Case Histories (30 page)

“Can I get you a drink, sir?” He opened his eyes and looked into Nicola Spencer’s bland, indifferent face. She smiled at him without warmth and repeated her question. He asked for an orange juice in order to prolong the encounter a little. In some ways he knew everything about Nicola Spencer, and in other ways he knew absolutely nothing. She gave him a small packet of pretzels with his orange juice and moved on to the next passenger. He watched as she pushed her trolley past him, her muscular buttocks straining against her uniform skirt. He thought about following her when they landed—out of curiosity and because she was unfinished business—but by the time he’d gone through the rigmarole of picking up a rental car at Toulouse Airport, he’d lost interest.

22

Caroline

J
onathan said, “What do you want for your birthday?” and she said, “A Mercedes SL 500,” joking, obviously, and he said, “Any particular color?” and she said, “Silver,” and fuck me (she thought) if it wasn’t sitting there in the driveway, seventy thousand quid’s worth, tied with a big, pink ribbon. He must be even richer than she thought. She had no idea how much money he had, she didn’t want any of his money, she hadn’t even wanted the car, not really, although now that she had it she loved it. Two seats, no room in the back for dogs or kids.

“Goodness,” Rowena said when she saw it. It was amazing how much meaning you could pack into one two-syllable word.

Maybe the car was a farewell gift. Maybe he was getting ready for his next wife. She was pretty sure he had someone in London. She’d be surprised if he didn’t, men like Jonathan always had mistresses. They never married them though. She should have been a mistress—temperamentally she was much better suited to being a mistress than a wife.

They still didn’t know about the baby, safe inside her. She was getting ready to shed her skin again, grow another new one. She had to leave before she got stuck in inertia, before someone discovered her. Before they stopped her when they found out about the baby. They would want to get their hands on the baby. And it was a shame because she really loved the school and the job, but there were other schools and other jobs, everything was possible when you turned your mind to it. And she was taking the baby with her (obviously) out of this place because it wouldn’t be a good environment for it—it might grow up speaking French on Wednesdays and not understanding about love. She
ached
with love for this baby. That was something that no one in this house was capable of understanding. There was a time when she hadn’t been capable of understanding love, and what a mess that had made of everything. She’d said to Shirley, “Treat me as if I’m dead,” but she hadn’t expected her to actually do as she said. But there’d been nothing: no visits, no cards, no birthday gifts, no word at all. For months she waited for Shirley to turn up on visiting day, with Tanya in her arms
(Look, here’s Mummy),
or chaperone their useless parents
(Come on, you have to visit Michelle),
but no. All her letters went unanswered, all her hopes were knocked back until she came to think maybe it really was for the best. Let them get on with their lives, let them be free of her, because what good had she ever done them? She hadn’t loved the people that she’d had a duty to love, and you had to pay the price for that, sooner or later.

W
hen you left you didn’t leave any traces. You packed minimally, you walked out as if you were going to Leeds for the day (but you took the beautiful car). You didn’t leave evidence, you didn’t place your fingerprints all over the handle of the bloody ax to protect other people. This time she was taking the bug, the new bug, and she would love this baby so much that it would wake up every day in a state of bliss and she herself would be in a state of grace, at last.

She would have to stop living her life as one variation after another on a pastoral theme, she would have to think of something absolutely different to do next time. She should probably move abroad—Italy or France. Of course you could never move far enough—Patagonia, China—nowhere was far enough, but the trick was to keep moving. The trick was not to leave the bug behind. And one thing was certain: you could never go back.

S
he was going to give him a chance to come with her, just one chance: He was going to be shocked and he wouldn’t come, but he was going to get that chance.

