You and Me Read online

  Even though I was used to sitting next to him in class, he seemed bigger somehow close up, outside of that formal setting.

  ‘Fran!’ he said at the doorway. ‘Just the person I’m looking for.’

  Meilin, who was visiting me from her boarding house that night, gawped as he made his way over.

  Charles sighed, took a seat and threw his legs onto a chair. ‘My legs ache,’ he said.

  I looked down at his mud-smeared thighs. ‘Did you win?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Of course he won.

  He smelled faintly of beer. How manly, I thought.

  He smiled. ‘Fran. Is that short for Frances?’

  ‘Francesca.’

  We’d never spoken for so long.

  ‘That’s a pretty name. It suits you.’

  I heard a snuffling noise come from Meilin. I couldn’t tell if it was admiration, or laughter.

  ‘Francesca, this timed essay on Henry IV, Part I for Mrs Fyson tomorrow – I don’t get it.’

  That was it. My moment. A present handed to me out of the blue. I had just been preparing for this very essay. ‘It’s about acting versus acting,’ I began proudly.

  ‘Right,’ he rubbed his chin. ‘Crystal clear.’

  ‘Let me explain. Hotspur’—I stabbed the text in front of me with my finger—‘is a man of action, whereas Prince Hal is a man who can dissemble. Act. Get it?’

  ‘Hm, so it’s about the two meanings of acting?’ He picked up the text and looked at it doubtfully.

  ‘Yes.’ I took the book off him, wondering at my boldness. ‘You know that speech when Hal talks about how he is biding his time, messing around in the pub with Falstaff; how eventually he’ll reveal his true self like the sun from behind the clouds?’

  ‘I know that bit,’ chirped up Meilin. ‘“If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work …”’

  I shot her a look. It wasn’t her moment. ‘It means that his real nature is like the sun – that it will come out eventually,’ I explained. ‘Until then he’s dissembling, biding his time. Slumming it. Acting, I suppose. Until he becomes a man of action – the warrior prince his father needs him to be.’

  Charles took the book off me and was quiet for a moment as he read the passage.

  ‘I like that,’ he said eventually. ‘What about the other characters? We have to write about them too, don’t we?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘with Hotspur – he’s a man of action. But it doesn’t do him that much good.’ I drew a little illustration on a piece of paper in front of me, of Hotspur with a sword, jumping up and down like a hothead.

  ‘Why not?’ Charles flicked through the book. We hadn’t finished it in class yet, but I’d read ahead.

  ‘He dies,’ said Meilin breathlessly. ‘Hal kills him.’

  ‘Huh, thanks,’ muttered Charles.

  ‘It’s Meilin,’ she reminded him eagerly, though no one had asked her.

  ‘And Falstaff,’ I continued with my lesson, sketching out the fat bearded man, sitting on a chair with a tankard in his hand. ‘He’s a character who dissembles too much. Lies. Like when he says that he killed Hotspur, but he hasn’t. So, in the end, Hal has to reject him, to leave him and all his lowlife buddies behind. I guess what it’s about, really, is that too much of either kind of acting is a bad thing. The characters who do best are the ones who can do both.’

  13

  ‘Someone’s asking for you,’ says Gareth. I’m in the basement helping Ingrid and Liam sort through a large delivery. Outside, it’s an uninspiring autumnal day, the kind of afternoon that barely gets light. The rain comes down in a steady drizzle, so it doesn’t seem worth taking a break.

  My heart does a small jump. A skip. It won’t be Charles, of course. I don’t know why I even let myself dream it might be.

  ‘A woman. With a baby,’ confirms Gareth.

  Definitely not Charles then.

  Gareth doesn’t stop to say more. He’s wary of me these days. I hurt him and I’m sorry for that. He’s a kind man, a little tubby, with a sweet, boyish face. I always felt safe around him and enjoyed our conversations about books. We used to spend some time together outside of the shop, but that’s all stopped now.

  When he first asked me out, I told Ellie. ‘It sounds like a date to me,’ she said.

