You and Me Read online

  I’m quiet for a moment. ‘We all have thoughts like that,’ I say. I don’t know whether to go on, but something about Caroline’s openness disarms me. ‘I fought with Ellie,’ I add. ‘Before she went away. I said things. Unforgivable things.’

  She leans down to Daisy, strokes her forehead as the child drifts off to sleep. ‘Things that seem unforgivable can change,’ she says. ‘I forgot to mention – I heard back from Ellie. She said I shouldn’t worry about her fallout with Dickie; that the past is the past.’

  I snag on the word ‘fallout’. It’s not enough to describe what happened. ‘If that’s what she said …’ I murmur.

  ‘I wish she’d talk about it,’ Caroline says. ‘No one seems to want to.’ She sighs, her eyes resting on her baby’s face. ‘Do you think she would come back?’ she asks. ‘For the auction.’

  ‘For the auction?’ I repeat, trying not to sound incredulous.

  ‘Charles and Fiona say she comes back sometimes.’

  There’s a swell of emotion in my chest, a flutter of it in my wrists. ‘She does come back sometimes,’ I parrot like an idiot.

  ‘What do you think?’ Caroline asks. She licks her lips quickly. ‘I could even fly her over, pay for her airfare.’

  ‘Why?’ I place my hands on the table to steady myself.

  ‘It would be an excuse, really,’ she says. ‘I just want to understand why Dickie felt so bad about what happened.’

  I’m quiet for a long time. ‘I can’t explain it,’ I say in the end. ‘It’s up to Ellie.’

  Caroline blinks away tears, runs a hand over her eyes. ‘I sometimes think that if we’d moved, he’d still be alive. We should have got away. I can’t help feeling that … Have you ever had that after an accident? That there might have been something you could do to stop it?’

  Juliet. I think of her then. How could I not? With the usual combination of shame and fury.

  ‘People like Juliet …’ Caroline says, as if reading my mind. ‘I reckon she was almost disappointed Dickie gave up booze. She used to be one of his drinking buddies. And the rest.’ She laughs darkly. ‘She’d touch him sometimes. I’d catch her with her hand resting on his knee … I couldn’t always be sure of her motives.’

  ‘Juliet’s motives have always been consistent – to serve Juliet.’

  ‘I know he had a thing for her at school, but she didn’t want him then, did she? When she could have him?’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She shakes her head. ‘But Dickie was upset about something before he died.’

  ‘An affair, you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m trying to work out whether it was an accident …’

  ‘Or?’ A tiny pulse flutters at my temple as I wait for her to speak.

  ‘Or whether my husband killed himself.’

  17

  I have to swallow back my words. I can’t tell Caroline that I don’t think Dickie killed himself – that that’s not what it looked like to me – because I can hardly tell her I think someone pushed him. But a thought occurs to me as I walk back to the shop: I need to work out what happened that night. It’s the one thing that will solve all of my problems – the distance between Meilin and me, the thoughts preoccupying Caroline. And Charles. What will it mean to him? Is he torturing himself too for not doing more? Replaying what he witnessed? Was he in a position to see something – or someone – I missed? The auction will offer the perfect opportunity to talk to him. If I can just get him away from Fiona.

  My old jealousy had reared its head at the mention of Ellie’s friendship with Fiona. They adored each other. It made me feel envious, but I wasn’t sure of whom. When Ellie first bumped into Charles in 2013, she bounded into the flat with a spring in her step.

  ‘Guess who I’ve just seen?’

  My first thought – an indication of my state of mind at the time – was Mother. That she had come back somehow, or appeared to Ellie as a vision. She’d only been dead a matter of months. I was missing her terribly.

  ‘Charles,’ Ellie said cheerily when I didn’t answer. ‘Charles Fry. You remember.’

  Of course I remembered, though by that stage my Charles collection had started to gather dust in the wardrobe. While I thought of him from time to time with fond yearning, the realities of my life in the bookshop, my burgeoning relationship with Gareth, had taken over.

