Miss You (36 page)

‘Do I have to pay her?’ Martin asked, when I floated the idea as he was leaving.

‘No,’ I said.

‘OK then.’

After Hope had gone to bed, I sat in the living room staring at the lights on the tree, thinking how happy Mum would be to see Hope with a friend. It suddenly struck me that it
was our tenth Christmas without her. Ten years was twice as long as Hope had known Mum. In that time she had gone from a little girl to a young woman. But everything else, even the twinkling tinsel
tree, had stayed the same.

I never took Hope to the grave when she was little, because I knew the idea of Mum in the box underground would frighten her, and Mum wouldn’t want that, but I decided we’d go on
Boxing Day, buying a bunch of glitter-dipped carnations from the petrol station we walked past on the way to the cemetery.

‘“Devoted wife to James and beloved mother of Kevin, Brendan, Teresa and Hope,”’ Hope read out the inscription on the headstone. ‘Who’s James?’

‘It’s Dad’s full name.’

‘Is Dad still married to Mum?’

‘Well, yes . . .’

‘Mum’ll never stop loving us, Tree.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t remember Mum, Tree.’

‘Sssh,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t say that here.’

Not that I really believed Mum could hear us.

I left Hope standing behind the counter with Mozart playing through the speakers and Martin whistling along in his workshop. As I opened the door on my way out, the bell
jangled and Hope did a kind of shooing motion with her hand, as if to say, ‘Go! I don’t need you any more!’

It was one of those January days with almost blinding bright sunshine and a bitter edge to the wind. That’s probably why my eyes were smarting as I walked down to the seafront, because
there was no reason at all to cry. I was actually incredibly relieved because it suddenly seemed possible that Hope would find her path in life. Wasn’t it great that she had found a niche for
herself? There was nothing I wanted more than Hope to be self-sufficient.

Sometimes happiness does make you cry though, doesn’t it? Like when Mum was smiling and waving and crying all at the same time when we saw Kev off at Heathrow.

Wasn’t enabling Hope to be independent what the last ten years had all been about?

But, I couldn’t help thinking, what was the purpose of me now?

New Year is normally an optimistic time with the days getting longer and the shops full of Valentine’s cards and heart-shaped chocolates and Prosecco with pink labels,
but I couldn’t seem to cheer up. The ten-years thing seemed so significant somehow, which was ridiculous because it was only a few days different from nine years, and I’d been all right
with that.

I felt so low, I decided to give the first writing class of the new term a miss, but the following Monday evening, Leo appeared in the store. I noticed the contents of his trolley first. Dog
food was on buy-one-get-one-free but sometimes the promotions didn’t register at the tills.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

‘I certainly hope so!’

The voice, then the face, clean-shaven, bearing out my shaving theory.

‘I didn’t know you had a dog,’ I said.

‘I like to maintain some semblance of mystery,’ he whispered, flirtatiously.

‘Sometimes there’s a blip in the software,’ I told him, concentrating on pressing buttons on the till, hoping he wouldn’t notice the blushing. ‘If you give me your
receipt, I’ll sort out a refund.’

‘That’s not the problem,’ he said. ‘Look, when do you get off work? I need to ask you a favour.’

For the fifteen minutes until I finished, my brain invented all sorts of stories to explain his request, none of which turned out to be accurate.

In Caffè Nero, Leo paid for his espresso and my latte and brought them over to the table.

‘I’ve got a bit of a problem because I’ve got tickets for
Much Ado About Nothing
at the National next Friday. My wife was supposed to be coming, but she forgot to write
in the diary that it’s her departmental dinner . . .’

I nodded.

‘. . . so she said, “Why don’t you take that girl you’re always talking about in your creative-writing class?”’

It took a moment for it to dawn, because I was thinking that he really was going to ask me a favour, that this was his charming way of offering a treat.

‘Me?’ I asked, and was rewarded with the full amused smile.

