Tell Me Everything (21 page)

“It's just like life,” I whispered to Tim. “You have to really look because you don't always see everything the first time.” But he was slumped forward over me, his turn to fall fast asleep. “Some spy,” I smiled, determined to watch out for both of us from now on.

I
was practicing Mrs. Roberts's walk—right shoulder, left hip— on my way through to the shower room at the gym when I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror. I stopped dead. And then, looking round to make sure there was no one else there, I opened the towel I'd draped round me. I put my hips back, my left leg forward, heel up, and stared at my naked body for a few seconds before covering myself up quickly.

Even in the shower, as I was standing shivering under the icy
cold water, I was thinking about my reflection. I was like something from a magazine. I was picture-perfect. As thin as a model. You could have hung clothes on my hipbones, kept jewels between my neck bones, hooked cups on the nobbles of my spine.

I was lean, mean, dangerous. I loved myself.

I
was finding it hard to keep any control over Liz and Bob's affair.

Some days I'd go into the library and she'd be bubbly and excited. “It's the real thing,” I'd tell her. But other times I'd have to look away from her so as not to let her see I'd noticed her red, swollen eyes. “Love hurts,” I'd say then. “If it wasn't painful it wouldn't mean anything. I bet he's feeling worse, at least you can take consolation from that.” Her book reading swerved from one of Bob's interests to the next, as if she was on some manic bus tour, always one country behind.

One evening I came to the library just before closing time to find her reading the history of the island of Corsica, because that was where he was taking his wife for an early winter break.

“You could get away too,” I suggested. “Go somewhere romantic. Do it properly.”

“Who with?” she said, and then before I could answer, “And what with? I'm not made of cash. Unlike some and his large-type wife. Anyway, I'm fine.”

Every morning for the last two weeks, Liz had gone out and bought a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
with her own money so Bob wouldn't have to keep up with the news on the hated computer.
She kept it, pristine clean, under the desk so if he came in she could surprise him with it. More often than not, she had to throw it away unread at the end of the day.

Even I could see it wasn't going well.

“I wonder if you aren't making it too easy for him,” I said. Liz had just received an inter-library loan of a book about Westminster School, where he had apparently spent the happiest days of his life. She had it in front of her on the desk as we spoke, fiddling with the cover. “He fell in love with you when you weren't very nice to him, after all.”

Liz stopped stroking the book and looked up.

“Maybe you just need a strategy for love, or something.”

She shrugged her shoulders, but I could see she was still listening.

“Make a plan. Play a bit hard to get. Act a bit cool.”

“And how do I do that?” She seemed to be asking me this seriously.

I shut my eyes. Willed all my French ladies to totter into my mind on their stiletto heels, with their razor-sharp silhouettes and even sharper tongues. I let all the words I'd read over the last six months swill around my head for a few minutes and then I opened my mouth to see what had stuck enough to come out.

“Sometimes what you have to do is imagine what people think about you, and enter that reality for a moment,” I said. “In your case you have to create a different reality for him.”

Liz was nodding, so I continued. “You've got to make him think there's someone else in the picture, but not just anyone. Imagine everything you've ever wanted from the accountant and dangle that in front of him so that he can see what's on offer from you, and what he's in danger of losing.” I was in my flow now, remembering all the women I'd read about and the efforts they went to to make their lovers jealous. “What you need is a hotel
room, with white sheets and big windows,” I continued. “Somehow you need to make him think you're going to this hotel with another man, let him picture all the things you're getting up to in there. Perhaps he could even burst in, find it empty, but there's a red silk negligee draped on the enormous double bed that is drenched in your perfume.”

For a moment the only thing I could think about was how proud my father would have been of me now if he could see me giving useful advice—and not to just anyone, but to a librarian, no less.

As I left the library, swinging my bag of books by my side, I saw Joe again.