  ‘He’s married,’ Ellie continued evenly. ‘His wife’s lovely. They’d love to see you.’

  I stared at her, taken aback by this development. Ellie and Charles hadn’t been particularly close at school – not until our final weeks when he’d helped her in the way he did. As for Fiona, I wasn’t happy to hear about her at all and I felt the first flicker of possessiveness. He’s mine, I thought. He always has been. And Ellie was too.

  I didn’t want Fiona to have either of them.

  I could see, though, what drew Fiona and Ellie to each other. They were both sporty and outdoorsy, not bookish and dreamy like me. Fiona had grown up on a stud farm in the Cotswolds I learned, trained as a midwife in London and worked her way up to management, which is what she was doing when she met Charles. After they married, she gave up work and settled in to their country life, firmly committed to her hobbies of skiing and riding and so on. That was before the twins came along.

  When Ellie and I went to visit Honeybourne together, the first and only time we did, the three of them were cheerfully intimate, sharing in-jokes, talking in shorthand. I didn’t like it. I was quiet that day. I found I couldn’t stop staring at Charles. How well he had aged. He was kind and courteous as always, asking me questions while Ellie and Fiona prepared the meal together. Falling for him was even quicker than the first time.

  After the meal, as the three of them chatted over coffee, I asked if I could nip to the bathroom. Fiona directed me to the cloakroom downstairs, but I decided to explore further afield. I tiptoed upstairs to use their bathroom instead. It wasn’t hard to find, next to the biggest bedroom on the first floor.

  A standalone bath crouched in the centre on clawed feet. The floor was polished wood, with grand draping curtains and a huge bunch of tulips in a blue spherical vase. An enormous gilt mirror hung over the double sink, with lotions and potions in glass bottles and jars reflecting the sunshine.

  I sat on the loo and, reaching down for a book to browse, as I always do, I picked up, from the top of a pile, What To Expect When You’re Expecting. So that would be the next thing, I surmised glumly. Little Charles-and-Fionas running around. I thought of Gareth – I couldn’t imagine having any of this with him. The book looked well-thumbed, second hand. Second-hand goods, I thought, remembering the pristine pile of books I’d brought for them downstairs. She likes second-hand goods. I spat in the middle of it. It made me feel a bit better.

  Next, I had a closer look at their bedroom, at the enormous four-poster bed with crisp white bedding and mounds and mounds of pillows. And more antique furniture – a huge old wardrobe, an Edwardian writing desk and a Louis XV dressing table, with yet more pots and potions. I wandered over and took the lids off a couple to have a smell. There was a black and white photograph of their wedding day amid her beauty accoutrements, which I could barely bring myself to look at.

  I went to the window instead, admired the view of the lake and the sheep-spotted fields beyond, and I imagined what it would be like to live here with Charles. Suddenly I found I needed something of his. It was a visceral tug. A need to be physically close.

  The only other person I’ve ever felt like that about is Ellie. When she was born and I was a toddler, I’d press so many kisses onto her cheek that our mother would have to hold me back so I wouldn’t squash her. That feeling returned later when she was pregnant and I’d say good morning to her belly every day and keep it updated on all my news and promise I’d read it the best stories in the world when it came out.

  We didn’t know then that Rose was a girl.

  Or that I’d
never meet her.

  I needed something that smelled of Charles, but I couldn’t see anything lying around. I looked for the pyjamas under his pillow, but the thought occurred to me, as I picked them up, that those would definitely be missed, so instead I went to the laundry basket, which I’d spotted in the bathroom, and pulled out a navy cashmere jumper – so classy, so Charles – and buried my face in it, inhaling deeply.

  Except, two unfortunate things happened: first, my deep inhalation revealed a distinctly feminine whiff. The kind of scent advertised by a girl in an evening gown running through the streets, dropping scarves and things behind her.

  The second thing was Ellie walked in right at that point.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked crossly.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, dropping Fiona’s jumper like a burning thing. ‘It’s nothing.’

