Apple Tree Yard (24 page)

My son did not text me. My son knew that if he texted me, I would text back asking what time he would arrive, if he would be hungry, how long he would be staying…

So Guy texts back.
Great. See you then
. Then he sits me down and gives me a long list of things I must not ask our son about. I must not ask him where he is living at the moment. I must not ask him if he has a girlfriend. I must not ask if he is taking medication or rehearsing with a band or looking for a job. I must not say, in that significant way that I do, ‘And… how are you?’

I stay at home all day on the Friday, cooking a casserole and cleaning the house. At ten o’clock that night, with no sign of our son, Guy insists we eat the casserole rather than saving it until the next day, then go to bed.

On the Saturday, at around three o’clock, the doorbell goes and I stay upstairs and let Guy answer. He will do it much better than me.

My son. I hear him downstairs, in my house – my son, the voice I know so well I could imitate it, the
yeahs
and
sures
, the deep scratchiness of it. I force myself to walk downstairs slowly. ‘Hi…’ I say, as I wander down to greet him.

He fills the hall, my boy. He has inherited his father’s height and bulk, the slightly turned-in curve of his shoulders. He is wearing jeans and trainers and a green jacket with some faux-military trimmings. At the sight of him I am awash with love, and reminded, with a pain like a shaft of light, just how many young women would love him too, if he were open to being loved. ‘You know nothing,’ he said to me once, on a visit a few years ago when I tried to talk about it, about how much love was out there. ‘Nothing.’ Later, Guy says there was a girl, after all, who had told Adam that she had aborted his baby but Adam didn’t know if the story was true.

He has stubble on his face – it suits him – and his thick brown hair looks untrimmed but in a trendy, deliberately dishevelled kind of way. He hates it when I stare at him so I am careful to glance at him briefly, enough to take him in, then look at my feet as I descend the stairs. Has he lost weight, or put it on? Does his gaze have that dull, off-centre look that it did when he was taking Carbatrol? It’s hard for me to look at him without making a diagnosis; or without the emotion showing on my face, how much I miss him, how desperate I am. So despite the fact that I haven’t set eyes on my own son for nearly two years, I am careful to avoid his gaze as I wander down the stairs towards him.

‘Hi Mum,’ he says, and I can hear from the drift of his voice that he has turned towards the kitchen.

*

Adam is home for four days. He sleeps a lot. At night, in our bedroom, Guy and I have whispered conversations where he hissingly demands that I do not ask Adam a
single
question, not one. I think he’s overreacting. Adam seems pretty good to me, good in comparison with what we have faced before: I think he could manage a little light discussion, but I bow to Guy’s insistence.

The smell of my son in my house, the shape and shade of him moving from room to room: that is enough. I don’t work while he is here, although I pretend to, up at my computer in my study. I cannot bear the thought of leaving the house while he is around but after four days, I relax a little and decide to go to the supermarket, leaving Guy and Adam sitting on the back doorstep in some damp sunlight drinking tea in companionable silence while Adam smokes a roll-up. I think, as I drive there, how it is a good idea to give them some time alone together. Maybe Guy will be able to glean some information that Adam wouldn’t divulge if I was in the house.

I push my trolley up and down the aisles filling it with food that Adam might like, not the stuff he liked as a child but the stuff I am guessing he might like now, seeing as I’m not allowed to ask; veggie burgers and chorizo, fresh pasta and oven chips – my choices are eclectic. I buy a huge amount even though we still have a stack of food in the house from the shop I did before he came. Queuing to pay, I throw in a bumper family pack of Liquorice Allsorts.

I am only out of the house for an hour, but I know as soon as I step in the front door that Adam has gone. There is an Adam-absence in the air, in the quality of the light, the not-quite silence as Guy’s footsteps shuffle across the hall to greet me, to take the plastic bags from my grasp. Adam was waiting for me to be out of the house so he could leave. He wanted to avoid the conversation that might happen when he bid me goodbye.

I stare at Guy accusingly. The plastic bags are overfilled, heavy, the handles stretched into wires that cut my fingers. Guy has to ease them from my grasp. ‘I tried,’ he says gently.