He was on his bicycle (with bicycle clips—for heaven’s sake—around the ankles of his cheap, black trousers), and he looked round when he heard the car approaching. She had the top down, and when she drew level she stopped and he dismounted and laughed and said, “That’s one snazzy set of wheels, Mrs. Weaver,” as if he were a secondhand car dealer, and she said, “Sure is, Vicar,” and she patted the seat beside her and said, “Do you want to come for a ride?” and he made some kind of helpless gesture toward the bike but then said, “Oh, what the . . .” and lay the bike down in the long grass of the verge. But when he put his hand on the door handle, she reached over as if to stop him and said, “But I have to tell you, I’m going to drive off and I’m not coming back, not here, not ever, and when I leave I’m going
fast,
” and he said, “You’re not joking, are you?” and she thought how she loved the way he looked like a solemn little boy when he was trying to think of the right answer to something. She revved the engine and said, “I’m going to count to ten . . .”

23

CASE HISTORY NO. 3 1979

Everything from Duty, Nothing from Love

M
ichelle thought that she’d been angry before, but never like this. It was like being a volcano, plugged and stoppered and unable to get rid of the boiling stuff inside. Which was called—what? Magma? Lava, for fuck’s sake. She couldn’t even remember the simplest words anymore. “Maternal amnesia,” the books said, but if it was amnesia then it was very selective; it didn’t allow her to forget how completely miserable and unhappy she was, did it? And today had been going really well up until this moment—she’d been on top of everything, everything under control, and then he’d barged into the house without a second thought and woken the baby up.

Michelle tugged at the ax, but it was stuck like bloody Excalibur in the log, and she was so lost in her fury that she didn’t hear Shirley and when she turned round and saw her she nearly jumped out of her skin and said, “Jesus, you frightened me,” and just for a nanosecond in time she forgot how angry she was but then she heard the baby screaming inside the house—half of East Anglia must be able to hear the bloody baby—and it all came boiling up again and she knew this time it was going to blow and it was going to be a mess. Krakatau. You see, she could still remember some things. “You look like you’re going to kill someone with that ax,” Shirley said, laughing, and Michelle said, “I am.”

She charged through the back door like a Viking berserker and when Keith saw her he laughed as well. They were all fucking laughing at her as if nothing she said was important, as if she didn’t mean what she said, and she lifted up the ax, although it was awkward because she didn’t really understand where its center of gravity was, and she flung it at Keith, but it was a girly throw and the ax bounced heavily and landed harmlessly on the floor.

He was furious, he was even more angry than she was, and at first she thought it was just because of the ax, although it was
miles
away from him, but then she realized he was shouting about Tanya. “You might have hit her, you might have really hurt her,” and she said, “Don’t be ridiculous. It was nowhere near her,” and he yelled, “You crazy fucking bitch, that’s not the point,” and she felt suddenly frightened because she could see that Keith had lost it now—he didn’t even look like himself and he made a move to pick up the ax but the next moment it was in Shirley’s hands and she didn’t do any girly tossing. She just lifted the whole weight of the ax up and brought the blade down on Keith’s head and then everyone was quiet, even the bug.

S
hirley was a member of the St. John Ambulance, but it didn’t take medical training to see that there was nothing anyone could do for him. Michelle was on the floor, hugging herself as if she were in a straitjacket, rocking backward and forward, and she could hear a weird keening noise that she realized was coming from her, and Shirley said, “Don’t do that,” her voice cold, but she couldn’t stop the noise so Shirley grabbed her and pulled her to her feet and shouted, “Shut up, Michelle, shut up!” but she couldn’t so Shirley punched her in the face.

The shock was so great she thought she might have actually stopped breathing for a second, and all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and find oblivion. Shirley said, “You’ve just ruined both our fucking lives, not to mention Tanya’s,” and Michelle thought, Not to mention Keith’s, but she knew Shirley was right because when it came right down to it, it was her fault.

So she got up from the floor—she felt as stiff as an old woman—and picked up the ax, which at least wasn’t actually embedded in his head, which was something to be grateful for, and then she wiped the handle of the ax on her jeans and grasped it herself and said to Shirley, “You go.”

Tanya was standing up, hanging on to the edges of her playpen, and she started screaming again, just as if she’d been stuck with a pin. Shirley picked her up and tried to quiet her, but that child didn’t look like she would ever be quiet again. “Just go,” Michelle said. “Please just go, Shirley.” Shirley put the baby back on the floor and said, “I promise I’ll look after her for you,” and Michelle said, “I know you will. Take her away, give her a fresh start, be the mother to her that I can’t be,” because if there was one person in the world she could trust it was Shirley.

