The Unknown Bridesmaid (7 page)

Julia and her mother stayed the night. It was on the next day, in the afternoon, that little Reggie was put to sleep in the Silver Cross pram which was placed in the garden, at the front, under a pear tree. It was a hot, sunny day but there was plenty of shade under the tree. Julia was told to check that little Reggie was asleep and then come in for tea, leaving the front door open so that any cries could be heard. She stood dutifully beside the pram. ‘You can rock the pram very, very gently,’ Iris said, ‘just enough to send him to sleep.’ She watched as Julia very, very gently touched the big, broad handle of the pram. The pram hardly moved at all. ‘Good,’ said Iris, ‘you’ve got the idea.’ She peered into the dark cavern of the hood of the pram. ‘Good,’ she said again, ‘he’s asleep. You don’t need to rock him now, Julia. Just play in the garden and listen out for him.’

Play. Julia pondered this instruction. What did it mean, ‘play’? With what? With whom? There wasn’t a ball or a skipping rope in sight. There wasn’t a swing in this garden either. She wandered round the lawn, stopping at the sundial and trying to work out the time, but couldn’t. There was a small pond in one corner, containing a few water lilies. She could, she supposed, throw stones into the pond. Half-heartedly, she picked up a few stones from the path and threw them one by one into the pond, moving further away each time, to make aiming at the water lilies more difficult. Then she heard little Reggie cry. It wasn’t a proper cry, more a whimper, but she went back to the pram and rocked it. The whimpering stopped, but she went on rocking the pram, doing it harder. How much rocking would it take to overturn the pram? It was just a passing thought that went through her head. She could see, in her mind’s eye, the pram tilting. But it never would. It would need a really, really strong push to upend it, much stronger than any she could give.

Often, she saw pictures like that in her mind. Things
happening, quite bad things. They were more often bad things than good things. She never told anyone this, though she would like to have known if everyone had such thoughts.

Half an hour had gone by. Julia didn’t need to consult her wristwatch. There was a large wall clock high up in front of her. Its presence always irritated her but getting it removed seemed a job nobody would take on. ‘It’s always been there,’ other people said, seeming surprised that Julia took exception to it.

‘Hera,’ Julia said, ‘how would you describe a happy family? What would you say it would consist of?’

But Hera was a clever girl and she wasn’t falling for this. ‘Happy?’ she queried. ‘Depends what you mean by happy.’

‘What do
you
mean by it?’ Julia parried.

‘I don’t,’ Hera said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘I don’t talk about happy families. You did. So you should know what you mean.’ She smiled, pleased with herself.

Julia nodded. ‘A happy family, to me,’ she said slowly, ‘can be of any size. It doesn’t matter how many, or how few, members it has. It doesn’t even matter how these people, adults and children, are related to each other, once they’ve grouped together into a family. But once they have, their happiness depends on how they treat each other. Just one member disregarding the feelings of another can wreck the family – if the rest of the family let it, of course.’

Hera yawned ostentatiously.

‘I might be boring you, Hera,’ Julia said, ‘but I haven’t finished yet. I think you don’t want your particular family to be happy. Everyone else who belongs to it wants it to be happy, but you don’t.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Hera said, but flatly, without passion.

‘You’re very fond of that word,’ Julia said. ‘Is everyone except you “stupid”?’

‘I didn’t say that. But what you’re saying about me is stupid. Why would I want to wreck my family? It’s stupid.’

‘What do you want to do, then,’ said Julia, ‘behaving as you have been behaving?’

‘I can’t help how I behave,’ Hera said.

‘Oh, but you can,’ Julia said, ‘saying
that
is stupid.’

This could go on forever or at least for the rest of the remaining twenty minutes.

‘Have you ever been hit, Hera?’ Julia asked. ‘Slapped? Smacked? Pushed around?’

Hera shrugged.

‘What does that shrug mean?’ Julia asked. ‘Yes? No? You can’t remember?’

‘I suppose,’ Hera said.

‘Suppose what?’

‘Well, I expect I was smacked when I was little, how should I know?’

‘Your mother says you never were.’

Hera made a noise of derision, a little ‘huh’ that sounded contemptuous.

‘So I shouldn’t believe her?’ Julia asked.

‘Believe what you like,’ Hera said, ‘it makes no difference to me.’