*

My son’s visit and departure make everything worse again. I stay busy, and the following week, I begin the maternity cover. This would help if it weren’t for the commuting, when I am forced to think. I think about my son, about how I might not see him again for another two years, how I have failed at the only relationship with a man that really matters. I think about Guy, about how self-contained he is, how it is probably my fault, that I have allowed that to happen because it suited me too. I think about you, and gradually, inevitably, my thoughts turn bitter. Why have you given me up so easily? Why did you take my text at face value? I might be wrong of course. You might be missing me desperately, holding yourself back from calling because you think it is best for me. You could be thinking about me all the time. Or you could be completely careless of how I am. You could be absorbed in a new love by now. I imagine the many different sorts of women you could be involved with. I imagine them one by one.

*

Then, finally, it happens, and when it happens the worst thing about it is its inevitability, as if I had been waiting for it, not wondering if but merely how and when.

Ten minutes’ walk from where we live, just before the main shopping precinct, there is a hairdressing salon run by a very small, very beautiful Italian man. It is more of a street-style salon than you would expect a woman of my age to patronise but, that, of course, is why I go. I have my highlights, lowlights, whatever they are, re-done about once every two or three months. The Italian, Bernardo, talks to me about Italy while he gives me a scalp massage. He tells me how in Italy, all the women want to look the same. That’s why he came to London, because every woman is different. He employs Japanese and Polish and Korean stylists, and another Italian man who makes eyes at every customer, male or female, whose open gaze demands to be loved. I think he might be going out with one of the Korean women but I’m not sure. I enjoy the soap opera of this place; I like observing the intricacies of the relationships the staff have with their customers and with each other. I like listening in on other haircuts. I look at my fellow customers’ reflections as I sit with folded foil in my hair – their reflections in the mirrors in front of them reflected in the mirror in front of me. I am never sure whether they can see me watching them or not.

I am sitting in the chair being finished off. Bernardo has done the blow-dry – he is snipping at the odd millimetre, here and there, taking his time, just to make me feel a bit more special than his other customers. He is asking me whether or not he should have a coffee machine in his shop and I am telling him not to bother. He has just stood back to admire his work and I am turning my head slightly, with a little shake to see how the layers fall, when I glance out of the window of the salon and I see that, standing in the street on the other side of the glass panel, looking in, is George Craddock. He is watching me through the glass panel. He smiles.

I hide in the toilet of the hairdressing salon for nearly fifteen minutes. Outside, Bernardo must be wondering if something is wrong. Maybe I don’t like the cut after all, or I am ill. I could call Guy and ask him to come and get me but I would have to pretend I
was
ill, and then keep that pretence up, and my behaviour recently has been odd enough as it is. And if I call Guy and he comes and George Craddock is still out there, then he will see Guy, know what he looks like, if he doesn’t already, be close to him, close to enough to say, perhaps, ‘Hello there, George Craddock, I work with Yvonne. I don’t believe we’ve met.’

I can’t call you. It’s a Saturday. And anyway, I can’t call you.

Eventually, I know that my only option is to leave, to hold my head up, however sick I feel inside, and walk out of the salon.

*

When I get outside, I glance up and down the road, but there is no sign of Craddock. He could be watching me, of course, but somehow I feel that, if he was still around, he would have approached me immediately – it’s an ugly coincidence, I say to myself, that is all. The chain stores are close by: he could just be out shopping. I will have to use a different hairdressing salon from now on. Bernardo will wonder, when I don’t come back.

I turn left and stride down the street, away from home, towards the big shops, vigorously, not looking around. If he is following me, then I need to know for sure. As I pass the entrance to Marks & Spencer, I turn suddenly and stride through the automatic door. Without looking behind me, I go straight to the escalator up to the first floor – it’s one of those escalators that speeds up when you step on it, which is something I normally find disconcerting but at this particular moment feels helpful. On the first floor, I weave amongst the Saturday shoppers through to the ladies’ lingerie department. He can’t follow me in here without it being obvious. Partially hidden behind a row of sports underwear and minimising bras, I turn to watch the top of the escalator. For several minutes, my heart crashes against my chest as I wait for the top of his head, then his face – the face that was in my face – to sail upwards into view.

