You and Me Page 9

  She emphasises the word friends as if it were a bad thing. I know what she means, though. She means men. I don’t like what she’s insinuating.

  ‘Such a shame she couldn’t be here tonight,’ says Fiona. ‘Caroline was so keen to meet her.’

  ‘I don’t really understand that,’ says Juliet, taking a gulp of her Prosecco and waving away the offer of a canapé. ‘Dickie and her weren’t exactly friends.’

  Fiona pauses to help herself to a crab cake. ‘She has her reasons,’ she says, popping the canapé into her mouth.

  I want to ask her if she’s heard from Ellie recently, but I daren’t in front of Juliet. She’ll only needle me about our estrangement. And I couldn’t bear that.

  Juliet yawns, as if she’s had enough of the subject. ‘I hear you had quite an eventful journey,’ she says to Fiona. ‘What a star you are.’

  ‘It was nothing.’ A slight flush on Fiona’s tanned face betrays her discomfort. ‘Just doing my job. My old job.’

  ‘Fiona delivered a baby on the M40 on the way here,’ Juliet tells me.

  ‘Gosh,’ I say. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘The traffic was terrible.’ Fiona shrugs. ‘A man was flagging down cars to see if anyone could help his wife and, well, I could – or at least I remembered enough. I’m not registered as a midwife any more, but the woman in the car didn’t care.’

  ‘You haven’t got a drink,’ says Juliet. ‘I’m sure you need one after that. Prosecco?’

  Fiona shakes her head. ‘I’m better with vodka these days. I’ve developed an awful allergy to wine.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say, thinking of the barman, keen to be away from Juliet.

  I wait by the table as he prepares the drink, comforted by the confident way he works. I’ve always felt more of a kinship with people serving at events like this than the other guests. I almost want to offer to help, so I have something to occupy my hands – a lemon squeezer or ice pick, a chopping board and sharp knife.

  19

  When I return to Fiona, she is talking to a tall man with an elaborately sculpted beard. She smiles her thanks as I pass her the cocktail and I slip off before she can draw me in to the conversation. It has occurred to me that now would be an excellent time to find Charles. I walk slowly as I scan the crowd looking for him, sipping a fresh drink as I go. Climbing the stairs will give me a good vantage point, I decide, and a rest from the prying eyes of the likes of Juliet. I gather my gown to climb and slip into a quiet spot on the balcony.

  From above I have a good view of the floor. It reminds me of the way the boys would gather on the balcony on the first day of the autumn term to assess the new girls that year. It was never the other way around, but the truth is: we liked looking at the boys too. They weren’t flawless, of course, with all the imperfections of youth – spotty chins and foreheads, the braces on their teeth, their muddy legs, the light fuzz of stubble, their faces still creased from sleep in the mornings. Back then, I could look at Charles all I wanted and there was nothing to stop me.

  I spot him, at last, standing with Caroline, stooping slightly to talk to her, his mouth close to her ear. At one stage, he gives her arm a consoling squeeze. How lucky she is to stand next to him like that, to be anchored by his kind presence, protected from the rest of the room. Caroline is staring at something and I follow her gaze to a small, blonde woman in a blue dress, standing on her own near the sculpture gallery. Something about her posture makes me think of Ellie. Her hair is like Ellie’s too.

  My sister was always so good at hiding when we were children, even in the tiny cottage we grew up in she’d find a place that hadn’t occurred to me, curled up in the hollow of a window seat or a box in the cupboard beneath the stairs. Places I couldn’t even fit.

  I stare at the woman in the blue dress, willing her to look up, just to check it’s not Ellie. I know it’s a daft thought, a vain hope. Nor is it the first time that my longing for her has manifested itself in a sighting like this. More than once I think I’ve spotted her on a London train – the white-blonde of her hair resting against the door or a flash of her skinny calves going around the corner. She stands very still staring at the Rape of Proserpina, like a statue herself, and doesn’t turn around.

  The longer she is still, the stronger the spell becomes: my conviction that she might have come along to surprise us. To laugh at us, perhaps; that would be more like Ellie. How ridiculous you all look, she might say, done up to the nines for Dickie Graham. I have to check. I have to see if it’s her. I pick up the train of Mother’s dress and make my way back downstairs.

