Something Only We Know (37 page)

‘You’re not mousey.’

‘I was in those days. Too nervous to speak up, wound tight the whole day, a target for anyone. I wanted to be sassy and funny and laid-back. Plus, she was incredibly pretty. She had this
blonde razor cut, and she used to gel it up at the front like a Manga girl, so it came down over one eye. Just ice cool. Gorgeous.’

‘Oh, but look at you. For God’s sake, Hel, you’re beautiful.’

‘Not like that. You think – you’ve always thought – that the way I look is some magic charm which can get me whatever I want. The solution to everything. But it
doesn’t work that way. This – ’ She flapped her hand in her face – ‘is nothing. Nothing
lasting.
I make an initial impression with someone, and then it wears
off and after that it’s up to me, the inner-me, myself. And that’s where things fall apart. I’ve never been good at making friends, not the way you are. God, you go into a room
and people just warm up and chat to you. I’ve always envied you that.’

‘You? Envy me?’

‘God, yes. You make friends so easily you don’t even realise it.’

‘You said two women at work had asked you to go for lunch. Marnie and Niamh.’

‘They have. They’re nice, yes. But when I’m with strangers I don’t seem to be able to do small talk, so I stay on the edge of a group and keep quiet, and people
aren’t comfortable with that. They think I’m being aloof. I’m not, it’s just that my brain goes blank. Then I can see the disappointment as they get to know me and find
there’s not much going on after all. I’m too self-conscious and wary with strangers, and that makes them awkward in turn.’

‘You quite like being by yourself. You’ve said to me you enjoy your own company.’

‘I do, but that’s because I’ve had to learn to. And then the other issue is, a lot of the types who do talk to me are actually trying to chat me up. They’re not
interested in me as a person. Never mind that sometimes I also manage to piss people off without even opening my mouth. You were there in the precinct last month when that woman strode over and
told me I’d wear out my reflection if I stared at it too much. I mean, God! I wasn’t even looking at myself, I was looking in a shop window.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact, not
self-pitying. And it was true what she said. Some people did take against her on sight through jealousy or resentment. Lucinda-Syndrome.

‘Is that why you got picked on at school?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Wrong place, wrong time, a couple of influential bitches casting about for their next project. I was a pretty visible target. You know, ginger nut. “Here I
am! Come over here and bully me.” Whereas Saskia was untouchable. She didn’t get bitchy notes left daily in her locker, or her GCSE artwork defaced, or have everyone get up and move to
a different table when she sat down in the dining hall. She didn’t lose her virginity to a boy who broke her heart weeks later. She didn’t mess up her own parents’
marriage.’

‘Don’t say that—’

Hel carried on quickly, speaking over me: ‘So Saskia became this symbol of a strong person and the kind of girl I wanted to be. I started thinking about her a lot, imagined her giving me
advice and encouragement. And it helped. At first, anyway. But then, as the months went on, she sort of morphed into the voice of the anorexia. Because – and I do know how weird this sounds
– sometimes anorexia
did
feel like my best friend and the only one who understood me. In my diary I began writing stuff down like, “Saskia says I should exercise more” or
“Saskia says keep the faith” or “Saskia’s disappointed in me, I’ve let her down”. That’s what Mum read. That’s what had her charging up to the school
to complain. Except by then, the real Saskia had left, thank God. It makes me feel sick to think about it. If she’d still been there . . .’

I could picture her, teen Helen, bent over her diary, scribbling away fearfully. Pouring out her darkest thoughts, searching for answers in her lonely, tangled mind. How horrible to then have
your privacy invaded. She must’ve nearly died of shame.

‘And you’ve never explained this to Mum?’

‘How could I? I’ve never told anyone. Not even Ned. For weeks after she snooped I was too angry, and then, when that subsided, I was crippled with embarrassment. I mean, you would
be, wouldn’t you? Giving your mental illness its own name. Sheesh. Fucking cuckoo, I was.’ She smiled ruefully, a shy curve of the lips.

A tension eased, a little flower of hope blossomed inside my chest.

I said, ‘Were you loop-da-loop?’

‘I was up the fucking pole, dear sister. Round the bend and coming back again. Nuts. Out of my tree.’

‘Then – ’ I groped around for the right words – ‘then it wasn’t really
you
, was it?’

