What She Left: Enhanced Edition (12 page)

‘You look beautiful, Ace,’ Dad said, which set me off blubbing, and then he said he couldn’t conceive anyone else in the world as his daughter (‘Couldn’t
conceive
it, hey?’ Robbie yelled … one Peter Kay DVD and he reckons he’s a stand-up) and how I’d done them proud, which made me feel guilty because I’ve actually done zilch. Then when he said the stuff about us being such a close family I was in bits because it made me think, you so
nearly
know me completely, and I had the urge to share the other stuff with him: how I’d never felt quite good enough, as if it was all one big act, which was why drink was so amazing, it made me feel the same size as everyone else, drink and a few lines, although I’m going to quit all that because it’s about my career now, but I’d like Dad to realize because otherwise he’s only seeing half of me.

‘I can’t believe that the tiny ball of screaming
gorgeousness that Lizzie nearly gave birth to in a lay-by twenty-one years ago has gone on to become this … this slightly bigger ball of screaming gorgeousness!’

And when he quoted his one bit of Latin,
tempus fugit
, Mum piped up and said, ‘Come on, Dave. I said I’d let a fire alarm off if you went over the five-minute mark.’

‘Thank you, Alice,’ he said. ‘Just, thank you.’

I went round the table and gave him a hug and wondered if he could smell the wine and the coke oozing through my skin as if my insides couldn’t take it any more, and he felt the same as he always did: big and solid and soft and like my dad.

After we’d managed to get Dad to sit back down, I did the hostess bit, catching up with all my guests.

‘You’ve grown up,’ Grampy Mullens said when I got to him.

‘I feel very old.’

‘You wait till you’re my age, then you’ll feel old.’ A waitress brought him half a pint of beer. ‘Being an old duffer does have its advantages,’ he said, winking. He asked me to sit with him, manoeuvred a chair round with a struggle, then talked about my gran, how she would have loved today; it had been three years but he still missed her every day, and what a stunner she’d been when they were ‘courting’, picking her up in his Ford Anglia, all dolled up like Elizabeth Taylor, with her long hair and bobby socks. He’s like this – he can have these amazing bouts of lucidity (that’s going to be my word of this diary entry) when everything that made him him is still there, but then he’ll have spells when it’s gone and he’ll call me ‘Liz’ and Mum ‘Alice’ and Robbie ‘David’. ‘How much do you and your mum talk?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Not chit-chat, but properly talk?’

‘We do a bit,’ I told him.

‘Secrets always come out in the end, even if it takes decades. You beat them by making them come out on your own terms.’ He’d lost me, but he did a lot. It used to annoy me, but Mum said I had to cut him some slack because when you’re old your brain stops working in a linear way. ‘I’ve never known anyone as proud as that lass, but talk to her, listen to her.’

We watched Mum wandering from table to table, catching up with friends. ‘Remember when you used to come over and walk Chip?’ Grampy asked, and I wondered if today was one of those days when his brain wasn’t working in a linear way.

‘Course I do, that was one cool dog!’ Rob and I would go over to his place to exercise him and when we came back Grampa would be watching through the window, waiting, and Chip would curl up by his feet and he’d pat his head and say, ‘Good lad, good lad, good lad.’

One afternoon when I was in the sixth form he’d handed me a brown envelope. Insisted I took it. ‘You enjoy yourself at the university, girl,’ he’d said, and later, when I was paying my rent or buying books, I’d tell myself it was the Grampy Mullens money, but when I bought booze or ciggies, that was the student loan.

He loved hearing stories about uni because it was so alien to him, so I recounted a few now: the all-nighter I’d pulled to get my dissertation done, the git of a landlord who ran off with our deposit and the weird bloke with the tattoos we shared a house with.

‘I need you to make me a promise about your mum,’ he said, going off on another tangent. ‘That you’ll look after her for me when I’m gone.’

‘She’s tough as old boots,’ I said, using one of his expressions.

‘She’s not as stout as she pretends. You’re the same. Ask her about her Southampton, about her time there. Ask her, because she needs you to understand, but wait until I’m gone, princess, because she swore me to secrecy!’

‘What are you two whispering about?’ Mum asked, bundling over. ‘You look like you’re plotting.’

‘Talking about you, not to you,’ Grampy said, winking at me. Then when she’d gone, he smiled mischievously and cracked one of our in-jokes. ‘Have I ever told you I left school at fifteen?’

It was one of his good days. A linear day.

‘Hey, Fish Face.’

His glassy eyes reminded me of Grampy’s, but the cause was different – Ben was wasted. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘Figured I’d pay you a visit. You not going to invite me in to meet your family?’

‘How did you know we were here?’

‘It wasn’t difficult, Lissa. You’ve been talking about nothing else on Facebook all week. Fancy a smoke?’

It was like the old days, except we had to go outside to smoke now, and this wasn’t a student haunt and only one of us was hammered. I was careful to stand out of view of the restaurant because I’d never exactly shared with Mum and Dad my penchant for the occasional cigarette and explaining Ben to them wouldn’t be easy, especially to Dad.

