Remember Me This Way (21 page)

‘What the fuck?’ Victoria suddenly shouts.

We both leave the room. The front door is open, rain splashing into the hall. Victoria is standing halfway down the garden path.

A red Mini with black arrows down its bonnet is revving in the street, horn blaring. Victoria makes an irritated upward swipe with one arm. ‘Get a fucking life.’ The man in the Mini rolls down his window and begins to yell, his words swept up in the wind and rain. Victoria has left her 4 x 4 blocking the road.

She doesn’t even register my presence. ‘Onnie, hurry up,’ she shouts and turns on her heel.

It’s too late to visit my mother. Now I’m alone, I am both bored and agitated. The street is full of stray howls and rattles, the sense of inanimate objects coming alive, on the move. In the garden, shrubs thrash.

I tell myself to relax, that nothing I do tonight will make any difference.

I go upstairs to the study to fold up the sofa bed which I pulled out for Peggy’s children, but I stand in the doorway when I get there. It’s already put away. The sofa sits squat and neat, its matching cushions in an orderly line, the sheets and blankets in a tidy pile.

The bookshelves along the main wall look different, too. I take a step into the room. I’ve been disorganised in here this year. I’ve just been shoving books back wherever I want, a small relaxing of Zach’s ordered code. But the spines have been levelled. When I look closely, I see they have been returned to alphabetical order.

I sit down abruptly on the chair. The desk has been cleared, too – the pens are laid, parallel to each other, down one side, the pieces of paper piled. And in the middle of the surface rests Zach’s laptop.

Is this Onnie’s work, or was I right? Has he been here? Did she see him? Or hear him? Something alerted her – I know it did.

Why hasn’t he taken the laptop if he was here? Did he plug it in to remind me? What does he want me to find on it? I yank it open. The demand for the password blinks.
What do you want from me?
I write.

INCORRECT PASSWORD
.

I slam the laptop shut, shove it away from me.

Under the desk is a box of photographs. Zach didn’t like being photographed. It made him self-conscious, he said, too many memories of his father knocking him about if he didn’t smile. But I caught him a handful of times: on a headland in Cornwall, hair blowing around his face, laughing, reaching for the camera. Another on the common, kneeling down, his arms tight around the dog’s neck. My favourite, though, was taken on our wedding day, on the steps of Wandsworth Town Hall. Zach is in that suit he wore the first time we met. He is trying to bend down to rest his head on my shoulder. I am laughing, almost tipped backwards under the weight of him, and he is grinning – his grin so broad and honest, a pure sort of happiness seems to shine from his eyes. It was the happiest day of his life, he told me.

I kneel down and begin searching. If I can find it, it will be proof of something – that he loved me, that we were happy, that the torture he is putting me through has a
reason
.

I tip the contents of the box on to the floor, and sift through them, but the photograph has gone.

Zach

November 2010

Wrong to relax. People like me can’t relax. We may roam outside the boundaries that restrict the behaviour of other people, but we’re never free. Occasionally, the people inside reach out and grab at us, squash our faces against the wire.

I was in the bath when I heard Lizzie talking on the phone. Her voice had an eager lilt to it. Angus, I thought, sickened. That cunting NQT. But no – a different problem altogether. Not her mobile.
Mine
. I’d left it on the kitchen table and she’d picked it up. I’ve been letting her get away with too much.

It was Pete, she told me. He and Nell were about to get a train from Victoria – they’d been up for a party the night before – and, knowing I was in London, were ringing me ‘on the off chance’. Lizzie had invited them over. She’d given them the address.

‘Here?’

‘For lunch,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. It was so sad they couldn’t make our wedding. I can’t wait to meet them. I said I’d pick them up.’

She was wearing the designer jeans and a slim-fitting Breton T-shirt I bought her, from the new boutique on Northcote Road. She’s only had them a few weeks but the jeans were stained at the knees and the top already had holes in it – a rash, a cluster of pinpricks. She followed the direction of my gaze. ‘I know,’ she said, glancing down. ‘I don’t know how it happened. Aren’t I stupid?’

‘Yes,’ I said, watching her face. ‘Do you know how much time I took choosing that top, working out what would suit you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Do you know how expensive it was?’

