Precocious Read online

  ‘Hey, chill out,’ he’s saying, ‘why such a serious face?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just … well, what you said about marriage. Me and Dave are … kind of taking a break. I moved out.’

  ‘Oh. Shit. Sorry, Fee. Laura never said.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t, since I haven’t told her.’ I sigh. ‘We kind of had other things to talk about last time I saw her,’ I add. Oblivious to my meaning, Matt checks his watch and smiles.

  ‘Well listen, I really do have to go in there now.’ I realise I’m blocking the doorway. ‘But why don’t you drop in on her this afternoon? I’m working late and she could really do with some girl time I reckon. Sounds like you could too.’

  He kisses me again, cool lips on my forehead, and squeezes my arm, and for a second I want to grab him and bury my face in his collar, but I don’t, I just say ‘bye’ and take myself off into the rain.

  ‘How do they do that?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Children.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Disappear like that.’

  I’m at Laura’s school. I’m always amazed by the way that children, even with all their mess and noise and clatter, can vacate a space in seconds; leave it ghostly.

  She smiles. She’s getting a bump. I feel a pang of envy, a surprise lurch in my stomach.

  ‘I’m taking you for an early dinner,’ I say brightly.

  ‘Matt …’

  ‘Actually he gave me the idea,’ I confess. ‘I’ve just seen him, in town.’

  She bundles up the papers on her desk and runs a hand through her hair.

  ‘Well, I guess that’s okay.’

  ‘Yep, you’re free for at least two hours. I’ll help you clear up.’

  We slide in between yellow-topped desks, stooping to pick up an eraser here, a pencil there. Laura sits down, on a child’s chair, Year Six driftwood on her lap.

  ‘Matt,’ she says again.

  ‘Stop it,’ I tell her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop wondering what he was doing in town today, what he’s doing this evening.’

  ‘Am I that transparent?’

  ‘Just think about you, for a change. Just for a couple of hours. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Although I have to admit,’ I take her handbag for her and link her arm as she flicks off the lights, ‘I do have an ulterior motive for my visit. I need to pick your brains on something. Is that alright?’

  ‘Of course,’ she laughs, ‘I hope I can help. I’m beginning to think that the more pregnant I get, the more brain cells I lose.’ She makes a whistling sound. ‘Even the ten-year-olds seem to be running rings round me at the moment.’

  It was always obvious Laura was going to be a primary school teacher. She had patience and a love of children, and what’s more they loved her too. They seemed to be able to sense in her a kindred spirit, one who had never really grown up, who still had wonder and innocence and could be silly at times. In turn, she loved their seemingly bottomless energy, and their honesty, both traits she tended to find lacking in adults.

  Laura always tells me she loves teaching the class she does because they’re old enough to have great conversations with. She says they’re at that lovely point when their adult personalities are almost fully formed: ‘everything’s there except the crap stuff’ she always says, ‘that gets poured in last’.

  ‘So how’s school?’ I say when we’re settled. We’re scanning the menus although I don’t know why we bother: we always come to the same little Italian place in town and we both always order the same thing. When the waiter comes over and Laura mouths ‘two minutes please’, I know it can’t be because she hasn’t decided yet.

  ‘What’s this really about then, Fee?’ She has a concerned look, head tilted, eyes wide. It strikes me if she wasn’t a teacher she’d have made a great therapist. ‘You said you wanted to pick my brains on something.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit of a weird one, I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Well. If a child were to make an, um, an accusation … against a member of staff. What would happen?’

  She frowns.

  ‘What kind of an accusation?’

  ‘Oh you know, anything. Bullying, maybe. Verbal abuse. Physical abuse. Erm … sexual,’ I add hastily. ‘It might even be years later, say.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t happen often, thank God.’ At this point, incongruously, she taps the table as if ‘touching wood’, or maybe she is just keeping herself anchored to a world of solidity, where these things don’t happen. ‘But if a complaint was made, well, the teacher would be suspended immediately while the investigation took place. Then I guess it would go to court, and so on.’

  ‘And if he – if they – were found guilty?’

  ‘You’re probably not asking the right person, honey. You’d need to ask a judge, or a lawyer. I can tell you they’d go onto List 99 – so they wouldn’t be able to work with children again. Although I think you can appeal after a certain number of years.’

  The waiter is hovering impatiently, and we both just point at our usual choices on the menu: salmon farfalle for me, cannelloni for Laura.

  ‘Oh, and a bottle of Frascati, please,’ I say with a ‘what the hell’ smile at Laura.

  ‘You know you’re on your own with that, don’t you?’ she reminds me. ‘I’m not drinking.’

  ‘Oh shit, yes. Better make it a half bottle!’

  ‘Fee, I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ she waits for the waiter to move away, ‘but why do you want to know all of this?’

  I look at her. The friend I used to pass notes to, have sleepovers with, share our most private dreams and fears. It strikes me that the longer you’ve known someone, the further away you can drift, the more you have to hide. Maybe this is why people often find themselves baring their souls to total strangers on trains or planes. I want Laura to remember the uncorrupted me, the schoolgirl with all her wishes and fancies and wild opinions and as yet untested worldly cynicisms. I’ve always tried to show Laura only my best side, and this has meant concealing the rest.

