After You (6 page)

And when it came down to it, what was the point in re-examining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking at a wound and refusing to let it heal. I knew what I had been part of. I knew what my role was. What was the point in going over and over it?

I wouldn’t come next week, I knew now. I would find an excuse for Dad.

I walked slowly across the car park, rummaging in my bag for my keys, telling myself it had at least meant that I hadn’t had to spend another evening alone in front of my television, dreading the passing of the twelve hours until I had to return to work.

‘His name wasn’t really Bill, right?’

Jake fell into step alongside me.

‘Nope.’

‘Daphne’s like a one-woman broadcasting corporation. She means well, but your personal story will be all over her social club before you can say Rodent Reincarnation.’

‘Thanks for that.’

He grinned at me, and nodded towards my Lurex skirt. ‘Nice threads, by the way. It’s a good look for a grief-counselling session.’ He stopped briefly to retie a shoelace.

I stopped with him. I hesitated, then said: ‘I’m sorry about your mum.’

His face was sombre. ‘You can’t say that. It’s like prison – you can’t ask someone what they’re in for.’

‘Really? Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t –’

‘I’m joking. See you next week.’

A man leaning against a motorbike lifted a hand in greeting. He stepped forward as Jake crossed the car park and enveloped him in a bear hug, kissing his cheek. I stopped to watch, mostly because it was rare to see a man hug his son like that in public, once they were over satchel-carrying age.

‘How was it?’

‘Okay. The usual.’ Jake gestured to me. ‘Oh, this is … Louisa. She’s new.’

The man squinted at me. He was tall and broad-shouldered. A nose that might once have been broken gave him the faintly bruising appearance of a former boxer.

I nodded a polite greeting. ‘It was nice to meet you, Jake.
Bye then.’ I lifted a hand, and began to make my way to my car. But as I passed the man he kept staring at me, and I felt myself colour under the intensity of his gaze. ‘You’re that girl,’ he said.

Oh, no
, I thought, slowing suddenly.
Not here too.

I stared at the ground for a moment and took a breath. Then I turned back to face them both. ‘Okay. As I’ve just made clear in the group, my friend made his own decisions. All I ever did was support them. Not that, if I’m honest, I really want to get into this right here and with a complete stranger.’

Jake’s father continued to squint at me. He lifted his hand to his head.

‘I understand that not everybody will get it. But that’s the way it was. I don’t feel I have to debate my choices. And I’m really tired and it’s been a bit of a day, and I think I’m going to go home now.’

He cocked his head to one side. And then he said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

I frowned.

‘The limp. I noticed you have a limp. You live near that massive new development, right? You’re the girl who fell off the roof. March. April.’

And suddenly I recognized him. ‘Oh – you were –’

‘The paramedic. We were the team who picked you up. I’d been wondering what happened to you.’

I almost buckled with relief. I let my gaze run over his face, his hair, his arms, suddenly recalling with Pavlovian accuracy his reassuring manner, the sound of the siren, the faint scent of lemons. And I let out a breath. ‘I’m good. Well. Not good exactly. I have a shot hip and a new boss who’s an utter arse and – you know – I’m at a grief-counselling club in a damp church hall with people who are just really, really …’

‘Sad,’ said Jake, helpfully.

‘The hip will get better. It’s plainly not hindering your dance career.’

My laugh emerged as a honk.

‘Oh. No. This is … The outfit is related to the boss who is an arse. Not my normal mode of dress. Anyway. Thank you. Wow …’ I put my hand to my head. ‘This is weird. You saved me.’

‘It’s good to see you. We don’t often get to see what happens afterwards.’

‘You did a great job. It was … Well, you were really kind. I remember that much.’

‘
De nada
.’

I stared at him.

‘
De nada
. Spanish. “It was nothing.” ’

‘Oh, okay, then. I take it all back. Thanks for nothing.’

He smiled and raised a paddle-sized hand.

Afterwards, I didn’t know what made me do it. ‘Hey.’

He looked back towards me. ‘It’s Sam, actually.’

‘Sam. I didn’t jump.’

‘Okay.’

‘No. Really. I mean, I know you’ve just seen me coming out of a grief-counselling group and everything but it’s – well, I just – I wouldn’t jump.’

He gave me a look that seemed to suggest he had seen and heard everything.

‘Good to know.’

