Remember Me This Way (16 page)

‘That’s not how you get them,’ she said. ‘You get them from chewing your nails.’

‘Well, you clearly know more about it than I do. I bow to your superior knowledge and no doubt experience.’

She stuck out her tongue, which made me laugh.

I was about to walk on but she called after me. ‘I’m running away.’

‘Oh yes?’ I stopped to listen.

She told me she was at boarding school and she hated it. Some girl was bullying her, excluding her from conversations, telling her she couldn’t sit on her table at lunch.

I told her to stay put, wait it out, to pay the little bitch back in her own time. ‘You know the saying?’ I said. ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’

She made a face as if to say, ‘Whatever.’

I blew her a kiss and walked on.

Back in Brighton. I can’t believe it. I’ve got to get out. London and Lizzie – I can’t stop thinking about both.

It’s all going wrong.

We were in the pub last night and Charlotte started flirting with the barman, leaning forward so he could look down her cleavage. She was trying to get my attention, make herself desirable, and I wouldn’t have cared except she did it in front of Pete and Nell. It was disrespectful. She made me look like an idiot.

We were climbing the stairs to the flat at the end of the evening and she started on again about Cornwall. She should have known when to stop. She was fumbling for her keys and the sight of her tarty leopard-skin coat falling off her shoulder, the smear of lipstick on her teeth, was too much for me. I told her to shut up and at the same time my hand impacted with her face. She wobbled and almost slipped. If I hadn’t grabbed her, she would have tumbled all the way to the bottom. It’s lethal, that seagrass.

She screamed at me and I begged forgiveness, told her how much she meant to me, how if anything happened to her, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I promised I’d get out my toolbox at the weekend, and nail the loose seagrass down.

Chapter Nine

Lizzie

I have promised to look after Peggy’s kids during half-term, to give her a break, and on Wednesday she brings them round.

She hovers in the hall, eager to get away. She and Rob, she tells me, are so desperate for some ‘us time’ they are ‘literally on the verge of divorce’. They are planning a lunch and a movie and dinner and what have you, and then home for a shag, ‘if that’s not TMI’. I never used to notice the way Peggy talks. She was just Peggy. Zach drew my attention to it, how she repeats certain words, or picks up phrases she has heard. I see her more clearly now, but I sometimes wish I didn’t. The older two have each packed a suitcase, though Gussie’s consists mainly of jewellery from the dressing-up box.

I take them swimming at the Latchmere, where there’s a wave machine, and then for chicken and chips and unlimited refills at Nando’s, and then a stomp over the common with the dog and the buggy to the big playground. Back home, we empty out the cupboards to create magic potions – fizzing up our gruesome concoctions with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. We play snap until Gussie gets cross, then decorate pizzas until, finally, we throw ourselves on to my bed and watch the DVD of
Stuart Little
I bought last week.

I have made up the sofa bed in the study but we end up sleeping where we are, with Gussie starfished across the mattress, Alfie hogging the duvet, Chloe curled in my arms. I sleep fitfully. Foxes in the garden disturb the dog and he barks intermittently. I lie there, wondering if Zach watched me out with the kids. He used to tell me Peggy took advantage, that I should stand up to her. But I love them. I love my sister too. He never seemed to understand that.

In the early hours, I hear music, plangent and slow, eerily reaching across the gardens from the cul-de-sac behind. The words are just out of reach, reverberating, bouncing against garage doors.

I get out of bed, extricating myself from small limbs, and cross to the window to listen. ‘I Wanna Be Loved’. Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Zach’s favourite song. Here it is again. Light pollution has turned the sky apricot. A white moon slips behind an orange cloud. I push up the sash and lean out, straining to catch every note, but the music stops.

They are awake, all three of them, at five but I find things to do – TV and colouring – before it’s ten, a decent enough time to drop them home. I’m in a hurry. I don’t want to put Peggy out, but my train to Brighton leaves at ten thirty.

‘Oh,’ Peggy says when she sees us at the door. ‘You’re early. Rob and I were about to go and have breakfast.’

‘I’m so sorry. I could look after them again at the weekend? It’s just I have a busy day.’

‘A busy day?’ She frowns, uncomprehending. ‘Doing what?’

I flush, swing back from the door frame to hide my annoyance. ‘Meeting a friend,’ I say.

