Precocious Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  They say your school days are the best of your life. But everybody lies...

  Fiona Palmer is (un)happily married when a chance meeting with her former teacher plunges her headlong into an affair. But as their obsessive relationship grows ever darker, Fiona is forced to confront her own past.

  She first met Henry Morgan as a precocious and lonely fourteen-year-old, and their relationship was always one which she controlled.

  Or did she?

  Has Henry Morgan been the love of her life or the ruin of it? And are some of the biggest lies Fiona has told been to herself...?

  Precocious is a controversial, compelling debut novel from an award-winning writer.

  About the Author

  Joanna Barnard is an English Literature graduate and is currently training as a counsellor. In 2014, she won the inaugural Bath Novel Award. A Northerner currently exiled in the South of England, Joanna misses flat vowels, friendly bus drivers and chips and gravy.

  For Mum, with love

  one

  We meet again in the supermarket. The drone of the tannoy announcements, the bustle of people, all seem to pause for a second while I register that it’s really you.

  ‘You look great,’ I say. You look old, I think. You’re holding a bag of frozen prawns, and a basket. Good. I stare at the basket. No trolley equals no family.

  You’re looking at me and for a horrible moment I think you don’t remember me. Then you smile, and the smile is fifteen years older but the same cloudy, wry smile as then, as ever. Your wrinkles, your teeth.

  ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum,’ you say.

  We embrace clumsily. You have no hands free and I have only one, so we sort of clang together and I end up patting you on the back as if in recognition of a job well done.

  With my head buried momentarily in your shoulder I send a wish skywards that when we separate my hair will look neater, my face fresher, my waist thinner.

  Pulling away from me, your polite questions begin.

  ‘So, what are you doing now?’

  ‘Shopping?’

  I’m doing that thing where I say everything like a question – it comes out when I’m nervous.

  You laugh in that way you used to when I could never tell if you were making fun of me.

  ‘I don’t mean right now, I mean, in life – for a career.’

  ‘Oh. I work in publishing.’

  I tell everyone this. I sell advertising space in the Yellow Pages.

  ‘Publishing,’ you consider this for a while, ‘and the writing?’

  But you say it with capital letters. The Writing, followed by a question mark, heavy with expectation.

  ‘Oh, bits and pieces,’ I mumble. The truth is I haven’t written anything except emails for eight years.

  The last thing I wrote was a letter I never sent. A letter to you, when I was twenty-two. Years had already passed and I was angry. I tried to disguise it as defiance. ‘I would eat you for breakfast now!’ I wrote, daring you to come back. I put it in an envelope and sealed it and it stayed on my bookshelf, so unlike the notes and poems I used to put in your pigeon hole or on your desk to wonder all day if you’d read them.

  I’m brought back to the present by your question:

  ‘What are you doing for dinner?’ I look at my trolley full of food.

  ‘No plans,’ I say, ‘nothing that can’t wait.’

  ‘Great. You can tell me your stories.’

  And you’re back.

  A small part of me has wondered, from time to time, whether you might have died. But somehow I felt that I would have known – not found out, not seen it in the newspaper, not been told by someone – I would have just known. I would’ve felt it, in my gut. I would’ve felt a hot pain behind my eyes. I would have known.

  I didn’t think I’d been obsessed with you all these years, but now that you’re back, the terrain between then and today takes on a different geography. I’ve thought about you, perhaps not every day, but most days, for however fleeting a time. I thought I saw you – lots of times – which was always disconcerting, even though a second glance would prove it to be only a piece of you, the flick of your hair, maybe, or the curve of your ear, on an impostor’s face. I’ve heard your voice: unmistakeably you, the lazy sound of your vowels, your bored drawl. And each time when I realised it wasn’t you, in the back of my mind was relief, and further back still a strange certainty that one day it would be.

  So you didn’t die – today you reappeared, very much alive, somehow smaller and with thinning hair, but still you, holding a basket. And now I’m following your car, steering with one hand and texting my husband with the other.

  I will be late home.

  The restaurant is made mostly of glass. Floor to ceiling windows look out onto a rain-soaked street. You slice through your steak, metal scraping china.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ you say.

  ‘Who?’ I push my food around my plate. I always did feel uncomfortable eating in front of you.

  You say nothing but motion towards my left hand. I glance down at the perfect diamond and, without thinking, spin it inwards with a flick of the thumb so that I only have to look at two thin gold bands.

  ‘Dave,’ I say simply.

  ‘Tell me about Dave.’

  ‘Dave is … a grown-up,’ I want to say. I realise how ridiculous a statement this is to make to a man who is now in his forties, and laugh to myself. But that’s how I think of Dave. Or at least, he makes me a grown-up.

  Dave is one of those people who is meant to be married. He got close, with the girlfriend before me. She left him three weeks before the wedding. When we met, it seemed like he was looking for a sticking plaster. He wanted me, yes, but only a fraction of how much he wanted to be married. It was as though the quicker he fell in love and got someone to love him back – the quicker he got married – the easier it would be to convince himself that his heartbreak had never happened.