We gazed at each other for a minute. Then he lifted his hand again. ‘Nice to see you, Louisa.’

He pulled on a helmet and Jake slid onto the bike behind him. I found myself watching as they pulled out of the car park. And because I was still watching I caught Jake’s exaggerated eye roll as he pulled on his own helmet. And then I remembered what he had said in the session.

The compulsive shagger.

‘Idiot,’ I told myself, and limped across the rest of the tarmac to where my car was boiling gently in the evening heat.

I lived on the edge of the City. In case I was in any doubt, across the road stood a huge office-block-sized crater, surrounded by a developer’s hoarding, upon which was written:
FARTHINGATE – WHERE THE CITY BEGINS
. We existed at the exact point where the glossy glass temples to finance butted up against the grubby old brick and sash-windows of curry shops and twenty-four-hour grocers, of stripper pubs and minicab offices that resolutely refused to die. My block sat among those architectural refuseniks, a lead-stained, warehouse-style building staring at the steady onslaught of glass and steel and wondering how long it could survive, perhaps rescued by a hipster juice bar or pop-up retail experience. I knew nobody except Samir who ran the convenience store and the woman in the bagel bakery, who smiled at me in greeting but didn’t seem to speak any English.

Mostly this anonymity suited me. I had come here, after all, to escape my history, from feeling as if everyone knew every thing there was to know about me. And the City had begun to alter me. I had come to know my little corner of it, its rhythms and its danger points. I learned that if you gave money to the drunk at the bus station he would come and sit outside your flat for the next eight weeks; that if I had to walk through the estate at night it was wise to do it with my keys lodged between my fingers; that if I was walking out to get a late-night bottle of wine it was probably better not to glance at the group of young men huddled outside Kebab Korner.
I was no longer disturbed by the persistent
whump whump whump
of the police helicopter overhead.

I could survive. Besides, I knew, more than anyone, that worse things could happen.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey, Lou. Can’t sleep again?’

‘It’s just gone ten o’clock here.’

‘So, what’s up?’

Nathan, Will’s former physio, had spent the last nine months working in New York for a middle-aged CEO with a Wall Street reputation, a four-storey townhouse and a muscular condition. Calling him in my sleepless small hours had become something of a habit. It was good to know there was someone who understood, out there in the dark, even if sometimes his news felt tinged with a series of small blows –
everyone else has moved on
.
Everyone else has achieved something.

‘So how’s the Big Apple?’

‘Not bad?’ His Antipodean drawl made every answer a question.

I lay down on the sofa, pushing my feet up on the armrest. ‘Yeah. That doesn’t tell me a whole lot.’

‘Okay. Well, got a pay rise, so that was cool. Booked myself a flight home in a couple of weeks to see the olds. So that’ll be good. They’re over the moon because my sister’s having a baby. Oh, and I met a really fit bird in a bar down on Sixth Avenue and we were getting on real well so I asked her out, and when I told her what I did, she said sorry but she only went out with guys who wore suits to work.’ He laughed.

I found I was smiling. ‘So scrubs don’t count?’

‘Apparently not. Though she did say she might have changed her mind if I was an actual doctor.’ He laughed again. Nathan was made of equanimity. ‘It’s cool. Girls like that get
all picky if you don’t take them to the right restaurants and stuff. Better to know sooner, right? How about you?’

I shrugged. ‘Getting there. Sort of.’

‘You still sleeping in his T-shirt?’

‘No. It stopped smelling of him. And it had started to get a bit unsavoury, if I’m honest. I washed it and I’ve packed it in tissue. But I’ve got his jumper for bad days.’

‘Good to have back-up.’

‘Oh, and I went to the grief-counselling group.’

‘How was it?’

‘Crap. I felt like a fraud.’

Nathan waited.

I shifted the pillow under my head. ‘Did I imagine it all, Nathan? Sometimes I think I’ve made what happened between Will and me so much bigger in my head. Like how can I have loved someone that much in such a short time? And all these things I think about the two of us – did we actually feel what I remember? The further we get from it, the more those six months just seems like this weird … dream.’

There was a tiny pause before Nathan responded. ‘You didn’t imagine it, mate.’

I rubbed my eyes. ‘Am I the only one? Still missing him?’

Another short silence.

‘Nah. He was a good bloke. The best.’