But she didn’t crawl away, as I thought. She looked up at me with a defiant jut to her chin. ‘Of course I know how expensive it was,’ she said. ‘I paid for it. If you don’t want Pete and Nell coming here to the house, that’s fine. I understand. We can go to the Italian instead. But just say it. Don’t pick a fight about something else.’

Wrong-footed, I said: ‘I don’t like my phone being answered. I need—’

‘It’s fine,’ she said firmly. ‘I understand. Now pull yourself together and ring them back.’

Weird thing is, as soon we were in the restaurant, I stopped worrying. I seem to be able to get out of any situation if I need to. People have so much less curiosity than you expect. Half the time they can’t even be bothered to dredge their own memories. Lizzie cottoned on pretty quickly that I hadn’t actually invited them to the wedding. ‘Hitched already?’ Pete said, slapping me on the back. ‘You’re a dark horse, mate!’ But she gave me a small wink as if it didn’t matter.

I could see Nell, a little Roedean snob beneath the hip clothes and the dropped ‘h’s, looking her up and down. But Lizzie won her over. She can be funny, that’s the thing you don’t realise when you first meet her. She told good stories about training as a librarian – the employee who had a nervous breakdown and stuffed all the reservation slips down the loo; the secret place in the bowels of one of Wandsworth’s libraries where you can only borrow books by ‘special permission’. She talked about her mother, and how improved her health is since she’s been receiving proper care at the Beeches. ‘I have Zach to thank for that,’ she said, smiling at me. Ironic really – it was never her mother’s well-being I was concerned about – but I’m glad it has made her happy.

Nell couldn’t keep her curiosity in any longer and said: ‘When did you meet?’

‘A year—’ Lizzie began to say, but I interrupted: ‘We were just friends at first, weren’t we? It was a long time unravelling.’

Lizzie smiled – she thought I was being doubly gallant, referring to her early modesty and protecting her from the Internet stigma.

Nell said, ‘But, Zach, when did you actually leave Brighton?’

‘You disappeared, mate!’ Pete added.

I apologised and took Lizzie’s hand. I told them I’d left in May, which was a lie. It was actually the end of June, but Lizzie thought I had been at Gulls and it covered me for . . . well, whatever else was coming. I said I’d had things on my mind, that I’d . . . I gave them a loaded look, hoping they’d realise not to mention Charlotte.

Nell nodded as if she were relieved, as if I’d cleared something up.

She turned to Lizzie and asked, with a directness some women seem to feel they can deploy on matters of other people’s fertility, if we were thinking of starting a family. Interesting moment: Lizzie went bright red. She’s desperate now. I’ve noticed she’s buying special ovulation kits. Nell ploughed on, regardless. ‘I’m hoping I might be pregnant myself. We timed it right and I’ve been feeling a low ache, not really period pain, but . . . anyway, I haven’t done a test yet.’

Pete caught my eye and we exchanged a blokeish look.

They were trying to behave normally. Beneath the surface I began to sense snakes seething – a shake to Pete’s hands, a feverish light in Nell’s eyes. They hadn’t simply tracked down their old mucker Zach Hopkins to find out what he was up to. They had a purpose. They had a mission.

I found out the moment Lizzie went to the loo (‘toilet’, she called it; I watched them to see how they reacted; Nell gave a patronising smile).

‘We’re so sorry,’ Nell said. ‘I didn’t know if you had heard. We wanted to tell you ourselves. I didn’t want to say in front of your lovely new wife – she’s
sweet
by the way – but . . .’

I just kept repeating ‘Dead? Charlotte. Dead?’ It seemed better to pretend I didn’t know. In fact, Jim had already rung. He was keyed up about the drugs – the diazepam and the Xanax – worried they might be traced to him. Had I left any in the flat?

‘I’m sorry, mate.’ Pete was looking increasingly uncomfortable.

‘How? Was it suicide? I know she was unstable.’ (I’d asked Jim the same question. ‘Headfuck, that’s what it was,’ he said.)

‘A terrible accident,’ Nell replied, enjoying every minute. ‘She slipped down those stairs of hers. You know how steep they were. And seagrass carpet is so slippery – I told her, when you were redecorating last year, it’s unsafe for stairs. She’d been drinking. The police say she had taken some pills. It wasn’t suicide. No note. But they found a lot of balled-up tissues in her flat, as if she’d had a bad cold . . . or been crying.’