  ‘It’s research,’ I say, ‘I can’t say too much about it, but … I’m writing a book.’

  ‘Oh, Fee, that’s fantastic!’ Her enthusiasm temporarily floors me; her eyes are shining, she actually looks as though she might cry. ‘I always knew you would do it. I think it’s great you’re using your talent.’

  ‘Well, thanks, but you know, early stages and all that. I don’t want to make a fuss about it.’

  ‘So what does Dave think about it?’

  The wine arrives just in time for me to take a deep breath and tell her we’re separated, the only scrap of truth in a stream of lies. I trot out the clichés: ‘I just need some space’, ‘we’ve drifted apart’ and, wide-eyed, she accepts them. She’s shocked, though: ‘of all people’, she keeps saying. It seems Dave and I had done a great job of convincing everyone around us, as well as ourselves, that we were a perfect couple.

  ‘If you ever need to talk about it, you know where I am.’

  ‘Do you know what, Lau? I really don’t want to talk about it. I’d much rather hear about you. How are things with Matt?’

  She suddenly looks panic-stricken.

  ‘God, you didn’t say anything to him when you saw him, did you? I mean, I’d hate him to think I was turning people against him, or something.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. It’s none of my business, I only care that you’re happy.’

  ‘Do you know what? I think it will be fine.’ That hand on the tummy again, like a reflex. ‘I know you’re not supposed to use a baby as a sticking plaster and all that, but … he’s been so sweet, and protective, since we found out I was pregnant.’ Her grin is wide, definite. ‘I think this will be just what he needs.’

  Responsibility, sleepless nights, staying in, a dwindling sex life: he’s going to love it, sounds right up Matt’s street. But whether it’s because I love
Laura and it’s what she needs to hear, or because of some impulse to defend Matt, or myself, I reach across the table, take her hand and say, ‘I think you’re right.’

  thirteen

  I pull up outside the house and I feel your presence in there before I even go in. I suddenly wish, long, for a home of my own again.

  When two people live together, they don’t create their own spaces within the one home; they share every corner, every square foot, every nook and cobweb and piece of furniture. They breathe the same air; one breathes in, and when they exhale, the other inhales it.

  The house I lived in alone, before I got married, is, in my memory, fresher, lighter. The space around me was mine. Not heavy with expectation. No words in the air, half-recalled arguments lingering like ghosts, no stale smell of bodies. My house was a place of thoughts, of quiet, except when I chose to bring noise in: music, friends, movies, chatter and the pop of the wine cork, the hiss of a joint being lit. Laughter.

  I want it back.

  I’m afraid of going inside and not knowing what to say. With Dave, I’ve had the kind of relationship where there were often silences. They were not bored silences, the silences of long-married couples who sit at pub tables with blank faces, as if they have long given up even trying to think of conversation. I worried occasionally that they might turn into them, but until recently they never did. They weren’t the awkward silences of acquaintances or people with secrets. They were the rarest silences: the kind you don’t mind hearing.

  But I always talked to you. I couldn’t bear for us to look at each other soundlessly: because that would only happen, surely, at the end.

  I’m not ready. That’s all that keeps going around my head. I’m not ready, I’m not ready. To confront you. To confront you, or confront It?

  I turn off the engine, ease back in my seat. I stare at the living room window, the open curtains. My hand rests on the car door handle, ready to open it if your face appears.

  I’m torn between order and chaos; between peace and drama.

  When I was a teenager, I fantasised constantly about falling pregnant and having to tell my parents. What would it be like? I envisioned wailing and screaming; maybe a single slap across the face. I imagined being thrown out, literally, onto the front street, in a scene where there was always rain or snow, their horrified faces at the window taking one last look then turning dramatically, haughtily, away. I saw myself giving birth secretly, bravely, in some backstreet room with a flickering light, to a beautiful dark-haired foundling boy, doomed to live a Dickensian life of squalor among thieves and addicts.

  While other teenagers probably fantasised about running away with their favourite pop star, these were the kinds of stories I invented for myself.

  When it happened, of course, it wasn’t quite like that.

  If I’m honest, there’s something I’ve always liked about my own reflection when my eyes are bright with tears, mascara streaked down my face. I like drama. Perhaps everyone does, secretly.

  I feel a nervousness that has been missing since those teenage years, and has been bubbling just below the surface since you reappeared. I look at my nails: bitten down, I don’t remember when. Perhaps on this drive home. A jitteriness in my legs and I know, when I speak, there’ll be a quaver in my voice. I consider how, in fact whether, to disguise these signs. Why are the symptoms of nervousness and dread so close to those of excitement?

  I know that once I get in the house I will be swept up in … in what exactly? Well, just in you. So I need to be clear on what to do before that happens.

  I could say nothing; carry on in our bubble and hope It goes away. Hope she goes away.

  I could start dropping her name into conversation, make a cough sound like ‘Alice’, watch your reaction.

  I could create a huge scene; shout and scream.

  I could leave, and leave a dramatic note.