That was one of the things I liked about Nathan. He didn’t mind a lengthy phone silence. I finally sat up and blew my nose. ‘Anyway. I don’t think I’ll go back. I’m not sure it’s my thing.’

‘Give it a go, Lou. You can’t judge anything from one session.’

‘You sound like my dad.’

‘Well, he always was a sensible fella.’

I started at the sound of the doorbell. Nobody ever rang my doorbell, aside from Mrs Nellis in flat twelve, when the
postman had accidentally swapped our mail. I doubted she was up at this hour. And I certainly was not in receipt of her
Elizabethan Doll
partwork magazine.

It rang again. A third time, shrill and insistent.

‘I’ve got to go. Someone’s at the door.’

‘Keep your pecker up, mate. You’ll be okay.’

I put the phone down and stood up warily. I had no friends nearby. I hadn’t worked out how you actually made them when you moved to a new area and spent most of your upright hours working. And if my parents had decided to stage an intervention and bring me back to Stortfold, they would have organized it between rush-hours as neither of them liked driving in the dark.

I waited, wondering if whoever it was would simply realize their mistake and go away. But it rang again, jarring and endless, as if they were now leaning against the bell.

I got up and walked to the door. ‘Who is it?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

A girl’s voice. I peered through the spy-hole. She was looking down at her feet, so I could only make out long chestnut hair, an oversized bomber jacket. She swayed slightly, rubbed at her nose. Drunk?

‘I think you have the wrong flat.’

‘Are you Louisa Clark?’

I paused. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘I need to talk to you. Can you just open the door?’

‘It’s almost half past ten at night.’

‘Yeah. That’s why I’d rather not be standing here in your corridor.’

I had lived there long enough to know not to open my door to strangers. In that area of town it was not unusual to get the odd junkie ringing bells speculatively in the hope of cash. But this was a well-spoken girl. And young. Too young to be one
of the journalists who had briefly fixated on the story of the handsome former whizz-kid who had decided to end his life. Too young to be out this late? I angled my head, trying to see if there was anyone else in the corridor. It appeared to be empty. ‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’

‘Not out here, no.’

I opened the door to the length of the safety chain, so that we were eye to eye. ‘You’re going to have to give me more than that.’

She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, the dewy plumpness of youth still visible in her cheeks. Her hair long and lustrous. Long skinny legs in tight black jeans. Flicky eyeliner, in a pretty face. ‘So … who did you say you were?’ I asked.

‘Lily. Lily Houghton-Miller. Look,’ she said, and lifted her chin an inch, ‘I need to talk to you about my father.’

‘I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know anyone called Houghton-Miller. There must be another Louisa Clark you’ve confused me with.’

I made to shut the door, but she had wedged the toe of her shoe in it. I looked down at it, and slowly back up at her.

‘Not
his
name,’ she said, as though I was stupid. And when she spoke, her eyes were both fierce and searching. ‘His name is Will Traynor.’

Lily Houghton-Miller stood in the middle of my living room and surveyed me with the detached interest of a scientist gazing at a new variety of manure-based invertebrate. ‘Wow. What are you wearing?’

‘I – I work in an Irish pub.’

‘Pole dancing?’ Having apparently lost interest in me, she pivoted slowly, gazing at the room. ‘This is where you actually live? Where’s your furniture?’

‘I just moved in.’

‘One sofa, one television, two boxes of books?’ She nodded towards the chair on which I sat, my breathing still unbalanced, trying to make any kind of sense out of what she had just told me.

I stood up. ‘I’m going to get a drink. Would you like something?’

‘I’ll have a Coke. Unless you’ve got wine.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I don’t understand …’ I went behind the kitchen counter. ‘Will didn’t have children. I would have known.’ I frowned at her, suddenly suspicious. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘A joke?’

‘Will and I talked … a lot. He would have told me.’

‘Yeah. Well, turns out he didn’t. And I need to talk about him to someone who is not going to totally freak out every time I even mention his name, like the rest of my family.’

She picked up the card from my mother and put it down again. ‘I’m hardly going to say it as a
joke
. I mean, yeah. My real dad, some sad bloke in a wheelchair. Like
that
’s funny.’

I handed her a glass of water. ‘But who … who is your family? I mean, who is your mother?’