‘You got a job then.’

‘Yes, it’s not exactly
The New York Times
, but it’s a start. Not a crappy internship, either.’

‘Plus you get to stay on in the Hampton,’ Ben said.

‘That’s probably a mistake. You can’t pretend you’re a student for ever.’ I explained how it was going to be goodbye Polygon, hello Highfield, and that I’d be moving into a
new flat the next week: sixty quid a month more, but there’d only be three of us. ‘I’m a young professional now, after all.’

‘Glad one of us is,’ he said. ‘This is going to sound weird, Lissa, but I’m … I’m proud of you, it sounds brilliant.’

I was convinced I’d blown it because I’d gone into what Mum called chatterbox mode at the interview – gabbling about how I fancied doing big-picture stuff, like the Madeleine McCann disappearance and the Virginia Tech shooting and liked reviewing music and was definitely up for crime reporting because there were too many scumbags on the loose, and I’d been positive I’d cocked up, but the editor had nodded and said, ‘We’ve got more than our fair share of scumbags in this city.’

I wondered what she’d be like, this new me. The one who’d wear her hair up, have a desk in an open-plan office, attend council meetings and court hearings, scribbling away in the shorthand I’d promised to learn by Christmas. I might not necessarily have liked the old Alice – rather, the young Alice – but I’d got used to her: the one who often didn’t surface till ten, who did assignments in the early hours, poring over online discussions about Plath and scribbling notes in the margins of books, the one who loved fishbowls in bars on Bedford Place and hockey club weekends away and even, now he was in the past, this guy. It gave me a stab of sadness, that it was over – the mornings drinking tea on scruffy sofas passing night-before phone photos around, segueing (maybe that should be my word for this entry!) into afternoons in the library and evenings on beanbags watching
Lost
and
Deal or No Deal
, the days and weeks bending into each other until, bam, my dissertation! ‘I can’t believe you’ve gatecrashed my lunch. Have you got no shame?’

‘No,’ Ben said. He smiled, and it all came back: him
dressed as Superman, the evening we first did coke, us in Paris. It was all so simple then – nothing but lectures and nights out and the flutter of excitement when he’d asked if I fancied coming away, no strings attached, but that I’d need a passport. Then I’d recalled how I’d launched into him on Platform 6 of Waterloo station.

‘Are you dumping me?’ he’d asked incredulously.

‘Yes.’

‘Whore,’ he’d said and stormed off.

And remembering that he could call me that gave me a spasm of anger, but it was over six months ago, it was history and I’d moved on. ‘I worked out what it was about you,’ I said.

‘What, that makes me irresistible?’

‘No, that makes you impossible.’ I felt like Grampy on one of his lucid days. Stuff made sense. ‘It’s the way you never see beyond the present. This constant searching for gratification; it’s like a baby, it’s like an animal.’

‘Which is it?’

‘Which is what?’

‘You can’t have it both ways – I’m either like a baby or an animal.’

‘Don’t be a dick.’

‘How about if we split the difference – say I’m a baby animal? Fuck’s sake, Lissa, give me a break, I’ve come all this way to wish you a happy birthday.’

It was very him – travelling all the way from Southampton to Corby on a whim. I could picture him stuck in that shithole of a student house. What used to be carefree, would soon be embarrassing, sad. Eventually, having exhausted all his options, he’d creep back to his parents’ place in London: the Georgian pad with the huge hall and the chandelier, sparkling like hundreds of earrings. It was
true, but doling out a character assassination made me feel older than ever, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

‘Remind me why I ever hung around with you.’

‘Because I’m gorgeous.’

‘Scratch the surface and I bet you’re still the same ginormous cock.’

‘I’ve got a ginormous
what
?’

‘See, it’s impossible to have an adult conversation with you.’

‘Fuck adult, Lissa. Let’s get drunk. Let’s go on somewhere. It’ll be like an after-party!’

I recalled what Grampy had said before he got on to all that weird stuff about Mum, about how I should live every day as if it was my last. Once I started work it would be all sparkling water and gym visits and early nights. I saw the room we’d eaten in – empty now, the tables getting cleared – and tried to visualize the next family gathering. I watched Mum helping Grampy into the car, lifting his legs in then handing him his stick. Probably his funeral.

‘Why not,’ I said to Ben. ‘You’re only young once.’

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Stay Away

 

Dear Liz,

 

You may find this hard to believe, but I enjoyed reading your email; I found it extremely stimulating. Listen to me, one sentence in and I’m already sounding like a lecturer marking an assignment. Old habits die hard. Thank you, as well, for deeming me ‘accomplished’; I’d have preferred ‘great’, but one takes compliments where one can.

 

Do you recall the cricket pitches? Houses now. The SCR, too? The one half-decent room on campus and they appropriated it for a management suite, a bit of oak panelling and a few stone mullions evidently sufficiently encouraged potential investors to part with their money to relegate us foot soldiers to a ghastly breeze-block bunker. Do you remember those things? Because right now
remembering seems very important to me. I’ve got a few issues with the old prostate, you see. Typical me – I can’t even get ill in an original place.

