dim, that I shall become another name on a list of people she feels guilty about.

  And there’s something else. If Meilin were ever to pay a visit to my flat, with its sticky linoleum floor, flimsy walls and the smell of marijuana billowing up from the dealer’s flat below; with Mother’s room upstairs left just as it was when she died, and Ellie’s next to it waiting for her to come back; and the dusty globe in the corner of the front room, keeping track of her movements, I would not be able to hide my loneliness. And I’m not sure I could bear for anyone else to witness it.

  When I get back to the flat and switch on my laptop it’s as if my thoughts of Ellie
have summoned her up. An email. My heart is racing as I open it. I heard about Dickie, she writes. How was the memorial service? Were the ‘gang’ all there?

  Her tone’s sarcastic, and she’s ignored my questions, I notice. Ellie never liked being interrogated, but this feels as if I have something to work with. It’s the first time I’ve heard from her since Mother’s birthday in September when she sent a bouquet of lilac roses, which were always Mother’s favourite. A reminder of her Christian name, which my niece shares. The roses are our thing, marking the annual day of truce in our estrangement. Ellie’s the only person who’s ever sent me flowers.

  In my email back to her, I pour my heart out in the way I once did in my journals – what it was like to catch up with Meilin, how Juliet baited me as always, my disappointment at not speaking to Charles. I just pull myself back from telling her that I witnessed Dickie’s death. That I saw a jostling crowd of women cram up against him. That in that scrum, one could have easily pushed him. That I suspected it was someone he knew.

  12

  Before I go to sleep, I look through my Charles collection. A consolation for not catching him today. There’s no need to keep it locked in my tuckbox now, but I still do. I get everything out, glancing at the team photograph, the rugby socks, the wrapped birthday presents I never delivered, the leather-bound journals from my school days – still among my most treasured possessions, though I don’t write in them any more. I’m careful what I keep a record of now. I find the passage I’m looking for and read it a couple of times before climbing into bed and reliving it again as I drift off. Another red-letter day.

  The first time he came to find me in the prep room, Charles was still in his rugby clothes, his thighs plastered in mud. I didn’t know where to look. In my memory, it was the golden hour: the light soft through the windows, a glow surrounding him like a religious icon. It’s possible those details may have been added later – it’s hard to tell after all these years.