I kept saying, ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. When?’

‘Last month, I think,’ Nell said. ‘I wanted to ring, but we thought it would be better to tell you in person.’ Of course she did: the delicious pleasure of passing on bad news.

‘Thank you.’

Interesting that they didn’t mention her pregnancy. Did they not know?

‘When did you last see her?’ I added.

‘Not for a while.’ Nell shook her head. ‘I feel bad. She was so upset when you left, and I went out for drinks with her a couple of times after that, but there was only so much I could say and . . .’

You see? No one cares. You’re on your own in this life. Nell didn’t stand by Charlotte when she needed her. She became a drain and she dropped her like a used tissue.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said again.

‘Can’t believe what?’

Lizzie had come back from the loo without us noticing.

I pulled her on to my knee. ‘I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen these guys. Mustn’t let it happen again.’ She put her arms around my neck and rested her chin on the top of my head. Quietly, into my ear, she said: ‘What do you think? Are we brave enough to invite them back to our hovel for coffee?’

‘I doubt they’ve got time,’ I said loudly.

‘Oh—’ Lizzie had remembered something. ‘Our new walls!’ She turned back to the table. ‘Borrowed Light. We’ve painted the downstairs this gorgeous cool grey and apparently we have you to thank for it. Zach said it was the colour of your flat in Edinburgh.’

They creep up, these moments, tie your ankles to a chair, set your pulse racing. How could I have let that detail slip out?

Pete frowned. ‘Borrowed Light. That’s right. We did. Farrow & Ball. Me and my expensive art-student tastes.’ He thought. ‘But Zach, you never came to the flat in Edinburgh, did you? I don’t think we even knew you back then, not when we were decorating.’

‘Must have told me about it, mate,’ I said.

‘He’s such an anorak when it comes to his colours,’ Nell informed Lizzie. ‘It’s the graphic designer in him.’

‘It’s not snobbery, Nell. It’s the quality of the paint, the opacity, I like.’

The moment passed. I got away with it. Just as I got away with my unofficial visit to their apartment in Leith. It was their flatmate I was interested in. What was her name? Margot, was it? I had hardly even registered Nell and Pete at that stage. Strange feeling of power, thinking back. After I broke in, I dipped a wet finger in the breakfast crumbs on the kitchen table, buried my face in their crumpled sheets, inspected Nell’s contraceptive cap in the drawer. The tins of paint were in the half-finished hallway. I slapped a bit on the door frame just to see, let it dribble on the floor.

Tombstoning, we used to call it – that feeling when you leaped into the Solent from a high harbour wall. The adrenalin, the rush of air, the surge as you hit the water, the release as you surface: there’s nothing else like it. It was the risk that made it worthwhile. Hidden rocks, unexpected shallows – mistime it and you could break your neck.

Chapter Twelve

Lizzie

The storm on Thursday night has battered the garden. I stand and look out on Friday morning at the lawn strewn with broken twigs and stray debris. A branch of the apple tree beyond the shed is hanging half off, like a fractured limb. I should spend the day out there, tidying and nurturing. A year ago that would have been my first instinct. But my instincts have changed, and I turn away from the window and leave it as it is.

I spend the last three days of half-term largely alone. Weekends are hardest when you’re a widow. People tend to fill them with families and loved ones. I try not to intrude. I can’t help wondering, sitting at the kitchen table on Saturday morning, how different it would have been if Zach and I had had a child together.

I visit my mother and babysit Peggy’s kids. I buy food at the supermarket and force myself to eat it. Normal activities. But my brain turns constantly, searching for places to look, ways to draw him out. On Saturday morning, I hover in the hall with the front door open and speak loudly to estate agents based in North Cornwall. It’s a depressed market, I am told. Can I wait until spring?

I move to the doorway. ‘Not really,’ I say. ‘I’d like Gulls sold as soon as possible. Perhaps by auction? I’m not that fussed about price.’

A local estate agent visits, on my invitation, to value my mother’s house, too. The mortgage I raised to pay for the Beeches was never a long-term solution. The capital is running out. I know all that. Peggy has been giving me time to grieve before a summit meeting on the subject.

I stand in the street with this freshly shaved man in a suit and discuss side returns and square-footage. He takes photographs with his phone.