When I Was Invisible (40 page)

I don't know why I've come here. When I opened the letter, forwarded by Sasha with a Brighton postmark, I hadn't been expecting to see his name, see his wife's name, to be confronted with the fact they lived so near to me now. The generic letter inserted with the invite was appealing with me to come and mark another important anniversary in the life of a great man. His dance school had produced dancers who had gone on to secure prestigious scholarships at prominent dance schools across the world; he had personally tutored women who had danced for all of the best ballet companies across the globe. And he had been responsible for young girls who had found a way to express themselves through dance, who had enjoyed the freedom that dancing gave them.

A great man, respected by so many.

I have not come to celebrate him. I suppose I wanted to come along and see if anyone would show up. I was hoping as I walked here that he and his wife, possibly his son, would be sitting alone, having to think back over all the things he had done and realise that no one would pretend now, when the girls didn't have to go because their parents compelled them to, they would vote with their feet, they would stay away. They would not flock into his place of business and his home address, and share drink, food, time and stories with him.

I arrived and discovered he is not alone. He is surrounded by people, the party on all floors of the house sounds full, burgeoning with people who think the world of him and his dance school.

I did not understand why they sent me an invite to my parents' address. Was it all so easily forgotten that I was the one who spoke out, who went to the police, who ran away as soon as she could? Or was I so unimportant, was what I accused him of so ludicrous to everyone, including my parents, that they thought I'd laugh it off as a childish misunderstanding to be set aside now I was an adult and understood the ways of the world? Or, as is most likely, did they send an invite to me, thinking it would get to the other Veronica?

When I was sixteen and a half, it stopped,
he
stopped. I had been to the police a year before and nothing had changed. If anything, it got worse. But then, when I was sixteen and a half, the lessons became about dancing, about teaching me new techniques instead of punishing me for repeatedly speaking out.

I remember the day it stopped clearly. I heard his breathing change, and the familiar dread of knowing what would come next began to creep through me because the sound of his breathing was always the warning. The next thing he said would be the start of it and I braced myself for that, for my body to become rigid with fear, for my mind to try to blank out, when the studio door suddenly banged open. It was Mrs Daneaux. She seemed to be all smiles, but still had that cold look in her eye she'd reserved for me since I'd told her what he'd been doing and he had convinced her I was lying.

He went to greet her, tried to shoo her out again, but she was having none of it. She decided to stay and watch the progress of one of their star pupils. After that, she regularly showed up unannounced, which stopped him from touching me again.

So for the last six months of living in Chiselwick, I learnt to dance again without fear lining the pit of my stomach like cement, and without bile foaming like lava in my throat. I never remembered what it was like to dance for the love of it and I still had disgust crawling over every part of my body, and the memories of what had happened were like scorch marks in my mind, but I could dance.

I know, even now, if I told people about it, they would question why I put up with it when I was fifteen, when I was sixteen, when I was nearly seventeen. Surely by then I was older and taller and stronger. I could have stopped it if I'd wanted to. I know people wouldn't understand, whatever age I was, whenever I saw him, whenever he came near me, whenever anyone did something that triggered the memory of him, I would become eleven years old again – horrified that someone I adored would do something that felt so awful; I would be thirteen again – stupefied because what he did to me was so distressing I'd spent the whole night throwing up. When I was older and apparently able to stop it if I wanted to, I was actually still thirteen, stuck back in that moment of terror, frozen with shock.

When I was sixteen and a half it all stopped, but I never quite managed to stop the feelings of hating myself that made me want to disappear.

I shouldn't have come to this place
, I realise. I should have stayed at home and told myself that everyone had abandoned him, instead of coming here to see the reality is that no one cares what he was accused of, everyone still considers him a great man.

‘I wondered if you'd show up,' she says. Her voice hasn't changed at all. I remember it as clearly as though I only heard it yesterday. Standing beside me, waiting for our turn on the stage, shouting into my ear that this club was rubbish and we should try somewhere else, begging me to speak to her and repeating that she was sorry. I remember her voice clearly, even though nearly twenty years have stacked themselves neatly between us. It won't really matter how she looks, because she sounds the same. ‘I should say, I hoped you would turn up. You're the only reason why I came here,' she adds.

That's the real reason I came here, of course. I wanted to see the other Veronica Harper.

I have been keeping watch across the street since six o'clock so I can see who comes to the party and I will not miss her. As time went by and she did not show up, I started to think she wouldn't. That she would do the sensible thing and stay away from a part of her past she wants to forget. That would be it for me if she did stay away, though, I realised, there would be no way of finding her.

When I saw her approach, walk up to the red door, and pause, staring up at the building in front of her as though deciding whether to ring or not, I was almost sick with anticipation and dread. She had the same gait as she had when we were seventeen. She was the same height, and although her hair was straight and short and she looked like she was wearing glasses, I knew instantly it was her.

I approached slowly, my heart ricocheting in my ears, my breathing as loud as that of a long-distance runner.

‘I wondered if you'd show up,' I say to her. She doesn't move, but she has heard me because her entire body becomes rigid where she stands. ‘I should say, I hoped you would turn up. You're the only reason why I came here.'

She doesn't move at all. She stands rictus-still and lets me talk. When I finish what I have said, she still does not immediately move or talk.

‘That sounds like you're blaming me for the poor choice you made this evening,' she eventually says.

‘I hope it doesn't. It was my roundabout way of saying I wanted to see you desperately, and if it meant coming here to do it, then that was what I had to do.'

