Remember Me This Way (28 page)

‘Could you just tell me,’ I say, ‘where Xenia fits in? Is she one of your friends? Or are you lying when you say you know her?’

Her face suffuses with colour. Her mouth hardly opens. ‘No,’ she whispers.

‘No to which bit of that?’ I am not bullying. I am just speaking firmly and clearly. I’m very aware of the way I’m standing, my legs apart, arms crossed.

‘No. I’m not lying.’ She still isn’t looking at me, but she makes an abrupt movement with her fingers, brushing something away from under her eyes. ‘Anyway.’ Her voice is cracking. ‘I meant it for the best.’

‘What?’

She gazes up at me. Her dark blue eyes have filled. It was a tear she brushed away. ‘The tidying. I wanted to make it up to you, to make amends.’

‘For what?’

She throws her arms out towards me, and then, seeing something in my expression, lifts them to her head. ‘I miss him so much.’ Her voice trembles. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here.’

I don’t move.

‘Was Zach more than a tutor to you?’ I ask. The words feel bulky in my mouth.

She doesn’t answer.

‘More than friends?’ I’m still trying to hold it at bay. It was a crush, that’s all. She was fixated on him, obsessed – he did that to people. He did it to me. And he wouldn’t have taken advantage, even Zach in his darkest moods wouldn’t have done that. No. She is young for her age now. She would have been a
child
when he died.

She sinks her head into her shoulders and looks at me with a different expression, from under her lashes. A grown-up expression I want to wipe off her face.

‘He could be such a charmer,’ I add after a beat. ‘Much older than you, of course.’

‘That didn’t matter.’

She answers too quickly. Her head is bowed so I can’t read her face, but I don’t need to. My insides have turned to red. I have a sharp pain across my shoulders as if someone is leaning on me from behind. I feel as if I might pass out. Zach and Onnie. He thought he could do anything he liked.
How could he?

‘We had a connection,’ she says.

‘You had a connection? You mean you had sex?’

She lets out a small, alarmed laugh, as if I have shocked her. How dare she force her way into my kitchen, with her callous self-obsessions, her petty concerns about whether her parents love her or not, knowing that all the time she slept with my husband?
Slept with my husband
. It is almost unbearable.

‘OK.’ I’m so calm on the surface. She has no idea. ‘I thought you had. When did it start?’

She begins to speak in a high little girl’s voice. If she’s doing it to make me feel sorry for her, it doesn’t work. ‘The day I got my GCSE results. August 2011.’

‘And where did you do it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Where did you fuck?’

She makes a face, jutting out her lower lip.

‘Here then? In my house?’

She nods. I think, in a detached way, that explains how well she knows her way around it, the workings of its plumbing system, the location of the heating controls, the whereabouts of the kitchen towels.

‘OK. And how long did it last?’

‘We only did it a few times. He ended it because of you. He told me he loved you. I promise.’

‘And how many times have you seen him since?’ I’m unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

‘What do you mean, how many times? Of course I haven’t seen him since.’ She’s frowning, shaking her head at me.

I stand. I shouldn’t have let that out. I’ve slipped up.

‘What do you mean?’ she says again. ‘Why are all his things in your wardrobe? You keep talking about him in the present tense. It’s like he’s still living here.’

Howard gets to his feet, turns a circle in his bed and collapses down again with a groan.

‘Did you take Howard to the vet?’ I say. ‘Or were you lying about that?’

She covers her face and peers out at me from behind spread fingers.

‘Oh, fucking hell, Onnie.’

She is weeping again, but more quietly this time, into her hands. ‘I make a mess of everything,’ she says. ‘That’s why no one loves me.’

I don’t want to prolong this. I don’t want to start feeling sorry for her. I am too angry, too upset. There is no room in my head for anything else. How dare she? How dare he? All those accusations he levelled at me, his suspicions, and all the time he was the one who was unfaithful. Not me. Him.

I realise I am twisting my hands, screwing up my mouth, and that Onnie is watching. She looks scared, suddenly diminished, as if she doesn’t know what I am going to do next. Her shoulders are trembling. Goosebumps pucker her slim young legs. And I do feel sorry for her. I can’t stop myself. None of it’s really her fault. She wasn’t in control. He was. It’s what he did,
does
. He draws you in until there is nowhere to go. He is all you can think about. She knew him and she loved him. She is as obsessed as I am. She’s the only other person except for me who knows what that feels like. It’s only a couple of steps and I give her an awkward hug.