  She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the afternoon, nor on the journey back to London. It was the first and last time she invited me with her to Honeybourne. And she was even crosser when I broke up with Gareth the following week.

  ‘You finished with him?’ she said, aghast. ‘Oh, Fran. Why?’

  ‘Because of Charles,’ I said. My overwrought state didn’t enhance my patience. ‘Because of seeing Charles.’

  ‘I think you’re barmy.’

  ‘You’ll see,’ I said.

  I was right, I reflect now: events had conspired to bring me closer to Charles – to the moment when we could finally talk, when he would finally see what he’d been missing all these years. When he would realise what a mistake he had made with Fiona; when we could work out what happened to Dickie together. Like Sherlock and Watson, except more romantic.

  On the run-up to the charity auction, Juliet keeps sharing on Instagram which of her famous friends will be attending. No one terribly impressive – a couple of middle-of-the-road presenters like herself, a reality TV star or two, a handful of soap actors. Making it all about her, as usual.

  I send Meilin the new Mary Beard book as a peace offering and suggest she joins me at the auction. I receive a kind note back saying she would have loved to, but she’s out that night, on a date with her colleague. Despite the prickle of jealousy, I wish her well.

  As for Ellie, she laughs at Caroline’s suggestion about flying her back for the auction, or at least she sends me the weeping-with-laughter emoji in a Facebook message, which is as close as I get to Ellie laughing these days. I miss her careless cackle. I don’t think I’ve ever known how to make someone laugh in the way I can with Ellie.

  I don’t blame you, I reply. Caroline means well, but it’s too late to make amends. I don’t really understand what someone like her was doing with Dickie.

  Have you told her anything?

  No. I pause. My fingers hover above the keyboard. There’s something else I haven’t told her …

  Branwell strolls in and winds himself around my ankles. I need this, I think. I need to be able to talk to her about it. I write, at last: I saw Dickie die. I was there on the platform.

  Christ, Fran. Why didn’t you say?

  I wondered if he thought of you as he went.

  Writing that makes me want to cry. I don’t know if it’s too much. If it’ll make Ellie skitter away from me again.

  I could do with seeing you, I continue. Do think about her offer, if she’s saying she’ll fly you back. It’s not far. I almost don’t dare write the words, but then I force myself. I’d love to see you. You and Rose.

  She is quiet again then. Ellie has always known the power of silence.

  I’m not sure she’ll even answer, but, after a minute or so, the three dots begin to bounce along again.

  Her answer comes in two short words: I can’t.

  As I get ready for the auction, I’m nervous. It’s not often that I get to socialise at black-tie events. The last time I got dressed up like this was as far back as Chesterfield. There was a Christmas barn dance every year and the fretting about what to wear would start as early as November. Usually Mother would help me pick something from a charity shop. Vintage pieces in creaking taffeta, which only needed a little airing to get rid of the fusty smell.

  The other girls in my year would buy skimpy dresses from Topshop or Miss Selfridge. I remember Juliet in a particularly tiny silver dress with long black gloves that kept wrinkling on her skinny arms. One of the band members couldn’t keep his eyes off her as she made her way around the room in a circle dance.

  Some people would find ways to sneak in alcohol and Charles, in our fifth year, drank too much beer and passed out on the sofa. I went to sit next to him and, as he slumped onto me, I stroked his golden hair and said, ‘There, there.’

  And while we were sitting like that, one of the fourth years said: ‘Do you go out with Charles Fry?’

  And I smiled at her, because I could tell she was jealous, and I said, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ That was one of the happiest moments of my life. And then Dickie found us like that and woke Charles up.

  I’m interested in the Dickie Caroline saw, because the way she talks about him, it doesn’t feel like the boy I knew. The thing is, I like her. She seems gentle and sensitive, caring. Perhaps tonight I’ll be brave enough to ask her about him.

  I pick a dress out from Mother’s wardrobe, a dark glittering gown that trails on the floor behind me as I walk. I take care getting ready, teasing my hair with curling tongs, borrowing a lipstick of Ellie’s that is, perhaps, a touch too dark. The effect is dramatic.