  ‘What happens on dates?’ I asked, partly teasing, partly curious. I’d seen dates on TV, of course, and sat on Ellie’s bed watching her get ready for them. She was quick at it – a lick of this, a smear of that, fingers through her curls and then she’d be gone.

  I remember how she pulled a naughty face and said, ‘It’s more about what you do afterwards.’

  I’d never done the thing she was talking about – and I didn’t think I’d be starting with Gareth – but I’d heard voices late at night upstairs in Ellie’s room in the months after Mother died. Perhaps it was her way of dealing with the stress – not just the grief of losing Mother, but the money worries that plagued us afterwards; the calls from our mortgage lender; the bills with ‘urgent’ stamped on them that we were struggling to stay on top of.

  By morning, there might be an empty wine bottle or two in the kitchen, the whiff of cigarette smoke or a condom wrapper in the bathroom bin, but there would be no sign of what we termed her gentleman callers.

  ‘And what was the name of last night’s visitor?’ I’d ask her over breakfast.

  ‘Oh, I don’t give them names,’ she’d tease. She’d just call them The French Man or The Banker or whatever. ‘It’s like pets,’ she’d say, tickling Branwell’s tummy. ‘If you name them, you have to keep them.’

  I’d enjoyed my time with Gareth – our author talks and cinema trips – but when Charles came back into my life four years ago, I found myself looking at Gareth with different, more critical eyes. I couldn’t help comparing him with Charles. Like on our disastrous date, towards the end of our time together, in an Italian restaurant, when he got terribly flustered choosing a wine and spilled spaghetti in his lap. We couldn’t think of anything to say to each other and by the point I asked him if he had any siblings for the third time, I knew we were lost.

  These days he is polite but distant. Careful with me like someone near an item that could cut them. A tin opener. A sharp knife.

  I walk up the stairs slowly, conscious of every step. If it is who I think it is, I’m going to have to be careful about what I say. I still haven’t told anyone except Meilin that I was there the night Dickie died.

  Caroline stands at the till upstairs in a dripping raincoat and hat. She has a pushchair with her. I peer through the transparent cover at Dickie’s daughter.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I ask, though I already know.

  ‘Daisy,’ she says.

  Daisy, who has her mother’s sandy hair and her father’s dark eyes, blinks and puts her thumb in her mouth. She looks sleepy.

  ‘We were wondering if you had time to join us for a coffee?’ asks Caroline. ‘Or tea. Whichever you like.’ She speaks quickly, softly. It occurs to me that she’s nervous too. She looks down at bitten fingernails.

  My gaze lowers to where water is dripping off the bottom of the pushchair, staining the carpet. My heart thuds in my chest. I wonder again if she overheard me at the memorial.

  I make a show of looking at my watch, but I already know how I’m going to answer. It’s risky but it might be a move that brings me closer to Charles. ‘I don’t drink coffee,’ I say, ‘but I could go for tea.’

  In the café, we have trouble manoeuvring our way with the pushchair. Caroline takes off her rain hat and shakes her head. Her skin is almost translucent, the rings beneath her eyes a light violet.

  ‘How are things?’ I ask.

  ‘You know,’ she says quietly.

  She looks down at the pushchair where Daisy is snoozing.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’

  When Mother died, sleep was the thing that really separated the wild days from the sane ones.

  ‘Not
really.’

  The child wakes with a furious squall. Caroline picks her up and she wriggles on her mother’s lap and nestles in to her. Her thumb returns to her mouth. Caroline strokes her daughter’s hair absent-mindedly.

  ‘Would you like a babycino?’ she asks.

  I’ve always thought that the daftest of names. It doesn’t even scan right, but Daisy beams at the word. Caroline catches a passing waitress and orders our drinks.

  ‘It still doesn’t feel real.’ She continues from where she left off. ‘Your husband goes to meet a friend and he doesn’t come home. You keep going back over the things you did before you got that phone call – the meal you made, the TV show you watched, every single detail – and you wonder: if I had done something else, something different, would that have saved him?’

  I nod. ‘I felt like that losing my mother.’