She says something into her hand that I don’t hear.

‘What did you say?’

She lifts her face, thrusting her arms at me. ‘I cut myself sometimes. I get these feelings that rise and rise, and it’s the only way to break the tension. It’s been much worse since Zach died.’

I take her wrists and inspect the red ridges. ‘You should get help,’ I say.

‘I’ve already got help. The latest doctor has given me those antidepressants, but they don’t work. It’s all my parents ever do – pay for help.’

‘Well, you should start helping yourself. Work out what you want from life and do it. You’re young and talented, picked for an internship at Shelby Pink above hundreds of others.’

She rests her head on the table. ‘You’re very kind.’

‘I’m not really very kind.’

‘I suppose I can’t stay, now you know?’

I could shout, No, of course you can’t. But I don’t. I shake my head.

Onnie nods.

She gets up and collects her things from upstairs. I’m waiting for her at the front door when she comes down, clasping her rucksack in both arms.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘You know the way to the station?’

‘Yup.’

‘You’ll be OK?’

‘Yup.’

As she turns to go, she does that gesture I’ve seen before: she rubs the skin between her eyebrows with her left forefinger several times quickly. I put my hand on her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘What for?’

‘For Zach, for the damage he’s done.’

She tilts her small, perfect face towards me. ‘I wanted to find out what he saw in you,’ she says. ‘That’s why I came.’

‘And did you?’ I ask, but she has already turned into the street, and if she has an answer for me, I don’t hear it.

In bed that night, my mind slides into places it shouldn’t. Her hair in his face, his hands on her body. Did she like what he did to her? His deep, hard kisses? Did he bring her to the edge where desire tipped over into fear?

I knew, didn’t I, in my bones? The week before Christmas, when I came home from school, there were two whisky glasses, unwashed, in the sink. I remember staring at them. I felt a creeping under my skin. The tap dripped, and the water pinged, like a tiny liquid firework. He’d been odd all month, washing his hands even more than usual. He’d upped the drinking. I’d found more pills under his pillow. He had stopped answering his phone in the day when I rang.

He was sitting at the table, tapping manically on his laptop – notes for a painting, he’d told me. ‘Are you seeing someone else?’ I said.

He threw the accusation back at me, said I was paranoid, that it was evidence of my guilt. ‘Who are
you
fucking?’ he said.

I felt ashamed to have asked.

He should have told me then. It wasn’t too late. The slightest remorse and I’d have forgiven him. I would have acknowledged my own guilt – my failure to look after him. I’d have gone to bed with him right then. I was helpless, powerless in his hands. He only had to touch me and I would lose control.

Well, now I know. Has he been waiting for me to find out? He ended it with Onnie, she said, because of me. And then I told him I was leaving – for no one. He wasn’t enough, or he wasn’t right. I feel a twist of resentment and guilt. He’s certainly had his revenge now. We need to have this out.

One of the curtain pins has come away from its ring and a slice of window gapes at the top. I get out of bed and stand on a chair to refix it, arms outstretched, exposed to the garden, the houses beyond.

Zach

October 2011

Onnie says I’m ‘the best thing that’s ever happened to her’. She’s supposed to be doing retakes at Esher College, but no one notices if she’s there or not. She has been coming to the studio almost daily. I can’t say she’s much of an interruption. I haven’t worked in weeks. Vanilla sex – not bad. It’s just the clichés I can’t take.

I’m ‘the man of her dreams’.

I’ve been trying to break it off. Lizzie suspects. I lurch between panic and fury. If only she understood. If she was only ready to give up her own flirtations. I know what she gets up to at that school of hers, seething as it is with sexual tension. We’d be happy if we moved to Cornwall. I wouldn’t need Onnie if I felt safe with her. I’d be the best person I could possibly be – the man who, at the best of times, I see reflected in her eyes – handsome, kind, sexy. Other people ruin it. We have to get away. Lizzie doesn’t – or won’t – understand. My lunchtime trysts with Onnie – well, they’re all Lizzie’s fault. She won’t give up her job. Or leave her mother – which is absurd. She’s so far gone, after that bout of pneumonia, she doesn’t even recognise her own daughters. And Peggy needs her, she says – pregnant again,
poor little love
.
How many children do they fucking need?

