Something Only We Know (16 page)

After I’d left Owen’s flat I wandered up to The Cross, unsure what to do with myself. I knew I was in no state to return to the office, so I sat on the monument
steps and texted Gerry that I’d been taken ill and needed to go home. A transparent lie, but it was the only excuse I could come up with on the spur of the moment. Then I let my head tip
against the stone column and lost myself in the flat and clouded sky, my mind boiling with words said and unsaid. How had I come to mess up so badly? After all the careful gains I’d made, how
had it come crashing down around me? Why had I not defended myself better? Made him see the Chelle that I could see? Why had I answered him back and put myself so squarely in the wrong?

She was my guest,
he’d said.
You had no right to decide when she went.

A woman with an afro walked past The Cross, and that made me think of Keisha and then of Vikki. I imagined taking myself round to the bookshop now, and their surprise and concern as I told them
what had happened. They’d be kind. They’d feed me one of their dense and lumpy cakes. But I knew even as I played with the idea that it wasn’t a serious option because, no matter
what they thought of Chelle, they were Owen’s mates first and foremost.

The air began to spot with rain. I felt it on my cheeks and lips first, as cold, spiteful prickings. Fine, I thought. Let it pour. Let it drown me where I sit. I’m not shifting. However,
as the drops grew larger and gathered momentum, it eventually occurred to me that if someone from the newspaper happened to walk past I’d be in even worse trouble than I already was.

I stood up, scanned the precinct, then made a dash for the nearest side street. Thunder rumbled in the distance and shop awnings flapped in the stiffening breeze. People were beginning to walk
with their heads lowered and their collars up. I gathered speed, found myself following a series of old and narrow lanes in the general direction of the city car park. It seemed my feet were taking
me home, even if I didn’t especially want to be there. Where else was there to go?

I’m not telling you what she said, no. It doesn’t matter anyway. I know you were trying to push her out, I heard some of it with my own ears.

On and on Owen’s voice echoed round my head. The windscreen wipers swished crossly against the rain as I drove down the A41, wondering who’d be in when I got there. Helen was working
odd hours at the kennels and I wasn’t on top of her timetable. It was Mum’s half day so she might be about, but then again she could have nipped out to see Ned’s mum or to check
on old Mrs Harris across the road, or to the shops. Dad had said this morning that he wouldn’t be home till late (cue more cupboard door slamming from my mother). So I didn’t know what
I’d find when I opened the front door. Part of me craved company and comfort, but part of me needed to be miserable alone.

You’ve let me down, Jen.

Far off, the sky over the southern horizon seemed brighter, as if I might at some point drive out of the rain. For now, though, I was right in the middle of the squall. Branches overhead waved
in the wind and yellow leaves spattered against the car. On my right I saw a sign for Hampton Primary School and the attached GCSE unit where Hel had gone for a while after she’d dropped out
of St Thom’s. I’d only visited the place once, an afternoon when I was recovering from chicken pox and Mum couldn’t get a babysitter for me. We’d driven out to pick up my
sister and I’d hung around in the main hallway while Mum had words with the unit tutor next door. I remembered cut-out daffodils and decorated eggs, so it must have been around Easter. Birds
with fat triangle beaks, a pink-faced Jesus popping up from behind a boulder. I remember thinking, with the superiority of a top junior, how some of the written work on display was rubbish:
‘My dad youses a hamma’, with a scratchy stick figure of a weapon-wielding maniac drawn underneath.

I switched my headlights on against the gloom. Sticks and small branches were flying out into the road, and lane-wide puddles forming in the dips. I was constantly braking to drive through
sheets of treacherous water. Along the edge of the field, telegraph wires swung between their poles, and I turned up my wipers a notch to try and clear the screen. Here came The Dragon Inn,
previously Rajah’s Curry House, previously The Gables, where we sometimes used to go for sixth-form birthdays. In that car park Nutter Cook had wrenched the wiper blades off a Micra, thinking
it belonged to Hannah Brierly, only to discover the car was actually owned by some random blameless punter. By that half-barrel planter I’d kissed lanky John Lucas, and Nia Hughes had pranced
along the adjoining wall singing that her milkshake brought all the boys to the yard.