‘Have you got any cigarettes?’ She had started pacing around the room, touching things, picking up the few belongings I had and putting them down. When I shook my head, she said, ‘My mother is called Tanya. Tanya Miller. She’s married to my stepdad, who is called Francis Stupid Fuckface Houghton.’

‘Nice name.’

She put down the water and pulled a packet of cigarettes from her bomber jacket and lit one. I was going to say she couldn’t smoke in my home, but I was too taken aback, so I simply walked over to the window and opened it.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I could maybe see little hints of Will. It was in her blue eyes, that vaguely caramel colouring. It was in the way she tilted her chin slightly before she spoke, her unblinking stare. Or was I seeing what I wanted to see? She gazed out of the window at the street below.

‘Lily, before we go on there’s something I need to –’

‘I know he’s dead,’ she said. She inhaled sharply and blew the smoke into the centre of the room. ‘I mean, that was how I found out. There was some documentary on television about assisted suicide and they mentioned his name and Mum totally freaked out for no reason and ran to the bathroom and Fuckface went after her so obviously I listened outside. And she was in total shock because she hadn’t even known that he’d ended up in a wheelchair. I heard the whole thing. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know Fuckface wasn’t my real dad. It’s just that my mum only ever said my real dad was an asshole who didn’t want to know me.’

‘Will wasn’t an asshole.’

She shrugged. ‘He sounded like one. But, anyway, when I tried to ask her questions she just started totally flipping out and said that I knew everything about him that I needed to know and Fuckface Francis had been a better dad to me than Will Traynor ever would have been and I really should leave it alone.’

I sipped my water. I had never wanted a glass of wine more. ‘So what did you do?’

She took another drag of her cigarette. ‘I Googled him, of course. And I found you.’

I needed to be alone to digest what she had told me. It was too overwhelming. I didn’t know what to make of the spiky girl, who walked around my living room, making the air around her crackle.

‘So did he not say anything about me
at all?
’

I was staring at her shoes: ballerina pumps, heavily scuffed as if they had spent too much time shuffling around London streets. I felt as if I was being reeled in. ‘How old are you, Lily?’

‘Sixteen. Do I at least look like him? I saw a picture on Google images, but I was thinking maybe you had a photograph.’ She gazed around the living room. ‘Are all your photographs in boxes?’

She eyed the cardboard crates in the corner, and I wondered whether she would actually open them and start going through them. I was pretty sure the one she was about to go into contained Will’s jumper. And I felt a sudden panic. ‘Um. Lily. This is all … quite a lot to take in. And if you are who you say you are, then we – we do have a lot to discuss. But it’s nearly eleven o’clock, and I’m not sure this is the time to start. Where do you live?’

‘St John’s Wood.’

‘Well. Uh. Your parents are going to be wondering where you are. Why don’t I give you my number and we –’

‘I can’t go
home
.’ She faced the window, flicked the ash out with a practised finger. ‘Strictly speaking, I’m not even meant to be here. I’m meant to be at school. Weekly boarding. They’ll all be freaking out now because I’m not there.’ She pulled out her phone, as an afterthought, and grimaced at whatever she saw on its screen, then shoved it back in her pocket.

‘Well, I’m … not sure what I can do other than –’

‘I thought maybe I could stay here? Just tonight? And then you could tell me some more stuff about him?’

‘Stay
here
? No. No. I’m sorry, you can’t. I don’t know you.’

‘But you did know my dad. Did you say you think he didn’t actually know about me?’

‘You need to go home. Look, let’s call your parents. They can come and collect you. Let’s do that and I –’

She stared at me. ‘I thought you’d help me.’

‘I will help you, Lily. But this isn’t the way to –’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I – I have no idea what to –’

‘You don’t want to help. You don’t want to do anything. What have you actually told me about my dad? Nothing. How have you actually helped? You haven’t. Thanks.’

‘Hold on! That’s not fair – we’ve only just –’

But the girl flicked her cigarette butt out of the window and turned to walk past me out of the room.

‘What? Where are you going?’

‘Oh, what do
you
care?’ she said, and before I could say anything more, the front door had slammed and she was gone.

I sat very still on my sofa, trying to digest what had just happened for the best part of an hour, Lily’s voice ringing in my ears. Had I heard her correctly? I went over and over what she had told me, trying to recall it through the buzz in my ears.