 

I’ve been trying to pinpoint when we last spoke properly. We bumped into each other once in the early 1990s, didn’t we, when you had Alice with you? I’d been in Corby for a conference and had visited your road out of curiosity. I had to wait a while to spot you.

 

‘Alice,’ you’d said, remaining remarkably composed when I’d blundered up to you, ‘this is an acquaintance of Mummy’s called Doctor Cooke. Say hello to Doctor Cooke, Alice.’

 

I put out my hand and she shook it nonchalantly. ‘I was a colleague of your mother’s at the university a long time ago,’ I informed her, as if a little girl would have had any comprehension of what a colleague or a university or indeed a long time ago was. ‘You’re a big girl, aren’t you?’ I said. I hadn’t had much experience of children, of how to speak their language. A language all of its own: a subset of ours.

 

‘I’m nearly seven,’ she said.

 

I recognized you in her voice.

 

‘I’m having a birthday party on Sunday and there’s going to be jelly,’ the child said.

 

Funny how that sticks in my mind all these years later. That there was jelly.

 

‘Will you be coming to my party?’

 

‘Doctor Cooke’s a bit busy on Sunday,’ you interjected.

 

‘It’s wonderful to see you, Liz. How have you been?’

 

You bit your lip, your eyes burnt, you rested your hand on the top
of your daughter’s head, gently turned her away and whispered: ‘It’s a bit late to be asking now.’

 

‘But, but –’

 

‘But nothing. How I am has got precisely zero to do with you.’

 

Alice picked up on your tone because she squirmed out from under your reach, spun round. ‘Doctors make you better,’ she said.

 

‘Doctor Cooke’s a different kind of doctor, sweetie,’ you told her. ‘He works with people who lived long before any of us were born.’

 

‘Wouldn’t they be dead then?’

 

‘Very prescient, young lady,’ I said.

 

A car pulled into the drive. ‘Daddy, daddy, daddy,’ she screamed, bolting from your grasp.

 

‘Have you got a family?’ you asked.

 

‘No. We never did. A blessing that passed us by,’ I said, deploying the phrase Fliss and I defaulted to. It could have been either of us, I’d not infrequently remind my wife, to which she’d respond, ‘But it
wasn’t
either of us, it was me.’

 

‘You did, I see,’ I said.

 

‘Yes,’ you said. ‘We’ve got a boy, as well.’

 

‘Bully for you,’ I snapped, remembering the slow, sinking dread, the tests, the theories, the statistics. They loved a probability, those doctors.

 

I hovered on the pavement, examined the man in your life. Hefty. Not un-handsome. Your age. Remembered those few months we’d spent together almost ten years before. He gave us a
nonchalant wave, as if I was asking directions, began unloading provisions from the boot and I felt a swift urge to walk up to him and say: I know things about your wife that you don’t.

 

So Alice turned down Oxford? Well, I never. I imagine that sparked some discussion in your household. I got the grades, but flunked the interview. They obviously detected in me even at that tender age what I was destined to become: good on paper. As a PhD, I was informed that to be truly brilliant, academics needed soul.

 

Could I not persuade you to change your mind about that drink, Liz? I could show you the mementoes of Alice I’m gathering. Heaven only knows what the university’s ‘technology support’ department must suspect I’m up to; my email hasn’t been so busy for years. My favourite photograph thus far is of her climbing on the statue outside the biology labs. It’s a constant battle, keeping the students off that ghastly piece of ‘art’, but you can’t herd them. She’s got her arms round his bronze neck and is sticking her tongue out at him. Hurrah for Alice, I say, poking fun at the blighter – derivative plagiarist that he was.

 

Liz, can I ask you a question? How was she at the time of her passing? In her final days, was she in good spirits? Only – and forgive me for raising this – much of what I’ve read alludes to her state of mind.

 

What is it they say about journalism being the first draft of history? I wonder if that’s what our correspondence is. The first draft of something. These words, the sentences they make, the sentiments they convey. The truths – or otherwise – we trade. Because nothing is entirely objective and facts are slippery little buggers. We’re better equipped to communicate than any organism that’s ever existed, but arguably we’re not a whole lot better at it than we were 40,000 years ago when the Neanderthals reached out and stencilled their hands in the El Castillo caves.
Every day we fail to communicate. We speak in riddles or half-truths or worse. Every day we pass up on that wonderful, beautiful chance to reach out into the darkness and connect. Still, the only way we’ve got of making sense of the madness is through these crazy, silly, magical maddening little things we choose to call ‘words’. They’re all we’ve got.

 

I would have asked about how you were after we went our separate ways, I so nearly did on so many occasions, but I had no idea how you’d react or whether those around you were aware of your situation. I was sick with worry.

 

Naturally I’ll treat your email in confidence. I, too, may have omitted to mention our correspondence to Fliss. Secrets, eh – aren’t we’re a right pair?

 

I would very much like to see you, even if it is our coda.

 

Yours,

Jem