I turn away from my mirror and stare out of my bedroom window at the drizzle, dampening up the street in a fog of greyness. And quickly I pick up my coat and my bag and I leave, before I lose my nerve.
Driving to Kew, I have a sense of purpose. I need not think. In fact, I am quite enjoying it, being dressed up as I am, and having somewhere to go. Normally my Mondays are a heavy weight of loneliness, of house-tidying and supermarket trips and longed-for and then frighteningly disappointing solitude. I have friends, of course I do, but they are scattered far and wide. I see them rarely. We are all, it would seem, too busy with our lives, though for me such busyness is a charade, an excuse to hide behind. My world has shrunk in on itself, with Jono at its centre. Look outwards and I might catch myself looking away.
I park alongside the wall to Kew Gardens, because here parking is free and available; I get out of my car and there are other women parking up and getting out of their cars, too. Young women with small children, setting off for a walk, and slightly older women like myself, heading for the Tube station to go shopping in town. I feel like I am one of them: busy, with somewhere to go. I click shut my car and walk as briskly as my boots will allow, and still I need not think. I am vague about the exact direction to Mrs Reiber’s house from here, but I find my way. I cross at the lights, and enter the quagmire of close, interwoven streets; I pass Amy’s house and walk onwards. My boots are starting to pinch a little, and my confidence is starting to waver. The young women with their children will be in the park now; the other women on their way to shopping in town. I am alone. I cannot pretend that I am anyone, or like anyone, else. My heels clack clumsily on the pavement; I am hot inside my clothes.
Outside Mrs Reiber’s house I stop. My teeth are clamped tight and I am tense from head to toe. The truth is that I haven’t a clue what I am going to say to her. She may not even be in, of course, and then I will have had a wasted journey and will have spent so much time on my appearance for nothing. But I am not going to give up now. Absolutely not.
I push open the gate and march purposefully up to the front door, bending my head low to avoid the thick reaching branches of the monkey tree. On the doorstep I take a deep breath and ring the bell. Through the heavy black wood of the front door I can hear it ringing, deep inside the house. My heart starts pounding and I feel a little sick suddenly, with nerves. I take another deep breath, and I wait; she doesn’t come. My finger is still positioned over the doorbell; before I have time to turn and run, I force myself to press it again. I listen to the ring, and then almost straight away I hear footsteps approaching the other side of the door, and then it is slowly opening and there she is. She keeps one hand on the lock and opens the door just enough so that she can see me, but the view behind her is obscured, and she looks at me with hostile blue eyes.
‘Yes?’ she says, and she is wary, ready to shut the door again, fast. And no wonder; I am a stranger. And I am standing there on her doorstep, struggling to say anything. Because it is her – I’m sure of it. It is the eyes, the paleness of her skin, the cheekbones, everything. It has to be her. I wish I’d looked properly at Vanessa’s mother all those years ago. I wish I hadn’t shied away; I wish I’d really taken notice and stored her face away in my memory, so that now I could retrieve it and consult and compare.
I try to smile, but I find that I can’t. My cheeks are numb; my whole mouth has turned to jelly.
‘Yes?’ she says again and she is frowning at me. ‘Can I help you?’
She’s about to close the door. She looks agitated, annoyed.
‘Mrs Reiber?’ I force the words out, but my voice cracks and wobbles and suddenly, to my deep and furious shame, I am crying. I am unable to stop myself. I put my wrist to my face and try to stem the tears with my coat sleeve. The door is open wider now; she is staring at me, alarmed. ‘Mrs Reiber, I’m so sorry,’ I manage to say on a shaking breath. ‘I knew Vanessa.’
She says nothing. There is no sudden gasp of breath, nothing. Desperately I try to control myself. I wanted to be calm and composed, and I feel so stupid now, and so, so embarrassed. I look at her through my blurred and watery eyes. There is a stillness to her, but that is all. I wonder if I have got it wrong, and I have no idea what I should try to say or do next.
‘I knew a girl called Vanessa Reiber,’ I say shakily. ‘And I thought that you might be her mother. That is why I’m here. I’m sorry.’ My throat is burning up again with tears, and I am about to turn and leave when at last she opens the door a little further and steps to one side.