  ‘Big night out?’ shouts the dealer at the door as I leave.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How’s that gorgeous sister of yours?’

  ‘Still gorgeous,’ I say lightly. He always had a thing for Ellie.

  ‘When’s she coming back?’ he calls plaintively after me.

  I pretend I don’t hear him as I walk away to hail a cab.

  18

  As the car pulls up on Cromwell Road, I spot the red carpet, the cluster of paparazzi waiting. Juliet is posing with a couple of men with mahogany tans and dazzling white teeth. I don’t recognise them but the photographers do. I have the urge to tap the glass screen between the driver and me to ask him to keep going, move on somewhere else. I’m dressed all wrong, I realise immediately: the other women are in miniskirts and jumpsuits, bare legs on display with bold earrings that glint when the cameras flash. My dress is far too formal. Far too much. I am slow to pay the taxi driver, sad to see him go.

  When I walk up the red carpet, the photographers lower their cameras and glance behind me. In the atrium, the waiting staff stand to attention holding trays of Prosecco lined up in rows. At a small table, a couple of bartenders are hard at work, preparing cocktails. I order a drink and loiter there as long as I can, asking lots of questions to put off the moment when I have to stand alone, drink in hand. One of them is kind to me, a tall man with dark hair and a warm smile. I realise, as I walk away, that he’s actually very handsome. I notice quite late sometimes – that it’s someone’s beauty drawing me to them.

  I start to compose an email to Ellie in my head. It was awful. You were right not to come – I don’t know what I was thinking.

  I haven’t spotted Caroline yet, or Charles, or anyone I know apart from Juliet. Everyone around me has someone to talk to. The details of what they’re saying get swallowed up by the high ceiling like the babble of the congregation in church. I miss my mother – I have the strange and sudden urge to call her, to ask her to come and pick me up – and it’s perhaps this that makes me think I can hear someone call my name in a high, light voice, not dissimilar to Ellie’s.

  I swing around to see where the voice is coming from and my handbag – which is to say my day bag, packed with books and my umbrella, not a neat glittering clutch – knocks into a sylphlike woman with iron-straight hair behind me – so light that she goes flying. She drops her glass on the marble floor and it shatters into a million pieces. We both stand and stare at the mess. The crowd shifts around us and, as I l
ook up in panic, I spot Charles and Fiona, standing on the other side of the atrium, watching.

  Juliet appears, drawn, as always, to trouble, tinkling with laughter. She clicks her fingers at a waiter, who supplies her friend, the sylphlike woman, with another drink and begins to clean up the glass.

  ‘Oh, Fran,’ she says. ‘You don’t change.’

  I smile thinly. ‘Neither do you.’

  ‘You know, I forgot to include you in the email circular,’ she says. ‘You’ve done well to get here.’ She looks past me, scanning the room for someone else to talk to.

  ‘Fran has contributed tonight,’ says Fiona, appearing by my side. ‘Didn’t Caroline tell you? She’s offered book tokens and a personal shopping session. So kind of you,’ she says to me. ‘Dickie would be so touched.’ She rests a hand on my arm for a second.

  In spite of everything, I’m so grateful I could hug her.

  ‘Fran was so clever at English,’ says Juliet. ‘With her private coaching sessions.’ She sniffs and takes a sip of her drink. ‘Charles benefited mainly.’

  Fiona nods. She’s in leather trousers and a leopard-print silk shirt, looking sleek and capable. ‘He’s so grateful for that – he’s mentioned it before.’

  ‘Has he?’ Juliet asks archly.

  If Fiona has picked up on her tone, she ignores it, brushing a hair off her face. ‘How’s Ellie?’ she asks me.

  ‘Yes, where is she now?’ asks Juliet, perking up at a subject that could sting.

  ‘Tignes,’ I say quickly, before Fiona can answer. ‘Doing a season.’

  ‘How she manages to work and travel with a small child,’ says Juliet. ‘But I suppose she’s not exactly a career girl. And I imagine she’s not short of friends to help her.’