It doesn’t happen. After ten minutes or so, I turn away, and begin a slow trail around the department, picking things up, putting them down. I will browse for a bit before I leave, I think, just to be sure. I have just turned to go when I feel the phone in my pocket buzz. I consider ignoring it but still extract it from the inside pocket of my jacket. There is a text from number I don’t recognise. It says,
Great haircut.
I delete it.

*

After that, there is a flurry of incidents. I begin to get
blocked missed call
s on my regular phone almost every day – sometimes a dozen in a row, sometimes at intervals, sometimes nothing for hours. Then it all goes quiet for a week. Then it starts again. At work, I get another email from him, a casual one copied into five other people, including Sandra, suggesting we all meet for a night in the pub to brainstorm about the future of the MA programme. At first, I am baffled because I have blocked Craddock’s work email address, but then I check and see that he has sent it from a home account. Everyone hits ‘reply to all’ and two out of the five people think it’s a great idea, two will come if they can. Sandra’s reply reminds George and everyone else that I’m not doing the external examining any more but says she hopes I’ll come anyway to give everyone the benefit of my wisdom. I don’t respond. I block his home email too.

*

A week later, I get a text while I’m walking back to my house from the Tube. It’s from my cousin Marion who lives in Bournemouth. I’m only in touch with her occasionally. The text says, ‘You’d better check your email, you’re spamming everyone! Hope you’re well. Love Marion x’ I get home and find that I am locked out of the Hotmail account I set up when I first went freelance because it has been hacked and is sending everyone in my address book links to pornographic websites. My Google account is more recent, and there are several emails in it from people who have both addresses, letting me know it is happening. Some of them are understanding, some indignant, as if I have deliberately, stupidly, sent everyone a corrupt link. It takes me three days to clear up the mess.

Then it stops.

The maternity cover post keeps me busy: not the work itself, which I know well, but reacquainting myself with the processes of being full-time, the different rhythm of my week, the different sort of tiredness I feel – this all provides distraction. A month into the post, Sandra sends me a confirmation of the time and date of the pub get-together. I imagine George Craddock standing in her office and saying, ‘By the way, why don’t you give Yvonne a nudge about the pub? Even if she’s not examining for us it would be great to have her input.’ I send her a quick one back.
Sorry, up to my eyeballs! Talk soon. Yx
Under normal circumstances, I would have added,
Say hi to everyone from me
. I imagine how guilelessly George Craddock might say to Sandra, ‘That’s a shame, we’ll have to get her out for a drink another time.’ There are a hundred different innocent ways he might make try to make contact with me. I must have a strategy prepared for each.

How I feel, during this time, swings wildly from rank fear and paranoia to a kind of determined pragmatism. Sometimes I think I am in danger – he knows by now that I’m not going to the police, for reasons of my own, and if I’m not prepared to report one attack, what’s to prevent him from assuming I won’t report another? At other times, I say to myself, he’s a functioning member of society, with things to lose, presumably, a home, a family. He isn’t interested in me. He is just trying to prove to himself that he didn’t do anything really wrong, that he can contact me and I will go along with it and then that will reinforce his conviction that his behaviour was acceptable. Perhaps he said to himself the next day,
Might have gone a bit far last night
but she was up for it.
Perhaps he thought, when he emailed or texted me, that it was a bit of joke.
This will give her a shock!
He’s a university lecturer. He holds down a job, operates on a day-to-day basis, presumably doesn’t have a criminal record. He would never dream of following a woman down a dark alley at night and dragging her into the bushes – well he might dream of it, fantasise about it, but he would never actually do it. I think about his students. I wonder if they are at risk, but somehow I doubt it. Harassing students gets picked up on pretty quickly these days, in most institutions at least. He’s not stupid. And anyway, I think what he likes best is humiliating a woman who regards herself as above him. It comes to me, this thought, as I am at my desk – that I did regard myself as above him, that that was probably obvious to him.