And she says, ‘Oh dear. I think you’d better come in.’
The house is long; it seems to go back forever. She walks slowly down the hall in worn old slippers that slap, slap, slap against the black and white tiles of the floor, and I follow her, my own heels clicking noisily. She is wearing very old tights again, not laddered this time, but pulled and bobbled, and there is a piece of red fluff caught in a snag on the back of her left leg. I find this so sad, so hard to understand. She is painfully thin, her body swamped in a brown woollen skirt and a matching jacket, such country clothes, such typical, predictable clothes for a woman of a certain age. But Vanessa’s mother wouldn’t dress like this, surely? Vanessa’s mother was so flamboyant, so theatrical. She dressed up, all the time. But of all these things it is the woman’s hair that upsets and perturbs me the most; it hangs and clings to her shoulders in a series of lank, unkempt straggles. And it’s so grey – white almost; silver – the colour that blonde hair turns when it ages.
Vanessa’s mother had auburn hair. But did she? Weren’t there photos of her scattered about the house at Oakley, photos from when she was young, photos of her with Vanessa’s father, and with her children when they were small, and didn’t she have fair hair then? They were black-and-white photos, from what I remember, but even so, you could tell. Auburn hair would have come out darker, much darker in a photograph.
So I stare at this hair and I’m wondering, and I’m looking for clues. We walk the length of the house, through the kitchen and another short connecting hallway and into a sort of small sitting room right at the back. Vanessa’s house was modern and bright, but this place is so dark and enclosed, and there is a strange, cloying smell that I can’t quite place. She gestures for me to sit and so I do, on the edge of a small leather sofa that is cracked and peeling along its arms. The seat of it creaks and gives under me, the cushion letting out its breath on a sigh. There is a large, pale rug on the floor and I rest my feet on it nervously, afraid that my boots will leave marks. I try to compose myself. I am desperate to look around, but I can’t while she is standing there observing me.
Eventually she says, ‘Can I get you a drink?’
And I say, ‘Oh, thank you so much, a glass of water would be lovely.’
It is too hot in the room and as soon as she is gone, I stand up and take off my coat, but then I think that that might look presumptuous, as if I am making myself too at home, so I put it back on again. I can hear her in the kitchen, taking out glasses and running the tap. Quickly I glance around, but there is not much to see. The room is pretty small, with just these two mismatched sofas, each pitched at an angle to each other, and a rectangular, dark-wood side table between them at one end, so that the three items make a sort of triangle: sofa, table, sofa. And behind the table, with not enough room to get around there and open it, is a lone and heavily curtained glass-panelled door, leading on to the darkness of the garden. There is a tall lamp with a nondescript gold shade in one corner, and against the wall behind my sofa is a bookcase, but I can see nothing of interest on it: no photos, no give-away clues. All in all, it is a pretty characterless space, and I wonder why she chose to bring me here, all the way to the back of the house, rather than into the living room at the front, with the bay overlooking the street. Somehow I think that is the room I would have liked to have seen.
When she returns from the kitchen I am perched on my seat again, with my hands clutched in my lap. And I have been rehearsing my speech in my head.
‘Thank you,’ I say as she puts two glasses of water complete with ice and lemon on the table. And then she carefully sits herself opposite me, and looks at me, and waits.
‘I must apologize for just turning up like this,’ I say. ‘You must think me very strange.’ I smile, and she smiles back, but it is a polite smile, giving nothing away. ‘The other day I was in the cafe by the station,’ I say, ‘when you left your card. And I heard them say your name – Mrs Reiber—’ I break off. How am I to continue without giving away the fact that I followed her? She sits so still before me, impassive, waiting for me to go on. ‘Well, I . . . It’s just it’s such an unusual name, and I knew someone called Vanessa Reiber a long time ago, and I thought, I wondered . . .’