  In the atrium, I can’t see through the crowd to where she was standing. Breathless, I push my way through. Guests sigh at me as I squeeze past, or glance down with derision. I don’t care. I must get to Ellie, but I’m walking too fast and my heel catches in the train of my dress so I trip and fall smack into a man. As large and immovable as a wall. He glances down at me for a second, mutters, ‘Steady on,’ and returns to his conversation.

  It’s his dismissiveness that does it. That takes me back to Chesterfield. I might not have recognised him from a distance. He’s lost even more hair than his Facebook profile photo lets on. His rugby build has changed into middle-age heft.

  Tom Bates. The presence of him like this, so close to me, the way he smells – not so different from school – makes me feel sick. I stumble for a couple more paces into the cool of the sculpture gallery where the woman in the blue dress is nowhere to be seen. I stand staring at the statues, as if they can tell me where she is. My palms are slick from the shock. Dashing to the loo, I dry-retch a couple of times and sit there waiting to calm down.

  In the cubicle next to me, someone else is retching too, the splash of vomit hitting the water over and over again. ‘Are you OK?’ I call. But she doesn’t answer.

  I sit on the loo for a long time feeling sorry for myself and when I return to the atrium, most of the party has moved through to the marquee for the auction. I think then of making a run for it – what a dreadful evening it has been so far – but I give myself a little shake. I’m not leaving until I’ve spoken to Charles.

  20

  Eventually, I find my place at a table in the far corner of the marquee – about as far away from the stage as you could be. The equivalent of sitting with the band at a wedding, which happened to me at the only one I’ve attended. Juliet’s doing, I’m sure. The only person I recognise at my table is Charles’s colleague, Victoria, with whom I’m standoffish, remembering the conversation I overheard in the loos. The elderly lady next to me works at the museum too; she’s one of the guides. Her face softens when I say I know Charles.

  ‘Such a gentleman,’ she says. ‘He always makes time to find a kind word for everyone.’

  ‘He was the same at school,’ I say proudly, filling her glass and then my own with white wine.

  The meal passes in a blur, sharing notes on our favourite items in the museum and on Charles. I realise for the first time tonight I’m starting to enjoy myself. After our main course of beef wellington, the auctioneer, a confident man with a keen ferrety face, takes to the stage and talks briefly about Dickie and the charity, and outlines the rules of the auction – the most serious being not to wave your flag in the air if you don’t want to bid. I sit very still. The ticket cost almost two days’ work for me. My flag will not be leaving my lap.

  Juliet’s is the first lot and the auctioneer makes a big fuss of her as she goes on stage. She stands with her hand on her hip like a teapot. I glance over to Caroline who is sitting on the same table as Charles, close to the stage, but I can’t make out her expression as she watches Juliet. The lot starts at five thousand pounds and is in the twenties in no time at all; the auctioneer speaks faster and faster as if he’s being sped up like a tape cassette. Juliet beams, her face shiny with sweat in the spotlight. I drain my glass of wine and fill it again. Next up is the tour of the V&A, which goes for a more modest amount; then there are a couple of small thing
s – a giant teddy and a piece of jewellery handmade by one of Dickie’s colleagues. Then we’re given a break for pudding.

  The first lot after pudding is mine. I’ve drunk quite a lot of wine by this stage and can feel the hot blush of it on my face. I go to the loo again and return to hear the auctioneer say my name. The whole room turns as one to face me.

  ‘Is that her?’ I hear him say. ‘Francesca.’ He beckons. ‘Come up on stage.’

  I blink. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would happen, that they wouldn’t just hold up the giant-sized book tokens. I shake my head to indicate my unwillingness but someone behind me gives me a little push. ‘Go on.’

  My feet are glued to the floor. Old Chesterfield feelings are fluttering in my chest – eyes everywhere in the dining room, the sensation of being judged, being found wanting. The beady-eyed auctioneer puffs out his cheeks with impatience.

  As I make my way slowly to the stage, I look for Caroline’s face. She gives me an apologetic shrug. A small smile. It feels like a trick has been played on me. Then I notice Juliet grinning as if the whole thing is a big joke. Heat flushes across my cheeks. I wish I hadn’t eaten so much. Beef wellington and chocolate mousse curdle in my stomach.