‘Well,’ Julia said, ‘it makes a great deal of difference to me. If I believe your mother, and I see no reason not to, you as a young child were never treated as you treat your younger brothers.’

‘Rick is older,’ Hera said, smiling triumphantly.

‘Yes,’ said Julia, ‘but you’ve hit your younger brothers too, haven’t you? But not hard enough for them to break a limb and for you to get found out. That’s what you’ve depended on, isn’t it? Not being found out. Making your brothers so
afraid of you that they have never said anything. Has that given you pleasure?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Hera said, angry now.

Julia let a pause of a full five minutes fill the room with silence. Hera didn’t like silence. It agitated her. She developed all kinds of strategies to combat it, tapping her fingers on the side of her chair, kicking her foot against the cupboard next to her. Julia let this happen, not once telling the girl to stop it. Eventually, it did stop. Hera folded her arms.

‘Are we finished?’ she asked. ‘All this talk is silly.’

‘Not stupid? Silly, but not stupid?’ Julia said, risking a smile.

‘You know what I mean,’ Hera said.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ Julia said. ‘Shall I tell you what I think you mean. Shall I? Are you interested?’ Another shrug. ‘Well, Hera, this is what I think you mean.’

There were so many kinds of tiredness. The tiredness she felt now was nothing like the physical exhaustion she remembered feeling when she was a teacher. This kind of new tiredness drained her, but her body was refusing to sleep. The exhaustion was in every limb, in the crevice of every line on her face, and still sleep would not come to rescue and replenish her. It was not that her mind raced. There was no thudding noise of repetitive thoughts in her head. She felt quite calm, but this calmness did not tip her over into the oblivion she craved. Instead, she lay and stared at the ceiling, a blur of white in the semi-dark of the curtained room and she began to count the tiles. They were made of some kind of polystyrene stuff – she had never known the proper name – unpleasant to touch. She knew this because one had fallen off and she’d been surprised how brittle it was. She’d never replaced it. There were ten tiles by ten. The missing tile was luckily in the darkest corner, hardly noticeable.

Hera counted things. Julia had guessed she did when first
she saw the girl staring at her own feet with such care, as though obliged to follow markings on the floor. And then, when making a display of ostentatious boredom during Julia’s questioning, she was looking so intently, left to right, right to left, along the books on the shelf behind Julia that Julia knew she was counting them. Was this obsessive? Julia, counting her ceiling tiles lazily, didn’t think it necessarily so, not in the way it was currently termed as obsessive compulsive disorder. It was a strategy, that was all. Something to do to avoid doing something else – no, that was not right. The tiles above her blurred and a wave of dizziness seemed to sweep through her, delicious, welcome.

In August, the summer little Reggie was born, Julia and her mother moved to Manchester. Julia never understood the reasons for this major upheaval. Nothing was explained and her opinion on whether this move was a good thing or not was never sought. Just one day her mother told her to pack up her things because they were going to Manchester to live.

She would be going to a new school in September, it was all arranged. Her mother had been born and brought up in Manchester and, it appeared, had never wanted to leave and come further north to the country, to where Julia’s father was going to work, but she had had no choice.

Saying goodbye to her friends at school wasn’t as sad as Julia thought it might be, but then she herself realised that none of these friends mattered much to her, except possibly Sandra. Sandra envied Julia going to Manchester, where she said there would be more ‘life’. Julia wasn’t sure what this meant, but nodded sagely. Her teacher gave her a book of poetry, a selection called
Poems of Lakeland
, and hoped she would continue to do as well at her new school as she had done at this one. Julia, she said, showed great promise. Julia
repeated this to her mother, who merely commented ‘Time will tell’.

The day they left the house where Julia had been born, and where she’d spent all her nine and a bit years, it rained heavily. She and her mother got soaked just going from the front door, which had to be locked, and into the taxi, and then soaked again, collecting the cases from the taxi and carrying them into the station. All short periods spent in the rain but enough to drench them because this rain was relentless, what Julia’s mother called ‘the wetting sort’, sheets of it falling from the dark sky. There was a clap of thunder as they stood on the station platform waiting for the train and her mother said thank goodness we’re leaving this place. Julia wondered if this meant that there was no rain and no thunder in Manchester, but she didn’t ask. ‘Best not to ask anything’ – the rule of her young life. Best to wait and see what happened.

