Exposure (39 page)

She had longed for a pretty little daughter with whom she could re-enter the fantasy world of her own childhood. But Sophie was not interested. And it was just plain humiliating to be grimaced at by a six-year-old when you suggested dressing up as a lovely Fairy Queen for the square garden fancy-dress party.

The party—or one of them, since it was an annual event—stood out in the story of herself and Sophie. It was put on to raise funds for the upkeep of the pretty communal garden in the centre of Burton Square and it was held in the summer, when the garden was heavy with magnolia. All the neighbours contributed party food and helped with balloons and tables and streamers. All the children had pretty hand-made costumes. Hiring was seen as terribly vulgar. It was an event fraught with feminine rivalry. Some of the women began work on the costumes months in advance.

Sophie, after much argument about whether she would go at all, had insisted on going as a judge. She was a sallow, thin litde figure in her father's wig and gown. She went about thumping her toy hammer by the other children's plates, making the crisps jump. One little boy burst into tears and Rosalind noticed Sophie being spoken to on several occasions by James Wardell from number thirty-eight.

She had rarely felt more disappointed in her daughter than she did that afternoon. She stood behind her big smile, holding a bucket, collecting the children's five-pence pieces by the coconut shy. She could not help seeing the other mothers stare at her weird little daughter as they arrived and released their Cinderellas and Little Red Riding Hoods into the sunshine in a shimmer of frills and ringlets. At least Luke looked perfect as a sailor-boy, she told herself.

But as wonderful as Luke was—and he was wonderful—she had always wanted a wonderful daughter. And instead she had Sophie. In her darkest moments—when Sophie had overdosed on sleeping pills and been taken into hospital aged fifteen—this was what Rosalind allowed herself to think. It was simply appalling for a mother to think something like that! It had made her feel so guilty that she stayed at the hospital all night, sitting on a chair by the bed, even though the doctors said Sophie was in no danger and would not wake up until morning.

It was then that she gave up on her dream daughter. She grieved for this beautiful figment in instalments—during the arguments or the visits to the anorexia clinic, where she and Alistair sat with their teacups surrounded by all the weirdly thin girls, angular as bicycles beneath their clothes.

Her own mother had come to visit the hospital the day after that first overdose and looked despairingly at Rosalind, her expression not without a tinge of judgement. Rosalind had wanted to remind her that Suzannah had been a total mess for years, but she would never have spoken to her mother in that way.

Did her mother
ever
look at her without a tinge of judgement? Rosalind had spent her life attempting to meet the woman's standards and it had never done any good; in fact, there seemed to be far more appeal, far more romance in Suzannah's imperfections. Suzannah had got away with everything. She had once stolen one of their mother's brooches and sold the diamond out of it. Shortly after the theft was discovered, Suzannah had overshadowed the incident, with what Rosalind considered to be chilling expertise, by bringing home the heir to the Ellerson sugar fortune for Sunday lunch. Her sister had bought herself a whole new wardrobe with the money from the diamond. She made no secret of her purchases. But that autumn Hugo Ellerson was regularly to be seen in their hall, helping Suzannah on with her new fox-collared coat or waiting while she tightened her new pearl earrings in the mirror. Drunk on grand visions of the future, in which her father went shooting with Ralph Ellerson and her mother sat chatting in the drawing room at Nordean, Rosalind's parents stood by with indulgent smiles. It had shocked her most deeply of all to discover that her father made an insurance claim for the brooch, saying it had been lost.

What a lot of secrecy family life involved. What a lot of mean, filthy secrets, she thought, pushing away her plate so hard that she splashed the water out of her glass. And then she remembered something Sophie had said when the anorexia was really bad and she had sat before an untouched plate, like the spectre at the feast, at every family meal. It had been raining hard, genuinely battering on the windows. They had just sat down to supper and Alistair had said he couldn't make it to something Rosalind had hoped he would come to. As far as she could recall, it had been the Holland Park Mothers Against Vandalism meeting, which it had been her turn to arrange. She had known perfectly well that Alistair would be bored stiff by the event and that he loathed all the women involved and thought they were 'silly twitterers'. But she had wanted him to be there as many of the other husbands were going and it would look odd if he wasn't.

'Oh, I'm sorry, darling, I've got a big case on next week. I'll simply have to stay on at chambers on Tuesday evening,' he said.

'Really? Oh, well.'

'Yes, it's a big case,' he said.

'I'm sure. Never mind.'

'What a bore.'

'Gosh, no—really.
Really.
Not important.'

'This is wonderful partridge, by the way, darling. A real triumph.'

Sophie snorted. 'Wonderful
partridge?'

They all looked at her leaning back against the wall, behind her untouched plate. She was doing 'the face', a mixture of disgust and despair. It signified a point of no return.

'Do you
know
how much you patronize her, Dad? Why can't you just go to her fucking mothers' meeting? She goes to your boring legal dinners all the fucking time. How often does she ask you to do anything for her? Name one thing in the last ten years and I'll give you all my money. No, tell you what, I'll give you all my
cigarettes.'

Rosalind put some more peas on to Sophie's plate and said, 'Darling, Daddy works incredibly hard for us
all the time
so we can have everything we need. And you aren't meant to be smoking, Sophie. We agreed.'

' You
agreed. I like smoking. And, no, Dad works incredibly hard because he
loves
it—because it's what he
enjoys
doing. Because it's a way of
avoiding time at home or doing anything he doesn't want to do.
Isn't that true, Dad?'

Sophie stood up and looked straight into her father's face. (Wonderful, Rosalind thought. She won't eat anything now.) Alistair looked back, his mouth twisted into a crooked smile or frown, which was strangely embarrassing to stare at, like a facial spasm on a stroke victim.