I was sure this time, despite the short, yuppie haircut even Miranda would approve of, but he nipped into a side alley and by the time I reached there it was empty. Pity, I thought, running my tongue over my teeth. His parents must be spending a fortune on his orthodontics.

S
eeing Joe made me think again about my father. What might I have done if I'd had parents who cared about the whole of me, as Joe's must have done, rather than just wasting all their imagination on expecting the worst? I became aware of walking quicker, almost stomping, as I remembered the different bad ends my father had seen me coming to.

By the time I got back to the shop I was cold with rage. I didn't even notice that the door was unlocked again until I was inside, and even then it was only when I put out my hand automatically to the light switch that I remembered I'd deliberately left the lights on when I left. Someone had been in and turned them off. I stalled my hand and peered into the gloom of the seemingly empty shop.

It would have been sensible then to run outside for some support but something made me go on. I went back to the door and kept my hand clutched on the handle, as if that would make it easier to get out in case of trouble.

“Mrs. Roberts?” I called. “Is that you?”

No reply, but then there was a sudden crashing noise from upstairs.

The street had been half-deserted as I had walked here. That twilight time between the shops shutting and the bars getting busy. The only people I'd seen were the two bouncers from the basement club, chatting to each other as they stood guard. I was trying to think how long it would take me to call out to them for help when there was another loud banging. It sounded like heavy boxes being thrown around the room.

Mrs. Roberts wasn't strong enough for that kind of work. Besides, it would ruin her nails.

My heart was punching up through my head and right into my ears now. I ran frantically, mothlike, to the door that led up to the stairs, and then to the window and back to the rear of the shop. I was looking for someone to help me, for somewhere to hide, for a weapon to defend myself with. Anything. Truth was I didn't have a clue where I was going, what I was looking for. I hiked Miranda's dress up around my waist so I could move quicker. I wished I was wearing something more protective. An invisible cloak would have been good. Outside a car drove very slowly down the street, illuminating the window display briefly in its lights, but it was gone before I could think about calling for help.

And then, seconds later, the shop door opened from the outside. I squinted but I couldn't see anything clearer than two dim shapes through the dark glass. The door opened wider until a triangle of streetlight appeared on the floor. I squatted down by the
envelopes, curling myself into the wall, ignoring the pain of the shelf edges as they dug into my body.

“Tim,” one of the shapes called out, and it was only then, as I sighed with relief, that I realized I'd been holding my breath. I started to uncurl myself, to stand up straight, when the lights in the shop snapped on. I paused, blinking, feeling vulnerable in the gleam, before crouching back down to watch what was going to happen. Just in case. A middle-aged man and woman were standing in the doorway. The woman stared around the shop hopelessly, but the man carried on shouting. “Come now, Tim. It's all right. We're here.”

I pulled Miranda's dress down to cover my ankles, smoothing my hands over the material as much to comfort myself as anything. Apart from that I stayed still. The banging upstairs stopped then. We were all paused, like characters on freeze-frame. I kept my eyes on the door leading up to my room.

“Tim,” the man called again. “We know you're here.”

He moved farther into the shop as I shrunk back into the shadows. If it was Tim upstairs he'd know what to do. I didn't want to spoil anything.

The man called up the stairs. Then silence again, broken only by the sound of someone walking downstairs, one slow step at a time.

“Thank God.” The woman rushed forward and hugged Tim as he appeared. He looked thin and small and tired. It was hard to imagine this was the same person who'd sat on my bed just the night before, raking his hands through his hair with excitement as he outlined his plans—big plans—for our future.

“Get your stuff together,” the man said. “We're going to take care of you. You'll be OK now.”

Tim stood completely still. Tell them, I prayed. Tell them that
you're with me now. That we're looking after each other. Tell them that you can't leave me.

“Let's just go,” the woman said. “This place gives me the creeps. We can come back later, Timmy, if you need anything from here. Or get you everything new. That might be the best thing.”