‘Huh?’ Helen’s head tilted to one side while she considered. Downstairs the TV blared briefly, then went to mute. Dad must have sat on the remote again.

I said, ‘You know how you were saying you needed Mum to understand that when you were anorexic, you were properly ill? Well, telling her all this would nail it.’

She laughed.

‘Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it? I can’t have that conversation, though, obviously.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she’s still recovering from the heart attack. The stress of bringing up the past again might be too much.’

‘I think you’re wrong. I think it would help.’

We stared at each other for a long moment. In The Lady of Shalott’s glass I saw us both reflected, the russet-haired and the dark, frowning to understand. Two landless princesses trying to
find their way through the midnight forest.

‘Will you give it some thought at least, Hel?’

Her shoulders moved in the faintest of shrugs. ‘You have to trust me. Trust that I’m working things out in my own way.’

Suddenly I felt exhausted with the intensity of the exchange. Once more the foundation blocks of what I thought I knew had shifted underfoot. Now I had to get to my own room and be alone, leave
her to think. Again there was a family history to revise, a new narrative to work out. Those of us who’d been caught up in my sister’s fantasy world would at some point need extricating
from that illusion. Could my mother bear it? Was I right to push for revelation? In my mind I saw Saskia’s broad, open smile, her square jaw and clean white teeth. I found myself edging
towards the door, putting my fingers to the cold handle.

‘Anyway,’ said Hel soberly, ‘we all have secrets, don’t we, Jen? All of us. Sometimes that’s how we survive.’

CHAPTER 11

Country Wise – Our weekly look at rural and folklore matters, by Briar Pipe

Around April, the landscape comes alive with birds. In one corner of my cottage garden, blue tits are busy inspecting the nest box, and a tiny wren flies in and out of the
ivy all day long with his beak full of moss. The fields now are dotted with gulls and jackdaws, the rooflines with rows of starlings. It’s a sign that spring has arrived.

But how many of us know the old stories and superstitions associated with some of our best-loved species?

The phone call came through at ten. Rosa’s door was closed and she clearly wasn’t picking up. Alan and Gerry had gone downstairs to help a driver unload a monster
delivery of printer paper. I was the only one on the desks.

A Mrs Williams it was, angry and upset. She wanted us to come out and see the damage done to their property by the local hunt. Her village was a fair way off – Rewle, which was actually
over the border – but she said she wasn’t confident her small local paper would deal with the story properly, so that’s why she was contacting us. Her logic was, we were bigger
players, but we still knew the area.

Mrs Williams kept fancy chickens, plus some ex-battery hens, and she sold eggs at the roadside and supplied the little local grocery. She’d had some of these birds for ten years and they
were more like pets. The previous week she’d been washing her hair, heard a racket at the rear of the house and come downstairs to find the garden packed with milling, hyper-excited
foxhounds, and people on horseback trampling everything underfoot. She’d run out and shouted at them to get off her land, at which point one of the mounted men had turned and stuck two
fingers up at her. Thoroughly frightened – their riverside cottage was out on its own and well away from near neighbours – she’d run inside to ring Mr Williams. By the time she
got through and told him what was happening, the hunt had begun to disperse. She shooed the last of the dogs out, noting that her gate had been broken off its hinges and a hole smashed in the
hedge, and went to survey the damage. That was when she saw the chickens.

Had the dogs eaten them?
I asked in my ignorance. I wasn’t sure whether foxhounds would do that.

No. What had happened was that the chickens were so distressed by the invasion, they’d taken fright and flown into the river where most of them had drowned. The brood she’d tended
with such care had been virtually wiped out within the space of twenty minutes.

When her husband arrived shortly afterwards, he’d been livid and wanted to know which hunt it was, but she didn’t know. Because their smallholding was situated on the county border,
it could conceivably have been one of three. So he’d jumped in his car, tracked them down just a few lanes away and, by pretending to be a follower, discovered it was the Glasington.

On appeal to the Master the next day, the Williams had been met first with a straight denial, then, when it was obvious the matter wasn’t about to go away, hearty apologies. Later a hunt
man had come to the door waving a cheque for two hundred pounds. They tore it up in his face, and he’d laughed and told them not to be such idiots. ‘But the money wasn’t the
point,’ the woman said to me. ‘It was the invasion of our property, and the loss of the birds I loved, and those men’s utter bloody rudeness. Everything. Scribbling your name on a
cheque can’t cancel that out. That’s why I want you to print the story. Call them to account.’