  This is making me feel better. Because the thing is, although I like drama, even with the damage it causes, I also like order, and lists, and to be prepared for the possibilities.

  What will you do?

  1. You’ll tell me it isn’t true; this girl is a crackpot; reassure me. It will be over.

  2. You’ll admit it’s true; you didn’t know how to tell me; you’ll ask for my help; you’ll understand, of course, if I leave.

  I take a deep breath, lock the car, and somehow my legs carry me to the house.

  ‘Here she is,’ comes your voice, then here come your arms, your lips, ‘here’s my angel.’ And instantly I’m back in that place with no full stops, no pauses.

  Every time I see you, after a separation however brief, it’s like a surprise. It’s still a surprise to me that you’re here, that we’ve somehow ended up here, and I don’t know how or why it’s happened except that I’m sure there is a reason, whether via the machinations of a capricious God, or the movement of the spheres, there is a reason, a poetry and pattern behind it just out of sight, that maybe one day will be revealed, as though from behind a curtain (‘Ta-da!’ a voice off-stage will trumpet, and we’ll sigh and say ‘Oh, NOW I see …’), but for now we’ll just accept it and be carried by its current.

  In your arms, all my lists and order are meaningless. And most disconcertingly of all: my nervousness melts away.

  The other thing that surprises me is just you. Your face, your way of moving. Each time I see you, everything is familiar but always in some way new and better. I wonder, is this a pure kind of love? I’ve heard kind aunties say to nieces and nephews, with dewy-eyed wonderment (and total sincerity), ‘you get more beautiful every time I see you’ – and that’s how I feel about you. Not more beautiful exactly – even I can’t claim that’s an epithet that fits you – just better. Better than I remembered, better than the last time I looked.

  This is how addictions happen.

  Tonight there are secrets between us, and this in itself is magnetic.

  Knowing something about you, I feel a rare power. A tiny lift on my side of the scale.

  ‘You look gorgeous tonight,’ you say, and it’s not a platitude, you mean it. You bring me to the mirror, to show me.

  This is a favourite habit of yours: standing behind me, both of us looking at ourselves, and each other, in the mirror.

  You put your head on my shoulder so our faces are next to each other. You love this, I know, seeing us together, seeing us as the world sees us. There’s an odd sort of narcissism to us: we look for the similarities between us. Our skin is similar: fair but slightly sun-burnished. Your nose is more Roman, mine more snub. Your eyes, the colour of metal, reflect in mine. I wonder, not for the first time, what our children would look like. Count our imperfections, native or acquired: your crooked teeth, your scar. My dimples, my high forehead. I look young, though, next to you. You have thirteen years’ more lines, after all.

  In these moments I look better than when I’m alone; you know this. You like to show me the version of myself that you see.

  ‘These are the photographs I keep in here,’ you say quietly, tapping your temple, ‘for later, in case you … for when you’re gone.’ Then you make a ‘click, click’ sound, like a camera, and smile, and I remember the first time you made me look in a mirror like this, years ago, when everything was unfamiliar.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I murmur, but my heart is pounding.

  When there is something important to say, there is a line between before and after. Uttering the first words will take you over the line, where there’s no going back. Behind the line, you can orchestrate what happens; you can predict the rise and flow of conversations, of events. The world is known. Over the line is the unknown – it’s intoxicating, in its way – being about to take the first step, the veins thrill with adrenaline.

  In a sick way, watching your face, being with you tonight, playing at lovers, I want to enjoy this delicate moment before the other side of the scale comes crashing irrevocably down.

  Here we go again, I think: how strange
to be sitting next to someone in the ordinariness of an evening, with a whole interior world of thought moving and whirring behind the eyes. How quickly I’ve shifted, I think, from hiding from my husband, to hiding from you.

  ‘Is everything alright? You seem distracted.’

  ‘I’m alright. What about you?’ I try to keep my voice light. ‘Anything you want to tell me? Any news?’

  ‘Nope. I did a bit of gardening while you were out. It’s looking good. You should see my clematis, it’s really coming on. What did you do today?’

  ‘How come I always end up talking about myself and you never give anything away about you?’

  ‘Because you, my love, are far more interesting and enchanting than I am.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me anything?’

  You frown. ‘Some might call me a good listener.’

  ‘I call you evasive.’

  ‘You say tomato …’

  ‘Very funny.’ Your kisses on my throat almost prevent me from saying, ‘I mean it, I want to talk. Like we used to.’

  ‘So, talk.’ Kiss, kiss. Insistent. ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘No, about real things.’ I pull away; you look, not quite impatient, just fidgety; distracted, playful; with the bounce of a much younger man, a boy, even. A boy at Christmas momentarily bored of one present and waiting for the next to be opened. Staring at my neck, my shoulders, smiling, apparently fascinated.

  ‘I’m serious, listen to me,’ my turn to be insistent, batting you away as though swatting a fly, ‘we only ever tell stories, or gaze at each other in the mirror and congratulate ourselves on our wonderfulness,’ your giddy grin almost throwing me off-balance, here, ‘or make fun of other people. Why don’t you tell me something, for a change? Something about you, and what’s going on with you.’