  Before I reach the stage, someone shoves the huge book tokens into my hands. I hold them in front of me, unsure of where to stand. The auctioneer has already started speaking, his words tripping over each other as if he’s running late for something. I catch the odd phrase – my name, the shop. Something about my knowledge as a bookseller, my friendship with Dickie.

  I’m sorry, Ellie. I will write that in my email to her tomorrow. It all got out of hand. I’m no friend of his.

  He begins the bid at just two hundred pounds – the same price as the book tokens – and for a moment there is a horrifying quiet. A silence like a desert falls upon the room. I look out at the crowd – a blur of faces and hairstyles. I don’t know how long it lasts but while we wait for that first bid it’s as if my life flashes before my eyes and I’m waiting to be picked for netball at primary school, my legs goose-pimpled with cold, the grim inevitability now apparent that no one is going to pick me at all because I always get flustered and drop the ball and I will just be assigned to a team in the end.

  Then I’m at Chesterfield, reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud and I say Titty-ana instead of Titania and there’s an explosion of laughter from Juliet and Dickie, and then I’m standing, with my head over the sink, while Mother cuts the chewing gum out of my hair and tells me that I’ll have a Twenties bob to show off the next day, but I can hear the crack in her voice, because no one in secondary school gives a shit about the Jazz Age, and Ellie grips my hand and promises revenge.

  I don’t want to do this any more. My own voice is very clear and strong in my head. I have had enough, it says. I don’t know who it’s addressing or what it wants me to do about it, but it feels then that a line has been drawn in the sand. That life cannot and must not go on as it has. That I must get off this stage as soon as possible.

  And then, right in front of us, at the table closest to the stage, Charles’s flag goes up and he makes a bid.

  21

  The auctioneer is squealing with delight, the room begins to murmur and my heart flutters like a kite. It all changed, I continue the imaginary email to Ellie in my head, the moment Charles raised his flag. I knew it would be all right, after that. A mini bidding war ensues – nothing outrageous but a modest battle between Charles and the old lady at my table. While the auction takes off, I notice Tom Bates sitting not far from Charles, his arms folded, and even though his face is expressionless, it’s clear he knows who I am now. That he’s remembered. If he feels any shame, there’s no sign of it.

  In the end the tokens go for five hundred and fifty pounds to Charles. He comes up on stage to receive them and kisses my cheek. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper. There’s no one else in the room for a moment. Just the scent of him. His face in front of me. I pass the huge fake tokens over to him and a small envelope containing the real ones. I can’t believe this is happening. It’s the stuff of dreams. My legs are unsteady as I make my way back to the table, still glowing with pleasure. Everyone cheers and I think: this is what it must be like to be famous. Or, at least, happy.

  My table is animated by my success. A couple of others introduce themselves and ask for reading recommendations. It occurs to me that this is one of the great evenings of my life.

  Thank you, Dickie, I say in my head, as we file out of the museum, gathering in clusters on the pavement. This is the beginning of everything.

  I am brave now. Invincible. I walk over to where Charles is standing with Caroline. There are things I want to say – private things – about how I’ll never forget this moment, how there is so much we need to discuss, but for now I just thank him, touching the side of his face with my cold fingers.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he says.

  ‘Dickie would be so proud,’ says Caroline, embracing me, her face flushed. ‘To have friends like you.’

  I look down at the dead leaves mashed into the pavement at my feet. ‘Tom Bates was here,’ I blurt out, without meaning to. ‘I didn’t know he would be.’

  Caroline looks confused. ‘I don’t know who you mean.’

  ‘I invited him,’ says Juliet. ‘He was a good friend of Dickie’s after all.’

  ‘Who is he?’ asks Caroline.

  ‘He’s …’ I begin. I find I don’t know how to explain him. ‘Didn’t Ellie say?’ I ask instead. ‘In her emails.’

  ‘He was at Chesterfield with us,’ says Juliet dismissively. ‘Big rugby player. Got suspended in his final year.’

  I feel briefly grateful to her for keeping it so succinct.

