Close My Eyes (8 page)

Wish this was flowers. Love you, Ax

I teach today’s class in a bit of a daze. I take four two-hour adult-education classes here at the Art & Media Institute each week – all on aspects of creative
writing. It’s not well paid and, as Art pointed out the other day, it’s so part-time it’s not even really ‘a proper job.’ I’m waiting for a lift when one of the
women from the class corners me. It’s Charlotte West, all designer jeans, sleek blonde ponytail and pushy sense of entitlement.

‘Geniver?’ Charlotte’s voice is wheedling, her accent pure Home Counties. ‘I wonder if I might have a word?’

I scan the lifts. All three of them seem to be stuck on the first floor so I force my mouth into a welcoming smile. ‘Sure,’ I say.

Charlotte moves closer and I have to stop myself taking a step away from her. She’s in her early forties, I’d guess – a little older than me, though roughly the same age as
most of my writing classes. She looks good for her age – slim and groomed. Today she’s teamed her trademark Calvin Klein jeans with an emerald-green boat-neck top that brings out the
colour of her eyes.

‘How can I help?’ I continue.

‘I re-read
Rain Heart
again,’ Charlotte says, her eyes shining. ‘It’s so brilliant.
Such
an inspiring book.’

‘Thank you.’ I feel awkward and not just because Charlotte is gushing. Of my three published books, I actually think
Rain Heart
is the weakest. The plot – about a
woman whose husband has an affair with the wife of his business partner – has more than a couple of holes, and the characters seem wooden and unconvincing to me now. Ironically, it sold
better than the others. In fact, it’s the only one still in print.

I edge away. Charlotte follows, backing me into the corner between the wall and the first lift. I get a whiff of her perfume – one of those dark, sweet, cloying scents meant for velvet
dresses and expensive restaurants.

‘I was wondering where you got the idea from?’ Charlotte goes on.

I sigh inwardly. This is the most common question writers get asked and, to my mind, one of the hardest to answer.

‘I thought perhaps the story came from real life?’ she adds.

‘No.’ I hesitate, wondering what to tell her. I could offer up the truth as far as I know it, that
Rain Heart
came from my imagination: a blend of half-thoughts and ideas
filtered through a couple of newspaper articles, five minutes of overheard gossip at a bus stop and the inside track on two friends’ heartbreaks.

And yet there’s something unsettling about the intensity of her gaze that holds me back from confiding any of this information. ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte . . .’ I glance
pointedly at my watch.

‘Oh, right . . .’ She sounds a little injured now. ‘I’m in a hurry too. If I miss my train from Paddington . . .’

‘I know.’ I offer her a sympathetic grimace. Charlotte has mentioned her
long
journey from the West Country to my creative-writing class several times before. She definitely
gives off ‘the smell of burning martyr’, as Hen would say. Other members of the group are now appearing behind her. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the lift furthest away from me
has reached the second floor.

‘Like I say, I was just curious . . .’ Charlotte pauses. She shifts her bag up onto her shoulder and I notice it’s an Orla Kiely, identical to the one Hen bought me for my last
birthday.

Across the lobby, the furthest lift away from me is opening. Students surge inside. There won’t be enough room for all of them, let alone me as well.

‘Okay, well, I really have to go.’

Charlotte stares at me intently but says nothing. Her green eyes are impossible to read. For a second she seems almost angry. The lift doors close, leaving several people still outside. I glance
at the two remaining lifts. The one nearest me is moving now.
Third floor
. . .
fourth floor
. . .

‘I’m just so fascinated by your work, Geniver,’ Charlotte says. There’s a fawning tone to her voice that sets my teeth on edge. I take a step towards the lift as it pings
its arrival.

‘Bye, then,’ I say brightly.

Charlotte’s face falls. She tosses her head and her blonde ponytail swishes from side to side. I feel guilty, then irritated. People are crowding around, angling for a spot in the lift as
it opens. If I don’t move now I’ll miss this one too. I step inside.

As people pile in after me, I can hear Charlotte, still outside the lift, sniff loudly.

‘Well, good luck with your
next
book,’ she says evenly.

My face burns as two women I don’t know stare at me.