  He even has a husband’s name. Dave. A comforting name, something about the warm sound of the ‘v’. A big man’s name, but not threatening big, just warm. Comforting, comfortable big.

  I had once thought I would end up with an Alec, or a Holden, or even a Heathcliff, but they are only characters in books, not real men you can marry. I thought I might marry one of the skinny, glassy-eyed, long-haired wraiths who kept me awake all night in my teens, smelling of patchouli oil and brown ale, running their hands along my back and quoting inaccurately from The Prophet.

  But none of them asked. The one who asked was a Dave, the Dave who brings me flowers, who smells clean, soapy even, who quotes old Genesis love songs, singing shakily while I look down at him through my hair.

  I tell you all of this and you listen.

  ‘So that’s why you got married? Because he asked?’ I nod; I don’t tell you that I also felt a bit sorry for him. The rings on my third finger feel tight.


  ‘Maybe. Why not? Why does anyone do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ You laugh that dry laugh, like a cough.

  ‘You got married.’ I sound like a sulky teenager. You say nothing but keep chewing. To fill the silence I say, ‘It’s just what you do, isn’t it? It’s what people do. Normal people.’ I wave my fork at you and all around, as though to demonstrate the difference between these normal people and you. A flake of salmon lands on the tablecloth.

  ‘Funny, I never had you down as a traditionalist, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, people can change in fifteen years.’

  ‘Hmm. Not everyone is as stubborn and set in their ways as I am, I suppose.’

  I feel exposed, accused of a crime I don’t remember committing.

  ‘Get married, have a baby,’ you pause, ‘that’s next, I suppose?’

  ‘No.’ A little too quickly.

  ‘Why not? Isn’t that what they do, these normal people you’re so fond of?’

  ‘I just never wanted to have his baby,’ I say, realising too late that I’ve emphasised the word his.

  You give a slow, reptilian blink and then say, ‘Whatever happened to vegetarianism?’

  For a strange, surreal moment I think you mean generally; in society as a whole. I finger my brain. Have I missed something? Has there been a widespread decline in concern for animal welfare, recently documented in the cleverer late night TV discussion programmes, or worse, in the popular press, and I have not noticed? How could I have come to dinner so unprepared to discuss topical issues?

  I look at you blankly and you nod at my plate.

  ‘Oh,’ I look down, ‘I had to start eating fish. Vitamin deficiency.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Always thought it was nonsense, you giving up meat so young. You can’t be a vegetarian until you’ve tasted a really excellent rare steak. Until that point you’re simply not making an informed choice. Oh sure, it’s easy to see the reasons for becoming vegetarian – but what about the reasons for eating meat? Until you’ve eaten veal – or foie gras – you simply don’t know enough. Some cruelty is worth it.’ You look at me, pop a forkful of steak into your mouth. ‘The end justifies the means.’

  I could swear I see blood oozing out at the sides.

  ‘So if Dan doesn’t mind …’

  ‘Dave,’ I say; you’re not funny, I think.

  ‘If you don’t think Dave will mind, can we go out again?’

  ‘Are we becoming friends now?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t you mean again?’

  ‘Are we becoming friends again?’

  ‘Better late than never,’ you grin.

  ‘Fifteen years,’ I say, ‘that’s late.’

  I’ve had two glasses of wine. I don’t drink and drive, as a rule; it isn’t me. I like to feel in control. Something made me order the second glass and it’s that glass, or that something, that I know is to blame when I reverse my car out of the pitch dark parking space and scrape the next car along.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  I get out, scribble my mobile number on the back of the supermarket receipt and leave it under the car’s windscreen wiper.

  From across the street I hear the thud of a door, and footsteps, and now you are at my side, laughing.

  ‘What did you do? Fee, Fee …’

  ‘It’s just a bump,’ I say irritably. I feel like a child. I feel shaky, inadequate, and can’t look at you.

  ‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’

  ‘You already did. It was good to see you.’

  You say something that I hear but immediately forget, because at once your hand is in my hair, and now on my throat, and there is kissing. I can’t say you kiss me, or I kiss you, only that there is kissing, because I am watching it from far away.

  And all I can think about is what I ate, and therefore what do I taste like, and does it feel nice to you, and I shouldn’t be doing this, and I should be doing this, and…

  At last.

  Tonight I will do all of the same things I do every night.

  Come through the door, stroke the dog, murmur ‘hellos’, exchange perfunctory kisses with my husband, wash the breakfast things that weren’t done in the morning, have a cup of tea. I will say ‘no, I’ve eaten, but I’ll do something for you’ and I will put some rice or spaghetti on to simmer while thawing out a sticky-labelled pot from the freezer. I do all the actual cooking at the weekends. I spend Sunday afternoons making chillies and stews and curries and broths and posting them, tightly lidded, colour coded, addressed to Monday, Tuesday and so on, into deep freeze.

  Today is Wednesday.

