Her Living Image (8 page)

Carolyn nodded but she seemed to have lost interest already.

“How d’you feel?”

“OK,” she said quickly.

“Do you –” [img_p63]They both stopped.

“Can I –” [img_p63]

Clare smiled. “Go on.”

“Can I see my room please?”

“Yes – yes, OK. Now?”

“Yes, please.”

Clare got up and went to the door. She noticed that Caro’s coffee was untouched. “Don’t you want that? It’ll warm you up.”

Carolyn picked it up unsteadily, slopping a pool of coffee across the table.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, and put the mug down. Clare waited, but Carolyn did not pick it up again.

She seemed pleased with the room. As Clare went out Carolyn quickly and unexpectedly closed the door behind her and said “Thank you,” as if she’d been shown her hotel room by a
maid.

And there she stayed. When they asked her down for meals she didn’t come. Clare took snacks up to her – poached eggs, milky drinks – thinking she was probably exhausted by the
change, and needed a couple of days in bed to recover. She looked shocking: absolutely white, with huge purple bags under her eyes. She said nothing, and replied to questions monosyllabically or
not at all. It was impossible to find any pretext for remaining in her company. She very obviously wanted to be left alone.

But after a few days Clare began to worry. Carolyn looked no better. Sue (who was at home most of the day) confirmed her suspicion that Carolyn never came out of her room. She was hardly eating
anything. Bryony attacked on the third night.

“What are you going to do about her?”

“Caro?”

“This is a communal house. It’s ridiculous, we can’t have someone like that here. No wonder you didn’t bother to ask us, you know what we’d have said. We have to
live with her as well as you. She’s hopeless – she doesn’t do anything. She doesn’t speak to anyone. She can’t take a share in child-care. She’s a nervous wreck.
Didn’t you ask her anything before she came? Didn’t you tell her it was a shared house?”

Bryony, on occasions like this, was always self-righteous: the problem and answers were obvious, why hadn’t she been consulted?

“For God’s sake, the girl’s ill. She’s just come out of hospital.”

“Well it’s deeply wonderful of you to offer this as a convalescent home – but you’ve got no right to do it without consulting me and Sue. You’re not the only
person who lives here. Have you considered the kids? Has it occurred to you that she might disturb or upset them? She doesn’t even bring her dirty cups down. Does she think it’s a
hotel? Why doesn’t she go home to her Mum?”

Clare did think it odd that Carolyn’s Mum hadn’t been. Ironic that that was originally the reason she’d hesitated to invite Carolyn: fear of her Mum hovering round the house
all the time. She went up and knocked on Caro’s door. There was no reply. She looked at her watch, it was nearly ten o’clock. Would she be asleep already? Clare opened the door quietly
and looked in. Carolyn was sitting in the dark looking out the window.

“Shall I put the light on?”

She didn’t reply. Clare switched it on. The room looked uninhabited.

“You all right?”

Carolyn nodded.

“Why don’t you unpack? D’you want some help?”

Carolyn shook her head.

“Caro, does your Mum know where you are?”

“No.”

Despite herself, Clare was shocked. “Where does she think you are?”

“I told her I was coming here. But I didn’t know the address.”

Instinctively, Clare glanced out of the window. It was amazing they hadn’t been invaded by detectives and policemen already. Carolyn’s Mum wouldn’t leave a stone unturned.
“Look, shall I tell her? Shall I ring her up for you?”

“No.” The voice was the same tight voice that had told Clare the hospital ceiling was coming down.

“Can I – why don’t –” Clare stopped. “She’ll be terribly worried – frantic.”

Carolyn continued to stare rigidly through the window.

“I think we should tell your Mum where you are,” said Clare firmly.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She’ll come and get me.”

Clare thought this was probably true. She also quite hoped it would happen. She had thought Carolyn needed a space in which to pull herself together, not to crack up. Jesus Christ, she told
herself angrily, the hospital’s discharged her. There can’t be that much wrong with her. “Look, Caro, if you want to stay here, you’ve got to make a bit of an effort to fit
in. The others aren’t very happy about you.”