“Right,” Shirley said, and you would think she’d done this before, she was so in control. “Right, I’m going to phone the police and I’m going to tell them that this was how I found you? Right?
Right,
Michelle?”

“Right.”

And then Shirley picked up the receiver and dialed 999 and when the operator answered she started screaming hysterically, you would think she was the best actress in the world, and then finally she stopped and replaced the receiver and they waited in silence for the police to come. The bug had fallen asleep on the floor. It was very cold and Michelle would have liked to clean up a bit for the police coming, but she didn’t have the energy. Finally, they heard the sound of a siren, and then another, and the noise of the police cars bumping their way along the farm track, and Michelle said to Shirley, “You never had any chocolate cake.”

24

Theo

S
he had dyed her hair a startling pink color that made him think of flamingos. It suited her much better than the custard yellow. It made her look healthier, although she
was
healthier—she must have put on half a stone in a week, although that was hardly surprising, as Theo had been feeding her with the single-mindedness of a parent feeding a chick: beans on toast, Horlicks, macaroni and cheese, bacon rolls, sausages and mashed potatoes, bananas and cherries and peaches. She didn’t like apples; neither did Theo. Laura had liked apples. Lily-Rose wasn’t Laura, Theo was very clear about that in his own mind. Theo was sticking to his donkey food—he got more satisfaction from watching Lily-Rose eat. You would never think to look at her that she would have such an appetite. It was as if she were making up for years of starvation.

She slept in Laura’s room, and her dog slept at the foot of the bed. Theo couldn’t go near the dog and Lily-Rose worried that it would trigger another asthma attack in Theo. Theo worried too but he told her about Poppy and how he had got used to her and that he believed you could get used to anything in time, and she said, “Yeah, I think that too.” They looked at photographs of Poppy, and of Laura, and Lily-Rose said, “She’s lovely,” and Theo was glad that she didn’t use the past tense because it always hurt. He hadn’t told Jenny about the girl living with him, he could just imagine what she would say.

He had Jackson’s postcard, a picture of a pink flower, the same pink as Lily-Rose’s hair. The postcard was propped up on the mantelpiece, next to a photograph of Poppy when she was a puppy. In some odd way Theo identified Poppy with Lily-Rose—little abandoned, mistreated creatures with their new, flowery names. Lily-Rose said she had given herself a new name so she could be a new person. A “fresh start,” she said.

She was the product of a profoundly dysfunctional background and she almost certainly needed professional help. She had a history of running away from home, of drug abuse, petty theft, prostitution, although she seemed clean of everything for now. Her mother had murdered her father and she was brought up by her grandparents, who sounded just as bad as her own parents (he suspected abuse). Her life was unreal, like a television program—a documentary or a bad soap opera. Yet she seemed remarkably happy, playing with the dog in the garden, eating an ice cream, reading a magazine. She loved being woken in the morning by a cup of sugary tea and a slice of buttered toast. In the evenings they’d started (bizarrely) doing a jigsaw puzzle together.

“We’re like a pair of fucking old-age pensioners,” she said, but not unkindly. He didn’t want to save her or keep her or change her, although he was doing all of those things and would continue to do them if she wanted. The one thing he didn’t do was worry about her. So many bad things had happened to her that she was damage proofed. He was happy just to give her back a childhood. And when she was ready she would move on and he’d deal with that when it happened.

25

CASE HISTORY NO. 2 1994

Just a Normal Day

T
he thing that happened with Mr. Jessop was stupid. (He was always saying, “Call me Stan,” but she just couldn’t. It sounded wrong, he was a
teacher.
) It was funny because she hadn’t felt particularly singled out or anything, he’d had Christina over a couple times, and Josh as well, and last year the whole biology A Level class went to his house for an end-of-term barbecue. That was the first time she was in his house, in fact. The barbecue was rained off and he’d rushed to the supermarket and bought stuff for sandwiches, which she had helped Kim to make. She always called her Kim, never Mrs. Jessop. Kim had seemed really pissed off at having them all in the house. She’d just had a baby a few weeks before, so maybe you couldn’t blame her. Kim was the same age as Jenny and yet you couldn’t have found two people on the whole planet who were more different from each other.