Her face is totally expressionless. Suddenly I am overwhelmed by the terrible fear that I may have got this all wrong. There is a long, awkward silence during which all I can hear is my heart, banging against my ribs. It is so hot in the room and the atmosphere is close and airless. My skin prickles under my dress and I can feel my feet starting to swell inside my boots. Eventually Mrs Reiber turns her head to look in the direction of the glass door, across which the curtains are still partially drawn. There is a faint, thin smile on her mouth, but I feel that this is a fixed expression, worn like a mask, and as I study her I see a quick, fleeting frown cross her eyes.
‘Dear me,’ she says. ‘I think we are in for more rain.’ And then she turns back to me and asks, ‘Did you have to come far?’
‘No, not too far. I – I live in Surbiton.’
She smiles, she nods, as though this is of some interest to her, as though we are here to make small talk. And I am thrown by this. I wonder if she is – well,
confused.
I feel that perhaps I should just give up and leave, and yet . . . and yet, I can’t.
I swallow back my doubts and say, ‘Please don’t be offended. And well, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I knew Vanessa. Vanessa Reiber. I was a friend, sort of. I was Leanne’s friend, and I came to the house a few times, in Oakley. When Vanessa died I was very . . . sad.’ How pathetic I sound. And if this woman is Vanessa’s mother, what on earth do I expect her to say to that? Suddenly I wonder what it is that I am trying to achieve. ‘I was very fond of Vanessa,’ I say and I pinch my nails into my hands.
Fond?
What kind of a word is that? ‘When I heard your name I thought – Vanessa’s mother was called Yolande. Yolande Reiber.’
She listens to my speech with that mask-smile fixed firmly in place. But she says nothing; not that she is Yolande Reiber, not that she isn’t. I don’t know what to do. I feel such helplessness, spiralling inside my head.
‘And if you were her mother, I just wanted you to know that I thought Vanessa was special. Very special.’ That lump is swelling up inside my throat again. I swallow hard to contain it.
‘It’s very kind of you to say so,’ Mrs Reiber says. ‘But I am afraid that you have had a wasted journey. I do not have a daughter.’ I stare at her and she stares back, her eyes unreadable.
‘But—’ I start, but she cuts me short.
‘And I never have had.’ She says it with such finality. And to make sure that I realize the conversation is now over, she breaks my stare and looks back out at the garden. ‘I do hope you make it home before the rain,’ she says.
I walk away from that house feeling numb. I am too miserable for words. It is raining now, that low-cloud persistent rain that looks as though it’s not much more than a heavy drizzle, but in fact gets you soaked. I do have an umbrella in my bag, but I cannot be bothered to get it out and the rain is working its way through my hair to my head, where I can feel it trickling against my scalp. My boots are killing me now, pinching and rubbing against my toes; every step is a punishment, but it’s a punishment I make myself endure. I feel I deserve it for being such a fool.
I walk to the end of the road and turn right, not really thinking which way I should be going. I have nothing particularly to do; no need to be anywhere until later this afternoon, when Jono comes home. And now I feel totally robbed of the day’s purpose. I end up at the road leading to the station, where all those lovely shops are, and I cross over and walk towards them. The Christmas lights are on, even at this time of day, inside the shop windows and outside too, draped around the lamp posts. All very tasteful, but then of course it would be, here. I am too wet to go inside the shops so I just walk slowly, and look in the windows. And once again I feel myself to be outside life, looking in. At the gift shop I stop, and I look at the beautiful jewellery and the leather bags so artfully displayed. And then I catch sight of my reflection, of my glum, distorted face and my hair stuck wetly to my head, and I am overcome with a wave of self-loathing.
Who am I to try and link my life to Vanessa’s – then, or now? I am just a middle-aged woman out of nowhere. I am what you become when you disappear.
I turn away from the shops and then cross back over the main road, and head back in the general direction of my car. And I try to walk tall, with dignity, as if I have the right to these streets, whilst inside I feel like an impostor. Niggling through my self-pity now is anger, worming its way like a thread.
Let us not forget that Vanessa’s mother never did notice me. I may have been in her house on various occasions; I may have sat on her furniture, laughed with her children, drunk the booze in her dining room, but she always walked past me as if I didn’t exist.