As I drove into the outskirts of town the rain was starting to slacken off. At the first roundabout onto the bypass was a signpost for the industrial estate, and that made me think of the times
when I was a kid and Dad had taken me to his office and bought me a bacon sandwich from the van parked on the corner, or we’d nipped down to the Midway Café for a Trucker’s
Brunch. On a couple of occasions he’d let me climb inside a lorry cab and investigate the drop-down bed and the mini TV and fridge, everything you could want for a perfect life. That had
blown my mind at eight. I’d questioned why anyone bothered with houses. Just buy yourself a kitted-out HGV and trundle off round the country. I remembered the office building itself, but the
way it had been in the early Noughties, just a spartan prefab affair with stacks of papers everywhere and boring charts on the boards. The drivers would stand outside the door and smoke and swear
and I’d have to pretend not to hear. Sometimes Dad would go out and say, ‘Keep it down, lads, we’ve got a visitor.’ Then they’d give me the trucker salute, which was a
pretend blast on an air horn. I recalled two secretaries, one blonde and smiley who kept sweets in her drawer, and another, more matronly woman with a Welsh accent. I liked them both; they made a
fuss of me. Looking back I suppose Dad took me to the haulage yard to give Mum a break, but it had felt like a special treat, something just for me and not for Helen. I didn’t recall him ever
taking Helen there. And hadn’t there once been a Christmas tree up, and I’d been given a plastic sparkly tiara which he let me wear on the way home?

Even though it was years since I’d last visited, I had an impulse to go there this minute, call in on the pretext of admiring the new buildings and just to say hello. Not to tell him
anything personal. To see a friendly face, that was all. But then again, if I did appear at his office on spec, how would it be? I could picture his flustered surprise, his concern in case I was
there to deliver bad news. He’d be wrong-footed, maybe impatient that I’d come during a busy period, maybe even embarrassed, and I wouldn’t know what excuse to give for dropping
by. I was too big now to stand in the swivel chair, jerking it from side to side, scrounging Fruit Pastilles and making chains out of paper clips. What had happened to that sparkly tiara in the
end? Why didn’t we take better care of the things we prized?

Mum was home when I let myself in. I could see she’d just returned from shopping because there was a receipt on the table and the fruit bowl was full again.

I stood in the doorway for a minute and watched as she went round tidying stuff away – Dad’s glasses thrown in a drawer, his headphones unplugged and tucked down the side of the book
case, his magazines and slippers pushed out of sight under the chair. Eliminating him from the scene, basically. One day he’d wake up from a nap to find himself shut in the cupboard.

‘What are you doing back at this time?’ she said, glancing up.

I shrugged.

‘What does that mean, Jen?’

‘Feel sick,’ I said, because it was easiest.

‘You do look a bit pale. What’s brought that on?’

‘Dunno.’

She stopped what she was doing and narrowed her eyes at me. ‘Have you got a headache?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then take some Panadol and go lie down.’ She went back to her tidying. ‘Probably too much staring at a computer screen. I’ve told you, you need to watch your
posture.’

‘Yes, thanks for that.’

I hate it when she tries to turn a problem round so it’s somehow your own fault. I wondered what she’d say if I launched into the truth about my day. Would she even have time to
listen?

‘Oh, and Jen, while I’ve got you on your own—’

‘What?’

‘Helen.’

‘What now?’

My mother paused in her activities again. ‘She told me this morning before she left for work that she wants to go to zumba with you.’

‘She’s not said anything to me.’

‘Well, she does.’

‘Oh. OK.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Are you going to
let
her?’

The question took me by surprise, so much so that even in my deep-dark misery I almost laughed. ‘I can’t say no, can I?’

Mum’s mouth went tight. Her face became a cartoon-face with a thought bubble over her head:
Yes, and if this is the beginning of an intense exercise regime that starts to make her
poorly? If she moves from one hour’s zumba a week to three and then seven and then ten, fourteen? If we find she’s doing it on her own in her room at night? Dancing till she’s
exhausted, and then she can’t function in the day and gets confused and confrontational and the disease manages to get a grip again? You’ve no idea. I’ve been there. I remember.
We had to take that treadmill away in the end.