They made ham sandwiches with that cheap, shiny ham��Kraft processed slices for the vegetarians—Kim slapping margarine onto doughy white Sunblest bread, and Laura thought, Yuck, and then berated herself for being such a snob. Dad had always been obsessed with feeding them well—home-cooked meals, wholemeal bread, and loads of fruit and veg (although God knows what crap he ate himself when he got the chance). Of course, poor people couldn’t afford all that good stuff, but then the Jessops weren’t poor. Teachers moaned all the time about their pay but they weren’t exactly paupers. Although, to be honest, Josh was right when he said Kim was white trash, and it did make you wonder how Mr. Jessop had ended up with her in that horrible little house that smelled of sour milk and baby shit.

She was wearing red high heels that somehow weren’t what you expected new mothers (or teachers’ wives) to wear. Her hair was dyed almost white, very
Blonde Ambition,
and made her skin look unhealthy. Mr. Jessop was completely in thrall to her, it was like she controlled him with one eyebrow, and he seemed quite a different person than the classroom Mr. Jessop (although not so different that you would want to call him Stan). When he was in the classroom he was funny and cynical and always saying mutinous things about the school. He was nothing like any of the other science teachers, more like an English teacher. When he was at home he was less interesting somehow, and you would have thought it would be the other way round really.

All the girls cooed over the baby—Nina—when Kim brought her downstairs. Even the boys were interested in her, as if she were a novel science project (“Can she focus yet?” “Does she recognize you?”), but Laura felt completely disinterested. She knew it would be different when she had her own, but other people’s babies left her cold. Kim wasn’t breast-feeding. One of the girls—Andi—had asked her and she said, “God, no,” as if she couldn’t imagine anything more unnatural, and Josh and Laura exchanged a look and both of them tried not to laugh.

“Of course, I’m not educated like you lot,” Kim said later, when they were washing up together, by which time they’d formed a kind of alliance—Mr. Jessop had bought a crate of beer and boxes of wine and everyone was in the living room completely pissed, in that stupid loud way, and neither Kim nor Laura was drinking, Laura because she was on antibiotics for an ear infection and Kim because of the baby—“I need my wits about me,” she said, and Josh whispered to Laura, “If she can find any,” and Laura pretended to ignore him because Mr. Jessop was looking at them as if he knew they were saying things about his wife.

Kim was from Newcastle and her accent seemed totally foreign. The fact that she was Geordie made her a little frightening. Laura imagined the North was populated with hard, no-nonsense women that you wouldn’t want to take on in a fight. “I left school at sixteen,” Kim told her, “and did a year at college. Secretarial, since you ask,” and Laura said, “Oh?” although she wasn’t really listening because she was wiping down the kitchen surfaces, which were already spotless because Kim might be trashy and stupid but she kept a very clean house, which was something Dad would have approved of. It would be good if, when she left to go to university (and definitely not before that), Dad were to meet a
really
nice woman (not a Kim), someone mature, even a little dowdy and a real homemaker, someone who would appreciate all his good qualities and would want to make him very, very happy. He deserved happiness, and when she went to university he was going to be heartbroken, even though he pretended he wouldn’t be. Maybe not heartbroken, not the way she felt when Poppy died, but he was going to be very sad because it had been just the two of them for so long and he
lived
for her. That was why she was going to Aberdeen, because it wasn’t on the doorstep. She had to get away, to be herself, to become herself. As long as she stayed with Dad she’d be a child.

She wouldn’t be like Jenny. Jenny was really bad, she never phoned or wrote—all the effort was always on Dad’s side. It was almost like she didn’t care about him at all. When Laura left she was going to phone a lot and she’d already bought a little stock of postcards, funny ones and ones with cute animals on them that she was going to send to him regularly. She loved him more than anything. That was why she’d agreed to work in his office, even though it was much more fun in the bar, but it was only for a few weeks and then she’d be off, like an arrow into the future. And she couldn’t wait.