When I got home, I put all my nice clothes out on the bed and tried on outfits. Smart-casual was how I thought Doll would describe the occasion. Eventually, I decided on a
duck-egg blue cardigan from the fifties that I’d bought from the Oxfam shop but never found an occasion to wear. It was embroidered with beaded flowers in pastel colours and lined with silk.
Teamed with new skinny jeans, I felt it struck exactly the right balance of glamorous enough for the theatre, but practical for sitting on a train. Catching myself pouting at the mirror, I gave
myself a talking-to: this was not a date; Leo was just a wonderful teacher who took an interest in his students. And he was a married man. Any attraction I sensed between us was purely in my head
and I must not make a fool of myself. But I still couldn’t quite quash my excitement.

You’d think being in the south of England, the weather would be milder than the rest of the country, but for some reason if there’s snow forecast, it usually falls
in Kent. The weather meant Hope’s bus was delayed coming home from Martin’s Music, so I was worried about her, and shouted at her when she finally got in, which was unfair because it
wasn’t her fault, but I was sure I was going to be late.

‘Why are you carrying on like this?’ Hope said, which is what I said to her when she had one of her tantrums. So that made me feel bad.

‘I had to wait for Hope . . .’ I apologized breathlessly to Leo for almost making us miss the train.

‘Hope?’

‘My sister.’

I’d never mentioned Hope in class, which now felt a bit disloyal, but it was really more to do with having a corner of my life that wasn’t defined by her.

‘She has Asperger syndrome.’

‘Isn’t that the thing in that novel?’ Leo asked.

‘
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
? Yes.’

A lot of people had heard of it now because of that.

‘Have you ever thought of writing from Hope’s point of view?’ Leo asked.

I laughed. ‘I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to see things through the prism of Hope’s mind, and I’ve never got anywhere close,’ I said. ‘I don’t know
what it’s like to be Hope any more than I know what it’s like to be you!’

‘It might be interesting to try . . .’

‘Maybe I will one day. At the moment, I’m trying to find out what it’s like to be
me
!’

The snow was falling heavily by the time we arrived in town, the air thick with snowflakes dancing in the orange aura of the lamps along the South Bank.

‘It’s like being in one of those Monet paintings of the Houses of Parliament,’ I said, trying to demonstrate a knowledge of culture. ‘Except with snow, instead of fog,
obviously.’

Leo gave me the amused look.

‘Did you know that Monet was actually in exile here in London, because of the Prussian war in France?’ I continued.

‘I didn’t,’ said Leo.

‘You can get a lot from art-gallery websites.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Isn’t it amazing that nobody liked the Impressionists when they started?’ I asked.

‘A true artist isn’t concerned about his popularity.’ Leo finally shut me up.

We got to the National Theatre in time for a drink before the curtain went up and sat, with gin and tonics, listening to the jazz band that was playing in the foyer. My outfit was fine. Some of
the women were in dresses and heels, but some of them were just in jeans. The blizzard outside made everyone look a bit windswept and blotchily pink, however much time or money they’d spent
on their make-up.

Although I’d seen the film of
Romeo and Juliet
and we’d read
Othello
for A level and watched the DVD, I’d never been to a live Shakespeare play before. As the
lights went down, my pulse quickened. I’m not sure whether the nerves were for me or the actors, but I needn’t have worried because they looked like they were really enjoying
themselves. I’d expected it to be a more formal and reverential experience, but it was really funny, not just nod-at-each-other-and-smile-smugly funny, but laugh-out-loud hilarious.

During the interval, while Leo went to the toilet, I leaned against a wall with my second gin and tonic, trying not to look like I was eavesdropping on the conversations going on around me. I
noticed London theatregoers talked much louder than people coming out of the multiplex, almost like they
wanted
people to hear their opinions.

Next to me, two middle-aged men and a woman were standing with a younger woman, who was very much the centre of attention. The clever comments she offered about the play made me think that she
might be an actress herself. She was beautiful enough, with long, dark hair and a way of holding herself like she should be at a cocktail party with a cigarette in a long holder, even though she
was only wearing plain black tailored trousers and a black cardigan, probably cashmere, I thought. One of the men was particularly attentive. He had a slight foreign accent and was talking about a
recent production he’d seen.

‘You never have been to the Salzburg Festival?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Mountains and opera, you know. It’s quite special.’