I press the button for the ground floor. As the door closes, I wonder if Charlotte knows what she’s saying. If she knows I haven’t written anything for nearly eight years.

Since Beth.

I try to push this thought away and head off to meet Hen for lunch. As I reach the restaurant I pass a little girl. She’s smiling and skipping along beside her mother in a stripy school
uniform, with short dark hair in two stiff bunches. I stop and turn, staring after her. A fear rises inside me. In the same way that you notice lovers in the street after you yourself have suffered
a break-up, for years I’d see babies in prams and toddlers in buggies and think: ‘That’s what my Beth would look like now.’

But I never wondered before if any of the children I notice could
be
my Beth.

The fear increases inside me. I actually take a step after the little girl before trampling on my panicky thoughts.
Don’t be stupid. Beth is gone.
Except . . . my panic rears up
again.
Maybe she isn’t gone. She could be out there somewhere and you would never know, Gen.

Oh God
. I force myself to go into the restaurant. I sit down, feeling hot even though it’s cool and calm and the room is only a quarter full. I push thoughts of the little girl
with her bunches out of my mind and start puzzling over that £50,000 Art paid to ‘MDO’. Who or what is MDO?

The restaurant is starting to fill up when Hen arrives, nearly fifteen minutes late. She flies in through the door of the restaurant, her wild hair streaming behind her, her scarf trailing on
the floor. She beams at the maître’d, who smiles indulgently at her and escorts her to our table.

That’s Hen all over. Pretty and dizzy. On the surface. Underneath, she’s as sharp as a pick.

‘Sorry, Gen,’ Hen gasps. ‘I got held up in Cath Kidston.’

I can’t help but smile. If there’s one sentence that sums Hen up, that’s it. Always late, and with a penchant for girly knickknacks. Until she married Rob last year, Hen never
had any money yet never seemed to stop spending. I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve been in shops and she’s had her cards cut up in front of her. She frittered away most
of her twenties in a succession of short-lived jobs which she only managed to hang on to for as long as she did because of her charm and her smarts. Unsuitable boyfriends were also a specialty
– penniless drifters with endearing smiles and severe commitment issues. No one who knew Hen was surprised when she fell pregnant with Nat or that the father ran away as soon as he found
out.

Rob
was
a surprise. He’s ten years older than her, and a banker – a breed that the younger Hen would have had put up against a wall and shot. Rob is as grounded as Hen is
flighty and, while I believe Hen genuinely loves him, I’m sure she enjoys his money too.

Still, as my mother never tires of reminding me, you can never really understand anyone else’s relationship. And the truth is that Hen’s been far easier to be around for the past
eighteen months, now she’s able to indulge her extravagant tastes without worrying about paying her bills.

Hen is on top form. She doesn’t mention Lucy O’Donnell’s visit for at least half an hour. She’s full of the funny shop assistant at Cath Kidston and some quirky
expressions Nathan has come up with. I try to put O’Donnell out of my mind too, though her words lurk like a shadow behind everything I think and say.

‘Are you okay, Gen?’ Hen asks at last, smoothing down her top. It looks expensively cut, with a low neckline and tiny seed-pearl buttons. She casts a glance at my chewed fingernails
and the torn, red skin around them and I smile, knowing this is how Hen gauges my well-being.

I tell her how upset Art got last night and then I tell her about the payment to MDO. I feel disloyal bringing it up, but it’s on my mind and I can’t hide my anxiety from Hen –
she’s too sharp-eyed for that.

‘It was fifty thousand pounds, Hen. I mean, that’s a
huge
amount to go out of a personal account.’

Hen shrugs. ‘But Art says it
wasn’t
personal,’ she insists. ‘Fifty grand isn’t that much in company terms. Rob’s always shifting money around
different accounts. And I’m not surprised poor Art was upset after that woman coming round. Bringing all the old stuff up – it’s going to be stressful for both of you.’