A
fter that day, the day the barbecue didn’t happen, she started babysitting for them—apparently Kim suggested her to Mr. Jessop, so she must have liked her in some way (although you would never have guessed). Mr. Jessop asked her at the end of class one day and she said, “Well, okay, but I don’t know anything about babies,” and he said, “God, Laura, neither do we.”

She usually got Emma to come over and sit with her because Emma was good with babies. She really loved them in fact, which was ironic and pretty sad really because she’d had that abortion, and for a while she seemed to really lose it, but she was the sort who always pretended to be bright and cheerful, which was why Laura liked her. And they’d usually just sit and do their homework together, although sometimes they looked through Kim’s wardrobe, which was always an education in itself, although it didn’t feel right being in their bedroom because, unlike with most other adults, you could actually imagine Kim and Mr. Jessop having sex, which was kind of embarrassing.

She’d told Dad that she was a virgin, because she knew that was what he wanted to hear, and as lies went it was pretty harmless. In fact it was charitable. And it wasn’t that far from the truth because she’d only had sex with four boys, and one of them was Josh so that hardly counted because they’d been to primary school together and had known each other since they were four years old and they’d decided it would be a good idea to get over the whole “losing virginity” thing to each other because that would be safe and friendly, if a bit weird. And better than Emma, for example, who lost it to a married man (in his car, for heaven’s sake), or poor Christina, who was raped by a guy who put something in her drink.

They did it in Josh’s bedroom, which his parents never went into. They were those arty, liberal types who’d let him do whatever he wanted since the age of twelve (so it was amazing really that the boy had turned out as well as he had). His parents were downstairs watching some nature documentary about whales.

At first it had been funny and they couldn’t stop laughing and then they’d grown quite formal, examining each other’s bodies like anatomy students and having foreplay by the book, but then they’d got completely into it and were down on the floor like dogs and it was just as well that the television was turned up loud because she could hear herself yelling like someone she didn’t know at all and afterward, when they were lying there on the floor, stunned by the way it had taken them over, all they could hear was whale song and they’d both started laughing again because his parents must have heard them, but if they did they never said anything. Josh said, “Well, we surprised ourselves there, did we not, Miss Wyre?” and she said, “Can we do it again, please?” and he said, “God, woman, give me a minute, will you.”

When Dad picked her up he said, “Are you alright, you look flushed,” and she said, “I think I’m coming down with something,” and he made her hot lemon and honey and she sat up in bed, in her Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas, and hugged him and said, “Thank you, Best Dad in the World,” and hoped he couldn’t smell Josh’s spunk. That was when they were fourteen and they’d done it a few times since and she knew Josh was in love with her, but was grateful that he was careful never to say so.

S
he’d been round to the Jessops’ quite a few times without any babysitting being involved. She’d grown to like Kim. Being Kim’s friend made her feel more like a woman and less like a girl. Once, after a supper of (tough) steak and chips, Kim had plucked Laura’s eyebrows and given her a manicure, although usually she visited on a Saturday afternoon when Stan wasn’t there and they just sat in the garden while Nina crawled around on the grass. Stan played on an amateur football team on Saturdays. “You’ve got to let them off the leash sometimes,” Kim said, as if she were giving tips on how to keep a difficult pet. That was when Laura’d encountered Stuart Lappin the first time. He was mowing his lawn next door. When he finished, he looked over the fence and offered to do the Jessops’ lawn, and Kim kept on filing her nails and said loudly to him, “No, thank you, Stuart,” without making eye contact with him. It seemed a bit rude to Laura and she gave “Stuart” an encouraging smile to compensate.

“I can’t stand him,” Kim hissed when he had disappeared, “he’s always trying to be friendly. He gives me the creeps. He’s in his thirties and he still lives with his mother, it’s pathetic,” and Laura said, “He looks harmless,” and Kim said, “Those are the ones you’ve got to look out for.”