  It’s true. Even though she was terminally ill, I went over the day she died obsessively in the months afterwards, reliving every point at which I could have changed what was about to happen. Picking at a spot on the table, I think of Dickie, too. When he’d glanced over his shoulder, could I have done anything to stop what happened next? Called out? Waved? I’ll never know.

  ‘I always worried about him going out anyway,’ she says. ‘Because of the chance he might drink again. And then this was so much worse …’ Her voice cracks a little. ‘He hadn’t been sober as long as me, you see, and it was a risk at the beginning – our dating. You’re not meant to see anyone for a while. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe we did everything too quickly for him – getting married, having a baby …’

  I shake my head. ‘You can’t think like that.’

  ‘It turns out he had been drinking that night, you see,’ she says. ‘Charles couldn’t stop him – he feels so dreadful about that. I know he’s worried that I blame him for it.’

  ‘Was it Charles who called you?’ I try to keep my voice as neutral as possible as I say his name, pushing away the memory of him on his knees on the platform. Poor Charles. I should have stayed; I should have been there to comfort him.

  She nods, picking up a teaspoon. ‘He didn’t have to say the words … He just said, “It’s Dickie.” And I knew. From the way he said it; how it was him on the phone and not Dickie – I knew it was something very bad.’ She shakes herself a little, as if to rid herself of the memory. ‘Do you believe in premonitions?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I look down at a smattering of sugar granules on the table.

  ‘Dickie was off in the days before he died.’

  ‘Off?’

  ‘Not himself.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Jittery. Secretive. He’d started drawing again, but his sketches were so dark I couldn’t look at them. They unsettled me. I didn’t like them – I told him as much, but I wonder now if he’d had a glimpse of something – his death. I know it sounds ridiculous.’

  The night before Mother died, I dreamed of Branwell at the door, scratching and scratching to be let in and then, when I opened it, part of his face was missing, his flesh starting to melt away. I woke to the rasp of Mother’s breath filling the room and I could tell the end was coming.

  I take a breath, unsure whether to share this with Caroline, but then our drinks arrive and the moment has passed. Daisy’s face lights up at the sight of the babycino. A couple behind us smile indulgently at her; Caroline too.

  Her delight is irresistible. It’s as if we’re warming ourselves on the glow of it. Her mother passes her a teaspoon and Daisy begins to ladle the white foam into her mouth, spreading it all over her face like the bubble beards Ellie and I used to make in the bath. I think of Rose and wonder if you can buy babycinos in Paris. Daisy goes to grab the cup with both hands and her mother intercepts.

  ‘I wondered,’ Caroline murmurs, as if she doesn’t want anyone else to hear us, ‘could you put me in touch with your sister?’

  The change in subject takes me by surprise. I take a gulp of tea too quickly. It leaves an ache in my throat like a bruise.

  ‘Why?’

  Caroline curls her fingers around her daughter’s foot. She doesn’t look at me as she says, ‘I don’t know how much you know about the twelve steps?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘The ninth step is about making amends. Usually to people you’ve hurt from drinking but there was something from his past – something from further back – that Dickie couldn’t let go of. To do with your sister. He wanted to apologise. He reached out to her on Facebook, but she didn’t respond … And then he tried again when Daisy was born. Then again more recently. Three times. At least. And she’s ignored him every time. And I don’t know why but since his death I keep thinking about that – wanting to know more, to understand what happened. He never told me properly. You know how there are those things you can’t move on from?’

  I lift my cup to my lips and regard Caroline and her baby. A picture of uxorial compassion. She’s lost weight, you can tell: her cardigan is loose around her shoulders. Still, my pity doesn’t douse the spike of fury.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agree in a clipped manner. ‘My sister doesn’t swim any more you know. She stopped. She was a wonderful swimmer. The best in the school. And she never does now. Ever. In fact, she is frightened of water.’ I hear my voice speed up. ‘The sea, swimming pools, rivers. It’s a terrible phobia. So yes, I do know about the things you can’t move on from.’ I take another gulp of tea. I don’t want to waste it before I go. ‘I have things too,’ I add, warming to my theme. ‘Things I don’t like: not as bad as my sister’s, but certain fears. I don’t like cheese,’ I list the points off my fingers, ‘because Dickie and Juliet put it in my hair and it made me smell for days. Or chewing gum. Or anyone sitting behind me. Because they’re in a position to hurt you when you can’t see them.’ I stop to catch my breath.