  Once I have thawed out, warmed up, talked about my day, I will put everything, including myself, away.

  Tonight I will do all of the same things I do every night, but tonight is different. Tonight I feel like a ghost in my own life.

  Dave often says: ‘I can see right through you.’

  It’s one of his favourite phrases – he’s said it for years. I used to take it literally, and I hated it; it made me look at the pale skin through which I can sometimes see my own veins. He would tell me, ‘don’t be silly’, but all the while he would be absentmindedly stroking the fine purple lines on my inner wrist, my temple, my breast.

  Then for a while I loved it: it made me feel completely known, and wanted. Safe.

  Now it frightens me. What if he can? I feel high-pitched; a different, shiny version of myself. Does he notice?

  I kick off my shoes and unpack the shopping, sliding melted ice cream and car-boot-warmed cheese straight into the dustbin with a smile. I prepare a bowl of spaghetti for Dave and a piece of chicken for the dog.

  ‘I saw someone today,’ I say casually. ‘I mean, I bumped into someone.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ He lifts the fork to his mouth. The bowl is balanced on his lap, his eyes fixed on the TV. I watch the blood-coloured sauce tipping, from left to right, towards his trousers, towards the sofa cushions.

  ‘Mm-hum. An old friend.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That’s where I was. I mean, that’s who I had dinner with. In case you were wondering.’

  ‘I just assumed you were with Mari. So where do you know her from?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This friend. Who is she?’

  ‘Oh. From school. It’s a he.’

  ‘Uh-oh, should I be jealous?’ He puts the bowl down and nuzzles my neck, jabbing at the TV remote, eyes never leaving the screen.

  ‘He was my teacher.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a no then. If he was your teacher, what is he, about ninety?’

  ‘Cheek!’ I pause, as if mentally calculating, as if I don’t know your age in years, months, weeks and days off by heart. ‘Forty-three.’

  ‘Should I be jealous?’ he says again.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I lie.

  I lie awake: I, who have always been able to curl like a cat into any available space, any time, can’t sleep.

  You are replaying in my mind like a movie. How typical of you, to turn up like that, to put a spanner in the works, a cat among the pigeons, walking cliché that you are. I’m married. I’m happy. Finally I’ve put to rest the irritating feeling I’ve had for most of my life, the suspicion that I might be missing something, that around the corner, or tomorrow, I would find the thing that would satisfy me. I have done the done thing, and it is working. Has been working.

  Then all of a sudden we were knocking each other over in the freezer aisle and I was hugging myself not from the cold, but for protection, and next I hugged you, and later there was the kiss.

  Silence in the bedroom is an extra blanket: sometimes comforting, but not for long; usually too thick. Hot and scratchy. Through this deep cover my husband hears the sound of me rustling in his bedside drawer.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’ he murmurs.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Fee,’ he lifts his head from the pillow, ‘you had dinner with your forty-three-year-old ex-teacher?’ Raises a quizzical, sleepy eyebro
w.

  ‘Like I said – he was kind of a friend. Aren’t there any bloody pens in this house?’

  Apparently satisfied with this response, he settles back into the pillow. ‘Come back to bed.’ Within seconds he is snoring softly.

  I’ve always thought it is only when you spend the night with someone that you know whether you can love them. If you can bear their sour night-breath; if you can get used to their flickering eyelids and the knowledge that something is happening behind them that you can’t know about; if you can lie and listen to their dream noises, you have a good chance.

  I pad down to the kitchen like a thief, down to the bottom floor of our cavernous house. The dog barely stirs.

  The kitchen takes up the whole of the basement. Copper-bottomed pans hang from the ceiling, so clean they look like they’ve never been used. In the windowless half-light they seem like weapons.

  I pour a glass of filtered water (bottled is too expensive, tap too dirty, according to Dave) and attack the heavy oak drawers.

  I need to find something to write with. The bill drawer – that’s the one. On top of the neat pile of mail, a cheque book, a spiral bound note book and a rollerball pen. The itch in my head that I haven’t felt for years is there, and I settle at the table to scratch it out onto the paper.

  He was kind of a friend.

  ‘If you trust me,’ you used to say, ‘I won’t let you down.’

  So I trusted you, and you did let me down, and later, you introduced me to your girlfriend.

  It was the fifth year leavers’ ball in 1994, that last summer before fifth year became known as year eleven at our school. There was a May smell of cut grass and keenly sucked ciggies behind the building. The fact that we were promised booze meant no one bothered to bring vodka in a Coke bottle. As it turned out, we only got one glass of watered-down wine each with dinner. I wore a pink and blue dotted puffball skirt and low cut white top. I was carrying a ‘proper’ handbag for the first time in my life and was rummaging in it as I tottered into school and straight into the two of you.

  You coughed in my cloud of Lou Lou.

  When I say ‘girlfriend’, she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman, of course. She had ash blonde hair swept into a chignon and she wore her age like a badge pinned from a birthday card. It towered over me, gave her height.