“Why? What have I done?” For the first time, Carolyn looked away from the window and at Clare, an expression of anxiety on her white face.

“Nothing. It’s just – well, it’s a shared house, we all do things like cooking and cleaning, you know – and usually we eat together. They just think it’s a
bit odd because you hide in your room all the time.” She hesitated. “I mean, there’s no need for you to bother with cooking or anything, yet. But I don’t think it’s
doing you any good, sitting up here on your own. I just think you’ll get depressed. I think you should come down for meals.”

There was a silence.

“OK,” said Carolyn.

Clare waited to see if she would say anything else. She felt clumsy and awkward; but irritated too. Carolyn was ignoring her like a sulky child. She’s so young, that’s the trouble,
Clare told herself. Basically, this is a teenage crisis. Well, I’m not her mother.

Carolyn came down to tea next day. She grimaced a smile at each of them, and nodded hurriedly at any remark directed at her. She radiated tension and embarrassment, so that
after the meal Clare went immediately to watch TV in the sitting room, Sue took the children to bed and Bryony went out to a meeting. Carolyn cleared the table, washed up, dried up, took everything
out of the cutlery drawer and cleaned and tidied it, cleaned the cooker and swept the floor. She was about to start washing the floor at five to ten when Clare went back into the kitchen to get her
cigarettes.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Just cleaning up.”

“Well look – that’s splendid – there’s no need to go mad. Stop, for heaven’s sake. D’you fancy a quick drink?”

Carolyn shook her head and continued to squeeze and soak the dried, shrivelled mop.

“Caro, when I said about helping – I didn’t mean –” Carolyn ignored her. Clare shrugged and left the kitchen. She felt very angry. She had tried to help Carolyn,
and now the bloody girl was acting as if Clare was a bossy teacher. Damn her.

Next day, a white-faced Carolyn with horrible silent determination dusted and vacuumed the landings, stairs and hallway, washed down the woodwork in the kitchen, and cleaned out the fridge and
food cupboards. Bryony and Sue were appalled.

“Can’t you stop her?” Sue asked Clare when she got home. “She’ll have to go. It’s impossible to live in the house.”

“D’you want me to tell her to go?” asked Bryony. “Why don’t we phone her Mum?”

Reluctantly, after supper, Clare mounted the extra six stairs to Carolyn’s room. She knocked and there was no reply. So she opened the door cautiously. It was dark. She
made out the shape of Caro squatting in the armchair, rigidly still.

“Caro?”

The figure didn’t move.

“You all right?”

Carolyn appeared to be staring at something horrible in the corner.

“What is it?” Clare stepped into the room, and some of Carolyn’s terror communicated itself to her. Quickly she stepped back and switched on the light. She couldn’t see
anything in the corner.

Carolyn shifted abruptly on her seat, turning her head away.

“What is it? What did you see?” Clare ran round the chair to face her.

Carolyn lifted her head sightlessly, tears and snot streaming down her face.

Much later that night, Clare lay in her bed staring at the ceiling. They should never have let Carolyn out of hospital like that. She was settled for the night; Clare had put
her to bed and given her a mug of warm milk and two sleeping tablets. But tomorrow? She wasn’t in a fit state to be on her own.

Before she finally fell asleep, Clare decided to contact the mother. It wasn’t fair not to. They couldn’t handle a nervous breakdown.

After she had swallowed the sleeping tablets, Carolyn slept for fourteen hours. Her sleep was black and absolute, as if she had been dropped into a bottomless pit. Waking meant
rising, as a diver surfaces from deep water, to a lightening of colours, navy blue, aqua blue, turquoise, pale blue, clear light – day light! with a shocked gasp at the change. It was the
first time she had escaped consciousness properly for days.