I fall silent. Beth is the one thing I’ve always found it hard to talk to Hen about. We were pregnant at the same time, though under very different circumstances, and full of plans for how
we would be mums together. Nathan was born just a week before Beth. Hen missed the funeral as a result. I know she felt bad about that, but she didn’t want to leave her baby and I
couldn’t cope with seeing a newborn just then. It was hard for both of us to be apart at the very moment we needed each other the most. During the twelve months that followed we spent less
time together than we had in years. Hen tried, to be fair. But I couldn’t face her and Nathan for a long time. I felt bad about that, but I know Hen understood. She certainly never held it
against me.

And yet, though it’s never been said, we both know that it’s still difficult for me to see her as a mother – or be reminded of what my own life as a mother would have been
like. At least Hen understood why I needed to call myself a mum after Beth died. Most people seemed to think that made no sense – as if I didn’t really qualify for motherhood. But, to
me, Beth was as real as any other baby and not to be allowed to call myself a mother seemed to deny her very existence. Stillbirth grief is like that – full of stupid little heartaches that
leave you isolated and floundering. There are no memories to hold on to, no known individual with a distinctive personality to mourn, only a sense of something lost, always out of reach.

Hen puts her hand on my arm. ‘I know it’s difficult even without some stupid woman making ludicrous claims.’ She rests her gaze on me, her normally lively, darting eyes full of
sympathy. ‘Maybe it would help to look at the certificates and stuff again. Maybe you need to see them all once more to let it go.’

I think about this on the way home. Hen’s right, maybe it would help to see all the official documents. The trouble is, I have no idea where Art put everything. Despite my search, I
didn’t find anything in his office.

It takes me ages to get home. My bus crawls along Seven Sisters Road – there has obviously been some kind of accident and all the cars are stopping to have a gawp. Once I’m back, I
check out the obvious places – the cupboards in the hall and the bedroom and, of course, Art’s office, though I already know there’s nothing about Beth in there unless it’s
in that locked cupboard.

I find nothing.

Art walks in at ten that evening. I can hear him on his iPhone as he trudges up the stairs. ‘But is that volume or value, Dan? We gotta be clear.’

Art ends his call as he enters our bedroom. There are dark shadows under his eyes and his shirt is creased. He looks exhausted, but happy. I lie back against the pillow and watch him cross the
room.

‘Hey,’ he says, sitting down on the bed beside me.

‘Hey.’ I ask about his day and Art talks for a while about the meeting at 10 Downing Street.

‘. . . and then the PM came in. He’s much shorter than he looks on TV and he’s
definitely
had botox or whatever. No lines on his forehead at
all
. He made a
special point of thanking me for being there. Sandrine and I got the policy wonks to talk about their Work Incentives programme, especially the stuff about increasing productivity through
demonstrating ethical decision-making. The PM couldn’t believe the Loxley Benson figures.’ Art grins. ‘He
listened
, Gen, he really did.’

‘Sounds brilliant,’ I say. I mean it, but at the same time my mind is running obsessively over everything I’ve been thinking about all day. I wait for him to stop talking, then
I take a deep breath. ‘Art?’

He looks up. ‘What?’

I meet his gaze. ‘I’m really honestly not saying I believe anything that mad woman said yesterday, but like I told you, it did bring everything up again. It . . . it made me want to
see Beth’s death certificate, but I don’t know where it, where anything is . . .’

‘Gen . . .’ Art shakes his head, his body visibly tensing. ‘What’s the point in going over all this again? You’re just torturing yourself.’

I shrug. ‘Sometimes I need to go back to go forward.’

Art shoots me a tired smile. ‘You’re crazy,’ he says affectionately.

‘Sure, I’m crazy.’ I try to smile too. ‘So where are all the papers from back then?’

I’m so expecting him to tell me that they’ve been lost or that he can’t remember, that it comes as a complete shock when Art swings his legs off the bed and stands to face me,
a look of weary concern on his face.

‘They’re in the locked cupboard in my office,’ he says. ‘I put them there because I don’t like looking at them. I’ll get them now.’

And before I can respond, he’s walked out.

I sit on the bed, my stomach in knots. Am I being cruel to Art over this? I think back to that first week after the stillbirth . . . I can’t remember much at all. Just a few random
snatches of conversation. I do remember Art talking about the funeral – he wanted a cremation, but insisted it should be a joint decision. At the time it seemed like the most insignificant
detail in the world. But now it means there is no body to dig up. No proof of death.