  Juliet sighs as if the subject is boring her. ‘Drinks at mine, Caz?’ she asks loudly. She fishes out a cigarette case and lights a long, white menthol. She offers the case to the others: Charles takes one, Caroline shakes her head.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ she murmurs. ‘I must get back to the sitter.’

  ‘I can’t,’ says Charles. ‘I need to see to poor Fiona.’

  It’s only then, I notice guiltily, that Fiona isn’t there.

  ‘She was terribly sick,’ Caroline explains. ‘Couldn’t stop vomiting. We think it was something she ate.’

  ‘Or drank,’ says Juliet, and she looks at me pointedly. ‘What was in that cocktail you got her? Was there wine in it? She’s allergic, you know. She told you.’

  ‘It was just vodka and orange,’ I say. ‘I didn’t make it.’

  ‘Anyway,’ says Juliet, ‘it wasn’t long after that she had to dash to the loo.’

  ‘It’s hardly Fran’s fault,’ Caroline intercepts. ‘As she said, she didn’t make the cocktails. It was probably one of those crab cakes. You know what shellfish is like.’

  Caroline is interrupted then by a guest in an oversized faux fur coat who pulls her into an embrace and begins talking animatedly to her and Charles, leaving Juliet and me standing awkwardly, side by side.

  ‘It’s funny though, isn’t it?’ says Juliet. ‘That she was taken ill and had to go and, after that, Charles made a bid on you.’

  She steps to the side, her sharp heel pinioning the train of my dress. She still enjoys it – taunting me. It’s a game to her; she still hasn’t learned.

  ‘Do you think he would have done that with Fiona there?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Perhaps. It was for a good cause.’

  ‘The cause. Of course,’ says Juliet, inhaling deeply. She blows out a thin plume of menthol smoke into the dank night air. ‘Is that why you’re here? For Dickie? For the cause? What would Ellie think of this sudden show of support?’ She grinds her heel into the train of Mother’s dress.

  Without thinking, I tug hard, claiming it back, and Juliet stumbles and trips. Her hands reach out to break her fall and her cigarette drops onto the damp pavement. I experience a flicker of pleasure, but I would never admit to that.

  ‘Gosh, are you a
ll right?’ Caroline turns to help pick her up.

  ‘Temper, temper,’ says Juliet, dusting down her jumpsuit without looking at me.

  ‘It was an accident,’ I say, panicking. I don’t want her to ruin tonight. Not after such a triumph.

  ‘That’s what you always say.’ Her hand moves to her wrist, covers the scars as if to protect them. I don’t know if she’s doing it consciously, but I will her not to say anything. Not tonight. Not in front of Caroline. She hovers above me then, and I wonder what she will do next. Am I frightened of her after all these years? Maybe.

  ‘Jules!’

  Victoria from the museum joins us then, flinging her arms around Juliet. Of course the pair of them are friends.

  ‘Poor darling Dickie,’ says Victoria. ‘I still haven’t got my head around it.’

  She looks as if she’s overdone it. Her cheeks are pink; her eye make-up is creeping down her face.

  ‘I know,’ says Juliet, taking a step to ensure I’m shut out of the conversation. ‘I think of it all the time.’ She lights a fresh cigarette.

  I glance at Caroline, who has returned to the woman in faux fur, and wonder if she can hear.

  ‘And to think we were so close to where it happened that night,’ exclaims Victoria. ‘I can’t bear it.’

  Juliet looks over at me to check if I’ve heard, and taps the ash off her cigarette. I can tell she wants Victoria to stop talking.

  ‘We could have been there on the platform ourselves,’ Victoria continues. ‘In fact, it was only because I’d drunk so bloody much that I took an Uber home.’ She gives a dramatic shudder. ‘It sounds dreadful – the way Charles describes it. The crush that night. It could have happened to any of us.’

  It’s clear she’s enjoying the thrill of her brush with tragedy – far enough away to wallow in it. Juliet, on the other hand, has become very still, like a fox caught in the flash of a security light. I know her well enough to sense how uncomfortable she is. And she doesn’t know I was there too. That I saw the crowd of women get so close to Dickie. That one of them could easily have been her.