It seems incredible that this jacket, and those three photos that Simon showed me, can really be all that is left of Vanessa. A whole life, reduced to this. Suddenly I think of Mrs Reiber, that day she came into the cafe in Kew; I think of her with her fur coat and her cut-glass accent and her stockings all worn to shreds. She is Vanessa’s
mother.
She held her in her arms. How –
how
– can she wipe out her own daughter like that? How can she pretend that she never lived at all?
And yet what
can
you ever do? How
can
you move on?
All of Vanessa’s things would be like this jacket now; turning rancid through purposelessness and decay. How unbearable would it have been to see that? To have tried to keep her alive through
things?
I ought to give the jacket to Simon. I think of him, showing me those photos.
They are all that I have of her
, he said.
They are all that is left.
I know I ought to give it to him, but I don’t know that I can.
I sit there on the attic floor and there is a fist in my heart, pressing, pressing hard. I hold that jacket in my hands, fragile and useless as a dead baby. And then, as if it was a dead baby, I put it away again; I wrap it back up in that paper and put it back in that box and I close the lid. I wish I had never got it out.
Two weeks after Jono’s birthday I meet Janice for lunch in Covent Garden. Naturally, she was too busy to come and see Jono, what with her work and her boyfriend, though she did send him something in the post. Janice hates family gatherings and avoids them at all costs. Being single, and childless – or
child-free
, as she would put it – she can do that. She can make that choice.
And so we arrange to meet on this Saturday, as though by seeing me she is also somehow discharging her duty to Jono, her nephew and, let me add at this point, her godson. To be honest, I wouldn’t normally mind this, in fact it’s a logic I have happily gone along with for years.
It’s a big day for you, too
, she said to me once,
so you and I should go out for lunch.
A present for Jono and lunch with me, and we’re all happy, aren’t we? Especially as it I means I don’t have to put on the stilted, uncomfortable display of happy families that a visit to my house would entail.
But today, taking the train up to Waterloo, I am too aware of the usual purpose of my trips into town these days, and too aware also of the fact that today, being a Saturday, Simon wouldn’t even be there. I picture his flat, silent and empty, and then I correct myself and picture that strange unknown woman in there, changing the bed sheets on which we have lain, cleaning the bathroom, replenishing the fridge. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a key, if I could let myself in there, just to be close to him. And I did suggest this. One day, just a week or so ago; it was raining and we’d arranged to meet, but he was late and for twenty minutes or more I was left standing in the foyer like a hooker, waiting, waiting. ‘Perhaps if I had a key . . .’ I said on the way up in the lift, trying not to sound annoyed.
But he laughed. ‘You’re sounding like a wife,’ he said, and my insides, my heart, my soul, every part of me turned to ice. ‘Come on,’ he continued, putting his hands on my hips and shoving up my skirt, kissing me, driving me out of the lift and into his flat and his bed, ‘you don’t need a key.’
And now I sit on the train to Waterloo, and I think of him leaving London last night, rushing back to Kingham, to be with his wife. I picture him waking in bed with her this morning, the country sunlight streaming through the window. I picture a vast table in the kitchen, laden with fresh bread from the Aga, eggs from the hens, and butter and jam; I picture the children rushing in, golden-haired and beautiful, calling,
Daddy! Daddy!
And I mind. Believe me, I mind.
I get off the train and walk towards the river, just as I would if I was going to Simon’s flat, but instead of carrying on along the South Bank I take the steps up to Waterloo Bridge and start crossing over. It is a calm, still day and London is bathed in soft, pale-grey light as the weak sunshine reflects off the concrete. It is mild, too, for March, and the tourists and day-trippers are out in their droves. I have always loved this walk across the bridge; the view of the Houses of Parliament to the left and the City to the right, but today in my heart I feel a hollow, dragging ache. If I look to my right I can see the Oxo Tower, and I find that I can’t stop looking. I want to see Simon’s flat. I want to know if I
can
see it from here, if I can make it out and identify it. Because if I can, I will have it then, marked forever in my head. Every time I cross this bridge,
every
time, I will see it.
I run over onto the other side, dodging through the traffic. I can’t help myself. Like the tourists looking at the view, I am there, one hand shielding my eyes, peering as far as I can.
I can’t see it, though, no matter how hard I try. The Oxo Tower stands out as a landmark, but the buildings around it merge into each other, a jigsaw puzzle of grey. It annoys me that I can’t see it. I feel as if I am being denied, as if Simon’s flat and all the buildings around it are closing together and shutting me out. And so I carry on walking now, though I can’t stop myself from turning and turning again, looking back, to see if from a different angle I might get a better view.
By the time I cross the Strand and start walking up Wellington Street I am all out of sorts, angry with myself, angry with Simon. I think of him wandering down the lane into his village with wife, kids and dogs in tow, meandering at leisure, comfortable in his world. I picture them, stamping the mud off their boots at the village pub; I smell the wood-smoke from the chimneys, hear the crackle of wood upon an open fire. I picture this idyllic world that I will never be part of, and I am shot through with a bolt of envy. And I wonder how it is that he can lead such a double life, moving from London to the country and from the country back to London again with such apparent ease, picking up and putting down his family as he goes, and picking up and putting me down, too.
But of course what Simon and I have is not of the real world. It is a fantasy, born out of loss and longing, a fabricated illusion of a life. I am not real to him. How can I be?
I shove my way through the crowds now and feel as I have always felt: like the outsider, the one on the edge of other people’s lives, seeing, stealing what I can. By the time I meet Janice at the cafe on the corner of the Piazza I am sunk in the grip of self-loathing.
She doesn’t make it any better.