I said, ‘Look, a session of dance might do her good, have you thought of that? Get her out of the house, meet some new people. Release some endorphins. Improve her bone density.’

‘Make her all conscious of her body again,’ finished Mum.

‘And what do you expect me to do? Stop going to classes myself? If Hel’s made her mind up, you know what she’s like. If she doesn’t come with me, she’ll just find a
class of her own.’

‘You always go against me.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘I’ll be checking with the doctor.’

‘You do that.’

For a moment we stood facing each other, crackles of frustration sparking across the distance between us. Then Mum seemed to sag, defeated. Her hand came up and gripped the edge of the sofa.

‘I worry.’

Yeah, you worry about her,
I longed to say.
Not about me. Try asking what sort of day I’ve had. Ask me where my life’s going. Go on. I’m your daughter too. But no.
You think the whole world revolves around the twisting rope that is your relationship with Hel.

‘It doesn’t do you any good, you know. All your fretting only winds her up.’

‘I know.’ Her head drooped.

I said, ‘Look, if she does decide to come to zumba with me, I promise I’ll keep a close eye on her. I’ll make sure she paces herself and drinks enough. And I’ll let the
teacher know her background. OK? Can’t say fairer than that.’

My mother’s brow remained pinched with anxiety. She obviously wasn’t going to be talked round.

‘Oh, you know what? I haven’t time for this,’ I said. Suddenly I was on the verge of tears. I needed to escape.

‘Are you really not well?’ I heard Mum say as I turned and ran for the stairs.

The whole drive home I’d longed for the sanctuary of my room, but now I was here it seemed like the crappest place on earth. I threw myself on the bed and stuck my
earphones in, hoping to blot out the last two hours but unable to stop events replaying on their horrible loop. I don’t know how long I lay there, tormenting my own brain. At first I kept my
phone next to me on the pillow, just in case Owen texted me. Then, after a while, I switched the mobile off and threw it onto the floor with the rest of my rubbish. Because what message could he
ever send that would undo the words he’d said?

‘But Owen,’ I’d pleaded. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you so upset? I mean, I know you enjoyed having her around to give opinions and stuff, but to be
this
distraught. It’s beyond reasonable. Not if she’s just a mate. What else is going on?’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. Unless . . . no.’

He’d run his fingers through his hair distractedly.

‘Last night Chelle and I sat up and talked till late. We talked about the future, about what she wanted. I told her to apply for a visa so she could stay here, ’cause she’d
fitted in so well. I said she could look at getting a job nearby, finding a place of her own, putting down a few roots. I’d have helped her with it all. And do you know what she said? She
said she wouldn’t because it would make you angry and she didn’t have the energy to fight you any longer.’

‘That’s ridiculous. It’s a front. She was always going to take off sooner or later, she was only ever visiting. We all knew that—’

‘Plus she told me about how uncomfortable you’ve been making her feel.’

‘Aw, come on.’

Owen’s jaw went tight, as if he was biting back words.

I said, ‘You mean because a few times I ribbed her slightly about the stories she told? I’m not being blamed for that. Some of those things she claimed, I just didn’t believe
them. Did you? I mean, insisting she came up with the idea for Captain Pollinator when we know it was that Swedish cartoonist.’

‘She knows him. They email.’

‘She
says
she does. Has she ever shown you any of the actual messages?’

‘See, this is what she found difficult, Jen. You were so hostile. So negative with her. You told her to go home, for fuck’s sake.’

‘That was my sister, not me! I never said anything like that. OK, I maybe took the piss a little, when she was showing off. It wasn’t nasty, though. Only like joking between mates.
Like we do with Saleem when he waxes lyrical about his days in Kashmir. He takes it, he laughs.’

‘This was different, and you know it. There was an edge to how you were with Chelle. You hurt her feelings. She tried to be your friend.’

I’d meant to play it cool, I really had, but my alarm was spiralling.

‘Hang on. I’m not being painted as the baddie here. I’ve been patience on a bloody monument, I have. How many other girlfriends would have put up with an alien woman parking
herself in their boyfriend’s flat and refusing to shift for months? Tagging along everywhere we went. Helping herself to anything left lying around. It was a ludicrous situation, only you
couldn’t see it. You do realise she was completely taking advantage? She was scrounging off you.’