T
he last time was just before her final exam. Mr. Jessop had suggested some extra tuition, and she didn’t think anything of it because he’d offered it to some of the others. She was disappointed that Kim wasn’t at home. Stan said, “Oh, she’s taken Nina to her mother’s,” very offhand, as if he couldn’t care less what his wife was doing. He had a pad of paper and a couple of textbooks out on the dining-room table, but she didn’t even get to sit down before he started, coming at her from behind, arms round her waist, trying to kiss the back of her neck, and she could smell alcohol on his breath, which was absolutely disgusting. She was furious, how could he, it was so
unethical.
She jabbed him with her elbows and yelled at him to get off her, and he said, “Oh, come on, Laura, you’ve done it with half the boys in your class. It’s time you had a real man, you know you want it.” The bastard, the fucking bastard! She stamped hard on his foot, the way they taught you in self-defense, but it was difficult because he was still holding her really tightly round the waist and she started to get panicky when she realized she couldn’t get away from him. He was twisting her round so that he could get his lips on hers and then he put his hand on her crotch, thank God she was wearing jeans, and it meant he had less of a grip on her and she managed to get far away enough from him to be able to jab a finger into one of his eyes. And then she ran.

S
he’d been revising with Josh in the churchyard of Little St. Mary’s. It was hot and they’d started fooling around a bit, no one ever went in that place, but then there was a rustling of leaves as if an animal were making its way through the summer vegetation, and then a man’s face suddenly popped up from behind a gravestone and she’d shrieked in a really girly way, and Josh had got all manly despite having his jeans round his ankles and shouted at the guy to fuck off and then they had collapsed with laughter. She thought the man looked vaguely familiar but it was only when he ordered half a lager shandy from her in the bar a couple weeks later that she realized he was the Jessops’ lawn-mowing neighbor, but she couldn’t remember his name. Luckily he didn’t seem to recognize her at all.

By then everyone had gone: Christina had gone to teach in Tanzania for a year, Ayshea was spending the summer in France, Joanna was Euro-railing with Pansy, Emma was in Peru (Emma, for God’s sake!), and Josh was a camp counselor in the middle of nowhere in Michigan. She felt like she’d been deserted. They all agreed to meet up in front of the Hobbs Pavilion on Parker’s Piece in ten years’ time, but how likely was that really? Mr. Jessop had tried to organize a “farewell get-together” for his class but everyone had been busy—not that she would have gone. She hadn’t seen him since he’d tried it on with her. Dad, bless his heart, said, “Don’t you want to go traveling then, Laura?” even though it would have been his idea of living hell for her to be abroad somewhere, somewhere he couldn’t pick her up from in the car at the end of an evening.

T
hen she bumped into him coming out of Heffers Bookshop and she said, “Hello,” in a neutral kind of way because it wasn’t as if she was looking to get into a conversation with the guy or anything, and then the next day there was this teddy bear left on the doorstep, not that really she connected the two things, not consciously anyway, it was just this stupid-looking bear, an ugly, pink thing with eyes that were all wrong, not like the cute old-fashioned ones Laura had piled on her bed. The bear on the doorstep was the kind of thing that someone with no taste would buy if they thought you liked teddy bears.

She went up to London for the day (she was beginning to hate everyone for having left Cambridge for the summer). She visited the British Museum and then went and bought some new clothes, but it wasn’t much fun on her own. She didn’t see him getting on at King’s Cross but she saw him walking into her carriage about ten minutes after the train had pulled out of the station—she was sure he was looking for her, even though when he spotted her he tried to look surprised. Luckily, there were no empty seats round about her, but when she got up at Cambridge he followed her down the carriage and stood at the door with her and spoke for the first time, saying, “Are you getting off here?” which was a bloody stupid question as it was obvious she was, but she just said, “Yes,” and then when they were on the platform he said, “Can I give you a lift home? My car’s in the car park,” and she said, “No thanks, my Dad’s meeting me,” and hurried away from him. And she remembered his name was Stuart. Kim was right, he was pathetic. She couldn’t go and see Kim anymore because that would probably mean seeing Mr. Jessop. She phoned the house a couple times and he always answered and she put the phone down and said nothing. The last time, he’d shouted into the phone, “Kim—is that you? Where the fuck are you?” so she figured things couldn’t be too good between them.