IT WAS A
relief, after the tussle with Hera, to have Camilla in front of her. Julia felt grateful. This was not necessarily how work went. A difficult case could be immediately followed by an even more difficult one. Her mind was still full of Hera. She had not by any means cleared it of the worry that she had not, after all, understood the girl. There was still something missing, which she would have to return to thinking about soon, before the final report was written.

But Camilla Pearson was almost a pleasure to have in front of her. A sweet, shy child, her expression a little anxious, though she was quite composed, sitting perfectly still and attempting a smile. The smile wavered but it was there. She was nine years old, slight of build and very pale. Julia noted shadows under Camilla’s eyes, indicating lack of sleep, but the eyes themselves were bright enough, showing no signs of fatigue. Both parents had come with the girl, and sat now in the waiting room. They had seemed anxious about Camilla being seen on her own but had been persuaded of the need for this. Both had given their daughter a hug, and the mother added a kiss before she went into the room with Julia.

‘Camilla,’ Julia began, ‘we’re just going to have a chat about a few things, so I can get to know you a bit, OK?’

Camilla nodded, the hesitant smile reappearing.

‘I was wondering,’ Julia said, ‘how you liked your new school?’

Camilla said it was all right. The ‘all right’ was grudging.

‘Did you like your last school?’ Julia asked. The nod was enthusiastic. ‘What was good about it?’ Julia encouraged her.

Camilla said she knew everyone there. She’d known them since they were all three in the nursery class. And the school was small, with a garden where they grew things. This new school was big, and there was no garden, and the playground was too hot and noisy and there were too many children and boys played football though they were not supposed to . . . the complaints tumbled out. Julia let them. Camilla had a long list of what was wrong with her new school and enjoyed going over it.

‘Is there anything better at this school than at your last one?’ Julia asked.

First Camilla shook her head, and then she said that maybe the dinners were a bit better, but that she didn’t care about the dinners anyway. Her mother wanted her to have school dinners but she would rather have a packed lunch.

‘What would you like in your lunch box?’ Julia asked.

Camilla again had a list ready. She would like a cheese sandwich, brown bread and Cheddar cheese, and an apple, a Granny Smith, and a tangerine.

‘No crisps, no biscuits?’ Julia prompted.

Another energetic shake of the head. ‘They aren’t good for you,’ Camilla said, ‘biscuits are full of sugar and rot your teeth, and crisps are rubbish. We did it at my other school.’

‘It?’ queried Julia.

‘Diet, what’s good for you and what isn’t.’

Very virtuous, and Camilla knew it. She was pleased with her answer, her expression almost comical in its knowingness.

Julia switched tack. ‘Your mum works, doesn’t she, Camilla? What is it that she does?’

‘She’s a physiotherapist,’ Camilla said, ‘at the hospital where my dad works too. He’s an engineer.’

Julia asked her if she had been to this hospital, if she’d seen her mother at work. Camilla said once, when there was a day off school, and her mother had taken her with her because there was no one to look after her and she was too young to be left on her own. Julia asked if she’d liked the hospital. No, Camilla hadn’t. It was too big and there were smells she didn’t like and once they had to walk past a man lying on a trolley, with blood all over him, and it was frightening. She’d sat on a chair watching while her mum got old people out of bed and showed them how to use a sort of walking frame and the old people didn’t like it and wanted to get back into bed. Then she and her mum went to another ward where there was a man who had to learn to use his arm again and he groaned and groaned.

There was no stopping Camilla. A chatterbox once started. Julia thought of directions in which the talkativeness could be usefully pushed. Here was a child who had twice been found a long way from home and apparently intent on travelling further if she had not drawn attention to herself and been questioned (in the first instance by a traffic warden, seeing her standing hesitantly at a crossing but never crossing, and in the second by a shopkeeper from whom she’d tried to buy a bar of chocolate with a 10p piece). In both cases, Camilla had been quite calm when challenged about what she was doing in an area such a long way from where she said she lived. She said she was just exploring. Taken to the nearest police station each time she gave her address and telephone number, perfectly self-possessed, and waited to be collected without seeming to have any worries about her parents being angry or distressed by her behaviour.