  Caroline’s green eyes have filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  Sensing the mood, Daisy begins to wail.

  I drain the last of my tea. ‘If you have anything you want to say to Ellie, you can say it through me,’ I tell her. ‘Send me any questions you have. Here’s my email.’ I fish out a receipt from my wallet and scrawl my address on the back. ‘But I should probably warn you – my sister’s not very talkative.’ I scramble to my feet. ‘She’s barely spoken to me in years, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’

  ‘I’ve upset you,’ Caroline says before she leaves me outside the shop. ‘I’m sorry.’

  A bus pulls past, sloshing through a puddle. I take a deep breath. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘It’s not you I’m angry with.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she says uneasily. ‘Thank you for helping me with your sister.’

  I shrug. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘One thing?’ She hesitates, fussing over the pushchair’s rain cover as it starts to drizzle again. ‘Please could this be a secret.’

  ‘A secret?’

  ‘From the others.’

  Glancing back at the shop, I feel a small flush of pride at the display I created spotlit in the window. I don’t answer straight away. I don’t want to tell her how little I see of the others – but I’ve already considered how, when I finally have the chance to speak to Charles, I might let him know I’ve met with Dickie’s widow. It could bring us closer. ‘Poor Caroline,’ I might say casually. ‘She needs her friends right now.’

  On the other hand, if Caroline and I share a secret, it might bind us together more tightly.

  Caroline carries on fiddling with the rain cover. ‘Dickie said you once had a soft spot for Charles.’

  ‘A soft spot?’ I repeat dumbly. The words make me feel exposed. I try to imagine the kind of thing Dickie might have said.

  ‘It’s OK.’ She smiles. ‘I know what addiction is like.’

  She puts her hat back on and moves away, shoulders up against the rain just like when I spotted her watching me silently from a distance. I can’t help but ask myself if she has her suspicions about Dickie’s death, just as I
do, and why she really wants to get hold of Ellie.

  14

  The worry nags at me as I return to the shop. It’s strange that Caroline didn’t mention that earlier approach, that she checked where I worked at the memorial when she already knew. It’s the sort of thing I do.

  There’s something else that strikes me later, as I sort through the stock: if Caroline is in the habit of following other people – her husband, for example, when she worried about his drinking – are there other occasions she has spotted me watching Charles? The idea of this needles me – that I might have been watched even as I was watching.

  ‘I feel low, too, after seeing friends with babies,’ Brenda whispers to me at the till during a quiet moment. ‘It’s harder at our age, isn’t it? Especially with Ellie and Rose living abroad.’

  I don’t want to correct her or tell her that Caroline isn’t really a friend. That I’m not upset by Daisy’s presence. Not really.

  ‘It can be difficult,’ I say vaguely.

  ‘I avoid seeing them sometimes,’ she says quietly. ‘Too painful.’

  Brenda doesn’t have children, though she’s been married for years – since I first started at the shop. I’ve wondered, from time to time, whether she might have been trying, during periods when she’s had lots of doctor’s appointments or given up caffeine or alcohol. It seems that she must have been, but I don’t ask any more. We all carry our private sorrows and she’s right: sometimes I also feel that longing, like a thread tugged inside me, when I think of Rose and how she has grown up so far away. Perhaps that’s why Ellie moved. To punish me.

  To cheer myself up after work, I decide to go and see Charles. I leave early and find my usual spot on the triangular patch of land opposite the museum. I only want to see him leave, watch him stride down the steps, pinching his coat at the neck as he makes his way to the tube station. I wouldn’t follow him or say anything. Not today. It’s just to see him, to reassure myself that he is still walking on this earth.