The other Veronika Harper, the one who has a ‘k' instead of a ‘c', slowly turns around to face me. I've imagined this moment a million times in my head. We would see each other, our eyes would meet and we would throw our arms around each other, bury our faces in each other's necks and cry. We would cry away the years we've been apart, we would sob aside our separate lives and we would find a way to come back together. To be true friends again. I have recreated this scene so many times in my head, I can almost feel my arms around her, her tears on my neck, my cry-punctuated confessions.

As it is, the best either of us can do is offer a small, uncomfortable smile, try but fail to make eye contact, move down the steps to the pavement and stand near each other, seeming awkward and out of place.

‘I don't even know why I'm here,' she admits. ‘It was such a shock, I guess, getting the invite and to find that they were here … living so close to where I live. It never even occurred to me to search for them, you know? That part of my life was over so I didn't expect to hear from them again … And then they're in Brighton. And life is carrying on as always for them. I don't know, maybe I came to look people in the eye and see if they remember.'

Oh. I thought she might be here to see me. I thought that might have featured in her reasons for allowing herself to be pulled into such a painful segment of her past. And she lives here, in Brighton.

‘It's good to see you,' I offer. ‘Like I said, I only came to see you. I came to say I'm sorry. That's the reason I wanted to find you. I've wanted to say it for years and years. I'm so very, very sorry.'

In the silence after my apology, I have been staring at her shoes, too cowardly to face her properly. She is wearing white Converse trainers that have seen many, many better days. I wonder if, like me, she avoids ballet shoes like the plague. The mere thought of fitting them on my feet turns every part of my stomach. I wonder if it's the same for her. Because, even though what we went through seemed the same, sometimes felt like carbon copies of the other's experiences, it was different. Every experience couldn't be swept away or minimised by lumping us together to become faceless ‘survivors' of a horrific man's perversions. Maybe, after all these years, Nika has found a way to dance again.

Her white Converse shoes have musical notes written in black marker along the bottom rim. ‘Are those notes to a song?' I ask.

‘Yes,' she replies. That confirms it: she isn't going to accept my apology; she is probably going to avoid talking about anything that might lead to an apology. As part of my conceit that there is a way to put this right, I thought it would be easy. Not easy, simple. I thought I would be able to say the words, mean the words, and all would be forgiven. In my arrogance, I thought forgiveness would only entail finding Nika, the act of seeing her, the moment of reunion, the utterance of those golden words. I should have made my confession when I had the chance, I should have allowed myself to be absolved. It is hubris to believe you can achieve forgiveness without any help from God.

‘I used to see you in the papers and magazines,' I offer as a way to make her talk. It will probably outrage her, encourage her to engage.

‘That was never me,' she states quite plainly. ‘That was someone who looked remarkably like me and had a similar name. What about you, what have you been doing?'

‘You wouldn't believe me if I told you,' I say. Out of everyone, she is the one who, having been there, probably won't believe the transformation in me.

‘Right, OK,' is her reply before she shuts her mouth and keeps her gaze lowered.

‘What, you're not even going to ask?' I'm affronted. More of my vanity, my need to have people as interested in me as I am in them. Actually, no, it is my need to have
Nika
as interested in me as I am in her.

‘No, I am not even going to ask. I'm sure you have your reasons for not telling me and I respect those reasons, even if I don't know them.'

‘I became a nun,' I say.

‘See? If you didn't want to tell me, why bother bringing it up? And then take the piss out of me. What was the point? Did that moment of piss-take really give you such a lift that it was worth it?'

‘I'm not … taking the you-know-what. I became a nun. Honest to God.'

That does it, that makes her look at me again. ‘
You
became a nun?'

I grin at her, take the chance to look over her face, note her wrinkles, her blemishes, the shaping of her look through her glasses. ‘I received a calling of sorts and followed it.'

‘I thought your calling was to be a dancer? All either of us ever wanted to be was a dancer. That was why we became friends. That was all we ever talked about.'

‘Things change.'

Veronica Harper, a nun. I suppose stranger things have happened. But a nun? I never would have guessed.

I've missed her. I'm ashamed to admit that to anyone, especially myself. But I've missed Roni. Even when I couldn't talk to her, when I refused to hold her hand, she was special to me. Our friendship lived at the very core of who I was. Without Roni, for a very long time, I did not feel alive, real or part of normal life. That is why it hurt so much, of course. Why I couldn't simply brush it off and be understanding as I had been in the past. Roni was a part of me and when she let me down, I lost that part in the most painful separation I'd ever experienced.

‘Where are you staying tonight?' Nika asks me.

‘How do you know I don't live in Brighton?' I ask. I bristle at the implication that it's obvious I am not quite ‘Brighton cool'. This dress I am wearing, it may not be the skimpy garbs from yesteryear, but it can pass muster. The same with my coat. I could be ‘Brighton' if I wanted.

‘You don't live in Brighton,' she tells me. ‘I was going to ask you if you wanted to stay at my flat, but if you live in Brighton, you go right ahead and go home. We can always do a girly catch-up tomorrow.'

‘I don't live in Brighton, you're right. I would love to stay if that is still on offer?'

‘Yes, sure, why not.'

I'm not thinking when I breach the gap between us and curl my hand around hers. I do it because it's instinctive. I love the feel of her skin against mine. Her skin has a special code, one that only I can read. When I touch her, I am transformed. I remember all the good things about her. I want to lean over and press my lips against hers. Not in a sexual way; it would be the quickest way to connect with her, to let her know how much I missed her, how incomplete I was without her. I've prayed for her every night since I last saw her, even before I decided to become a nun I would ask God to keep her safe, to protect her from harm. Now I know, after all those years of not seeing anything about her after she left her famous boyfriend, that she's alive and well, and I want to kiss her. I want to express in the most physical way possible that I love her. She's my name twin and my reflection.