Lizzie wants a baby. We’re ‘trying’. I’ve forced myself to ape concern, to pore over ovulation sticks when what I really want is to grip her by the shoulders and shake her. ‘Why aren’t I enough for you?’ I should ask her. ‘What would a baby add to what we’ve got?’ I don’t, though. She needs to reach that conclusion for herself – that’s the pure test of her love. I’ve told her we’ll let nature take its course. I’m waiting for her to realise the mistakes she’s made, how her happiness is in her hands. Things will be better then. If she gets pregnant – that’ll be a different sort of proof. Someone else will pay. And if she won’t drop it, won’t accept our life as it is, then it will be proof of her disengagement.

The dog’s got to go. She doesn’t realise what a commitment he is, how much of her attention he takes up. A cocktail of temazepam and valium is lethal in the long term. (I Googled it.) The mutt’s so stupid, he scoffs his daily sausage as if his life depends on it. So far, he’s just sleepy, a bit wobbly on his feet, but I’m assured that it’s cumulative, and also undetectable. Better this than an outright accident. She’ll learn to live without him so slowly she’ll hardly notice when he’s gone.

Onnie just rang.

‘I’d do anything for you,’ she says. ‘You only have to ask.’

Chapter Seventeen

Lizzie

The following day, I put Howard into the car and drive him to the vet. It’s almost obscenely cheerful in the waiting room. Dogs yapping and cats in baskets under displays of ‘Mini Bone’ dog treats and ‘Jolly Moggy’ catmint-stuffed toy mice. After my tortured night it feels like a cartoon version of the real world.

The vet doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He takes some blood tests, gives him a vitamin shot and tells me to keep his fluids up. It’s probably a bug, he says, or something he’s eaten. He gives Howard’s ears a breezy rub. ‘What us veterinary professionals call trash-can gastroenteritis.’

I take the dog home and arrive late for school, though no one seems to notice. The inspectors still haven’t been and there is a feeling of waiting in the building. Less chatter in the kitchen than usual. Most of the teachers seem to be preoccupied with tidying up their classrooms and fine-tuning their lesson plans. Michele organises a whip-round for Sam, who is out of intensive care. Flowers are ordered, a card circulates.

At lunchtime, I buy a sandwich in the canteen and pull a chair to the window in the library. It’s an old habit. Zach used to wait for me out there, sometimes, under a tree. A kick-boxing class is in process – a row of women in Lycra, legs at angles. A line of small children in gingham pinafores from the local nursery are heading towards the playground in a straggling crocodile. In the distance, towards the row of sycamores in shadow, a couple strides holding hands. It still comes as a surprise to me to realise the world is going about its business.

I leave school as early as I can and visit my mother on the way home. She’s in a fractious mood and is refusing food. It’s an uphill struggle, trying to persuade her to try her cottage pie. She asks me who I am three times. ‘I’ve got a daughter,’ she says, shaking her head contemptuously. ‘You’re not her.’

Peggy was in on Monday, one of the carers tells me. ‘She brought your lovely baby granddaughter with her, didn’t she? What’s she called again?’

Mum smiles coyly but doesn’t answer.

‘Chloe,’ I say. ‘She’s called Chloe, isn’t she? And the older two are Alfie and Gussie.’

It doesn’t seem to register and it breaks my heart a little. She wants to watch television and I take her slowly through to the bedroom and put on the small set we bought her.
Pointless
is on and she sits in the chair, her eyes fixed eagerly. Before the dementia she hated quiz shows. I think about Iris Murdoch watching
Teletubbies
. I stroke her hair for a bit and then I make a cup of black tea and put it down gently next to her.

I walk around the room and stop by the shelves. How many Coalport china houses should there be? I count four. There were six. One was missing, I know that. But now there are only four. The little white hexagon house with its mossy garden and its umbrella-shaped roof is gone. I search the floor on my hands and knees, and pull the curtains away from the window sill in case it has been put there. No sign.