'Isn't
it, Dad?' Sophie shouted. 'Why couldn't you just go to one little meeting for her—make her feel
respected
for once?' She turned to her mother. 'But, Mum, what I
really, really
don't understand is, why do
you
take this shit?'

Rosalind found herself saying pleadingly, 'Sophie, everything's fine. Please sit down. Please. Everything's all right.'

Sophie laughed. 'You and Dad want to know why I can't eat? Big fucking mystery! This is a fucking
hunger strike
against
lies.'

'Hey,' Luke said, leaning back in his chair in an attitude of paternal authority, 'calm down, Soph, for goodness' sake.'

Sophie threw her water in his face and left the room.

Now Rosalind looked at the tuna salad she had pushed away from her across the table. A hunger strike against lies. She could actually understand that. Had she always understood more than she had allowed Sophie to know? How terrible! Why on earth would that be?

Or was this bizarre self-accusation unfair? After all, Sophie had always given her reason to doubt her insights from the moment she began to trust them. Because, as angry as Sophie could be, the day after an incident like the one over her speech at the Holland Park Mothers, she and Alistair would often behave as if nothing had happened. They would sit in the drawing room discussing newspaper articles in raptures of mutual appreciation.

Just as Suzannah had always been forgiven, always remained their father's favourite, whatever wine she opened or whatever time she came in, Sophie was forgiven by Alistair. Their reunions were obscurely embarrassing to Luke and Rosalind, who stood up in silence and cleared the plates while father and daughter played word-association games in French or Latin and giggled at their private jokes. Luke and Rosalind did not look at each other while this sort of thing went on in the background.

Rosalind's daughter was a wild and frightening mystery to her. One thing she felt passionately, though, was that, unlike her, Sophie did not hide things from herself. It was a painful way to live—there was no doubt about it. You could not see Sophie, with her emaciated arms and legs and the scars on her forearms, and say it was not a painful way to live.

Suddenly Rosalind was proud of her daughter in a way she could not have expressed—in a way that deeply confused her, given all the anxiety Sophie had caused. Her cheeks had flushed and she looked at the letter again:

 

I'm writing to you from Heathrow airport.

 

Her heart raced with excitement. Then she read the end:

 

I'm not sure why I feel this so strongly, but I know you'll understand.

 

Why would she understand? Rosalind felt completely unworthy of this trust and her fist clenched in exasperation.

She was the least adventurous person who had ever lived. Where had she ever been, other than on family ski-trips with her parents or family holidays with Alistair? She had only ever planned one journey without a family, without a man. It had been known as the Big Italian Adventure. She remembered this and cringed internally. It was poignant, but it was also embarrassing.

She and Lara Siskin had planned the trip for months when they were both twenty and doing their secretarial courses in Chelsea. Alistair had been doing his law-conversion exams at the time and they saw each other rarely. She did not know that he could not afford to take her out to dinner and that his only option was to hope to be invited to the same drinks parties as she was. She imagined he took out other girls—clever Girton or St Hilda's girls, unlike her in every way. It was lovely to see him by chance at a party, though. She had told herself she must get on and forget the extravagant promise of that May Ball, over a year ago now. And, anyway, she couldn't help thinking it probably was more interesting to be dreaming about travel rather than weddings, as her friends always were.

But in spite of these independent tendencies, love was still the incentive behind all action. She and Lara had bought a map of Italy and a guidebook, which they took out every day over lunch, saying things like, 'Well, I think some dashing Italian will ask you to marry him on the Spanish Steps, which is where Keats died in 1821.'

Then the other one would grab the book and flick through the pages, 'Well, I think you'll fall in love with a vineyard owner's eldest son in Montepul–Montepulciano.'

Lara would giggle wickedly. 'You'd better not say yes if it's you on the Spanish Steps, Roz, no matter how dark and handsome he is, or someone's heart will be broken.'

'Oh, what are you talking about?'

Lara made a face: pompous, self-conscious, lovestruck. It was Alistair to a T.

'Lara. Stop it.'

'Well, he's mad about you. Everyone says so. Philip says he nearly
faints
if someone mentions your name.'

'I don't know him that well,' Rosalind said, biting her lip to suppress the smile of pride—even if she didn't think it was true, it was nice to be thought of by her friends as an object of someone's desire. But she could not quell her natural honesty and modesty for long. 'Really, Lara, it's not as if he's endlessly taking me out to dinner or anything.'

'Who knows what goes on in men's minds?' Lara said, sighing like a woman who has reconciled herself to much disappointment. In fact, she had never had a boyfriend. 'Anyway, Roz,' she said, 'there's lots of time for getting married, isn't there? You aren't on the shelf till you're twenty-five.'

They took Italian lessons on Tuesday and Thursday evenings with an enormously fat woman named Elena Forli whose house smelt mouthwateringly of fresh pastry and icing sugar and vanilla. Signora Forli had faintly alarming baby blue- and pink-hued pictures of Jesus all over her walls and He smiled down at Lara and Rosalind like a patient nanny as they struggled with the past perfect and licked their lips.

During their dull shorthand lessons, they hid their Italian grammar books just beneath the desk, smiling conspiratorially at each other.
was
'Andiamo in Italia
, which was

'We are going to Italy.'

Lara made pasta out of flour and eggs and they ate it rever-ently, even though it was revoltingly overcooked. Was this slimy stuff what the Italians were famous for, they wondered. It was all part of the mystery of adult life, of a piece with the thrilling uneasiness that came of imitating grown-up talk at their parents' dinner parties. There was a distinct sensation of fraudulence, and eye-contact with each other at the wrong moment might have blown their adult personae apart in an avalanche of stifled giggles. They solemnly avoided this eventuality. Each secretly vowed to pretend to like tagliatelle, almost as if this constituted a rite of passage in itself.