I came off the phone all fired up. This could make a great piece, maybe even front page. Proper journalism, not the manufactured ramblings of Briar Pipe and his old country drivel. And it was
mine, my scoop!

I tapped at Rosa’s door and entered carefully. Since the break-up she’d been pricklier than ever, finding fault with me and my work on a microscopic level. She didn’t like this
semi colon here, these italics there. I shouldn’t sound so cheerful when answering the phone. When did I last polish my shoes? I was slumping in my chair. It was ‘common’ to wink
at your colleagues.

Today she had a face on her like a troll. ‘Well, Jennifer? What’s the problem now?’

‘No problem. A great story,’ I said, and proceeded to tell her about Mrs Williams.

She listened, frowning, cut me off before the end.

‘Where did you say this was?’

‘Rewle. Just outside there, really. Hartswell. I’ve looked it up on the map and it is within our range. Just.’

‘No.’

‘Sorry?’

‘No it’s not. It’s out of county.’

‘Yes, I know, but we covered that fire a month ago and that was Rewle. That was actually a mile further out.’

‘That story was of some public interest.’ Rosa flicked her attention back to her PC screen.

‘So is this.’

She looked up. ‘Oh, my goodness. You don’t
believe
these Williams people, do you? A couple of anti-hunt chancers, that’s what they are. Trust me.’

‘You know them?’

‘I know the type. Compensation-scroungers. Probably the sort who call Claims Direct every time they trip over a paving stone. Hunts are easy targets, high profile and wealthy. They get
this kind of nonsense thrown at them continually, from locals hoping to make a fast buck. And
The Messenger
isn’t going to give a platform to what’s certainly a politically
motivated scam. Call Mrs Williams and say we aren’t coming.’

I was thrown. I’d thought the story had the hallmarks of a strong lead. ‘Hang on. I could at least nip out there, get a few more facts. See if I thought it was bona fide.’

‘You’re not “nipping” anywhere. You’ve no vehicle, remember.’

That was true. My car had died and I’d had to scrounge a lift in that morning with one of Dad’s drivers.

‘And anyway,’ she went on, ‘there’s no photographer available. Tam’s out on the Wirral and Billy’s covering the races all day. And you’re supposed to be
getting ahead with those Briar Pipe columns. I told you, I want three or four months in hand. Briar Pipe’s a pinned feature.’

‘But what if this is a story, Rosa? I mean, it could be the tip of the iceberg. Who knows how many landowners the hunt’s ridden roughshod over? It could be a significant local
problem.’

‘I – told – you – no.’

‘OK, well, if you don’t want me to go, how about Gerry?’

She smacked her palm down on the desk, making me jump. ‘For God’s sake, Jennifer! How many times do you have to be told? There is NO story here, and we are NOT following it up. Can
you grasp that? It’s very simple, simple enough for even you to understand. Nod at me if you’ve got it. Yes? Can you do that?’

For a few seconds I stared her out, laser-beam style. I imagined striding forward, drawing her up from her seat by her chiffon scarf and flicking her hard on the end of her superior nose.
Oh, Rosa, Rosa, I’m so glad your heart got broken. May the same thing happen again and again. May you stew in your own bitter juice forever.

Then I gave in, with a single jerk of my head. ‘Right, then. If that’s what you want. I’ll go and write a piece about “hedgerow herbs”, shall I? Since it’s so
very urgent?’

I waited for the nasty comeback, but more insultingly, she didn’t even acknowledge me. She just returned to clicking her mouse and reading the screen in front of her. I was dismissed from
her attention.

Closing the door behind me – by some miracle not slamming it so hard that the glass fell out and shattered on the floor – I trudged over to my desk. Was there really nothing worth
investigating out in Rewle? How could Rosa be so sure? But that had been the judgement, no mistake. Instead, waiting for me on top of the cuttings and sheets of notes sat my antiquarian source
text,
Down Honeysuckle Lanes
by Colonel Edward Smythe, 1929.
A Ramble through the Legends and Lore of the English Countryside.
Rosa had come across the dusty little guide at a
book collectors’ fair and had the idea of adapting chunks of it for the newspaper. Since then we’d all had a turn at being Briar Pipe, dispensing rural wisdom, although when Gerry did
his stint he’d chosen to write about mole trapping which hadn’t gone down well with everyone.