‘Sounds blissful,’ said the woman, her green eyes shining at him.

Maybe it was a blind date set up by the other two? He seemed rather old for her. Old but rich. Definitely rich. You wouldn’t wear a black polo neck under a light brown tweed jacket unless
you were.

‘Shall we go back in?’ their host asked as the ten-minute bell rang.

‘Such a shame my husband’s missing this . . .’ said the beautiful woman.

‘So lucky for me,’ said her admirer, in a low whisper. His hand hovered a fraction of an inch from the small of her back as he stood aside to let her go first.

‘Ready?’ said Leo, reappearing.

‘Yes,’ I said, snapping back into my own narrative as I followed him back into the auditorium.

Outside, the snow had turned into a blizzard. We managed to trudge through the drifts along the river and up over the Charing Cross footbridge, but, by the time we reached the
station, all trains back to Kent had been cancelled.

I was anxious about Hope spending the night on her own, but when I rang Anne, she’d already gone across and collected her.

‘What will you do?’ she asked.

In my imagination, a film was running about a young woman and her professor stuck for one magical night in the sparkling city, reciting lines from
Much Ado About Nothing
on the steps of
the National Gallery, making snow angels in pristine white drifts in the parks . . .

‘Shall we try the Premier Inn?’ said Leo.

They didn’t have any single rooms left and no twin rooms either; in fact we got the last double. I negotiated a folding toothbrush and tiny toothpaste from the reception desk and when I
came out of the bathroom, Leo was already in bed. My jeans were wet from the snow and the beaded cardigan was too fragile to sleep in, so I made the decision to sit on the bed, strip down to my
knickers, vest and bra, then duck straight under the duvet, without ever looking at him. I turned off the light on my side.

‘Shall I place a pillow between us?’ Leo breathed gin and tonic against the back of my neck.

‘No need,’ I giggled. ‘I’m not going to pounce on you!’

I meant it as a joke, to show I wasn’t even thinking about that, but it came out sounding more like an invitation.

‘Not even if I do this?’ he asked, planting a feather-light kiss on the nape of my neck, sending a current down my spine that made my whole body spasm.

I didn’t dare turn, in case he was joking, and I’d find my nose an inch away from his amused face.

‘Or this?’ he asked, slipping the heel of his palm under my arm and gently cupping my breast.

Then I turned and he was looking at me with great seriousness. We kissed, tentatively, then ravenously. The stubble was scratchier against my skin than I’d imagined.

Leo said I possessed the earnest innocence of Audrey Hepburn in the body of Claudia Cardinale. I treasured the description even more after googling her. I was constantly aware
of the contours of my body under my shop uniform, as if the very top layer had been ripped from my skin, exposing my nerve endings to the slight catch of the polyester fabric. I stood at the
customer service desk staring down the frozen-food aisle, with his voice slowly repeating the four syllables of the word ‘voluptuous’ in my head. I kept my mobile phone in my top
pocket, so when he texted, it vibrated next to my heart.

After work most evenings, Leo took me to country pubs where no one would recognize us and talked to me about poetry and made love to me in the car after.

‘You’re a breath of fresh air,’ he said. ‘And I can’t get enough of your body.’

I listened to his compliments, silent and passive, unable to find evocative-enough vocabulary to describe the overwhelming feeling that I had been waiting for him all my life.

I told no one about our affair. I didn’t want Shaun’s opinion. I didn’t allow myself to consider what Mum would think. The memory of her face blended with the features of the
painted statue of Our Lady the two of us had prayed in front of when I was a little girl, her skin smooth and radiant, her lips pursed in a little strawberry smile, her eyes gazing distantly beyond
me. She wasn’t there, so it didn’t matter what she thought.

Secrecy strengthened the delicious illusion that Leo belonged only to me.

I think I must have persuaded myself that his wife had tacitly instigated the relationship. Although he rarely mentioned her, I assumed she’d gone off sex with the menopause. I fell on
every crumb of information like a scavenging seagull.

The two of them had met as students at Oxford playing opposite each other in a garden production of
Look Back in Anger
.