Tim didn't look up from the floor. If he had, he might have seen me. And then would things have been different? I knew what he was thinking. I almost expected him to ask for a cigarette as a last request.

The woman had her arm around him now and it was clear she wasn't going to let go as she led him out of the shop. It was only when the man bustled after them that I remembered how to move. I ran out after them. There I stood in the doorway, watching them get in the red estate car that was double-parked outside.

It worried me that the car made no noise as it drove away, but I could see the back of Tim's head through the rear window. He looked like a child being taken for a treat. I willed him to turn round and say something to me, but he didn't. I was left waving on my own. I kept my hand up for some time after the car had gone, imagining the sad picture I made, the perfect French tilt of my chin. It was only after I'd gone back inside that I realized Tim hadn't looked out for me once. He hadn't said a word.

I locked the door and went upstairs. There I pinched myself hard. Shut my eyes and kept on pinching until a wall of pain wrapped round me like a comfort blanket.

T
he park at night became my sanctuary. There was a time between eight and ten o'clock when I could pretend it was nearly all mine. Now that it was dark, the kids who would normally
be there kicking a football around or practicing on their skateboards had long gone home, and the late-night gangs of teenagers and kissing couples hadn't come out of the pubs yet.

A few dog walkers were doing their rounds on the outside paths. I'd got to know most of the regular ones. There was a longhaired woman in an automated wheelchair who chased a spaniel twice round the park at exactly the same time each evening. A surly-looking man with two dogs, one large and glumly obedient, the other small, hairy and bouncy, glared at me nightly. One terrier bounced up every time to say hello before being called away by his owner, a nervous-looking dark woman who kept firmly to the lit paths.

I liked to imagine them going home and talking about me, the mysterious girl who sat alone on the bench. “She was there again tonight,” I could almost hear them calling out, as they shook the night off their coats at the door before moving into the warmth and the light.

I shifted along the bench to make a space for where Tim would normally sit, and then I started to cry. This was a regular thing now. I allowed myself twenty minutes exactly, weeping with my head between my knees, and then I'd shake myself up, wipe my face with one of the two spotted handkerchiefs I'd bought from an old-fashioned man's shop I'd started going to for accessories—Mrs. Roberts had stressed how important these were—and walk back.

One day, though, about three weeks after Tim left, I caught sight of something from my upside-down position. I tried to focus through my tears and reached down to pick up the walnut from the ground. I finished crying five minutes earlier than usual, rolling the nut round and round between my hands so I could feel its roughness against my palms.

It wasn't there before. I could swear it. Which meant someone
must have put it there. I walked over to the tree and placed it carefully in a fork of the branches where it wouldn't fall, pressing it safe with my index finger. I pulled off three hearts from around it so they wouldn't knock it down, crumpling them up and throwing them in the bin. “Fridge,” I said. I didn't feel guilty; there would be more tomorrow.

“
H
ow's Mr. Roberts?” I asked Mrs. Roberts as she fussed over the window display I'd just spent several hours arranging.

“Fine,” she said, moving a pile of gaudy notebooks from one side of the desk back to where I'd originally put them.

“Is he ever going to come back?” I was standing with my arms crossed, just watching her although I knew it would get me into trouble. I should at least have some files in my hands so I could pretend to be busy, something she was always going on at me about, but I couldn't be bothered.

“Probably not.” Mrs. Roberts stood up and rubbed her lower back. She was dressed head to foot in beige. Even her perfectly waved hair seemed more wool-like and knitted into shape than my sweater. I ran my hand through my hair.

“Ah Molly.” She leaned over and smoothed it down immediately. “A French woman would never let herself get messy like this. And so thin. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as too thin.”

I knew my style was getting more “individual” than she liked. I couldn't explain it. It wasn't because I didn't care either; it took a lot of time to dress how I did. In fact, I'd almost become obsessive
about getting things right. The truth was my new look felt Charlie Canterbury-ish, and I was learning to take comfort in that because it reminded me of Tim.