I am there first, and I get us a table under the awning so that we are half-indoors, half-out, with a view of the crowds gathering around the street performers across the square. I sit there with my drink, watching all this fun and activity while I wait for her, a good fifteen minutes. When she does at last arrive she swoops in, pushing past the other tables, knocking people with her bag.
‘Sorry,’ she says as she collapses down into the chair opposite me. ‘Had to speak to Paul. His bloody wife’s giving him hell.’
She does nothing to keep her voice down, and around us people glance over their shoulders, take a good look.
Bitterness, and some dark sense of irony, has me quoting, ‘They always go back to their wives in the end, you know.’
‘Not always,’ she snaps back. ‘Ian didn’t.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘But if there are children involved.’
‘For God’s sake, Rachel, children are not the be-all and end-all.’
I am struck by her vehemence and feel a rush of heat to my face. It is not a good start. We look at our menus in silence.
And then, as if it is a natural follow-on, she says, ‘How is Jono?’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Thank you for his present.’
‘I take it he enjoyed his birthday?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Why do I feel so patronized by these questions? So put-in-my-box as the good little wife and mother, as if she knows everything about the world and I know nothing –
nothing
– beyond the limits of my own domestic walls? Her questions are an end to conversation, not a start. They distance me from her. And yet she is my sister. We are both screwing other women’s husbands. We have so much more in common than she thinks.
‘Do you remember my baby? My other baby?’ I do not know where these words come from; they are out of my mouth before I even know I want to say them. And now that they are out, I stare at her, just as shocked as she is.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ she says.
‘Good.’ I nod my head. ‘Good.’ My heart is thumping and I am perilously close to tears.
‘Why do you ask?’ she says, but then the waitress appears beside us, butting in with her oblivious cheer. ‘Salad,’ Janice snaps at her.
And I say, ‘Same,’ and take a deep breath, and try to get a grip.
‘Why do you ask?’ Janice demands again when the waitress has gone. She is leaning closer to me over the table now and watching me with narrowed eyes. I am reminded of how things were when we were children; of how she’d demand and intimidate me till she got her own way, so that we always had to watch her programmes on TV and play her games, games that she would always win. And of how she’d sneer if she ever caught me crying. This, perhaps, is why I don’t tell her things now.
And yet I need to. I need to tell someone.
‘It’s something we’ve never talked about, that’s all,’ I manage to say. To avoid her eyes I look out across the Piazza. Some guy on stilts is balancing a tray of glasses on his head; the crowd whoop and sway as he staggers among them. ‘No one ever talks about it. About
her’
I can feel her staring at me. ‘It was a long time ago, wasn’t it, Rachel?’ she says at last, though her voice is gentler now, I will give her that. ‘Why bring it up now?’
I don’t answer. I can’t. I watch that clown, weaving around. Suddenly one of the glasses topples and slides off the tray. It smashes on the ground and the crowd jumps back, squealing. The clown loses his balance for a second and another glass falls, and another. The show is in chaos.
The waitress comes back and slaps down our salads.
‘Rachel,’ Janice says quietly, ‘what’s this all about?’
I turn and face her.
Nothing
, I could say.
I was just thinking, that’s all.
And I could change the subject. We could talk about her work, her boyfriend, the complexities of a hectic, single life. I could ask her about her holiday plans, her progress in painting her flat. And my life could stay where it always stays, skirted over briefly in a series of mundane surface issues, and then we would part, as we always part, done until next time.
Or I could tell her.
Inside my chest I can feel my heartbeat, ticking away like a clock.
‘You remember Leanne?’ I say tentatively.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ Janice replies, spearing salad onto her fork. ‘You asked me that recently. Why?’
I watch as she shoves lettuce, goat’s cheese, olives and tomato into her mouth, getting the eating over with quickly. My own food sits there untouched. ‘Do you remember her friend, Vanessa? Did you ever meet her? Did I ever . . . talk about her?’
Of course she never met Vanessa, and of course I never talked about her. I never talked to her about anything. She quickly shakes her head as she sticks a piece of bread into her mouth, and raises her eyebrows for me to continue.
‘Well . . . she was Leanne’s friend from school, and I became friends with her, too. She had all these parties . . .’ I am stalling. I am having second thoughts.
‘And?’ Janice prompts in that schoolmistress voice that she used so often when we were little, when I’d have to stand in front of her, stumbling over my excuses for borrowing her pens or her doll, or whatever, without asking.
And?
she’d demand, hands on hips.
And?
till I confessed, and what a mistake that always turned out to be.
I lick my lips, not even sure what I want to say.
‘Eat your lunch,’ Janice orders, and so I cut up a piece of cheese, stick it in my mouth. She watches while I chew and swallow. It feels like cardboard in my throat. ‘
And?
’ she asks again.
‘Well . . . she died,’ I say.
And Janice mutters, ‘Oh,’ and puts down her fork.
‘When I was at college,’ I add quickly.
‘Oh,’ she says again. And she watches me, and waits for me to continue.
‘And recently I – I got back in touch with her brother.’
‘What did you go and do that for?’ she asks as if it was the most stupid, ridiculous thing.
And as if it was the most stupid, ridiculous thing, I say, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he want to meet you?’ she demands.
‘Yes,’ I say.
And she says, ‘Well, don’t.’ Followed by, ‘There’s only ever one reason why a man wants to meet a woman.’
‘No, there’s not!’ I am knocked by her cynicism, though, really, I should have expected it. What did I think: that we’d have a sisterly heart-to-heart? That she’d offer me her support and understanding?
‘Don’t meet him,’ she says. I stare at her, wishing I had never started this. She stares back at me and then states disparagingly, ‘You already have.’