‘Oooh.’ She purses her mouth suggestively. ‘That new teacher Jane was telling me about?’

I laugh. ‘No.’

‘Who then?’

A car toots, idling in the street, and Peggy waves. ‘How was Quiz Night?’ she shouts to the passenger, who has rolled down their window. I escape before she can ask me anything else.

I drive home, park in the nearest space at the end of the road and let Howard into the garden. I should have asked Nell if she minded me bringing a dog, but I didn’t have the courage. The house is a mess – stuff everywhere. The sofa bed’s still pulled out in the study. No time now. I’ll tidy it when I come home.

As I leave the house, I notice a young woman out of the corner of my eye. She is sitting on the ground, against the railings, her legs out across the pavement. She is wearing shorts over ripped black tights, those long, thin plimsolls with no heels the girls at school wear, a leatherette jacket slung over her shoulder. Prison visitors often hang around in the street, or on the edge of the common, having a last fag, waiting for the welcome centre to open.

I walk briskly to the end of the road and am waiting for the lights to change at the pedestrian crossing when I hear footsteps and a cry: ‘Oi! Don’t ignore me!’

I turn. The girl is standing right by me. Close to, I see she has long limbs, a precise oval face and an upturned nose with a scattering of small spots. I catch an expensive scent, shampoo or body lotion of basil and lemongrass. And not leatherette, a real leather jacket.

And with a rush, I realise who she is. Not a grumpy girlfriend or teenage mum, but Alan and Victoria Murphy’s daughter.

‘Onnie!’ I say. ‘Hello!’

She flicks a sheet of dip-dyed hair forward over one shoulder as if to hide her face. ‘I was waiting for you to come home,’ she says, ‘and you, like, walked past me. Twice.’

‘You’ve come to see me?’

‘Yes,’ she says, widening her eyes slightly as if I’m being dim.

I almost smile, despite feeling so disconcerted, but manage not to. Her tone is off, but you often find that with shy kids. What comes across as rudeness is often acute embarrassment. They find it hard to open their own mouths. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. I wasn’t expecting . . .’ I shake my head. ‘How did you know where I live?’

‘Zach gave me the address.’

‘When? Recently?’

She frowns. ‘Not
recently
. Ages ago.’

‘And you . . . kept it? All this time?’

She shrugs. ‘Yes.’

I stare at her, baffled. Zach would never have given out our address. He was too protective of his privacy.

‘Didn’t you think I would come?’

I grasp to make sense of her words. Is there a detail from last weekend I’m not remembering? It seems so long ago. Something about a work placement. Did I tell her to get in touch? Also, why did she wait for me outside the house? Why didn’t she knock?

‘Gosh, I’ve been so busy. I’m not sure.’ I look at my watch. ‘I’ve got a train to catch. Could we chat on the way to the station?’

She shrugs.

The green man is flashing and I begin to cross. ‘Are you in London for a while?’ I ask.

She doesn’t answer. A horn sounds behind me. I reach the other side and turn to see Onnie stranded in the middle of the road, cars accelerating on either side of her.

‘Onnie!’ I reach out, my hands clutching at the empty air. An engine roars, a motorbike swerves.

She waits for a gap, neck craning – a bus looms and passes – and then takes three quick strides, landing on the pavement with a small leap.

‘Oh,’ I say in pantomime relief. My fingers, finding her sleeve, clutch at the slippery leather. ‘What happened? Did you drop something?’

‘No. I just – I don’t know.’

Her expression is closed, but she has gone red.

‘It’s a quickie, isn’t it, that traffic light?’

‘I wasn’t concentrating.’ She looks away and I realise she might be about to cry.

I let a beat pass before looking at my watch. Not long until my train. I try to talk calmly. ‘I really do have to go,’ I say, moving my hand to her shoulder. I can feel her collarbone through her jacket. ‘Can you come back later?’

‘It’s OK.’ She pulls away. ‘I shouldn’t have come anyway.’

‘Of course you should have come.’ I smile at her. ‘If it was any other day, I’d drop everything, but I’ve got an appointment. You do understand, don’t you?’ I feel a bit worried about her suddenly. ‘I’m really pleased to see you,’ I add, ‘and if there is something I can help you with, I will.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Are you going to be in London for the day? Could we meet for a coffee this afternoon?’