She lay relaxed and dizzy on the bed, with the lingering sense of floating on top of the depths she had plumbed in her sleep. Her white room was full of light. Through the open window came a
breeze which separated and fluttered the curtains, which in turn made moving watery patterns of light and shadow on the white ceiling. She felt peaceful. She remembered . . . different feelings and
flavours. Memory was a great open channel she could float down. Had it been blocked before this morning? Had she forgotten it? She remembered going to the seaside. They had gone once with school.
She remembered the coach ride, and having no one to sit next to because Mandy was ill. They went to a strange place, with no piers or fun-fairs or candy floss. By the sea the empty beach was wide,
and the dunes were dotted with bristly little bushes. Then the sand dunes flattened out and there were pine trees. They were quite far apart, it was light but still felt enclosed: you could look up
and see the high tops of the pines swaying in a wind that you couldn’t feel down on the ground. The air smelt sweet and sticky, and there were those big wide-open pine cones lying on the
sand, with their little woody layers peeled back like petticoats. Mr Marshall told them you could forecast the weather with pine cones. After lunch they all trooped back down to the beach with
plastic bags and jars for specimens, and Carolyn lagged behind. Following the tidy path through the pines, past a picnic site with slatted wooden tables and large litter bins, she was soon out of
sight of any other people. There was the sound of the sea, at a distance, like regular quiet breathing. There was the secretive rustling of the wind in the tops of the pines. There were sudden
sharp sounds, a fir cone dropping to the ground, a seagull. Mainly there was silence, in still greenish light, as if she were at the bottom of a pool. She sat and held her breath, and felt that she
could hear the trees growing around her and that she was part of the same quiet measured progress, in a world devoid of people.

Carolyn began to get better. Although Clare had decided to call in Meg, she didn’t; at first because in the morning things weren’t so pressing as they had been at night, and then
because she was too busy at the Refuge, and then because it really didn’t seem fair. She could see that Caro was trying very hard.

Gradually these impressions, and the passing of time, merged with her observation of Caro’s improvement to wipe all thought of Meg from her mind.

As Carolyn got better, she stopped hearing her other story. She no longer needed it; didn’t have time for it.

The story, once started, continued though, as stories will – quite unknown to Carolyn. It featured a Carolyn no less real than herself: her double, her living image, separated from her
only by a second’s timing in a rainsoaked dash across Leap Lane. A Carolyn who led another life, with no more than the ghost of a thought that things could have been different.

Carolyn never really understood Alan’s reaction to her being pregnant. Two days after the scene in the pub, he rang her up. His voice sounded forced and sulky, as if
someone was telling him what to say.

“I’m sorry if I upset you. Let’s get married.”

There was a silence. She couldn’t think of any reply.

“All right? Carolyn? We’ll get married at Christmas. I’ll come back again next weekend and we can plan it.”

When she had put the phone down she went and sat in her bedroom. She was very relieved, so much so that she felt weak. It would be all right at the weekend. They would be able to talk and
explain.

But she was disappointed. Alan remained distant and slightly sullen. He insisted on discussing practical details, as if they were planning a sale of work or an expedition. At last she lost
patience.

“You don’t have to marry me.”

“I know,” he said evenly.

“Well why are you?”

“Because I want to.”

“Well why are you being so horrible about it?”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Why are you being so distant and unfriendly? Anyone would think someone was standing behind you with a gun.”

“It is a shot-gun wedding,” he said and grinned, making it, briefly, all right.

“No one is. We don’t have to.”

“Look I’m OK. I’ve decided – unless you don’t want to?”

She hesitated. “I don’t want you to do me a favour.”

“Well I’m not. Now let it drop,”

Carolyn knew that he was angry with her, for some reason which she couldn’t fathom, and that the more she pressed him for an explanation the more he clammed up over it. She knew that it
was to do with her being pregnant, but that it wasn’t the simple fact of her pregnancy. She remembered vividly the sight of him crying in the car that night, and she still didn’t
understand what that had been about. But he refused to let her get near the subject.

“Forget it. I don’t want to discuss it.”

She could see that he would lose his temper if she pressed him any further, and so she left it. But it made her miserable that they were not open with one another. Her position in relation to
him had slipped. He was forcing her to be careful of what she said; setting up areas which were not to be talked about. It made her feel that he wanted her to be grateful to him for marrying her.
But confusingly, he seemed sincere enough in wanting to (almost the more sincere, because of his grimness about it).