She blinks slowly. Her eyes, an arresting dark blue, are bloodshot. ‘I don’t drink coffee. I’m not allowed. Apparently, I get too—’ she shrugs to express contempt with whoever it is who has opinions on this matter ‘—agitated.’

‘Tea then,’ I say cheerfully.

Onnie nods, twisting her lip.

‘Walk with me for a bit,’ I say. ‘I’m heading towards the station, which is probably the way you’ve just come.’

‘I took the tube. It’s literally miles from here.’

‘Sorry about that.’ I laugh again. ‘The train is better, or buses.’

We are approaching the common now, passing the last row of Victorian houses. Onnie is carrying a small khaki rucksack and it bashes my shoulder with each step. She doesn’t say anything and there is a set to her mouth. Her eyes look sullen. I think how alienating teenagers can seem. Didn’t someone say she was eighteen? She seems younger than that. The important thing is not to be put off, to talk normally.

‘So what’s new?’ I say, cheerily.

‘Nothing.’

‘What happened about that work placement? Did you persuade your mother to let you do it?’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

We have reached the main path and have turned towards the café and the tennis courts.

‘Oh yes?’

‘The thing is she’d let me do it if I had someone sensible to stay with, so I thought I might take you up on your offer.’

‘My offer?’

On the bowling green, two crows are stalking a squirrel.

‘You said . . . I could, like, rent a room?’

I am fiddling with the gate that leads on to the football pitch. Rent a room? Did I offer to do that? I wouldn’t have done, surely? I don’t want someone in the house. Not in normal circumstances, and certainly not now.

I’m trying to think how to let her down gently when I realise Onnie has stopped and is hanging back against the fence. Her arms are thin, the wrists narrow. She pulls the sleeves of her top down over her fingers, one after the other, hunches her shoulders. I check my watch again. Ten minutes until the train leaves.

‘It’s only two weeks,’ she says.

‘When does it start?’ I’m still holding the gate open for her. She doesn’t move. For a fraction of a second I wonder wildly if she has been sent to distract me, to delay me from Brighton, to make me miss my train.

She shrugs nonchalantly, but she is flushed around the eyes. ‘Monday, but I was thinking I could come, like, today?’

‘I’m not sure . . .’

‘I could come on Sunday? Or even Monday. I could take the train in for the first day and come when I finish work.’

I push my hands into my pockets, let the gate clang. ‘I don’t think it will work really. But listen – I might be able to find a solution. Can we talk about it later?’

She looks up at the sky. A few drops are falling. ‘When will you be back?’

‘Early afternoon. That café we just passed: we could meet there at two?’

She gazes out across the grass as if it were the frozen wastes of Antarctica. ‘What shall I do until then?’

I want to say, ‘Go to the library – there’s a good one on Northcote Road, or read a book, or buy a newspaper.’ The expression in her eyes stops me. It isn’t belligerent or sulky, but lost. She looks so hopeless. All that money and privilege, all that pretence and posturing, she is no different from some of the young people at school – the ones who, for whatever reason, don’t know where to put themselves.

I think about the house, and Howard alone in the kitchen. I think about Zach giving her our address. Did he feel sorry for her, too? I find myself rummaging in my bag for my keys. ‘Listen, let yourself in now. I used to have a spare key hidden, but I’ve lost it. Take these. You can keep the dog company. There is bread, cheese, a few slices of left-over pizza in the fridge. It’s a bit messy, I didn’t have time to clean up, but make yourself at home. I’ll see you when I get back. If you need to go out at all, hide the keys under the plant pot.’

She takes the key ring and dangles it so casually on her middle finger, I want to snatch it straight back. Oh God. What have I just done?

She shrugs as if she might do what I suggest, or she might not. ‘Cool,’ she says.

Sunlight flickers through the high arched roof of Brighton Station and outside, on the forecourt, patches of blue sky are poking between the clouds. A family is consulting a map. Teenagers of different sizes hover by the entrance to Fitness First, sharing a cigarette.

Pete and Nell’s house is only a short walk behind the station, up the hill, in the middle of a pretty terrace. The front door is sea-green and opens directly on to the pavement. I feel nervous, off kilter, waiting for Nell to answer. I was stupid to come. It’s a fool’s errand. Ozone sparkles in the air. Seagulls, white and shrill, are lined up on the roof. Someone somewhere is practising the recorder. I can’t imagine Zach here. It is all sharpness and radiance. No dark corners to slide into.